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.
Shares of Astra fell after the aerospace company announced a failure to deliver its NASA satellite payload mid-launch, resulting in its stock price plummeting to the point where trading had to be halted twice.
Amid a string of recalls for their electric cars, Tesla is also facing a lawsuit over workplace discrimination. The electric automaker is being accused by California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing of a pattern of racial discrimination against Black workers. Caleb Silver, Editor-in-Chief at Investopedia, joined Cheddar News to discuss the numerous technical and safety issues that led to the recalls and the allegations of systemic racist abuse at its Fremont plant. "Tesla disputes these claims, but still you can’t avoid the pattern," he said.
The Super Bowl is only a few days away, and the game is currently tracking to be the most expensive one ever.
Gametime, a website and app for last-minute tickets, says the average ticket price for the NFL's championship game is $9,502.50, with the most expensive seats costing nearly $38,000. That's a far cry away from the average ticket price of the first-ever Super Bowl in 1967, which was only $12. The average ticket price increased by more than $8,000 in just the past decade. Matt Rados, Senior Operations Manager at Gametime, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Earlier this week, digital investment advisor Betterment announced that it has hired Makara, a company known for its management of cryptocurrency portfolios. Sarah Levy, CEO of Betterment, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where she explains why crypto represents such a promising long-term play and how her company stands to benefit from this latest move.
