Trading Ideas

The Oxford Club’s Chief Income Strategist, Marc Lichtenfeld, takes a look at SMFG stock and its dividend safety rating below.
Earlier in the year, I recommended Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (NYSE: SMFG) in my newsletter, The Oxford Income Letter.
This was before COVID-19 made its appearance in the U.S. I liked Japan’s prospects for economic recovery and Sumitomo Mitsui’s position as the fourth-largest financial institution in Japan (although it generates 30% of its revenue from 39 other countries).
The company is also one of the technology leaders in the cashless society movement, which is something the Japanese government is strongly in favor of.
Now …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — U.S. public pensions suffered a double blow from the coronavirus pandemic: losing hundreds of billions of dollars in the equity market rout just as unprecedented revenue losses piled up for the governments that pay into the funds.Funding levels will be under stress because of the losses in the financial markets, and at the same time, governments may struggle to make up the difference as the economic shutdown to stem the outbreak slashes their income.In March, Moody’s Investors Service estimated that public pension investment losses were nearing $1 trillion. During the first quarter, the S&P 500 Index plunged the …read more […]

Restaurants, hotels, airlines and anything connected with live entertainment are in coronavirus-induced economic comas. And the oil industry is trying to emerge from a coma of its own making. Russia and Saudi Arabia just ended their oil price war.
In normal times (remember those days?), this would have been big news. High gas prices drive consumers crazy. I don’t know how many times I’ve argued with friends and family that high gas prices are a good thing. It usually means the economy is humming.
And low gas prices usually mean something has gone wrong. The last time I filled up, gas was …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — The clamor for retail investors to get hold of precious-metals coins is about to get more urgent.The U.S. Mint said Wednesday it’s temporally halting production at its West Point facility in New York because of the risk to employees from the coronavirus. The site makes gold, silver, platinum and palladium coins which are sold through a network of distributors.The shutdown comes as convulsive swings in financial markets spur a surge in demand among retail investors for precious metals as haven assets. Last month, the Mint said it sold out of American Eagle silver coins, while the gold coins …read more […]

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled on Wednesday that shareholders could try to prove Musk’s tweet was the “proximate cause” of volatility in Tesla’s stock price, causing billions of dollars of alleged losses that prompted the lawsuit. It was later established that he had not lined up funding, and Musk backed down from the going-private offer. …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — J.C. Penney Co. is skipping an interest payment, putting the struggling retailer on the path toward a potential default on its debt.The department store chain said it’s not paying $12 million due today on its 6.375% senior notes due 2036. Instead, it’s invoking a 30-day grace period, which keeps the missed payment from becoming a formal event of default, and evaluating strategic alternatives.The company’s management is considering bankruptcy in addition to negotiating with creditors, Reuters reported Tuesday. J.C. Penney tapped the restructuring consulting firm AlixPartners LLP for advice on how to ease its $4 billion debt load amid …read more […]

Federated Hermes Client Portfolio Manager Jordan Stuart joins Yahoo Finance’s Seana Smith to discuss the impact COVID-19 has been having on the economy, as consumer and manufacturing reports for March were worse than expected. …read more […]

The coronavirus pandemic is taking no prisoners, and investors will get another pulse on the deteriorating labor market when the U.S. Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims Thursday morning. …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — The world-wide coronavirus pandemic that’s caused oil demand to plummet has turned the Canadian oil patch’s biggest problem on its head. Rather than having too few oil pipelines, the province now has too many.The collapse in oil demand caused by people staying home has reduced U.S. demand for Canadian crude, leaving pipelines struggling to stay full. After more than a year of rationing space, Enbridge Inc. announced it had additional space on its Mainline pipeline system for both heavy and light crude in April. TC Energy Corp. also issued a call for crude on its Keystone pipeline running …read more […]

A trade group says homeowners are jumping on rates that have dropped to a new low. …read more […]

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After the news broke that the Trump administration was ordering that the president’s name appear on stimulus checks, the question focused on whether the move would delay the checks actually being disbursed. …read more […]

The one company heading into the coronavirus outbreak in a bad position was Boeing (BA). The passenger airplane manufacturer was already dealing with 737 Max problems and now faces a global economic shutdown and greatly reduced air travel. The stock is down $200 from early 2020 highs, but too many questions still exist to buy the stock on weakness.Weakened CustomersDespite all of the problems with the 737 Max and questions of when the airline could finally delivery 100s of parked aircraft, Boeing still had nearly unlimited demand for airplanes due to global travel demand. The company started the year with …read more […]

Automotive company Tesla saw a jump in shares after Goldman Sachs analyst gave the company a ‘buy’ rating in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman discusses. …read more […]

The coronavirus pandemic should be Amazon’s moment to shine. Instead, Whole Foods has been overwhelmed. Amazon Prime subscribers, who pay $119 a year for free delivery, are having difficulty finding Whole Foods delivery windows, according to interviews with a dozen customers and numerous posts on social media. …read more […]