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By Staff Reporters

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• Markets: After their worst first half since 1970, stocks climbed to kick off the second half of the year, led by home building companies. But, the three major indexes posted weekly losses in four out of the last five weeks.
• At least four SPAC mergers were called off in the 24 hours after the market closed, including one that would have taken Panera Brands public, according to Bloomberg. An index that tracks companies that went public via SPAC has plunged 67%. For the year to date, 30 proposed SPAC deals have been cancelled.

Recession: The Federal Reserve’s key real-time model for tracking U.S. economic activity has turned negative, signaling that the nation could already have entered a recession. The GDPNow gauge, a widely watched measurement from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, indicated that real gross domestic product shrank by 1.0% in the second quarter from April through June, 2022. So, while the official advance estimate of Q2 performance will not be released for another month, this preliminary reading shows the second quarter in a row of negative growth in the economy after GDP contracted 1.6% in Q1.

And Jeff Bezos beat nemesis Elon Musk at—losing money. The Amazon founder’s net worth crashed by $63 billion in the first half of 2022, while Musk’s fell by $62 billion. All told, the 500 richest people in the world lost $1.4 trillion so far this year according to Bloomberg.

Finally, Mark Zuckerberg thinks he has more employees than he needs. He told Meta workers that the company would be “turning up the heat” on performance oversight in order to uncover the workers who just watch Netflix all day. “If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” he said.

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Filed under: Alerts Sign-Up, Investing | Tagged: Bezos, Bezos and Zuckerberg, elon musk, GDPNow, Mark Zuckerberg, recession, SPACs, SPCA, The Markets | Leave a comment »