McDonald’s says it’s not political after Trump visit

McDonald’s says it’s not political after Trump visit

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Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump works behind the counter during a visit to McDonalds in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, U.S. October 20, 2024. 

Doug Mills | Via Reuters

Though President Donald Trump visited a Pennsylvania McDonald’s location on Sunday, the fast-food giant is trying to stay neutral in the presidential race.

“As we’ve seen, our brand has been a fixture of conversation in this election cycle. While we’ve not sought this, it’s a testament to how much McDonald’s resonates with so many Americans. McDonald’s does not endorse candidates for elected office and that remains true in this race for the next President,” the company said in an internal message viewed by CNBC and confirmed by a source familiar with the matter.

Trump learned how to operate a fry cooker and work the drive-thru line during his short shift at a Feasterville, Pennsylvania, restaurant. He used the stunt as an opportunity to take more shots at his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump often accuses Harris of lying about working at McDonald’s for a summer in her 20s, but has offered no proof backing up the claim. Harris has denied the accusation. McDonald’s and its franchisees don’t have all of their employment records for workers dating back to the early 1980s, when the 60-year-old Harris would have worked there, the company said in the Sunday memo.

“Though we are not a political brand, we’ve been proud to hear former President Trump’s love for McDonald’s and Vice President Harris’s fond memories working under the Arches,” McDonald’s said.

Both McDonald’s and the franchisee who operates the location emphasized that the chain opens its doors to “everyone.”

The photo shows a letter outside the McDonald’s verifying it was closed to the public at the time of Trump’s visit.

Lauren Mayk | NBC Philadelphia

“As a small, independent business owner, it is a fundamental value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Feasterville community,” franchisee Derek Giacomantonio said in a statement. “That’s why I accepted former President Trump’s request to observe the transformative working experience that 1 in 8 Americans have had: a job at McDonald’s.”

Although McDonald’s publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, it has tried to portray itself as an apolitical brand to avoid alienating customers. It follows a broader shift in Corporate America away from politics or initiatives perceived as ideological.

A number of companies, including Ford, Lowe’s and Harley-Davidson, have walked back their diversity, equity and inclusion policies and practices this year.

And that’s a change that many Americans want; only 38% of U.S. adults believe that businesses should take public stances, down from 48% in 2022, according to a Gallup-University of Bentley study conducted this spring. 

But McDonald’s has already been involved with another controversy this election cycle.

In late May, several viral social media posts criticized the burger giant’s affordability, citing everything from an $18 Big Mac meal at a Connecticut location to charts that alleged the chain’s prices had more than doubled over the last five years. Republicans latched onto the controversy, tying a jump in McDonald’s menu prices to Biden’s economic policy in a bid to win over voters fed up with inflation.

To quell the controversy, McDonald’s U.S. President Joe Erlinger wrote an open letter and released fact sheets about the company’s pricing.

— CNBC’s Kate Rogers contributed reporting.


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ASML stock plunge wipes over billion off Dutch chip giant’s value

ASML stock plunge wipes over $50 billion off Dutch chip giant’s value

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An icon of ASML is displayed on a smartphone, with an ASML chip visible in the background.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Shares in semiconductor equipment maker ASML fell 16% on Tuesday, after the Dutch company published financial results a day early, issuing disappointing sales forecasts.

ASML’s share plunge led the critical semiconductor firm to lose 48.7 billion euros ($52.99 billion) in market capitalization in a single day, according to CNBC calculations using LSEG data.

The move also pulled other chip stocks lower, with Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom all falling after the report.

Netherlands-based ASML on Tuesday said it expects net sales for 2025 to come in between 30 billion euros and 35 billion euros ($32.6 billion and $38.1 billion), at the lower half of the range it had previously provided.

Net bookings for the September quarter were 2.6 billion euros ($2.83 billion), the company said — well below the 5.6 billion euro LSEG consensus estimate. Net sales, however, beat expectations and reached 7.5 billion euros.

“While there continue to be strong developments and upside potential in AI, other market segments are taking longer to recover. It now appears the recovery is more gradual than previously expected,” company CEO Christophe Fouquet said in the earnings release.

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AMSL

ASML said that the early publication of its results was the result of a technical error that led to erroneously publishing the report on a part of its website.

