OVERVIEW
The Weekend Rip: December 15, 2024

There are only two full weeks of trading left in 2024, and people are beginning to freak out. While many are tightening up their portfolios and heading out for a long break, others are pressing their bets and trying to end the year on a high note. ⌛️ 

Let's recap and prep you for the week ahead. 📝

What Happened?

🥵 On Monday, an overheated market simmered over. Chinese stocks popped on more stimulus hopes, while U.S. tech flopped. Crypto-linked stocks also pulled back, while earnings and M&A activity took center stage elsewhere.

🤖 On Tuesday, Google’s quantum computing news helped mitigate the stock market’s losses. GameStop gained some temporary steam after earnings, Microsoft shareholders pushed back again, making Bitcoin investments, and semiconductor stocks continued experiencing weakness.

⭐️ On Wednesday, the Nasdaq composite broke above 20,000 for the first time ever, driven by unrelenting strength in mega-cap tech. Tesla and Elon Musk topped the charts, with the share price hitting new all-time highs (above $420) and Musk’s net worth topped $400 billion.

🤔 On Thursday, higher inflation readings produced lower stock prices. The market’s anxiety rose as producer prices showed their largest annual increase since February 2023, while Broadcom blasting to new highs helped brighten the mood after hours.

📈 On Friday, the trillion-dollar club welcomed its new member, Broadcom. Meanwhile, the tale of two stock markets continued as the equal-weight S&P 500 diverged from the market-cap-weighted version. Nvidia shares also remain under pressure as semiconductors sink, and FartCoin made the craziest move of the week…rising to a market cap above $640 million at one point.

😐️ This week's Stocktwits Top 25 showed underperformance vs. the indexes.

Here are the closing prices: 

Bullets From The Weekend 📰

📺️ YouTube TV is raising prices again but letting some subscribers temporarily lock in prices. Google announced that beginning on January 13th, existing YouTube TV members will pay $10 more per month for a total of $82.99, but some subscribers did not take too kindly to that. As a result, users are reportedly receiving offers to lock in the existing price for 6 more months when they try to cancel their subscription. While this marketing save will help ease the short-term pain, many are questioning the value of their streaming subscriptions as they all continue rising in price. The Verge has more.

🏭️ Major Apple chip supplier expands into the U.S. As the tech giant doubles down on its artificial intelligence (AI) endeavors, its need for high-powered chips is only going to increase. Luckily the world’s largest chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor, recently completed a 3.5-million-square-foot fabrication facility in Phoenix, Arizona. It’s described as the “most advanced chip fab” in the country and will soon be in production. Apple plans to be the company’s biggest customer at the new facility, making it a key partner in TSMC’s U.S. expansion. More from Yahoo Finance.

⚠️ Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns against interfering with bank supervision. Yellen urged the incoming Trump administration to avoid tampering with “critically important appropriate regulation” of American banks’ capital levels, liquidity, and risk-taking. While she admits that the U.S. oversight system is imperfect and there’s legitimate reason to look for ways to reduce its regulatory burden, she warned that taking radical steps could put a historically volatile banking sector at risk. CNBC has more.

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