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Wall Street up in premarket after Dow slips into bear market

Published

2 years ago

September 27, 2022

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. futures jumped Tuesday morning one day after a selloff on Wall Street put the Dow Jones Industrial Average into what’s known as a bear market.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1.2% and futures for the S&P 500 were up 1.4%. The S&P 500 slid into bear market territory in June.

The end of the third quarter is approaching and with the next round of earnings reports, investors will get a better sense of how companies are dealing with persistent inflation.

Several economic reports are on tap for this week that will give more details on consumer spending, the jobs market and the broader health of the U.S. economy.

The latest consumer confidence report, for September, from the business group The Conference Board will be released on Tuesday. The government will release its weekly report on unemployment benefits on Thursday, along with an updated report on second-quarter gross domestic product.

On Friday, the government will release another report on personal income and spending that will help provide more details on where and how inflation is hurting consumer spending.

Seeking to make borrowing more expensive and crimp spending, the Fed raised its benchmark rate, which affects many consumer and business loans, again last week. It now sits at a range of 3% to 3.25%. It was near zero at the start of the year. The Fed also released a forecast suggesting its benchmark rate could be 4.4% by the year’s end, a full point higher than envisioned in June.

The U.S. economy is already slowing, raising worries that rate hikes might cause a recession. The Dow was the last of the major U.S. stock indexes to fall into what’s known as a bear market on Monday, falling 1.1% to 29,260.81.

The Dow is now 20.5% below its all-time high set on Jan. 4. A drop of 20% or more from a recent peak is what Wall Street calls a bear market.

The S&P 500 fell 1% to 3,655.04. The Nasdaq dropped 0.6% to 10,802.92, while the Russell 2000 dropped 1.4% to close at 1,655.88.

At midday in Europe, Germany’s DAX climbed 0.5% and the CAC 40 in Paris rose 0.6%. In London, the FTSE 100 was unchanged.

In Asian trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index picked up 0.5% to 26,571.87 and the S&P/ASX 200 added 0.4% to 6,496.20. In Seoul, the Kospi rebounded from earlier losses, edging 0.1% higher to 2,223.86.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added just 5 points, to 17,860.31. The Shanghai Composite index jumped 1.4% to 3,093.86 after China’s central bank on Tuesday moved to maintain cash flow for banks by buying securities from commercial lenders, with an agreement to sell them back in the future.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the People’s Bank of China carried out 175 billion yuan (about $24.7 billion) in reverse repos “to maintain liquidity in the banking system.”

Global stocks have been sagging under concerns over stubbornly hot inflation and the risk that central banks could trigger recessions as they try to cool high prices for everything from food to clothing.

Investors have been particularly focusing on the Federal Reserve and its aggressive interest rate hikes. But volatility in currency markets has further roiled markets.

The British pound dropped to an all-time low against the dollar on Monday and investors continued to dump British government bonds in displeasure over a sweeping tax cut plan announced in London last week. It had stabilized by early Tuesday.

The Japanese yen edged toward 145 to the dollar early Tuesday. Last week, the Bank of Japan intervened in the market as the yen slipped past 145, gaining a brief reprieve. But the dollar’s surge against other currencies is putting pressure on the BOJ and other central banks, especially in developing economies facing growing costs for repaying foreign loans.

On Tuesday, the pound was at $1.0810, up from $1.0686 late Monday. The dollar bought 144.35 yen, down from 144.65 yen, and the euro rose to 96.35 cents from 96.10 cents.

In other trading on Tuesday, U.S. benchmark crude added 90 cents to $77.61 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It sank $2.03 to $76.71 on Monday.

Brent crude, used for pricing international oils, rose 97 cents to $83.83 per barrel.

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Saudi bank chief resigns after Credit Suisse comment

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Zuckerberg loses OVER $6 BILLION as Facebook-empire outage drags into HOURS

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Saudi bank chief resigns after Credit Suisse comment

Published

1 year ago

March 27, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

Shares of the Swiss bank tumbled after Ammar Al Khudairy warned of a funding cut-off

The chairman of Saudi Arabia’s largest lender, the Saudi National Bank (SNB), Ammar Al Khudairy, has resigned his position, the bank announced on Monday. The resignation, officially “due to personal reasons,” came mere days after his comments triggered a share price collapse of Switzerland’s second-largest bank, Credit Suisse.

When asked in an interview with Bloomberg TV whether the SNB would be open to providing additional capital to Credit Suisse, Al Khudairy responded, “The answer is absolutely not, for many reasons outside the simplest reason which is regulatory and statutory.”

Earlier this month, the SNB rejected a plea from Credit Suisse to provide more funding because, according to the lender, owning more than a 10% stake in the Swiss bank would have caused a “regulatory issue” with the Saudi government.