Wall Street analysts had turned more cautious on the company — a critical supplier to the broader semiconductor industry — in the lead-up to the earnings.

China concerns

ASML is facing a tougher business outlook in China due to U.S. and Dutch export restrictions on shipments.

Last month, the U.S. government rolled out new export controls on critical technologies to China, including advanced chipmaking tools. Separately, the Dutch government announced plans to take over control of exports of ASML’s machines to the country.

ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines are used by many of the world’s largest chipmakers — from Nvidia to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing — to produce advanced chips.

ASML Chief Financial Officer Roger Dassen said Tuesday that he expects the company’s China business to show a “more normalized percentage in our order book and also in our business.”

“We do see China trending towards more historically normal percentages in our business,” Dassen said, according to a transcript of a video that was also released a day early.

“So we expect China to come in at around 20% of our total revenue for next year. Which would also be in line with its representation in our backlog.” 

In its June-quarter earnings presentation, ASML had said that 49% of its sales come from China.

‘Clearly disappointing’

In a note published following ASML’s results on Tuesday, analysts at Bernstein said the weaker-than-expected order book and a disappointing 2025 outlook were “likely to overshadow decent Q3 results.”

The analysts added that ASML’s lowered guidance indicates that “the delayed cyclical recovery and specific customer challenges are weighing heavily” on 2025 expectations.

Analysts at Cantor, meanwhile, said the downbeat outlook for ASML was “clearly disappointing” and will weigh on semiconductor stocks. However, they added that, “in no way shape or form does the company’s updated outlook indicate any change in the AI growth story.”


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Spirit Halloween to open 10 new ‘Spirit Christmas’ stores

Spirit Halloween to open 10 new ‘Spirit Christmas’ stores

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A family exits a Spirit Halloween store operating in a former Best Buy. 

Paul Weaver | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Some Spirit Halloween locations will be busy for longer than usual this year.

Spirit Halloween will operate 10 stores through the entire holiday season as “Spirit Christmas,” a spokesperson confirmed with CNBC.

Instead of the company’s usual strategy of renting abandoned storefronts only long enough to host the Halloween-specific retailer, 10 stores around the Northeast will open through the end of the year. The company’s flagship store in Mays Landing, N.J., will open on Oct. 18, while the other nine locations will open in early November, the spokesperson said. Not all stores will be converted from existing Spirit Halloween locations.

“Spirit Christmas is a new concept for us, and we’re hopeful it will resonate with our customers,” a spokesperson for Spirit Halloween told CNBC. “Our goal is to create a festive retail experience that captures the spirit of the season, much like we do for Halloween.”

Each store will have holiday inflatables and decor, but they will not all have the same experiences. The new stores won’t just replace fake skulls and costumes with wrapping paper and stockings, they will also have activities like photographs with a real-life Santa and letter writing to the North Pole.

The first 10 locations will act as a test to see whether customers will stay invested through the holiday season.

Holiday sales are a lucrative space, but not certain bet for the company. Spending grew 3.8% year over year to $964.4 billion in 2023, according to the National Retail Federation.

Deloitte estimates that holiday retail sales will increase 2.3% to 3.3% in 2024, but expects a higher jump of 7% to 9% for e-commerce, which the Spirit Christmas test stores will not support. Amazon is already sizing up for the holidays with plans to hire 250,000 workers for the season, the same number as last year.

Holiday spending could also be affected by a tense presidential election in November and a historically tumultuous season of hurricanes in progress.


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Powers: The Fed is going to gradually cut rates, guiding the economy into a soft landing

When to refinance your mortgage as the Federal Reserve cuts rates

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Andresr | E+ | Getty Images

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a half percentage point, or 50 basis points, on Wednesday, its first interest rate cut since March 2020. But homeowners shouldn’t bet on the move as an opportunity to immediately refinance their mortgage.

That’s because “a lot of these rate cuts are already priced in,” Chen Zhao, the economic research lead at Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm, recently told CNBC. 

While mortgage rates are partly influenced by the Fed’s policy, they are also tied to Treasury yields and the economy. Home loan rates have already started to come down in recent weeks, slightly induced in part by favorable economic data and indications the Fed could cut rates.

As of Thursday, the average 30-year fixed rate mortgage in the U.S. was 6.20%, according to Freddie Mac data via the Fed. That’s down from this year’s peak of 7.22% on May 2.

