Stock futures opened flat Tuesday night immediately after a recovery rally for the duration of the regular investing working day, with the major equity indexes recouping some losses soon after a few consecutive classes of declines.
Contracts on the S&P 500 ticked up. Futures on the Nasdaq were very little changed, after the tech-hefty index outperformed to soar 2.4{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} all through Tuesday’s session.
With buying and selling volume comparatively mild all through the holiday break-shortened week, buyers have ongoing to evaluate a multitude of developments on the Omicron variant and its likely effects on financial exercise. These updates have come along with expectations for tighter financial coverage upcoming calendar year from the Federal Reserve.
Omicron has overtaken other coronavirus variants to become the dominant strain in the U.S., and now accounts for about a few-quarters of new bacterial infections. From this backdrop, President Joe Biden on Tuesday declared a sequence of new actions to deal with the virus, together with opening further federal COVID-19 testing and vaccination websites and sending 500 million at-property immediate exams to Us citizens for free beginning upcoming month.
“I feel this is a great time to remind everybody that the sector is a major indicator. So the market is heading to go down, the industry is going to bottom in advance of the undesirable news peaks,” Liz Younger, SoFi head of expenditure approach, told Yahoo Finance Are living on Tuesday. “We most likely haven’t read all of the bad news however. We unquestionably haven’t hit a peak in the Omicron cases.”
“But what we’re seeing in the action nowadays is that, we’ve experienced 3 times of a offer-off. And some of that I think was overdone, in particular in a ton of these parts that are positioned to do well in a reopening atmosphere,” she included. “You have to have some income in the marketplace in parts that must do perfectly in that distinct way. Airlines are just one of those, cyclicals are additional of these. When we look at the pattern in the market these days, I feel this helps make feeling for what’s ahead for the upcoming 6 to 12 months.”
Other strategists agreed that investors really should brace for much more choppiness heading into the conclusion of the calendar year.
“I believe you by natural means are receiving a tiny bit of this bounce immediately after we have experienced a few choppy sessions. But also the market is striving to rate and digest the new data we’re getting in this article,” Anna Han, Wells Fargo securities equity strategist, instructed Yahoo Finance Reside on Tuesday. “We had some information on Build Again Superior obtaining delayed, we have much more data on Omicron. These are the issues you’re seeing blend with reduced liquidity as we get into 12 months-stop, so we’re not amazed to see the volatility.”
Throughout a question and response session through his remarks Tuesday, Biden mentioned he and Senator Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) have been “likely to get a thing performed” on the White House’s about $1.8 trillion Construct Again Far better social coverage invoice. Manchin experienced explained to Fox News earlier this week he could not back the laws in element given persistent inflation issues, suggesting the monthly bill would be scuttled in absence of assistance from the moderate Democratic lawmaker.
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6:10 p.m. ET Tuesday: Inventory futures open up tiny adjusted
Here’s where markets were trading as the overnight session kicked off Tuesday evening:
S&P 500 futures (ES=F): +1 issue (+.02{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}), to 4,641.75
Dow futures (YM=F): +19.00 factors (+.05{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}), to 35,400.00
Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): -1.75 details (-.01{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to 15,978.25
Image by: NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx 2021 12/16/21 Environment at the New York Inventory Exchange (NYSE) on December 16, 2021 in New York.
If you are in a posture to offer financial assist to your grandchildren, your generosity is possible to be appreciated. Considerably.
Here are some points to contemplate just before acting on your want to give more youthful family members a economic increase.
Strategies to give economical aid
There is additional than 1 way to add to your grandchildren’s fiscal well-being. Find the approach that operates most effective for your circumstances and will make the greatest affect:
Open up and contribute to a 529 program. If higher education is in your grandchild’s long term, a 529 faculty personal savings system can be quite valuable. If you go this route, your contributions would be tied to the inventory marketplace, featuring the likely for advancement in excess of time. Upcoming distributions will not be taxed, as extended as the beneficiary uses the funds for capable charges.
