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Wall Street is edging lower on Tuesday following drops for Palantir and other stars that had been riding the mania surrounding artificial intelligence technology. The S&P 500 slipped 0.4% and is on track for a third straight modest loss after setting its all-time high last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 8 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 11:50 a.m. ET, and the Nasdaq composite was down 1%. The heaviest weight on the market was Nvidia, whose chips are powering much of the move into AI. It sank 2%. Another AI darling, Palantir Technologies, dropped 5.7%, for the largest loss in the S&P 500. It has seen bets build up sharply among investors this year that its stock price will drop, according to S3 Partners. Only Meta Platforms has seen a bigger increase in what’s called short interest, where traders essentially bet a stock’s price will fall. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, fell 1.7%. Criticism has been rising that stock prices have shot too high, too fast, and have become too expensive. One way companies can make their stock prices look less expensive is to deliver solid growth in profits. Palo Alto Networks climbed 4.7% after reporting earnings and revenue for the latest quarter that topped analysts expectations. The cybersecurity company also gave forecasts for profit and revenue in its upcoming fiscal year that were above Wall Streets. Home Depots rise of 3.1%, meanwhile, was the biggest reason the Dow was doing better than other indexes. The Dow had been flirting earlier in the morning with its own record, which was set in December. The retailer reported results for the latest quarter that were a bit short of what analysts expected. But it nevertheless delivered growth in revenue and stood by its prior forecasts for revenue and profit over the full year. Other big retailers will deliver their latest profit updates in the coming days. Lowes and Target are on deck for Wednesday, while Walmart and Ross Stores will report on Thursday. The weeks likely headliner for Wall Street is arriving on Friday. Thats when the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, will give a highly anticipated speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The setting has been home to big policy announcements from the Fed in the past, and the hope on Wall Street is that Powell may give a hint that cuts to interest rates are coming soon. The Fed has been keeping its main interest rate steady this year, primarily because of the fear of the possibility that President Donald Trumps tariffs could push inflation higher. But a surprisingly weak report on job growth across the country may be superseding that. Traders on Wall Street widely expect the Fed to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September in order to give the economy a boost. Treasury yields have come down notably in the bond market as a result, and they fell on Tuesday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.31%, from 4.34%, late Monday. Strategists at Bank of America, though, warn that Powell may not sound as inclined to cut interest rates as the market is expecting. He could remain noncommittal and discuss the possibility of a worst-case scenario for the economy called stagflation. The Fed has no good tool to fix that situation, in which the economy stagnates at the same time that inflation remains high. On Wall Street, Tegna rose 4.1% after Nexstar Media Group said it will buy the owner of 64 television stations across the country for $22 per share in cash, giving the deal a total value of $6.2 billion, including debt. Nexstar, which owns the CW and local television broadcasters of its own, added 0.4%. The companies said combining will give them a broader reach and allow them to better compete with Big Tech and legacy media. Viking Therapeutics tumbled 43% after the biopharmaceutical company released results from a clinical trial of its oral tablet, which could treat obesity and other metabolic disorders. In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe after falling modestly in Asia. Tokyos Nikkei 225 index slipped 0.4% as market heavyweight SoftBank Group Corp. fell 4% after it announced it was taking a $2 billion stake in U.S. chipmaker Intel. Intel climbed 7.7%. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also confirmed in an interview on CNBC that the Trump administration may take an ownership stake in Intel. By Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Category:
E-Commerce
