By Christiana Sciaudone
Investing.com -- F5 Networks Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV). rose almost 8% after being upgraded at Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). Shares are around $144, up about 66% from a 2020 low in March.
Morgan Stanley upgraded the cybersecurity company to overweight from equalweight and increased its price target by $40, to $175.
Analyst Meta Marshall cites "uncaptured value" in the software business, diminishing hardware headwinds, and "increased confidence" in F5's earnings power, according to Seeking Alpha.
F5 has six buys, three holds and no sells, according to data compiled by Investing.com, with an average price target of $158.
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) Stock rose by 3.39% to trade at $422.50 by 15:15 (19:15 GMT) on Thursday on the NASDAQ exchange.
The volume of NVIDIA shares traded since the start of the session was 10.25M. NVIDIA has traded in a range of $409.34 to $422.74 on the day.
The stock has traded at $422.7400 at its highest and $370.8200 at its lowest during the past seven days.
(Bloomberg) -- The Washington advocacy group Better Markets has spent a decade fighting big banks and railing against the government’s 2008 financial industry bailout. Now it has taken one of its own.
The organization received between $150,000 and $350,000 in loans from a key U.S. coronavirus relief program, according to data released by the Small Business Administration earlier this week. While that pales in comparison to the $700 billion taxpayer rescue banks got at the height of the credit crunch, Better Markets’ adversaries haven’t been able to hide their amusement.
“Apparently Better Markets didn’t enter this crisis as well capitalized as our nation’s largest banks,” quipped Bank Policy Institute President Greg Baer. Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS)., JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) & Co., Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C)., Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) & Co. and other members of Baer’s trade association have long been castigated by Better Markets.
The circumstances of Better Markets’ loan are dramatically different than what prompted the lifeline for banks. Wall Street played a starring role in causing the 2008 meltdown by packaging subprime mortgages into securities that triggered staggering losses, prompting Congress to approve the bailout to head off a collapse of the global financial system.
Better Markets -- like millions of other loan recipients -- was the victim of a health crisis and used its funds to save more than a dozen jobs, according to Dennis Kelleher, the group’s president. In an interview, he said it’s “ironic” that Wall Street would be “chuckling about a small nonprofit” getting aid, considering that financial firms have benefited significantly from Federal Reserve actions that have kept markets functioning during the pandemic.
“These guys are getting everything they want from the Trump administration and their regulators,” Kelleher said. “Yet they get angered by the mere slightest opposition.”
Bank lobbyists and others who have clashed with Better Markets have expressed their glee in emails fired off to each other -– and the press -- that note the loan won’t even be big enough to cover Kelleher’s annual compensation, which is roughly $400,000, according to public filings. Also making the rounds is a recent interview Kelleher gave in which he stressed that the government Paycheck Protection Program loans should be given to “Main Street small businesses in need.”
Bankers say that hardly describes Better Markets, which is located on Washington’s K Street lobbying corridor. It was co-founded and funded by Atlanta hedge fund manager Michael Masters, who is chairman of the nonprofit’s board.
A number of think tanks, lobbying groups and nonprofits tapped the aid program, a list that includes Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and Citizens Against Government Waste. As of Wednesday night, almost 4.9 million loans had been approved totaling $521.1 billion, according to the SBA.
Since its founding in 2010, Better Markets has become Wall Street’s leading antagonist in the regulatory arena, where deep-pocketed banks with legions of lobbyists have few opponents equipped to argue esoteric policy points. Small tweaks in rules can often provide profit windfalls, and financial firms routinely use the complexity to their advantage.
Kelleher also has a knack for getting under bankers’ skins, peppering his public comments with phrases like “too-big-to-jail banks” and “financial industry predators.”
The forgivable SBA loan, Kelleher said, helped keep Better Markets’ 15 workers employed. Before the PPP program was announced, he was drawing up plans for layoffs because the group’s fundraising had completely dried up. Virtually all of it is done in person, which has been impossible since the coronavirus hit, Kelleher said.
“Our entire annual budget is less than the pay raise that Goldman’s CEO got this year,” he said.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) Stock rose by 3.05% to trade at $3,175.14 by 14:58 (18:58 GMT) on Thursday on the NASDAQ exchange.
The volume of Amazon.com shares traded since the start of the session was 4.71M. Amazon.com has traded in a range of $3,075.59 to $3,175.97 on the day.
The stock has traded at $3,175.1399 at its highest and $2,676.0100 at its lowest during the past seven days.
