Author: starbpo

WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. — Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump started to put together his foreign policy team. He announced that he is naming Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and Army veteran, to be his defense secretary and John Ratcliffe, a former Director of National Intelligence, to be the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. He made a lot of announcements at once. Trump said that his close friend Steven Witkoff would be a special envoy to the Middle East and that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee would be ambassador to Israel. Trump also said that he would put South…

To help poor people, boost state banks’ capital, and speed up slow economic growth, China’s finance minister said on Saturday that the country will “significantly increase” the amount of debt it issues. Finance Minister Lan Fo’an said on Saturday that the Chinese government is looking at other ways to boost economic growth. However, he did not give any information about the new fiscal stimulus plan that analysts were expecting. Investors were hoping Lan would announce a plan to boost the economy that would cost up to 2 trillion yuan ($280 billion). At a press conference, he said, “Other policy tools…

SpaceX’s huge Starship rocket went on its riskiest test flight yet on Sunday. Mechanical arms were used to catch the booster as it came back to the launch pad. Elon Musk was so happy that he called it “science fiction without the fiction part.” The empty Starship took off at dawn from the southern tip of Texas, close to the border with Mexico. It was almost 400 feet tall. It flew over the Gulf of Mexico in a circle, just like the four Starships that came before it and were sunk, either soon after takeoff or while they were landing.…

This year, 2024, artificial intelligence has been a big deal in both company and retirement plans. The word “AI bubble” is being used a lot, but AI stocks like Nvidia Corp. NVDA -0.01% are up over 160% so far this year. It seems like regular investors aren’t as excited about AI stocks as they were earlier this year. According to a new study from the online brokerage Public, 51.6% of the small investors they polled were positive about AI companies and stocks, while only 9.5% were negative. Still, only 30.8% said they were going to put more money into AI…

AMI stock is only up 11% so far this year, less than the 21% rise in the S&P 500. Nvidia stock, on the other hand, is up more than 170%. Yet, even though Nvidia shares NVDA -0.01% did amazingly better in 2024, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon says those shares look like a better bet. AMD’s AMD 2.26% Advancing AI event on Thursday backed up this claim. AMD said that its new MI325X accelerator chip is faster than Nvidia’s H200 offering. However, the H200 is Nvidia’s older graphics processing unit, and Wall Street has been buzzing about the Blackwell chip that’s…

The race for president is getting close, and both Kamala Harris (D) and Donald Trump (R) are likely to use exaggerated claims about their track records on economic problems as the race gets closer. What does the market say? As of Thursday night’s close, the S&P 500 SPX 0.61% had gained 50% since President Joe Biden and his vice president, Harris, took office on January 20, 2021. It’s a big jump in just over three and a half years, especially considering that the stock benchmark fell 19% in 2022 because the Federal Reserve tried to fight inflation by raising interest…

Lessen the chance in your investments right now, before it’s too late. The financial markets are not about to crash, but as I just said, the stock market could turn over at any time. Instead, lower-risk stock methods don’t help in the long run, which is why portfolio risk should be cut. Large amounts of risk mean that you will not only lose sleep for nothing, but you will also probably give up on your plans at the worst possible time. Take a look at the two charts below. They show how reward changed over time compared to risk for…

Boeing Co. shocked the market late Friday night by announcing that it would be laying off about 10% of its staff. The company also told investors that it expects a much bigger loss and weaker sales in the third quarter than Wall Street had thought. In a statement, CEO Kelly Ortberg said, “Our business is in a tough spot, and it’s hard to overstate the challenges we face together.” Boeing said earlier this week that talks with the strike machinists in Washington state had broken down. S&P Global Ratings says the strike, which is now in its fourth week, costs…

When the Federal Open Market Committee cut the goal range for the federal-funds rate by half a percentage point on September 18, it caused a big stir. But it takes time for banks’ financial results to show that their funding costs for savings and loans have gone down. In order to find the banks whose net interest rates are most likely to get better in 2025, we looked ahead. Before short-term interest rates went down, there was a huge market for longer-term bonds. Right now, the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes (TMUBMUSD10Y 4.105%) is much lower than the yield…

People in the U.S. may be stuck in their homes, but they can still get their money out. Home prices have gone through the roof in the past few years, and people who have built up equity are taking out home-equity loans to cash in on their gains. An analysis company called CoreLogic said in a report released Wednesday that home equity loans have reached their highest level since 2008 in the first half of this year. The company said that during that time, lenders made more than 333,000 new home-equity loans worth a total of $23.6 billion. Home-equity loan…