Biden to Further Curb Nvidia, AMD AI Chip Exports in Final Push
Biden to Further Curb Nvidia, AMD AI Chip Exports in Final Push – Bloomberg News
Biden to Further Curb Nvidia, AMD AI Chip Exports in Final Push Read Post »
Costco’s Holiday-season Sales Jump Was Not Just About Food, Analyst Says
E-commerce sales were up 34% thanks to timing of Thanksgiving, while online sales mostly came from nonfood segments, analyst notes Costco Wholesale Corp. on Wednesday reported a 9.9% year-over-year sales gain through the final stretch of the holiday-shopping season, marked by a big jump in online sales due to the later timing of this year’s big discount days for the period. The membership warehouse chain (COST) said that for the five weeks ending on Jan. 5 – the time frame it defined as the retail month of December – it had sales of $27.52 billion. That was up from $25.03 billion during the same period last year. Same-store sales were up 7.4% over the December period. E-commerce sales were up 34.4%, helped in part by Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday occurring a week later than usual this year. The company said online sales were “positively impacted by an estimated
Costco’s Holiday-season Sales Jump Was Not Just About Food, Analyst Says Read Post »
Bank of America Bond Losses Could Top $100 Billion Due to Rising Rates
Andrew Bary A sharp rise in rates since the end of the third quarter widened losses on bank securities portfolio and could become an investor issue again when banks start reporting their fourth-quarter results in the next week. Bank of America has the largest unrealized losses in the banking industry and could be a focus of investor attention. Barron’s estimates that Bank of America’s paper losses on a portfolio of $568 billion of bonds, mostly U.S. agency mortgage securities, could widen to $111 billion or more, compared with $86 billion at the end of September. Industrywide, total unrealized losses could top $500 billion, up from $364 billion at the end of the third quarter. These losses involve all banks insured by the FDIC. The total potential losses would still be narrower than the nearly $700 billion at banks at the end of the third quarter of 2022. Why the wider
Bank of America Bond Losses Could Top $100 Billion Due to Rising Rates Read Post »
Dividends Will Keep Growing in 2025. Where to Find Them.
By Lawrence C. Strauss An important question for the market in 2025 is whether strong performance will broaden beyond the Magnificent Seven and other large-cap growth names that have dominated in recent years. But when it comes to dividends, this year is shaping up as one with healthy mid-single-digit growth across much of the market. “From a macro perspective, the main driver of dividends historically is earnings growth,” says Ben Snider, senior strategist on the U.S. portfolio strategy macro team at Goldman Sachs. “Earnings growth was good last year, and we think it’ll be even better in 2025.” Goldman is forecasting an 11% bump in S&P 500 earnings per share this year, compared with an estimated 8% in 2024. That, in turn, will lead to a 7% boost in dividends this year versus 6% in 2024, Goldman expects. Ohsung Kwon, a U.S. equity strategist at BofA Securities, has a more
Dividends Will Keep Growing in 2025. Where to Find Them. Read Post »
This Analyst Likes Software for 2025 — With 1 Notable Exception
Software stocks finished 2024 with a bang, and a Deutsche Bank analyst sees that trend continuing for the sector, minus Adobe. Stocks including Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Palantir Technologies saw strong returns last year as investors bought up shares of software companies with exposure to generative artificial intelligence. Enterprises are spending big to improve productivity, giving Wall Street optimism on the space. The Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF rose 20.80% in 2024. Deutsche Bank’s Brad Zelnick believes this trend will continue in the new year. “Our conversations with CIOs, industry constituents, and analysis of third-party data indicate the spending environment for software will improve in 2025 vs 2024,” Zelnick wrote in a research note Wednesday. Zelnick added that monetization of gen-AI is still in its early days, but an “AI halo effect” will help drive revenue dollars. Essentially, the analyst believes excitement over AI software could help bring in new customers,
This Analyst Likes Software for 2025 — With 1 Notable Exception Read Post »
Financial Advisors, Get Ready for AI Agents
In late November, a start-up called “/dev/agents” captured headlines with its $56 million seed funding round at a $500 valuation. Not bad for a company without a commercial product. It’s easy to see why the buzz was electric: the founding team boasts alumni from Google, Stripe, and Meta Platforms. The company is building an operating system for AI agents. These agents are poised to redefine how we interact with software. The idea is that they run in the background, acting autonomously based on user-provided guidelines and with minimal human oversight. AI agents have become a hot pursuit of tech giants. At Microsoft’s Ignite conference, CEO Satya Nadella sang their praises, while Salesforce rolled out Agentforce, its take on this transformative technology. Not to be outdone, ServiceNow, Workday, and Oracle have joined the race with their own AI agent offerings. “The rapid adoption of AI agents stems from their transformative impact
Financial Advisors, Get Ready for AI Agents Read Post »
Don’t Punish Google for Being Good at What It Does
About the author: Jay Ezrielev is the founder of the economic consulting firm Elevecon and in 2018-2020 was an economic advisor to the chair of the Federal Trade Commission. He holds a doctorate in economics from New York University. The U.S. Department of Justice recently scored a victory in its war against big tech. The agency is using the opportunity to push a radical policy agenda that is likely to harm consumers and reduce economic growth. Courts should reject these harmful policies and save consumers from the very agencies that are meant to be protecting them. The D.C. District Court found in August that Alphabet subsidiary Google violated antitrust law by entering exclusive distribution agreements that made Google’s search engine the default option. The DOJ and state plaintiffs have now proposed a remedy to undo the effects of these agreements. In addition to forbidding these agreements, the proposed remedy forces
Don’t Punish Google for Being Good at What It Does Read Post »
Apple, Indonesia in Talks Over Investment to Lift iPhone 16 Sales Ban
Apple (AAPL) executives held talks with Indonesia’s industry minister to discuss a potential investment required to lift the country’s ban on iPhone 16 sales, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing the minster, Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita. The minister met Apple’s vice president of global government affairs, Nick Ammann, and investment negotiations are underway, the report said. Another Indonesian cabinet minister previously said Apple proposed a $1 billion investment to lift the sales ban, but Kartasasmita deemed it “not sufficient,” while Ammann called the talks “great discussion” but gave no details, the report said. Indonesia banned iPhone 16 sales last year for lacking 40% locally made components, Reuters said, and Apple currently has no manufacturing facilities in Indonesia.