The banker’s comments sent shares of Credit Suisse plummeting to their lowest level on record. They also caused more turmoil in a global banking sector still reeling from the recent failures of three US lenders. Credit Suisse narrowly avoided insolvency itself, saved by a government-brokered rescue acquisition by rival UBS.

While Al Khudairy’s statement was not the only source of Credit Suisse’s troubles – the bank has been plagued by deposit outflows since last year surrounding a series of scandals and regulatory issues – it exacerbated the crisis of confidence in the bank, analysts say.

SNB, which is 37% owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, has suffered significant losses on its investment in Credit Suisse, which has plunged by about $1 billion in a matter of months. The Saudi bank has itself lost more than $26 billion in market value since the start of the turmoil.

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SUITABLE MUSIC FOR YOGA LOVERS

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Zuckerberg loses OVER $6 BILLION as Facebook-empire outage drags into HOURS

Published

3 years ago

October 5, 2021

The San Francisco Telegraph

Mark Zuckerberg is facing some major financial consequences, according to Forbes, losing billions of dollars, as well as his No.5-richest man rank as users continue to be shut out of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

After mass complaints about the various platforms in the Facebook family being down, and users getting error messages when trying to log on, the company said it was working to resolve the issue.

With all four now off-air for several hours, Zuckerberg has faced a pile-on on rival social media platforms, and habitual Facebook users have taken to other apps that aren’t experiencing issues, such as Twitter and Telegram, to express their dissatisfaction. Many have even temporarily celebrated the absence of Facebook.

Facebook and Instagram go mysteriously offline and, for one shining day, the world becomes a healthier place. #facebookdown

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 4, 2021

Zuckerberg has lost billions as a result of the outage, according to real-time tracking by Forbes. Its list of “today’s winners and losers” tracks from the close of business the previous day, meaning the CEO’s massive losses have clearly occurred since users began experiencing technical issues.

Other leaders in Big Tech have also seen recent losses, according to the data, with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates both losing billions, too, though those losses are still comparatively minor in the shadow of Zuckerberg’s $6.7 billion hit, as of the time of writing. The loss has put Zuckerberg at sixth on Forbes’ list of the world’s top billionaires, with Elon Musk at the zenith.

Facebook, WhatsApp & Instagram ALL down in major worldwide outage

Facebook stock has dropped multiple percentage points in the wake of not only the aforementioned technical difficulties, but also a ‘60 Minutes’ interview with a whistleblower from the company that aired on Sunday night.

Data scientist Frances Haugen came forward as the source of a recent report claiming the company had been aware of the negative effects its services could have on users, and its censorship ‘measures’ had been used to increase only its profits, rather than to fight misinformation, as it had claimed.

Haugen will appear before Congress this week for a hearing titled ‘Protecting Kids Online,’ which will focus on the alleged negative effects of Facebook’s algorithms on youths.

‘Betrayal of democracy’? Whistleblower blasts Facebook for prioritizing profits over fighting ‘hate speech & misinformation’

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Musk says Tesla SUSPENDING Bitcoin use, citing environmental impact

Published

3 years ago

May 12, 2021

The San Francisco Telegraph

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced he will stop taking Bitcoin for vehicle purchases or selling the cryptocurrency until mining procedures transition to “more sustainable energy” than coal or fossil fuels.

“We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday evening.

Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment.

Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021

Tesla doesn’t intend to sell any of the Bitcoin it currently holds, however, but will hold on to it until “mining transitions to more sustainable energy,” and is looking at other cryptocurrencies that use “<1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”

That last metric might be a hint Musk is considering Dogecoin, a meme currency he recently embraced – and even hawked on Saturday Night Live in his guest host appearance last weekend.

Do you want Tesla to accept Doge?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2021

The about-face comes less than two months after Musk announced that Tesla would be accepting Bitcoin as payment for vehicles, having bought an estimated $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin by late March.

‘It’s a hustle’: Elon Musk DESTROYS Dogecoin as he brings crypto memes to his episode of SNL

Bitcoin’s price plummeted after Musk’s tweet, going from $54,602 to 52,467 within just ten minutes before recovering slightly – and leading to speculation that the Tesla and SpaceX boss was trying to drive the price down before buying up some more.

Bitcoin mining is energy-intense – in March 2021 it was estimated at 129 terawatt hours, more than enough to power Norway for a year. Few if any studies have been done on crypto mining’s carbon footprint, with Musk presumably extrapolating it from the percentage of total electricity generated by oil, gas and coal – rather than wind, water, solar or nuclear power.

On Monday, Musk announced he would launch a satellite to the lunar orbit next year named Doge-1 and funded entirely by Dogecoin, meaning that “to the moon” memes were literal, and not referring to Dogecoin’s rapidly rising value – which dropped substantially after Musk’s attempt at comedy.