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US

Nearly 50 more migrants pour into NYC from Texas, 14 hotels now used for housing

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Another bus carrying approximately 50 illegal migrants arrived in New York City Saturday from Texas, with another bus expected later in the morning.

Migrants transported to New York City were mostly young men, as well several women.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent more than 1,500 migrants to the Big Apple in a bid to draw attention to the ongoing immigration crisis on the southern border.

New York officials said this week that the city is using 14 hotels to provide housing to the new arrivals.

5 MORE MIGRANT BUSES FROM TEXAS ARRIVE IN NYC AS ABBOTT CALLS OUT ADAMS’ ‘HYPOCRISY’

Nearly 50 more migrants arrived from Texas at New York City’s Port Authority Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022, with another bus expected.
(Fox News Channel)

“Texas is filling the gaps left in Biden’s absence at our border,” Abbott wrote on social media after the Saturday buses arrived. “We’ve made over 19,000 arrests, seized over 335.5M lethal fentanyl doses, & sent over 7,400 migrants on buses to DC and over 1,500 to NYC. While Biden ignores the crisis, Texas steps up.”

Supporters see Abbott’s bus program as forcing liberal cities and government to deal with the reality of mass illegal immigration.

NPR BLASTS GOP GOVERNORS FOR BUSING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO DC ‘WITH NO PLAN FOR WHAT’S NEXT’

New York City and Washington D.C. have positioned themselves as “sanctuary cities.”

Critics say the buses are a cheap ploy for attention.

“He’s weaponizing asylum seekers,” Manuel Castro, commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs said. “It is shameful, and it is our moral obligation to condemn the use of human beings for political purposes.”

TEXAS GOV. ABBOTT PLEDGES TO KEEP SENDING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO NYC, DC DESPITE MAYORS’ OUTRAGE 

Castro was not the only official in Mayor Eric Adams’s administration to blast Abbott. City Comptroller Brad Lander said Abbott’s action are “inhumane” and “disgusting.”

Lander said the city’s resources are being stretched thin as they provide shelter, food, legal services and more. 

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The city’s shelter system is “right up at its capacity,” and they are looking into expanding and renting hotel space.

Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.

Timothy Nerozzi is a writer for Fox News Digital. You can follow him on Twitter @timothynerozzi and can email him at timothy.nerozzi@fox.com

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Business

Stocks Rise on Services Data, Earnings

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U.S. stocks rose Wednesday as investors considered another wave of corporate earnings reports and after a key reading on the services sector hit a three-month high.

The S&P 500 rose 1.1%, recouping losses after it fell Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.9%. The Nasdaq Composite gained 1.8%. 

Stocks had come under renewed pressure in recent days from geopolitical tensions, as U.S. House Speaker

Nancy Pelosi

met with Taiwan’s president despite warnings from China. Meanwhile, Federal Reserve officials said the central bank is likely to continue raising interest rates at coming meetings, dampening hopes in markets that slowing economic growth could mean a change in policy.

But some better-than-expected earnings reports amid low liquidity in August are lifting sentiment, investors say.

“Markets are taking a bit of a breather to assess what’s going on globally. There is still a lot of inflation, central banks are keeping that hawkish rhetoric and we get some geopolitics on top of that,” said Olivier Marciot, global macro portfolio manager at Unigestion. But earnings have been pretty good, in terms of beating expectations, he added.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.805% from 2.740% Tuesday. Weak economic data have weighed on yields in recent days, according to Michael Hewson, markets analyst at CMC Markets. There are “raised concerns that the U.S. economy could well be slowing sharply,” he said.

There have been concerns about the pace of the economy, and even whether a new recession is coming, but the U.S. services sector continued to expand in July, according to a report from the Institute for Supply Management. The ISM’s index of conditions for businesses like restaurants, hotels and retailers hit a three-month high in July.

The broader problem for investors is that whether or not the economy is technically in recession, inflation and the pressure it puts on the Fed to raise rates is resulting in an environment for investors that is fundamentally different from anything they have seen over the past several decades, said Eaton Vance portfolio manager Aaron Dunn. That won’t end soon, he said.

