MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said that a series of strikes Monday across Ukraine came in retaliation against the Ukrainian attack on a bridge to Crimea and other attacks in Russia that he described as “terrorist” actions.
Putin said the Russian military launched precision weapons from the air, sea and ground to target key energy and military command facilities.
He warned that if Ukraine continues to mount “terrorist attacks” on Russia, Moscow’s response will be “tough and proportionate to the level of threats.”
The intense, hours-long attack marked a sudden military escalation by Moscow. It came a day after Putin called the explosion Saturday on the huge bridge connecting Russia to its annexed territory of Crimea a “terrorist act” masterminded by Ukrainian special services.
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian authorities said that a truck bomb on Saturday caused a fire and the collapse of a section of a bridge linking Russia-annexed Crimea with Russia — a key supply artery for Moscow’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine.
The attack on the bridge comes a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin turned 70, dealing him a humiliating blow that could lead him to up the ante in his war on Ukraine.
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said that the truck bomb caused seven railway cars carrying fuel to catch fire, resulting in a “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge.” The committee didn’t immediately apportion blame.
The Crimean Peninsula holds symbolic value for Russia and is key to sustaining its military operations in the south. If the bridge is made inoperable, it would make it significantly more challenging to ferry supplies to the peninsula. While Russia seized the areas north of Crimea early during the invasion and built a land corridor to it along the Sea of Azov, Ukraine is pressing a counteroffensive to reclaim them.
The bridge has train and automobile sections. Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee specified that the explosion and fire led to the collapse of the two sections of one of the two links of the automobile bridge, while another link was intact.
Authorities have suspended commuter train traffic across the bridge until further notice. Putin was informed about the explosion and he ordered the creation of a government panel to deal with the emergency.
The 19-kilometer (12-mile) bridge across the Kerch Strait linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov is the longest in Europe. It has provided an essential link to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge.
Russia opened the first part of the span to car traffic in May 2018. The parallel bridge for rail traffic opened the following year.
The $3.6 billion project is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea. It was Russia’s only land link to the peninsula until Russian forces seized more Ukrainian territory on the northern end of the Sea of Azov in heavy fighting, particularly around the city of Mariupol, earlier this year.
In August, Russia suffered a series of explosions at an airbase and munitions depot in Crimea, which underlined its vulnerability.
The truck bomb on the bridge occurred hours after explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early Saturday, sending towering plumes of smoke into the sky and triggering a series of secondary explosions.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that the early-morning explosions were the result of missile strikes in the center of the city. He said that the blasts sparked fires at one of the city’s medical institutions and a nonresidential building. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The blasts came hours after Russia concentrated attacks in its increasingly troubled invasion of Ukraine on areas it illegally annexed, while the death toll from earlier missile strikes on apartment buildings in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia rose to 14.
On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to human rights organizations in his Russia and Ukraine, and to an activist jailed in Belarus, an ally of Moscow.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, the committee’s chair, said the honor went to “three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence,” though it was widely seen as a rebuke to Putin and his conduct of Europe’s worst armed conflict since World War II.
Putin signed documents on Wednesday to illegally claim four regions of Ukraine as Russian territory, including the Zaporizhzhia region that is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, whose reactors were shut down last month.
That move was foreshadowed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, which was carried out after Moscow alleged residents of the peninsula had voted to join with Russia. That move was widely condemned, and prompted sanctions from the U.S. and the European Union.
A large number of U.S. COVID deaths could be prevented if patients would take Paxlovid, the antiviral developed by Pfizer PFE, -1.79%
that helps reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, according to White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha.
Jha told the New York Times that the average daily death count could be reduced to about 50 a day from 400 currently, if every American aged 50 and above that tests positive for the virus took a course of either Paxlovid or used monoclonal antibodies.
“The public doesn’t seem to understand that the evidence around hospitalization and deaths is really powerful,” Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco told the paper.
The issue seems to be a combination of worry about certain issues that Paxlovid can cause, including a strange metallic taste and the potential for “rebound COVID,” where patients quickly become reinfected after the five-day course of pills has been completed. That happened to both President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden recently.
The second reason is that many Americans — and Republicans, in particular — have refused to take COVID seriously and are not willing to take steps to reduce its impact. Trials have found Paxlovid to be effective across all age groups, but mostly among older patients. But as the COVID death rate for people under 50 is already close to zero, reducing it in a statistically significant way is difficult.
The news comes as U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, with data generally not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 41,605 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 25% from two weeks ago. Cases are declining in northeastern states including New York and New Jersey, while cases are rising in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,021, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 391.
• Molnupiravir, the COVID pill developed by Merck MRK, +0.18%
and privately held Ridgeback Therapeutics, produced mixed results in two recent studies, the companies said Thursday. Early data from a trial conducted in the U.K. by the University of Oxford found no evidence of a difference when molnupiravir was added to usual care in reducing hospitalizations and death. A second study conducted in Israel found a benefit in patients who were 65 and older, but no benefit for 40- to 60-year-olds.
• Homelessness is surging in the U.S. again as pandemic programs that halted evictions are being phased out, the Associated Press reported. The overall number of homeless people in a federal report to be released in the coming months is expected to be higher than the 580,000 unhoused before the coronavirus outbreak, the National Alliance to End Homelessness said. The AP tallied results from city-by-city surveys conducted earlier this year and found the number of people without homes is up overall compared with 2020 in areas reporting results so far.
• The idea was to have China in stable and tip-top shape when thousands of delegates gather in Beijing to usher in a historic third term in power for Xi Jinping, BBC News reported. However, the coronavirus is not playing nicely. In recent weeks, tens of millions of people have again been confined to their homes in lockdowns across 60 towns and cities, and this is bringing political pressure on the man who has become the most powerful Chinese figure since the first communist-era leader, Mao Zedong.
Covid-19 lockdowns, corruption crackdowns and more have put China’s economy on a potential crash course. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains how China’s economic downturn could harm the U.S. and the rest of the world. Illustration: David Fang
• A new COVID-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of available vaccines will likely limit booster uptake, Reuters reported. The omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of infections, but newer omicron subvariants are gaining ground. Hundreds of new forms of omicron are being tracked by scientists, the World Health Organization said this week.
The U.S. leads the world with 96.6 million cases and 1,062,130 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.8 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 110.5 million have had a booster, equal to 48.9% of the vaccinated population, and 24.8 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 37.9% of those who received a first booster.
Some 11.5 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants.
OSLO, Norway (AP) — This year’s Nobel Peace Prize is going to jailed Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian group Memorial and the Ukrainian organization Center for Civil Liberties, the award’s judges said Friday.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the judges wanted to honor ”three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence in the neighbor countries Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.”
