Here are the top news stories that investors need to know before they begin their trading day:
1. The end is in sight
The bulls can’t wait for the month to expire, which will be in two trading days from now. Stocks are expected to end September, as well as the third quarter, in the red. Although job creation is still robust, consumers are still having to deal with increased prices and interest rates as the Federal Reserve works to reduce inflation to its goal rate of 2%.
2. New advice from the UAW
If negotiations with automakers don’t yield meaningful results by Friday, the United Auto Workers union plans to announce new strike areas. The walkout began at three facilities and last week added dozens more. Ford was exempt from the UAW’s expansion last week. Currently, about 12% of UAW members are on strike. The next step by the union comes after Michigan was visited by both President Joe Biden and Former President Donald Trump, who are expected to compete for the presidency in 2018. As UAW employees went on strike, Biden joined them on the picket line, and Trump spoke at a non-union auto parts plant.
3. The metaverse keeps moving.
Still heavily relying on the metaverse is Mark Zuckerberg. The Quest 3 virtual reality headset and Ray-Ban smart glasses from Meta Platforms were also on display, along with new artificial intelligence software. When asked about the future of smart glasses, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated, “I kind of believed that smart glasses were only really going to become universal until we really dialed in, you know, the holograms and the displays and all of that stuff, which we’re making work on. As businesses like Meta and Alphabet’s Google compete with OpenAI and its ChatGPT initiative, which has seen fast growth, Silicon Valley is enmeshed in a quickly evolving AI arms war.
4. Awarded military funding
Building on its already lucrative relationships with the American military, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was awarded its first Pentagon contract for its Star shield military satellite service. A representative for Space Force told CNBC that the contract calls for end-to-end service via SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation, as well as user terminals, other equipment, network administration, and related services. The Pentagon’s relationship with Musk has drawn criticism from a number of politicians, most notably after it was discovered that Musk had refused to provide Ukraine with the internet service necessary to execute a drone attack on Russia’s navy. As a result, the new deal is shrouded in controversy.
5. Trump eclipses the GOP discussion
Donald Trump didn’t debate his opponents in the 2024 Republican primary race once more. And yet again, Trump was the center of attention. In an effort to garner blue collar support amid the UAW strike, the former president appeared at a rally at a nonunion facility in Michigan on Wednesday night. The former president is battling four criminal indictments and a civil case that threatens his corporate empire.
Source (CNBC)