There has been a bounce back recently in some of the more beaten-up stocks, he said, but those hoping the growth trade returns may be disappointed. “Equities returns are going to be a grind.”

In corporate news,

PayPal

shares jumped 10% after hedge fund Elliott Management confirmed it has a $2 billion stake in the payments company. Starbucks rose 2.7% after it said demand is still strong and raising prices partially offset higher labor costs.

Vaccine maker

Moderna

rose 16% after it posted earnings above analysts’ estimates and said it would begin a new $3 billion share repurchase program.

Airbnb

declined 4.7% after it said it swung back to profit but its outlook disappointed investors. Online dating group

Match

tumbled 17% after posting results that missed estimates and said the CEO of Tinder is leaving the firm. 

Chip maker

Advanced Micro Devices

fell 3% after it reported a drop in profit and issued guidance for the current period that came below Wall Street’s expectations. 

Clorox,

MGM Resorts,

and insurers

MetLife

and

Allstate

are scheduled to report earnings after markets close.

Oil prices fell after an OPEC+ meeting where a committee suggested a smaller-than-expected production increase, according to delegates. U.S. crude fell 2.5% to $92.10.

Traders worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.



Photo:

ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS

Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 ticked up 0.4%. British-listed cybersecurity firm

Avast

soared 43% after a U.K. regulator said it has provisionally cleared

NortonLifeLock’s

$7.3 billion acquisition of the company. French

bank Société Générale

rose 2.9% after reporting a narrower loss than analysts expected, despite its exit from Russia.

In Asia, major benchmarks were mixed. The Shanghai Composite Index ticked down 0.7%, extending losses after it closed down 2.3% on Tuesday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.4% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.5%.

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Business

‘Prices will not come back down’: Americans dip into their savings to cope with record-high inflation

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Americans accumulated extra savings during the pandemic, but that money is fast dwindling because of inflation.

Some 70% of Americans are using their savings to cover rising prices, a recent Forbes Advisor survey of 2,000 U.S. adults concluded. Among those polled, older adults were more likely to say they have left their savings intact.

In fact, the personal savings rate for April 2022 hit 4.4% — the lowest level since September 2008 — down from 6% at the beginning of the year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a department of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Another concern: More respondents told a New York Federal Reserve “Survey of Consumer Expectations” that their finances are worse now than they were a year ago. In fact, the average perceived chance of missing a minimum debt payment in the next three months increased by 0.4 percentage point to 11.1%, according to the results of the survey released Monday.

“Median household nominal spending growth expectations increased sharply to 9% from 8% in April,” the NY Fed said. “This is the fifth consecutive increase and a new series high. The increase was most pronounced for respondents between the age of 40 and 60 and respondents without a college education.”

That slump in savings and rise in spending comes at a time when the drum beat of recession grows louder. Case in point: Nearly 70% of 49 respondents expect the National Bureau of Economic Research to declare a recession next year, according to the FT survey published Sunday; the survey was conducted with the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth’s School of Business.

Though some Americans have built up savings during the pandemic, helped by COVID-related government benefits, those savings appear to be running low as people cope with rising prices.

Laura Veldkamp, a finance and economic professor at Columbia University, suggested people try renegotiating salaries with their employers. “Prices will not come back down,” she said. “They never do.” Dipping into savings to cope with rising prices is not a sustainable long-term solution, she added.

The increase in the cost of living is making Americans nervous. Inflation rose 8.6% on the year through May, the highest since 1981. A survey of U.S. consumer confidence fell in May to a three-month low of 106.4. That’s one of many surveys pointing to a pessimistic outlook by people both for their own finances and the U.S. economy.

For the week ending May 29, grocery inflation reached a record high of 14.6% compared to a year ago, according to the latest survey from data company Numerator. The survey shows that middle-income consumers — those who earn $40,000 to $80,000 a year — are paying the greatest price increases among all income levels.

“‘Cutting down on your budget doesn’t need to be painful.’”


— Thomas Scanlon, a financial adviser with Raymond James Financial

In April, consumer spending increased by $152.3 billion, separate Bureau of Economic Analysis data found, with people spending the most money on motor vehicles and auto parts, in addition to food and housing. Compared to the month before, the consumption of gas and other energy decreased by $26.9 billion.

