OVERVIEW
The Weekend Rip: December 22, 2024

The bears were jolly this week after the Fed's ‘hawkish cut’ allowed them to take short-term control of the market. 🎁 

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

What Happened?

🫧 On Monday, Wall Street ‘embraced the bubble’ and looked for reasons why 2025 could be another record year for stocks. The Nasdaq 100 announced its new constituents, including Palantir, MicroStrategy, and Axon Enterprises, which replaced Illumina, Super Micro Computer, and Moderna.

🔻 On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average notched a nine-day losing streak. Weakness in the healthcare sector weighed on UnitedHealth and the price-weighted index, and the last “Trends With Friends” of 2024 discussed the future of email, owning your audience, network effects, and leveraging AI.

🚨 On Wednesday, the market’s slow bleed turned into a gusher. The Fed cut another 25 bps as expected, but the FOMC’s economic projections showed increased uncertainty around the path of inflation and weighted risks to the upside. Micron earnings missed the mark, short seller Hindenburg targeted Sezzle, and Stocktwits pro Brian Shannon took chart requests to live on our YouTube channel.

😐️ On Thursday, it was not quite a turnaround Thursday. FedEx and Nike outlined turnaround plans, third-quarter economic growth estimates were revised higher, and we rolled out the "perfect holiday watch” on our YouTube channel.

🎅 On Friday, the ‘Santa Rally’ helped close the week out on a slightly greener note. Novo Nordisk shares fell the most since April 2002, Bitcoin ETFs experienced a record outflow, and ‘The Weekend Rip’s’ Ben & Email talked all the latest market trends.

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

Here are the closing prices: 

Bullets From The Weekend 📰

📺️ DOC finalizes $7 billion in semiconductor awards. The U.S. Department of Commerce announced its awards for Samsung, Texas Instruments, and Amkor Technology under the CHIPS Incentives Program, totaling over $6.75 billion. Samsung plans to invest $37 billion over the next few years to ramp up its chip development and production in the U.S., expanding its operations in Texas to include two new production facilities and a site for research and development. Engadget has more.

🏭️ Volkswagen agrees to deal to avoid German plant closures. The automaker made a deal with the IG Metall trade union that will avert plant closures in Germany and avoid immediate compulsory redundancies. The two sides will cut more than 35,000 jobs across the country in a “socially responsible manner” by 2030, saving roughly 12.4 billion British pounds. Germany’s largest automaker has struggled to find a long-term solution to slowing sales and difficult economic conditions. More from BBC News.

⚠️ Rumble stock surges after Tether invests $775 million. Tether Limited will invest in the video-sharing platform Rumble as part of a strategic partnership aimed at boosting decentralization efforts. The stock surged 35% in after-hours trading on Friday, with the company purchasing 103.3 million shares at $7.50 per share. The company will allocate $250 million from the deal to strengthen its balance sheet and accelerate growth initiatives, while the rest will provide liquidity for existing shareholders via a tender offer. CryptoSlate has more.

PRESENTED BY STOCKTWITS
The Weekend Rip With Ben & Emil 🎁 

In the second-to-last episode of 2024, Ben and Emil recap a week so wild it felt like a fever dream. Meme coins infiltrate the Taliban, Haley Welch addresses her "HawkCoin” disaster, the Fed sends markets tumbling, and Argentina’s AI utopia.