The S&P 500 could be on the verge of a sharp move down, as inflation isn’t cooling much further from here, according to Stifel analysts.
In a note, the investment firm predicted the S&P 500 would fall to 4,750 in the second or third quarter of this year. That implies around a 10% decline from the benchmark index’s current levels at around 5,222 on Monday.
Inflation will likely remain stubbornly high, the strategists predicted, as the economy is coming out of what they described as a “pseudo-recession” that took place from early 2022 and lasted through the middle of 2023. That accounted for the bulk of the disinflation seen to date, and economic activity has since revved up.
“We have been wary of a broad S&P 500 correction in the middle quarters of 2024. While most strategists were expecting a recession last year or eagerly attempting to call the start of one in the next year, we have been of the view that the ~5 quarters 1Q22 to 2Q23 were a ‘pseudo-recession’ and the Fed has already harvested all the normal post-recession disinflation we would expect,” the firm wrote.
Who: Plaintiff Kimberley Dennie filed a class action lawsuit against Bank of America.
Why: The lawsuit claims Bank of America does not legitimately investigate fraud claims, instead sending out form letter denials making customers responsible for banking fraud.
Where: The Bank of America fraud claims lawsuit was filed in federal court in North Carolina.
A consumer filed a class action lawsuit against Bank of America saying the bank does not legitimately investigate fraud claims, instead sending out form letter denials arguing its customers are responsible for banking fraud.
The lawsuit alleges that the company often denies Bank of America fraud claims — even when they are submitted properly — by claiming that fraudulent payments were actually made by an authorized card user.
AT&T’s application to end its landline phone obligations in California is likely to be rejected by state officials following protest from residents worried about losing access to phone lines.
An administrative law judge at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) recommended rejection of the application in a proposed decision released Friday. The CPUC is set to vote on finalizing the proposed decision at its June 20 meeting.
Administrative Law Judge Thomas Glegola found that AT&T’s application to end its Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) obligation should be dismissed with prejudice. State rules require a replacement COLR in order to relieve AT&T of its duties, but there is no other COLR in AT&T’s wireline territory “and no potential COLR volunteered to replace AT&T,” he wrote.
“It is not clear why AT&T filed this Application, under existing rules, and then attempted to convince the Commission that it should ignore its rules, based on flawed and erroneous assertions regarding the law and regulatory policy that slowed down the adjudication of this proceeding,” Glegola wrote.
For years, President Joe Biden was flying west to east with the prevailing winds, economically speaking. During Covid, politicians (primarily Democrats) closed down large portions of the economy. When Covid ended, the economy “grew” because that’s what happens when you go from a partially closed economy to an entirely open one.
The truth is that Biden’s economic numbers were never any good. And now that the easy-growth environment of the post-Covid era is well behind us, Biden — and the country — face a terrible economic reckoning.
Lowe’s (LOW – Free Report) closed at $232.98 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.87% move from the prior day. The stock’s change was less than the S&P 500’s daily loss of 0.02%. Elsewhere, the Dow saw a downswing of 0.21%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq appreciated by 0.29%.
Shares of the home improvement retailer have appreciated by 1.28% over the course of the past month, underperforming the Retail-Wholesale sector’s gain of 1.42% and the S&P 500’s gain of 1.29%.
The investment community will be closely monitoring the performance of Lowe’s in its forthcoming earnings report. The company’s upcoming EPS is projected at $2.94, signifying a 19.89% drop compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $21.07 billion, down 5.7% from the prior-year quarter.
The specter of stagflation has returned. On April 25th, The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that GDP only grew by 1.6% in the first quarter of this year, well below expectations.
Consumer spending on goods actually declined in the quarter as ordinary Americans are financially tapped out. The report also showed inflation remains stubbornly high, continuing a recent trend of resurgent inflation running about twice the Federal Reserve’s target rate.
American small businesses are the biggest victims of the stagflationary economy, which is being weighed down by big government policies. This was the most important storyline coming out of this Month’s National Small Business Week.
President Biden is claiming a small business “boom” under his administration. The reality is entrepreneurs grapple with a triple threat: a decelerating economy, soaring inflation, and escalating credit expenses due to his bad policies.
American consumers have a record $1.2 trillion of credit card debt. They are experiencing declining real wages and face a cost-of-living crisis. They can’t afford to keep up their discretionary spending, which small businesses rely on to survive and thrive.
