TheStreet’s J.D. Durkin brings the latest business headlines from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as markets open for trading Wednesday, January 31.
Related: Elon Musk can’t catch a break
Full Video Transcript Below:
J.D. DURKIN: I’m J.D. Durkin, reporting from the New York Stock Exchange. Here’s what we’re watching on TheStreet today.
Investors are reacting to the first batch of big tech earnings. Microsoft reported a better-than-expected quarter thanks to a jump in its cloud unit driven by AI. Google parent Alphabet also reported a beat but did miss on advertising revenue, which disappointed investors.
Meanwhile, investors are looking ahead to the Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates as the January policy meeting wraps up. Markets are pricing in a 98 percent chance that interest rates will be held steady. Investors will be looking for clues on the path forward from Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks on Wednesday.
In other news, Elon Musk just lost $56 billion. Well, sort of. A Delaware judge has voided Musk’s Tesla compensation package after a shareholder filed a lawsuit claiming the company’s CEO was overpaid.
In her ruling, Judge Kathaleen McCormick said, “Put simply, neither the compensation committee nor the board acted in the best interests of the company when negotiating Musk’s compensation plan. In fact, there is barely any evidence of negotiations at all. Rather than negotiate against Musk with the mindset of a third party, the compensation committee worked alongside him, almost as an advisory body.”
While Elon Musk didn’t respond directly to the ruling, he did take to his other company’s platform, X, to tell his 170 million-plus followers: “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.”
In 2018, Musk was given the largest compensation package a publicly traded company had ever handed out. The plan gave him 12 tiers of stock that would vest if the company’s market cap increased by $50 billion. At the time, it made Musk the richest man in the world.
That’ll do it for your daily briefing. From the New York Stock Exchange, I’m J.D. Durkin with TheStreet.
