Francesca Fontana
speaker
586 appearances
22 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 10 Jan
Francesca Fontana’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 3.
Appearances
And Friday, as you likely noticed, the stock market was closed for Good Friday. On the week, the S&P 500 lost 1.5%, the Dow fell 2.7%, and the Nasdaq fell 2.6%. First up, let's talk about some big movers outside of all the tariff drama, like Eli Lilly, one of the drug makers vying for the weed in the race for a weight-loss pill.
A little context, pharmaceutical companies including Lilly and Novo Nordisk, which currently dominate the obesity market with injectable drugs like Zepbound and Wegovy, have been testing pills that could help people lose weight. The market for weight loss drugs has been on fire, and analysts say it could reach $100 billion by the end of the decade.
On Thursday, Lilly said its daily pill met its goals in a trial, helping diabetics lower their blood sugar and lose weight. And these results are the first from several studies of the pill expected this year. And they were certainly celebrated by investors, because Lilly shares surged 14% on Thursday.
Now let's circle back to UnitedHealth, the healthcare conglomerate and parent of UnitedHealthcare, America's largest health insurer. UnitedHealth's stock took a nosedive on Thursday after the company slashed its annual outlook and posted quarterly earnings that fell short of Wall Street's expectations. This is a rare stumble for the company.
You know, it typically delivers a steady stream of increased earnings and better than projected financial performance. So what caused the unexpectedly disappointing results? Well, higher than expected medical costs in its Medicare business. This is an issue that has affected the entire industry over the past year, but until now, it's been not so significant a problem at UnitedHealth.
The stock ended up plummeting 22% on Thursday. Last but not least, some news from Netflix. The streaming giant has some pretty ambitious goals, The Wall Street Journal reported this week, including joining the elite club of companies with a market cap of $1 trillion or more, which includes tech giants like Apple and Nvidia. The company also aims to double its revenue to about $80 billion by 2030.
So where's Netflix at right now? Well, it's got a market cap of more than $400 billion, for starters, and the company has boosted its performance in recent years by raising prices, limiting password sharing, and starting an ad business. Another thing Netflix has going for it, it's been relatively unscathed by the market turmoil related to Trump's tariffs, at least so far.
Netflix shares gained 4.8% Tuesday and, on a weekly basis, rose about 6%. We also got the latest quarterly results from Netflix later in the week, after market close on Thursday, in which it reported a record quarterly profit. But, as we know, the market was closed on Friday, so the stock is definitely one to keep an eye on Monday. And now you know what's news in markets this week.
You can read about more stocks that moved on the week's news in The Score, my column in the Wall Street Journal's Exchange section. Today's show was produced by Zoe Kolkin and Anthony Bansi with supervising producer Talia Arbel. I'm Francesca Fontana. Have a great weekend and see you next Saturday.
Hey, listeners, it's Saturday, April 12th. I'm Francesca Fontana for The Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News in Markets, our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Let's get to it. So what to talk about this week? I mean, it was so slow. There was no big news. I'm fully kidding.
This week, like last week, was full of trade turmoil and giant market swings. Really, we can divide it into before Wednesday and after Wednesday, a.k.a. before and after Trump's big about face on a bunch of the latest tariffs.
So before Wednesday, the market was digesting all of the latest threats of retaliation from China in response to Trump's tariffs, as well as big Wall Street players weighing in and voicing their concerns like JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, and BlackRock's Larry Fink. In contrast, Trump told everyone to, quote, be cool via Truth Social, but clearly things in the market were not cool.
And then there was Wednesday. Trump interrupted the day's sell-off and announced the 90-day pause on certain tariffs to most countries, also via Truth Social. And we got a big old rally, and the three major indexes notched some records. Now, after Wednesday. Thursday, stocks were falling again, despite the good news from the previous day.
For one, the White House said that the China tariffs added up to 145 percent, not the 125 percent it had indicated the day before. And then we got one last twist. On Friday, stocks were back to rallying to close out the wild ride. On a weekly basis, the Dow gained about 5 percent, the S&P 500 gained more than 5 percent, and the Nasdaq climbed more than 7 percent.
In terms of individual movers, let's start with Delta Airlines. Delta predicted that 2025 would be its best financial year ever. But that view has gotten pretty cloudy. The airline on Wednesday ditched its full-year financial outlook and said it's too soon to say how air travel demand is going to play out.
On an earnings call, CEO Ed Bastian also said Delta's working to avoid paying tariffs on the dozens of planes it's set to receive from Airbus this year. Of course, you'll recall that Wednesday afternoon's tariff pause injected a bunch of optimism into the market. And man, oh man, did airline stocks really fly. Delta shares rose 23% on Wednesday. American Airlines also rose 23%.
And United Airlines rose 26%. On a weekly basis, Delta notched a 9.7% gain. American ended up 2.2%. And United rose 14%. Now, not every company was relieved by the tariff pause, certainly not the ones affected by levies that remained in place.
Like CarMax, the used car dealer, which on Wednesday posted disappointing quarterly earnings and said it could no longer give a time frame for financial goals that it's been working toward for years. The 25 percent tax on automotive imports was not included in Trump's walkback. Now, the tariffs could be a mixed bag for CarMax and its auto-selling peers.
Analysts say the levies will likely drive up the cost of both new and used cars. This could attract more used car buyers, moving away from the higher cost of buying new. Or they could lose out on demand if shoppers hold off on buying vehicles altogether. The stock rode the broader rally higher on Wednesday, but the next day it took a nosedive, dropping 17% on Thursday.
And on the week, CarMax ended up losing more than 9%. It's that time again, bank earnings. On Friday, traders were celebrating the latest quarterly results from JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, higher quarterly profits reported by each, while also digesting executives' warnings about the recession risks looming over us all.
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