On Sunday, AAA pegged the national average at $5.01 for a gallon of gasoline. That’s 20 cents higher than it was a week ago, 60 cents higher than a month ago, and almost $2 more than the $3.07 average a year ago, according to AAA data.

Thomas Scanlon, a financial adviser with Raymond James Financial in Manchester, Conn., said it’s a good time to adopt thrifty habits, such as borrowing from the public library instead of buying a book, and looking to free leisure activities such as visits to some museums and beaches.

“Cutting down on your budget doesn’t need to be painful,” Scanlon said, “it can be an opportunity to spend a good time with friends and families.”

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US

California church shooter upset over Taiwan-China tensions -police

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May 16 (Reuters) – The man accused of killing a doctor and wounding five other people in a shooting at a Taiwanese-American church banquet in California methodically planned the attack because he was upset over Chinese-Taiwanese tensions, authorities said on Monday.

The suspect, David Chou, 68, chained the doors and placed glue in the locks at Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, California, about 45 miles (72 km) southeast of Los Angeles, before opening fire inside the church on Sunday, Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said Monday.

Up to 40 people, members of a Taiwanese Presbyterian congregation from nearby Irvine, California, that has space in the church, were attending a luncheon honoring a former local pastor when the shooting began, sheriff’s officials said.

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Chou, described by the sheriff as a U.S. citizen and Las Vegas resident born in China, drove to Southern California on Saturday and came to the church on Sunday morning, authorities said. After the shooting, investigators found three bags placed around the church building with various items, including additional ammunition and four Molotov cocktail-like devices.

The FBI said it was opening a hate crimes investigation in the case.

The sheriff’s department issued a statement late on Monday saying investigators had “determined that the suspect was upset about political tensions involving China and Taiwan” but did not elaborate.

In Chou’s car, Barnes said, investigators found notes written in Mandarin that indicated an obsession with Taiwan and a dislike of Taiwanese people.

China views Taiwan, a democratically governed island, as its “sacred” territory and has never renounced the possible use of force to bring it under Beijing’s control.

Taiwan rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying that it is already independent and that only its 23 million people can decide their future.

The Geneva Presbyterian Church is seen after a deadly shooting, in Laguna Woods, California, U.S. May 15, 2022. REUTERS/David Swanson

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All of the victims – whose names have not been released – were of Asian heritage.

The gun violence in California came on the same day as a separate mass shooting at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, that left 10 people dead and three others wounded. Most of the victims of that attack, which the FBI has labeled an act of racially motivated violent extremism, were Black. read more

Among those killed in the Laguna Woods church shooting was a physician Dr. John Cheng, 52, who was shot when he tackled the gunman, Barnes said, crediting Cheng’s act of bravery with preventing more fatalities.

Subduing Chou gave other congregants, including a pastor, the opportunity to overpower him and tie his legs with an electrical cord, detaining him until sheriff’s deputies arrived and broke through the chains on the doors.

Chou, who remains in custody, was believed to be acting alone, Barnes said. He purchased two guns used in the attack legally in Las Vegas, where he rented a room in a shared home. He likely will be charged with one count of murder, five counts of attempted murder and four counts of unlawful possession of explosives at an arraignment set for Tuesday, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer told reporters.

The wounded, four men ranging in age from 66 to 92 and an 86-year-old woman, were taken to area hospitals for treatment, the sheriff’s department said.

The shooting unfolded during a lunch reception the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church congregation had arranged for a former pastor who had left United States and relocated in Taiwan but returned for a visit, Tom Cramer, leader of the Presbytery of Los Ranchos and a former pastor at the Geneva Presbyterian Church, said in an interview.

Spitzer said he was considering seeking the death penalty in the case, though California has not executed a prisoner in more than a decade. Spitzer said he visited the church social hall on Sunday to see the carnage for himself.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen was deeply concerned about the incident and has instructed the island’s foreign ministry to help the victims and their families, the ministry said on Tuesday.

