Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Thursday, May 9th, and I'm'm your host Kim Kong. Our top story so far.

Sony and Apollo Group planned to sell the Paramount Group CBS Network as well as the

entertainment giant's cable channels such as Nickelodeon and MTV as part of their 26 billion dollar offer for the company.

The new owners would also sell off the Paramount Plus streaming service, according to a New York Times report.

The Sony and Apollo are also expected to keep Paramount's library of films and TV shows and

the rights to well-known characters.

The companies haven't allied this plan to Paramount or its advisors. The update comes after Paramount Global's

board on Saturday, formally gave the go-ahead for negotiations to begin on a

potential acquisition by Apollo and Sony. Under a Sony deal, the two would likely operate the company as a joint venture

controlled by Sony with a minority stake owned by Apollo, according to the latest New York Times report.

Sony plans to combine the marketing and distribution segments of the Paramount movie studio with its own operations and divest the rest of the properties

Sony and Apollo expect there could be many logical buyers for Paramount's assets

Warner Brothers Discovery could be a possible suitor for CBS any logical buyers for Paramount's assets.

Warner Brothers Discovery could be a possible suitor for CBS,

while TV station groups like Nextstar and Tegna

would be natural buyers for CBS's owned and operated TV stations. On the economic front, initial jobless claims for the week

ended May 4th rose by 22,000 to 231,000. That was more than the 212,000 expected and up from 209,000 in the prior week.

The four-week moving average was 215,000, an increase of 4,750 from the prior week's average.

Ian Shepardson, economist at Pantheon Macro, says he needs to see at least a month of

elevated readings to convince us that the trend really has turned.

Still, he adds, this is the biggest one we increased since June last year and the

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