More from Personal Finance:
What homeowners and buyers need to know as first rate cut is on the horizon
Don’t expect ‘immediate relief’ from the Federal Reserve’s first rate cut
Mortgage rates are falling, improving home buying conditions

It can be very difficult to perfectly time a mortgage refinance by looking at mortgage rate activity alone, said Jeff Ostrowski, a housing expert at Bankrate.com.

“It’s almost impossible to figure out what mortgage rates are going to do from week to week or month to month,” Ostrowski said.

Yet there are ways homeowners can determine when a refinance makes the most sense to them, experts say, especially if more rate cuts are slated before the end of the year.

Here’s how to know when it’s time to refinance your mortgage, according to experts.

‘This is going to be a much smaller wave’

Refinance activity increased to 46.7% of total applications during the week ending Sept. 6, up from 46.4% the week before, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

While there has been an increase in refinances as mortgage rates come down, “compared to the massive refinance boom” in 2020 and 2021, “this is going to be a much smaller wave of refinances,” said Ostrowski.

Most homeowners have a mortgage rate below 5%, said Jacob Channel, senior economic analyst at LendingTree.

A refinance will mostly benefit a “small number of people” who bought homes “when rates were at 8%,” said Ostrowski.

Whether it’s smart for homeowners to refinance their mortgage will depend on factors such as their existing borrowing and repayment timeline, experts say.

How to know when it’s time to refinance

If you are thinking about refinancing, look carefully at what’s going on with rates in the market, reach out to lenders and see if doing so now or in the near future makes the most sense for you, Channel said.

“The only person who can decide whether or not refinancing is going to be worth it is you, based on what’s going on in your life,” he said.

Here are three criteria that can help you determine if a refinance makes the most sense to you:

1. You can cut your rate by 50 basis points or more

To know when it makes sense to refinance, homeowners need to see a notable drop in mortgage rates in order to benefit, experts say. The prevailing rate should be at least 50 basis points below your current rate, Zhao said.

But that’s not a “hard and fast rule,” Channel said.

Some experts set a higher bar: It “makes sense” to consider a refinance if rates have fallen one to two points since you took out the mortgage, Ostrowski said.

Even if your existing mortgage has a high rate, you might want to consider waiting until the central bank is further along in its cuts. The expectation is that rates are to steadily decline throughout the rest of 2024 and into 2025, according to Zhao.

2. You can afford refinance costs

There are two ways to pay for a refinance: with cash up front, or by rolling the expense into your new loan, boosting your monthly mortgage payment.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to refinancing a loan, Melissa Cohn, regional vice president of William Raveis Mortgage in New York, told CNBC in August.

Generally, a refinance is going to cost between 2% and 6% of the loan amount that you are refinancing, said Channel.

For example: If your current loan amount is $250,000 and you’re refinancing the total amount, expect to pay anywhere between 2% and 6% of $250,000, or roughly $5,000 to $15,000.

If you plan to refinance, make sure you can afford the associated costs, such as closing costs, an appraisal and title insurance. The total cost will depend on your area.

3. Your savings will outweigh the costs

You can also look into your “break-even point,” or the moment your savings eclipse the cost of the refinance, said Channel.

Here’s an example on doing that math: If you decide to refinance your mortgage and it costs $6,000 and you’re saving $200 a month, divide $6,000 by $200. The result is the number of months that you have before your refinance has “paid for itself.”


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Trump Media shares plunge after Harris debate

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Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump walks away during a commercial break as US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris take notes during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. 

Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images

The share price of Trump Media plunged more than 10% on Wednesday, a day after majority shareholder Donald Trump gave a widely panned presidential debate performance against Vice President Kamala Harris.

The company’s stock price closed at its lowest level since the Truth Social app owner began publicly trading as DJT on the Nasdaq in late March.

Investing in Trump Media stock is often seen as a way to bet on the political fortunes of Trump, the former president and current Republican nominee.

Trump Media has said its business hinges at least partly on Trump’s popularity, and analysts say the company’s value will rise or fall based on his electoral prospects.

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Trump Media (DJT) Share Price

The stock drop Wednesday could signal that some Trump’s supporters were not pleased with what they saw at Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia.

Liberal and conservative political commentators said Harris appeared more prepared, articulate and even-keeled than Trump, who repeatedly bit on bait that she tossed to throw him off topic.

