Rate Cuts, Tesla Loses its Charge and IPOs are Back
Rate Cuts, Tesla Loses its Charge and IPOs are Back
Vonetta Logan's weekly recap of the big business, news, markets, political, cultural and viral trending 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.
Dear reader, this week’s blog is coming to you from the desk of a very tired Senior Swiftie. I was not prepared for a pre-dawn double-album release. It’s also fitting for all of us in the Tortured Traders Department this week. So, let’s raise a glass to the trades that are torturing us all this year.
Let’s also get to this week’s recap.
To cut or not to cut…
The market was more emotional than the new Taylor Swift album this week.
Speaking at a policy forum on Tuesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy, while otherwise strong, has not seen inflation come back to the central bank’s goal, pointing to the further unlikelihood that interest rate cuts are in the offing anytime soon. Basically, the Fed chair isn’t upset with America, he’s just disappointed.
When Fed officials initially penciled in three rate cuts at the end of last year, markets hit new highs. Investors were overjoyed when officials maintained their median forecast for three rate cuts this year at last month’s meeting, leading to multiple fresh records for major U.S. indexes.
After last week’s hotter-than-expected inflation data, the Dow (DIA), S&P 500 (SPY) and Nasdaq Composite (QQQ) have each shed around 2% of their value. So now we’re left to wonder: What happens if we don’t get any rate cuts this year?
Israeli strike on Iran rattles markets
The S&P 500 is already enduring its longest slide since January. Then, last night, news broke that Israel launched a limited direct military attack on Iranian soil early Friday morning. That sent all the major indices down at least 1%. Oil also rocketed up but has since settled.
This morning however, the market woke up and was like “oh man, I blacked out. Did I do anything crazy last night?” It is wild that we’re basically unchanged on the day.
Tesla loses its charge
Wow, I feel like I should start hitting the ctrl + c, ctrl + v button on my blogs when I’m writing yet again about the terrible week Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk had.
The week kicked off with Musk posting a memo announcing layoffs at Tesla. 10% of Tesla’s global workforce will be affected. Then, news was released that Tesla halted deliveries of the divisive Cybertruck because of a TikTok video. Yes, I am serious. That sent the value of Tesla’s stock cratering.
As if to kick them when the chips were down, Deutsche Bank downgraded Tesla’s stock this week in the most layup call of the century. I mean, how do I become a financial analyst? Just downgrade things that are already down bad? Let’s go!
The funniest thing though, was that during this massive onslaught of drama, Tesla has asked shareholders to approve a $56 billion pay package for Musk that got previously got smacked down in Delaware. I’m just here for the audacity.
Finally, to cap off the week, Tesla has now announced a TOTAL RECALL of all Cybertrucks. The stock is flirting with 52-week lows and is down almost 40% for the year, but yeah, go ahead and approve that huge pay package.
IPOs are back, baby!
Reddit (RDDT) got the ball rolling this year with its history-making tech IPO, but it looks like the IPO market is slowly trying to revive itself.
To kick off the week, we got news that online ticketing service StubHub is exploring a summer IPO.
The timing is near perfect as the Department of Justice has teamed up with the Tortured Poets Department to prosecute the lying, greedy, corporate behemoth that is TicketMaster (LYV). TicketMaster has been widely slammed for its usurious rates, opaque platform, and the fact that I can’t get Eras Tour tickets.
Ibotta (IBTA), the digital marketing company backed by Walmart (WMT) said it was looking to raise about $551 million in an upsized IPO in the United States. Well, the Ibotta (IBTA) did above and beyond what analysts were expecting. Ibotta sold 6.6 million shares at $88 apiece, raising $577.3 million. Its earlier price range was $76-$84 per share. Tech companies continue to lead the charge as the IPO market hopes to rebound.
We had another IPO this week in the tech space as Serve Robotics (SERV), the Uber (UBER) and Nvidia (NVDA)-backed sidewalk robot delivery company, debuted publicly on the stock exchange Thursday, making it the latest startup to choose going public via a reverse merger as an alternative path to capital needed to fund growth. But the coolest robot-of-the-week story must go to this guy.
And finally, I guess the opposite of an IPO would be taking a company private and it looks like the family that owns Nordstrom (JWN) is trying to do just that. It’s good to see new stocks popping up like spring flowers.
Random chicanery
These are my favorite funny stories of the week
That’s it for this week! 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. Vonetta appears Monday-Friday on Daily Dose and contributes to Luckbox Magazine. @vonettalogan
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