Co-indication on a bank loan. Credit score suggestions have tightened in new yrs, making it more durable for younger folks to qualify for financial loans. Contemplate co-signing a mortgage for a grandchild to help pay out for school, a reputable automobile or a very first dwelling, as long as you would not be harming your have fiscal protection to do so. Be sure to have a distinct comprehension of who is accountable for loan payments to stay clear of financial loan default.
Spend an expense specifically. You can fork out university tuition as perfectly as health care and dental expenditures on a different person’s behalf with out incurring federal reward tax. Make payments immediately to the university or company to keep away from applying other reward tax exclusions.
Buy inventory. Stocks and other investments can be ordered by you and gifted to yet another. You can also transfer ownership from existing stock holdings. Preserve in head if an financial investment has grown, the recipient will be accountable for having to pay taxes on any funds gains when the shares are sold.
Create a rely on. A believe in is a useful authorized entity when you have significant prosperity you’d like to share with your grandchildren. By establishing a have faith in, you make your mind up at what age your beneficiaries can draw from the have faith in (when you’re still dwelling or following you go) and the level at which resources are distributed.
Give income. There is always the possibility to give the gift of money.
Know the tax procedures
Usually, the IRS needs disclosure of items of dollars or belongings (such as shares or home) in excessive of $15,000 for each recipient working with IRS Type 709. Offering regulations are for every individual, so both equally you and your partner can every give up to $15,000 for each recipient without having reporting it. Even though the giver is dependable for having to pay gift tax, the life span exclusion signifies you can presently give upwards of $11 million in items without having gift tax obligation.
Check with in advance of you give
Fiscal assistance can be a delicate topic. Look at if your grandchildren’s mom and dad may perhaps want to know about economical gifts meant for their kids. This is especially legitimate if the youngsters have entry to funds without having any requirements for its use or if there’s a historical past of cash mismanagement.
Seek the advice of your economical advisor
To safeguard your very own money position, critique your funds prior to making monetary gifts. When offering is a priority, your money advisor can assistance you draw down your assets when managing the tax implications.
Holley Smaldone-Cragg, CMFC, is a Economic Advisor with Ameriprise Economic in Geneva. She specializes in fee-based mostly fiscal organizing and asset management procedures and has been in exercise for around 35 several years. Her site is ameripriseadvisors.com/holley.com.
This is the second of a series of articles looking at race and the financial system
When US civil rights campaigners of the last century took to the streets, they dreamt of a day when black Americans would enjoy the same educational opportunities as everyone else in the country. Sabrina Cannon has lived that dream — and it has landed her deep in debt.
Cannon, 33, was the first member of her African-American family in Buffalo, New York, to go to college, using $100,000 in federal student loans to obtain a marketing degree in 2010 from Niagara University, a nearby private institution.
But she struggled to find work in her field during the tough times that followed the financial crisis, and only earned enough from other jobs to make minimum payments on her borrowings, leaving the principal untouched.
So, Cannon switched gears. She decided her future was in healthcare — specifically, mastering the alphanumeric code doctors use to keep track of patients — and she went back to school part-time to obtain a second degree in 2017 from State University of New York Polytechnic Institute. Resuming her studies allowed her to put payments on her first student loan on hold while she was in school, but it also required her to take on more debt to obtain new credentials.
FT Series: Race and finance
Part 1 — The segregated banking system
Part 2 — The trap of student debt
Part 3 — Fund managers fail to walk the walk
Now Cannon is making better money as a medical coder, but owes $120,000 in student debt — more than when she started university a decade and a half ago. Her credit history is so blemished that she was recently turned down for a mortgage, and only last year, she took a temporary second job as a grocery delivery driver to help pay off her college loans.
“I did what we were all told we were supposed to do, go to college so you can get a good job to make enough money to change your situation,” she said. “I would have been better off not going to college.”