Harris’ team, projecting confidence, challenged Trump to another debate right after the first one ended.

Trump said he may not agree to that. In a Truth Social post Wednesday, he repeated his claim that Harris only wanted another debate because she was “beaten badly.”

“Why would I do a Rematch?” he wrote in the post.

Trump Media had surged as much as 10% during trading Tuesday, possibly indicating optimism about how Trump would fare in the debate.

The company’s gains on Monday and Tuesday were a respite from a weekslong rout that saw the stock price sink as much as 75% from its intraday high in late March, when then-privately held Trump Media merged with a blank-check firm.

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The slump coincided with President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.

It also came in the run-up to the date when Trump and other company insiders can start selling their shares.

Trump owns nearly 57% of the company’s stock. That stake at Wednesday’s closing price was worth about $1.9 billion.

It is unclear if Trump plans to start selling off his stake when a lock-up agreement lifts on Sept. 19.

Correction: Donald Trump owns nearly 57% of Trump Media’s stock. An earlier version misstated the percentage.

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Stock market news for September 9, 2024

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Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on July 3, 2024.

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

U.S. stocks jumped on Monday after investors bought the dip following Wall Street’s worst week of the year, betting that a likely Federal Reserve rate cut later this month would bolster a slowing economy. Technology shares, among the hardest-hit stocks last week, were Monday’s top performers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 484.18 points, or 1.2%, to close at 40,829.59. The rebound comes after the 30-stock index lost more than 1,200 points last week. The S&P 500 gained 1.16%, ending at 5,471.05, after posting its worst week since March 2023. The benchmark also broke a four-day losing streak.

The Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.16% to end at 16,884.60, following its worst week in more than two years. Nvidia‘s 3.5% gain helped lift the tech-heavy index. The artificial intelligence darling lost 14% last week.

Outside of tech, retailers, banks and industrial shares also mounted a comeback as investors believe a rate cut would give a boost to the flagging consumer. JPMorgan Chase, Costco, Amazon and Boeing were among the winners on Monday.

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S&P 500, 1 month

“I do think you have a little short-term bounce here — we were a little bit oversold last week. However, the markets are very focused on how the economy is going to be now, rather than what inflation is going to do and what the economy is going to do,” said Sarat Sethi, managing partner at Douglas C. Lane & Associates. “When the uncertainty starts building … first thing you do is take some money off, especially since you’ve had such a good run this year.”

Investors are awaiting two key inflation reports that could further inform the Fed’s rate decision on Sept. 18. August’s consumer and producer price index reports are slated for release Wednesday and Thursday morning, respectively. Traders see it as a certainty the Fed will cut by at least a quarter point.

Monday’s rally comes after the stock market suffered serious losses to kick off its first trading week of September, which is historically a tough month for equities. These declines came as the August jobs report stoked fears of a slowing labor market. The S&P 500 averages a 0.7% decline in September, the worst track record of any month, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac.

Palantir and Dell Technologies popped 14% and 3.8%, respectively, after S&P Dow Jones Indices said late Friday the stocks will join the S&P 500.

Correction: Last week, the S&P 500 posted its worst week since March 2023. An earlier version misstated the year.


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Green Bay Packers stock ownership team valuation

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Jeff Robinson | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

Only one National Football League team has an ownership structure that resembles a publicly traded company.

The Green Bay Packers, who are the 12th most-valuable NFL franchise at $6.3 billion, according to CNBC’s Official 2024 NFL Team Valuations, are the only publicly owned team across the four major North American professional sports leagues. The franchise is completely owned by stockholders, many of them Packers fans, in a structure established more than 100 years ago.

The Packers have had six stock offerings — which kicked off in 1923, 1935, 1950, 1997, 2011, 2021 — resulting in more than 5.2 million outstanding shares owned by more than 538,000 people, according to the team’s 2024 media guide.

The shares pay no dividend, are nontransferable outside of passing to a child or relative and do not have any intrinsic market value. Shareholders get to attend the team’s annual meeting and vote for a board of directors, but the team says owners do not make any financial gains from ownership. The only way a shareholder receives any money is by selling their stake back to the team, and even that is for a percentage of the original share price.

For 2023, the team took in $638 million in revenue, and its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were $128 million. The Packers are a nonprofit, and the only member of the team’s seven-person executive committee who gets compensation is the president.

