Author: starbpo

‘We’re on the verge of a vicious cycle, in which fewer and fewer people can afford the American dream of homeownership. That’s not good for America.’ Lisa Escobar, head of Lennar Mortgage LEN 0.47%, said that on Monday at the annual Mortgage Bankers Association conference in Denver, Colorado. Escobar, who was just named chair of the MBA, told the 275,000 members of the trade group that she would work to make policymakers and government officials more aware of the problem of affordable housing and would push for fewer rules on mortgage loans and home building. Lennar Mortgage is the lending…

More than the initial suggestion of about $19 billion, the Boeing Co. said Tuesday that it will raise almost $21 billion through public sales of common stock and depositary shares. This is in addition to the capital raise that was announced on Monday. The aircraft company BA -2.79% increased the size of the deal from 90 million shares of common stock to 112.5 million shares of common stock and $5 billion worth of depositary shares, each of which represents one-twentieth of a share in newly issued convertible preferred stock. It cost $143 a share to sell the stock, which brought…

The stock price of Pfizer Inc. went up 3.2% early Tuesday after the company beat expectations for the third quarter and raised its outlook for the whole year. The drug company based in New York made a net income of $4.465 billion, or 78 cents per share, for the quarter. This is up from a loss of $2.382 billion, or 42 cents per share, during the same time last year. If you take out the one-time things, EPS was $1.06, which is a lot more than the 61-cent FactSet consensus. Last year’s sales went up 31% to $17.702 billion, up…

If there isn’t an unexpected event or market shock that sends the U.S. bond market into chaos, it hasn’t been this wild in a long time. Harley Bassman, who made the ICE BofA Move index and is now a managing partner at Simplify Asset Management, gave that reading based on the index. Since late September, when the bond market started adjusting for a soft landing, the Move index has been going up. The recent event, on the other hand, seems to be the close race for president between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. The bond market…

Some big names were speaking in Saudi Arabia early on Tuesday. With all the violence going on around the world, it’s no longer a bad thing for business leaders to be seen in Saudi Arabia seven years after Jamal Khashoggi was killed. It was the annual Future Investment Initiative Institute. The Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s national wealth fund, runs it and is in charge of $925 billion in assets. Some of that $925 billion is held by BlackRock, which opened a financial arm in Riyadh earlier this year. It was no surprise that Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, was…

The big presidential candidates aren’t leaving anything to chance since the election in November is only a week away. During their campaigns, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have called for a lot of new tax cuts, credits, and other spending. They are still adding to their lists in the last few days of the election. Trump revealed over the weekend a plan for a new tax credit for people who provide home health care. This follows Harris’s plan a few weeks ago to have Medicare pay for long-term care at home. A report released Monday…

Following their own rules, Federal Reserve officials have been quiet to get ready for their meeting on Nov. 7 to decide on interest rates. Economists think that the Federal Reserve will lower its key interest rate by a quarter percentage point to a range of 4.5% to 4.75% based on the talks that Fed officials have given over the past six weeks. It’s not likely that any of the numbers, even important ones like the September PCE inflation report and the October jobs report that will be out this week, will change their minds. “The signals we’ve gotten from Fed…

The U.S. stock market’s record-setting rise could hit its scariest stretch of 2024 this coming week, when a huge number of risks are expected to happen. A lot will depend on how much money big tech companies report, how volatile the U.S. debt markets are, the monthly jobs report for October due out on Friday, and the last few weeks of a very heated presidential race. One person who works at SLC Management and is in charge of investment strategy and asset allocation said, “It’s a tossup that’s definitely bothering the rates market.” “In the last month, the 10-year has…

With the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates and Wall Street focusing on the huge costs of Big Tech’s AI rollout this summer, some of the so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks became a little less beautiful. However, this week most of those companies will report their quarterly earnings. Some experts expect growth that is either still pretty good for their size or still hard to find elsewhere. Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., releases its earnings on Tuesday. Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc., which is the parent company of Facebook, do the same on Wednesday. Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. both have…

Tesla Inc.’s stock is going through the roof after the company reported bigger-than-expected profits and gave investors a lot of good news. But investors still have some questions. Tesla TSLA 0.80% reported results for the third quarter on Wednesday. They then held a call with investors where CEO Elon Musk was very positive. The stock then went up by almost 22% on Thursday, and it went up another 3.4% on Friday. This was the best two-day stretch for shares since the two days ending on February 4, 2020, when they went up 36%. The stock had its best day since…