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.
INTRODUCING: THREADS
It's the new Twitter! No, wait, it's a new competitor! Meta stock got lots of likes this week as it introduced a new platform called Threads, which is meant to take on the short-text social media OG. Like Twitter, Threads allows users to converse in real-time text conversations and makes it very easy for current Instagram users to sign up. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said 10 million users signed up in the first few hours and the platform has already been dubbed the "Twitter killer." Meta ended the week up about 2 percent.
MACRO WORRIES
There was good news for the job market, but bad news for investors Thursday when ADP announced private hiring was much stronger than expected in June. While workers are happy to be pulling in paychecks, strong hiring could lead to more rate hikes from the Federal Reserve as it struggles to get inflation under control. A milder-than-expected monthly report from the feds tempered the fallout Friday, helping the Dow Jones end the week down nearly 2 percent. At the last FOMC meeting, they opted not to raise them for the first time in over a year, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted that just because they passed on a rate hike this time, more increases are still very much on the table.
JETBLUE DITCHES AMERICAN DEAL
JetBlue rattled the markets Wednesday when it announced it will ditch an alliance with American Airlines in order to save its proposed takeover of Spirit. The Justice Department has been trying to block the Spirit acquisition and the American deal over fears about consolidation in the airline industry that would further stifle competition and drive up ticket prices. Both JetBlue and American stock dipped on the news Thursday but climbed back on Friday. It was good news for Spirit stockholders; shares rose on the news, ending the week up 8 percent.
UPS LABOR PROBLEM
Your packages may not get where they need to go later this year and investors are watching. Labor negotiations broke down this week with both sides blaming the other for walking away from the table. The union says it wants a final offer, but the company says it delivered a "historic offer" that the union abandoned. If conditions continue to deteriorate, a strike could come at any time. The stock took a dive on Wednesday when this all came to a head, but will still end the week up about 2 percent.
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.
