WSJ Your Money Briefing - What’s News in Markets: Buffett on Apple, Airbnb Slowdown, Weight-Loss Battles

Episode Date: August 10, 2024

What happened to Apple stock after Warren Buffett sold it? And why wasn’t Airbnb fully booked? Plus, who’s winning the weight-loss drug race? Host Francesca Fontana discusses the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. Hey, listeners. It's Saturday, August 10th. I'm Francesca Fontana for The Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News in Markets, our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Let's get to it. It has been a long week for traders. A long and volatile week. Monday, which feels like a month ago already, was when markets melted down. The panic started with the Japanese markets and spread across the globe, with the Dow losing more than a thousand points on growing fears of a U.S.

recession. We saw the start of a rebound on Tuesday that fizzled out on Wednesday. Then we saw another rebound on Thursday, with the S&P 500 posting its best day in nearly two years after a better than expected jobless claims report. And by Friday's closing, the whirlwind week ended nearly right where it began. Now that doesn't mean we're out of the woods in terms of volatility, what with all the recession talk, political uncertainty in the U.S. and overseas, and questions of whether the AI hype has been totally overblown. But all in all, the S&P 500 finished Friday just half a percent below where it started the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the week 0.7% lower, and the Nasdaq Composite ended just 0.2% lower.

Speaking of Monday's markets mayhem, let's talk about the Magnificent Seven. The so-called group of tech stock giants, say them with me, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tesla, they got a real beating during Monday's session, with each of them losing at least 2.5%. Let's zoom in on Apple, though, because Apple was under extra pressure at the start of the week thanks to the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway revealed in a filing last Saturday that it sold nearly half of its huge stake in Apple last quarter. And, as we've seen, Buffett's reputation as one of the greatest stock pickers of all time, the GOAT if you will, means his decisions can really sway the market. So that didn't do Apple any favors during this big rotation out of tech stocks that we've been

seeing lately. And Apple shares ended Monday down nearly 5%. Apple ended in the green the last three days of the week, but notched a weekly loss of more than 1%. Another not-so-hot stock this week was Airbnb, the short-term rental company. Airbnb warned of slowing demand, posted a bigger-than-expected drop in quarterly earnings, and its revenue forecast for the third quarter missed Wall Street expectations. And this warning is coming at a time when investors are on the lookout for signs of weakness in people spending, especially among Americans. To be sure, the company did report quarterly revenue that was slightly stronger than it forecast, with a boost in Europe thanks to the Olympics in Paris and the Euro Cup in

Germany. But that wasn't enough to sway traders, and Airbnb shares dropped 13 percent on Wednesday. After clawing back a bit of ground on Thursday and Friday, the stock ended the week down about 10 percent. A stock that had investors in higher spirits this week was Eli Lilly, the drug-making giant which also reported earnings this week. Lilly is also one of the big pharmaceutical companies who are competing in the big weight-loss drug race, so to speak.

Lilly's become one of the most valuable U.S.-listed companies, thanks to the wild popularity of its medications used for obesity, like the diabetes drug Munjaro. And in that weight-loss drug race, it sure looks like Lilly is gaining ground. The company reported better than expected earnings and hiked its annual revenue guidance by $3 billion. Those results were a big contrast to those of its Danish rival, Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic. Every time I am so tempted to sing the jingle, but I'm sparing you all, you're welcome. Anyways, Novo Nordisk posted disappointing sales of another of its drugs, Wagovi, also used for weight loss, due to bigger discounts to U.S. buyers. So how did EY Lily do? Well, its stock rallied nearly

10 percent Thursday and ended the week up about 11 percent. 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. I'm Francesca Fontana. Have a great weekend and see you next Saturday.