Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
1. Love lost
2. Playing the field
Traders work as a screen displays the trading information for GameStop and AMC Theatres on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on May 15, 2024.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
GameStop could soon be getting into the cryptocurrency space. The video game retailer and meme stock is considering investing in bitcoin as an alternative asset class, three sources told CNBC. The news comes after CEO Ryan Cohen stirred up excitement last weekend, posting a photo on X with Michael Saylor, the co-founder and chairman of MicroStrategy, which is the largest corporate holder of bitcoin. GameStop shares soared in extended trading.
3. Signed, sealed, delivered
U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he stands in the Oval Office of the White House, on the day Robert F. Kennedy Jr is sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services, in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 13, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
Trump has signed his anticipated “reciprocal tariffs” plan on foreign nations. The plan calls for imposing levies on nations that “charge us a tax or tariff,” Trump said from the Oval Office, meaning things like value-added taxes, or VATs, and other trade policies that the U.S. deems unfair. The reciprocal tariffs aren’t expected to take effect for at least a month and a half, once officials have determined what tariff level is appropriate for each impacted country.
4. Growing apart
Brown Girl Jane’s sales have more than doubled since the brand got picked up by Sephora last year. The beauty retailer took the 15 Percent Pledge, an effort to add more Black-owned brands to shelves.
Courtesy: Brown Girl Jane
The pullback on DEI could soon hit the product mix on store shelves. As retailers like Walmart and Target scale back goals for diversity, equity and inclusion, it raises questions about the fate of efforts to support Black-owned brands. Such programs have become fairly commonplace among America’s retailers and are a useful pathway for Black founders to grow their businesses with the help of big-box-sized customer bases. “When you don’t have that commitment or even that understanding from the retailer side, it becomes quite difficult for small brands to survive — even when they’ve made it on shelves,” said Malaika Jones, CEO and co-founder of fragrance brand Brown Girl Jane, which won a grant last year through Sephora’s incubator program.
5. Finding a spark
The CVS pharmacy logo is seen outside of a storefront on August 07, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
CVS Health could be reigniting its business after a heart-breaking 2024. The drugstore chain’s stock is up 45% so far this year, well outpacing its peers. Fueling the recent run is promising earnings trends and an upbeat outlook for 2025, helped by store closures, cost cuts and a new CEO. “The pieces are in place for [CVS to return] from what has been a bottoming of operations performance,” according to Leerink Partners analyst Michael Cherny.
– CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han, Yun Li, Gabrielle Fonrouge, Kevin Breuninger, Melissa Repko and Annika Kim Constantino contributed to this report.
