Bitcoin and smaller stocks led another winning week on Wall Street, helped by lower bond yields and AI hype, ahead of another labor market report and more earnings.
The price of goods and services remains elevated around the U.S., as evidenced by four recent reports by the U.S. government.
Uber and Lyft are in the right market at the right time. The market is ride-hailing, which has been changing riders' lives worldwide.
In recent years, Walmart seems to be doing everything right. The retailer paid big bucks to hire top software development talent. It acquired digital properties to expand its online sales scale and scope and developed its version of Amazon's Prime program.
The S&P 500 ended the week at 5,088.80, up 1.70%; the Dow Jones at 39,131.99, up 1.30%; and the tech-heavy Nasdaq at 15,996.82, up 1.40%.
Nvidia reached the rarefied air of a $2 trillion evaluation on Friday, and its stock keeps on rising by leaps and bounds
"The notion of a virtuous cycle—wherein improvements in one domain precipitate enhancements across others—is particularly salient," said Patrick Fan, professor of business analytics at the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business and an AI expert.
Wall Street uses the Total Shareholder Returns (TSR) to determine which S&P 500 corporations manage their clients' money, and we have the top 10 lists.
The S&P 500 ended the week at 5,005.57, down 0.30% for the week; the Dow Jones at 38,627.99, down 0.50%; the tech-heavy Nasdaq at 15,775.65, down 1.10% and the small-cap Russell 2000 at 2032.74, down 0.60%.
According to FactSet, the performance of the S&P 500 relative to earnings estimates continues to improve as more companies release their financial statements.
Avis Berg, CIO at Berg Capital, thinks the choice between the two popular brands depends on the investor's profile.
The small-cap heavy Russell 2000 ended the week at 2009.99, up 3.8%, beating both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones, which gained 1.7% and 2.5%, respectively.
U.S equities continue defying gravity this week, with major market averages reaching new highs almost daily.
From Greece to Italy, France, and Germany, tractors have become the farmers' "weapons" of a "war" against Brussels and national governments, protesting EU and domestic policies threatening their livelihood.
The Containerized Freight Index has more than doubled since the beginning of October 2023, from 850 to 2,179 points. It increased 419 points or 24% since the beginning of 2024 alone.
China's slide into deflation came when Japan was snapping out of it. In the third quarter of 2023, Japan's residential property price index rose at an annual rate of 2.4%, following an even more significant rise in the previous two quarters.
U.S stocks and bonds moved in the opposite direction at the end of last week, caught between a blowout job report and solid earnings from Meta and Amazon.
The nation's central bank will maintain interest rates steady. It will leave the Federal Funds Rate unchanged at the current 5.25%-5.50% level.
The continuation of the rally in equities, which took the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones to yet new highs, came as bond prices and yields remained steady.
After years of decline, IBM's Economic Value Added (EVA), a measure of Economic Profit, the value a company generates more than the cost of capital, has been rising.
Fastenal's financial performance looks even better when it comes to Economic Value Added (EVA), the difference between the Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) and the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC).
The S&P 500 closed at 4,839.81, up 1.20% for the week; the Dow Jones at 37,4853.80, up 0.70% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq at 15,310.97, up 2.2%.
Trading at around 36,000, the Nikkei is less than 15% below its old-time high of the late 1989s when Japanese equities were among the hottest in the world.
While more data is needed to reach a definite conclusion on the direction of inflation, there are a few reasons why the nation's central bank may declare victory against inflation and begin cutting interest rates.
The Panama Canal drought causes severe shipping delays from Asia to the U.S. East Coast, particularly for heavy goods. Carriers are rerouting from trans-Pacific to trans-Atlantic via the Suez Canal, with alternate routes increasing transit times by 20-30%.
The sum of all fears among traders and investors over valuations and the direction of monetary policy fueled the reversal in the fortunes of the U.S. equity and bond markets.
The leader is optimistic about the country's economy, but economic numbers do not support this optimism.
Oil had a smooth ride in 2003. The first part of the year traded in the $70.28-79.47 per barrel range, jumped to $89,19 in the second part and ended very close to where it began at $72.47.
The rapid deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, computer systems that mimic human intelligence, could turn the service economy into a winner-take-everything game.
Corporate earnings and their derivative, cash-free cash flow, have always been on Wall Street's radar. They are a critical input in almost every model, which calculates the intrinsic value of a company as the present value of future cash flows to stockholders.
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