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A takeover announcement ignited one stock, while a fresh FDA approval strengthened another company’s commercial outlook.
Meanwhile, disappointing trial data weighed heavily on a major pharma name, shifting sentiment across the sector.
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A US startup just hit a $1 billion private valuation, joining billion-dollar private companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and ByteDance. Unlike those other unicorns, you can invest.
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Markets
Wall Street tumbled on Monday as renewed tariff uncertainty weighed on sentiment after President Trump imposed a 15% global tariff despite the Supreme Court ruling.
Tech and software shares also slid following a report highlighting potential risks from rapid AI disruption.
DJIA [-1.66%]
S&P 500 [-1.04%]
Nasdaq [-1.13%]
Russell 2k [-1.63%]
Market-Moving News
Payments
Is PayPal Worth More in Pieces Than as One Company?
PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ: PYPL) has attracted takeover interest from potential buyers, with at least one large rival reportedly examining an acquisition of the entire company.
Others are looking at specific pieces of the business.
PayPal has held meetings with banks in response to unsolicited interest, though nothing has moved past the preliminary stage yet.
This is a company that once defined digital payments, now drawing attention for a very different reason. It is suddenly looking affordable to the companies it used to outrun.
How Did PayPal Get Here
PayPal pioneered online checkout and built one of the most recognized fintech brands. But competition caught up fast.
Apple Pay, Stripe, Block, and buy-now-pay-later platforms all carved out their territory over the past few years.
You watch a company go from industry leader to acquisition target, and it tells a clear story. The product still works. The growth story just stopped keeping pace with the competition.
Whole Company or Just the Parts
Some suitors reportedly want the entire business. Others are interested in specific assets. Venmo, Braintree, and the core checkout platform each serve different markets.
If your reading of PayPal has been of a single company doing everything, the takeout interest suggests buyers see several valuable businesses bundled together.
You either see a company about to get rescued or one that finally got cheap enough to attract the attention it could not earn through growth alone.
Pharmaceuticals
Johnson & Johnson Is Being Sued Over How It Sells Its Cancer Drug
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) is facing a federal lawsuit from Bayer over how it markets Erleada, its prostate cancer drug.
Bayer claims J&J ran a false advertising campaign to make Erleada appear superior to Bayer's competing drug, Nubeqa.
This is not a patent dispute or a pricing fight. This is one pharma giant accusing another of lying to doctors and patients about what its drug can do.
Reputation Risk Is Real
J&J has spent years rebuilding trust across its pharmaceutical and consumer businesses.
A lawsuit alleging false advertising on a cancer drug adds a new layer of scrutiny at a moment when the company cannot afford it.
If your impression of J&J has been shaped by its pivot toward pharma and med tech after spinning off consumer brands, this case puts a spotlight on how aggressively it competes for market share in oncology.
Pharma Marketing Has Limits
Drug companies compete hard on messaging, especially when two treatments target the same condition.
But there is a legal line between competitive positioning and false claims. Bayer believes J&J crossed it.
You will not see a resolution anytime soon, but the lawsuit itself changes the conversation around how both drugs are perceived by the medical community.
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Retail
This Is Not a Retail Story Anymore
Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) posted $716.9 billion in annual revenue, surpassing Walmart's $713.2 billion for the first time ever.
That makes Amazon the largest company in the world by sales. The gap is narrow, but the shift is historic.
Walmart held this title for decades. Losing it to a company that started selling books online tells you everything about how commerce has changed.
Amazon Is Not Really a Retailer
The headline says retail, but the engine says otherwise: cloud computing via AWS generated nearly $129 billion last year.
Advertising brought in over $60 billion. Third-party seller services account for roughly a quarter of total revenue.
Amazon sells everything, but the businesses behind the storefront are what pushed it past Walmart. The retail operation is the front door. The technology stack is the house.
Three Businesses in One Body
Retail, cloud, and advertising each operate at a scale that would make them standalone giants. Together, they create a compounding effect that no traditional retailer can replicate.
If your mental model of Amazon is still an online store with fast shipping, this milestone is the moment to update it.
The company that just became the biggest by revenue earns its most profitable dollars from things that have nothing to do with boxes on doorsteps.
You can debate whether revenue is the right measure.
But the company that occupies this spot sets the tone for how the business world thinks about scale, ambition, and what a modern company even looks like.
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Top Winners and Losers
Arcellx Inc [ACLX] $113.76 (+77.44%)
Arcellx surged after agreeing to be acquired in a $7.8 billion deal, with a hefty premium reflecting confidence in its late-stage CAR-T cancer therapy.
Vanda Pharmaceuticals [VNDA] $8.15 (+41.49%)
Vanda jumped after securing FDA approval for its new bipolar and schizophrenia drug, extending its commercial runway with patent protection through 2044.
Enhabit Inc [EHAB] $13.60 (+22.63%)
Enhabit climbed after agreeing to be taken private in a $1.1 billion cash deal that offered shareholders a significant premium.
Stepan Company [SCL] $53.35 (-20.65%)
Stepan fell after posting a surprise quarterly loss and missing revenue expectations, marking a sharp negative earnings swing from the prior year.
Novo Nordisk A/S [NVO] $39.63 (-16.44%)
Novo Nordisk plunged after its next-generation obesity drug underperformed a rival treatment in a head-to-head Phase 3 trial, missing its non-inferiority goal.
LendingTree, Inc [TREE] $33.24 (-14.66%)
LendingTree dropped as new tariff announcements rattled consumer-focused stocks, fueling concerns about rising costs and slowing demand.
Trivia: What was Amazon originally called?
Energy Threat (Sponsored)
Big Oil may be facing its biggest challenge yet.
A breakthrough tied to an MIT-trained scientist could unlock a fuel source that’s virtually unlimited.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, it could last billions of years.
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That’s why this story matters now.
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Everything Else
The Dow tanked 800 points on tariff chaos while the Nasdaq ate it on an AI research report, giving traders a double dose of bad news to process at once.
J&J just locked in EU approval for a subcutaneous Rybrevant dosing tweak, which is basically a win for easier administration and patient convenience.
Trump warned that countries "playing games" with US trade deals are about to catch higher tariffs, turning diplomacy into a very public threat list.
Novo Nordisk's $475B Wegovy-era surge just got erased, proving that weight-loss hype can build empires and torch them with equal speed.
AbbVie's dropping $380M to expand its Illinois manufacturing footprint, because when you're winning in pharma, you double down on capacity before someone else does.
That's it for today! Please, write us back, and let us know what you think of the Closing Bell Roundup. We're always eager to hear feedback!
Thanks for reading. I'll see you at the next open!
Best Regards,
— Adam G.
Elite Trade Club
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