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Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California, Kanishka Singh in Washington and Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Additional reporting by Yimou Lee in Taipei; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Heather Timmons and Rosalba O’Brien

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Biden vows to stand with SE Asia in defending freedom of seas, democracy

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  • Biden pledges to defend freedom of the seas
  • U.S. concerned by China’s “coercive and proactive actions” across Taiwan Strait
  • China’s Premier Li says upholding peace in South China Sea in everyone’s interest

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Oct 27 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden said on Wednesday the United States would stand with Southeast Asian allies in defending freedom of the seas, democracy and human rights and backed efforts to hold the Myanmar junta accountable to its commitments to peace.

Southeast Asia has become a strategic battleground between the United States and China, which controls most of the South China Sea and has turned up military and political pressure on fiercely democratic Taiwan, a self-ruled island it considers its own.

Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed on Wednesday at a virtual regional summit to establish a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, a sign of Canberra’s ambition to play a bigger role in the region.

Biden joined Southeast Asian leaders in rebuking Myanmar’s junta as the summit opened on Tuesday without a representative from the country following its top general’s exclusion for ignoring peace proposals.

“In Myanmar, we must address the tragedy caused by the military coup which is increasingly undermining regional stability,” Biden said on Wednesday.

“The United States stands for the people of Myanmar and calls for military regime to end the violence, release all political prisoners and return to the path of democracy.”

He also said the United States was deeply concerned by “China’s coercive and proactive actions” across the Taiwan Strait, a waterway linking the island and the mainland.

Tensions between Taiwan and China have escalated in recent weeks as Beijing raises military and political pressure.

That has included repeated missions by Chinese warplanes in Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, or ADIZ, which covers a broader area than Taiwan’s territorial air space which Taiwan monitors and patrols to give it more time to respond to any threats.

China has never renounced the use of force to ensure eventual unification with Taiwan.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told the summit upholding peace, stability, freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea was in everyone’s interest.

“The South China Sea is our common home,” he said.

REGIONAL ECONOMIC FRAMEWORK

Biden also said he would speak out for “human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet (and) the rights of the people of Hong Kong”.

China denies human rights abuses in farwestern Xinjiang and the Himalayan region of Tibet. It also denies meddling with freedoms in the former British colony of Hong Kong.

Biden also announced discussions with partners in the IndoPacific region would start to develop a framework “that will position all of our economies for the future”.

“We look forward to working together with digital economy standards on infrastructure and regional connectivity, on supply chain resilience and anti-corruption and worker standards and so much more,” he said

Critics of U.S. strategy for the region point to its lack of an economic component after former President Donald Trump withdrew from the trade deal now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters he had stressed in Wednesday’s meetings his country’s resolute stance on “urgent regional situations”, including the East and South China Seas, North Korea and Myanmar.

“I also mentioned human rights situations in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, as well as the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan strait,” he said.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the Australia-ASEAN pact would strengthen diplomatic and security ties and promised Canberra would “back it with substance”.

“This milestone underscores Australia’s commitment to ASEAN’s central role in the Indo-Pacific and positions our partnership for the future,” he said in a joint statement with Foreign Minister Marise Payne.

Brunei, serving as chair of ASEAN, said the agreement “marked a new chapter in relations.”

After the announcement, Australia said it would invest $154 million in projects in Southeast Asia on health and energy security, counter-terrorism, fighting transnational crime, plus hundreds of scholarships.

China has sought a similar agreement with ASEAN. Premier Li met ASEAN leaders on Tuesday, and the bloc’s leaders will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in November at a virtual summit, two diplomatic sources told Reuters.

Morrison sought to reassure ASEAN that a trilateral security pact agreed last month between the United States, Britain and Australia, under which Australia will get access to nuclear-powered submarines, would not be a threat to the region.

Reporting by Ain Bandial in Bandar Seri Begawan and Tom Allard in Sydney; Additional reporting by Stanley Widianto in Jakarta; Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo, Colin Packham in Canberra, David Brunnstrom in Washington and Neil Jerome Morales in Manila; Writing by Martin Petty and Nick Macfie; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Jon Boyle and Sonya Hepinstall

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Southwest pilots’ union considers picketing to protest lack of hotels, fatigue

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Southwest Airlines pilots union is considering picketing at U.S. airports over Thanksgiving and Christmas to protest what it described as a frenetic increase in schedules, among other complaints, its president told CNBC.