The Packers’ annual revenue goes toward paying players, maintaining Lambeau Field and marketing, among other expenses. The share offerings throughout the years have been used to pull the team out of rocky financial situations and do larger renovations of Lambeau Field.

The unique structure puts the Packers among the teams that newly approved private equity investors will be least interested in. Even deep-pocketed investors cannot use their funds to generate a return.

There is a 200,000 share per person ownership cap — less than 4% of the team’s outstanding shares. Current rules allow approved private equity firms to own up to 10% of a franchise, but even if the Packers wanted a firm to own that much of the team, it is unlikely to entice private equity investors.

Since the stock offerings are so infrequent, the biggest barrier to Packers fans owning a piece of the team is not money — it’s timing. 

In the first offering in 1923, one share cost $5. Even though the price has increased throughout the years to as high as $300 for an offering that started in 2021, it is still a tiny fraction of the $6.49 billion average valuation of an NFL team today.

The unique ownership structure is one of several ways the Packers stand as an outlier in the NFL. Green Bay is the smallest television market of any of the 32 teams, and it does not have the high level of tourism that other cities with NFL teams such as Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Los Angeles receive.

It also often draws the ire of other fans and organizations because of its long-term stability at quarterback as the team transitioned from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love.

The Packers kick off their season Friday against the Philadelphia Eagles led by Love, who recently signed a four-year, $220 million extension with the organization. 


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Zuckerberg alleges White House ‘pressured’ Meta to ‘censor’ Covid-19 content

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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” in Dirksen building on Wednesday, January 31, 2024.

Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

The Biden Administration “pressured” Facebook-parent Meta to “censor” content related to Covid-19, the social media giant’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg alleged, adding that he regrets some of the decisions taken in relation to the U.S. government’s requests.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee.

The letter was posted on the Committee’s Facebook page and on its account on the X social media platform on Monday.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed the letter’s authenticity to CNBC.

Zuckerberg said it was ultimately Meta’s decision to take down any content, but he noted he believes that the so-called “government pressure was wrong.”

“I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg said.

NBC News has reached out to the White House for comment Tuesday morning, but did not immediately receive a response.

In a statement to Politico, the White House said: “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this Administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present,” it added.

Zuckerberg said Meta made some choices that, “with the benefit of hindsight and new information,” the tech giant would not make again.

“Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg said.

In August 2021, Facebook said it had removed more than 20 million posts related to Covid-19 for violating its content rules across the main social networking site and Instagram.

That year, the White House criticized social media firms, including Facebook, for allowing misinformation related to the Coronavirus to spread across their platforms.

Zuckerberg’s letter underscores the ongoing debate about the extent to which social media firms should moderate content.

The House Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has alleged that big technology firms colluded with the government to censor speech.

Zuckerberg also discussed his position on the upcoming U.S. presidential vote, noting that he made contributions via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative toward electoral infrastructure during the previous round at the polls. He said he will not be doing that for the upcoming election.

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role,” Zuckerberg said.


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Sen. Bernie Sanders: We need an economy that works for all of us, not just billionaires

Bernie Sanders DNC speech contrast to Harris on liberal policies

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., spent his primetime appearance at Tuesday night’s Democratic National Convention laying out his own policy priorities — even ones that he knows diverge from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign platform.

“We need to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all people as a human right, not a privilege,” Sanders said, doubling down on his longstanding support for a Medicare for All program.

The Independent senator running for reelection in Vermont was well aware that Harris does not share his position on universal healthcare.

“We need Medicare for All,” he said in a Monday interview with Politico. “That’s not her view, nor is it President Biden’s point of view. And you know what, I think I’m right and they’re wrong.”

During his DNC speech, Sanders also railed against the influence of big money in politics, in spite of all the billionaire megadonors helping to fund Harris’ campaign.

“Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections—including primary elections,” Sanders said.

Harris has a well-documented Rolodex of billionaire megadonors helping fund her campaign, along with millions more in small-dollar donations.

“We must take on big pharma big oil, big ag, big tech and all the other corporate monopolists whose greed is denying progress for working people,” Sanders said.

By making universal healthcare, money in politics and class warfare all key planks of his DNC speech — and by never extolling Harris’ virtues, Sanders knowingly bucked an unspoken rule of presidential conventions: Speakers are expected to sing the praises of the party’s nominee.

