Author: Press Room

By Georgina Lee HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chicago’s CME Group opened options trading for futures on Monday, as it looks to deepen a market that investors use for betting or hedging against moves in China’s currency. Hong Kong has offered similar exchange-traded options since 2017, though bringing the product to CME – the world’s biggest derivatives exchange – may be a step toward competing with the banks that dominate options by selling directly to customers. “Many traders no longer view CNH as an emerging market currency like it was ten years ago,” said Chris Povey, CME Group’s (NASDAQ:) executive director…

By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Yoshifumi Takemoto TOKYO (Reuters) – The Bank of Japan (BOJ) should be cautious about changing its unconventional monetary policy for now, given financial market uncertainty due to problems in Western banks, former top financial diplomat Takehiko Nakao told Reuters in an interview. Nakao made the comments amid speculation the BOJ may abandon its yield curve control policy when new Governor Kazuo Ueda takes over incumbent Haruhiko Kuroda, whose term ends on April 8. U.S. bank failures and the buyout of Credit Suisse by UBS last month have driven financial market risk aversion. Nakao said the BOJ…

The DividendRank formula at Dividend Channel ranks a coverage universe of thousands of dividend stocks, according to a proprietary formula designed to identify those stocks that combine two important characteristics — strong fundamentals and a valuation that looks inexpensive. Western Union presently has an above average rank, in the top 50% of the coverage universe, which suggests it is among the top most “interesting” ideas that merit further research by investors. Start slideshow: 10 Oversold Dividend Stocks » But making Western Union an even more interesting and timely stock to look at, is the fact that in trading on Tuesday,…

Snap’s stock (NYSE: SNAP) has gained roughly 26% YTD as compared to the 7% rise in the S&P500 index over the same period. That said, at its current price of $11, it is trading at the same level as the fair value of $11 – Trefis’ estimate for Snap’s valuation. The company posted mixed results in the fourth quarter of 2022, with earnings beating the consensus but revenues missing the expectations. It reported total revenues of $1.3 billion, marginally above the year-ago period. Snap, like its peer Meta, suffered in 2022 due to the Apple AAPL iOS privacy update, restricting…

A federal appeals court has issued a ruling that clears the way for the Biden administration to implement student loan forgiveness and other debt relief under a landmark settlement to resolve stalled Borrower Defense to Repayment claims. Here’s the latest. $6 Billion Student Loan Forgiveness For Over 200,000 Borrowers In Sweeping Settlement With Biden Administration A federal district court ruled in February that settlement relief to resolve Sweet vs. Cardona could proceed. The class action lawsuit had pitted thousands of student loan borrowers against the Education Department for several years. The class of borrowers alleged that department officials had illegally…

Jason R. Escamilla, founder and CIO of ImpactAdvisor LLC in San Francisco, has seen it all before. It was nearly 30 years ago when he initially tried Socially Responsible Investing (“SRI”), the predecessor of ESG. And he was cool with it. Until everything changed. “ESG/SRI used to be about selectivity and choice,” says Escamilla. “I first got involved with SRI/ESG investing in the 90s. For decades, it was about selectivity and choice or preferences—primarily among institutional investors/clients. Funny thing happened on the way to going mainstream. ESG became the bully. The divestment movements ushered in powerful attention and support from…

Today’s Social Security column addresses questions about whether filing dates can affect the application of COLAs to benefits, how public pensions can affect spousal benefits and submitting applications before benefits begin. Larry Kotlikoff is a Professor of Economics at Boston University and the founder and president of Economic Security Planning, Inc. Should My Husband Have Filed In January Or Earlier To Receive The COLA? My husband was receiving spousal benefits before he filed for his benefit at 70. He turned 70 in December of last year. Should he have filed for his retirement benefit to have begun in January 2023…

Although the Federal Reserve voted to raise rates another .25% at its second meeting of the year, there was a silver lining in the announcement. In his opening statement, Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated significant rate hikes may not be needed going forward, which will bring much needed relief and stability to the commercial real estate market. Investors were bracing for a .50% bump following Powell’s congressional testimony several weeks earlier during which he implied a larger rate increase might be warranted in response to stronger than expected economic indicators, especially in the labor market. Additionally, the annual inflation rate…

The United States is a country of two housing markets. In one, home prices are falling from a year ago. In the other, they’re still posting annual gains. That division runs right down the center of the U.S. In all of the 12 major housing markets west of Texas, plus Austin, home prices fell in January on an annual basis, according to mortgage-data firm Black Knight Inc.’s home-price index. In the 37 biggest metro areas east of Colorado, except Austin, home prices rose year-over-year. This pattern of geographical disparity is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, housing analysts say. “We’ve never seen anything…

With President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan hanging in the balance, borrowers can still count on resuming payments later this year with a clean slate. That’s because over $34 billion of defaulted loans have been made current under the administration’s Fresh Start program. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases against Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. The plan would cancel up to $10,000 in federal loans per borrower and up to $20,000 per borrower for those who used Pell Grants in college, eliminating about $441 billion in outstanding student debt.The first case involved six states that argued the plan…