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☆ Senate Republicans say the increasingly nasty Trump-DeSantis sparring is how you get to the best possible 2024 candidate and they expect a no-holds-barred fight
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Warren Rojas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

In fact, some said that's exactly what the party needs to produce a winning presidential candidate the next time around. "Heck, I hope 10 or 15 people run," Tuberville told Insider at the US Capitol, urging other White House hopefuls to "put out what you need to, go raise money, and put your best foot forward." When asked how DeSantis might hit back at the scandal-plagued former president, Rubio said that's for 2024 contenders to figure out. A follow-up question about his possibly entering the race compelled Rubio to say that he was not running for president. "There's an old statement, 'What Peter says about Paul tells you more about Peter than it does about Paul," he told Insider in the Senate subway tunnels.

At some Silicon Valley Bank branch locations in California, depositors gathered early Friday to attempt to get their cash out, fearing it could be inaccessible in the coming days. It has had financial relationships with a who’s who of Silicon Valley firms over the years, including Snapchat's parent Snap Inc (SNAP.N). A locked door to a Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) location on Sand Hill Road is seen in Menlo Park, California, U.S. March 10, 2023. A Silicon Valley Bank spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent Friday. As of Friday, FarmboxRx’s funds were still tied up with Silicon Valley Bank.

March 10 (Reuters) - The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday sent shockwaves through the startup community, which has come to view the lender as a source of reliable capital, particularly for some of tech’s biggest moonshots. It has had financial relationships with a who’s who of Silicon Valley firms over the years, including Snapchat's parent Snap Inc (SNAP.N)Snap declined to comment. A Silicon Valley Bank spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent Friday. Uncertainty swept through Silicon Valley as startup founders and venture capital firms worried they could, among other things, fail to make payroll. As of Friday, FarmboxRx’s funds were still tied up with Silicon Valley Bank.

☆ Investors share strategies to beat interest rate fears — including one that trumped the 60/40 model
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Weizhen Tan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Markets are jittery now that fears that interest rates will stay higher for longer have been reignited . These are BlackRock's recommendations: Short-duration fixed income: iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF, iShares Short Treasury Bond ETF, and iShares Treasury Floating Rate Bond ETF. Longer-duration fixed income: iShares TIPS Bond ETF, iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF and iShares MBS ETF. "While we do not suggest investors abandon stocks all together, in a "higher for longer" environment, we believe investors should gravitate towards value-style stocks," Chaudhuri said.

☆ Oracle misses third-quarter revenue estimates as cloud demand staggers
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

March 9 (Reuters) - Oracle Corp (ORCL.N) missed quarterly revenue estimates on Thursday, as businesses slowed down IT spending against the backdrop of a sobering economic outlook. Back-to-office and hybrid work have pushed up demand for the company's suite of cloud software, especially from large businesses. However, Oracle has yet to find its footing in the booming cloud services market dominated by tech heavyweights Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O). A stronger dollar and rising costs have prompted companies to be more cautious about their spending, further slowing demand for Oracle's software. Oracle's net income fell to $1.89 billion, or 68 cents per share, in the quarter, from $2.32 billion, or 84 cents per share, a year earlier.

☆ Lethal Liverpool smash Manchester United for seven in record win
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Salah rubbed salt into United wounds with a close-range effort to score a record 129th Premier League goal for the Merseyside club, taking him past the mark of Robbie Fowler. Liverpool had thrashed United 4-0 at Anfield last April but considering the reversal of fortunes for the two clubs since, with United on the rise and Liverpool off the pace, this result was a major surprise. Liverpool's fourth win in five league matches lifted them above Newcastle United into fifth on 42 points, three points behind fourth-placed Tottenham Hotspur with a game in hand. "Today you could see the energy levels and everything was back, although to be fair the last few Premier League games had shown we were on the right path." Liverpool's previous biggest win over United was a 7-1 victory in 1895 when both clubs were in the second tier.

