Month: January 2017

Intel Corporation Doesn’t Raise Its Dividend

The lack of a dividend increase could give us some insight into Intel’s thinking around its cash generation and use during 2017. At $1.04 per share, at a share count of approximately 4.74 billion, Intel is paying out roughly $5 billion in dividends per year.

Slossberg wants FCC to end WFSB’s tiff with Optimum

State Sen. Senator Gayle Slossberg on Thursday fired off a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to help end a contract dispute that has left Cablevision viewers without WFSB, the CBS affiliate in Connecticut, traditionally known as Channel 3. This blackout has left much of southern Fairfield County and parts of New Haven and Litchfield counties without access to WFSB, the only CBS-TV affiliate in Connecticut. Cablevision has been without WFSB since Jan. 13. “My constituents are outraged that they have missed the recent Patriots games, and they have every right to be,” Slossberg said, adding that the FCC “has failed to intervene,” even though it could help get the two sides together.

GOP Leaders Embrace Trump’s Border Wall But Split on Details

Republican leaders are finally climbing on board President Donald Trump’s plan for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border — and they say they’re ready to spend as much as $15 billion to build it. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell both suggested Thursday that, after months of studiously ignoring the border wall proposal, they’re now ready to act on the wall as part of a spending request they expect from Trump that would help jump-start construction.

Two Ex-Och-Ziff Executives Accused by SEC in Bribery Scheme

Two former Och-Ziff Capital Management Group executives, including the ex-head of the hedge fund’s European office, were sued by U.S. regulators over allegations that they spearheaded a sprawling bribery scheme that involved paying tens of millions of dollars across Africa to win business. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement action against Michael Cohen, who headed the European office, and Vanja Baros, an executive on Africa-related deals, follows a settlement with the U.S. government last year in which an Och-Ziff unit pleaded guilty to violating bribery laws and the firm agreed to pay $415 million.

Constellation, Maker of Corona Beer, Slips on Report of Possible Trump Border Tariff

Constellation Brands shares fell about 2.7% to $149.97 after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday that President Trump’s proposed wall on the border with Mexico will be financed with a 20% tax on imported goods from Mexico. Constellation, maker of Corona and Modelo beers, both brewed in Mexico, sold $3.44 billion worth of beer in the U.S. in 2016, according to the company’s fiscal 2016 year-end report, which came out in February.

Wynn Shares Skyrocket Despite Ugly Earnings Miss

Wynn Resorts shares jumped 7.6% to $102.80 in late trading Thursday despite the gaming company reporting a wide fourth-quarter earnings miss. The company reported a 37.3% increase in net revenue of $1.3 billion for the quarter with adjusted earnings of 50 cents a share, well short of analysts’ expectations for earnings of 67 cents a share.

Alphabet Scales Back Another ‘Moonshot’ With Verily Sale

The Google parent’s $800M sale to Temasek is the latest move to reel in some of its ambitious ‘Other Bets’ investments. In another move that suggests Alphabet Inc. is having second thoughts about big so-called “moonshot” investments, its life sciences subsidiary, Verily, said it will sell a minority stake to Singaporean firm Temasek Holdings Pte.

LendingRobot Sets Up ‘Hedge Fund’ to Simplify Online-Loan Investment

A one-stop shop for investors, the service’s costs are a fraction of typical hedge-fund fees. LendingRobot Series charges 1% of assets under management and caps fund expenses at 0.59% So you want to bankroll loans made by online firms like Prosper and Lending Club , which rely on individual investors for financing, but you don’t have time to analyze credit risk and potential returns for dozens of different borrowers? LendingRobot CEO Emmanuel Marot has the solution: a hedge-fund style investment vehicle for clients looking to park $100,000 or more in so-called peer-to-peer loans, with average returns as high as 11.5%.

Clever Hackers Love Call Centers to Tap Into Sensitive Information

Hackers are drawn to call centers because of the plethora of personal and financial information which is shared even in a few minutes of a conversation, which aids clever fraudsters. Hackers are drawn to call centers because of the plethora of personal and financial information which is shared even in a few minutes of a conversation, which aids clever fraudsters on the hunt for more data.

Qualcomm Headed South

It is always nice to see the fundamentals and the technicals come together. QCOM made a toppy pattern from October into January before prices began break down.

Dow Gets the Right Chemical Reaction

In this one-year daily bar chart, above, we can see how DOW was consolidating mostly between $50 and $54 from April through November. In December, DOW finally moved higher with increased volume, a rising On-Balance-Volume line and positively sloped moving averages.

