What do Apple, Boeing, Intel, AMD and Goldman Sachs all have have in common? They all say China and the global economy are weakening and getting worse. From smartphones and semiconductors to financials, companies representing all corners of the stock market say they are worried more and more about macroeconomic issues hitting revenue. “The CEO community that I’m talking to, which is our clientele, which is across all industry groups and all geographies, and most of our clients are global in nature so they’ve got businesses all over the world. They are clearly feeling some type of slowdown in their…
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Add shareholder voting to the list of applications for blockchain technologies. Later this year, Nasdaq plans to record stockholders’ electronic votes on its own blockchain system for companies listed on one of its exchanges. By digitizing the entire process, it expects to speed and simplify the proxy voting process. Blockchains — the best known of which is the public ledger of bitcoin transactions — are distributed records of events, each block in the record containing a computational “hash” of itself and of the previous block, so that all are connected like links in a chain. A hash, or digest, is…
It won’t come as a surprise to market watchers that “Dr. Doom” Marc Faber isn’t getting any more cheerful. But the noted bear at least found a sense of humor on Wednesday into which he could channel his bleakness. The publisher of the “Gloom, Boom & Doom Report” told attendees at the annual “Inside ETFs” conference that the medium-term economic outlook has become “so depressing” that he may as well fill a newly installed pool with beer instead of water. Drinking up seems to be Dr. Doom’s only answer for investors to get through this market. Guy who called $30…
The Pwn2Own hacking contest will return in March, pitting researchers against the most popular browsers and operating systems. The novelty: Contestants can win a $75,00 prize for escaping a VMware virtual machine. Contestants will be able to exploit Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome on fully patched versions of 64-bit Windows 10 and Apple Safari on OS X El Capitan. System or root-level privilege escalation pays extra, as does escaping from the virtual machine. Every year, Pwn2Own, at the CanSecWest security conference, has slightly modified rules, and 2016 is no different. Adobe Reader, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are no longer on…
Gold prices hit a three-month high this week as investors seek shelter in the volatile market environment. The precious metal has climbed more than 5 percent since the start of the year, and according to one trader it could continue to rally through the rest of the first quarter. On Tuesday, when gold gained more than 1 percent, one trader spent more than $13 million on a bet that the SPDR Gold ETF, the GLD, would rise to levels not seen since May 2015 in the next two months. Specifically, that trader purchased 75,000 of the March 108/117 call spreads…
Foursquare is all about discovering new places to visit, but for those times you don’t feel like venturing out, the app can now help bring takeout, booze, and groceries to you. The “location intelligence” company recently announced a new partnership with Delivery.com and mobile commerce platform Button. Users living in or visiting the 36 cities where Delivery.com is available will soon see the site’s icon within the Foursquare app. Tap the icon next to a location that uses the service, and you will move from Foursquare to the Delivery.com app (or be encouraged to install it). That means you’ll have…
Many traders expect the Federal Open Market Committee meeting announcement Wednesday to be dovish as Fed Chair Janet Yellenresponds to the extreme market volatility that has ensued since the central bank’s rate hike at the last meeting. So what typically happened to the markets during the easy money Fed days of old? Using hedge fund analytics tool Kensho, we looked at which S&P 500companies and ETFs performed the best during those Yellen Fed days when it left rates unchanged. [“source -cncb”]
Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali likes Facebook despite the 8 percent year-to-date dip in its stock price. Facebook releases fourth quarter results after the bell Wednesday, and Squali said investors should treat a positive reaction to earnings as a buying signal. The social network giant looks primed to dominate the mobile ad market the same way Google dominates mobile search, he said in an interview with CNBC’s “Tech Bet.” Read MoreWhy Facebook’s earnings won’t just be about Facebook “We think for investors that are looking to own this asset for the next six to 12 months, this is a good…
Intel’s solid-state drives could be poised for a big jump in capacity and speed with new 3D flash chips coming from Micron. Micron, which makes the flash in Intel’s SSDs, has started volume shipments of its 3D NAND flash chips. The chips could lead to SSDs the size of a pack of gum with more than 3.5TB of storage and standard 2.5-inch SSDs with capacities greater than 10TB. SSDs have been advancing in capacity and durability. Fixstars last month shipped a 13TB SSD, which is priced at about $1 per gigabyte, or $13,000. This year, SanDisk plans to ship 6TB…
Is the Fed about to give commodities a much-needed boost? Gold tempered recent gains ahead of the Federal Reserve statement Wednesday. But if the central bank sounds dovish in its release at 2 p.m. ET, gold and other metals could be ready to surge. In December, the Fed raised the federal funds rate for the first time in almost a decade. However, Phillip Streible of RJO Futures said he doesn’t expect another rate hike for the rest of 2016. The absence of further rate increases should lead to a weaker dollar and higher gold prices. “The metals markets: gold, silver,…