The Yahoo Finance Live team analyzes Friday’s top stories, including the market rally, debt ceiling talks and Disney’s feud with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Video Transcription
JULIE HYMAN: And here are three things you need to know this morning. Call it resilience or cognitive dissonance, but stocks keep growing. The S&P 500 closed yesterday at its August 2022 highs. Now, within a hair of 4,200. However, that’s the level where Bank of America thinks you should think about hitting the sell button.
The tech-heavy NASDAQ also expanded its epic breakout, fueled in part by the fervor for any exposure to AI. A large number of shopping results this week painted a picture of a pickier consumer who might have put a damper on things. But it didn’t. A strong performance from the nation’s largest employer, Walmart, kept the tailwind burning.
Next week we get Costco, Best Buy and Dollar Tree all starting to take. Thing number two, another problem that investors seem to be brushing off. It’s the debt-related spectacle unfolding in Washington. President Biden is balancing the fast-approaching debt ceiling deadline at home with geopolitical tensions abroad.
Speaking from the G7 summit in Hiroshima, he called for momentum in what are now higher-level talks. The president trusts Congress to act in time. This as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hints that a vote could take place next week. Summit participants in Japan will be aware of the consequences if the world’s largest economy were to default. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called it devastating.
And thing number three is that the feud with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is taking yet another turn. The entertainment giant is pulling the plug on the construction of a billion-dollar office complex in Orlando. That investment was expected to bring about 2,000 jobs from California to Florida with the incentive of a state tax credit. It is the latest development in a political feud between Disney and DeSantis that began early last year with the signing of the so-called Don’t Say Gay Bill. CEO Bob Iger alluded to retaliation in last week’s earnings call, asking, quote, “Florida wanted the company to invest more and pay more taxes.”
