U.S. retail sales fell at a record pace in March, and economists are scrambling to find the right words to illustrate the rapid deterioration of the U.S. economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic....
Retailer J.C. Penney explores bankruptcy as the business continues to struggle with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi shares the latest....
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- It’s no surprise that President Donald Trump wants to let the U. S. Postal Service die.Remember in the spring of 2018, when Trump created a task force to “conduct a thorough evaluation of the operation and finances of the USPS?” His primary complaint then — and presumably now — was not so much that the Postal Service was losing billions every year but that it was aiding and abetting Amazon.com Inc., whose chief executive is Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, which Trump despises. According to Trump, the Postal Service was delivering Amazon packages at a discount, which was supposedly adding to its growing deficit. Needless to say, that was exactly the opposite of the truth. Indeed, the Postal Service’s package business was one of the few areas where it made a profit.Now it appears as if Trump is hoping to use the coronavirus crisis to finish off the...
In last week’s trading, stocks showed their best weekly gains in over 40 years, prompting a wave of confidence among investors. But it’s not clear that the bulls really want to start running – today, the S&P slipped 2.5%. Volatility indicators remain high, as daily trading results remain unpredictable.The market gyrations are the direct result of the strong reactions to the COVID-19 epidemic. New York City, the world’s financial center, is clearly at the center of the epidemic in the US, but social distancing, shutdowns, lockdowns, and quarantines are being applied in varying degrees throughout the country – and worldwide. Economic activity, the ordinary daily business of working, producing, buying, and selling, has ground to near-halt, and economists are debating not if we’ll see a recession – that’s clear already – but if it will turn into a Depression.In the meantime, stock market investors are looking for ways to rebuild and...
(Bloomberg) -- Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio, founder of of the world’s largest hedge fund, said investors would be “crazy” to hold government bonds now because of money printing by central banks to rescue the global economy.“This period, like the 1930-45 period, is a period in which I think you’d be pretty crazy to hold bonds,” Dalio said Wednesday on the Bloomberg Invest Talks webcast with Erik Schatzker. “If you’re holding a bond that gives you no interest rate, or a negative interest rate, and they’re producing a lot of currency and you’re going to receive that, why would you hold that bond?”Dalio may not like bonds as an investment, but he said he believes central bankers have to employ every bit of monetary ammunition they can muster to compensate for the collapse in income and spending resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. While economists are divided on how long and deep the...
Alibaba makes IBD's Long-Term Leaders list with its long-term outperformance and earnings stability. China names made people nervous after Luckin Coffee and TAL Education issues. But Alibaba has fund sponsorship that sets it apart....