“Through their consistent efforts in favor of human values and anti-militarism and principles of law, this year’s laureates have revitalized and honored Alfred Nobel’s vision of peace and fraternity between nations, a vision most needed in the world today,” she told reporters in Oslo.
The award follows a tradition of highlighting groups and activists trying to prevent conflicts, alleviate hardship and protect human rights.
Three scientists jointly won the prize in physics Tuesday. Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger had shown that tiny particles can retain a connection with each other even when separated, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, that can be used for specialized computing and to encrypt information.
French author Annie Ernaux won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature Thursday. The panel commended her for blending fiction and autobiography in books that fearlessly mine her experiences as a working-class woman to explore life in France since the 1940s.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in economics will be announced on Monday.
The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.
The U.S. is at risk of prolonging the COVID pandemic if it fails to back an initiative that aims to get vaccines, diagnostics and treatments to lower-income countries, a congressional group has told President Joe Biden.
In a letter to Biden from the group led by Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, the group urged him to back the World Trade Organization’s agreement in June to ease exports of lifesaving therapies.
“With more than 600 million shots in arms, 21,500 free testing sites, the ability to order at-home tests for free, and more treatments available now than at any point in the pandemic, the outlook in the United States is better than ever. Unfortunately, however, the prospect for many low-income countries is not so positive — putting the United States’ own success in jeopardy,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter was sent ahead of a meeting of the WTO council for trade-related aspects of IP rights that is due to kick off Thursday.
The group noted that lower-income countries are facing a higher risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death as only a small percentage of their populations are vaccinated. Just 19% of people in those countries are vaccinated, compared with about 75% in high-income countries, according to the Multilateral Leaders Taskforce on COVID-19, a joint initiative of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the WTO.
U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 43,149 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 23% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in most northeastern states by 10% of more, while cases in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon are rising.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,184, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 391.
The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes
• China’s huge Xinjiang region has been hit with sweeping COVID travel restrictions ahead of a key Communist Party congress later this month, the Associated Press reported. Trains and buses in and out of the region of 22 million people have been suspended, and passenger numbers on flights have been reduced to 75% of capacity in recent days, according to Chinese media reports. The region is home to minorities who have been forced into prison-like re-education centers to force them to renounce their religion, typically Islam, and allegedly subjected to human-rights abuses.
• Five current or former Internal Revenue Service workers have been charged with fraud for illegally getting money from federal COVID-19 relief programs and using a total of $1 million for luxury items and personal trips, prosecutors said, the AP reported. The U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said Tuesday that the five have been charged with wire fraud after they filed fake applications for the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, which were part of a federal stimulus package tied to the pandemic response in 2020.
• Peloton Interactive Inc. PTON, +3.84%
said it plans to cut about 500 jobs, roughly 12% of its remaining workforce, in the company’s fourth round of layoffs this year as the connected fitness-equipment maker tries to reverse mounting losses, the Wall Street Journal reported. After enjoying a strong run early on in the pandemic, Peloton has struggled since the start of the U.S. recovery, and CEO Barry McCarthy, who took over in February, said he is giving the unprofitable company another six months or so to significantly turn itself around and, if it fails, Peloton likely isn’t viable as a stand-alone company.
The U.S. leads the world with 96.6 million cases and 1,061,490 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.
Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of one of the new bivalent boosters that target the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.
A strong fall COVID booster campaign could save about 90,000 people living in the U.S. from dying of the virus and avoid more than 936,000 hospitalizations, according to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund.
As immunity wanes and new variants that can evade protection from early vaccines emerge, surges in hospitalizations and deaths are increasingly likely this fall and winter, the authors wrote. That makes it important that people get the bivalent boosters recently authorized by the Food and Drug Administration and help stop transmission, they wrote.
Researchers analyzed three scenarios to evaluate the impact of vaccination on reducing fatalities, hospitalizations and medical costs to both the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The first measured the outcome if daily vaccination rates remain unchanged from current levels; they have gradually declined since the first wave of the omicron variant. Federal financial support has also not been replenished, amid a perception among many Americans that the pandemic is over and as congressional Republicans oppose legislative efforts to continue the pandemic fight.
As of Oct. 3, some 68% of the U.S. population has had primary shots, but fewer than half of those have received a booster dose, and only 36% of those aged 50 and older have had a second booster.
The second and third Commonwealth Fund scenarios looked at outcomes if rates increased by the end of 2022.
In one scenario, researchers imagined booster uptake would track flu-shot coverage in 2020 to 2021. The other scenario assumed 80% of eligible individuals 5 and older get a booster by the end of 2022.
Source: Commonwealth Fund
The data found that more than 75,000 deaths could be prevented along with more than 745,000 hospitalizations if coverage reaches similar levels to 2021 to 2022 flu vaccination. The best scenario would save $56 billion in direct medical costs over the course of the next six months.
“Stratifying by insurance type, we found direct medical costs would be reduced by $11 billion for Medicare alone under scenario 1 and $13 billion under scenario 2,” the authors wrote. “An additional $3.5 to $4.5 billion in savings would accrue to Medicaid. Even if the federal government paid all vaccination costs, accelerated campaigns would generate more than $10 billion in net savings from federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.”
The study comes as U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, with data not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 44,484 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 22% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in most northeastern states by 10% of more, while cases in the are rising in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 12% at 27,334, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 393.
The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes
• Long COVID, a condition that can encompass symptoms such as respiratory distress, cough, “brain fog,” fatigue and malaise that last 12 weeks or longer after initial infection, is becoming a long-term challenge as both employers and workers navigate an ever-mutating virus, according to Liz Seegert, writing for NextAvenue.org. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in five COVID survivors younger than 65 experienced at least one incident that might be related to previous COVID-19 infection. Among those 65 and older, the rate was one in four. Their data also show that nearly three times as many people age 50 to 59 currently have long COVID than those 80 or older.
• A retired judge opened a public inquiry on Tuesday into how Britain handled the coronavirus pandemic, saying bereaved families and those who suffered would be at the heart of the proceedings, the Associated Press reported. Former Court of Appeal judge Heather Hallett said the inquiry would investigate the U.K.’s preparedness for a pandemic, how the government responded, and whether the “level of loss was inevitable or whether things could have been done better.”
