Author: starbpo

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…

A lot of people bought and sold Crown Electrokinetics Corp. shares recently, sending them skyrocketing 467.1%. However, the company’s news about smart glasses and fiber optics might not be seen as good. It was the most traded stock on the Nasdaq, with 2.8 billion shares changing hands. The average number of shares traded in a full day is about 37.5 million. Chief Financial Officer Joel Krutz told MarketWatch in an email, “We are keeping an eye on it, but we don’t know what is causing this volume and price spike.” “We have disclosed everything.” With the Securities and Exchange Commission,…

Victor Ricciardi, a behavioral finance expert, says that the meme-stock rally this week that boosted shares of GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. used a number of human traits. Ricciardi, a visiting finance professor at Ursinus College and co-author of the book “Advanced Introduction to Behavioral Finance,” talked about how the meme rally was fueled by people following the crowd. This was made worse by the fact that influential investor and analyst Keith Gill returned to social media. 1.2 million people follow Gill on X, which used to be called Twitter. She is also known as Roaring Kitty. Ricciardi…

Russian officials say that an early Friday morning attack by Ukrainian drones on Crimea cut power to the city of Sevastopol and set fire to a refinery in southern Russia. During Moscow’s offensive in northeastern Ukraine, the drone raids were Kyiv’s attempt to strike back. This has put more pressure on the Ukrainian forces, who are already outnumbered and outgunned and are waiting for Western partners to deliver important weapons and ammunition. Ukraine hasn’t said anything about the attack or taken credit for it. Moscow’s Defense Ministry said that air defenses shot down 51 Ukrainian drones over Crimea, 44 over…

Washington, D.C. Thursday, the Justice Department said that three people had been arrested in a complicated scheme to use stolen identities to make a lot of money for the North Korean government, which is used for things like its weapons program. The scheme involves thousands of North Korean IT workers who, according to prosecutors, are sent to live abroad by the government and use stolen American identities to get remote jobs at Fortune 500 companies in the U.S., where they can access sensitive company data and make good money. Marshall Miller, the principal associate deputy attorney general for the Justice…

NEW ORLEANS— For the second time this month, severe thunderstorms hit southeastern Texas on Thursday. They killed at least four people, broke windows in high-rise buildings, knocked down trees, and cut power to nearly 900,000 homes and businesses in the Houston area. Chief of Communications and Senior Advisor to the Mayor, Mary Benton, told the Associated Press in the evening that four people had died. Multiple counties were warned of flash floods and severe thunderstorms, and the National Weather Service office in Houston said that damaging winds and even tornadoes could happen into the evening. “If you’re in the path…