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.
BUDGET DRAMA
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has yet to secure the Republican votes for a bill that would raise the federal debt ceiling to avoid default until at least March 31, 2024. That means more uncertainty for the stock market next week, as the prospect of a default on the national debt hangs over the economy. The debt fight on Capitol Hill is also raising the cost of credit default swaps, which gauge the risk of a default on U.S. Treasury bills.
NETFLIX'S WILD RIDE
Shares of Netflix slipped on Tuesday after the company reported mixed earnings in the first quarter, including a lower-than-expected forecast for the coming quarter. The streaming giant also announced that it was ending its DVD mailing service. "We are growing, not as fast as we believe we can, not as fast as we would want to, but we are growing and we are profitable," co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors during an earnings call. "We have a clear path to reaccelerate growth in both revenue and profit and we are executing on it."
AT&T DROPS
AT&T's stock saw its biggest sell-off since 2000 after reporting a miss on revenue and cash flow. The telecommunications company added 424,000 postpaid phone subscribers, but free cash flow was well below estimates. AT&T said it expects those factors to normalize next year. Rival companies Verizon and T-Mobile are set to report next week.
PROCTER & GAMBLE POPS
Finishing out the week, shares of Procter & Gamble popped nearly 4 percent after the company reported that it raised prices around 10 percent across its brands in the first quarter. P&G had raised prices roughly 10 percent the prior quarter as well, suggesting incredible pricing power, which investors rewarded
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.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