With each mutation, the Covid-19 virus is becoming more transmissible. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez breaks down the science of how Covid variants are getting better at infecting and spreading. Illustration: Rami Abukalam
• Health experts are keeping an eye on new versions of the BA.5 omicron subvariant amid concerns those virus versions can evade the drugs developed to fight COVID, Salon reported. Of particular concern are two named BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, along with BA.2.75.2, which is spreading in Singapore, India and parts of Europe. Then there’s XBB, which some research suggest is the most antibody-evasive strain tested so far. The World Health Organization said in its weekly update on the virus that BA.5 descendent lineages continued to be dominant in the latest week, accounting for 80.8% of sequences shared through a global database. It also noted “increased diversity” within omicron and its lineages.
• Eiger BioPharmaecuticals Inc. EIGR, -5.01%
said Wednesday it will not pursue emergency authorization of its experimental treatment for mild and moderate COVID-19 infections. It had asked the Food and Drug Administration to consider an EUA application based on data from the Together trial, a Phase 3 study that has assessed 11 possible treatments for COVID-19 that is being conducted in Brazil and Canada. Eiger said the FDA instead recommended the company consider running its own pivotal trial for peginterferon lambda that would support full approval of the drug.
The U.S. leads the world with 96.5 million cases and 1,060,446 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.
Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.
The Republican Party has an edge again in the generic ballot, and that advantage has reached a level last seen in late July, according to a RealClearPolitics average for that closely watched indicator.
Republicans are now scoring 46.0% support in the RCP average of generic ballots, a percentage point ahead of Democrats at 45.0%.
The GOP hit a 1-point edge last Wednesday, then saw a dip, but as of Tuesday was back at that level, as shown in the chart below.
It’s not a big advantage, but it’s the best showing for Republicans in RCP’s data for generic ballots since July 28, as Democrats had the advantage for much of August and September.
The generic ballot refers to a poll question that asks voters which party they would support in a congressional election without naming individual candidates. Analysts tend to see it as a useful indicator.
Other websites focused on political analysis and forecasting, such as FiveThirtyEight, still show Democrats with an edge in their data for generic ballots.
Election Day for the midterm contests is now five weeks away. Democrats have focused their campaigns on abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s June decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, while Republicans have seized on Americans’ frustration with high inflation.
The additional chart below is interactive and shows RCP’s data for the generic ballot over a longer time frame.
Elon Musk would lose about 13.5 million Twitter followers, if he pushes through his plan to get rid of most spam accounts, according to data crunched by CodeClan, a Scottish digital skills academy.
The Tesla Inc. TSLA, -3.84%
CEO on Tuesday gave up a legal battle and agreed to pay $44 billion to take over the social-media company. Musk has said he wants less than 5% of Twitter TWTR, -2.35%
accounts to be spam.
But Musk’s losses pale in comparison with singer Justin Bieber, who would lose 27.6 million of his 114.2 million followers, according to the data.
Britney Spears would lose the highest percentage of fake followers out of the top 20 with some 48% of her 55.8 million followers being classified as fakes.
Former President Barack Obama would lose 19.3 million of his 131.9 million followers, the data shows.
Among other high profile names; Katy Perry has about 23.3 million fakes among her 108.9 million followers, or 21.4% of the total; Rihanna has about 26.5 million fakes, or 24.9% of her 106.5 million followers; Lady Gaga has 10.9 million fakes in her roster of 84.7 million followers, for 12.9% of the total; Kim Kardashian has about 14 million fakes, or 19.4% of her 72.4 million followers, and Ellen DeGeneres has about 24.4 million fakes, equal to 31.5% of her 77.5 million followers.
In the world of politics, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has about 17.5 million fakes in his 78.8 million followers, equal to 22.2% of the total.
CNN Breaking News has about 7.7 million fakes, or 12.2% of its 63.1 million followers. Bill Gates has about 14.3 million fakes, or 24.2% of his 58.9 million followers. And NASA has some 14.7 million fakes, or 26.8% of its 57.1 million followers.
Twitter shares were slightly lower premarket, while Tesla was down 1.1%.
Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC, +0.03%,
the special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, buying the company behind former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social social-media company, was slightly higher premarket after falling more than 5% Tuesday in the wake of the Musk/Twitter news.
The SPAC has fallen 67% in the year to date, while the S&P 500 SPX, -1.28%
has fallen 20%.
The Tesla Inc. TSLA, +2.90%
CEO agreed to buy the social media company back in April for $44 billion, but in recent months said he wanted to terminate the deal, publicly citing concerns about bots on the platform. The two sides had been entrenched in a legal battle over the past few months, and a Delaware Chancery Court judge was scheduled to hear arguments on the case in October, a case Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said Musk was “highly unlikely” to win.
Twitter users reacted to the news on Tuesday afternoon, many of them joking about a potential resolution to the seemingly never-ending Elon Musk Twitter saga.
One Twitter user said she believes Musk will look to reinstate the account of former President Donald Trump, which was banned shortly after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has claimed he won’t return to Twitter even if the Musk deal is executed, and he’ll continue to post on his platform, Truth Social.
“We’re doing a big platform right now, so I probably wouldn’t have any interest,” the former president said.
Another user tweeted that supporters of the meme crypto dogecoin DOGEUSD, +1.11%
are excited by Musk’s move to proceed with the deal. Musk has touted dogecoin on several occasions in the past few years.
Similar to bitcoin, dogecoin is a peer-to-peer, open-source cryptocurrency. It trades under the ticker symbol “DOGE” and features the face of the shiba inu from the popular Doge meme as its logo. Dogecoin was up as much as 9.16% after the Bloomberg news was published.
Musk has not publicly commented on the report, but one Twitter user pointed out that he tweeted about his satellite internet project Starlink after the news broke, but did not mention Twitter in any way.
Shares of Tesla Inc. dipped after the news, and are now up just 1.31% during Tuesday’s trading. Shares of the EV maker were up as much as 5.65% on the day before the Musk news.
When the stock market has jumped two days in a row, as it has now, it is easy to become complacent.
But the Federal Reserve isn’t finished raising interest rates, and recession talk abounds. Stock investors aren’t out of the woods yet. That can make dividend stocks attractive if the yields are high and the companies produce more cash flow than they need to cover the payouts.
Below is a list of 21 stocks drawn from the S&P Composite 1500 Index SP1500, +3.12%
that appear to fit the bill. The S&P Composite 1500 is made up of the S&P 500 SPX, +3.06%,
the S&P 400 Mid Cap Index MID, +3.18%
and the S&P Small Cap 600 Index SML, +3.80%.
The purpose of the list is to provide a starting point for further research. These stocks may be appropriate for you if you are looking for income, but you should do your own assessment to form your own opinion about a company’s ability to remain competitive over the next decade.
Cash flow is key
One way to measure a company’s ability to pay dividends is to look at its free cash flow yield. Free cash flow is remaining cash flow after planned capital expenditures. This money can be used to pay for dividends, buy back shares (which can raise earnings and cash flow per share), or fund acquisitions, organic expansion or for other corporate purposes.