The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association told members in a video late Wednesday that it was weighing pickets and demanded the company address scheduling and fatigue. Casey Murray, president of the pilots union, said the company schedule means pilots are working additional shifts with little notice.

Southwest didn’t immediately comment.

The message highlights the increasing tensions between Southwest’s pilots as well its flight attendants over the company’s push to ramp up flying to meet a revival in travel demand following the pandemic slump. American Airlines pilot and flight attendant unions have also complained this summer about alack of food and hotels and poor scheduling.

Staffing shortages this summer have exacerbated flight disruptions for tens of thousands of travelers. Southwest this week started offering referral bonuses worth $300 to staff because it’s struggling to hire new employees, CNBC reported Wednesday.

“We have experienced technology failures, severe understaffing and operational failures that are completely out of our control, yet we suffer the sometimes violent frustration of our customers as the face of Southwest Airlines,” wrote the executive board of the flight attendants’ union, TWU Local 556, to Southwest CEO Gary Kelly on Tuesday.

Southwest’s said it was aware of the flight attendants’ concerns.

“The safety of our Employees and Customers comes first, at all times, and that continues to be the priority in everything that we do,” Sonya Lacore, the airline’s vice president of inflight operations, said in a statement. “We are aware of the concerns the TWU 556 raised in their letter, and there is much work already underway to address many of the issues this summer.”

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Business

Hyatt Plans to Buy Apple Leisure Group From KKR and KSL Capital for $2.7 Billion

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Hyatt Hotels Corp. plans to buy resort company Apple Leisure Group from its private-equity owners for $2.7 billion.

The deal for the company, which is owned by KKR & Co. and travel-and-leisure specialist KSL Capital Partners LLC, was announced Sunday after The Wall Street Journal reported it was imminent.

The transaction is the latest sign of optimism about a return to vacation travel even as the U.S. economy continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. Like many travel-related companies, Apple Leisure’s business got clobbered by virus-related lockdowns and travel bans last year, but it has rebounded as restrictions have loosened.

For Chicago-based Hyatt, one of the world’s biggest hospitality companies, the deal would bolster its already considerable resort-management portfolio and give it one of the biggest U.S. providers of charter flights and vacation packages for travel to Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and the Caribbean.

It also would accelerate Hyatt’s transformation, long under way, to a more asset-light business model, focusing on generating an ongoing stream of steady and predictable fees.

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Business

NYC Hotel Industry in a ‘Depression,’ Room Revenue Down 60%, Report Says – NBC New York

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The hotel industry is in a recession or worse in 21 of the top 25 U.S. markets, and New York City is one of the worst off of all, according to a new report released Thursday by a lodging trade group.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association said the city has lost about a third of its hotel rooms since the pandemic. For those that are left, revenue per available room was $95 in May — down 62 percent from May 2019.

That’s a deep enough drop to put the city’s hotel industry in the “depression” category, the association said.

In percentage terms, only San Francisco, Boston and Washington are suffering more. (In dollar terms, NYC’s revenue drop is worse, though.)

Just four top markets nationwide have stabilized or returned to growth versus two years ago, the association said — Phoenix, Virginia Beach, Tampa and Miami.

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US

Trump Hotels are dumped by luxury travel agency Virtuoso

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“Trump Hotels are no longer part of the Virtuoso network,” the company said.

The luxury travel agency declined to elaborate on why it made the decision, saying they “consider many variables when reviewing both existing and new network participation. Out of respect for all involved parties, and as a general policy, we do not share comments regarding our non-renewal and exit decisions.”

Zenger News, a digital wire service, was the first to report the news.

Virtuoso operates a network of more than 1,100 travel agencies and roughly 22,000 travel advisers in 50 countries. The travel agency enjoys preferred relationships with a number of “hotels and resorts, cruise lines, airlines, tour companies and premier destinations.” Advisers usually work with high-end clients to provide them with “unique experiences, special values, complimentary perks, VIP treatment and rare access.”

This comes as Donald Trump’s businesses have taken a hit in the past year. Even before Trump left office and his role in the US Capitol insurrection brought further complications to his businesses, the pandemic was putting considerable strain on Trump Organization properties worldwide.

