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.
Google announced it will be updating its privacy restrictions that will limit tracking throughout apps on android devices. The update is similar to Apple's previous update, which ended up causing companies like Meta to lose billions of dollars on the market. Cheddar News was joined by David Trainer, CEO of New Constructs, to discuss the implications of the new privacy updates.
Global semiconductor sales topped $500 billion dollars for the first time in history in 2021. Demand for microchips has been at an all-time high amid a global shortage, but questions still remain about the future of semiconductor production. Cheddar News was joined by Tristan Gerra, Senior Research Analyst at Baird, to answer some of these questions and more.
Stephen Gardner, director at ETF Managers Group, explains why investors shouldn't be rushing to sell vaccine stocks like Moderna or BioNTech even as the spread of COVID-19 slows down.
Keith Smith, President of Direct Digital Holdings, and Mark Walker, CEO of Direct Digital Holdings, discuss the challenges businesses have reaching diverse audiences and the future of programmatic ads.
Compass Inc. reported its Q4 earnings on Wednesday, noting a 31 percent surge in quarterly revenue year over year. The real estate brokerage platform allows agents to promote and market their properties online and saw a 90 percent agent retention rate as well. Compass CEO Robert Reffkin joined Cheddar News to discuss the company's earnings, what ongoing inflation means for the housing market and how they help agents directly. "Let me start by saying my mom is actually a real estate agent, has been the majority of my life. She's a real estate agent today at Compass, and so I built Compass with her in mind," Reffkin said. The goal for an agent is to grow their business and have a better quality of life, more income to support their family, more time to be with their family, and it's not just software. It's a platform of software and services."
While many are excited to watch the final two NFL teams square-off and see which one ultimately takes home the trophy, some, on the other hand, are there for another mian attraction -- the commercials. Companies during this year's game are looking towards the future From electric vehicles, to robots, and crypto-currency, several first-time advertisers are expected to join long-time advertisers like Pepsi, Budweiser and Doritos during the NFL's biggest game. Tom Morton, Global Chief Strategy Officer at R/GA, joined Cheddar News' Big Game Special to discuss.
Americans are expected to spend nearly $24 billion in 2022 for Valentine's Day, and many of those gifts will be in the form of chocolate. John Galloway, interim president of the Americas and CMO of Godiva, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss what chocolate trends the brand is seeing this year, plus the impact of inflation and supply chain issues on the industry.