If we divide a company’s estimated annual free cash flow per share by its current share price, we have its estimated free cash flow yield. If we compare the free cash flow yield to the current dividend yield, we may see “headroom” for cash to be deployed in ways that can benefit shareholders.
For this screen, we began with the S&P Composite 1500, then narrowed the list as follows:
Dividend yield of at least 5.00%.
Consensus free cash flow estimate available for calendar 2023, among at least five analysts polled by FactSet. We used calendar-year estimates, even though fiscal years for many companies don’t match the calendar.
Estimated 2023 free cash flow yield of at least double the current dividend yield.
For real-estate investment trusts, dividend-paying ability is measured by funds from operations (FFO), a non-GAAP figure that adds depreciation and amortization back to earnings. Adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) takes this a step further, subtracting cash expected to be used to maintain properties. So for the two REITs on the list, the FCF yield column makes use of AFFO.
For many companies in the financial sector, especially banks and insurers, free cash flow figures aren’t available, so the screen made use of earnings-per-share estimates. These are generally considered to run close to actual cash flow for these heavily regulated industries.
Here are the 21 companies that passed the screen, with dividend yields of at least 5% and estimated 2023 FCF yields at least twice the current payout. They are sorted by dividend yield:
Any stock screen has its limitations. If you are interested in stocks listed here, it is best to do your own research, and it is easy to get started by clicking the tickers in the table for more information about each company. Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information for free on the MarketWatch quote page.
For the “estimated FCF yields,” consensus free cash flow estimates for calendar 2023 were used for all companies except the following:
For the REITs, (Uniti Group Inc. UNIT, +7.36%
and Macerich Co. MAC, +8.18%
), consensus AFFO estimates were used.
Consensus EPS estimates were used for Prudential Financial Inc. PRU, +5.66%,
Invesco Ltd. IVZ, +6.76%
and Franklin Resources Inc. BEN, +4.37%.
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk now plans to close his proposed $44 billion deal for Twitter Inc., according to a Tuesday filing that arrived less than two weeks before a judge was scheduled to hear a case on the disputed acquisition.
Musk’s lawyers sent a letter to Twitter’s management team indicating that he was proposing to move forward with the original acquisition terms late Monday, and that letter was released as a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday afternoon. A Twitter spokesperson later confirmed to MarketWatch that the company intended to proceed with the deal for $54.20 a share.
Twitter TWTR, +22.24%
shares jumped 22.2% to $52 in Tuesday’s session, after an hours-long trading halt that started after Bloomberg News first reported the move around noon Eastern time, suggesting a possible end to the legal saga between the two parties. The increase is the second best daily percentage gain on record for Twitter stock, behind only the 27.1% gain experienced when Musk disclosed his initial ownership stake in Twitter in April. Twitter was the best performing stock Tuesday in the S&P 500 index SPX, +3.06%,
and is now up 20.3% on the year.
The two sides have been locked in a legal battle for months, and a Delaware Chancery Court judge was expected to hear from both sides in a five-day trial slated to begin Oct. 17. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the Delaware judge asked the two sides to come up with a plan by the end of the day that could bring about an end to the litigation.
“Musk could see the writing on the wall that he was going to lose the trial,” said Josh White, an assistant finance professor at Vanderbilt University, in an email to MarketWatch. “By doing this, he can save legal costs, time and ultimately losing in a very public trial.”
Musk agreed in April to buy Twitter in a deal that valued the company at roughly $44 billion, but he later said that he was terminating the deal. The Tesla TSLA, +2.90%
CEO cited concerns about bot activity on Twitter and said he believed the company’s management team wasn’t accurate in its public disclosures about the extent of spam activity on the platform.
White noted that text messages released in conjunction with the case showed that Musk was aware of Twitter’s bot issue before going forward with his original deal offer, and he doubted that Musk would be able to show that “something really changed” after that point.
“If he offered less than $54.20, Twitter might have proceeded with the trial, and he would be deposed,” White continued. “By offering the original price, he maximizes the chance that Twitter accepts and the trial ends. I expect Twitter’s board to accept the deal and for it to close rather quickly.”
Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives agreed that the Tesla leader’s latest move marked a “clear sign that Musk recognized heading into Delaware Court that the chances of winning vs. Twitter board was highly unlikely and this $44 billion deal was going to be completed one way or another,” he wrote in a note to clients. “Being forced to do the deal after a long and ugly court battle in Delaware was not an ideal scenario and instead accepting this path and moving forward with the deal will save a massive legal headache.”
Vanderbilt’s White noted that a deal at the original price would be a “big” win for Twitter shareholders.
“The stock price of Snap SNAP, +8.42%
and Twitter seemed to trade around the same price level before the offer,” he told MarketWatch. “Snap is now a ~$10 stock with a $17 billion market cap. So Twitter’s shareholders win by getting $54.20 rather than having the price drop to $10-20 per share.”
Additionally, he deemed Delaware business law another winner: “This deal shows that even the richest man in the world cannot overcome well-written contracts enforced in a neutral and fair way by the Delaware courts.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dropped its country-by-country COVID-19 travel health notices that it began issuing early in the pandemic, the Associated Press reported.
The reason: Fewer countries are testing for the virus or reporting the number of COVID cases. That limits the CDC’s ability to calculate travelers’ risk, according to the agency.
CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said the agency will only post a travel health notice for an individual country if a situation such as a troubling new variant of the virus changes CDC travel recommendations for that country.
The CDC still recommends that travelers remain up-to-date on vaccines and follow recommendations found on its international travel page.
A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research has confirmed that political affiliations played a key role as a risk factor for dying of COVID, finding evidence that Republican-leaning counties suffered higher death rates than Democratic-leaning ones.
“We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states,” the authors, Jacob Wallace and Jason L. Schwartz of the Yale School of Public Health, and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham of the Yale School of Management wrote.
“Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats.”
The researchers used data from Ohio and Florida and matched 2017 voter registration data with mortality data from 2018 to 2021. They also found a link between political affiliation and views on vaccines, with Republican-leaning counties showing far lower vaccination rates.
Source: NBER paper
In the U.S., known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 45,495 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 24% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in 11 states plus Washington, D.C. They are up by double-digit percentages in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,854, while the daily average for deaths is down 12% to 386.
• Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. NCLH, +16.84%
is removing all COVID testing, vaccination and masking requirements from its health and safety protocols. The company said the new protocols, which follows “significant, positive progress” in the public health environment, will be effective Oct. 4. “Health and safety are always our first priority; in fact, we were the health and safety leaders from the very start of the pandemic,” said Chief Executive Harry Sommer. “Many travelers have been patiently waiting to take their long-awaited vacation at sea and we cannot wait to celebrate their return.”