☆ Resilient stock market finds support at just the right time, preserving uptrend
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-04 | by ( Michael Santoli | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Did the "soft landing" occur six months ago, at least in market terms? The leadership profile speaks, perhaps, to an elongated economic and Fed tightening cycle and suggests where within a notably bifurcated market investors should migrate. For one thing, the stock market surely can be prone to misapprehending the next macro turn and can overshoot reality in the short term. BCA Research here shows the sobering harmony in the current market trajectory and that of the early-2000s post-tech-bubble bear market. We can note, though, that the S & P 500 back then never spent as much as a month above its 200-day moving average as it has this year.

☆ A 40-year stock trader and mathematician who had a 366% return shares her 4 biggest tips, plus the winning strategy she learned from her worst mistake
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-04 | by ( Laila Maidan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Sunny Harris began trading on her own after a fund manager lost a big chunk of her investment. She recommends testing your strategy and rules at least 100 times before using them to make trades. Before Sunny Harris became a stock trader, she was a computer programmer with a master's degree in mathematics. 4 of her biggest takeaway tips to trading the marketHer overarching advice is to develop your own trading strategy. And I lost money three times in a row.

☆ Amazon delays construction of second phase of Virginia headquarters
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Amazon had earlier said the Virginia headquarters, a multi-year investment dubbed 'HQ2', would create 25,000 jobs. John Schoettler, Amazon's real estate chief, said in a statement on Friday the company was pushing out the date for groundbreaking of PenPlace, the second phase of the northern Virginia campus. Met Park comprises of two 22-story office buildings with 2.1 million square feet of office space, and a two-acre public park. Earlier this year, Amazon announced it would eliminate more than 18,000 roles, in one of its largest layoffs in history. However, the delay in construction would not mean any elimination in jobs, Amazon said.

☆ Stripe, Instacart, and Reddit valuations fare better in Fidelity's latest filings, but it's still a sobering reminder of how far the tech market has tumbled
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Stripe, Instacart, and Reddit fared better month-over-month in Fidelity's latest holdings report. The valuations of Stripe, Instacart, and Reddit all fared better in Fidelity's latest monthly holdings report, with Stripe seeing an over 20% bump from the previous month, according to recent filings. Although promising, the new valuations still serve as a sobering reminder of how far the tech industry has fallen from its 2021 highs. Faced with a muted welcome from the private markets, Stripe might not be the only company looking to the public markets for liquidity. But the public markets may prove more pain.

☆ Shares skid, bonds face worst February since 1981 as US rates set to rise
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Samuel Indyk | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The concern now is not so much over global recession, but over the prospect of there being little respite any time soon from higher interest rates. MSCI's All-World index of global shares (.MIWD00000PUS) was last roughly steady on the day, but still close to Friday's seven-week low. Since then, a slew of U.S. and euro area economic data has reinforced the view that interest rates will rise further and stay high for longer. U.S. two-year Treasury yields , the most sensitive to shifts in expectations for interest rates, have risen by 60 basis points this month to almost 5%. Fed funds futures are fully pricing in a 25-bps rate rise from the Fed next month, with around a 20% chance of a larger 50-bps hike.

Feb 27 (Reuters) - A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Jamie McGeever. A wave of selling is likely to crash over Asian markets on Monday following a sobering end to the week on Wall Street, as the reality of 'higher for longer' U.S. interest rates finally dawns on investors. The implied peak Fed rate is approaching 5.50% - does anyone still think 6% is the stuff of fantasy? One consequence of the market's Fed rethink is the sharp rise in bond yields and the dollar. Many Asian currencies are being pushed back toward their recent lows, boosting inflationary pressures across the region and making dollar-denominated debt servicing more expensive.

☆ Can't figure out this economy? Walmart, Home Depot are having trouble, too
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-26 | by ( Tim Mullaney | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Joe Raedle | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesIf you think the economy is confusing right now, consider how baffling it must look to Home Depot and Walmart. Home Depot said consumer spending is holding up, but that it expects a flat sales-growth year overall, with declining profits. Friday's PCE showed consumer spending rose more than expected as prices increased, jumping 1.8% for the month compared to the estimate of 1.4%. It wasn't a good week for the retail sector or consumer stocks, either. "The outlook for sustained consumer spending growth remains," wrote consumer analyst Jason English.

