What’s News in Markets: Nvidia Effect, S&P Milestone, Apple Pay Later
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Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it. Infliction is killing me. But who cares? Big retailers are making record profits. That's why we support the Durbin Marshall credit card bill. See? Banks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll. This bill would cut the vital resources they need. While increasing megastore profits. They deserve it, don't they?
Tell Congress, stop the Durbin Marshall money grab for corporate megastores. Paid for by the Electronic Payments Coalition. Hey, listeners. It's Saturday, June 22nd. 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. The summer heat really is upon us now. We've had a pretty hot week here in New York, and so did the S&P 500. Even during a relatively quieter trading week shortened by the Juneteenth holiday, there was still a good amount of action. The index notched two record closes and hit another new milestone, surpassing 5,500 in intraday trading on Thursday. For that, we can all thank Nvidia, which was a big driver of those moves higher.
But more on that in a bit. All in all, the Dow rose for the week, the Nasdaq ended about flat, and the S&P managed a third straight week of gains.
Apple is ending Apple Pay Later. As you might guess from the name, Apple Pay Later is Apple's Buy Now Pay Later service that it unveiled last year. Buy Now Pay Later, too, is pretty self-explanatory. There are installment payment options offered by firms like Affirm and Klarna, so you can split your shopping bill into multiple payments over time. On Monday, Apple's website said that the company isn't offering new Pay Later loans, marking an end to this relatively new service. Like Apple Pay, The loans were part of the company's push to use finance to deepen its relationship with consumers, beyond, obviously, the bread and butter of its iPhone and Mac ecosystems. We're also seeing a bit of a trend here, since Apple also pulled the plug on its credit card partnership with Goldman Sachs last year.
So how did investors react? Well, Apple shares lost more than 1% Tuesday, and the stock kept moving lower the rest of the week.
Let's circle back to NVIDIA, which loyal listeners of What's News will have heard about earlier this week. If you missed it, I'll catch you up. NVIDIA ended Tuesday with a 3.5% gain. Now, that might not sound like a huge leap, but it was enough for the chipmaker-slash-artificial-intelligence darling to close ahead of tech giant-slash-AI arms race competitor Microsoft as the most valuable public U.S. company for the first time. In plain English, NVIDIA became the biggest company in the world. The next day, like I said earlier, markets were closed. So Thursday was the day to watch, to see whether NVIDIA would stay at the top of the market cap leaderboard. Apparently, it wouldn't. NVIDIA shares lost about 3.5%, and Microsoft took back the crown.
On Friday, NVIDIA shares fell even lower, so Microsoft is still on top. For now. Even beyond NVIDIA, Thursday was a bit of a down day for stocks. But Gilead Sciences was a bright spot amid the clouds. The biotech company led the S&P after it said its twice-yearly HIV prevention drug completely stopped new infections in a study of women and adolescent girls.
How did the S&P 500 reach record levels this week?
And analysts said that the results greatly increased the chances for the drug to be approved after a second study is completed by early 2025. Let's zoom out for a second. I've talked a bit on here before about biotech and pharmaceutical companies and the whole craze around new drugs that are being used for weight loss, Ozempic, Monjaro, and so on. It's kind of like another arms race, right? Like the AI arms race in tech. But Gilead isn't trying to position itself in that arena. It's focused on treatments for cancer and HIV. And investors seem to be a fan of the results. Gilead shares jumped around 8% Thursday and gained another 3% on Friday. And now you know what's news in markets this week.
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Chapters
2 chaptersSpeakers
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