• Ringo Starr has test positive for COVID, forcing the former Beatle to cancel scheduled concerts in Canada with his All Starr Band, the AP reported. Five concert dates from Tuesday to Sunday — in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Lethbridge, Alberta; and the British Columbia cities of Abbotsford and Penticton — will be rescheduled. “Ringo hopes to resume as soon as possible and is recovering at home. As always, he and the All Starrs send peace and love to their fans and hope to see them back out on the road soon,” said a statement from the band.
The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes
• A federal appeals court in New Orleans on Monday became the latest to hear arguments on whether President Joe Biden overstepped his authority with an order that federal contractors require that their employees be vaccinated against COVID, the AP reported separately. The contractor mandate has a complicated legal history. It is being challenged in more than a dozen federal court districts, and the mandate has been blocked or partially blocked in 25 states.
• The Chinese resort city of Sanya has ordered all tourists to take PCR tests, and those who fail to do so by noon on Tuesday will be slapped with a yellow code restricting their mobility, according to local officials, the South China Morning Post reported. The city in the southern province of Hainan logged two asymptomatic Covid-19 cases on Monday. It carried out a round of mass testing and locked down several areas in Haitang district, including a scenic island that received around 2,000 tourists on Monday.
The U.S. leads the world with 96.4 million cases and 1,059,888 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.
Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.
Stocks declined again on Friday, closing out September with large losses across the board as the rally from the June lows partway through August faded into memory.
The S&P 500 SPX, -1.51%
fell 1.5% on Friday. The benchmark index slumped 9.3% for September, leading to a 2022 loss of 24.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.71%
gave up 1.7% on Friday, for a September decline of 8.8%. The Dow has now fallen 20.9% for 2022. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -1.51%
pulled back 1.5% on Friday for a September drop of 10.5% and a year-to-date plunge of 32.4%. (All price changes in this article exclude dividends.)
Below is a list of stocks in the S&P 500 that fell the most during September.
Nike Inc. NKE, -12.81%
was down 13% on Friday for a September decline of 22%, after the company warned that discounting to clear inventory would continue to affect its earnings performance. Here’s how analysts reacted.
Most financial planners advise young people to start saving early — and often — for retirement so they can take advantage of the so-called eighth wonder of the world – the power of compound interest.
And many advisers routinely urge those entering the workforce to contribute to their 401(k), especially when their employer is matching some portion of the amount the worker is contributing. The matching contribution is – essentially – free money.
New research, however, indicates that many young people should not save for retirement.
The reason has to do with something called the life-cycle model, which suggests that rational individuals allocate resources over their lifetimes with the aim of avoiding sharp changes in their standard of living.
Put another way, individuals, according to the model which dates back to economists Franco Modigliani, a Nobel Prize winner, and Richard Brumberg in the early 1950s, seek to smooth what economists call their consumption, or what normal people call their spending.
According to the model, young workers with low income dissave; middle-aged workers save a lot; and retirees spend down their savings.
Source: Bogleheads.org
The just-published research examines the life-cycle model even further by looking at high- and low-income workers, as well as whether young workers should be automatically enrolled in 401(k) plans. What the researchers found is this:
1. High-income workers tend to experience wage growth over their careers. And that’s the primary reason why they should wait to save. “For these workers, maintaining as steady a standard of living as possible therefore requires spending all income while young and only starting to save for retirement during middle age,” wrote Jason Scott, the managing director of J.S. Retirement Consulting; John Shoven, an economics professor at Stanford University; Sita Slavov, a public policy professor at George Mason University; and John Watson, a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
2. Low-income workers, whose wage profiles tend to be flatter, receive high Social Security replacement rates, making optimal saving rates very low.
Middle-aged workers will need to save more later
In an interview, Scott discussed what some might view as a contrary-to-conventional wisdom approach to saving for retirement.
Why does one save for retirement? In essence, Scott said, it’s because you want to have the same standard of living when you’re not working as you did while you were working.
“The economic model would suggest ‘Hey, it’s not smart to live really high in the years when you’re working and really low when you’re retired,’” he said. “And so, you try to smooth that out. You want to save when you have relatively high income to support yourself when you have relatively low income. That’s really the core of the life-cycle model.”
But why would you spend all your income when you’re young and not save?
“In the life-cycle model, we are assuming you are getting the absolute most happiness you can out of income each year,” said Scott. “In other words, you are doing your best at age 25 with $25,000, and there is no way to live ‘cheaply’ and do better,” he said. “We also assume a given amount of money is more valuable to you when you are poor compared to when you are wealthy.” (Meaning $1,000 means a lot more at 25 than at 45.)
Scott also said that young workers might also consider securing a mortgage to buy a house rather than save for retirement. The reasons? You’re borrowing against future earnings to help that consumption, plus, you’re building equity that could be used to fund future consumption, he said.
Are young workers squandering the advantage of time?
Many institutions and advisers recommend just the opposite of what the life-cycle model suggests. They recommend that workers should have a certain amount of their salary salted away for retirement at certain ages in order to fund their desired standard of living in retirement. T. Rowe Price, for instance, suggests that a 30-year-old should have half their salary saved for retirement; a 40-year-old should have 1.5 times to 2 times their salary saved; a 50-year-old should have 3 times to 5.5 times their salary saved; and a 65-year-old should have 7 times to 13.5 times their salary saved.
Scott doesn’t disagree that workers should have savings benchmarks as a multiple of income. But he said a high-income worker who waits until middle age to save for retirement can easily reach the later-age benchmarks. “Savings for retirement probably is more in the zero range until 35 or so,” Scott said. “And then it is probably faster after that because you want to accumulate the same amount.”
Plus, he noted, the home equity a worker has could count toward the savings benchmark as well.
So, what about all the experts who say young people are best positioned to save because they have such a long timeline? Aren’t young workers just squandering that advantage?
Not necessarily, said Scott.
“First: saving earns interest, so you have more in the future,” he said. “However, in economics, we assume that people prefer money today compared to money in the future. Sometimes this is called a time discount. These effects offset each other, so it depends on the situation as to which is more significant. Given interest rates are so low, we generally think time discounts exceed interest rates.”
And second, Scott said, “early saving could have a benefit from the power of compounding, but the power of compounding is certainly irrelevant when after-inflation interest rates are 0% – as they have been for years.”
In essence, Scott said, the current environment makes a front-loaded lifetime spending profile optimal.
