Here is a rundown of Cheddar News' top trending market stories of the day.
TECH EARNINGS AHEAD
It's going to be a busy week for Wall Street. The Federal Reserve is announcing its next rate hike on Wednesday, and Big Tech is dropping a slew of quarterly results. Meta is releasing earnings on Wednesday, and Amazon, Apple, and Google parent Alphabet are all releasing on Thursday. Traders are betting that the Fed delivers a modest 25 basis point hike, marking a deceleration of this tightening cycle. As for the earnings, investors will be tuned in for signs of how the tech sector might fare in the coming year after several high-profile rounds of layoffs.
MICROSOFT COPYRIGHT SUIT
Microsoft and OpenAI requested that a San Francisco court toss out a class-action lawsuit accusing the firms of improperly monetizing open-source code in their artificial-intelligence systems. The companies said the anonymous copyright owners who filed the complaint were not specific enough in their allegations. The plaintiffs maintain that they used the open source code in a program called Copilot without complying with licensing terms.
AMAZON ADD GROCERY FEES
Amazon is adding a fee to Fresh grocery orders that cost less than $150. It said the extra charge is designed to keep prices down across its services. The delivery fee is $9.95 for orders under $50, $6.95 for orders between $50 and $100, and $3.95 for orders between $100 and $150. “This service fee will help keep prices low in our online and physical grocery stores as we better cover grocery delivery costs and continue to enable offering a consistent, fast, and high-quality delivery experience,” the company said.
Kraft Heinz is splitting into two companies a decade after they joined in a massive merger that created one of the biggest food companies on the planet. One of the companies will include brands such as Heinz, Philadelphia cream cheese and Kraft Mac & Cheese. The other will include brands like Oscar Mayer, Kraft Singles and Lunchables. When the company formed in 2015 it wanted to capitalize on its massive scale, but shifting tastes complicated those plans, with households seeking to introduce healthier options at the table. Kraft Heinz's net revenue has fallen every year since 2020.
About 780,000 pressure washers sold at retailers like Home Depot are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada, due to a projectile hazard that has resulted in fractures and other injuries among some consumers.
President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie ahead of the board considering the largest railroad merger ever proposed.
Ford is recalling more than 355,000 of its pickup trucks across the U.S. because of an instrument panel display failure that’s resulted in critical information, like warning lights and vehicle speed, not showing up on the dashboard.