By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – Wall Street moved pared some losses on Thursday, as tech rebounded from intraday lows though weakness in stocks tied to the progress of the economy kept the broader market in the red.
The S&P 500 lost 0.54%, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.44% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.27%.
The U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday that initial jobless claims decreased by about 100,000 to 1.31 million in the week ended July 3, beating forecasts for a decline to 1.3 million.
Continuing claims fell 698,000 to 18.06 million, extending a trend of downside momentum that is "encouraging," Jefferies (NYSE:JEF) said. "Continuing claims are down 2.5 million over the past 4 weeks."
Despite the backdrop of resilience seen in the labor market, investors have cooled expectations for a V-shape economic recovery, as several states have paused, or rolled back reopening measures to contain a surge in cases in Covid-19 hotspots including Texas, California, and Florida.
Stocks tied to the progress of the reopening, and ultimately the economy, continue to come under pressure.
Airlines and cruise stocks retreated, with American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL) and Carnival (NYSE:CCL), both down more than 4%, among the notable decliners.
In tech, the so-called Fab 5, continued to hold onto slender gains. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), all which collectively make up about 40% of the Nasdaq, traded above the flatline.
Energy led the selloff, paced by a decline oil prices as the pause of reopening measures in pockets of the U.S. offset signs of a recovery in gasoline demand seen a day earlier.
Financials were not far behind, falling 2% just days ahead of quarterly results from banks. The second-quarter earnings reports for a slew of Wall Street banks are likely to underscore a rough quarter amid rising loan loss provisions and weaker profit from lending activity weighed down by near-zero interest rates.
Elsewhere, AMC Networks (NASDAQ:AMCX) rallied as rumors swirled the company had hired Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) to explore a sale.
By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Geoffrey Berman, the former top federal prosecutor in Manhattan who was ousted last month, told lawmakers on Thursday that U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr strongly pressed him to resign, according to a copy of his written congressional testimony.
Berman, who departed as his office continued a probe into President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, was warned by Barr that if he did not leave and was fired, it would "not be good for my resume or future job prospects," Berman said.
Berman said Barr also repeatedly urged him to take another job, either in the Justice Department running its civil division or possibly as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Berman said Barr told him he wanted to appoint current SEC chairman Jay Clayton to replace Berman as Manhattan-based U.S. attorney.
Berman said he told Barr he regarded Clayton as an "unqualified choice" for the prosecutor job because he had never served as a federal prosecutor and "had no criminal experience."
Berman said he initially issued a news release saying he had "no intention of resigning and that I intended to ensure that our Office's important cases continue unimpeached."
However, he ultimately agreed to leave.
Berman was scheduled to meet behind closed doors on Thursday with the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee following his June 20 firing.
Barr is scheduled to appear before the panel on July 28.
Democrats have accused Barr of improperly meddling in a number of criminal and antitrust investigations to protect Trump and his allies. Barr has defended his actions.
Last month, career prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky told lawmakers on the panel that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia faced political pressure to scale back its sentencing recommendation for Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone.
Court papers filed in Stone's case indicate that the Justice Department said Stone should report to a federal prison in Jesup, Georgia, next Tuesday. That could pave the way for a possible presidential pardon or sentence commutation after Stone was found guilty of obstruction as part of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.
By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear an appeal by President Donald Trump's administration seeking to avoid a lawsuit by shareholders of mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (OTC:FMCC) relating to the government rescue of the companies following the 2008 housing crisis.
The justices will review a 2019 ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that shareholders in the two companies could pursue a challenge to the 2012 agreement between the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Treasury Department. The deal eliminated dividend payouts to various shareholders and required the companies to pay the U.S. Treasury an amount equal to their quarterly net worth each quarter.
The court also took up a related appeal brought by the shareholders that challenges the constitutional structure of the agency.
The Supreme Court in a similar case concerning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ruled on June 29 that such a structure is unconstitutional, deciding that the president should be able to fire the director at any time.
The cases will be heard together in the court's next term, which starts in October.
In 2016, Fannie and Freddie shareholders Patrick Collins, Marcus Liotta and William Hitchcock sued in a federal court in Texas saying that the 2012 agreement, sometimes referred to as the "net worth sweep," exceeded FHFA's authority and that the structure of the agency was unconstitutional.
The government in 2008 seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both private enterprises set up by Congress, at the height of the financial crisis as they teetered on the brink of insolvency. The government took a majority stake in each and they were placed under the supervision of the FHFA, which was created at the same time.