Cannon is far from alone in her disappointment. For a disproportionate number of black Americans, the pursuit of a university degree has led to a new kind of poverty rather than prosperity — dashing decades of hopes that increased access to higher education would narrow the US racial wealth gap.
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The underlying problem is that black university enrolment rose in recent decades just as the use of debt to finance US higher education exploded — and costs soared along with all the money pouring into the sector.
Student debt, most of it provided by the federal government, reached $1.75tn this year, according to the Federal Reserve, as state budget cuts led to increased costs at public universities and private institutions raised annual charges for undergraduates to beyond $80,000 a year in some cases.
Black students are more likely to take out loans to finance their education and to borrow more when they do — with many taking on debt, as Cannon did, to improve their employment prospects after the Great Recession. Thirty per cent of black households carry student debt, compared with 20 per cent of white ones and 14 per cent of Hispanic households, the Fed said in 2019. The median black borrower owes $30,000, compared with $23,000 for the median white borrower.
Paying back these debts is turning into a decades-long struggle for many black borrowers. Twenty years after starting college, the median black borrower owed 95 per cent of their student debt, while the comparable white student had paid back 94 per cent, according to a 2019 study by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University. Three-quarters of black borrowers owed more on their student loans in 2019 than when they took them out, reflecting the accrual of interest, Brookings found.
Some researchers compare the impact of educational debt loads in the black community to the ravages of subprime mortgages in the financial crisis. In both cases, credit products that were supposed to help borrowers increase their wealth had the opposite effect, draining resources from the disadvantaged — a process social scientists call “predatory inclusion”.
According to a study published this year in the journal Social Currents, the median US black household with student debt held only 5 cents of wealth in 2019 for every dollar of wealth in the median white household with student debt — a wider disparity than exists in the country overall. In 2019, the median white household had $188,200 in wealth, nearly eight times more than the median black household’s $24,100, Brookings found.
“We see student debt going up and up and the reason is that people can’t get out from under it — they can’t get to the (loan) principal,” said sociologist Louise Seamster of the University of Iowa, one of the authors of the Social Currents study. “If you were trying to set up a system that produced one outcome for one group of people and another outcome for another group of people, I don’t think you could do better than this.”
Black Americans fall behind in many cases because they started out with so little in the first place. Like other students from disadvantaged communities, they are more likely to work long hours at outside jobs while in school and to leave school without a degree. They are also more likely to be recruited by for-profit schools that have been accused by critics of preying on students with federal education benefits by charging excessive prices and offering lower-quality teaching.
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Family needs can make things even harder on black students. Based on nearly a quarter century of data, the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis found in a 2017 study that white college graduates were more likely to receive financial assistance from their parents in paying for their education or buying homes, while black college graduates were more likely to be providing money to their parents.
“It’s very difficult for black students to get the same benefits from higher education that white students receive, because of student loans, family wealth and more,” said Julia Barnard of the Center for Responsible Lending, a financial policy group.
Although most student loans are made by the federal government, the resulting debt loads can prevent borrowers from obtaining private sector credit to buy cars or homes or start businesses. For black Americans, catching up on student debt after graduation is complicated by continuing racial inequities in the labour market; government statistics show black Americans earn less than white ones with similar educational qualifications.
“You have to take debt in order to just get the degree, and when you get the degree, you end up going into jobs that pay (less),” said Bernel Hall, chief executive of New Jersey Community Capital, a lender that finances minority entrepreneurs. “You are in trouble by the time you leave school. You just don’t know it yet.”
Black borrowers such as Sabrina Elliot of Charlotte, North Carolina, are finding out just how long it can take to pull free from their student debt. She said she owed $72,000 when she finished her education and after more than two decades of employment her debt has hit $166,000. Her monthly minimum student loan payment has reached $1,393.29, more than the median monthly mortgage payment of $1,122 in her hometown.
