Trading Ideas

* This weekend’s Barron’s cover story shows how the race for a COVID-19 vaccine could affect investors. * Other featured articles look at stocks involved in the race for 5G and some value stocks that are worth a look now. * Also, the prospects for an online retailer, a networking stock, video streaming picks and more.”How the Race for a Covid-19 Vaccine Affects Investors” by Josh Nathan-Kazis asks which stocks could face steep drops if their coronavirus vaccines fall through. Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD)? Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ)?Nicholas Jasinski’s “5G Is Here. Will Anyone Care?” shows …read more […]

A deluge of retail earnings and the Federal Reserve will be in focus in the week ahead. …read more […]

Tesla Inc. (TSLA) is said to have been given a green light by health officials to resume production at its main Fremont auto plant ending a stand-off between the electric automaker and Alameda County.Tesla informed employees it received approval to resume operations at its factory after Alameda County’s interim health officer had approved its Fremont work plan and safety measures, according to an email seen by Bloomberg.“We have local support to get back to full production at the factory starting this upcoming week,” Laurie Shelby, Tesla’s vice president for environmental, health, and safety told employees.The Alameda decision comes after Tesla’s …read more […]

There’s a growing realization that the COVID-19 crisis has unleashed an era of activist government that’s likely to remain a central feature of economic policy for years to come. …read more […]

The investors in Aurora Cannabis Inc.’s (TSE:ACB) will be rubbing their hands together with glee today, after the… …read more […]

U.S. President Donald Trump is accusing Alphabet Inc.’s Google (GOOGL), Facebook Inc. (FB), Twitter Inc. (TWTR) and Instagram of being involved in an “illegal situation”.“The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google,” Trump said in a Twitter post. “The Administration is working to remedy this illegal situation.”Trump’s comment was triggered by a video showing part of a speech decrying tech censorship by Michelle Markin, a conservative commentator who has been criticised for backing white nationalist activists and who has previously questioned the number of Holocaust victims.The tweets come amid a report by the …read more […]

Last week, you might have seen that Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) released its second-quarter result to the… …read more […]

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF) has dramatically ramped up its holdings of US stocks in the first quarter of the year, a new filing has revealed.The $325 billion fund, which is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, made the most of the coronavirus-related stock market selloff by taking its US holdings from a total value of $2.1 billion to $9.78 billion in just three months.Sizable new positions include an $828M stake in BP Plc (BP), and a $714M stake in Boeing (BA).PIF also made significant investments in Citigroup (C), Facebook ($521M) (FB), Marriott (MAR), …read more […]

Refinancing can be smart for homeowners who have a high interest rate on their current mortgage, many years left to pay it off, or both, experts say. …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Forget plunging oil prices and a collapse in consumer spending. Some of the world’s most-prominent investors are raising alarm bells over the looming threat of inflation, and turning to gold for protection.Money printing by central banks and vast state stimulus packages are rekindling interest in one of the oldest stores of wealth. It’s a revival of a trade that became popular in the wake of the 2008 crisis, as money managers piled into gold for similar reasons, but were ultimately disappointed as inflation was kept in check. Yet the unprecedented scale of the government response to the coronavirus …read more […]

(Bloomberg Opinion) — American oil producers have cut much more output than you think. Their reaction to market forces has been bigger than official data suggest, and that means the U.S. is actually working alongside Saudi Arabia, Russia and other big oil producers, to help balance oil supply and demand — even if that wasn’t quite what President Donald Trump intended.Two sets of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that crude production is now about 11.6 million barrels a day, down by between 1.2 million and 1.4 million barrels a day, or roughly 10%, from plateau levels reached …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — All the legendary Wall Street investors complaining about how expensive stocks have become can’t have been talking about Europe.Valued near a record low relative to the S&P 500 on an estimated price-to-book basis, the Stoxx Europe 600 Index has lagged behind in the equity market’s recent rally, adding 18% since the March trough compared with a gain of about 30% in the U.S. benchmark.“European equities have massively underperformed the U.S. year-to-date,” said Alberto Tocchio, chief investment officer at Swiss wealth-management firm Colombo Wealth SA. “We are getting increasingly less bearish on European value sectors — autos, financials — …read more […]

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday he would look at possible ways to help airlines further, but laid out no new measures after the country’s biggest airline announced mass layoffs due to the coronavirus pandemic. Air Canada said on Friday it would cut its workforce by up to 60% as the airline tries to save cash amid the COVID-19 pandemic and adjust to a lower level of traffic. “This pandemic has hit extremely hard on travel industries and on the airlines particularly,” Trudeau said in a briefing in Ottawa. …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — More than $8 trillion has been thrown at the Covid-19 crisis by governments around the globe and hundreds of billions more by central banks from Washington to Wellington. And that means investors are finding a swath of opportunities from investment-grade bonds to emerging-market equities.Looking where central banks themselves are buying, even if it’s been well flagged, still has merits, according to portfolio managers at Western Asset Management Co. and JPMorgan Asset Management. Areas of China’s vast bond market, including junk-rated company debt, are yet to benefit and have room to catch up with more highly-rated peers as authorities …read more […]

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