Were on the other side of Taylor Swifts Eras Tour now, but the landmark 149 show world tours rollout was plagued by bots, resellers, and spiking ticket prices that left many unhappy fans empty-handed. Now, we know a little more about how all of that went down. The Eras Tour was big money, no matter how you slice it. The tour inspired expensive geopolitical maneuvering in Southeast Asia, gave some sluggish American local economies a shot in the arm, and drove $261 million in box office sales after the fact. For unscrupulous resellers, it was a massive payday. According to a new lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission filed on Monday, one elaborate ticket reselling scheme flooded Ticketmaster with an army of fake accounts, buying up sought-after tickets for live shows like Swifts Eras Tour. The lawsuit alleges that Key Investment Group, a ticket broker based in Maryland, used fake accounts to bypass Ticketmasters security measures and the companys limits on ticket purchases. The FTC believes that the reseller operated thousands of Ticketmaster accounts, many that it paid to purchase, and relied on a combination of virtual credit card numbers, IP spoofing and SIM card fraud to execute the purchases. Buying up thousands of tickets According to the complaint, the group was able to buy at least 379,776 tickets over the course of a single year, paying almost $57 million for the trove. By reselling the tickets on secondary markets for heavy markups, the scheme netted at least $64 million in sales. For a single Eras Tour show at Nevadas Allegiant Stadium, the reselling group bought 273 tickets using 49 different accounts, selling them for a total of $119,227, the FTC alleges. Swifts tour enforced a strict six-ticket limit in place for each show. The company allegedly purchased at least 10 tickets to each Taylor Swift concert from March to August 2023, making $1.2 million in profit from reselling the 2,280 tickets. Sketchy ticket flipping practices like the ones in the new FTC complaint run afoul the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, a 2016 law enacted to prevent ticket resellers from buying up tickets and manipulating prices. While Swifts concerts likely proved the most lucrative, the reselling scheme cast a wide net that included buying up more than 1500 tickets to a Bruce Springsteen show at MetLife Stadium. Todays action puts brokers on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will police operations that unlawfully circumvent ticket sellers purchase limits, ensuring that consumers have an opportunity to buy tickets at fair prices, FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said. Swift hype builds again News of the ticket reselling crackdown comes a week after Swift announced a new album, The Life of a Showgirl, expected in October. The pop superstar announced her new music on New Heights, a podcast hosted by Swifts boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and his brother. The album will be the first in a true new era for Swift. In May, she successfully purchased the master recordings of her first six albums, a struggle that took years to pull off. Swift bought the original recordings from Shamrock Capital, a private equity firm that winded up with them after music manager Scooter Braun offloaded the recordings for at least $300 million. Ive been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening, Swift said at the time. I really get to say these words: All of the music Ive ever made… now belongs to me. Swifts new album will be the first since her 2024 release, The Tortured Poets Department, which smashed streaming records and set a new high bar for the most vinyl albums ever sold within a single week.
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E-Commerce
Earlier this summer, Dajiah Blackshear-Calloway, 34, started to notice that her regular clients weren’t visiting her hair salon as often as they used to. The salon, in Smyrna, Georgia, houses two stylists and offers dozens of services that range from $50 natural hairstyles to $745 tape-in weave extensions. Her most popular services are $254 sew-ins, where human hair extensions are woven into braids, and $125 quick weaves, where human or synthetic hair is styled and then glued to a stocking cap. But the prices of hair extensions and hair glues used to create wigs and weaves have gone up exponentially after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a series of different tariffs on China and Vietnam, where the majority of Black beauty products are made. The price of a package of hair imported from Vietnam has gone up to $290 from $190 since May. A bottle of hair glue, imported from China, has gone up from $8 a bottle to $14.99 at her local beauty supply store. Were being impacted at every level, Blackshear-Calloway said. Im either having to eat that cost or pass that expense along to my clients, which affects their budgets and their pockets as well. To avoid passing on rising costs, Blackshear-Calloway is asking her clients to bring their own hair to their appointments. Now her salon is offering a quick weave service without hair for $140, but with hair the price is $400, according to her booking website. She’s also struggling to get products since her wholesaler is delaying shipments as tariff rates fluctuate. Kadidja Dosso, 30, owner of Dosso Beauty, which sells hypoallergenic braiding hair, as well as The Dosso Hair Salon in Philadelphia, has also faced delayed shipments on imports from China. She waited over a month to get $50,000 worth of China-made braiding hair via air freight at John F. Kennedy Airport in June, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced 145% tariffs on the country over confusion over what tariff should apply. “We have to provide more specifics of the products – exact materials, the product use – for it to clear customs,” Dosso said. “Part of the issue was that the same language that we’ve been using for years wasn’t descriptive enough.” She wants to avoid raising prices on her $13 packets of hair, which customers typically buy at least five at a time to complete one hairstyle. Higher costs Tariffs are disproportionately impacting Black business owners like Blackshear-Calloway and Dosso, said Andre Perry, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Many Black entrepreneurs started off with less wealth, Perry said. He said that the wealth gap puts Black entrepreneurs, especially those in low-margin businesses like consumer goods or hair care services, into precarious financial positions as tariffs eat into their bottom lines. Sina Golara, an assistant professor of supply chain and operations management at Georgia State University, said rising costs due to tariffs are “like a tax that you’re imposing on business.” In some cases, it could be borne by the foreign manufacturer, but in most cases, it will also have quite a substantial impact on the domestic buyers and consumers,” Golara said. Diann Valentine, 55, founder of Slayyy Hair, first felt the impact of tariffs shortly after the initial 145% tariff was imposed on China and she faced a $300,000 bill to get 26,000 units of braiding hair out of the Los Angeles port in May. “To lose that kind of money at this stage has been devastating,” Valentine said. Since then she has raised the price of her braiding hair and drawstring ponytail extensions by 20%. She also laid off four employees and is working 16-hour days to compensate in her two Glow+Flow beauty supply stores in Inglewood and Hawthorne, California. Slayyy Hair supplies $8.49 nontoxic braiding hair and $35.99 synthetic drawstring ponytails to TJ Maxx and Marshalls, which have resisted renegotiating prices or delivery deadlines to compensate. “So essentially, we paid more for our ponytails than TJ Maxx and Marshalls paid for them,” Valentine said. She is also trying to renegotiate price increases with Target, where she sells in at least 70 stores in California, Nevada and Colorado, she said. TJ Maxx and Marshalls declined a Reuters request for comment. Fifty percent of the merchandise comes from China, Valentine said, and prices for synthetic wigs, human-hair weaves, plastic hair rollers, rubber bands, combs and brushes that stock her shelves are trending up at her beauty supply locations. “I thought maybe we would see an increase in foot traffic because there would be more DIY hairstyles – more women doing their hair at home,” she said. “But for right now, we’ve only seen decreased foot traffic and also a decrease in frequency of visits from our existing customers.” Struggling salons While beauty product sales are typically resilient during economic downturns, beauty services are seen as discretionary, said Marley Brocker, senior analyst at market research firm IBISWorld. “Tariffs on those imports are going to directly lead to higher costs for those service providers, whether they’re buying directly from overseas manufacturers or buying from wholesalers within the U.S.,” she said. Black U.S. consumers spent approximately $2.29 billion on hair care products in 2022, according to a NielsenIQ study from that year. But higher prices are causing some Black women to visit the salon less frequently. Deiara Frye, 27, of Raleigh, North Carolina, usually schedules hair appointments at least five times a year, but so far this year she’s only gone once. “Due to the cost of everything rising over the years, I tend to get braids a little more often now than sew-ins, or try to maintain my natural hair,” she said. She’s also seeing prices for her natural hair products like Unilever’s Shea Moisture and Procter & Gamble’s Pantene go up. Fewer visits are impacting salons and beauty supply stores. Until earlier this year, Dionne Maxwell was selling wigs, braiding hair, shampoos, and conditioners out of her mini beauty supply store in Dallas, Georgia, located 33 miles outside of Atlanta, but she shut it down after she started losing foot traffic in May and moved operations into her home. Now she’s relying on orders placed through Uber Eats, TikTok Shop and Walmart.com to sustain her business, but even those sales have slowed significantly, she said. We don’t have the money for advertising, because enough revenue is not coming in to advertise with,” Maxwell said. Tariffs have raised Maxwells wholesale price for China-made braiding hair by 50 cents per pack, she said, and she is now required to buy more hair in her wholesale orders. She said shes struggled to negotiate better prices with her hair wholesalers, who are requiring her to order ore units of merchandise at higher costs. Her wholesaler is asking her to purchase 110 packs of hair per order, when she was previously able to buy 30 packs at a time, she said. For the past two months, we have been basically paying our bills out of pocket because we really have had nothing coming in, Maxwell said. Arriana McLymore, Jayla Whitfield-Anderson, and Julio-Cesar Chavez
Category:
E-Commerce
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