From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.

JOBS POP

The labor market had its biggest monthly gain since last August, with employers adding 916,000 jobs in March, far above the 675,000 consensus estimate. The unemployment rate fell to an even 6 percent from 6.2 percent in February. The hospitality and construction sectors led the recovery as more leisure-based businesses open and the housing market continues to run hot. With U.S. markets closed for Good Friday, investors will have a long weekend to digest the upside surprise and think about whether it’s an aberration or a sign of things to come as the pandemic begins to recede and the stimulus spending hits the economy’s circulatory system. At the end of a shortened week that closed out Q1, the S&P 500 closed above 4,000 for the first time, led once again by tech stocks. President Biden’s announcement that he plans to pay for his infrastructure plan by raising corporate taxes has not put a dent in the rally on Wall St. — at least not yet. 

GAMESTOP'S NEW EXECS

GameStop continued its big-name hiring spree, poaching another Amazon exec to help guide its e-commerce transition. Elliott Wilke joins the video game retailer as its chief growth officer, where he will be tasked with expanding customer loyalty programs and consumer insights. Wilke was previously running Amazon’s Prime Pantry business and had come up at P&G before that. GameStop also raided Chewy for another pair of execs to head marketing and brand development. (Chewy, for its part, got a nice pop after a big earnings beat this week. That stock got hammered in the broader tech selloff a month ago but has been recovering ever since.)  GameStop investors have been liking what they’re seeing since Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen has started putting his imprimatur on the company, with the stock maintaining more than half the gains notched during the Reddit-fueled trading frenzy of two months ago. 

PFIZER'S GOOD WEEK 

Pfizer said this week that its COVID vaccine is still highly effective after six months, even against some of the more worrying variants of the virus, and also 100 percent effective in the first trials in adolescents. And yet…the stock ended the week more or less unchanged. Pfizer shares are only up about 5 percent since last January, despite the company in that time period completing one of the greatest engineering and logistical successes in the history of business. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla noted as much on the company’s last earnings call, saying Pfizer "clearly deserves a much, much higher multiple in this industry." And empirically speaking, he’s not wrong. Pfizer’s trading at a forward earnings multiple of about 11.4, compared to 22 for the broader S&P.

VIRGIN GALACTIC'S SHINY SPACECRAFT

Virgin Galactic unveiled its second spacecraft, a shiny silver vehicle dubbed the VSS Imagine. The Imagine is the first in a new generation of spaceships that Virgin plans to use to ferry civilians into suborbital space as early as next year. The Imagine "lay[s] the foundation for the design and manufacture of future vehicles," the company said. Shares of $SPCE rose on the news after coming through a brutal March that saw the stock fall close to 20 percent when a prominent investor sold down his stake. 

ARCHEGOS MESS

The implosion of Archegos Capital Management led to extreme volatility in shares of ViacomCBS, of which the hedge fund had built a large, highly-leveraged stake. Archegos got caught in a margin call after its big bet started to unravel late last week. That colossal position in the media conglomerate helped make it the best performing stock in the S&P this year. Then a routine share issuance by Viacom to raise $3 billion led to the margin call that torpedoed Archegos, taking shares of Viacom down with it and knocking off half the company’s valuation.

Share:
More In Business
Michigan Judge Sentences Walmart Shoplifters to Wash Parking Lot Cars
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
State Department Halts Plan to buy $400M of Armored Tesla Vehicles
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
Goodyear Blimp at 100: ‘Floating Piece of Americana’ Still Thriving
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
Load More