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Stock futures rose on Wednesday – Elon Musk to quit as Twitter CEO and explains why Tesla shares are tanking – Amazon reaches EU antitrust settlement
Stock futures rose on Wednesday, buoyed by earning reports from two major bellwethers – Nike and FedEx – raising hopes that corporate earnings may be stronger than fear, despite the looming prospect of a recession.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 340 points, or 1%, while the S&P 500 declined 0.8%, and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.6%, CNBC reported.
Driving the mini-rally were shares of Nike, gaining 12 percent after beating expectations for both quarterly earnings and revenue. At the same time, FedEx gained 4.7 percent, despite falling short of revenue expectations, beating consensus earnings-per-share estimates on per-share.
As of 8:50 AM EST, the benchmark US 10-Year Treasury Note was down -0.042 with a yield of 3.642%.
After Twitter owner and current CEO Elon Musk held the vote asking users if he should step down as CEO, promising to “abide by the results of this poll,” he now says he will resign when he finds someone “foolish enough to take the job,” BBC reported.
“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, shares of Tesla reached a new 52-week low after sinking 8 percent, CNBC reported.
“Tesla stock price now reflects the value of having no CEO,” long-time Tesla bull Ross Gerber wrote in a tweet. “Great job tesla BOD – Time for a shake up. $tsla.”
Musk replied in a tweet: “As bank savings account interest rates, which are guaranteed, start to approach stock market returns, which are not guaranteed, people will increasingly move their money out of stocks into cash, thus causing stocks to drop.”
Amazon has reached an antitrust settlement with the European Union (EU), avoiding a multibillion-dollar fine in the process. The European Commission alleged that Amazon was using data taken from independent sellers to its own advantage, acting as both a marketplace and a competitor to merchants selling on its own platform. Amazon could have faced fines of ten percent of its global annual revenues, which could have been as high as $47 billion, CNBC reported.
As part of the settlement, Amazon agreed to make significant changes to its business practices. The changes include a second ‘buy box’ when there is a second offer that is different from the first on price or delivery, as well as letting Prime sellers choose any carrier for their logistics or delivery services. Amazon has until June 2023 to implement the changes, which will remain in place for 5-7 years.
