Free Republic

Could Target's woke executives finally be made to pay attention?They might, given that they've been issued legal demands from a shareholder to produce all documents related to its woke transgender agenda.According to America First Legal, a group that is led by Stephen Miller, a former member of the Trump White House:WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL), on behalf of its client, the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), served the Target Corporation with a formal demand for the production of corporate books and records, seeking transparency regarding its management’s radical LGBT political agenda that has apparently cost...

Target has lost $10 billion in market valuation over the last 10 days as the popular retailer continues to face backlash over its Pride-themed clothing line for children. A week ago Wednesday, Target enjoyed its stock value at $160.96 a share, but following the calls to boycott the Minneapolis-based retailer over its “PRIDE” collection, the value plummeted and closed Friday at $138.93 a share.

Robinhood said 24-hour trading is coming to its platform as the company that was at the center of the meme-stock frenzy aims to accommodate time-strapped customers while pushing for wider change in trading operations. A rollout of 24 Hour Market will begin May 16 to a "subset" of customers, followed by all customers getting access in June. Trading hours will be from 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday to 8 p.m. Eastern on Friday. "We've often heard from customers that it's tough to find time for investing during regular market hours with work, family, and everything in between," Robinhood said...

PacWest (PACW) and Western Alliance (WAL) plunged Tuesday as investors remain convinced the worst is not yet over for troubled regional banks. Their drops of more than 20% in morning trading come one day after JPMorgan Chase (JPM) purchased the bulk of First Republic (FRC), in a deal that was designed to restore stability to the banking system after two months of turmoil. Other regional banks also plummeted, including Zions (ZION), Comerica (CMA) and Key (KEY).

In tracking BLM contributions, we found many companies prioritizing ‘racial justice’ to the detriment of shareholders and employees.Most Americans will remember the first few years of the 2020s for the pandemic, the lockdowns, the layoffs, and the Black Lives Matter (BLM)-fueled riots. Shareholders will also remember them as a tempestuous time for the market. Many companies announced mass layoffs and cuts to dividends and share buyback programs. For example, Disney’s last dividend date was Dec. 12, 2019.But shockingly, as we’ve shown in our BLM Funding Database, companies contributed or pledged more than $83 billion to the BLM movement and related...

Several regional bank stocks were halted Friday morning amid a market selloff led by SVB Financial Group, owner of startup-focused Silicon Valley Bank. First Republic Bank, PacWest Bancorp, Western Alliance Bancorp and Signature Bank were all halted for volatility after sharp declines in early trading. First Republic had fallen by as much as 50%. PacWest and Western Alliance had slid more than 30%. Signature was down by about 25%. SVB Financial said it would sell securities at a nearly $2 billion loss on Wednesday in the face of larger-than-expected deposit outflows. Its stock, which was halted early Friday, has fallen...

U.S. stock were sharply lower Wednesday morning as two economic prints showed a slowdown in February, coupled with fresh turmoil at Credit Suisse that weighed on sentiment. The S&P 500 plunged 1.4%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.6%. Contracts with the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 1%... But fresh troubles at Credit Suisse injected more jitters into markets Wednesday. The European bank's stock fell more than 20%, plunging to a record low after its biggest backer said it could not provide any more assistance. Credit Suisse on Tuesday disclosed in a report that it had identified "material weaknesses" in...

Small things can lead to big reactions, and that seems to be the case with bank stocks on Thursday, as a huge loss at SVB SIVB 0.00% Financial has caused stocks like JPMorgan JPM +2.48% Chase, Bank of America BAC +0.29% , and Wells Fargo WFC +1.50% to get pummeled. Here’s what happened. Silicon Valley Bank’s parent, SVB Financial (ticker: SIVB), said Wednesday night that it had sold securities from its portfolio for a $1.8 billion loss, while also announcing plans to raise capital via an offering of common and preferred stock. SVB Financial stock tumbled 60% to $106.04 on...

Stocks accelerated losses in the final hour of trading Thursday as banks and other financials sold off, and investors braced for a key payroll report Friday that could set the direction of interest rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average last dropped 510 points, or 0.56%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed 1.95%. The S&P 500 fell 1.8%.

The gap between the VIX Put-call volume and CBOE Put-call ratio is the widest since 2006, the precursor of a major volatility spike. Meanwhile, for those of you interest in railroad regulatory issues, as a general matter, regulations are rarely ever “reversed,:” but rather modified or replaced with changes. No administration would be able to outright “repeal” a major safety regulation because it almost certainly be immediately enjoined by a court and found to be counter to Congressional delegation. I assume most of the attention will be on this final rule (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/10/07/2020-18339/rail-integrity-and-track-safety-standards) published and effective on Oct 7, 2020. It...