As Churn Sets In, Bulls Still Have the Edge

The action was a bit sloppy today but it didn’t amount to much other than some consolidation after a breakout. The hardcore bulls would have preferred continued momentum and the bears had their fingers crossed for a big reversal, but we ended up with some routine churning.

Broadband in New York to get funding boost

FCC will reverse course and direct $170 million to the Empire State after threatening to bid the money out elsewhere. Broadband in New York to get funding boost FCC will reverse course and direct $170 million to the Empire State after threatening to bid the money out elsewhere.

New area code may be headed to Central Jersey

New area code may be headed to South Jersey The state’s Board of Public Utilities is considering a new area code for South Jersey. Check out this story on mycentraljersey.com: http://northjersy.news/2jAGo3X The board found out in October 2015 that the 609 area code would run out of available numbers in 2018 if a new area code was not added to that part of the state.

Why Scientists Just Reset The Doomsday Clock Closer To Midnight

The clock is now the closest it’s been to midnight since the 1950s, with scientists citing “alternative facts” and threat of nuclear arms. [Source images: National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office via [i] Wikimedia Commons ; Clock: via Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists] [/i] In a series of statements alluding to President Donald Trump’s fiery rhetoric, experts from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock forward to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight on Thursday.

Speculation Builds on a Verizon-Charter Tie-up, No Offer Made

U.S. cable company Charter Communication Inc shares rose as much as 10 percent on Thursday after the Wall Street Journal reported a preliminary approach by Verizon Communications Inc about a tie-up, but Reuters sources said no proposal was made. Speculation over a combination of the two companies has been building steadily since last month, when Verizon Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam told Wall Street analysts that such a deal would make “industrial sense.”

Oil up on Stock Market, but U.S. Supply Caps Gains

Oil prices were driven 2 percent higher by an ongoing rally in the U.S. stock market on Thursday, although gains were capped by plentiful supplies and bulging inventories in spite of efforts by producers to cut output. U.S. light crude futures were up $1.22 to $53.97 a barrel, a gain of 2.2 percent, while Brent crude rose $1.25, or 2.3 percent, to $56.33 by 10:49 a.m. ET .

Johnson & Johnson’s Most Exciting Opportunity

Can cancer drug sales continue to soar? Here’s why cancer drugs could be Johnson & Johnson’s most exciting opportunity in 2017. Global spending on cancer drugs eclipsed $100 billion two years ago, and aging and longer-living populations worldwide have IMS Health projecting that global spending on cancer medicine could hit $150 billion in 2020.

Dow Holds Above 20,000 as Investors Focus on Earnings

The Dow Jones Industrial Average stayed firmly above 20,000 on Thursday, after breaching the milestone a day earlier, while losses in tech stocks weighed on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite indexes. Qualcomm fell 5.1 percent to $54.04 after the chipmaker reported a lower-than-expected rise in quarterly revenue.

CFTC Fines E*TRADE For Allegedly Destroying Customer Records

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission settled charges against Chicago-based E*Trade Securities LLC , an introducing broker, and E*Trade Clearing LLC, the firm’s futures broker-dealer, for record-keeping and supervision violations. According to the CFTC order, between October 2009 and January 25, 2014 E*Trade Securities and E*Trade Clearing allowed audit trail logs for their customers trades to be destroyed after 10 days rather than that maintaining them for use by regulators who use the records to monitor the firm’s compliance with laws and regulations.

Advisers could land $100 million payday from Actelion sale

Advisers could pocket up to $100 million in fees from Johnson & Johnson’s $30 billion acquisition of Swiss biotech firm Actelion , the largest takeover of a European healthcare business in more than a decade. Four investment banks will share the advisory pot; J&J could cough up $30-$40 million in fees to its advisers, Lazard and Citi, while Actelion is expected to pay $45-$60 million to Bank of America and Credit Suisse, according to estimates from Thomson Reuters/Freeman Consulting.

5 Things Schlumberger Management Wants You to Know About the Oil Market in 2017

If you want an idea of where the oil market is headed, the first thing you need to read is a conference call transcript from Schlumberger . As the world’s largest oil services company, it has connections with just about every producer out there, from the titan Saudi Aramco to the small mom-and-pop shops in the U.S. That extensive network gives the company a pretty good pulse of the market.

3 Dumb Mortgage Moves

Interest rates have been inching up, with the 30-year fixed mortgage rate recently approaching4%. According to the Federal Reserve and general expectations, they’ll continue rising in the coming years.