Low-income workers don’t need to save either
As for those with low income, say in the 25th percentile, Scott said it’s less about the “income ramp that really moves saving” and more that Social Security is extremely progressive; it replaces a large percentage of one’s preretirement income. “The natural need to save is not there when Social Security replaces 70, 80, 90% (of one’s preretirement income),” he said.
In essence, the more Social Security replaces of your preretirement income, the less you’ll need to save. The Social Security Administration and others are currently researching what percent of preretirement income Social Security replaces by income quintile, but previously published research from 2014 shows that Social Security represented nearly 84% of the lowest income quintile’s family income in retirement while it only represented about 16% of the highest income quintile’s family income in retirement.
Source: Social Security Administration
Is it worth auto-enrolling young workers in a 401(k) plan?
Scott and his co-authors also show that the “welfare costs” of automatically enrolling younger workers in defined-contribution plans—if they are passive savers who do not opt-out immediately—can be substantial, even with employer matching. “If saving is suboptimal, saving by default creates welfare costs; you’re doing the wrong thing for this population,” he said.
Welfare costs, according to Scott, are the costs of taking an action compared to the best possible action. “For example, suppose you wanted to go to restaurant A, but you were forced to go to restaurant B,” he said. “You would have suffered a welfare loss.”
In fact, Scott said young workers who are automatically enrolled into their 401(k) might consider when they’re in their early 30s taking the money out of their retirement plan, paying whatever penalty and taxes they might incur, and use the money to improve their standard of living.
“It’s optimal for them to take the money and use it to improve their spending,” said Scott. “It would be better if there weren’t penalties.”
Why is this so? “If I didn’t understand that I was being defaulted into a 401(k) plan, and I didn’t want to save, then I suffered a welfare loss,” said Scott. “We assume people figure out after five years that they were defaulted. At that point, they want their money out of the 401(k), and they are optimally willing to pay the 10% penalty to get their money out.”
Scott and his colleagues assessed welfare costs by figuring out how much they have to compensate young workers at that five-year point so that they are OK with having been inappropriately forced to save. Of course, the welfare costs would be lower if they didn’t have to pay the penalty to cash out their 401(k).
And what about workers who are automatically enrolled in a 401(k)? Are they not creating a savings habit?
Not necessarily. “The person who is confused and defaulted doesn’t really know it’s happening,” said Scott. “Maybe they’re getting a savings habit. They’re certainly living without the money.”
Scott also addressed the notion of giving up free money – the employer match — by not saving for retirement in an employer-sponsored retirement plan. For young workers, he said the match isn’t enough to overcome the cost of, say, five years of below-optimal spending. “If you think it’s for retirement, the match-improved benefit in retirement doesn’t overcome the cost of losing money when you’re poor,” said Scott. “I’m simply noting that if you are not consciously making the choice to save, it is hard to argue you are making a saving habit. You did figure out how to live on less, but in this case, you did not want to, nor do you intend to continue saving.”
The research raises questions and risks that must be addressed
There are plenty of questions the research raises. For instance, many experts say it’s a good idea to get in the habit of saving, to pay yourself first. Scott doesn’t disagree. For instance, a person might save to build an emergency fund or a down payment on a house.
As for the folks who might say you’re losing the power of compounding, Scott had this to say: “I think the power of compounding is challenged when real interest rates are 0%.” Of course, one could earn more than 0% real interest but that would mean taking on additional risk.
“The principle is about, ‘Should you save when you are relatively poor so you can have more when you are relatively rich?’ The life-cycle model says, ‘No way.’ This is independent of how you invest money between time periods,” Scott said. “For investing, our model does look at riskless interest rates. We argue that investment expected returns and risks are in equilibrium, so the core result is unlikely to change by introducing risky investments. However, it is definitely a limitation of our approach.”
Scott agreed there are risks to be acknowledged, as well. It’s possible, for instance, that Social Security, because of cuts to benefits, might not replace a low-income worker’s preretirement salary as much as it does now. And it’s possible that a worker might not experience high wage growth. What about people having to buy into the life-cycle model?
“You don’t have to buy into all of it,” said Scott. “You have to buy into this notion: You want to save when you’re relatively rich in order to spend when you’re relatively poor.”
So, isn’t this a big assumption to make about people’s career/pay trajectory?
“We consider relatively rich wage profiles and relatively poor wage profiles,” said Scott. “Both suggest young people should not save for retirement. I think the vast majority of median wage or higher workers experience a wage increase over their first 20 years of working. However, there is certainly risk in wages. I think you could rightly argue that young people might want to save some as a precaution against unexpected wage declines. However, this would not be saving for retirement.”
So, should you wait to save for retirement until you’re in your mid-30s? Well, if you subscribe to the life-cycle model, sure, why not? But if you subscribe to conventional wisdom, know that consumption might be lower in your younger years than it needs to be.
About half of the American public has heard little or nothing about the new COVID-19 bivalent booster, a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation has found. The new booster targets the omicron variants that have become dominant around the world.
One in five of those surveyed said they had heard “nothing at all” about the new boosters. Some 17% said they had heard “a lot” about the boosters, while 33% said they had heard “some” about the new shots. About a third said they’d already gotten the new booster or intended to do so as soon as possible.
“Intention is somewhat higher among older adults, one of the groups most at risk for serious complications of a coronavirus infection,” the authors wrote. “Almost half (45%) of adults ages 65 and older say they have gotten the bivalent booster or intend to get it ‘as soon as possible.’”
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
The news will likely disappoint health experts who cheered the regulatory authorization of the new boosters in August. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorization to boosters developed by Moderna MRNA, +1.36%
and by Pfizer PFE, -0.07%
and German partner BioNTech BNTX, +1.53%
for use in people aged 12 and older who have had an initial series of a COVID vaccine, including those who have already had one or more booster doses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that all adults get one of the bivalent boosters at least two months after completing a primary series of shots. So far, some 7.6 million people in the U.S. have received it, according to the CDC.
Once again, the country’s partisan divide is evident, with 6 in 10 Democrats saying they’ve already had the shot or will get it soon, compared with 1 in 8 Republicans.
“Notably, 20% of Republicans say they will ‘definitely not’ get the new COVID-19 booster dose, while a further 38% of Republicans are unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated and therefore not eligible for the new updated COVID-19 booster dose,” the survey authors said.
In the U.S., known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where data are not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 47,569 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 26% from two weeks ago and now at the lowest level since late April. Cases are rising in 14 states and are sharply higher in several. Montana leads the count with a 75% rise in the last two weeks, followed by Washington with a 48% rise. Cases are up by double digits in Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 13% to 28,639, while the daily average for deaths was down 11% to 407.
