What’s News in Markets: Tariff Fear, Delta Soars, AMD + OpenAI

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Hey, listeners. It's Saturday, October 11th. I'm Francesca Fontana for The Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News in Markets, our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Let's get to it. The stock market was chugging along this week, with indexes hitting records and shrugging off some doubts about the AI boom. Then, on Friday, things took a turn, a pretty steep one. US stocks gave up their gains for the week on Friday after President Trump posted on Truth Social that he may cancel a planned meeting with China's leader and threatened a, quote, massive increase in tariffs on products from China. We saw chip stocks take a tumble. So did oil prices. But do you know what was up? Good old fear. Wall Street's Fear Gauge, aka the Sebo Market Volatility Index, was flying higher, with its percentage gain hitting double digits during Friday's session. All in all, the three major indexes ended the week lower. The S&P 500 fell 2.4 percent, the Dow fell 2.7 percent, and the NASDAQ fell 2.5 percent. We just went over what went wrong, so to speak, in the stock market. What went right? Well, one sector that got some good news was airline stocks. We're talking about Delta Airlines, which did you know is the biggest US carrier by market cap. If you didn't, now you do. And this week, investors were celebrating Delta's earnings and sales beat in its latest quarterly report, showing a recent recovery in travel demand. The company said it expects that demand to continue to bounce back, and it's aiming for a record holiday season. Now, remember, this sunny outlook is a pretty big departure, pardon the pun, from earlier this year, when geopolitical tensions and tariffs weighed down demand. Delta shares gained 4.3% on Thursday, with some other airlines following suit. For instance, United shares gained 3.3%.

Next, let's check in on the AI boom, shall we? Who's the winner this week? Drum roll, please. It's AMD, AKA Advanced Micro Devices, AKA a chip maker looking to take on the reigning champion, industry giant, NVIDIA. And AMD certainly notched a win on Monday, when it announced a multi-billion dollar computing deal with OpenAI, which makes Chad GPT. The two are going to be working together on artificial intelligence datacenters that run on AMD chips. OpenAI committed to purchasing 6 gigawatts of AMD's chips. And no, sorry back to the future fans, it's apparently pronounced gigawatts, not gigawatts. And in return, OpenAI will get warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares, roughly 10% of the company, at Ascenta Share, awarded in phases under certain conditions. AMD shares jumped to 24% on Monday and kept gaining through Wednesday. And of course, amid Friday's downturn, the stock fell nearly 8%. But all in all, AMD ended the week in the green, with a gain of roughly 30%.

Now I'm an analog person. Sure, I love a lot of things about the digital information age. But on the whole, I was not built for it. I hate texting, I love typewriters, and I love getting mail. Handwritten letters hand-delivered to me by a person. And I never want to watch a film written by or starring some kind of generative AI. So I need you guys to know that before I read this opening line that I wrote. And I'm going to try not to make it sound like a scary movie written just for me. Guys, the future of food delivery is here. And guess what? It's AI robots. Yes, Cerv Robotics, the maker of AI-powered food delivery robots, announced a multi-year partnership with DoorDash on Thursday. Now as a New Yorker, I did not know this, but Cerv's self-driving sidewalk robots have already been making deliveries in LA, as well as Miami, Dallas, Chicago and Atlanta through an existing partnership with UberEats. But this new deal will help the company expand its footprint, and it sent the stock up a whopping 29 percent on Thursday, and it ended the week up 14 percent. Now you know What's News in Markets this week. You can read about more stocks that moved on the week's news in The Score, my column in the Wall Street Journal's Exchange section. Today's show was produced by Zoe Kolkin with Deputy Editor Chris Dinsley. I'm Francesca Fontana. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you next Saturday.

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