Traders on the floor of the NYSE, Aug. 16, 2022.
Source: NYSE
Here are the most important news items that investors need to start their trading day:
1. Stocks try to recover
The major U.S. stock indices indicated a slightly higher open Tuesday, the morning after a rout that dealt a serious blow to the summer equities rally. The Dow fell over 600 points Monday, while the S&P 500 suffered a 2.14% drop. The Nasdaq fell by the biggest percentage of the three, 2.55%, to conclude its worst day since late June. On Tuesday, as investors anticipate what Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other central bank officials will say later this week at Jackson Hole, they will also digest a new round of retail earnings, including Macy’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods; and economic data, including new home sales. Follow live market updates here.
2. Primate price action
Charlton Heston and Linda Harrison, alongside Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall dressed in ape costumes, in a publicity still issued for the film, ‘Planet of the Apes’, 1968. T(Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
Silver Screen Collection | Moviepix | Getty Images
It’s a madhouse. AMC, the meme-stock movie theater chain, unleashed its so-called APE units on the market Monday, making for a thrilling sideshow as investors contended with broader market declines. The APEs, a new share class for AMC investors, effectively act as a dividend and resemble a stock split in some ways. They’re also CEO Adam Aron’s latest attempt to appeal to meme-stock investors who refer to themselves as “apes.” AMC’s shares finished Monday down more than 40%. But, as CNBC’s Jesse Pound points out, the combined value of an AMC share and an APE unit at the close was about 8.7% below AMC’s closing price on Friday.
3. Zoom pulls back
Video-call platform Zoom on Monday cut its full-year revenue and profit outlook, citing shifts in buying patterns. The company, which was a pandemic favorite as people worked from home and relatives kept in touch fro afar, has seen its revenue growth slow down as more employees call staff back to work at their offices and people go out again. “We have implemented initiatives focused on driving new online subscriptions, which have shown early promise but were not enough to overcome the macro dynamics in the quarter,” the company’s chief financial officer told analysts in a conference call Monday.
4. ‘Dragon’ comes in hot
Milly Alcock as Rhaenyra Targaryen in HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” a prequel to “Game of Thrones.”
Warner Bros. Discovery
Even after the final season of “Game of Thrones” suffered so much backlash among fans and critics, audiences were still pumped to watch the first episode of HBO’s new prequel series, “House of the Dragon,” on Sunday night. HBO said late Monday that the premiere had nearly 10 million viewers on its traditional cable service and its streaming platform HBO Max, making it the most-watched debut of a series in the network’s history. That marks a huge win for the newly merged HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery and its CEO, David Zaslav. WBD is in a period of upheaval as it aims to combine HBO Max and Discovery+ next year, while trimming costs and reshaping the overall business, which also includes CNN and the Warner Bros. production studio.
5. Ex-Apple engineer pleads guilty
An aerial view of Apple Park is seen in Cupertino, California, United States on October 28, 2021.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
An ex-Apple employee who allegedly stole trade secrets about the tech giant’s car division pleaded guilty Monday, four years after he was arrested trying to fly to China. The engineer, Xiaolang Zhang, faces up to 10 years in prison. His sentencing is set for November. The former employee was accused of downloading files about Apple’s hush-hush automobile project, including a document featuring schematics of a circuit board for a possible autonomous vehicle. There’s another former Apple employee who is accused of similar crimes, too: Jizhong Chen, a U.S. citizen who had also planned to travel to China, has not pleaded guilty and is represented by Zhang’s lawyer, as well.
— CNBC’s Samantha Subin, Jesse Pound, Jordan Novet, Sarah Whitten and Kif Leswing contributed to this report.
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