☆ Beyond Meat's upbeat 2023 revenue forecast, cost controls lift shares
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Granth Vanaik | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Feb 23 (Reuters) - Beyond Meat Inc (BYND.O) on Thursday forecast annual revenue slightly above estimates and doubled down on cost controls at a time when persistently high inflation was slowing demand for its faux meat products, sending its shares up over 13% after the bell. The company's net revenue fell 21% to $79.9 million in the quarter ended Dec. 31 from a year earlier, but still beat analysts expectations of $75.7 million. Net loss for Beyond Meat narrowed to $66.9 million, or $1.05 per share, in the fourth quarter. In October, Beyond Meat had said it was targeting cash flow positive operations within the second half of 2023. Reporting by Granth Vanaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra EluriOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Exclusive: Tencent scraps plans for VR hardware as metaverse bet falters - sources
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The world's largest video game publisher had ambitious plans to build both virtual reality software and hardware at an "extended reality" XR unit it launched in June last year, for which it hired nearly 300 people. One of the sources said the XR project was not expected to become profitable until 2027, according to an internal forecast. The company also said on Thursday that it was not disbanding the XR unit. It also entered into a race against Western peers such as Meta Platforms (META.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O), which are building their own metaverses and have their own virtual reality hardware projects. Pico, a virtual reality (VR) headset manufacturer owned by TikTok's Chinese developer ByteDance, said on Friday it was laying off a small number of people, after local media reported the start of hundreds of redundancies earlier this week.

"If the debt limit is not raised or suspended before the extraordinary measures are exhausted, the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully," the CBO report said. "As a result, the government would have to delay making payments for some activities, default on its debt obligations, or both." CBO Director Phillip Swagel attributed the rise to higher interest rates that particularly are hitting the housing industry, coupled with slowing business investment. REUTERS/Elizabeth FrantzRepublicans, who control the House of Representatives, want to withhold a debt limit increase until Democrats agree to deep spending cuts. Democrats in turn say the debt limit should not be "held hostage" to Republican tactics over federal spending.

Two-year Treasury yields hit their highest in three months at 4.65%, now on par with the current Fed policy rate. Morgan Stanley's Matthew Hornbach described the payrolls as a "mood changing" print that's seen markets chase rates higher as if gripped by a sort of reverse FOMO - fear of missing out. Reports circulated last week of swaps and options market activity on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that bet on market rates touching 6%, or at least hedging against that possibility. If that's true, the battle over the terminal rate may now be overtaken by how long the Fed can keep rates higher to achieve its goals. BofA chart on peak rates from fund manager surveyInflationThe opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.

New York CNN —Thursday afternoon will round out what has so far been a sobering earnings season for the Big Tech giants. Alphabet’s revenue will likely remain flat from last year and Amazon’s sales are expected to grow just shy of 6% year-over-year. All three companies’ profits are expected to fall from the year-ago quarter, with Amazon set to suffer the steepest drop with a decline of 40.6%. Then came the press conference, which led to a steep divergence between what the Fed thinks and what the Wall Street thinks. A cautionary tale: In mid-November, Ticketmaster’s site overloaded when fans tried to purchase pre-sale tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour.

☆ Morning bid: Running out of breath
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Asian equities held steady on Wednesday near seven-month highs after a mixed session on Wall Street. On a thin day for economic data, focus will be on U.K. producer prices and the German IFO. Revenue at Europe's largest companies is expected to have risen by just 0.9% in the fourth quarter, Refinitiv I/B/E/S data showed on Tuesday. The forecast, which tracks companies listed on the pan-European STOXX 600 (.STOXX) benchmark index, represents a drop from last week when analysts expected revenue growth of 4%. Analysts downgrade earnings forecastsInvestment strategists at Standard Chartered say it is time to fade the rally seen in European stocks and the euro since the lows of September.