Apple, Indonesia in Talks Over Investment to Lift iPhone 16 Sales Ban Read Post »
Apple Stock Catches a Downgrade. Why This Analyst Isn’t Impressed.
Apple stock has a “decidedly unattractive” outlook, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said, lowering his rating on the shares and cutting his target for the price. Moffett downgraded Apple to Sell from Hold and trimmed his price target to $188 from $202. Shares fell 0.8% to $243.13 on Tuesday. When MoffettNathanson initiated coverage of the stock in August, the equity research firm concluded that Apple’s “ultimate success in AI” was already reflected in the price, Moffett wrote in Tuesday’s note. The stock’s valuation at the time was already high, he said, failing to factor in risks such as Apple’s dimming prospects in China and reflecting not just a surge in people upgrading their iPhones but a “permanent uplift” in the rate of phone replacement. Now, Moffett appears even less optimistic, pointing to a “lukewarm” consumer response to Apple’s suite of artificial intelligence features. Apple officially launched Apple Intelligence in October, coinciding
Apple Stock Catches a Downgrade. Why This Analyst Isn’t Impressed. Read Post »
Why Nvidia Needs to Appeal to a Bigger Crowd
Jensen Huang pleased the crowd at the CES conference this week — just not the “right” crowd. The Nvidia co-founder and chief executive was in rare form for the annual conference’s keynote address, even swapping his typical black leather racing jacket for a glittery one. He used the occasion to introduce products such as new videogaming processors and even an artificial-intelligence supercomputer the size of a large sandwich. He also announced new efforts in humanoid robots and self-driving cars, the latter of which he predicted will be the “first trillion-dollar robotics industry.” The in-person audience was thrilled — particularly with a new family of gaming graphics cards based on the company’s Blackwell AI chip. But investors seemed disappointed, sending Nvidia’s stock sliding more than 6% Tuesday. That was double what the shares gained the previous day, when Nvidia seemed on track to surpass Apple and perhaps become the first public
Why Nvidia Needs to Appeal to a Bigger Crowd Read Post »
Nvidia Stock Rebounds. Why Hot Jobs Data Rocked the Chip Maker’s Shares.
Nvidia stock was climbing ahead of Wednesday’s opening bell, recovering some ground after stronger-than-expected economic data triggered a Big Tech selloff. Shares in the chip designer rose 1.9% to $140.14 in premarket trading. Futures tracking the benchmark S&P 500 index were up 0.3%. Nvidia stock tumbled 6.2% in the previous session, wiping out about $200 billion worth of market capitalization. The plunge came shortly after red-hot jobs numbers fueled investors’ fears that the Federal Reserve won’t cut interest rates by much this year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said November job openings rose to 8.1 million, which was ahead of economists’ expectations at 7.7 million, according to FactSet. When the labor market is strong, there’s less incentive for the Fed to cut rates — and higher borrowing costs tend to particularly weigh on tech stocks by chipping away at the future cash flows that make up a core part of
Nvidia Stock Rebounds. Why Hot Jobs Data Rocked the Chip Maker’s Shares. Read Post »
Quantum Stocks Plunge After Nvidia CEO Says ‘Very Useful’ Computers Are Decades Away
IonQ and other quantum-computing stocks slid after Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang played down the likely utility of the technology in the near- or medium-term. “If you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that’d probably be on the early side. If you said 30 is probably on the late side,” Huang told analysts late Tuesday. Quantum-computing shares, which have surged since Alphabet announced a technological breakthrough last month, tumbled in premarket trading. Shares of IonQ (IONQ), Quantum Computing (QUBT), D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) and Rigetti Computing (RGTI) all fell 14% or more. Huang said that quantum computing was good at small data problems, such as cryptography, rather than large data problems.
Quantum Stocks Plunge After Nvidia CEO Says ‘Very Useful’ Computers Are Decades Away Read Post »