^DJI - Dow Jones Industrial Average
| Previous Close | 29,423.30 |
| Open | 29,440.50 |
| Volume | 232,546,894 |
| Day's Range | 29,283.20 - 29,463.00 |
| 52 Week Range | 24,680.57 - 29,568.57 |
| Avg. Volume | 266,042,622 |
- Yahoo Finance
Strategists remain 'irrationally bullish' on the stock market: Morning Brief
Top news and what to watch in the markets on Tuesday, February 18, 2020.
- MarketWatch
Walmart raises dividend 2%
Walmart Inc. announced Tuesday that it has raised its dividend for fiscal 2021 to $2.16 per share, up 2% from the $2.12 per share in the last fiscal year. The fiscal 2021 dividend will be paid in four quarterly installments of 54 cents per share. The first payment will be on April 6 to shareholders of record as of March 20. Walmart also announced fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that missed expectations. Walmart stock is down 1.1% in Tuesday premarket trading, but up nearly 18% over the last year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 13.6% for the period.
- MarketWatch
DuPont CEO and CFO to leave company
DuPont Inc. said Friday that Chief Executive Marc Doyle and Chief Financial Officer Jeanmarie Desmond are leaving the company, effective immediately. The specialty materials and chemicals company said Executive Chairman Ed Breen would take on the additional role of CEO and Lori Koch, vice president of investor relations and corporate financial planning, will be CFO. "While we made some progress in 2019, we did not meet our own expectations and we now need to move aggressively to secure our foundation for growth," Breen said. "We have solid businesses, but, as we discussed on our recent earnings call, we need to accelerate operational improvement and make sure we are taking appropriate action to deliver on our commitments for the year." DuPont's stock, which tacked on 0.4% in premarket trading, has tumbled 31.2% over the past 12 months through Friday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 13.6%.
- Barrons.com
U.S. Stocks Set To Retreat After Apple Warning on Coronavirus Impact
U.S. stocks on Tuesday looked set for a lower start as traders returned from a three-day break to find a warning from Apple and Walmart reporting worse-than-forecast results.
- Barrons.com
Jeff Bezos’ Firm Blue Origin Opened a New Rocket Plant. The Space Race Is Heating Up.
Blue Origin is a privately held space company, but “space” is becoming investible in a number of ways.
- Investor's Business Daily
Dow Jones Futures: Walmart Earnings Due, 3 IPOs Near Buys; Warren Buffett Stock Set To Break Out
Futures: Walmart, Medtronic and InMode earnings are due Tuesday. IPO stocks InMode, Progyny, Ping are near buy points. So is Taiwan Semiconductor. Buffett-boosted RH is likely to break out.
- MarketWatch
Delta’s CEO offers a simple solution to the raging debate over reclining seats on airplanes
Delta Air Lines Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian weighs in on a simmering debate about the proper protocol when reclining one’s seat on a flight.
- Barrons.com
The Stock Market Is Up About 5% Through Presidents Day. Here’s What Happens Next.
Can history point out hidden risks for the stock market or is it clear sailing from here? As it turns out, the data is encouraging.
- MarketWatch
Here’s which markets are open, and closed, this Presidents Day
U.S. financial markets are closed on Monday, Feb. 17, in observance of Presidents Day. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are shut down, and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, or Sifma, is recommending no trading in dollar-denominated debt, which includes money markets and U.S. Treasurys. The S&P 500 (SPX)and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)were both less than a percentage point away from their respective record closes on Friday, while the 10-year Treasury note yield (BX:TMUBMUSD10Y)traded around 1.59% at last check.
- Barrons.com
Stimulus Moves by China Nudge Global Stocks Higher
Moves by China’s government to limit the fallout of the deadly coronavirus helped boost stock markets globally on Monday.
