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.
Jack Daniels was at the U.S. Supreme Court today. The whiskey-makers argued that a dog toy company violated federal trademark law with a product that parodies the distiller's iconic bottle. The toy is the Bad Spaniels Silly Squeaker toy by VIP products. The first amendment case pits the rights of a famous trademark holder against parody products. Jack Daniel says the toy damages its reputation, especially the references to dog poop.
Alcohol brand White Claw is moving into spirits amid an industrywide shift away from hard seltzers. The spiked seltzer brand announced a new line of regular and flavored White Claw premium vodkas. The bottles are available in select markets across North America and come in an unflavored option as well as pineapple mango and black cherry white Claw has dominated the Heart Seltzer market for years. Now bringing the category into the mainstream as more consumers sought those low calorie alcohol drinks.
Stocks are holding relatively steady Wednesday as Wall Street bides its time until the Federal Reserve’s announcement in the afternoon about whether it will tighten the screws further on the economy.
Meme stocks are rising before the opening bell Wednesday after GameStop, one of the most heavily traded off-brand stocks during the pandemic, posted a surprise profit for the fourth quarter.
The rising cost of groceries is pushing more consumers to use Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services for necessities such as groceries, according to new data from Adobe Analytics.