☆ Lavrov says Russia will "sober up" NATO and EU
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Jan 19 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that Moscow would do all it could to "sober up" the European Union and NATO, which he accused of setting out to weaken and defeat Russia. His comments came on the same day that former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned NATO that a defeat for Russia in Ukraine could trigger a nuclear war. Nearly 11 months after invading Ukraine, Russia is increasingly presenting the war to its own people as an existential battle with the West. In televised comments, Lavrov said Moscow would set out to disabuse Western politicians of their "presumptuous" and "colonial" attitudes to Russia. "We will do everything so that our colleagues from NATO and the European Union sober up as soon as possible."

☆ Luxury eyes focused on China after Richemont's Q3 sales miss
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( John Revill | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

SummarySummary Companies Q3 sales rise by 8% but miss market forecastsMainland China sales drop 24%Company says customer demand in China now picking upAll eyes on China for luxury sector, say analystsZURICH, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Cartier jewellery maker Richemont (CFR.S) missed market forecasts during its latest quarter as the resurgence of COVID-19 in China hit sales there, highlighting the country's importance for the luxury sector. Richemont, whose other brands include Swiss watchmakers IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre, has been seeing strong sales growth in Europe, the Middle East and Japan, particularly for jewellery. But the mainland Chinese market - which accounts for about a fifth of the group's sales, according to Zuercher Kantonalbank estimates - struggled with sales down 24% in constant currency terms. The prospect of a pickup in Chinese sales meant analysts were not too worried by Richemont's quarterly miss. "The catch-up from Chinese consumers will come as strong as sales decelerated in 3Q, as they were able to save money during the lockdowns."

LONDON/ZURICH, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Luxury retailers Richemont (CFR.S) and Burberry (BRBY.L) said they were optimistic that consumers in China would start spending again, helping offset three years of upheaval from the government's strict COVID-19 lockdowns and soaring infections. Richemont (CFR.S), whose brands include Cartier jewellery and Swiss watches IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre, also said it expected a strong rebound in China. The European luxury sector is among the largest expected winners as China loosens COVID-19 restrictions that kept shoppers out of stores for months. Richemont missed market estimates after sales in China plunged by a quarter, as customer traffic dwindled and staff were not available, leading to a reduction of boutique hours, or temporary closures of sales points, the company said. Mainland China is currently 25% of Burberry sales, down from about 40% pre-pandemic.

In an interview with Allure magazine, Stefani, 53, who is Italian American, cited the influence of Japanese culture in her home when she was growing up. "I said, 'My God, I'm Japanese and I didn't know it,'" Stefani told Allure. She later insisted, "I am, you know," calling herself a "super fan" of Japanese culture. A representative for Stefani told Calaor that she had "misunderstood what Stefani was trying to convey" but declined to provide an on-the-record statement. Even before the interview, Stefani had defended her "Harajuku" era.

☆ America Self-Sabotages Its Electrical Grid
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Your editorials “The Christmas Grid Emergency” (Dec. 27) and “The Cold Reality of Buffalo” (Dec. 28) give a sobering taste of what’s to come if hubristic climate policy keeps overriding human needs. Things aren’t going to improve so long as governments choose to suppress reliable methods of generating electricity in favor of alternatives whose availability depends on the wind, sunshine or clouds. U.S. wind energy facilities deliver their designated power output on average about 34% of the time. Solar panels are even less efficient, yielding an average of 24% of their rated capacity. The more we try to increase the share of total power demand obtained from these sources while retiring fossil-fuel and nuclear plans, the greater the risk of inadequate supply.

☆ Silicon Valley layoffs go from bad to worse
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

At Amazon and other tech companies, the second half of last year was marked by hiring freezes, layoffs and other cost-cutting measures at a number of household names in Silicon Valley. Rising interest rates also dried up the easy money tech companies relied on to fuel big bets on future innovations, and cut into their sky-high valuations. While there have been some layoffs recently in the consumer goods sector and hints of more to come elsewhere, the situation in Silicon Valley remains in stark contrast to the economy as a whole. And despite the robust overall labor market, there are growing concerns that tech layoffs could spread elsewhere. In that sense, at least, Silicon Valley may once again be ahead of the curve, but not in the way it wants.

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