The Week's Top Stories is a guided tour through the biggest market stories of the week, from winning stocks to brutal dips to the facts and forecasts generating buzz on Wall Street.
DEBT DEAL
Congress has reached a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling, news that was well-received on Wall Street. The bill now heads to the desk of President Joe Biden, which raises the odds of the government avoiding a potentially catastrophic default. The good news from Washington, D.C., along with a stronger-than-expected jobs report, gave stocks a boost at the tail-end of the trading week.
AMAZON MOBILE
Telecom stocks dropped on Friday after Bloomberg reported that Amazon is in talks with wireless carriers to launch its own mobile service for Prime members. Amazon is said to be in talks with Verizon, T-Mobile, and Dish Network to potentially resell their mobile services to Prime members at a lower cost and even free in some cases. The report comes as Amazon tries to attract more members to its subscription service. However, it could take months for the companies to seal a deal. This wouldn't be the first time Amazon attempted to get into mobile. The company in 2014 launched its Fire Phone, which it scrapped a year later.
NVIDIA HITS $1 TRILLION
Just weeks after a massive rally, shares of Nvidia rose another 4 percent this week, pushing the chipmaker's market cap past the $1 trillion mark. The company is riding a wave of enthusiasm around the rise of artificial intelligence, and advanced semiconductor manufacturers are positioning themselves to benefit from increased adoption of the technology. Nvidia has also continued to boost investor expectations with a steady clip of announcements around new products and services. The stock was up nearly 4 percent this week.
TROUBLE AT C3
Another beneficiary of the AI boom has been C3.ai, which provides AI-based solutions to businesses. But now the company is facing pressure from a short-seller who is accusing C3 of inflating margins, engaging in "aggressive accounting," and for an overall lack of transparency. Billionaire CEO Tom Siebel is pushing back against the allegations, saying in a statement that it "appears to be a highly creative and transparent attempt by a self-acclaimed short seller to short the stock, publish an inflammatory letter to move the stock price downward, then cover the short and pocket the profits." The stock ended the day Friday down 7 percent but still rose 12 percent for the week.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