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And while he offered a quick note of support for Harris’ election fight against former President Donald Trump, Sanders’ positions effectively drew a contrast with the vice president.

Sanders’ speech on Tuesday was not the first time he expressed noticeably tepid support for Harris.

“She’s a great campaigner,” Sanders said of Harris in the Monday Politico interview. “We’re not best friends, but I’ve known her for many years.”

Sanders said Monday that while he supports Harris, he stands by his belief that President Joe Biden could have carried out a second term, a view that is not shared by most of his party’s leaders.

Sanders remained fervently loyal to Biden even after his disastrous debate that led Democratic party members to voice concerns about his reelection bid.

Not so radical?

But Sanders’ decision to highlight some of the distance between himself and Harris, though unconventional, could ultimately be an asset to the vice president, as she works to appeal to moderate, undecided voters.

An August poll from the New York Times and Siena College found that 45% of likely voters felt Harris was too liberal or too progressive in the battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

That sentiment is in part a result of Trump’s effort to paint Harris as a radical progressive, an attempt to scare off Democrat-curious undecided voters who may lean more moderate.

“Comrade Kamala Harris is terrible for our Country. She is a Communist, has always been a Communist, and will always be a Communist,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday.

But Sanders’ half-hearted enthusiasm for Harris offers a direct rebuttal to those Republican attacks.

A Democratic Socialist and one of the farthest left lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Sanders is a reminder for center-leaning voters that there are plenty of Democrats who are far more radical than the vice president.

That message might already have begun to take hold with the electorate.

Austin Davis, a 29-year old self-declared communist from Chicago, told NBC News on Tuesday that he does not consider Harris a communist.

“Kamala is not a communist,” he said. “Any person who can understand even the basic definition knows that she’s not a communist.”


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Stock market today: Live updates

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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on August 1, 2024 in New York City. 

Jeenah Moon | Getty Images

Stocks fell sharply on Friday as a much weaker-than-anticipated jobs report for July ignited worries that the economy could be falling into a recession.

The broad market index dropped 1.84% to end at 5,346.56. The Nasdaq Composite lost 2.43% to close at 16,776.16, bringing the decline for the tech-heavy index from its recent all-time high to more than 10%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 610.71 points, or 1.51%, to finish at 39,737.26. At its session low, the 30-stock index was down 989 points.

Stocks sank after July job growth in the U.S. slowed more than expected, while the unemployment rate rose to the highest since October 2021. Nonfarm payrolls grew by just 114,000 last month, the Labor Department reported, a slowing from 179,000 jobs added in June and below the 185,000 expected by economists polled by Dow Jones. The unemployment rate increased to 4.3%.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell to its lowest since December as investors flooded into bonds for safety on the fear the Federal Reserve made a mistake this week by keeping interest rates at current levels.

Some megacap names saw steep losses during the day, as Amazon‘s second-quarter results sparked investor concerns about Big Tech’s blowout levels of artificial intelligence-related capital spending. The e-commerce giant slid 8.8% after missing the Street’s revenue estimates and issuing a disappointing forecast. Intel, meanwhile, cratered 26% after announcing weak guidance and layoffs. Nvidia lost 1.8%, following a 6% loss a day before.

The Nasdaq is the first of the three major benchmarks to enter correction territory, down more than 10% from its record high. The S&P 500 and Dow were 5.7% and 3.9% below their all-time highs, respectively.

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Nasdaq Composite this year.

Friday’s declines are a “natural course” in a bull market that is reverting after its steep uptrend, LPL Financial chief technical strategist Adam Turnquist said.

“[The Nasdaq] was very overbought coming into July, same thing with semiconductors. And a lot of that AI enthusiasm hasn’t really had a reality check at this stage,” he said, adding that “it’s not the end of the AI story.”

But it was more than just technology stocks that saw selling on Friday. Bank stocks were slammed on the recession fears with Bank of America off 4.9% and Wells Fargo down 6.4%.

It has been a volatile week with the S&P 500 moving more than 1% in each of the past three trading sessions. The stock market had rallied Wednesday when the Fed gave a strong hint that a rate cut was coming at its next meeting in September. After Friday’s weak job figures, many investors are starting to believe the central bank should have acted on Wednesday.


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