UPDATE

🌤️ Happy Tuesday

Good morning; we hope you had a great Monday workday. Sunday was Mother's Day, and hopefully, you could spend time with family for a lovely brunch or activity.

• It's crazy to think about how last week was our 20th MARK IT. issue. Thank you for reading along all this time.

Let's all make this a productive week 🚀

WEEK IN REVIEW

📈 Market Performance

Tesla Model S by Steve Jurvetson, via flickr

While last week may have seemed bumpy for the market if you watched each day, there was little overall movement. For example, Tuesday saw a minor rise midday, while Wednesday appeared to reverse that. Similarly, Thursday saw roughly a 0.64% rise before Friday saw a roughly equal drop.

• All said and done, last week, from Tuesday's market open until Monday's (yesterday) close, the S&P rose only 0.31%.

It's unclear why the week was so bumpy yet balanced, but it's likely a post-earnings and banking crisis cooling.

🚗 Tesla Takes Cues From Twitter

Last Friday, Elon Musk, the current CEO of Twitter and Tesla, announced that he would pass the reigns of Twitter CEO on to Linda Yaccarino. Yaccarino was (until Friday) head of advertising at NBCUniversal.

• While Musk will be stepping down as CEO, he made clear he will be involved in the technology department for Twitter. (Source: CNBC)

As a result of the news, Tesla shares dropped about 2% on Friday, likely because of general investor uncertainty. While Twitter and Tesla are separate companies, Musk's involvement in both does appear to have overreacting effects. (Source: Barrons)

📺 Disney+ Subscriber Update

DIS (5-day), via Google Finance

Towards the end of earnings season last week, Disney reported its second straight quarter of Disney+ subscriber decrease. The company has lost an estimated 4 million subscribers from the streaming platform since the beginning of 2023. (Source: Variety)

• The news, publicized on Wednesday, resulted in a 9.9% decline in the DIS share price, from $103 to $92.2 by Thursday morning.

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MARK IT. EXPLAINED

📊 What is Bid-Ask Spread?

New York Stock Exchange by Christine Puccio, via flickr

In the MARK IT. Explained section of last week's article, On the Horizon, we mentioned bid-ask spread and wanted to talk more about it. The bid-ask spread is the gap between the highest bid (from the buyer) for an asset and the lowest ask (from the seller) for that particular asset. To put it into more detail, it's the difference between the highest price a buyer wants to pay and the lowest price a seller wants to sell.

The transaction cost is the spread between those two prices. The bid-ask spread is the go-to measure for finding market liquidity. According to Investopedia, the bid is the demand, while the ask is the supply for an asset. It's important to understand that this all happens in a market setting. A market has two critical forces to consider for bid-ask spread:

• Buyers: those looking to pick up assets for prices they are willing to pay for

• Sellers: those looking to unload or give assets away for prices they are ready to sell for

We emphasized this concept because when someone buys an asset, there has to be someone else selling that asset. That's how the market functions, and we can use millions of these sales to determine market demand and supply. (Source: Investopedia)

ONE MORE THING

🤝 Keep in Touch

This week's issue was edited and published by Abbas Akhtar. Our MARK IT. Explained section was written by contributing editor Rahul Kannam.

• For general announcements or updates on what we're working on, follow Abbas on Twitter 👉 @RealAbbasAkhtar

• Also, we want to hear your feedback! Send any comments or suggestions to [email protected]

Thanks again for reading!

Nothing MARK IT. publishes constitutes professional and/or financial advice, nor does any information published by MARK IT. constitute a comprehensive or complete statement of the matters discussed.