Lone Star stocks
Trading comes to Texas
Good morning, rodeo rockstars. This is your Stock Market Rundown for June 13, 2024. Thanks for joining me. Let’s dig in:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: THE NEW BULL MARKET
Wall Street is iconic: the raging bull statue, the Corinthian columns of the New York Stock Exchange building, the traders in fleece vests and Ferragamo loafers.
Now picture a different Wall Street: one with cowboy hats, smoked BBQ, and 100 degree heat in the summer.
A group of investors, including big dogs like like BlackRock and Citadel, have raised $120 million to launch a new stock exchange based in Dallas, Texas.
The Texas Stock Exchange will be fully electronic—no old-fashioned guys in blazers yelling and gesticulating on the trading floor.
Why now? Well, the southern US is a financial and business powerhouse, and Dallas is a key hub. Texas is headquarters to 1,500 publicly traded companies. Which means lots of potential customers for the upstart exchange.
Plus, some corporate execs feel the Nasdaq and NYSE have gotten too fat and complacent. The major exchanges are jacking up compliance fees, and dictating board diversity targets. The Texas Stock Exchange aims to be more “CEO-friendly”. Translation: we won’t cost as much, and we won’t tell you what to do.
We’ll know soon whether corporations are ready to trade in bagels for brisket: the Wall Street Journal reported that the Texas Stock Exchange aims to start handing trades in 2025. Maybe instead of ringing the opening bell, they’ll fire up the grill.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Inditex, which owns mall retailer Zara, reported double-digit sales growth, showing that the fast fashion brand’s weird asymmetrical dresses and plastic jackets are resonating with consumers.
Layoffs watch: Sometimes even a backhoe can’t dig you out of trouble. Deere is cutting staff to cope with a demand slowdown for farm equipment.
You might want to bring in donuts to suck up to your boss. The number of jobs available per job-seeker in the US is at its lowest in nearly three years.
Starbucks is partnering with Grubhub to provide food delivery. I’m sorry, but if you order a latte to be delivered to your house, you should be sent to work in a coal mine somewhere.
That’s it for today, homeslices; let’s circle back first thing tomorrow morning. Yours in capitalism, The Axe
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