The FHFA is headed by a director who is appointed to a five-year term by the president subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
(Bloomberg) -- A triple-leveraged ETF that tracks some of the world’s biggest technology companies is poised for its worst week of outflows in a decade after soaring more than 200% from its March low.
The $6.8 billion ProShares UltraPro QQQ, which seeks investment results that correspond to three times the daily performance of the Nasdaq-100 Index, has already lost almost $500 million in the span, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That puts the exchange-traded fund on pace for its largest weekly withdrawals since TQQQ started trading in February 2010.
The megacap tech trade has ruled stocks for months, with investors piling into companies with rock-solid balance sheets and that benefit from the stay-at-home economy. The Nasdaq 100, including Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), is headed for an annual gain that ranks with its best of the last two decades, raising some concern whether the big-tech rally can continue.
“The outflows here look like classic profit-taking from an ETF that has been in money printing machine mode for about three months straight,” said Eric Balchunas, an ETF analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. “These traders know not to push their luck, which is the key to not losing your shirt with exotic ETFs.”
The outflows may not persist, though. With more states slowing or reversing reopening measures, demand for the companies that can withstand another economic setback has been rising again. As of Thursday afternoon, the Nasdaq 100 was outperforming the other major equity benchmarks.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
ROME (Reuters) - Italy remains unsatisfied with Atlantia's proposals to settle a dispute over its motorway concession and has given the company until the weekend to come up with something better to avoid being stripped of its licence, a government source told Reuters.
Rome has been threatening to revoke the business licence of Atlantia's motorway unit Autostrade per l'Italia following the deadly collapse in 2018 of a bridge in Genoa that was run by the motorway operator.
Speaking after a Rome meeting between senior government officials and Autostrade chiefs, the source, asking not to be named, said the government had asked the company for better offers over tariffs, compensation and penalties for maintenance failings.
The issue will be on the table of the next cabinet meeting, the source added.
(Reuters) - Dakota Access, LLC asked a federal court to stay its order to shut and empty the largest oil pipeline out of North Dakota within 30 days pending an appeal of the ruling, court records showed on Thursday.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this week denied an emergency request to reconsider its decision, which came after the court found fault with an environmental permit for the 570,000 barrel-per-day Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL).
Dakota Access, controlled by Energy Transfer (NYSE:ET) LP, asked the court in a filing late on Wednesday to decide on its request by July 14 so it could appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court for D.C. if denied. The lower court is holding a hearing on Thursday to discuss the schedule.
DAPL was ordered to shut and be emptied by Aug. 5 while an environmental review of the line was being completed. A portion of the pipeline runs under South Dakota's Lake Oahe, a drinking water source for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which long opposed the pipeline.
Dakota Access said shutting the line would cost companies and state economies billions of dollars and result in the loss of thousands of jobs.
Energy Transfer and Dakota Access say they would lose $2.8 million to $3.5 million each day the line is idled in 2020 and as much as $1.4 billion for the whole of next year.
Purging the line, which runs 1,172 miles from the Bakken shale region in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois, would take about three months and cost roughly $27 million, it said.
The company told Reuters on Wednesday it had not yet taken measures to empty the line.
Israel stocks were lower after the close on Thursday, as losses in the Oil & Gas, Banking and Financials sectors led shares lower.
At the close in Tel Aviv, the TA 35 lost 0.55%.
The best performers of the session on the TA 35 were Paz Oil (TASE:PZOL), which rose 3.61% or 900 points to trade at 25800 at the close. Meanwhile, Ormat Technologies (TASE:ORA) added 3.17% or 670 points to end at 21790 and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (TASE:TEVA) was up 2.15% or 83 points to 3940 in late trade.
The worst performers of the session were Israel Corp (TASE:ILCO), which fell 6.03% or 1830 points to trade at 28500 at the close. International Flavors & Fragrances Inc (TASE:IFF) declined 3.58% or 1560 points to end at 41960 and Harel (TASE:HARL) was down 3.48% or 73 points to 2027.
Falling stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange by 213 to 175 and 24 ended unchanged.
Crude oil for August delivery was down 3.01% or 1.23 to $39.67 a barrel. Elsewhere in commodities trading, Brent oil for delivery in September fell 2.29% or 0.99 to hit $42.30 a barrel, while the August Gold Futures contract fell 0.91% or 16.55 to trade at $1804.05 a troy ounce.
USD/ILS was up 0.03% to 3.4504, while EUR/ILS fell 0.29% to 3.8965.
The US Dollar Index Futures was up 0.33% at 96.690.