Author: starbpo

Donald Trump’s plans for taxes and spending during his proposed second term in office make it sound like he doesn’t mind if the federal budget deficit gets to levels that have never been seen before. He wants to spend more than $5 trillion to cut taxes on businesses even more and make permanent the tax cuts Republicans made for individuals in 2017. But not as much attention has been paid to how much his plans to deport a lot of illegal immigrants could cost the government. Trump has said he will start “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”…

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — A lot of workers at two Mercedes-Benz factories near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, voted on Friday not to join the United Auto Workers. This was a setback for the union’s efforts to organize plants in the South, which has a history of not having unions. Unofficial results released by the UAW show that 56% of workers voted against the union. The UAW had people watching the vote as it was counted by the National Labor Relations Board. About 5,200 people who worked at an auto-assembly plant and a battery factory in and around Vance, Alabama, not far from Tuscaloosa,…

IN ATLANTA — President Joe Biden will have the most direct interaction with college students since the start of the Israel-Hamas war when he gives the commencement address at Morehouse College. The college is a hub for Black politics and culture. Atlanta is the largest city in Georgia, a swing state that Biden took from President Trump four years ago. This is where Morehouse is located. Biden’s speech on Sunday comes as the Democrat tries to connect with young Black men, who are a key and symbolic group of voters, and fix the coalition of different groups that helped him…

Even though the U.S. stock market has gone up this year, Cathie Wood’s Ark Innovation ETF is having a hard time. According to DataTrek Research, the fund probably won’t get a bid until the Federal Reserve starts cutting interest rates. “Heavily weighted toward struggling disruptive tech themes that have yet to return to their winning pandemic ways,” said Jessica Rabe, co-founder of DataTrek, in an email Friday. “Even though the S&P and Nasdaq just made all-time highs.” At the last check, FactSet data showed that shares of the Ark Innovation ETF ARKK have dropped more than 13% so far this…

Bank of America strategists say that since April 2020, the total return on 30-year bonds has dropped by 45%. This is the biggest drop in four years in more than 100 years. Over the past 30 years, the BX:TMUBMUSD30Y has not done very well. This is because of high inflation (which has slowed down some) and a lot of government spending. In the 1990s and 2010s, the economy was a “2+2=4” economy, which means that 2% growth plus 2% inflation equals 4% nominal GDP growth. Now, according to Bank of America strategists led by Michael Hartnett, the economy is a…

One observer says that the return of a more traditional relationship between stocks and volatility could mean that the markets are about to have a “accident.” Charles McElligott, a cross-asset macro strategist at Nomura, said that the market is moving from a long period of “spot up, vol up, crash up” behavior to a more normal one where stocks and volatility are negatively related. Several things are causing this change in dynamics. These include traders’ efforts to keep volatility low through different strategies, rising optimism about an economic slowdown, and the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Because of this, the market…

The S&P 500 has hit several all-time highs this year, thanks in large part to strong gains from technology companies. U.S. stocks seem to be going up all the time. But some of the most popular ETFs that follow those stock sectors haven’t kept up, leaving big gaps between their returns and the returns of the indexes they’re supposed to follow. If you look at the 11 sectors that make up the S&P 500, the communication services sector XX:SP500.50 has done the best so far in 2024. However, the Communication Services Select Sector SPDR Fund XLC has underperformed by 6.6…

Many people think that President Joe Biden’s new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles won’t have a big effect right away. This is because most people in the U.S. don’t buy these kinds of EVs. As Wolfe Research analysts put it in a note, China’s electric vehicles are “rightly seen as a future threat.” However, Biden’s tariffs on these vehicles and other important Chinese goods are “more protective/symbolic than currently disruptive.” Polestar PSNY, -6.57%, a company based in Sweden, is the only one selling EVs made in China in the U.S. The company said last month that its ownership structure had…

People don’t like that Washington’s three-year-old bipartisan infrastructure law doesn’t include many chargers for electric vehicles. But Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Thursday that he sees that as a good thing about the law, not a flaw. Tillis was one of 69 senators who voted for the 2021 law. “I don’t think the government should have to spend a lot of money on that,” she said. “Do you really think that Sheetz, Pilot, and everyone else doesn’t want people who can afford to buy an electric car to have to wait 20 minutes at Sheetz or Pilot…

People who work for Toyota Motor and Ford Motor might feel a little uneasy on Wednesday morning. It’s because of a new BYD car. The Chinese company that makes electric cars showed off their Shark pickup truck in Mexico on Tuesday. The plug-in hybrid truck is a little longer than a Ford Maverick and about the same size as a Toyota Tacoma. It’s the first truck that the company has made. Two electric motors in the shark’s 1.5-liter engine make 430 horsepower. The truck can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in about six seconds. It can pull…