Stocks Seesaw From Big Gains, to Losses, and Back Again
*By Carlo Versano*
What the market giveth, the market taketh away...or does it?
After coming out of the gate roaring Friday morning, the Dow Industrials gave back 400 points worth of gains and turned negative midday. But just a few minutes later, around 1:10 pm ET, the index was back up triple digits. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was up about 1.4 percent.
While stocks were well off their highs of the day, tech names, which saw some of the biggest losses over the previous two days, were largely higher Friday. Four of the so-called FAANG stocks ー Apple ($AAPL), Amazon ($AMZN), Netflix ($NFLX), and Google parent Alphabet ($GOOGL) ー added a combined $67 billion back to their collective market cap. The only one that was down was Facebook ($FB), which provided an update to the data breach announced last month, saying attackers stole data from 29 million users.
Trading was once again choppy amid a mounting heap of concerns over the global economy, trade tensions, interest rates, and a slowdown in tech.
The major indexes are on pace for their worst week since March.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was tricked into an extended phone call in January with Russian pranksters posing as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which Powell appeared to discuss the economic impact of interest rate hikes.
Amazon on Thursday reported stronger-than-expected revenue and profits for the first quarter, sending its stocks higher in after-hours trading. But its prices took a dip in the evening amid concerns about a continued slowdown in the company's profitable cloud computing unit AWS.
A key index of underlying inflation that is closely followed by the Federal Reserve remained elevated last month, keeping the Fed on track to raise interest rates next week for the 10th time since March of last year.
As a growing number of overweight Americans clamor for Ozempic and Wegovy — drugs touted by celebrities and on TikTok to pare pounds — an even more powerful obesity medicine is poised to upend treatment.
A California judge is ordering Tesla CEO Elon Musk to be interviewed under oath regarding statements about the safety and capability of the car maker's autopilot features.
David Wright, president and owner of Wright Financial Group LLC, joined Cheddar News to discuss Thursday's trading as stocks closed higher amid strong tech profits. But Wright says banking stress could sway markets down as the Federal Reserve could weigh more rate increases.
The Gap is laying off 1,800 corporate workers, roughly three time the number of headquarters jobs it cut last fall, as the struggling chain cuts costs in a bid to become more nimble.
