Stocks faltered on Wednesday, with all three major U.S. indices losing ground as Wall Street increasingly turns its eyes towards the one thing they really want this holiday season: a massive stimulus package.
Although negotiations are reportedly underway, calls for a second major round of fiscal stimulus have advanced from a polite murmur over the summer to a cacophonous roar in December.
The consensus view is that a package, perhaps around $900 billion in total, will pass both houses of Congress by the end of 2020 — but time is slipping away.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 105 points, or 0.35%, to finish at 30,068 on Wednesday.
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Facebook hit with huge antitrust suit; investors brush it off. In a prime example of just how toothless investors perceive U.S antitrust regulation to be, Facebook (ticker: FB) was hit with one of the largest antitrust cases in decades on Wednesday, and its stock lost just 1.9% — the same decline seen by the tech-heavy Nasdaq on the day.
The Federal Trade Commission, along with a bipartisan group of 46 states, filed antitrust lawsuits against Facebook on Wednesday. The FTC is actually seeking to split up the social media giant, asking it to divest of its Instagram and WhatsApp businesses, both of which were acquired in the last decade.
Although the legal costs and political pressure are nothing to envy, even if Facebook had to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp, it’s possible shareholders could still reap major rewards; spinoffs are generally thought to unlock value for investors, allowing the market to more fully value each discrete business segment.
DoorDash jumps more than 80% in IPO. In yet another sign that Wall Street and Main Street are experiencing two very different realities, food-delivery giant DoorDash (DASH) went public on Wednesday for $102 per share, above its previous range of $90 to $95 per share.
Even that major bump turned out leaving money on the table, as by the end of the day DoorDash stock closed above $189 per share, valuing the company at roughly $60 billion, or about four times the $15 billion valuation it had on the private markets earlier in 2020.
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Facebook Split-Up? DoorDash IPO Jumps 86% originally appeared on usnews.com
