TikTok Troubles, Get Your Green On: Saturday US Briefing

Virginia Van Natta
·2-min read

(Bloomberg) -- Hello from San Francisco, where we will celebrate St. Patrick a day early, with a parade down Market Street.TikTok fans are on tenterhooks after the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would require the beloved short-video app’s Chinese parent to divest itself of the service in the US or remove the app altogether. TikTok has access to extraordinary amounts of US data and poses a security threat, according to Congress. Privately traded ByteDance doesn’t want to sell and will put up a fight in the courts. Stay tuned.

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Stocks fell for a second week as investors sold off tech companies and a pile of options expiring Friday amplified market swings. The S&P 500 dropped 0.1%, paring gains this year to 7.3%. An index of unprofitable tech companies tracked by Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, has tumbled 18% in the year-to-date and is on track for its worst quarter since mid-2022.

Whither Apple? Shares of the iPhone maker are down 10% this year as investors rethink its future in the wake of AI, writes Bloomberg’s Jeran Wittenstein. CEO Tim Cook has promised Apple will “break new ground” in AI this year and market professionals are anticipating big news at the company’s annual software developer’s conference in June. Some investors are losing patience and have turned to stocks with a clearer path in AI, like Nvidia. Apple has “become more of a value stock, a bit like Coca-Cola,” said Phil Blancato, chief market strategist at Osaic.

Bitcoin’s rally has attracted so much attention, it’s even beating out Taylor Swift in Google searches. What does it take to be a certified cryptocurrency expert these days? Good question. The lack of a widely recognized professional accreditation in the industry has left a vacuum that a variety of organizations are trying to fill.

The cost of the fuel you probably use to heat your home has tumbled to the lowest in four years. Consumer gas bills dropped 9% in February versus a year ago, giving households a much-needed break. Natural gas is also used to make ammonia and nitrogen fertilizers, which is key to global food production and should also translate to savings ahead at the supermarket.

And lastly, a Texas startup called Aerolane is betting gliders pulled from small freighter planes could save air-cargo companies millions in fuel costs. “We’re just dusting off some of the most proven concepts in aviation history and modernizing them with today’s technology,” said Todd Graetz, CEO and co-founder. “It’s far less radical than anyone thinks.”

Check back with us tomorrow for a look ahead to the coming week.

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