Catching up on today’s top business headlines: Recession fears hit the stock market coming off of the holiday weekend; airline travel returned to pandemic-era levels amid staffing shortages and flight cancellations; oil prices fell to $100 a barrel, and more.

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 In Business: Recession Fears, July 4th Travel Weekend Recap, Oil Prices Fall

stocks are mostly lower, but off session loans with the NASDAQ popping. It's a positive territory after being mirrored in the red most of the day, investors are coming back from the july 4th holiday with recession fears top of mine as U. S. Stocks tried to recover from a brutal first half of the year. You can see on your screen the NASDAQ is higher by 1.2%. S. p. That is slowly making gains because it was lower way earlier now down 3/10 of a percent in the Dow Jones, which was down nearly 700 points early in the day. Now down about 1% shaving off about 290 points and more experts are weighing in on the possibility of the us entering a recession. We've been talking a lot about that on this network. The chief economist at brokerage Nomura predicts many of the countries with the biggest economies in the world will fall into a recession within the next year. Central banks around the world, including right here in the US are making aggressive moves to bring down soaring inflation like raising interest rates. The firm's chief economist expects the US UK Japan, South Korea Australia Canada and other countries in the EU to enter recessions as well. Back here in the US, he predicts a recession would be shallow but long lasting more than a year now. Meanwhile, credit squeeze cut, its target for the S. P. 500 for the end of the year, from 4900 to 4300. But the analysts making the call says it's not related to concerns of a recession. The analyst actually said the opposite, saying that he does not see the U. S. Economy falling into a recession. The lower target from credit squeeze would mean the index makes up about half of its losses from the first half of the year. And we are looking at the major U. S. Airlines this afternoon after a busy weekend in the air for the long holiday weekend. Let's take a look at shares. Right now. American and United are in the Green Delta JetBlue Southwest in the red air travel, hit a pandemic era record this weekend. Even as experts predicted turbulence, more than 2.5 million travelers passed through T. S. A. Checkpoints on friday that by the way the highest number since before the pandemic passenger traffic at checkpoints remained above two million every day this weekend, demand is high as people seek to travel after two years of the pandemic. But airlines have been struggling with staffing shortages, especially when it comes to pilots, Conditions for air travel generally improved throughout the weekend. Though fewer than 1000 flights were delayed in the us by this time yesterday on July four after thousands of delays and hundreds of cancelations earlier in the weekend, pleasant weather throughout much of the country helped keep flights moving and avoided weather-related delays. Travelers also had an easier time changing their plans. They also offered a waiver to make it easier for customers to re book their trips booked for this weekend. So they expected it to be a lot worse this weekend. It wasn't as bad. I mean look hundreds of flights were canceled but this was a record amount of people. I think the last time we saw this many people go through the T. S. A. Was back in 2019 we had an airline expert on last week and when I asked him do you think this will happen all summer? Do you think we'll continue to see this trend? He says it's not even the weather, it's not even just what we're seeing with, you know, shortages when it comes to high gas prices or he says it's about the pilot and he thinks this is going to last for at least a year well into the christmas season where we're going to see these flight delays and of course his pilot shortage continue. Not fun, not fun. Dude, it's alright but some relief when it comes to gas, at least oil prices are falling as fears of a recession are rising around the world. The U. S. Benchmark of W. T. I. Crude fell below $100 a barrel to 99 bucks and 50 cents. That's down eight and a quarter percent from the day prior experts expect that a recession would lead to a slowdown in global demand As oil prices fall, gas prices here in the us are also ticking lower prices at the pump have generally fallen for the past three weeks in a row. This is the longest period of declines for gas prices in the US has seen since the pandemic started by the national average of the price of gas here in the US is now $4.80 below The $5 market reached recently but it is still higher than the same time last year. It does feel good. It's still awful. Yes but it feels a little better a lot. What's the lowest you've seen it? We live in Connecticut so it's it's pretty expensive. I think I saw 4 95 in Connecticut the lowest for the low. I don't know I saw 4 79. Yeah maybe it wasn't the lowest 79. But you know what we've been talking about this a lot. People don't really care. It's what we're calling it the summer of revenge Travel because I think a lot of people like I need to get out of the house, I'm going to pay these gas prices and maybe taking you know trying to save money in other places when it comes to groceries or entertainment but they're hitting the road. People want to get out this year. My producer says she saw 4 59 where it's pretty please. We're also focusing on Tesla the E. V. Giant delivered more than a quarter million vehicles in Q. Two this year. That's about 50,000 more from the same time a year ago. This year's numbers are just short of analyst estimates. The latest figure is also short of Tesla's first quarter total. Covid lockdowns at its Shanghai factory, ongoing supply chain disruptions, the chip shortage and other parts shortages have slowed down production.