Gen Z have been relentlessly mocked for spending money they don’t have on avocado toasts, designer bags and luxury holidays—and then complaining that they’ll never be able to save up enough for a house deposit. But in reality, research echoes that the youngest generation of workers really do have it worse financially.
A new study from credit reporting agency TransUnion found those in their early 20s are earning less, have more debt and see higher delinquency rates than millennials did at their age.
The research compared the credit usage of 22 to 24 year olds to millennials, who were 22-24 years old 10 years ago. It found that 20-somethings today are taking home around $45,500, while millennials at their age were earning $51,852 when adjusting for inflation.
Despite earning less, young people today are being forced to dig deep for basic necessities like food groceries and gas thanks to inflation, with interest rates currently at a 23-year high in the U.S.
A political action committee for a ubiquitous home improvement company is doing some financial renovations in the wake of fraud, according to a new financial filing.
“The PAC has taken action to prevent this from happening in the future by closing that bank account and opening a new account,” said a report to FEC from May 8. “In addition, the PAC is using positive pay through the bank to prevent any future occurrences.”
The $7,500 charge was “fraudulent activity on the bank account and has been reversed,” the report said.
Governor JB Pritzker’s administration is shedding more light on plans to close a state prison in Chicago’s south suburbs as early as September, and possibly move another.
Capitol News Illinois reports top officials with the Illinois Department of Corrections on Friday laid out the agency’s plans to close and rebuild two state prisons that are in dire states of disrepair.
Pritzker announced the plan in March, but IDOC officials have been slow to release details. Now, the agency is acknowledging it’s aiming to close the Stateville Correctional Center at the end of summer.
Organized labor is pushing back on the plan. AFSCME Council 31 represents most state prison workers. The union’s Deputy Director Mike Newman cast doubt on the state’s assurances that prison employees would be guaranteed jobs at other facilities.
Less than two weeks until its scheduled adjournment, state lawmakers and Gov. JB Pritzker appear to be at-odds in budget negotiations.
The Democratic governor is requesting legislative approval of a $52.7 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year, accompanied with approximately $800 million in tax increases. Those increases, namely extending an expiring cap on losses that corporations can claim on taxes to gain $526 million and increasing the tax on sportsbooks’ revenues from 15% to 35% to collect another $200 million, are meeting resistance in Springfield.
Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at the Hoogland Center for the Fine Arts Thursday, May 2, 2024.
During a May 13 news conference, Pritzker said Democrats and Republicans — often clashing with the governor — were both raising concerns. Mathematically, however, he just needs Democratic backing since the party holds super-majorities in both the House and Senate.
The governor and Democrats have often been in lockstep throughout his first five years in office, yet tweaks to his budget proposals have occurred in prior budget negotiations. Pritzker said at an unrelated event in Chicago that he welcomes changes as long as they keep spending in-check.
“My one principle around this budget is its got to be balanced,” he said. “We’re not going to overspend, we’re not gonna start sweeping dollars from accounts that had been done before I became governor. And we’re not gonna go back to the old practices of, you know, making us a credit unworthy state.”
In preparation for legislative resistance, Deputy Gov. and former local state senator Andy Manar sent out a letter to department heads last week requesting their help in identifying $800 million in collective budget cuts. Their focus, he wrote, should be on items such as “grant programs and other discretionary spending that has increased in recent years.”
Others leading counter efforts to Pritzker’s spending plan include the Sports Betting Alliance, a nationwide advocacy group representing gaming interests such as DraftKings and FanDuel. The alliance claims the new rate will lead to an uptick in illegal offshore sports betting.
Last year, Illinois collected $150 million in tax revenues from sports wagering meaning the increased rate would bring in $350 million to the state’s coffers. Pritzker said the 35% is subject to the sportsbooks themselves and not on those placing bets, a point that he’s had to clarify with lawmakers.
Scheduled adjournment for the spring session is set for May 24, but lawmakers have built a contingent schedule tacking on a week in case negotiations are still ongoing. If negotiations are not wrapped up by the end of the month, a three-fifths vote in both chambers will be necessary. FY25 starts on July 1, 2024.
Jerry Nowicki of Capitol News Illinois contributed to this report.
Contact Patrick M. Keck: 312-549-9340, pkeck@gannett.com, twitter.com/@pkeckreporter.