Fed tightening 'always breaks something,' top Bank of America economist says The U.S. economy could be headed for a "no landing" scenario thanks to the hot labor market, but that might not be good news for the stock market, according to Bank of America analysts. In an analyst note published Friday, Bank of America chief economist Michael Hartnett predicted a "no landing" scenario in the first half of the year, where there is no immediate slowdown in growth but inflation remains above trend. That would likely force the Fed to raise interest rates much higher than previously forecast — and...

Pfizer Inc shares slid as much as 3.5% in premarket trading (before bouncing back) after the company forecasted COVID-19 vaccine sales for 2023 would miss the average Wall Street estimate by more than $2.5 billion. The New York-based drug company expects Covid vaccine sales this year to be around $13.5 billion, below analysts' $16 billion forecast. Sales for its Covid pill Paxlovid were forecasted at about $8 billion, below the $9.2 billion expected by analysts. Pfizer expects revenue for Covid-19 vaccines and pills to slide this year because of large government stockpiles but might see an increase in sales in...

Waning volatility in the U.S. bond market has helped spur a rally in stock markets around the world, according to the latest research note from Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid.Reid, head of thematic research at DB, pointed out that bond-market volatility, as measured by the ICE BofA MOVE Index, appears to have peaked in October (see chart), just as expectations for the terminal fed-funds rate — the level at which the Federal Reserve is expected to pause its most aggressive cycle of rate hikes since the 1980s — stabilized around 5%, where they remain.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is making a new push to ban members of Congress from private stock trading. It's an attempt to "demonstrate that lawmakers are focused on serving the interests of the American people -- not their own stock portfolios," Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat, said in reintroducing the measure along with Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy. After failing to get a floor vote when last introduced in 2021, the "TRUST (Transparent Representation Upholding Service and Trust) in Congress Act," gained increasing support across the political spectrum in 2022 with 75 cosponsors, and its backers say that...

Zoltan! The Federal Reserve will be the backstop of the Treasury market this year to alleviate dysfunction resulting from its increasing size and the retreat of regular buyers. That’s the view of Credit Suisse Group AG analyst Zoltan Pozsar, who in a note to clients Friday predicted the Fed will restart asset purchases during the summer of 2023. In Pozsar’s analysis, relative-value funds won’t buy Treasuries unless they cheapen a lot relative to overnight index swaps, and banks with sagging reserves are more likely to tap the funding markets than to buy Treasuries. FX-hedged buyers have been “priced out,” and...

Today is all quiet of the financial market front since the US stock and bond markets are closed. But as the new year starts, we have to ask the following question: is the US already in a recession? Well, if you follow the NBER business cycle tracker, the answer is no. Unfortunately, the NBER only tells us if we are in a recession after iti has already happened. A simple measure of IMPENDING recession is the US yield curve which is currently inverted. Typically, a recession occurs within months of the yield curve inverting. But if we look at real...

2022 is one of the record books and not in a Tiger Woods way. Call it a year of pain. First, the US enacted policies that drove up energy prices (goin’ green) that reverberated through the entire economy in the form of higher prices. Second, The Federal Reserve, in attempt to combat runaway inflation, started removing the excessive monetary stimulus that had been around since Fed Chair Bernanke initiated QE, the seemingly unlimited purchase of Treasury and Agency MBS securities. Janet Yellen continued the massive asset purchases and zero interest rate policies or ZIRP. Now that inflation has struck the...

Wipeout! More tech tantrums. China’s Covid surge. And above all, no central banks riding to the rescue if things go wrong. Reeling from a record $18 trillion wipeout, global stocks must surmount all these hurdles and more if they are to escape a second straight year in the red. With a drop of more than 20% in 2022, the MSCI All-Country World Index is on track for its worst performance since the 2008 crisis, as jumbo interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve more than doubled 10-year Treasury yields — the rate underpinning global capital costs. And in the US,...

(Reuters) -Technology and growth stocks lifted Wall Street's main indexes higher on Thursday after data pointing to signs of a cooling U.S. labor market eased worries about future interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc, Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), whose shares have been battered in the past few sessions, gained more than 2% each, with traders attributing the rise to bargain hunting. All the major S&P 500 sector indexes rose, with consumer discretionary and technology leading the pack with a near 3% rise. The Fed's aggressive rate hikes have hammered equities...

A federal grand jury indicted seven Twitter users and a podcaster Wednesday on behalf of the Securities and Exchange Commission, charging the eight men with conspiracy to commit securities fraud. The eight influencers are alleged to have used their presence on social media platforms Discord and Twitter to run a “pump and dump” scheme from at least January 2020 to April 2022. So-called meme stocks mentioned by their accounts included GameStop and AMC...