WSJ What’s News - What’s News in Markets: EA’s Goodbye, TrumpRx, FICO Tweak

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

What do investors think of Electronic Arts saying game over to the public markets? And how did Pfizer do amid pharma stocks’ TrumpRX-fueled rally? Plus, who were the winners and losers in a change to how FICO scores are bought and sold? Host Francesca Fontana discusses the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Francesco Fontana for the Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News and Markets, our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Let's get to it. Let's start with the government shutdown in the U.S., shall we? How the stock market has been reacting both before and after the shutdown that started Wednesday. While stocks were weighed down early in the week, we saw investors mostly shrugging off the shutdown, which, remember, delayed Fridays, September jobs report, and could lead to a blackout of key economic data. And that strength is thanks to a few things.

For one, a rally in pharmaceutical stocks helped lift major indexes on Tuesday, more on that in a second, and there's continued enthusiasm over AI. Now let's talk closing records. This week's performance by the three major indexes brought the grand total of closing records for 2025 to 72. On Friday, the Dow notched its 11th record close of the year, while the S&P notched its 31st. And on a weekly basis, all three indexes ended with gains of more than 1%. Electronic Arts is saying, game over. to public markets in the largest leveraged buyout of all time. The video game maker, which

you may know is the publisher of the Sims, Madden NFL, etc., said on Monday that it would go private in a $55 billion mega deal with a group of investors. Before this deal took its place on the leaderboard of biggest leveraged buyouts, the previous record belonged to the 2007 purchase of Texas utility TXU by a group of private equity firms for around 32 billion. dollars according to deal logic. Before the Wall Street Journal first reported on deal talks on September 26th, EA's market value was roughly $43 billion. That day, the stock popped nearly 15 percent, and EA shares rose another 4.5 percent on Monday, making minor moves the rest of the week. And at the end of this week, EA's market cap was roughly $50 billion, not too far

away from the $55 billion deal amount. All right, back to pharma stocks. You may be asking, what was it that sparked such a big rally? Well, in a word, Trump RX. Or is that two words, Trump RX? In any case, that's the name of this new website that President Trump unveiled his plans for on Tuesday. It'll be run by the U.S. government, and it will give Americans a place to buy discounted medicines directly from manufacturing. And Trump said the drug maker Pfizer would offer some of its drugs on the website and introduce

new drugs to the U.S. market at reduced prices. As part of that deal, Pfizer gets a three-year exemption from national security-related tariffs, as long as it invests in domestic manufacturing. Now, the site isn't live yet. Senior administration officials said they hope to launch it early next year. And Trump said his administration is working to secure similar agreements with other companies, mentioning Eli Lilly by name. Pfizer shares jumped 6.8% Tuesday, making it the S&P's top gainer as it led pharma stocks higher.

And on a weekly basis, the stock rose 15%. American listeners, you're likely well-acquainted with your FICO credit score. But did you know that the company behind it is named Fair Isaac? Because I didn't. At least not until this week when Fair Isaac said it was giving mortgage lender. a way to offer its credit scores without buying them from the big three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Okay, so let's break it down in the simplest of terms.

Say you're looking to get a mortgage from a bank. The bank wants to check your credit. To do so, they pay a company that buys and merges credit reports from the three bureaus into one combined score. Hence why those companies are known as tri-merge resellers. But not anymore. Now, these resellers can get the scores for the lenders directly. from FICO, cutting out the middleman credit bureaus.

The new program was certainly good for Fair Isaac's stock, with the ticker FICO, of course, which on Thursday surged 18%. And it was less good for the credit bureaus. TransUnion sank 11% Thursday, Equifax shares fell 8.5%. And U.S. traded shares of Experian lost nearly 5%. And now you know, what's news? in markets this week. You can read about more stocks that moved on the week's news in The Score, my column in the Wall Street Journal's Exchange section. Today's show was produced by Rodney Davis

with Deputy Editor Chris Sinsley. I'm Francesca Fontana. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you next Saturday.