Big news on Wall St

Summer’s set to sizzle in Aotearoa but not everyone’s happy that the cruise industry’s setting sail to our calm waters. Behemoth passenger ships are bringing record numbers of tourists to our shores as the global cruise industry recovers from their Covid woes. We zoom out five years to see what’s been going on.

From NYC to Paris and plenty of places in between, Airbnb’s been battling for their place in the short term rental market. But cities are saying otherwise. In a global cost of living crisis, residents are being squeezed out of rental properties and now the Big Apple’s regulators are coming in hard. So why's Airbnb's stock soaring?

Since they first stepped their lycra-clad yoga bods onto the Nasdaq, Lululemon has come a long way, now producing everything from tennis gear, golf clobber to …neon slides? Today Lululemon is nipping at the heels of sporting giants Nike and Adidas bringing a shoe game that delivers all the feels.

Nvidia revolutionised the gaming industry in the 1990s by inventing ultra-fast graphics processing units. Decades later they’ve whooshed past Wall Street expectations with their tech innovation driving generative AI for Big Tech. Far from overnight success, Nvidia was a slow burn, rewarding investors who joined them on day one.

How’s the US economy doing? Big-box retail giants might hold the clue. Home Depot and Target’s budget-conscious shoppers are cautious about big dollar spending. Meanwhile at Walmart, it seems shopping’s flying out the door - groceries, that is - with home cooking the winner.

While Richard Branson’ crew are flying paying passengers to the edge of the Earth, Rocket Lab has launched a mission to find out what’s melting the ice caps. The news comes hot on the heels of Rocket’s Lab’s Q2 earnings where they raised the stakes for the upcoming quarter, expecting double-digit liftoff.

We are what we eat and it seems we’ve become a planet of lil nuggets as budget-friendly kai kicks inflation to the curb for some food stocks. And while some companies filling pantries are battling inflated commodity costs, Seattle’s finest, Starbucks, is trying to convert the world’s most populous nation of tea drinkers into craving a fresh daily brew.

AI bubble trouble or market optimism? Global AI innovation is accelerating rapidly, changing how humans do things. But some Wall Street analysts are saying the 2023 market recovery is starting to look a lot like an AI bubble comparing it to the dreaded dotcom boom ’n’ bust. But is the comparison realistic?

Two strikes and is Hollywood out? While writers and actors wait it out while bigwig studios decide whether they deserve royalties and protection from AI stealing their jobs, an industry is left reeling while the world feels the trickle-down impacts. Will entertainment stocks strike out?

It’s second-quarter earnings season for the top four banks in the US and it seems not all of them are making bank. While high interest rates benefiting lending are helping some banks, as the investment banking sector’s rebound is still on a go-slow, it’s hurting others.

Is Mark Zuckerberg cool again? His new Meta app Threads is gaining traction with more than 100 million sign-ups less than a week after launch. The Big Tech company’s share price has been on the climb since November 2022 and bumped up following the news. But is Threads innovative enough to add to Meta’s revenue?

Trillion dollar tech companies don’t come bigger than Apple, which this June claimed the title of the World’s Biggest Company. Next in line is more Big Tech, but at half a trillion dollars behind, it’s not a close race. Do Wall Streeters think Apple’s fundamentals stack up over the long term?