The Week's Top Stories is a guided tour through the biggest market stories of the week, from winning stocks to brutal dips to the facts and forecasts generating buzz on Wall Street.
RATE HIKE WORRIES
It was a bumpy week on Wall Street, adding to an already volatile 2023 for investors. Stock drifted in and out of the red throughout the week, as investors continued to trade speculation about what, exactly, the Federal Reserve might do rate-wise now that the economy is proving more resilient and inflationary than expected. Despite this narrative, stocks recovered Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial rose 1.47 percent, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.33 and 1.49 respectively.
TARGET REBOOTS
Target's stock fell this week after it released a tepid forecast for the coming year. The retail giant reported that consumers are pulling back spending, and the near-term inflation picture doesn't offer much hope of a bounce back. On top of that, the company said that its recent spate of markdowns is likely to continue for a little bit longer, which means continued pressure on profit margins. Because of these headwinds, Target said it's investing $5 billion to open new stores and revamp existing ones to encourage impulse buying.
FORD ACCELERATES
Ford's stock is up nearly 10 percent this week, following an earnings report showing a 22 percent jump in sales in February from the year before. The legacy automaker bolstered the positive sentiment with the announcement that it planned to resume production of pickups and electric vehicles in the popular F-Series. The assembly line was idled after a battery in an F-150 Lightning caught fire in the company's parking lot. Ford said the cause of the fire has been discovered and has now been solved. Production will resume on March 13. The increased pace of sales beat Wall Street estimates, which predicted a less than 10 percent jump.
AI STOCK SURGES
Shares of artificial intelligence software company C3.ai skyrocketed nearly 30 percent on Friday. The rally appears to be fueled by support from retail investors, who have put their weight behind the lesser known AI-related stock. In addition, momentum is building around the AI space, with new enterprise applications rapidly gaining traction with investors. The company also beat Wall Street estimates on profit and revenue in its latest earnings report. C3.ai is aiming to become fully profitable by the year 2024.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
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.
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.
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.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
