What's News in Markets: Tesla Deliveries, Spirit's Nosedive, Carmakers' Roadblocks
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Hey, listeners. It's Saturday, October 5th. 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. Happy October, everybody. Not only is it now my birthday month, sorry, shameless birthday self-promotion, we are also coming into the fourth quarter of 2024. And markets had a lot to digest to kick it off.

We had two main threats to follow this week. One was the escalating conflict in the Middle East. On Tuesday, Iran attacked Israel, prompting vows of retaliation, and we saw the ripple effects move across the markets. Obviously, global energy markets got a jolt, with oil prices rising, and we saw nervous investors turning from stocks to bonds.

And oil prices kept moving throughout the week, notably after President Biden suggested on Thursday that U.S. officials are considering whether to support an Israeli strike on Iranian oil facilities. But the stock market's collective focus turned back to the U.S. economy.

and the latest largely upbeat data around the labor market, the big market mover being Friday's payrolls report, which bolstered expectations for the Fed to cautiously proceed with future interest rate cuts. On a weekly basis, all three major indexes ended with small gains, and on Friday, the Dow notched its 34th record close of 2024.

Global automakers are hitting some roadblocks. Stellantis, which makes Jeep and Chrysler, cut its full-year earnings outlook on Monday, adding to the list of recent warnings from overseas automakers.

Volkswagen slashed its guidance that Friday before, plus Mercedes-Benz and BMW downgraded targets earlier in September. Stellantis said it faced weaker demand across many of its markets and said it would accelerate costly plans to trim its bloated U.S. inventories. And around the world, we've been seeing car sales shifting into reverse in recent months. According to the data provider Global Data, August volumes were down 4% year over year.

So, surprise, Stellantis shares stalled out on Monday. Its U.S.-traded shares dropped 13%, closing at their lowest level since December 2022. Plus, Ford lost about 2%, and GM fell about 3.5%. The rest of the week, Stellantis mostly made moves downward, ending with a weekly loss of about 17%.

Elsewhere in the auto arena, Tesla delivered some good news on its quarterly deliveries. But spoiler alert, that didn't stop its recent rally from hitting the brakes.

So Elon Musk's electric car maker, Tesla, delivered a total of nearly 463,000 vehicles during the July to September period. And that's some real good news. It was roughly in line with analysts' expectations. It reversed earlier declines this year. Plus, it was a 6.4% increase from the same period last year, when Tesla's sales were affected by factory upgrades that paused production. So you might be asking, what gives? We got solid numbers. Why wasn't the stock up?

Well, for one, Tesla's total deliveries for the first nine months of 2024 are still trailing last year's performance. That's putting extra pressure on the company to deliver an even higher number of vehicles in the fourth quarter to beat 2023. And Tesla's stock has been on kind of a tear lately. September notched a gain of like 22%, so a dip might be expected when deliveries come in solid rather than exceptional.

So the stock lost about 3.5% on Wednesday, with more losses Thursday, before gaining back some ground on Friday. All in all, Tesla ended the week down 4%. Then on Friday, we saw Spirit Airlines shares taking a nosedive on news of a possible bankruptcy filing. Spirit's stock has had a rough go of it. There was the company's failed merger with JetBlue Airways. Not to mention, Spirit hasn't turned an annual profit since before the pandemic.

Spirit shares ended up dropping 25% on Friday, meaning the stock is down around 90% year-to-date. In comparison, fellow discount airline JetBlue is up about 30% this year. So I guess we'll have to see whether the stock can keep its spirit up. Sorry, too corny.

I don't know. But 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 Pierre Bien-Aimé with supervising producer Michael Kosmitas. I'm Francesca Fontana. Have a great weekend and see you next Saturday.

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