TNB Tech Minute: TikTok Lives On…For Now
WSJ Tech News Briefing
Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an original podcast that unpacks the stories making news there. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise. Here's your TNB Tech Minute for Friday, April 4th. I'm Victoria Craig for The Wall Street Journal.
75 days. That's how much longer President Trump is giving TikTok to find a buyer for its U.S. operations or risk a national ban. The president signed an executive order this afternoon granting the Chinese-owned company more time to work out a deal. The president this week reviewed a proposal that could include about a dozen potential investors.
It wasn't clear which ones would be part of any agreement, but among those floated were Oracle, Blackstone and Silverlake, with Amazon and mobile tech firm Applovin making 11th hour bids. Elsewhere, the tech-heavy Nasdaq had another bruising sell-off today, dropping just under 6 percent after China said it would apply a 34 percent levy to all imported goods from the U.S.,
Two days of steep losses pushed the index into bear market territory, and all $6.4 trillion was wiped off the U.S. stock market in the last two days. That's a record. Suffering some of the biggest losses were the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks, which include Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, and Alphabet. That group erased $1.5 trillion in market value in the two-day tariff route.
Meanwhile, the stock market swoon has slammed the door on companies that have been waiting to go public. That's because investors, who would usually be the ones buying up shares in newly public companies, are instead focusing on losses from stocks they already own. Massive market declines also make it difficult to set price targets for new entrants.
People familiar with the matter have told the Journal that online ticketing marketplace StubHub and buy-now-pay-later fintech Klarna are both postponing their IPO roadshows, which were set to begin next week. Among others taking a wait-and-see approach are fintech firm Chime, virtual therapy company Hinge Health, and crypto company Circle Internet Financial. For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech and the impact of tariffs on the industry, check out Monday's Tech News Briefing podcast.
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