CNBC Business News Update - Market Open: Stocks Little Changed, GameStop Shares Tank, Reddit Shares Pop On OpenAI Deal 5/17/24

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

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 and reported by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger.

I'm Jessica Ettinger, CNBC, Wall Street, with slight gains out of the gate this morning after the Dow crossed the 40,000 mark yesterday for the first time and then pulled back. The Dow is up two points this morning. The S&P 500 index up two points. The Nasdaq is up 14 points. After yesterday's Dow 40,000, history shows the 128-year-old average tends to pull back at least a little after crossing large round-number thresholds. Investors have been optimistic about AI, falling inflation, and eventual lower interest rates. We obviously had a touch of the 40,000 level yesterday. I just wanted to show the experience with 30,000 to suggest it doesn't necessarily have to be either a barrier or a launch point. So 30,000 here, we got there for the first time in late 2020, pretty much tacked on an immediate 10% from there, got as high as 36,000. But in the bear market of 2022, we breached it again. So

it's sort of this noticeable number, but not necessarily something that I think is necessarily going to be all that conclusive in terms of where we go from here. But the more indexes that do make new highs, of course, the more confirmation you get about this move. CNBC's Mike Santoli. GameStop shares were falling after a meme stock frenzy to start the week on tweets from Roaring Kitty for the first time in three years. The video game retailer filed to sell more stock, but said first quarter sales dropped and shares went down. Reddit shares were popping after it announced a partnership with OpenAI. Under the deal, Reddit will gain certain AI features powered by OpenAI,

while the chat GP team maker will gain access to Reddit's data application programming interface to train its AI models. Perhaps anything you put on Reddit could mean you're giving it to open AI. Cracker Barrel old country store shares are tanking today. Cracker Barrel is slashing its dividend by around 80% as the chain plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into overhauling its restaurants and updating its brand. The company also updated its forecast saying that it expects earnings next year to be flat

or down slightly before increasing in 2026 and 2027. CNBC's Becky Quick. Later today, we find out the results of the UAW union voting among workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama. Here's what's at stake in Alabama. You've got about 5,100 workers for two Mercedes-Benz plants that are located near Tuscaloosa. Their current pay, anywhere between $23 and $34 an hour. It would likely, the expectation is, move up $5 to $7 per hour if they were to get some type of a UAW contract if the UAW is successful in this organization. CNBC's Phil LeBeau. Boeing holding its annual shareholders meeting today. It's National Bike to Work Day. And Taylor Swift's UK tour stops estimated to boost the UK economy by almost a billion pounds, according to a new

report from British bank Barclays. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, that would be about $1.25 billion U.S. dollars. Jessica Ettinger, CNBC. Shark Tank, tonight starting 8 Eastern, CNBC.