Caroline Woods brings the latest business headlines from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as markets open for trading Thursday, April 25.
Full Video Transcript Below:
CAROLINE WOODS: I’m Caroline Woods reporting from the New York Stock Exchange - here’s what we’re watching on TheStreet today.
Investors are reacting to first quarter GDP – U.S. gross domestic product increased 1.6 percent, slower than analyst expectations of 2.4 percent, following a 3.4 percent gain in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Wall Street is also looking ahead to big tech earnings – Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft are slated to report after the bell Thursday. So far almost a quarter of companies in the S&P 500 have released results and of those, a majority have beat analyst expectations.
And in other news, the U.S. is one step closer to banning TikTok. President Joe Biden signed a bill into law Wednesday that will force the social media app to find a new owner within nine months or risk being banned.
If TikTok does not find a new owner before January 19th, 2025, the app would be prohibited from all U.S. app stores.
But TikTok parent company ByteDance isn’t going down without a fight. The social media app has pledged legal action, calling the new law ‘unconstitutional.’
TikTok is expected to argue that a forced sale would violate free speech rights as a new owner could change the app’s content policies, redefining what users can post on the platform.
Analysts estimate that the price for the U.S. portion of the social media app could be in the tens of billions.
So far, former Secretary of State Steven Mnuchin and Canadian businessman and star of Shark Tank Kevin O’Leary have signaled interest in buying the app.
TikTok has more than 170 million users in the United States.
That’ll do it for your daily briefing - from the New York Stock Exchange, I’m Caroline Woods with TheStreet.