Elliot fell behind when she went into government service after earning degrees from the University of Virginia and the North Carolina Central University law school. She took a job as a lawyer for the city of Charlotte and, because the pay was low, requested multiple deferrals on her student loans.
However, that did not stop her interest from compounding. By the time she moved to private sector employers, including Walmart, and started drawing a sufficient salary to make her minimum payments, her loan balance had ballooned. While acknowledging that her educational borrowings are “my responsibility”, she said all that accumulated interest “makes it really difficult for someone to get out from under their student loan debt”.
“I’m part of that 50-and-older group that is still paying student loans,” she said. “So, based on my current payment that I’m making, I’m not scheduled to have paid off this loan until 2035. By that time, I’ll be well into what many would consider retirement age. Who wants to go into retirement age with student loans?”
The question of what to do about US student loan borrowers is about to become a hot topic in Washington. Student loan relief measures introduced at the start of the pandemic, which temporarily paused interest and payments for borrowers such as Cannon and Elliot, expire on January 31 2022. Both Congress and the Biden administration are facing pressure to provide additional help.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, President Joe Biden pledged to forgive $10,000 of student debt for every borrower, but he has yet to do so and many progressives in his Democratic party want him to go further. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator, said this year that cancelling $50,000 of student debt per borrower would be “the single most effective executive action available to get our economy going and to make progress toward closing the racial wealth gap”.
For her part, Cannon said she is earning a sufficient salary to make the minimum payments on her student loan and hopes to “be able to pay it off eventually”. But she said she would advise younger black Americans to think twice before signing up for federal loans to attend a four-year university.
“Now, I’m just a big advocate for the next generation not falling for this like we did,” she said. “Go to community college or work first, and see what it is that you’re good at and where you can get in, and go from there.”
An Illinois point out legislator proposed a monthly bill in which neither the condition nor wellbeing coverage suppliers would have to spend for COVID-19-linked healthcare care for all those who opt for to continue to be unvaccinated towards COVID-19 and grow to be contaminated.
These a bill evidently is govt overreach. The legislator, Rep. Jonathan Carroll, subsequently withdrew the invoice owing to threats built from him, his spouse and children and his employees. Nevertheless this proposal opens for dialogue the hazard calculus that goes into providing overall health care and how well being insurance policy premiums are established.
Insurance coverage is pooled hazard. Regardless of whether it is car coverage, existence insurance policies or wellbeing insurance policies, there is a expense to offer coverage, with statements paid out out of rates charged. That is why youthful motorists pay increased automobile insurance premiums than more mature motorists, and smokers pay out better lifetime insurance plan rates than nonsmokers. The historic file of declare payouts supports these differential rates.
With health and fitness coverage, like all sorts of insurance policies, rates are based on the collective threat profile of the population remaining covered. When an exterior party disrupts the chance profile, the amounts paid out will be unique from what is traditionally expected.
Delta Air Traces, a corporation that sponsors health insurance policy for its employees, acknowledged this disruption and began to evaluate a health insurance surcharge for individuals who opted to remain unvaccinated. From a chance assessment perspective, the airline viewed this as acceptable and acceptable. It thought that these who remained unvaccinated ended up more possible to accrue bigger professional medical care and hospitalization fees than those people vaccinated.
Primarily based on the company’s threat evaluation, this was a sound business enterprise conclusion, independent of factors why people possibly opted for vaccination or remained unvaccinated.
What the Illinois legislator proposed was much extra draconian. He proficiently needed to take away any one who remains unvaccinated from the team of people today who have health and fitness insurance coverage coverage that needs care for COVID-19. This is akin to a coverage exemption, which is not unheard of by insurance policies vendors, but unreasonable if imposed by condition regulation.
Health treatment delivery is a elaborate method of providers furnished and payments sent. Physicians just take an oath to deliver treatment for all their individuals and “do no damage.” It is against their concepts to withhold care from unwell sufferers with COVID-19 if they are unvaccinated, or any situation for that make any difference, unbiased of their capability to pay back for companies. Nevertheless, those who pay out for expert services are not certain by these ideals.
