*By Mike Teich*
Amazon shares jumped nearly 4 percent Friday after the e-commerce juggernaut delivered blockbuster earnings results on Thursday.
The tech giant impressed investors by delivering operating profit of $1.9 billion. Amazon's blockbuster numbers reflected its success in retail sales and growth in its cloud services business, said Michael Pachter, an analyst from Wedbush Securities.
Amazon also announced that it would be raising its Prime membership fee by $20, up to $119 a year. Pachter said the "odds are less than 1 percent that there is a decline in membership" as a result of the price hike.
Pachter compared Amazon Prime's cost to Netflix, noting that Prime was priced below Amazon's video-streaming rival and offers content that is "75 percent as good."
Meta is poised to launch a new app that appears to mimic Twitter, marking a direct challenge to the social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
Tobacco manufacturers have started posting new warning signs about cigarettes in over 200,000 stores across the country, one of the final steps in a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department against Big Tobacco in 1999.
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.
