Viral Stories of the Week: July 10

Vonetta Logan's recap of business, markets, political, cultural and viral stories featured this week on Daily Dose.

What’s up tastynation! Welcome to this week’s edition of Weekly Dose! Each week, I recap the top stories that I covered on Daily Dose. If you missed any eps of Daily Dose you can catch up on them here. 

Why is that the first full week after a short week feels like a total slog? 

Let’s get to the recap! 


Monday 

• "Magnificent 7 Stocks" combined market cap worth 3x GDP of Germany: The seven largest U.S.-listed companies—the five tech titans Alphabet, (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Meta (META) and Microsoft, (MSFT), along with new kids Nvidia (NVDA) and Tesla (TSLA)—have an eye-watering combined market capitalization of $11 trillion. Thanks to surging interest in artificial intelligence, the Magnificent 7 are, together, up 60% for the year so far. Poor Germany. Someone get David Hasselhoff to make a new album to increase Germany’s GDP, stat! Here’s how the Mag 7 fared this week: 
1. Alphabet, the parent of Google. opened on Monday at $118.58 then surged to around $125.
2. Amazon opened on Monday at $129.20 then wrapped up around $135.
3. Apple (AAPL) opened on Monday at $189.27 then was flat to finish the week at $190.
4. Meta opened on Monday at $293.00 then surged to around $308 (high tick $314).
5. Microsoft opened on Monday at $332.40 then wrapped up around $345 (high $351).
6. Nvidia opened on Monday at $423.22 then surged to finish the week near $454 (it hit a high of $480 on Friday).
7. Tesla opened on Monday at $275.75 then ticked up to finish the week at $281.
• Threads is just vibes, no news: Threads captured the crown this week for the most rapidly downloaded app in history. Threads head (never not funny) Adam Mosseri says politics and hard news just aren’t worth the hassle. I have to say, Threads is a fun way to turn off your brain for a brief respite or while tornado sirens blast through your town. Meta had a great run in the market this week, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to inexplicably post thirst traps. Can I just say that we should never, under any circumstances, see a CEO’s nipples. #freethenipple on Instagram, not in the boardroom. But as we headed into Friday some news was released that Threads engagement did seem to be cooling. But anecdotal evidence shows users are waiting for more refinement from the app in terms of chronological feed, DMs, edits and other features. 
  
  
• Emojis are legally binding: In a wild legal tale from our neighbors to the North, comes a unique precedent. A Canadian farmer owes $82,000 for breach of contract after using a “thumbs-up” emoji in a text. During contract negotiations about the price of flax, the farmer responded to the contract with the “thumbs-up” emoji. The farmer then failed to deliver the grain and things got flaxxed-up and ended up in court, thus setting the precedent for an emoji-based legal system. I would like to point out that if this is, in fact, legally binding, there are a lot of dudes out there who promised me eggplants but only delivered baby corn. Someone get Gloria Allread on the phone for me. 

Tuesday 

• Get ready for the richession: No, richession isn’t the latest Sunday night drama on HBO. Wall Street Journal reporter Justin Lahart coined that term at the start of this year to refer to a downturn that disproportionately impacts some of the country's wealthiest people. When I first read this I was like “hells yeah!” I wanted to add ‘richession’ to my now undying love of Orcas who seem to take extreme delight in yeeting themselves at super yachts. Sadly, I learned richession doesn’t apply to the mega rich like Musk and Zuckerberg, it merely refers to people whose annual salary puts them in the top 25% of wage earners. That’s 90k per year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can see where your income ranks here. Umm, if you live in NYC or San Francisco or Austin and make 90k you’re not even close to rich. So first, the bad news, layoffs hit this sector of workers particularly hard. The good news, however, is that workers in the bottom 25% have seen their wages outpace the top quartile over the last 12 months. 
• Nasdaq 100 set to rebalance: It looks like the Nasdaq is going to do a little self-care and is going to re-center itself. Not with a Goop subscription or a visit to The Ranch in Malibu, California, rather with a re-weighting of some of its heavyweight tech stocks. The Nasdaq 100 (NDX) is going to carry out a “special rebalance” to "address overconcentration in the index by redistributing the weights." The adjustment will be based on shares outstanding as of July 3, with changes announced on July 14 and taking effect before the market opens on July 24. It’s like when the gawky, awkward kid shoots up 6 inches over the summer and returns to school as a verified hottie and the whole social structure of the high school has to re-balance. This was not me, btw, I was captain of the debate team and solidly uncool for all time. If you want to learn more about the Nasdaq rebalancing, check out Nick Battista’s story here.
• Twitter vs. Threads spat intensifies: In news that no journalist who went to journalism school should have to actually report, Tesla and SpaceX CEO, and owner of Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted that he and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg should have “a literal dick measuring contest.” Alright y’all, this has been fun, but imma head out. **closes laptop and throws it out the window** Musk then followed up that insightful bon mot with “zuck is a cuck”.  When Musk made the tweets, Twitter rival Threads had reached 100 million users. Can we just agree that all of this actually reeks of the literal opposite of BDE. But if these dudes wanna whip out the rulers, I kinda want to see what happens. “Aww, it’s like a frightened turtle.” Also, I would like to apologize to the tasty tech team that monitors my internet searches, this week’s recap has been a doozy. 

