Updated Jan. 11, 2024 3:06 pm ET
Bitcoin’s trip to Main Street just took a detour.
Vanguard said Thursday it won’t offer the new spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds on its brokerage platform.
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Updated Jan. 10, 2024 5:56 pm ET
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission voted Wednesday to allow mainstream investors to buy and sell bitcoin as easily as stocks and mutual funds, a decision hailed by the industry as a game changer.
The SEC decision clears the way for the first U.S. exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin to be sold to the public. Expectations of U.S. regulatory approval for such funds drove the price of bitcoin to the highest level in about two years. The digital currency fell to just below $46,000 late Wednesday, up from $17,000 in January 2023.
Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has filed an application for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
There are currently no such products in the U.S. The SEC approved several bitcoin BTCUSD futures-based ETFs in the past, but has yet to greenlight anything that is backed by bitcoin itself.
BlackRock BLK will tap Coinbase Global…
BlackRock, Inc. engages in providing investment management, risk management, and advisory services for institutional and retail clients worldwide. Its products include single and multi-asset class portfolios investing in equities, fixed income, alternatives, and money market instruments. The company was founded by Susan L. Wagner, Robert Steven Kapito and Laurence Douglas Fink in 1988 and is headquartered in New York, NY.
BlackRock Inc.
BLK,
Chief Executive Larry Fink sold 35,799 BlackRock shares on Tuesday, according to a regulatory filing, garnering about $25 million in proceeds. That’s equal to about 7% of Fink’s stake in the company. The deal was executed in three trades at prices ranging from $694.00 to $696.35, according to the filing. The stock is down 1.7% in the year to date, while the S&P 500
SPX,
has gained 8%.
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https://www.barrons.com/articles/stock-market-movers-6336691f
U.S. stocks finished higher Friday, as investors weighed a flurry of bank earnings results for the fourth quarter and fresh data on consumer sentiment and inflation expectations.
All three major benchmarks also booked their best weekly percentage gains since Nov. 11, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
For the week, the Dow rose 2%, the S&P 500 advanced 2.7% and the Nasdaq gained 4.8% gain.
Read: Goldman Sachs sees these ‘prospective’ total returns across assets in 2023
Major stock indexes posted their best week of gains in two months on Friday after companies began reporting their fourth-quarter results, with big banks kicking off the earnings season.
No big surprises have come from the banks’ earnings results so far, with Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. indicating a potentially mild recession this year, according to Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial.
“I think the base case for most of the market right now is that we’re going to see a mild recession,” Saglimbene said in a phone interview Friday. “I don’t think anything that was said across bank earnings today surprised investors.”
Typically, the release of megabank earnings marks the unofficial start of the U.S. earnings reporting season, and market analysts will be watching closely this quarter for indications of how America’s largest companies are bracing for an expected economic downturn driven by higher interest rates.
JPMorgan
JPM,
Bank of America
BAC,
Wells Fargo & Co.
WFC,
and Citigroup
C,
were among banks that reported their fourth-quarter earnings Friday. JPMorgan was the top performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, with its shares closing 2.5% higher, FactSet data show.
Earnings will continue to be a “big focus” for markets this month, according to Saglimbene. “Analysts took down estimates pretty aggressively in the fourth quarter,” he said. “So the bar is pretty low for companies. We’ll see if they can hurdle past that.”
In U.S. economic data released Friday, the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index climbed in January to its highest level in nine months, as expectations for the rate of inflation one year out moderated.
“Signs that inflation has peaked and is moderating slowly kind of eases some of the anxiety that we’re going to see runaway inflation this year,” said Saglimbene.
A reading from the consumer-price index on Thursday showed U.S. inflation fell in December. Many investors are expecting that the Federal Reserve will slow its pace of interest rate hikes this year as the cost of living has cooled.
Read: Inflation slows again and clears path for slower Fed rate hikes
Stocks on Thursday pushed higher after St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard said the probability of a soft landing for the economy has increased due to “encouraging” inflation data.
Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, said by phone Friday that he still favors consumer-staples stocks and companies with “more steady streams than more cyclical streams” of income. “If you’re looking at an economy that’s likely to slow down, it’s really hard for me to think that somehow ‘the cyclicals’ will be immune from the economic cycle,” he said.
Read: Why earnings season could be a ‘market-moving event’
—Barbara Kollmeyer contributed to this article.