Stock Market Nerd – Market Headlines – June 22, 2024
PayPal named Srini Venkatesan as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He comes over from Walmart where he spent 8 years. Most recently, he was that retailer’s Executive Vice President (EVP) of U.S. Omnichannel and Platform Technology. He has also been StubHub’s CTO, and a Senior Director of Product Development at eBay. It also seems to have conducted another round of layoffs based on some LinkedIn posts that I saw.
Tesla laid off 14% of its workforce. This sucks for those involved, but it should be great for Tesla’s somewhat bloated cost structure and its current margin issues. If they do figure out how to commercialize Optimus, that should greatly diminish headcount needs and augment its margin ceiling. TBD.
CrowdStrike, KKR and GoDaddy will be added to the S&P 500 on Monday.
McDonald’s is debuting a $5 value meal to combat inflation and cater to price conscious consumers. They join Target, Amazon, Airbnb, Starbucks, Wendy’s, Uber and many, many more firms adding renewed focus on consumer affordability.
Palantir caught a downgrade this week from Monness, Crespi, Hardt. The company acknowledged Palantir’s great progress in GenAI and strong execution. It just thinks the stock’s valuation is ahead of itself.
Snowflake is dealing with a customer credentials vulnerability at the moment affecting 10 clients including LendingTree and potential ransom payments of somewhere between $3 million and $50 million. It would be easy to pick on Snowflake here, but this doesn’t seem to be their fault. This was based on stolen customer credentials via malware. There were no direct breaches.
Apple is delaying the rollout of its new AI product suite in Europe amid regulatory issues.