The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual COVID shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to COVID could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes
• The U.K. is the only G-7 country whose economy is smaller now than before the pandemic, the Guardian reported, citing data released Friday by the Office for National Statistics. The ONS released figures showing that rather than the economy being 0.6% larger than it was in February 2020, a combination of a deeper recession during the pandemic and a weak recovery had left it 0.2% smaller. All the other major economies in the G-7, including France and Italy, recovered strongly enough to be larger than they were in February 2020.
• Taiwan is the latest country to end mandatory COVID quarantines for people arriving from overseas, the Associated Press reported. Officials said that beginning Oct. 13, the previous weeklong quarantine requirement would be replaced with a seven-day self-monitoring period. A rapid antigen test will still be required upon arrival, but people showing no symptoms will be allowed to take public transportation.
• Germany’s health ministry is warning of a rise of COVID cases heading into the fall and is urging older people in particular to get a second booster shot, the AP reported separately. Other European countries such as France, Denmark and the Netherlands are also recording an increase in cases, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach told reporters in Berlin. “We are clearly at the start of a winter wave,” he said.
COVID-19 lockdowns, corruption crackdowns and more have put China’s economy on a potential crash course with the U.S. and the rest of the world, the Wall Street Journal’s Dion Rabouin explains. Illustration: David Fang
• The first Chinese mRNA-based COVID vaccine has received government approval — in Indonesia, the New York Times reported. The shot, developed by Walvax Biotechnology 300142, +0.49%,
Suzhou Abogen Biosciences and the Chinese military, was cleared this week by Indonesia for emergency use. Countries all over the world, including Indonesia, have embraced mRNA vaccines, and they are considered among the most effective vaccines that the world has to offer. But more than two years into the pandemic, they are not yet available in China, which has relied on an increasingly draconian “zero-COVID” approach to keep cases and deaths from the virus low.
• Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a supporter of Russia’s war on Ukraine, has tested positive for COVID-19, the church’s press service said on Friday, Reuters reported. The church said Kirill, 75, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had canceled all his planned trips and events and had “severe symptoms” requiring bed rest and isolation. It said his condition was “satisfactory.”
The U.S. leads the world with 96.3 million cases and 1,059,291 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.
This week Freddie Mac said the average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage loan in the U.S. had climbed to 6.70% from 6.29% the week before and 6.02% two weeks ago. The average rate a year ago was 3.01%.
Would-be sellers who have low-rate mortgage loans are reluctant if it means they need to take out a new loan to fund their next home. Would-be buyers are forced out of the market, as the monthly principal and interest payment for a new 30-year loan, based on Freddie Mac’s figures, has increased 53% from a year ago.
Home-sale contracts are being canceled at a record pace in some areas.
The dollar has strengthened as the Federal Reserve has taken the lead among central banks in raising interest rates. This is reverberating across the world, making it more costly for countries to make interest payments on dollar-denominated debt and increasing the cost of any commodity traded in dollars.
The rising dollar lowers prices on imported goods for Americans and can also lower their international travel costs. But Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s chief equity strategist, warns that earnings for the S&P 500 SPX, -1.51%
would decline as a direct result of the strong dollar and called the current foreign-exchange backdrop an “untenable situation” for the stock market.
This is what happens when bearish sentiment runs high
Michael Brush interviews David Baron, co-manager of the Baron Focused Growth Fund BFGFX, -0.76%,
who describes opportunities cropping up as institutional investors dump stocks. He also explains his winning long-term strategy, which has included a very long-term investment in Tesla Inc. TSLA, -1.10%.
When interest rates rise, bond prices fall. But it also means that if you have money to put to work, bond yields have become much more attractive.
Khuram Chaudhry, a European equity quantitative strategist at JPMorgan in London, makes the case for buying bonds now.
What about preferred stocks?
Getty Images/iStockphoto
Preferred stocks feature stated dividend yields and prices that move the same way bond prices do. That means prices for many issues are now heavily discounted to face value and that current yields are much higher than they were at the end of 2021. Here’s an in-depth guide on how to research preferred stocks and make your own selections.
Stanley Druckenmiller predicted a “hard landing” in 2023 for the U.S. economy while speaking at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha Investor Summit on Sept. 28.
Bloomberg
Stanley Druckenmiller predicted a U.S. recession in 2023 as a result of monetary policy tightening by the Federal Reserve. That may not be much of a stretch, considering that the U.S. economy contracted during the first half of 2022, according to revised GDP figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
After the new U.K. government of Prime Minister Liz Truss announced a massive tax cut along with a new spending program to help counter rising fuel costs and new borrowing, the pound hit a new low against the dollar on Sept. 26 as investors and money managers panicked and sold-off U.K. government bonds. Steve Goldstein explains how and why the Bank of England came tot the rescue.
After Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the upcoming Cybertruck would be sufficiently waterproof to “serve briefly as a boat,” the San Francisco Bay Ferry offered this advice to patrons.
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Russian authorities are opening more military enlistment offices near Russia’s borders in an apparent effort to intercept some of the Russian men of fighting age who are trying to flee the country by land to avoid being called up to fight in Ukraine.
A new draft office opened at the Ozinki checkpoint in the Saratov region on Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, regional officials said Thursday. Another enlistment center was set to open at a crossing in the Astrakhan region, also on the border with Kazakhstan.
Earlier this week, makeshift Russian draft offices were set up near the Verkhny Lars border crossing into Georgia in southern Russia and near the Torfyanka checkpoint on Russia’s border with Finland. Russian officials said they would hand call-up notices to all eligible men who were trying to leave the country.
Over 194,000 Russian citizens have fled to neighboring Georgia, Kazakhstan and Finland — most often by car, bicycle or on foot — since Russian President Vladimir Putin last week announced a partial mobilization of reservists. In Russia, the vast majority of men under age 65 are registered as reservists.
The Kremlin has said it plans to call-up some 300,000 people, but Russian media reported that the number could be as high as 1.2 million, a claim that Russian officials have denied.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has promised to only draft those who have combat or service experience, but according to multiple media reports and human rights advocates, men who don’t fit the criteria are also being rounded up.
The official decree on mobilization, signed by Putin last week, is concise and vague, fueling fears of a broader draft.
In an apparent effort to calm the population, Putin told Russia’s Security Council on Thursday that mistakes had been made in the mobilization. He said that Russian men mistakenly called up for service should be sent back home, and that only reservists with proper training and specialties should be summoned to serve.
“It’s necessary to deal with each such case independently, but if there is a mistake, I repeat, it must be fixed. It’s necessary to bring back those who were drafted without proper reason,” Putin stressed.
