Good evening, y’all. Stocks sank following yesterday’s gains. 💔
The Russell 2000 was the weakest index, giving up 2.36%. The Nasdaq dropped 2.26% and the S&P 500 surrendered 1.26%.
The markets moved lower on investors’ inflation-related anxiety. Fed Governor Lael Brainard indicated her interest in boosting interest rates higher and moving fast to shrink the Fed’s balance sheet — investors sold on Brainard’s comments. 📉 Specifically, she said: “[The Fed] will continue tightening monetary policy methodically through a series of interest rate increases and by starting to reduce the balance sheet at a rapid pace as soon as our May meeting.”
System1 more-than-doubled intraday before closing up 23% at all-time highs. 💪 The company reported strong fourth-quarter profits. Revenue increased 47% year-over-year to $833 million. The daily chart is below:
7 of 11 sectors closed negative. Consumer Discretionary dipped 2.34% as the weakest sector. Tech tumbled 2.11% and energy dove 1.57%. Utilities performed the strongest, increasing 0.63%.
Ethereum erased 2.3% while Bitcoin dipped 1.7%. 🙄
The dollar reached its highest price in almost two years.
$ANGH ascended 47.52%, $DDL leaped 45.96%, and natural gas gained 6.55%.
Here are the closing prices:
| S&P 500 | 4,525 | -1.26% |
| Nasdaq | 14,204 | -2.26% |
| Russell 2000 | 2,046 | -2.36% |
| Dow Jones | 34,641 | -0.80% |
When Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced his purchase of a 9.2% stake in Twitter yesterday, he also gained access to the platform’s board of directors. Musk will serve a 2-year term on Twitter’s board and he was welcomed publicly today by Twitter execs. 👋
Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, said that he and Elon Musk have been in contact for a while about Musk’s interest in Twitter. Today, Agrawal tweeted: “I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.“
Musk also publicly commented on his new board seat, announcing: “Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!”
It should be interesting to watch Musk’s enforcement of “improvements” to Twitter’s platform, especially since Elon’s motives for buying a fat stake in the platform may not align with those of the company’s new CEO. Musk decided to join the Twitter team after 70% of respondents to his Twitter poll voted “no” to the question “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”
A few years ago, an MIT Technology Review interview with Agrawal asked for the exec’s opinion on balancing Twitter’s efforts to eliminate misinformation while upholding free speech. Agrawal famously replied:
“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation. The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed. One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.” In other words, Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” could likely go head-to-head with Parag Agrawal over the platform’s content moderation. 🥊
By law, Elon won’t be able to own more than a 14.9% stake in Twitter while he holds a director position. Nonetheless, it should be fun (to say the least) to watch the billionaire dump his two cents on Twitter’s management. Maybe he’ll post about their disagreements on Twitter? 🤔 Elon does have 80 million followers, after all. 😅
$TWTR trended on Stocktwits again today and gained 2.04%.
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In early February, Frontier Airlines made a bid to combine its business with Spirit Airlines and form one gigantic discount airline. Today, JetBlue offered 40% above Frontier’s bid in an effort to acquire Spirit. ✈️ 💰
Spirit stock ($SAVE) exploded above 20% on news of JetBlue’s $3.6 billion cash and stock offer. JetBlue’s motive for the deal is likely Spirit’s fleet, as the budget airline flies all Airbus A320 planes — Airbus A320s account for most of JetBlue’s fleet as well.
The Spirit-Frontier merger was a $2.9 billion deal that would have served as an alternative to the other 80% of airlines (Delta, United, Southwest, etc.), but an offer worth 40% more could entice Spirit out of the Frontier merger. Although, we have to say… the idea of a successful Spirit-Frontier merger is way more entertaining (both airlines are notorious for woeful customer service.) 😂
$SAVE gained 22.47%, $JBLU tumbled 7.08%, and $ULCC is up 4.87% after hours.
🔥
Trending Stocks
Cognyte Software dropped 31.13% after falling short of earnings and sales expectations. $CGNT is down 48.8% YTD.
$CGNT | EPS: $0.16 (vs. $0.22 expected) | Revenue: $125 million (vs. $129.6 million expected) | Link to Report
Sunshine Biopharma flew 148.23% to six-month highs after its recently developed mRNA molecules were found to be effective against multi-drug-resistant cancer cells. 🧬 In light of these findings, the company plans to file a patent application soon.
Dogecoin surged 12% in a matter of minutes after Twitter announced that Elon would join the company’s board of directors. $DOGE.X is on a three-day win streak and trading back above $20. Here’s the daily chart:
Bullets
Bullets from the Day
📚 The Biden Administration announced a plan to postpone student loan repayments until August of this year. This is the sixth time loan repayments are being suspended. Without the next push, student loan repayments would be due this May. Read more in CNBC.
📈 30-year fixed mortgage rates have surpassed 5% for the first time since 2011. On April 5, 2021, mortgage rates sat at about 3.88%. Rates crossing the 5% threshold this year will continue to pose challenges for the already-strained housing market, especially since home prices are up a whopping 20% from this time last year.
💩 Credit Suisse is in some deep sh*t. In addition to losing over $5 billion during the Archegos Capital Management drama a year ago, reports are out that Credit Suisse’s former chief of investment banking was under investigation for the bank’s securitized products and mistreatment of women. Brian Chin, Credit Suisse’s former head of investment banking, violated the bank’s code of conduct which mandates that all employees must be “respectful, ethical, and professional.” Read more in WSJ.
🌎 The U.S. labor market was a mess during the pandemic, and it still hasn’t fully recovered because of reduced immigration. Before the pandemic, the U.S. welcomed about 1 million immigrants each year. Now, the labor market is seeing $2.4 million fewer immigrants than in prior years. Some industries are feeling the loss in workers more than others, like nursing homes, trucking, and manufacturing. Read more in WSJ.
🏦 In spite of the heat the industry has taken over the last two years, investment banking applications are up 16%. A record 236,000 applicants submitted applications to work in investment banking at Goldman Sachs this year. 2021 was a tough year for Goldman as grumpy employees complained of long hours and miserable working conditions… but the same employees received huge bonuses last year, which could be the reason for the uptick in investment banking interest among college students. Here’s CNBC with more.
Links
Links That Don’t Suck:
💰 College Grads Got Lion’s Share of Pandemic Wealth Gains in U.S.
✌️ WarnerMedia CEO Exits as Discovery Merger Nears Close
🌎 U.S., Allies Set to Impose More Sanctions on Russia Following Outrage Over Possible War Crimes
🚗 Lexus teases its first electric vehicle, and oh no, it’s got a steering yoke
📚 BookTok is the ‘last wholesome place’ on the internet