Wall St. barely budges to open week
NEW YORK — U.S. stock indexes drifted to a mixed finish May 13, hanging near their record heights.
The S&P 500 edged down by less than 0.1 percent Monday, after flipping between small gains and losses. It remains within 0.6 percent of its record high set at the end of March.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.2 percent, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.3 percent.
Biopharmaceutical company Incyte jumped 8.6 percent after saying it would buy back up to $2 billion of its stock.
On the losing end was Fortrea Holdings, a provider of clinical trial management and other services for the life sciences industry. It fell 14.9 percent after reporting weaker results than analysts expected.
Roaring Kitty is back; so are meme stocks
NEW YORK — The man at the center of the pandemic meme stock craze returned to the social platform X for the first time in three years and sent prices of those stocks surging overnight.
Keith Gill, better known as “Roaring Kitty,” posted an image May 12 of a man sitting forward in his chair, a meme used by gamers when things are getting serious. GameStop, which Gill turned into a hot stock after pitching the company on Reddit, is a video game retailer that in 2021 was struggling as consumers switched rapidly from discs to digital downloads.
Shares of GameStop, which have faded steadily since 2021, jumped 74 percent Monday and AMC Entertainment Holdings, another meme stock, leapt 78 percent.
US probes Amazon’s self-driving robotaxi
DETROIT — Amazon’s self-driving robotaxi unit is being investigated by the U.S. government’s highway safety agency after two of its vehicles braked suddenly and were rear-ended by motorcyclists.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said May 1 it will evaluate the automated driving system developed by Zoox.
Both crashes involved Toyota Highlander SUVs with autonomous driving technology. They happened during the daytime hours, and the motorcyclists suffered minor injuries. In both cases, the agency confirmed that each of the Amazon vehicles was operating in autonomous mode leading up to the crashes.
Read More: Stocks muted but remain near all-time highs; meme shares are back | Business