The Market Winners and Losers From India's Elections

Political stability alone isn't likely to drive continued outperformance by India's equities or currency, with investors also weighing headwinds from softer domestic consumption, rising oil prices and a trade war. And valuations are already on the higher side: The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex trades at a 12-month blended forward price-to-earnings multiple of 18.3, above its five-year average. Markets are pricing in double-digit earnings growth over next few years.

Same-day delivery brings 'Target effect' to cities, with retailer carrying the bags

Shoppers at Target Corp.'s suburban stores know all about the so-called "Target effect" — that thing that happens when you go into a store for, say, shampoo — that's it, just shampoo — and walk out with enough stuff to fill a car. It turns out something similar is happening in urban markets as the retailer invests more in ship-from-store delivery options. Marketwatch has a follow-up story to Target's strong quarterly earnings announcement this week, reporting that Target customers who use same-day delivery at urban stores buy five times as many items than those who carry their own bags home.

Russia’s Dirty Oil Crisis Is Worse Than Almost Anyone Predicted

After any normal voyage the tanker would quickly deliver its 700,000 barrels of Russian crude into a refinery for processing into gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products. Back in April, unusually high levels of the chemicals known as organic chlorides were discovered in Russian crude flowing through the giant Druzhba pipeline, built in the 1960s to carry crude from the U.S.S.R. to allied countries in Eastern Europe. The chlorides can severely damage oil refineries and on April 24 Russia's state pipeline operator, Transneft PJSC, halted shipments.

• Exclusive: Russia to pump dirty oil back from Belarus - sources

  Reuters
• EXCLUSIVE-Russia plans to import dirty oil back from Belarus - sources

  Reuters

How China could use its massive US debt holdings as a trade war weapon

China is currently the largest holder of U.S. government debt. It now owns $1.12 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds. If China decided to sell off its U.S. government debt holdings as a form of retaliation in the ongoing trade war with the U.S. and President Donald Trump, it could upend global financial markets and drive U.S. interest rates higher.

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  Investors sell off stocks amid China trade tensions

  FOX News Videos
• 
  POTUS Trump's trade war comments lift stocks, gold shines

  Trading Central

Asia's Sassoon Family of Coffee Bean Fame Shifts to Venture Debt

As the clan who brought The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to Asia, they're often credited for helping spark the craze for Western-style coffee around the region. Genesis Alternative Ventures Pte, anchored by family office Sassoon Investment Corp., plans to raise $70 million over the coming 12 months for venture debt financing, people familiar with the matter said. Whereas venture capitalists typically buy stakes in companies via funding rounds or bonds that can convert into shares, venture debt is a subtler business.

Avoid Paying Taxes on Social Security Income

Some people have to pay federal income taxes on the Social Security benefits they receive. Typically, this occurs only when individuals receive benefits and have other substantial sources of income from wages, self-employed earnings, interest, dividends, required minimum distributions from qualified retirement accounts, and other taxable income that must be reported on their tax returns. Taxable Social Security Income In accordance with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules, you won't pay federal income tax on more than 85% of your Social Security benefits.

• 
  4 Ways to Score Higher Social Security Benefits

  Motley Fool
• 
  Bernie Sanders on Social Security: 10 Things You Should Know

  Motley Fool

25 Stocks to Avoid After Memorial Day

Below, we take a look at the 25 worst stocks to own the week of Memorial Day. Looking at S&P 500 Index stocks over the past 10 years -- and considering only stocks with at least eight years' worth of returns -- a handful of bank names made the list. STI and FITB have ended the week lower 80% of the time, averaging losses of 2.49% and 2.07%, respectively, per data from Schaeffer's Senior Quantitative Analyst Rocky White.

Could Ford Buy Tesla? Here's How Likely A "Doomsday" Scenario Is

The auto maker is burning through $1 billion in cash a quarter, the cash from the latest $2.7 billion funding round will be gone within ten months, and demand is falling off. One of the classic business solutions would be an acquisition. Maybe a white knight with the cash and managerial and operational wherewithal to come in, buy the company, fix the broken parts, and let Tesla become what it had the potential to be.

Cramer: 5G rollout has tower stocks in 'raging bull market mode'

"Once you build a tower, you can just add another antenna to it when you pick up a new client, so the margins are terrific," he says.

• 
  Cramer pinpoints the hardest part of individual investing

  CNBC
• 
  Cramer: Consider what you want from the market before diving into stocks

  CNBC Videos

Here's how the world's billionaires make their money

Most billionaires in the world didn't inherit their wealth. Most billionaires put their money into public holdings — 36.4% of their portfolios were allocated to this asset class — followed by private holdings at 35%, liquid assets such as cash at 26.4%, and real estate and luxury assets at around 2.2%. Breaking the group down, those with $1 to $2 billion in assets generally invested mostly in liquid assets, while those with over $50 billion invested mostly in public holdings.

3 Oil Stocks to Drop Now

To keep production high, the Administration is giving the oil companies everything they always wanted. It's possible because oil and gas no longer represent cheap energy. The lifetime cost of solar and wind installations, $63.20 per Megawatt-hour, is now below that of coal, and approaching that of natural gas. The solar power expansion that began early this decade in the Far West, spurred by favorable tax laws, has now spread to the heart of the U.S. oilpatch.

5 Cheap Stocks to Buy That Are $6 or Less

Safe Stocks to Buy This Summer With that in mind, here is a list of five of the best penny stocks to buy that I think have more upside potential to ride the market's bullishness. Pier 1 (PIR) PIR stock price: 64 cents Year-to-date gain: 100% Furniture retailer Pier 1 Imports (NYSE:PIR) has had a tough time getting its act together for several years. PIR stock has collapsed over the past year.

Why Bull Market Could Rise Over 25% In 2019 Despite Trade War

The escalating U.S.-China trade war has raised bearish sentiment, but several respected investment strategists remain bullish, predicting the S&P 500 Index (SPX) will be up by 25% to 30% in 2019. Through the close on May 23, the S&P 500 gained 12.6% year-to-date. Binky Chadha, head of asset allocation and chief equity strategist at Deutche Bank, projects that the S&P 500 will end 2019 at 3,250, up by 29.7% for the year, and the most bullish call among 17 firms surveyed by CNBC.

The Race Is On to Build a Better Battery

At first glance, all seems serene on a spring morning at the research-and-development campus of SK Innovation, one of Korea's biggest industrial conglomerates. The campus sits in Daejeon, a tidy, planned city an hour's high-speed-train ride south of Seoul that the national government has built up as a technology hub. Dotting SK's rolling acres are tastefully modern glass-and-steel buildings that wouldn't be out of place in a glossy architecture magazine.

Bitcoin coils up ahead of potential price hike to five digits

Bitcoin is once more creeping up to challenge the $8,400 level of resistance before a potential bull market continuation towards a five-figure price tag. The digital asset is currently coiling up in a snake-like formation, with price following a consistent ascending channel before the parabolic breakout above $6,000. Over the past two weeks, Bitcoin has seen a sequence of five higher lows and two very distinct lower highs as price looks poised to spring out of its current wedge with an explosive move either up or down.

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  Staking Claim on Bitcoin — Does Craig Wright’s Copyright Filing Hold Legal Merit?

  Cointelegraph
• 
  Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 24/05/19

  FX Empire

The Real Reason Microsoft Stock Stands Out Among Other Big Tech Names

In 2015, a year after Satya Nadella became its CEO and committed his company to the cloud, I put some Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares in my retirement account and forgot about them. With a market cap of $972 billion, Microsoft is now the world's most valuable company, and despite his earnest philanthropy, co-founder Bill Gates is worth over $100 billion.