- Bloomberg
David Ruder, SEC Chairman During 1987 Crash, Dies at 90
(Bloomberg) -- David Ruder, a former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission whose off-the-cuff comments may have fanned panic selling on what became known as Black Monday, has died. He was 90.He died on Feb. 15, according to Northwestern University, where he served as dean of the law school from 1977 to 1985. No cause was given. Jay Clayton, the current SEC chairman, said in a statement on Twitter that Ruder was “a great chairman and constant contributor to the SEC for over 30 years.”As head of the SEC from August 1987 through September 1989, Ruder presided over the final phase of the agency’s insider-trading investigation of Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. He also steered the agency away from the anti-regulatory course it had taken during Ronald Reagan’s first six years as president.A longtime professor of corporate and securities law at Northwestern, Ruder was Reagan’s pick to succeed John S.R. Shad, a former vice chairman of E.F. Hutton & Co. who had led the SEC from 1981.Ruder was in his third month as SEC chairman when markets around the world plunged on Oct. 19, 1987. The Dow Jones Industrial Average would end the day down 22.6%, having lost 508 points.That morning, Ruder delivered remarks to a conference of the American Stock Exchange in Washington. Afterward, he met with reporters seeking his reaction to what was happening in equity markets.‘Quite Anxious’“I’m afraid to say that there is some point, and I don’t know what that point is, that I would be quite anxious to talk to the New York Stock Exchange about a temporary, and very temporary, halt of trading,” he replied in part, according to an Associated Press account.Dow Jones, the first news service to report his comment, at 1:09 p.m, rendered it slightly differently: “There is some point, and I don’t know what that point is, that I would be interested in talking to the New York Stock Exchange about a temporary, very temporary, halt in trading.”There would be no such halt, and Ruder was criticized for mentioning it as a possibility, which may have caused nervous investors to believe they had to race to sell shares before the market closed.“By 1:25 p.m., the Dow Jones news wire quoted the SEC as stating that it was not discussing closing the stock markets,” the presidential task force that investigated the market crash wrote in its final report. “However, the uncertainty created by the possible inability to sell may have exacerbated the dramatic selling pressure.”At a hearing three weeks after the crash, Senator William Proxmire, a Wisconsin Democrat who led the Senate Banking Committee, asked Ruder whether it would have been wiser not to talk publicly about a halt to trading.Defining MomentAccording to a Washington Post account of the hearing, Ruder explained that when he spoke to reporters on Oct. 19, he “did not have in my consciousness what sort of day it would be.”Ruder told the New York Times in January 1988: “You want to deny that you caused the market to drop. You want to defend yourself. But the proper response would be to say that I made a mistake talking about the market and I would not do it again.”Arthur Levitt, who was chairman of the American Stock Exchange at the time and later would serve as SEC chairman, said of Ruder: “It’s funny how one event can mark a chairman. It’s unfortunate, because he was a very solid chairman, very thoughtful, very balanced. He came out for the right things.” Levitt is a board member of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.Under Ruder, the SEC studied what happened to stocks, options and futures throughout the tumultuous month of October 1987. It identified how “new institutional trading mechanisms and strategies in this linked market can cause extraordinary peak volume and volatility,” Ruder said in a 1988 speech.Lacked ResourcesThroughout his term at the SEC, and for years after, Ruder urged that the agency be given more money and authority.He failed in a bid to wrest authority over commodity-index futures from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In 2008, he joined with two other former SEC chairmen, Levitt and William Donaldson, to caution against weakening the SEC while reforming financial regulation following the housing and credit crisis.“The problem with the SEC today is that it lacks the money, manpower and tools to do its job,” they wrote.David Sturtevant Ruder was born on May 25, 1929, in Wausau, Wisconsin, the son of an attorney. He graduated from Williams College in 1951 and, after service in the U.S. Army, earned his law degree in 1957 from the University of Wisconsin.After practicing law in Milwaukee for four years, he became a professor at Northwestern’s law school, known today as Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. During his time as dean, the law school attracted a pool of highly talented professors and built a $25 million building.Reagan’s AgendaThe SEC chairman’s post opened up when Shad became U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands. Reagan, hoping to keep the agency focused on enforcement matters, reportedly offered the job first to Rudolph Giuliani, who was then the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and then to Nicholas Brady, chief executive of the investment firm Dillon Read & Co. They turned it down.Ruder didn’t fully share the president’s zeal for deregulation, especially after the market crash early in his tenure.“I definitely believe that I am more regulatory than my predecessor,” Ruder told the Times in January 1988. “I find myself voting more clearly for intervention by the commission into all kinds of activities, particularly in the enforcement area.”Ruder called the SEC, with its $135 million budget, “a peanut agency, in terms of budget size, doing a giant’s job,” during a congressional hearing in September 1988.That same month, the SEC sued Drexel and four of its officials, including Milken, for insider trading and stock manipulation, following a long-running investigation that had begun under Shad. In a settlement with the SEC and the Justice Department, the firm agreed to pay $650 million in fines and to remove Milken as head of its junk-bond unit. Milken would serve two years in prison; Drexel filed for Chapter 11 protection in February 1990.Ruder stepped aside in 1989, making room for Richard Breeden, President George H.W. Bush’s pick to lead the SEC. Ruder returned to Northwestern, where he became a professor emeritus in 2005. From 1999 to 2010 he led the Mutual Fund Directors Forum, which represents independent fund directors.Ruder was married three times and had four children and two stepchildren.(Adds date of death and attribution in second paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Laurence Arnold in Washington at larnold4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Caroline Salas Gage at csalas1@bloomberg.net, Steven Gittelson, Linus ChuaFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- FX Empire
Week Ahead: “Covid-19, And The ‘Cleanest Dirty Shirt’ Argument”
Investors took solace in robust economic data, better-than-expected earning reports and the fact a quorum of the global central banks have the markets back which we will highlight in the Asia Week Ahead section.
