Author: starbpo

Wednesday, Raphael Bostic, president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, said that he still thinks interest rates will drop by a quarter point this year, sometime in the October–December quarter. As of now, Bostic still thinks that the federal funds rate will likely need to be lowered in the fourth quarter of the year. He wrote this in an essay that was posted on the website of his regional bank. But he also said that he wasn’t “locked in” to any one policy path. “It is possible that more cuts, no cuts, or even a raise would be the right…

Volkswagen’s stock dropped after the German automaker announced a partnership with Rivian Automotive to create software for cars. This is one way that Volkswagen is improving its technology. VW and Rivian agreed late Tuesday to spend up to $5 billion. VW will invest $1 billion in convertible bonds in Rivian and another $1 billion to set up the venture. VW will also invest up to $2 billion in equity in Rivian and another $1 billion in the venture. Rivian RIVN, 26.84% stock went up 50% after market hours, but VW’s preference shares VOW3, 0.14% went down 2% in early Frankfurt…

Three quarters of analysts rate Nvidia Corp. stock as a buy, but they haven’t updated their price targets to reflect the big gains in the stock price since the company reported earnings. But at least two raised their targets before the market opened on Wednesday. C.J. Muse of Cantor Fitzgerald is now the second most optimistic analyst on Nvidia’s stock (NVDA, 0.82%). “We have never seen a more frantic pace of technological innovation and subsequent drop in the cost of compute as we are seeing today,” Muse wrote. “All of this is driven by [Nvidia] and its full-system approach.” He…

A group of KBW analysts said that when the Federal Reserve releases its stress-test results on Thursday, it may raise the stress capital buffers for Truist Financial Corp. and KeyCorp and lower them for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., and other large banks. The Fed uses the stress tests to help figure out stress capital buffers, which are an important part of a bank’s balance sheet that protects it from system shocks. For bank shareholders, the Fed’s annual stress tests are important because they often have an effect on stock buybacks and dividends, both of which raise the value…

There isn’t always good news for the U.S. market as a whole in the recent rise in stock buybacks. Birinyi Associates says that May was a “record-setting month for announced buybacks” and that “2024 is the second-highest ever in the number of [buyback] announcements as well as the value of announcements.” That’s too bad. In general, companies are bad at timing the market, so they tend to buy back shares when prices are high. This is why you should not join the buyback party. Even Apple AAPL, 1.41%, which made more than half of May’s record-setting total, isn’t very good…

Donald Trump, who was president four years ago, told voters that Joe Biden, who was running against him, was going to destroy the oil industry. Biden talked up his plan to get the U.S. off of oil, but he said that fossil fuels would not be banned or moved away from for “a long time.” When it comes to U.S. stocks, energy has been the best-performing sector during Biden’s time in office. The two will face off in the first debate of the campaign season next week. It has given returns equal to those of the tech, industrial, and financial…

‘[T]he price that now matters the most is that political perennial — the one at the petrol pump.’Daniel Yergin, S&P Global If President Joe Biden wants to stay in office, the price of gas could make or break his chances. His campaign team is probably very worried about this. He said that in an opinion piece in the Financial Times on Tuesday. Yergin is vice chair of S&P Global and a longtime energy analyst. Price jump was caused by OPEC+ countries’ recent decision to cut back on oil exports, according to him. According to FactSet, the North American benchmark price…

People who want to become lawyers often take on six-figure debt loads in the hopes that they will help them get to a six-figure salary. That is, however, only usually what happens to graduates of 20% of law schools in the U.S. That’s one thing you can learn from the Center on Education and the Workforce report that came out Tuesday at Georgetown University. Most people who want to become lawyers have a lot of debt. A median of $118,500 is owed by law students when they graduate, which can make it hard for them to keep their finances stable.…

A very important economic advisor to President Joe Biden said that he thinks voters will worry less about the high cost of living over time if the government can control inflation. On Tuesday, Jared Bernstein, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said, “I put a lot of weight on the price level, not just inflation.” He was talking about the difference between how much something costs and how fast it costs more over time. Even though inflation rates have dropped a lot since their peak in 2022, many everyday items are still more expensive than they were…

Before earnings season, there may be a “blackout” for stock buybacks. This could lead to another short-term drop after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite hit all-time highs, warned Deutsche Bank strategists this week. “Large buybacks at a rate of $1 trillion a year are still well supported by strong earnings.” Discretionary buybacks, on the other hand, will go down in the short term as companies go into “blackout periods” before reporting Q2 earnings, wrote analysts Parag Thatte and Binky Chadha in a note on Monday. “By the end of next week, we expect that close to half of the…