Elon Musk is the CEO of several companies including Space X, Tesla, and xAI, while Mark Zuckerberg owns Meta platforms including, Facebook and Instagram. — AFP/File
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has criticised Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg for being “excessively greedy”. He said that the Facebook owner takes credits for advertisers’ campaigns on its platforms which he should not, India Today reported.
The dispute unfolded after a user posted on X formerly known as Twitter about the attribution of conversions in advertising campaigns on both X and Meta platforms.
The user shared that despite running ad campaigns on both the platforms, the majority of conversions came from Meta while only some were from X.
(Bloomberg) — Using Facebook in the lead-up to the US 2020 presidential election might have increased the chances of someone voting for Donald Trump, university researchers said in a study published Monday in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As part of the study, the researchers asked nearly 19,900 Facebook and 15,600 Instagram users to stop using the platforms ahead of the 2020 election. The authors, led by Stanford University professors Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow, found some evidence suggesting that people who used Facebook might have been more likely to vote for Trump. They noted that their finding fell “just short” of being statistically significant.
“So we need to take it with a grain of salt,” Gentzkow said in a statement. “But if it’s real, it’s big enough that it could impact the outcome of a close election.”
An Australian federal court sided with Elon Musk on Monday, rejecting an Australian safety regulator’s request to extend a temporary order blocking a terrorist attack video from spreading on Musk’s platform X (formerly Twitter).
The video showed a teen stabbing an Assyrian bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel—whose popular, sometimes controversial TikTok sermons often garner millions of views—during a church livestream that rapidly spread online.
Police later determined it was a religiously motivated terrorist act after linking the 16-year-old charged in the stabbing to a group of seven teens “accused of following a violent extremist ideology in raids across Sydney,” AP News reported. Bishop Emmanuel has since reassured his followers that he recovered quickly and forgave the teen, Al Jazeera reported.
In April, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, had cited Australia’s Online Safety Act and asked X to remove 65 posts showing footage from the attack, Reuters reported, but X refused to remove the posts.
Minutes after it became clear that Javier Milei had been elected president of South America’s second-largest nation in November, Elon Musk posted on X: “Prosperity is ahead for Argentina.”
Since then, Mr. Musk has continued to use X, the social network he owns, to boost Mr. Milei. The billionaire has shared videos of the Argentine president attacking “social justice” with his 182 million followers. One doctored image, which implied that watching a speech by Mr. Milei was better than having sex, is among Mr. Musk’s most viewed posts ever.
Mr. Musk has helped turn the pugnacious libertarian into one of the new faces of the modern right. But offline, he has used the relationship to press for benefits to his other businesses, the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX.
“Elon Musk called me,” Mr. Milei said in a television interview weeks after taking office. “He is extremely interested in the lithium.”
(CNN) — Rudy Giuliani was suspended from New York City radio station WABC and his talk show canceled after he flagrantly ignored orders not to discuss false 2020 election conspiracy theories, the station’s owner said Monday.
Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Donald Trump lawyer who has hosted a daily talk show on the AM station for three years, was pulled from the airwaves Friday after he repeated bogus claims of vote rigging in the 2020 presidential election.
In recent months, Giuliani was repeatedly directed to not make claims of electronic voting manipulation surrounding the 2020 election, John Catsimatidis, the billionaire GOP donor and owner of the radio station, said in a statement.
Catsimatidis said the station received a letter in January 2021 from election technology company Dominion Voting Systems, which has been the target of baseless vote rigging claims by right-wing media figures, including Giuliani. WABC instructed its on-air hosts, including Giuliani, to avoid the subject, Catsimatidis said.
Schumer urges FTC to hit the brakes on $53 billion Chevron-Hess merger
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday urged the Federal Trade Commission to “pump the breaks” on Chevron Corp’s (CVX.N), opens new tab proposed $53 billion acquisition of Hess Corp (HES.N), opens new tab.
“The FTC should side with consumers and pump the breaks on this deal,” Schumer said in a post, opens new tab on social media platform X, adding that the deal would give oil majors more leverage to raise gas prices.
In October last year, Chevron agreed to buy Hess for $53 billion in stock to gain a bigger U.S. oil footprint and a stake in rival Exxon Mobil’s (XOM.N), opens new tab massive Guyana discoveries.
President Joe Biden has announced plans to implement new tariffs targeting Chinese imports. These targets will mainly affect the EV industry, Solar industry, and medical supplies industry.