Inserting a COVID-19 exemption or surcharge into a wellbeing insurance policies coverage for the unvaccinated may possibly be seen as excellent business enterprise, as Delta Air Lines uncovered. It also delivers an incentive to get vaccinated, which is in line with President Joe Biden’s vaccination mandate, although legal headwinds will likely avoid the mandate from ever currently being enacted and enforced.
3 vaccines are obtainable at no charge to Us residents and have proved to be most helpful in holding people today out of hospitals. Breakthrough bacterial infections do take place, nevertheless the preponderance of them has been gentle conditions.
When people today pick out vaccination, they are having edge of all out there resources to defend by themselves and other individuals, with these assets made available at no cost to them.
When men and women select to keep on being unvaccinated, they are opting out of using these means. Investigate has proven that the unvaccinated are far more susceptible to infections, hospitalizations, deaths and very long-haul COVID-19. The uncertainty surrounding the omicron variant provides an additional but-to-be-decided wrinkle into the risk equation.
Withholding care for men and women who make selections based mostly on their notion of information and facts, even if it is flawed or incomplete, is opposite to the rules of moral clinical apply. With regards to paying out for treatment, nonetheless, immediately after just about two decades into the pandemic, with all-around 50 million confirmed cases and 800,000 fatalities, insurance businesses know adequate to make informed enterprise decisions.
No matter if this is via coverage exemptions or quality surcharges for the unvaccinated, or premium reductions for the vaccinated, the insurance policy threat calculus of COVID-19 not only indicates the need to have for modify, but it also demands it.
The exact rules utilize to everyday living insurance plan. Lifetime insurance payouts have surged all through the pandemic. With vaccines readily available to minimize this sort of fatalities, if folks decide on to continue being unvaccinated, for any motive, they are subjecting them selves to bigger fatality chance than those people who pick vaccination. The daily life coverage risk calculus implies the want for differential premiums, which previously exist for persons who decide on to indulge in dangerous behaviors like using tobacco.
As COVID-19 moves into the omicron era, the uncertainty encompassing the virus calls for that the greatest available resources be utilized. If men and women select to reject these applications, the economics of threat suggest that insurance policies providers will answer by having some shell out a price tag for their selection.
This is not a moral, moral or political determination. It is a seem business enterprise determination.
Sheldon H. Jacobson is a professor of laptop science at the College of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who applies his expertise in information-pushed threat-based mostly choice-building to examine and notify community overall health plan.
Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, recommended on Wednesday that the economic system could realize the central bank’s total-work purpose by up coming yr, a development that could presage elevating desire prices from their rock-bottom concentrations.
Mr. Powell emphasized that a broad range of economic indicators, which includes unemployment, job openings, wages and other metrics, counsel the labor sector is therapeutic swiftly, developing additional room for the central financial institution to take away its financial help.
“In my view, we are producing quick progress toward greatest work,” Mr. Powell reported.
Mr. Powell stated that the unemployment charge, which was 4.2 {1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} in November, has been dropping immediately. He mentioned that the labor drive participation rate had been “disappointing,” even as vaccinations increased and colleges reopened, and that it now appeared most likely that a return to a bigger participation fee would get some time.
“We’re not heading back to the very same financial system we experienced in February of 2020,” Mr. Powell said. “The publish-pandemic labor market place and the economic system in common will be distinctive, and the optimum stage of work which is consistent with price balance evolves around time.”
Inflation is significantly outstripping the Fed’s target, climbing by 6.8 per cent in the year as a result of November, the speediest speed in nearly 40 many years. But it has been significantly less apparent regardless of whether the Fed has accomplished its other financial goal — comprehensive work — which means that People in america who want to perform are able to obtain work opportunities.
