Author: Press Room

The outlook for corporate profits during the first quarter is looking pretty gloomy.But a team of analysts at Goldman Sachs Group see hope for individual companies that could manage to buck the trend by delivering on four areas of critical importance to investors. Analysts cut their outlook pretty aggressively as the economic outlook deteriorated during the first quarter. As a result, operating profits are expected to have shrunk by 6.8% last quarter, according to an average of Wall Street forecasts compiled by FactSet. If this comes to pass, it would mark the worst quarterly contraction since the third quarter of…

AMC’s APE-conversion settlement paves the way for a huge equity raise that could bring in as much as $16 billion, according to B. Riley Securities analyst Eric Wold. The settlement, which was revealed in a filing Monday, opens the way for AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc.’s AMC, +20.99% proposed conversion of AMC Preferred Equity units APE, -12.87%, or APEs, into common stock, alongside a 10-to-1 reverse stock split and the capacity to sell more shares. The move, which is part of the company’s ongoing battle to eliminate debt, had faced court proceedings. Wold said that the settlement clears the decks for a…

When buying a home today, you might have to solve a puzzle about the mortgage rate you’ll pay. Which would you do?A one-size-fits-all answer doesn’t exist, but it might be wise to lean toward paying discount points these days. Here’s how to make a decision that fits your circumstances. Read: Americans expect mortgage rates to rise above 8% in the next 12 months, New York Fed housing survey findsWhat are discount points? Discount points are a fee paid to the lender to reduce the mortgage’s interest rate. One discount point equals 1% of the loan amount and typically reduces the…

Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said she expects the central bank will have to raise interest rates further, and then hold them at high levels, in order to bring down inflation. “In my modal projection, to put inflation on a sustained downward trajectory to 2% and to keep inflation expectations anchored, monetary policy moves somewhat further into restrictive territory this year, with the fed funds rate moving above 5% and the real fed funds rate staying in positive territory for some time,” Mester told a group of professional economic forecasters in a speech in New York on Tuesday evening. In…

3/3 © Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Cosmic Girl, a Virgin Boeing 747-400 aircraft sits on the tarmac with Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket attached to the wing, ahead of the first UK launch tonight, at Spaceport Cornwall at Newquay Airport in Newquay, Britain, January 9, 2023. 2/3 By Eimi Yamamitsu TOKYO (Reuters) – The bankruptcy filing by Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc has dealt a blow to Japan’s hopes of building a domestic space industry, with plans for a Kyushu-based spaceport designed to attract tourism on hold for lack of funding. Oita prefecture, home to Japan’s largest number of hot springs,…

By Mohi Narayan and Matthew Chye NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Singapore’s imports of Russian naphtha nearly tripled in the first quarter of 2023, government data showed, after the European Union banned oil products imports from Russia. The Asia oil hub imported 741,000 tonnes of Russian naphtha in the period, accounting for about 23% of Singapore’s total imports of the refined product, a Reuters calculation based on Enterprise Singapore data showed. This jumped from about 261,000 tonnes imported in the fourth quarter last year, the data showed. The EU banned imports of Russian oil products from Feb. 5 and the Group…

By Hari Kishan BENGALURU (Reuters) – The U.S. dollar will weaken against most major currencies this year as the interest rate gap with its peers stops widening, putting the currency on the defensive after a multi-year run, according to a Reuters poll of foreign exchange strategists. Despite starting the year on a weak footing, the dollar bounced back sharply in February, gaining nearly 3% for the month, on expectations the U.S. Federal Reserve would take interest rates higher than previously thought. However, the failure of two regional U.S. banks in March forced the Fed to temper those expectations, pushing the…

(Reuters) – Bank loans to companies in Italy declined sharply between November and February as demand weakened and interest rates rose, the Bank of Italy said on Friday. In the three months to February loans to the non-financial sector fell overall by 3.2% year-on-year, driven down by 7.5% drop in credit to companies, the Bank of Italy said in its quarterly bulletin. The contraction in lending to firms “reflects a broad weakening in all sectors, and in particular the service sector,” the bulletin said, citing higher funding costs for banks and more stringent lending criteria. Between November and February the…

Recently, U.S. inflation hasn’t been falling as fast as many hoped. On April 12, we’ll see Consumer Price Index data for March. Nowcasts suggest that March’s inflation data may show an improving outlook with estimated inflation running at a little over a 5% annual rate and an estimated month-on-month rise in prices of 0.3%. However, core inflation may be more of a concern running at an estimated 0.45% month-on-month once food and energy are stripped out, that’s because energy costs are expected to have generally fallen in the March report helping bring inflation down in the headline numbers. Housing Costs…

We love to get questions from readers, and I recently got one from a CEF Insider member about commercial real estate, after Bank of America BAC (BAC) recently said the sector could be the next one to tumble. Let’s dive into that, because this fear has been driven by the same kind of overwrought media coverage we saw with regional banks (an issue that’s been addressed, by the way, with no depositors or taxpayers losing money). And that fiasco, you no doubt know, gave us a nice “buy the dip” opportunity on, well, pretty well everything. The media has set…