Author: News Room

© Reuters. People are seen inside the First Republic Bank branch in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., March 13, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Segar (Reuters) – First Republic Bank (NYSE:) said in a regulatory filing on Friday that it will suspend payments of quarterly cash dividends on its preferred stock “as a measure of prudent oversight.” Last month, the bank suspended its dividend on common stock after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Large U.S. banks injected $30 billion in deposits into First Republic Bank last month to rescue the lender caught up in a widening crisis triggered…

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Tesla vehicles are shown at a sales and service center in Vista, California, U.S., June 3, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake By Hyunjoo Jin and Mike Scarcella SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A California Tesla (NASDAQ:) owner on Friday sued the electric carmaker in a prospective class action lawsuit accusing it of violating the privacy of customers. The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California came after Reuters reported on Thursday that groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras…

Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said she expects the central bank will have to raise interest rates further, and then hold them at high levels, in order to bring down inflation. “In my modal projection, to put inflation on a sustained downward trajectory to 2% and to keep inflation expectations anchored, monetary policy moves somewhat further into restrictive territory this year, with the fed funds rate moving above 5% and the real fed funds rate staying in positive territory for some time,” Mester told a group of professional economic forecasters in a speech in New York on Tuesday evening. In…

Stocks remain off to a winning start in 2023 despite rising recession fears and uncertainty around the stability of the banking sector. Take a closer look, however, it’s clear the market is far from moving in lockstep.Instead, the S&P 500 has demonstrated a high degree of dispersion, a measure of the variation in returns within an index or a market. Dispersion is on display as investors jump quickly on a hot stock or other investing trend, and are even quicker to get out of industries and sectors heading lower, said stock-market technical analysts, who described the phenomenon as a sign…

Investors can’t wait for the Federal Reserve to start pivoting. This past week’s action—illuminated by a pink full moon—shows that they might have to wait a bit longer. The S&P 500 index slid 0.1% in the shortened trading week, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.6% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1%. But while equity markets were little changed, bond yields declined in the early part of the week as weakening economic data stoked fears of a recession among fixed-income traders. The stock market is known to be a forward-looking mechanism, but with the S&P 500 trading at 18…

To the Editor:The most alarming part of this article (“What’s Ahead for TikTok,” Cover Story, March 31) is that the average American spends 90 minutes a day on this brain-rotting poison. Ban TikTok! To the Editor:I don’t understand all the hand-wringing in Washington over TikTok. If lawmakers want it out of the hands of most Americans without looking like they’re legislating against young voters, just give it time. Once millennial parents take to it, the kids will be on to something new. Paul Antico, On Barrons.comThe Facts, Please To the Editor:I think that the parties who are advocating the banning…

The March jobs report was pretty strong by almost any measure. Some 236,000 new jobs. A superlow 3.5% unemployment rate. And more Americans entering the labor force looking for work. Not exactly what the Federal Reserve wanted as it seeks to slow the economy and prevent a tight labor market from exacerbating inflation. Don’t miss: Jobs report ‘likely tips the scales toward another rate hike in May’: economists react to March release Also see: Jobs report shows 236,000 gain in March — lifting 2023 total above 1 million — but U.S. labor market shows hints of cooling So why are…

Gold prices are hot. At $2,023.70 an ounce—up 2.8% this past week—gold has about 2% to rise to hit its record high of $2,069.40, set in 2020. The yellow metal has gained 11% over the past month, and 24% from its recent November low, to flirt with the record. Gold prices are typically driven by three factors. Gold is worth more in dollars when the greenback falls in value. Lower bond yields mean less competition for gold, which produces no income. And greater risk aversion makes gold more popular. Bond yields collapsed in March—the two-year U.S. Treasury note yield was…

The office of Vice President Kamala Harris said she’ll take a flight Friday afternoon to Nashville, Tenn., and meet there with state legislators. The trip comes after Tennessee Republicans on Thursday expelled two Democratic lawmakers from the state legislature over their role in a protest that called for more gun control in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting in Nashville. Harris, who initially had no public events on her schedule for Friday, denounced the GOP move in Tennessee in a tweet on Friday, saying it was “undemocratic and dangerous.” Read the full article here

The contest to become the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee is heating up, with Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nation, and longshot candidate Vivek Ramaswamy each announcing runs since the beginning of the year, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson joining the fray in a Sunday-show appearance on April 2. Another notable move has been the rollout of a campaign-style book by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in which he argues that his approach to managing his state can provide a model for the rest of the country. And former President Donald Trump appears to be getting…