The unemployment price is however over the 3.5 per cent that prevailed just before the pandemic’s onset, but it has been falling promptly. Fresh new economic projections released by the Fed on Wednesday present officers expect the jobless charge to tumble to 3.5 p.c all over again by the end of next yr.
About 4 million employment are nonetheless missing when compared with before the pandemic, complicating the Fed’s job when it comes to assessing whether it has satisfied its twin aims of keeping charges stable and the career industry sturdy.
The query has been no matter whether and when lacking staff will occur back again and if policymakers sense the require to leave fascination rates very low right until they do. The virus has complicated that outlook. While quite a few personnel have retired, some are hesitant or not able to return for health, child treatment or other explanations.
Mr. Powell explained it would very likely consider time, and the retreat of the pandemic, for people folks to appear back into the do the job force, and that inflation would probable need to continue being in look at in the meantime to let for a very long period of economic advancement.
“One of the two massive threats to obtaining back to most work is actually high inflation,” he mentioned. “Because to get back again to exactly where we were being, the evidence grows that it is going to acquire some time.”
Fed officers have mentioned that they required to obtain inflation sustainably higher than 2 per cent — which has been extra than attained, quite a few have signaled — and complete employment just before boosting fascination rates. The financial projections introduced by the Fed on Wednesday proposed that officers predicted to make three desire price improves following year.
Mr. Powell beforehand stated that the Fed’s two ambitions have occur into tension this yr. He has also signaled that the central financial institution will not allow for inflation to rocket out of control.
“We have to stability people two targets when they are in rigidity as they are right now,” Mr. Powell claimed in testimony on Dec. 1. “But I guarantee you we will use our resources to make guaranteed that this significant inflation that we are dealing with does not come to be entrenched.”
In remarks Wednesday, Mr. Powell claimed that the Fed did have a framework it could use to make decisions about its fascination fee when its dual targets of selling price balance and employment arrive into conflict. But thanks to the enhancement in the labor current market, the Fed would not necessarily have to use it.
Stocks fell on Monday at the start of a holiday-shortened week of trading, with investors considering renewed virus-related restrictions overseas and prospects that a significant social policy bill may be scuttled.
The S&P 500, Dow Nasdaq each dropped by nearly 2{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} during intraday trading. Treasury yields fell as investors piled into safe haven assets, and the benchmark 10-year yield held below 1.4{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}. The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, spiked more than 20{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} to hover above 25.
U.S. crude oil prices sank 3{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} to trade below $69 per barrel as restrictions mounted in Europe, stoking jitters around energy demand. Countries from Germany to Ireland imposed curfews or travel restrictions in recent days given the rapidly spreading new variant. And the Netherlands over the weekend announced a nationwide lockdown of non-essential stores, bars and restaurants until Jan. 14. As of this weekend, the Omicron variant had been reported in about 89 countries, with cases doubling every 1.5 to 3 days.
Renewed fears over the economic impact of the Omicron variant compounded with last week’s concerns for investors around the prospects of tighter monetary policy, with the Federal Reserve accelerating its rate of asset-purchase tapering and signaling three interest rate hikes could be coming next year. Last week, each of the three major indexes posted steep weekly losses. The Nasdaq Composite fell 3{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} and the S&P 500 and Dow each dropped by nearly 2{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} for the week.
Still, other updates around the effect of current COVID-19 vaccines on the variant were more upbeat. Moderna (MRNA) said Monday that a booster, or a third dose, of its shot increased Omicron neutralizing antibody levels. This echoed results from Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) from earlier this month about the effectiveness of their vaccine’s third dose on neutralizing Omicron. Shares of Moderna gained more than 7{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} ahead of the opening bell.
Investors also digested the unexpected news that Senator Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) would not support President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better social policy bill. Manchin, speaking on Fox News Sunday, said he had discussed with Democratic House and Senate leaders and Biden, but was unable to come to an agreement on the bill given concerns about inflation, the national debt and ongoing pandemic.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki released a statement calling Manchin’s comments “a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position,” and said the administration would work to move forward with the legislation next year.
