Year: 2020

The biggest supply cut ever contemplated by the world’s top oil producers is hanging in the balance as a refusal by Mexico’s leftist leader to imperil his plans to rebuild state oil company Pemex has angered the Saudi prince who helped craft the deal. For the past three days, Mexico has kept the oil industry on tenterhooks by resisting Saudi pressure to sign up to global cuts worth nearly a quarter of output for participating countries, aimed at reviving prices from their lowest level in decades. The refusal by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to compromise his plan …read more […]

JPMorgan Chase & Co , the country’s largest lender by assets, is raising borrowing standards this week for most new home loans as the bank moves to mitigate lending risk stemming from the novel coronavirus disruption. From Tuesday, customers applying for a new mortgage will need a credit score of at least 700, and will be required to make a down payment equal to 20% of the home’s value. The change highlights how banks are quickly shifting gears to respond to the darkening U.S. economic outlook and stress in the housing market, after measures to contain the virus …read more […]

If you are trying to call a bottom in this market, we urge you to move towards a safer stance in your investing style. …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — The U.S. stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia to seal a historic deal to cut oil production as negotiations that President Donald Trump himself has brokered dragged on for a third day.Talks aimed at ending a price war that’s savaging the U.S. oil industry and threatening petrostates’ budgets continued Saturday as Mexico and Saudi Arabia refused to budge. In an attempt to move negotiations along, a group of Republican senators from oil-drilling states such as Texas spoke to the Saudi oil minister by conference call.“The Saudis spent over a month waging war on American oil producers, all while …read more […]

Macy’s Inc has hired investment bank Lazard Ltd to explore options for bolstering its finances after the department store operator lost most of its revenue as it shut down all its stores as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, people familiar with the matter said. The move by Macy’s, the largest U.S. department store operator by sales, is a sign of the severity of the crisis facing brick-and-mortar retailers, which were already struggling with the shift to online shopping. The pandemic has forced store closures and widespread furloughs of employees as state after state issued shelter-in-place …read more […]

I started wearing disposable gloves and a mask in early March. Almost everyone was looking at me as if I was some kind of a freak. Today, I don’t wear a mask when I go out and people are looking at me as if I am an idiot. Most of the time it makes perfect […] …read more […]

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Republican U.S. senators from oil states who recently introduced legislation to remove American troops from Saudi Arabia said on Saturday they had spoken with three officials from the kingdom and urged them to take concrete action to cut crude output. Saudi Arabia and Russia were close to finalizing a deal to cut crude output by a record 10 million barrels per day. Oil prices had fallen to 18-year lows as the coronavirus outbreak closed down economies across the world and after major producers Saudi Arabia and Russia had boosted output in a race for market share. …read more […]

3M has sued Performance Supply LLC of Manalapan, accusing it of charging exorbitant prices for N95 respirators. …read more […]

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(Bloomberg) — As Mexico and Saudi Arabia fight over a deal to bring the oil-price war to an end, Mexico has a powerful defense: a massive Wall Street hedge shielding it from low prices.With talks well into their third day, the Mexican sovereign oil hedge, which insures the Latin American country against low prices and is considered a state secret, is a factor that may make the country less inclined to accept the OPEC+ agreement.For the last two decades, Mexico has bought so-called Asian style put options from a small group of investment banks and oil companies, in what’s considered …read more […]

Just seven weeks ago, we were in The Wizard of Oz‘s opulent Emerald City. We watched the major indexes hit new highs and reflect a seemingly immortal bull market.
But now, some investors who diligently followed their yellow brick roads and had hoped to retire in 2020 are feeling shortchanged.
It’s true that a low-maintenance investing strategy prevents emotion-driven losses. (In fact, a study by Fidelity showed that the best-performing portfolios were ones investors had forgotten about.)
However, there are circumstances under which buy-and-hold can fail.
Target-date funds are offered by 9 out of 10 retirement plans, and a recent Vanguard survey shows that …read more […]