The Rundown - New Stock Exchange Coming to Texas, Instagram Tests Unskippable Ads

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Stock market update for June 5th, 2024.

Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadmani, and today is Wednesday, June 5th. In today's episode, we tell you about a new stock exchange coming to Texas, and it's being backed by some of the biggest names on Wall Street. And streaming companies are raising prices again. Shocker. And then stick around to the end of the show to find out about a new feature that Instagram is testing that's probably going to make a lot of people very upset.

All right, let's go. Tuesday was an up and down kind of day for the stock market. The S&P was in the red for most of the day, but then it was able to rally near the end and squeeze out a small gain. You'll love to see that. And the NASDAQ and Dow also finished in the green. Now, we got some economic data yesterday, the Joltz report, which is a cool name for a report that measures how many job openings there are in the economy. Well, that number fell to a three-year low of 8 million job openings. Not great news.

And that might be one of the reasons why the stock market was in the red for most of the day yesterday. And speaking of jobs, Friday is going to be a big day because we're getting the May jobs report that will show how many jobs were added to the economy last month. Investors like to pay close attention to that to see if there's any weakness in the job market because the job market has stayed pretty strong. That's one of the reasons why the Fed has been hesitant to cut rates. But if we start seeing a weakness in the job market, maybe the feds might cut rates sooner rather than later.

But I don't know. We'll see. I mean, we're actually going to be hearing from Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve next week. The Fed meeting kicks off Tuesday, June 11th and concludes with a Jerome Powell press conference on Wednesday, June 12th. Great cuts aren't expected, but we'll see what Jerome Powell has to say about the latest economic data. And I wonder if someone's going to ask them about GameStop.

Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Texas. A new stock exchange is coming to Texas, my home state, to compete with the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Texas Stock Exchange raised $120 million from some big names like Black Rock and Citadel, and the exchange plans to file paperwork with the SEC later this year. The new stock exchange will be based in Dallas, which I'm kind of bummed about, but you know, I get it because Dallas is low-key, a huge finance hub. Some of the biggest

companies in the world have headquarters there, and Goldman Sachs is working on an office there that's going to have 5,000 employees. But like, what's the point of starting a new stock exchange and why are BlackRock and Sededale backing this? Well, see, some firms are getting frustrated with the burden of all the compliance requirements from the New York Stock Exchange and NASDA. So the Texas Stock Exchange is hoping to act as an alternative to that and attract listings for ETFs and companies looking to go public that don't want to have to deal with all the compliance requirements from the two exchanges in New York. But, you know, it's going to be a challenge to get this going because the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange have been the big dogs for a long time.

And the volumes on those stock exchanges are in the trillions of dollars. And traders like to direct orders to exchanges that have the greatest volumes. But the Texas Stock Exchange does have some powerful friends in Sederdell and Black Rock. So we'll see. If this does end up becoming a big thing, I might have to move from Houston to Dallas. No, never mind. I'm not doing that. Let's shift gears and talk about streaming. Streaming companies are added again. They're raising prices. This time, it's Warner Brothers Discovery.

They're raising the prices of Max, formerly known as HBO Max. Still don't know what they were thinking with that name change. They're raising prices effective immediately for their ads-free tier. The price will increase by $1 to $1699 a month, but they aren't changing prices to their ad tier. Now, the timing on this is no coincidence either. House of Dragons, the spin-off from Game of Thrones. It's one of their most popular shows on the platform.

It premieres in like a week and a half. So they're raising the prices right in time for people to subscribe to Max for that show. I mean, at this point, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Streaming companies have been raising prices for the last year or so. Like even yesterday, I mentioned that Spotify is raising prices for the second time in 12 months. Disney also raised their prices for their ad-free tier last year to $14 a month. But I don't know if you guys noticed this, but the price increases are usually happening on the ad-free tier. Because the thing is, these streaming companies want people to subscribe to the ad tier

because they can make more money by serving ads. So I wouldn't be surprised if these streaming companies continue to raise prices for their ads-free tier, hoping to push more and more people to their ad tier. These streaming companies are doubling down on ads. Netflix has ads tier. Even Amazon Prime Video has ads now. And now these companies are teaming up to form bundles to market them as good deals and hopefully reduce churn. So we're getting higher prices, ads, and bundles.

So we're literally right back to cable. You know, maybe cable wasn't so bad. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Starting with CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity companies' shares are up this morning after they reported better than expected earnings. Revenues were up 34%. Profits were up to $42.8 million and adjusted earnings were $0.93 a share. And the company's feeling pretty confident about the business. They raised their full year revenues and earnings guidance, meaning they expect the company to make more money and profits than they initially expected. Investors love that. And the stock is up more than 10% in the pre-market. CrowdStrike, man. It's been one of the best performing cybersecurity companies this year, and they're keeping the momentum going. On the flip side, dollar tree shares are down after the discount retailer announced a strategic review of its family dollar brand. The review could lead to potential sale or spinoff. The company plans to close 600 family dollars in the first half of this year and another 300 over the next few years. The stock is down more than 3% on this news in the pre-market.

All right, let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Instagram is testing out unskippable ads. This might be the most unfun fact of all time, but I think it's worth sharing. There are some users on Instagram that notice that their real scrolling on IG is being paused and locked until they finished watching a sponsored ad.

This is for real. Instagram actually confirmed with the verge that these ad breaks are being tested. This is going to get really annoying if they actually roll this out. On the flip side, this might actually help break my phone addiction. Because if I see an unskippable ad, I am closing Instagram right on.

away. So I'm going to take the optimistic side of this. All right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoy today's show. If you did, please hit us with that five-star rating on Apple and Spotify. And thank you to everyone that's left a review on Apple as well. It really does mean a lot. If you guys want to be notified as soon as an episode goes up, hit that notification bell on Spotify and don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Connor for all the help behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow. This is the rundown, your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in this show reflect the opinions of the guests.

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