OVERVIEW
The Weekend Rip: August 18, 2024

It was a strong week for U.S. stocks following better-than-expected data, with precious metals also shining. 🤩

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

What Happened?

😰 On Monday, stocks closed mixed after geopolitical tensions escalated over the weekend. Monday.com led the software stock rebound following strong earnings, B. Riley broke down sharply, gold grabbed the top spot, and Trump’s return to Twitter tumbled $DJT shares.

🐂 On Tuesday, strong producer price (PPI) data helped embolden the bulls’ push. Starbucks stole away Chipotle’s CEO, Sea Ltd. soared amid its revenue rebound, and Home Depot continued its cautious tone.

💼 On Wednesday, bears found an edge early in the day after more inflation data, but the bulls battled back into the close. A steelmaker slump prompted economic worries, an acquisition bid sent Kellanova shares higher, and Victoria’s Secret followed Starbucks in replacing its CEO.

🛍️ On Thursday, U.S. consumers saved the day, with strong retail sales and Walmart earnings pushing the market higher. Price and momentum diverged in two popular stocks, and Alibaba's earnings were $BABA-boring.

🏅 On Friday, stocks finished the week strong, while gold and mining stocks hit new highs. Housing remained a hot-button issue, with weak data and a new plan from Kamala Harris making headlines. Also, MSG Entertainment eyed new highs after earnings.

🤩 This week's Stocktwits Top 25 showed outperformance vs. the indexes.

Here are the closing prices: 

Bullets From The Weekend 📰

🤖 New AI tools mean a new battlefield for fighting election misinformation. OpenAI banned accounts using ChatGPT to generate articles and social media posts related to the U.S. election, the Israel-Hamas war, and the Olympic Games. The accounts were tied to an Iranian influence campaign that generated and shared this content via long-form articles and social media comments used on Instagram and X. While OpenAI says that the campaign “does not appear to have achieved meaningful audience engagement.” it shows that this new frontier has raised the stakes for those battling misinformation. The Verge has more.

🏘️ Work from home trends may mean the death of hallways. Newly built homes are prioritizing more nooks that can serve as “pocket offices” or kid-friendly alcoves, trying to maximize every square foot of space as house size shrinks to boost affordability. However, not everyone is eager to embrace this newfound format, with one X user quipping, “Why not just live in an RV at that point? No property taxes…” Nevertheless, large homebuilders are churning out smaller homes to attract first-time homebuyers, many of whom have been locked out of the market by low inventory and high prices/financing costs. More from Axios.

🥚 Bird flu once again boosts egg prices in July. Prices jumped 19.10% YoY during July, marking the third straight month of gains. The culprit is a continued battle against the highly pathogenic avian influenza, known in short as HPAI or the bird flu. The bird flu had a historic outbreak in 2022 and surged at the end of 2023, with it continuing to linger and put pressure on eggs, which are an “inelastic demand” good. That means consumers will usually buy the same amount regardless of price, but that doesn’t mean they will do so happily. NBC News has more.

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