CE 100 Index Barely Budges in Holiday-Shortened Trading Week

The CE 100 Index barely budged in a week shortened by the Juneteenth holiday.

Overall, the index slipped a scant 0.02%, as six pillars lost ground and five pillars advanced. In doing so, the CE 100 pantheon outperformed all of its broader benchmarks, as, for example, the S&P lost 0.5%.

Banking names surged the most, adding 3%.

LendingClub advanced by 5.3%. The company announced the rollout of its LevelUp Checking. The new offering is designed to help consumers move away from reliance on credit cards, especially given record-high credit card debt, by incentivizing the use of debit with rewards tied to debit spending.

Target customers are individuals with high FICO scores (around 725) and high incomes ($125,000 to $130,000) who, despite their earnings, often lack immediate cash and carry substantial credit card debt, CEO Scott Sanborn told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster.

“We’re saying that if rewards are important to you, that’s great, so let’s reward you for good behavior,” Sanborn told Webster in an interview.

The new LevelUp Checking product gives members 1% cash back for everyday spending with a LevelUp debit card on grocery and gas, among other key categories. Members who have LendingClub personal loans can also receive 2% cash back for making on-time loan payments from the LevelUp accounts.

Deposit Token Boosts JPMorgan

JPMorgan Chase plans to launch a product called a “deposit token” that will serve as a digital representation of commercial bank money and will be available only to the bank’s institutional clients.

The deposit token, dubbed “JPMD,” will provide an alternative to stablecoins and will be closely connected to traditional banking systems. JPMorgan Chase will launch JPMD on Coinbase’s public blockchain, Base. JPMorgan’s stock gained 3.8%.

In the Pay and Be Paid segment, up 0.3%, Visa has partnered with licensed stablecoin payments orchestrator Yellow Card to explore stablecoin use cases and opportunities across the African markets in which Yellow Card is licensed to operate.

Together, the companies will seek opportunities to help streamline treasury operations and enhance liquidity management as well as test integration opportunities with Visa Direct to investigate cross-border payment options, Visa said. Visa’s stock lost 4%.

But buy now, pay later names were higher, marked by Sezzle’s 10% rally and Affirm’s 5% boost.

As PYMNTS reported, Affirm has announced a new revolving pass-through loan sale facility in which PGIM Fixed Income, a Prudential Financial company, will invest up to $3 billion over 36 months by purchasing up to $500 million of Affirm loans at any one time.

This facility, which marks an expansion of the companies’ existing capital partnership, will support Affirm’s offering of pay-over-time options to consumers, the companies said.

Be Well Names Slide

The Be Well sector led declining stocks, losing 2.5%. Peloton dipped by 11%, trading lower since news earlier this month that Peloton introduced its own peer-to-peer resale marketplace, Repowered. Users can list their pre-owned equipment and accessories from the connected fitness company on the Repowered platform. Sellers determine the listing price, aided by a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool.

In the Enablers group, which lost 0.3%, OpenAI’s Sam Altman has reportedly accused Meta of offering nine-figure signing bonuses to poach his workers. Shares gave up 0.7%.

Amazon’s stock lost 1.1%. In a message penned by CEO Andy Jassy, and as reported by PYMNTS, employees who have learned how to use AI will be better positioned to be a part of Amazon in the future. Jassy added that Amazon’s total corporate workforce is likely to shrink over the next few years as the company adopts AI.

“Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company,” Jassy said in the message.