Author: News Room

By Hari Kishan BENGALURU (Reuters) – The U.S. dollar will weaken against most major currencies this year as the interest rate gap with its peers stops widening, putting the currency on the defensive after a multi-year run, according to a Reuters poll of foreign exchange strategists. Despite starting the year on a weak footing, the dollar bounced back sharply in February, gaining nearly 3% for the month, on expectations the U.S. Federal Reserve would take interest rates higher than previously thought. However, the failure of two regional U.S. banks in March forced the Fed to temper those expectations, pushing the…

By Barani Krishnan Investing.com — Crude prices struggled again to keep up with their huge weekly opening rally triggered by the OPEC+ announcement on production cuts, as a U.S. weekly inventory report on Wednesday showed the government had drawn down reserves again to add to market supply and limit fuel price hikes. Also weighing on oil was data showing U.S. in March came in at less than 44% of the previous month, emitting potential recession signals even as it indicated relief for inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve who said employment and wage growth have to cool to curb the…

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A worker loads a truck with crates of oranges at a farm in Limeira January 13, 2012. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker By Ricardo Brito (Reuters) -Giants of the orange juice trade in Brazil have become defendants in a class-action lawsuit seeking $2.5 billion in damages over an alleged scheme to fix prices between 1999 and 2006, a prosecutor told Reuters. Federal Prosecutor Karen Kahn said the Sao Paulo Court of Justice will hear claims in a lawsuit filed against firms including Citrosuco, Cutrale and Louis Dreyfus Co (LDC), which account for most of the world’s orange juice output.…

The numbers: The U.S. added a robust 236,000 new jobs in March, defying the Federal Reserve’s hopes for a big slowdown in hiring as the central bank struggles to tame inflation. The consensus economist forecast called for a nonfarm-payrolls expansion of 238,000. The solid increase in employment last month followed a revised 326,000 gain in February and a gain of 472,000 in January. While the increase in hiring was the smallest monthly rise in more than two years, the number of jobs created last month was much greater than is typical. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, slipped to 3.5% from 3.6%…

My girlfriend and I have been dating for approaching two years now and are starting to think about future plans — including buying a bigger place together for a forthcoming family. We currently live in the one-bedroom condo I bought in 2017. I’m 38 and feel confident about my financial situation. I make $130,000 a year, have $200,000 in my 401(k), no credit-card debt, and have roughly $55,000 in savings on top of my condo.  My girlfriend, who is about to turn 35, is in a very different place. She earns $80,000 a year, has no retirement account, owns no property,…

Creditors eager to avoid steep losses on half-empty office buildings in the wake of the pandemic have been sending chills through the rest of the roughly $5.5 trillion commercial real-estate debt market. A year later, old and outdated office towers remain a key source of dread, but lenders now also must navigate stress in the banking system, tighter credit conditions, and a Federal Reserve that appears committed to keeping interest rates restrictive, despite cracks in the banking system emerging a year into its interest rate-hiking campaign. “It couldn’t be more tone deaf,” said Jason Callan, head of Columbia Threadneedle’s structured…

Actively-managed mutual funds in the U.S. weren’t ready for the stock-market’s “big rally” in the first quarter, according to BofA Global Research.   The rally “caught active funds off guard,” with just 33% of large-capitalization funds beating their Russell 1000 benchmarks in the first quarter, BofA equity and quant strategists led by Savita Subramanian said in an April 4 note. That was their “worst quarterly hit rate” since the fourth quarter of 2020, they said.  The U.S. stock market rose in the first three months of 2023, including in March despite the volatility sparked by the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley…

Shortly after you board a plane, flight attendants almost always remind you to set your cell phone to airplane mode – but a few extra minutes on your wireless network wouldn’t cause an emergency for the aircraft, right? Well, it depends on whom you ask. Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day. (You can get “CNN’s 5 Things” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.) Tennessee’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to expel two of three Democratic lawmakers Thursday after they led a gun reform protest last week on…

The leak of classified US and Nato documents on Ukraine’s military and its much-anticipated spring counter-offensive is part of a Russian information operation and does not reveal Kyiv’s actual operational plans, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.The documents, seen by the Financial Times, are around five weeks old and appear to have first leaked on social networking site 4chan before spreading to Telegram and Twitter. The US department of defence said on Friday that it was investigating reports of a new batch of classified documents being leaked online, and that it had “made a formal referral to…

Co-produced with PendragonY Why Bet on the U.S.A? At High Dividend Opportunities, we are investing and betting on the U.S. economy. Why? For starters, it is one of the largest economies in the world, as well as one of the most resilient and flexible economies. The GDP for the U.S. economy is currently $26.14 trillion, while the entire E.U., for example, comes in at only $17.18 trillion. The entire world is approximately $96 trillion. The U.S. produces just over 27% of the goods and services produced by the entire world despite having only a small fraction of the world’s population.…