Author: Press Room

Yamundow Camara grew up in Gambia, West Africa, in a house without electricity and running water. Now she runs a bustling rental-real-estate business in the U.S., where she owns more than $2 million in property, including a “dream house” for her growing family in an Atlanta suburb.  In less than three years of investing, she became a millionaire with multiple sources of income. During most of that time, she was a visa holder. Last year, she became a permanent resident. Camara, 34, is a buy-and-hold investor who rehabs distressed properties and rents them out. Some of her tenants are 12-month lease…

The Internal Revenue Service is planning a hiring spree for top-tier talent as it uses $80 billion to upgrade the tax agency’s systems and to scrutinize a greater number of the more complicated returns that are filed by corporations and wealthy taxpayers.Now it has to convince people to come aboard at the IRS instead of taking potentially more lucrative work in the private sector. And it has to make that recruiting pitch in the midst of an accountant shortage, and knowing that the prospect of working for the taxman in a politically charged moment may turn off some candidates. On…

In this environment of high inflation and uncertainty about the banking sector’s financial health, market participants should scrutinize U.S. leveraged finance markets carefully. This asset class, comprised of leveraged loans and high-yield bonds, is very sensitive to rising interest rates and current uncertainty about the direction of the banking sector. In 2022, leveraged loan issuance declined and default rates rose given rising interest rate pressures. Recent bank turmoil influenced leveraged loan underwriting volume to be at it lowest level since 2016. U.S. Leveraged Markets Have Grown Significantly According to Eric Rosenthal, Senior Director of Leveraged Finance at FitchRatings, the “leveraged…

By Lewis Krauskopf NEW YORK (Reuters) – A closely watched U.S. inflation report next week could help settle one of Wall Street’s most pressing questions: whether the market has correctly pegged the near-term trajectory for interest rates. Following last month’s banking crisis, investors have become more convinced the Federal Reserve will cut rates in the second half to ward off an economic downturn. Such bets have pushed bond yields lower, supporting the giant tech and growth stocks that hold sway over broad equity indexes. The has gained 6.9% so far in 2023. But the central bank’s more restrictive rate outlook…

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s foreign exchange reserves rose in March, official data showed on Friday, as the dollar fell against other major currencies. The country’s foreign exchange reserves – the world’s largest – rose $51 billion to $3.184 trillion last month, compared with $3.149 trillion tipped by a Reuters poll of analysts and up from $3.133 trillion in February. The yuan rose 0.86% against the dollar in March, while the dollar fell 2.3% against a basket of other major currencies. China held 66.50 million fine troy ounces of gold at the end of March, up from 65.92 million at end-February.…

By Barani Krishnan Investing.com — One of the craftiest moves in recent times to boost the oil market should result in a weekly gain at least in crude — which is exactly what OPEC+ got. But nothing more. Crude prices did not advance beyond initial rally to $86.44 per barrel this week and surge to $81.81, which came on the back of the announcement that the world’s largest oil producers will collude to cut a further 1.7 million barrels from daily output after an earlier decision in November to reduce 2.0M barrels per day. New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, or…

2/2 © Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Federal Councillor and chief of the finance federal department Karin Keller-Sutter attends a news conference on Credit Suisse after UBS takeover offer, in Bern, Switzerland, March 19, 2023. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse 2/2 ZURICH (Reuters) – UBS’s multi-billion state-sponsored takeover of Credit Suisse should proceed smoothly without political obstructions, Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said in an interview published on Saturday. The Swiss parliament is due to hold an extraordinary session next week to discuss the emergency merger engineered by the Swiss authorities after Credit Suisse came close to collapse. Nearly 260 billion Swiss francs ($287 billion)…

LTX has migrated its electronic trading platform for corporate bonds to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The company, a subsidiary of Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., said it will use AWS to better optimize its data science processes. “A key component of the LTX value proposition is our data and AI offering,” said Jim Kwiatkowski, CEO of LTX. “AWS’s tools, including cloud-based services and API connectivity, enable us to build, train and deploy state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) models at scale as well as accelerate and streamline ML lifecycles.” “By moving its trading platform and critical business applications to AWS, LTX can bring…

As America watched two large banks fail over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a mad dash of businesses and individuals to ensure their money is actually safe in the bank. Perhaps what’s scariest to us all is having to confront a tough uncertainty: what does safe actually mean? Banking somewhere too big to fail? Keeping deposits under the FDIC insurance limit? Banking where a small percentage of deposits are over the limit? Learning about exotic products outside the banking system? It’s enough to make your head spin, and your wallet ache. These unfortunate events have left community banks caught…

The employment report for March gives plenty of good news for the U.S. macroeconomic situation. The economy added 236,000 nonfarm jobs, matching what had generally been expected. In fact, March’s 0.15% growth rate (1.8% annualized) was exactly identical to the average over the past 77 1/2 years since the end of World War II. That’s perfect. Major softening in the job market would be an important sign that a recession is on the way, while too much strength in the job market would force more aggressive interest rate hikes. The March jobs report, though, suggests that we’re on exactly the…