By Ozan Ergenay and Andrey Sychev (Reuters) – Volkswagen (ETR:) shares were down 3% in early trade on Monday with analysts citing uncertainty about the automaker’s cost-cutting deal with unions and likely headwinds in 2025. Friday’s agreement, hailed by unions as a “Christmas miracle”, calls for more than 35,000 future job cuts and a reduction of production by almost a quarter, but without immediate plant closures or layoffs. It fell short of management’s initial ambitions and market expectations, and lacked a sense of urgency, according to Jefferies analyst Philippe Houchois. Given the pace of change at rival firms and the…
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By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. investors are preparing for a swathe of changes in 2025, from tariffs and deregulation to tax policy, that will ripple through markets as President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, putting the focus on whether the U.S. economy can continue to outperform. The changing of the guard in Washington has big implications for how stocks, bonds and currencies fare in the new year and may require investors to rejig portfolios. Forecasts call for another buoyant year for stocks, the dollar to maintain its recent strength over the coming months and…
The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo for allegedly failing to protect consumers from “widespread fraud” on the Zelle payments platform. Early Warning Services, which developed and operates Zelle, has also been named in the lawsuit. It is jointly owned by Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, US Bank, and Wells Fargo. The CFPB claims that since Zelle’s launch in 2017, customers of the three banks have lost over $870m due to inadequate fraud prevention and detection measures. Zelle facilitates electronic money transfers…
Author: Lin Bo-yu Regulation December 23, 2024 Thai government exempts mangrove land tax to encourage development. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) Mangroves are three to five times more effective at carbon sequestration than tropical forests, and the Thai government is optimistic about their substantial carbon credit potential. Recently, Thailand amended tax laws to encourage mangrove restoration, with plans to exempt land taxes on green area, such as mangrove forests, starting in 2025. This initiative aims to accelerate the goal of restoring 80,000 hectares of mangrove forests by 2031. Land taxes trigger shift from mangroves to farms Under the 2019 Land and Building Tax Act,…
Taking nonfinancial information into account when conducting financial analyses is not entirely new to professional investors and analysts. But the demand for information beyond revenue, earnings, and other conventional accounting measures has increased significantly in recent years. This year, investors with over $130 trillion in assets asked more than 15,000 companies worldwide to specifically disclose environmental information so that they could evaluate how it impacted their investments. Companies now report more nonfinancial environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-related data than ever before. Indeed, an analysis of 50 Fortune 100 companies by White & Case LLP found that all 50 had included…
Image source: Getty Images One of the great things about value shares is they can get motoring if some good news comes along. However, that’s balanced by the patience that investors often need. Sometimes businesses with low valuations remain forgotten and overlooked for years. In addition, there’s always the risk that an already cheap stock will just keep getting cheaper. So it’s possible to end up holding shares that grind lower over days, weeks and even years. Sometimes it pays to hold and wait It’s enough to make the dourest of value investors cry into their beer. But the waiting game can…
Silver price recovers further to near $29.90 even though US bond yields rise as Fed officials support fewer interest rate cuts in 2025. Soft monthly US PCE inflation raised uncertainty over the Fed’s shallow rate-cut path. Silver price is expected to struggle in an attempt to extend the upward-sloping trendline above $30.00. Silver price (XAG/USD) extends Friday’s recovery move to near $29.90 in Monday’s European session. The white metal rebounded strongly on Friday from a more than three-month low of $28.75 after the release of the United States (US) Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index (PCE) data for November, which showed that…
By Kantaro Komiya TOKYO (Reuters) – Honda (NYSE:) and Nissan (OTC:) are in talks to merge by 2026, they said on Monday, a historic pivot for Japan’s auto industry that underlines the threat Chinese EV makers now pose to the world’s long-dominant legacy car makers. The tie-up would create the world’s third-largest auto group by vehicle sales after Toyota (NYSE:) and Volkswagen (ETR:). It would also give the two companies scale and a chance to share resources in the face of intense competition from Tesla (NASDAQ:) and more nimble Chinese rivals, such as BYD (SZ:). The merger of Honda, Japan’s…
This article was written byFollowAaron Chow, aka Elephant Analytics has 15+ years of analytical experience and is a top rated analyst on TipRanks. Aaron previously co-founded a mobile gaming company (Absolute Games) that was acquired by PENN Entertainment. He used his analytical and modeling skills to design the in-game economic models for two mobile apps with over 30 million in combined installs. He is the author of the investing group Distressed Value Investing, which focuses on both value opportunities and distressed plays, with a significant focus on the energy sector. Learn more>>Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar…
Image source: Getty Images The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (LSE: SMT) share price hasn’t exactly stood still in 2024. In fact, as I write, it’s up 16% year-to-date. But the US Nasdaq index has gained almost twice that, at 31% since the start of 2024. It just keeps hitting all-time records. Scottish Mortgage invests heavily in Nasdaq stocks. The result is that the investment trust shares are now trading at a 12% discount to their underlying net asset value (NAV). In effect, that means we can buy £1’s worth of the world’s top technology growth stocks for just 88p. Don’t…