CNBC Business News Update - Market Close: Stocks Higher, S&P 500 Index And Nasdaq Each Close At Record Highs, TikTok Could Go Dark In The US Soon 7/25/25

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

From Wall Street to Main Street, the latest on the markets and what it means for your money. Updated regularly on weekdays, featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business newsmakers. Anchored by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger.

I'm Jessica Edinger CNBC Wall Street opens Monday morning for the final four days of July trading after the S&P 500 index and the NASDAQ each notched fresh record high closes again stocks helped by President Trump who said Friday he believes Fed Chair Jay Powell is ready to start lowering interest rates the Dow up 208 points on Friday, a half percent. Goldman Sachs shares let it higher up 1.3 percent. The S&P 500 index was up 25 points. That was four tenths of a percent. The NASDAQ added 50 points, a quarter percent. Nvidia shares slipped on Friday by one tenth of one percent. Companies whose shares hit fresh all-time highs on Friday include Charles Schwab, Palantir, eBay, VeriSign, Ralph Lauren, Fasinol and Caterpillar.

With stocks at record highs, CNBC's Scott Wapner asked Hightower's Stephanie Link about whether it's time for a cool down. Is this like a point of worry at this point? Because there's been a lot of speculative stuff that's gone up a bunch. There's no question. I worry about worry about a lot my eyes are on it every day, but I come back to 32% of the companies in the s&p 500 have reported so far and it's 5% total revenue growth, it's 8% earnings growth that's better than expected.

The economy is still growing so I'm not whistling past the graveyard on the meme stuff. The week's meme stock frenzy of volatile trading and names like GoPro which was up 60% for the week, Coles and Krispy Kreme up 30% each for the week and Opendoor the stock that got the meme party going it was only up about 8% for the week but it's gained more than 350% this month. Pro investors say meme stock activity means the market's exceptionally frothy. TikTok could go dark in the U.S. soon, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who spoke on CNBC.

It's got to come out of Chinese control, right? We've made the decision you can't have Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones. That's just, that's just not okay. So Americans will have control. Americans will own the technology and Americans will control the algorithm. If that deal gets approved by the Chinese, then that deal will happen. If they don't approve it, then TikTok is going to go dark. The FCC said yes to the Paramount merger with the entertainment group Skydance. It's about an $8 billion deal. Paramount owns its movie studio, cable channels like Comedy Central and CBS and CBS News. Skydance has promised about $2 billion in cuts when

this merger closes. So we're going to see both employee cuts and I think content cuts. CBS in particular has a lot of scripted programming that I think could be on the chopping block. Cindy Holland who's coming in to run Paramount Plus, she has a plan for the kinds of shows she wants to make. We don't know if that includes all the Taylor Sheridan shows which have been powering Paramount Plus. There could be some cuts to the Taylor Sheridan universe.

Everything I'm hearing is that they want to make shows for less money, inexpensive stuff, and Taylor Sheridan's shows are very expensive. Pucks, Matt Bellany on CNBC, and these shows include Yellowstone and the spin-offs, Tulsa King and Landman. On the coming week's watch list, the Fed begins a two-day meeting on

interest rates on Tuesday. Big names reporting earnings include Tech Giants, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook parent Meta. China trade talks start up again in Sweden and the July jobs report will be out Friday. Jessica Edinger, CNBC. Wednesday, August 6th, join CNBC's virtual small business playbook event,

Real World Insights, on navigating volatility and seizing opportunity. Register now at CNBCEvents.com slash small biz.