Market news usually tends to slow down in the summer, when Wall Street executives depart for the Hamptons and the stream of tech bro tweets dwindles. But not this summer.
The markets once again had a wild ride this week.
In case you missed it, Apple held its annual WorldWide Developers Conference (WWDC) where the company unveiled its greatest innovation in years: It’s finally putting the calculator app on the iPad! The excitement was palpable.
The tech behemoth also announced a deal with OpenAI, in which the company will get to integrate its features into what management has dubbed as “Apple Intelligence.” Apple shares are up nearly 8% over the past week.
On Wednesday, we had a double whammy of the Fed confirming it’s leaving interest rates unchanged, while new data showed that inflation is cooling. The consensus among central bankers was that we’ll likely see one rate cut this year, at most two. Analysts pointed to September as the month to watch for rate cuts.
Elon Musk, your high school bully’s favorite Joe Rogan guest, got a huge win as Tesla shareholders overwhelmingly voted to uphold his controversial pay package, granting him $56 billion tied to Tesla stock options. In addition, the coalition, which was largely backed by retail investors and a few key institutional backers like Ark’s Cathie Wood, voted to allow Tesla to incorporate in Texas.
As if that wasn’t enough, the S&P 500 announced it is adding KKR, CrowdStrike, and GoDaddy to the index. All three stocks spiked on the news, while the index itself hit a 29th record high for the year. The Nasdaq also rose as AI hype carried Apple, Nvidia, Broadcom, Adobe, and just about every other tech stock remotely tied to artificial intelligence higher.
We'll see if market news finally picks up its mai tai and hits the pool next week, but don't count on it.–LB
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