The mass exodus of Russian men — alone or with their families or friends — began Sept. 21, shortly after Putin’s address to the nation, and continued all this week. Airline tickets to destinations abroad have sold out days in advance, even at unprecedentedly high prices.
Long lines of cars formed on roads leading to Russia’s borders. Russian authorities tried to stem the outflow by turning back some men at the borders, citing mobilization laws, or setting up draft offices at border checkpoints.
The bus stations in Samara and Tolyatti, two large Russian cities in the Samara region, on Thursday halted service to Uralsk, a border city in Kazakhstan.
Finland announced that it would ban Russian citizens with tourist visas from entering the country starting Friday. With the exception of Norway, which has only one border crossing with Russia, Finland has provided the last easily accessible land route to Europe for Russian holders of European Schengen-zone visas. The Nordic country has taken in tens of thousands of people fleeing the military call-up in recent days.
Trevor Noah is leaving Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” after seven years.
The South African comedian made the announcement at the end of the taping of Thursday’s show, after thanking the audience for their support. “It’s been absolutely amazing. After seven years, my time is up,” he said. “But in the most beautiful way.”
“Honestly, I’ve loved hosting the show. It’s been one of my greatest challenges. It’s been one of my greatest joys,” he added. ” I have loved trying to figure out how to make people laugh, even when the stories are particularly shitty on the worst days.”
Noah took over hosting the satirical news show from Jon Stewart in 2015.
He hosted the show from his apartment for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, before returning to the studio last year. During Noah’s tenure, “The Daily Show” shifted its focus, from snarky mocking of conservatives under Stewart to a more youth-focused, social-advocacy messages (though conservatives were still regularly mocked).
Noah did not give a departure date, and said he will continue hosting the show for the “time being.”
“We are grateful to Trevor for our amazing partnership over the past seven years,” Paramount Global’s PARA, -4.44%
Comedy Central said in a statement Thursday night. “With no timetable for his departure, we’re working together on next steps. As we look ahead, we’re excited for the next chapter in the 25+ year history of The Daily Show as it continues to redefine culture through sharp and hilarious social commentary, helping audiences make sense of the world around them.”
“The Daily Show” has been Emmy-nominated for “outstanding variety talk series” every year Noah has hosted, but has never won, losing to former “Daily Show” cast member John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” on HBO each year, though it did win an Emmy for “best short-form variety show” in 2018.
New York Yankees star Aaron Judge hit his 61st home run of the season Wednesday night, tying the American League record — but leaving at least one person with good reason to frown, despite having just witnessed baseball history firsthand.
A Toronto Blue Jays fan sitting in the left-field stands at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, where Judge blasted the home run that tied fellow Yankees slugger Roger Maris for the league single-season record, was almost ideally positioned — and even equipped — for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Unfortunately, the ball glanced off his glove and landed in the Blue Jays bullpen below.
And a potentially huge payoff slipped through his fingers.
The fan was later revealed to be a 37-year-old Toronto restaurant owner, who reportedly gave his name as Frankie Lasagna to the Canadian Press. He said normally he “would never ever bring a glove other than this situation,” with his left-field seat a reasonably likely landing spot for a home run by the right-handed-hitting Judge and history on the line.
In video footage, the fan appears visibly upset after missing the ball and his chance to be a bit player in baseball history. “The disbelief comes over you and just the shock and the amazement,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I almost had it.’ “
David Kohler, CEO of California auction house SCP Auctions Inc., estimated the value of a ball hit for Judge’s home 61st home run could be between $200,000 and $250,000. And if this was Judge’s last home-run ball of the season, it could end up being valued at more than $1 million.
“The Yankees are beloved,” Kohler said. “Aaron Judge is beloved. There’s no negativity here like the steroid era in the past.” (The only players to have hit more than 61 home runs in a season have been linked with performance-enhancing drugs and played for National League clubs.)
The moment went viral on Twitter after the game.
The historic ball landed in the Blue Jays bullpen and eventually made its way to Judge. The Yankees star didn’t keep it for long, however, as a video of Judge gifting the ball to his mother was posted on Twitter TWTR, -1.18%
after the game.
“It’s a moment that I’ll never forget. I’ll cherish it,” the Yankees right fielder said. “Having my mom here supporting me — she’s been here through it all. That’s for sure. The Little League days. Getting me ready for school. Taking me to my first couple of practices and games. Being there for my first professional game and being there when I debuted and now getting chance to be here. This is something special. We’re not done yet.”
Judge tied the AL record held since 1961 by Maris, who also manned right field in the Bronx. Maris made $32,000 during that 1961 season with the Yankees, which would be worth around 10 times that today, according to Saving.org. Judge is considered undercompensated with his 2022 season salary of $19 million, according to contract data from Spotrac.
The numbers: Mortgage rates continue to march towards 7%, continuing to pressure potential homeowners looking to buy a home.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.7% as of Sept. 29, according to data released by Freddie Mac FMCC, +0.75%
on Thursday.
Mortgage rates are up as the Federal Reserve pushed key interest rates up to deal with the worst inflation the country has seen in 40 years.
That’s up 41 basis points from the previous week — one basis point is equal to one hundredth of a percentage point, or 1% of 1%.
The rise in rates is bad news for prospective buyers, as it potentially adds hundreds of dollars to their mortgage payments.
Mortgage rates are now at highs last seen since mid-2007. To put the latest rate in perspective: A year ago, the 30-year was at 3.01%.
“Mortgage rates are now at highs last seen since mid-2007. To put the latest rate in perspective: A year ago, the 30-year was at 3.01%.”
Bloomberg’s chief economist Michael McDonough said a $2,500 monthly mortgage payment — with 20% down — would have gotten a buyer a $758,000 home last year.
This year? You’d get a lot less house — with $2,500 per month, you’d only be able to afford a $476,000 home, he wrote on Twitter TWTR, -1.12%.
The median price of an existing home in the U.S. was $389,500 in August, down from $403,800 the previous month, the National Association of Realtors said.
The average rate on the 15-year mortgage also rose over the past week to 5.96%. The adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 5.3%, up from the prior week.
“The uncertainty and volatility in financial markets is heavily impacting mortgage rates,” Sam Khater, chief economist at Freddie Mac, said in a statement.
Khater added that Freddie Mac’s survey of lenders revealed a large dispersion in rates, so home buyers should shop around with lenders to find a good quote.
Mortgage applications also fell in the latest week, as cautious buyers continue to pull back as rates march towards 7%.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.784%
rose slightly above 3.8% in morning trading on Thursday.
Got thoughts on the housing market? Write to MarketWatch reporter Aarthi Swaminathan at aarthi@marketwatch.com