Wednesday 

• June CPI released: Inflation cooled for the 12th straight month in June as grocery prices remained flat which slightly offset a rebound in gas costs and pricey rent hikes. Core inflation, which the Fed watches more closely, eased more than expected. Consumer prices overall increased 3% from a year earlier, down from 4% in May, according to the Labor Department’s consumer price index. The market loved the news and sent all indices higher on both CPI and PPI reports this week. No word yet on what the Fed plans to do about the still ongoing sriracha shortage. 
• B of A allegedly lies and steals no one cares: Bank of America (BAC) engaged in deceptive practices that hurt hundreds of thousands of its customers in recent years, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Tuesday. Bank of America charged some customers $35 overdraft fees for the same transaction. “Heh. You really will have insufficient funds now, homie.” America’s second-largest bank also held people’s credit card awards hostage. Oh, and they also opened bogus accounts in people’s names. For this they were fined **checks notes** $150 million to the CFPB and $80 million to the customers it improperly charged. No one at BofA lost their job or went to jail. Meanwhile, my girl Martha Stewart is out here thriving after doing hard time. 
•  Microsoft’s bid for Activision gets the greenlight from judge: Microsoft (MSFT) advanced to the next level in its gameplan to buy video game maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI) after a U.S. judge gave the green light to the $69 (nice) billion deal. A British regulator suggested it would reconsider its opposition. Shares of Activision traded over $90 briefly this week on the news. The FTC will appeal the decision because they can’t beat Call of Duty. 

Thursday

• Elon Musk launches new company, xAI: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of Twitter, announced the debut of a new AI company, xAI, with the goal to “understand the true nature of the universe.” Um, pump the brakes, girl. You don’t even understand how Twitter works. When he’s not trolling Mark Zuckerberg or standing beneath Grimes’ window like John Cusack in Say Anything, Musk is busy assembling a cadre of the finest dudebros to develop cutting edge AI technology that will laugh at all of Elon’s jokes and tell him that he will win any measurement contest that he enters. Good luck to all involved. 
• Farmers Insurance pulls out of FL insurance market: Farmers Insurance will stop offering insurance coverage in the state of Florida. This includes home insurance, auto, and policies that cover a combination of these. Apparently, the company made this decision to better manage its risk exposure in such a hurricane and natural disaster-prone state. Can we all agree that more people in Florida should be adopting pull out strategies? Real talk, this sucks. Insurance premiums in Florida average $4000, while the national average is closer to $1500. But Florida is gonna Florida. 
• Actors authorize strike against Hollywood studios and streamers: The picket line is about to get a lot more attractive as SAG-AFTRA, the union representing TV and film actors, authorized a strike against the studios and the streaming services. SAG has 160,000 members and they will join the WGA the Writer’s Guild of America (who have been on strike since May) for the first dual-union strike since 1960. After tons of tone-deaf sound bites from studio executives this week, Disney (DIS) chief executive Bob Iger seemed to take the cake as he literally gave an interview from “billionaire summer camp” calling striking worker’s actions ``disturbing”. Well hold on to your metaverse Bob, you’re getting hella rich off the backs of creatives who keep your private jet filled with the tears of the poor. Your parks are empty this summer, and ESPN is laying off top-tier talent, but yeah, writers and actors are the problem. I am not in the writers union, but I one day hope to be. I’m working on a little screenplay called The Devil Wears a Beret. A protracted strike could definitely impact the bottom line of Amazon (AMZN), Disney (DIS), Netflix, Comcast (CMSCA), Apple and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) among many others.   

Friday 

• Ripple Labs notches landmark win vs SEC:  Is crypto winter over? Is it finally time for crypto spring? Hot crypto summer? Autumnal, pumpkin spice crypto? Whatever the season, the market is celebrating. Ripple Labs Inc did not violate federal securities law by selling its XRP token on public exchanges, a U.S. judge ruled on Thursday, a landmark legal victory for the cryptocurrency industry that sent the value of XRP soaring. The legal ruling sent alt tokens soaring as well as exchanges like Coinbase (COIN). Coinbase opened the week at $76.80 then wrapped up the week near $104, trading as high as $114. The ruling was the first win for a cryptocurrency company in a case brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission—though it did also give the SEC a partial victory. Of course the industry expects challenges, but this was a great win by the team at Ripple to go headfirst into a protracted, and expensive legal battle with the U.S. government. 
• Liquid Death hires bank for IPO:  Canned water company Liquid Death has hired Goldman Sachs for a potential initial public offering as soon as next spring, according to a report from The Information.  Liquid Death was valued at $700 million after raising $70 million last year. $700 million for water in a can. You gotta love the market. But the heat of new IPOs like fast-casual Mediterranean chain Cava (CAVA) has regenerated interest in a tepid IPO market. 
• FTC investigates OpenAI: The Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI for possible violations of consumer protection law, seeking extensive records from the maker of ChatGPT about its handling of personal data, its potential to give users inaccurate information and its “risks of harm to consumers, including reputational harm.” You thought you only had to worry about your ex spreading lies and falsehoods about you. Now, we have to worry about technology doing it as well. The federal probe comes as more people question the legality of how large language models “scrape” or acquire data. Also, a radio host almost had his life ruined by a GPT “hallucination”. It’s an exciting, but scary time for sure. 

What I’m watching: This week, I watched the “Shiny, happy, people: Duggar family secrets” documentary on Amazon (AMZN). The 4-part series investigates the darker side of the once beloved TLC-clan. 

See ya next week! 

Vonetta Logan has more than a decade of markets experience and has been a trader for five years. She is an on-air personality, creative writer and news correspondent at tastylive, She appears Monday-Friday on Daily Dose and contributes to Luckbox Magazine. @vonettalogan

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