New Biden tariffs on China’s EVs, solar, medical supplies due Tuesday – sources – Reuters
U.S. President Joe Biden is set to announce new China tariffs as soon as next week targeting strategic sectors, including a major hike in levies on electric vehicles (EVs), according to three people familiar with the matter.
The full announcement, expected Tuesday, will maintain existing tariffs on many Chinese goods set by former President Donald Trump, according to one of the people.
But it will also add new tariffs to semiconductors and solar equipment, according to one of the people, as well as hiking EV tariffs. Chinese-made medical supplies like syringes and personal protective equipment also face additional tariffs, sources told Reuters.
A threat actor claiming to be behind the recent Dell data breach has said he managed to steal the data of 49 million customers by brute-forcing a company portal and milking it for almost three weeks.
Dell released a statement saying that there was no “significant risk to our customers”, however the data stolen includes names and postal addresses, alongside other data relating to purchases of Dell products.
The hacker, known as Menelik, told TechCrunch exactly how he managed to extract such a huge amount of data without being detected.
BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc revealed its first quantum computer on Thursday and is ready to make it available to external users, joining the global race to apply the technology to practical uses.
The Baidu-developed quantum computer, dubbed “Qianshi”, has a 10-quantum-bit (qubit) processor, Baidu said in a statement. The Beijing-based company has also developed a 36-qubit quantum chip, it said.
Governments and companies around the world for years have touted the potential of quantum computing, a form of high-speed calculation at extraordinarily cold temperatures that will bring computers to unprecedented processing speeds.
However, current real-world applications in the field are still very basic and limited to a small group of early clients.
The United States, China and the European Union have initiated massively funded projects in quantum computing, hoping to pull ahead in the field, which is often considered as one of the cornerstones on which the new global supremacy will be determined.
TOPEKA, Kan. – Kansas could soon offer up to $5 million in grants for schools to outfit surveillance cameras with artificial intelligence systems that can spot people carrying guns. But the governor needs to approve the expenditures, and the schools must meet specific criteria.
The AI software must be patented, “designated as qualified anti-terrorism technology,” in compliance with certain security industry standards, already in use in at least 30 states and capable of detecting “three broad firearm classifications with a minimum of 300 subclassifications” and “at least 2,000 permutations,” among other things.
Only one company currently meets all those criteria: the same organization that touted them to Kansas lawmakers crafting the state budget. That company, ZeroEyes, is a rapidly growing firm founded by military veterans after the fatal shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
(Bloomberg) — International Business Machines Corp. said all of its U.S.-based employees must be vaccinated by Dec. 8 or be put on unpaid suspension.
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The Armonk, New York-based company told workers that because it’s a government contractor, it’s required to adhere to President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors.
IBM said the new mandate will apply to all U.S. employees regardless of where they work or how often they go into a company office and will offer “limited” medical or religious exemptions. The decision was prompted by “the continued spread of Covid-19, local clinical conditions around IBM sites, and the reality that vaccines are readily available nationwide,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement. “As we’ve said throughout the pandemic, IBM’s health and safety practices are driven by science.”
American Bridge officials say the ads are aimed at four kinds of voters: moderates, those who swing between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives who dislike the hard-right rhetoric espoused by some Republicans, and a group they call “double doubters,” which they define as voters who aren’t excited about either Trump or Biden.
The ongoing legal battle between Disney and Gina Carano has taken another turn.
Carl Weathers (Greef), Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Gina Carano (Cara Dune) in happier times.
The public back and forth between Disney and former Mandalorian star Gina Carano has been raging for almost three years now since the company fired the Cara Dune actress from the hit Star Wars series over controversial social media posts that the company said denigrated “people based on their cultural and religious identities.” The battle jumped into the courtroom when Carano — financially backed by Elon Musk — filed a lawsuit against Disney in February of 2024 seeking an injunction to return to The Mandalorian.
In the face of ongoing campus unrest, Ken Griffin, founder of the $63 billion U.S. hedge fund Citadel, has urged Harvard University to uphold “Western values.”
What Happened: Griffin, a major donor to his alma mater, voiced his concerns over what he perceives as a “cultural revolution” in U.S. education, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. He believes this shift has resulted in a loss of focus on the pursuit of truth and knowledge. He criticized the narrative on college campuses, which he says has devolved into claims of systemic racism and injustice.
“The narrative on some of our college campuses has devolved to the level that the system is rigged and unfair, and that America is plagued by systemic racism and systemic injustice,” he said in an interview.
