(Bloomberg) -- Lawmakers in Washington are making it easier for Americans struggling with the fallout from the coronavirus to draw on the trillions of dollars in their 401(k)s and other retirement accounts.For a limited time, Americans would be able to withdraw money from tax-deferred accounts without penalties under a stimulus package approved by the Senate and awaiting a vote in the House. Rules on 401(k) loans would also be relaxed, and some retirees would avoid so-called required minimum distribution, or RMD, rules that might have been onerous.Read more: House faces urgency to act on Senate’s $2 trillion virus rescue billSome of the changes mirror what’s been done for retirement savers after previous disasters. In general, though, the adjustments are “much more significant than what was done for the California wildfires or the hurricane in Houston,” said Gregg Levinson, senior director, retirement, at Willis Towers Watson.That’s needed because “with Covid-19, we are...
(Bloomberg) -- With so many workers videoconferencing from home -- while their children stream videos and play Fortnite -- the internet is creaking at the seams, according to Nokia Oyj.The junctions between different internet networks are close to being overwhelmed, the Finnish telecom equipment company said in a weekly report seen by Bloomberg News.“Globally, service providers are starting to see the increased strain and are approaching the capacity on some peering links and edge routers,” Nokia said.But don’t panic yet: Operators can sidestep major jams and outages by rapidly upgrading equipment and adding components at these bottlenecks, according to the company, which likened it to a supermarket hiring more cashiers for busy times.“They can add more capacity, which is easily done,” Nokia said. “Networks are handling traffic well -- so far.”Nokia’s analytics service, dubbed Deepfield, also found a 300% surge in remote-conferencing programs like Zoom and Skype in the U.S. compared...
The Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) ETF looks like a mixed bag at this point. Some of its top holdings should perform very well in the coming weeks and months, while others are likely to struggle. Therefore, I believe that investors should avoid the QQQ ETF at this point.Source: Shutterstock To be sure, the ETF has some very good components. Two of the exchange-traded fund's top holdings --Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) which accounts for 10.7% of its assets and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) which is 8.14% of its assets -- should perform pretty well going forward. The companies are the leaders of the cloud transition.The fund tracks the Nasdaq-100 index, which includes 100 of the largest domestic and international non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange, based on market cap.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsAs I've noted previously, multiple analysts have said that firms are unlikely to stop transitioning to the cloud....
(Bloomberg) -- When Saudi Arabia kicked off its oil-price war and triggered the worst crude crash in a generation, U.S. President Donald Trump lauded the ensuing decline in pump prices, saying it would be “like a tax cut” for Americans.Weeks later, the crisis remains a low priority for the president, who has continually expressed his satisfaction with cheap gasoline and whose agenda has been consumed by the coronavirus pandemic itself, according to people familiar with the situation. While Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday took the strongest action yet to calm the market -- pressing Saudi Arabia to dial back its production surge -- the kingdom has shown no signs of slowing down.Now, with thousands of oil jobs hanging in the balance and the U.S. shale industry in upheaval, any action by Trump himself may be too little, too late. Oil’s downturn has rapidly devolved from a simple case of...