Still, Goldman Sachs this weekend slashed its quarter GDP forecasts for 2022 following Manchin’s withdrawal of support for the bill. The economists, led by Jan Hatzius, said they expected the “fiscal impulse will be somewhat more negative” than previously expected next year, in absence of the spending on social and climate-related policies included in the bill. The firm lowered its U.S. GDP forecast to 2{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} from 3{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} for the first quarter of 2022, to 3{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} from 3.5{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} for the second quarter, and to 2.75{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} from 3{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} for the third quarter.
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4:04 p.m. ET: Stocks end lower amid renewed Omicron concerns: Dow drops 433 points, or 1.2{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}
Here were the main moves in markets as of 4:04 p.m. ET:
S&P 500 (^GSPC): -52.61 (-1.14{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to 4,568.03
Dow (^DJI): -433.28 (-1.23{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to 34,932.16
Nasdaq (^IXIC): -188.74 (-1.24{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to 14,980.94
Crude (CL=F): -$2.20 (-3.10{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to $68.66 a barrel
Gold (GC=F): -$15.50 (-0.86{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to $1,789.40 per ounce
10-year Treasury (^TNX): +1.7 bps to yield 1.4190{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}
The three major indexes extended losses heading into the afternoon session, building on overnight declines as virus-related concerns flared anew.
The Dow dropped more than 650 points, or about 1.9{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}, shortly before noon in New York. The Nasdaq declined by just over 1{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}, and the S&P 500 was also down about 1.9{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}.
All 11 major sectors were in the red in the S&P 500, with the cyclical energy, financials and materials sectors leading the way lower. Consumer staples, utilities and healthcare outperformed, though these sectors were also lower during the session.
In the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Goldman Sachs, The Travelers Cos. and Caterpillar underperformed.
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10:28 a.m. ET: Oracle plans to buy Cerner Corp. for $28.3 billion in largest-ever acquisition for software giant
Oracle (ORCL) announced on Monday it planned to buy Cerner Corp., an electronic medical records company, for $28.3 billion. This would be the largest-ever deal for Oracle.
The deal is expected to close next year, and would give Oracle access to Cerner’s trove of software used to record healthcare data electronically. Cerner shareholders will receive $95 in cash for each share held, which marks a premium of nearly 6{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} compared to Friday’s closing prices for the stock.
Oracle shares were down by 2.6{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} following the announcement, underperforming the broader market during the session. Oracle shares were up 49{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} for the year-to-date through Friday’s close.
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9:30 a.m. ET: Stocks open lower
Here’s where markets opened Monday morning:
S&P 500 (^GSPC): -61.45 points (-1.33{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to 4,559.19
Dow (^DJI): -454.32 points (-1.28{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to 34,911.12
Nasdaq (^IXIC): -237.69 points (-1.53{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to 14,942.55
Crude (CL=F): -$3.10 (-4.37{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to $67.76 a barrel
Gold (GC=F): -$7.10 (-0.39{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to $1,797.80 per ounce
10-year Treasury (^TNX): -1.7 bps to yield 1.385{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}
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7:45 a.m. ET Monday: Stock futures point to a sharply lower open
Here’s where markets were trading as of Friday morning ahead of the opening bell:
S&P 500 futures (ES=F): -52.25 points (-1.13{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}), to 4,557.75
Dow futures (YM=F): -366 points (-1.04{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}), to 34,886.00
Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): -208.5 points (-1.32{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to 15,579.50
Crude (CL=F): -$2.20 (-3.10{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to $68.66 a barrel
Gold (GC=F): -$6.50 (-0.36{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}) to $1,798.40 per ounce
10-year Treasury (^TNX): -1.7 bps to yield 1.385{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a}
Photo by: NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx 2021 12/16/21 Atmosphere at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on December 16, 2021 in New York.