- MarketWatch
Two years after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — who are the winners and the losers?
With tax filing season now underway, we have two full years of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) changes in the rearview mirror: 2018 and 2019. Not surprisingly, the answers depend on your specific situation and, just as importantly, your perceptions. Perceptions often override reality.
- FX Empire
The Week Ahead – Economic Data, COVID-19 Updates and Geopolitics in Focus
It’s a busy week ahead, with private sector PMI numbers likely to reflect the impact of COVID-19 on economies. Falling cases should soften the blow, however.
- MarketWatch
Here are vulnerable parts of the U.S. economy that coronavirus may infect
Festering worries about the spread of COVID-19 is a potential peril for the U.S. economy, but ailing manufacturers and tepid investment are already muzzling growth.
- MarketWatch
Here’s the segment of the economy that may benefit from fears of coronavirus, analysts say
As the COVID-19 spreads and the patient count and death toll grow, economists are slashing their once-rosy expectations for global growth in 2020.
- MarketWatch
Here’s how one ‘black swan’ investor is protecting his $5 billion fund against a market crash that ‘won’t be pretty’
Mark Spitznagel of Universa Investments is getting ready for the next big drop, but he says he’s fine if it never comes.
- MarketWatch
Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger warns of ‘wretched excess,’ says Tesla’s Elon Musk ‘may overestimate himself’
Munger, who serves as chairman for the Daily Journal along with his Berkshire role, cited the increasing use of EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — as an example of that excess. “I don’t like when investment bankers talk about EBITDA, which I call ‘bulls**t earnings,’” Munger, 96 years old, explained.
- MarketWatch
Trump administration considers proposing new tax incentives for stock buying: report
The Trump administration is considering making it possible for Americans to invest more in the stock market on a tax-free basis, according to a report on Friday citing four unnamed administration officials.
- Investor's Business Daily
Visa, UnitedHealth, Fiserv, TransDigm, Monolithic Power: Give These 5 Leaders A Long Look
Long-Term Leaders stabilize your portfolio and offer stellar long-term growth. Visa, UnitedHealth, Fiserv, TransDigm and Monolithic Power are setting up.
- Barrons.com
How Netflix Wins Despite Underperforming at the Oscars
The streaming giant had 25 nominations and only two wins at the Academy Award. But the stock price went up. The reason: Lots of chatter about the company’s content.
- Barrons.com
The Dow Jones Industrial Average Gained 1% This Week. Let It Ride?
We’ve heard the market dubbed “ludicrous.” We’ve seen the comparisons to the dot-com bubble. We’ve pointed out that stocks have almost never traded with valuations as high as they are now. That’s still no reason to sell.
- MarketWatch
IBM, Caterpillar share losses contribute to Dow's 75-point fall
DOW UPDATE Shares of IBM and Caterpillar are trading lower Friday afternoon, dragging the Dow Jones Industrial Average into negative territory. Shares of IBM (IBM) and Caterpillar (CAT) have contributed to the index's intraday decline, as the Dow (DJIA) was most recently trading 75 points lower (-0.
- MarketWatch
S&P 500 and Nasdaq end week at records as investors weigh economic health, coronavirus
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq on Friday closed at an all-time high, capping a week that had produced a decided uptrend as investors parsed a round of corporate results, economic data and the spread of COVID-19. All three benchmarks, however finished the week solidly higher. The S&P 500 gained 6.22 points, 0.2%, to close at 3,380.16, a record. The Nasdaq Composite Index closed 19.21 points, 0.2%, also at a record at 9,731.18. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 25.23 points, or 0.1%, down to end at 29,398.08. On the day, investors weighed slightly sluggish retail-sales growth in January against relatively upbeat corporate earnings, even as companies like Expedia warned on the impact of the viral outbreak that reportedly originated in Wuhan, China last year. For the week, the Dow gained 1%, the S&P 500 was up 1.6%, and the Nasdaq gained 2.2%.
- MarketWatch
S&P 500 and Nasdaq end at records to end week, amid signs of soft retail sales, coronavirus spread
The Nasdaq and S&P 500 finish at records Friday, after bouncing between small gains and losses, as investors parse mixed data on the strength of the U.S. consumer and monitored the spread of COVID-19 in China.