The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

— CNN’s Brian Todd and Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.

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Business

Betting on the post-pandemic boom? Bank of America has 17 stock recommendations

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Here’s one possible all-clear signal. COVID-19 is no longer a “tail risk” for investors, the first time since February 2020, says Bank of America in its latest fund manager survey. A tail risk is an unlikely event that could cause outsize losses or gains.

Scroll down for that chart.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting begins on Tuesday, and investors will be on the lookout for any hawkish signals that could take some steam out of stocks. The premarket is showing some mixed action after some disappointment over retail sales.

But many remain stuck into the idea of a post-pandemic boom, at least in the U.S. as vaccinations roll out.

Read: Value stocks are making a comeback. Don’t get left behind, these analysts say

That has kept the records coming for the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.53%
and S&P 500
SPX,
+0.65%
and those stocks geared toward a recovery. Our call of the day comes from strategists at Bank of America, who offer up 17 stocks to buy for the three R’s they see coming — recovery, reflation and rerating.

Strategists Jill Carey, Savita Subramanian and Ohsung Kwon say the economy has reached the mid-cycle phase, where inflation typically is strongest. In prior such phases, excluding the technology bubble, small-caps have outperformed larger ones, and value has beaten growth.


Uncredited

The Bank of America team says there are two reasons to like those stocks: many of the companies they highlight are still not expensive, and active funds aren’t positioning for that rising inflation, with heavier exposure to mega than smaller caps.


Uncredited


Uncredited

Onto the stocks (nearly half are small-to-midcap companies)…

Alcoa
AA,
-1.49%
— BofA has a share price target $37 for the miner. Aluminum prices could go either way, but global demand growth is a plus for Alcoa.

Axalta Coating Systems
AXTA,
-0.70%
— Share price target £37 for the global coatings group. The pace of automobile recovery will be key and a stronger dollar and lower raw material costs could be a boost.

Broadcom
AVGO,
+4.34%
— Share price target $550. Risks for the semiconductor company include sensitivity to U.S.-China trade relations and competition in networking, smartphone and other markets.

Hess
HES,
-1.40%
— Share price target $95. Among the energy company’s risks are oil and gas prices, as well as slowing developments in drilling.

Marriott International
MAR,
+2.24%
— Share price objective $150. Economic weakness and worse-than-expected spending by businesses and consumers are among the risks for the hospitality company.

Walt Disney
DIS,
-0.20%
— $223 price objective for the entertainment giant that has “best in class assets.” Downside risks include slowing ESPN growth from people deciding not to keep a cable television subscription, weaker consumer confidence, and low theme park attendance. Also watch out for potential film flops.

As for the rest, they like CNH Industrial
CNHI,
+0.59%,
Comcast
CMCSA,
+0.77%,
Emerson Electric
EMR,
-1.39%,
Herc Holdings
HRI,
+1.98%,
Knight-Swift Transportation
KNX,
-0.67%,
Occidental Petroleum
OXY,
-4.34%,
Parker Hannifin
PH,
+0.75%,
Principal Financial
PFG,
-0.45%,
Robert Half International
RHI,
-1.11%,
Union Pacific
UNP,
-0.66%
and World Fuel Services
INT,
+0.08%.

The chart

Here’s that “tail risk” chart from the latest BofA monthly fund manager survey. Bigger risks are higher-than-expected inflation and a “tantrum” in the bond market.


Uncredited

The markets

Dow and S&P futures
YM00,
-0.06%

ES00,
+0.08%
are flat, while Nasdaq-100 futures
NQ00,
+0.52%
are up. European stocks are higher
SXXP,
+0.62%.
It was also an up day for Asian markets. Elsewhere, oil
CL.1,
-1.39%
and the dollar
DXY,
-0.06%
are weak and bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-2.98%
is backing further away from the $60,000 hit over the weekend.

The buzz

Retail sales dropped a bigger-than-expected 3% in February, though they surged a revised 7.6% in January. Import prices rose 1.3%. That data will be followed by industrial production and a National Association of Home Builders index. Aside from the Fed meeting kickoff, investors will also be watching the outcome of a an auction of 20-year Treasury bonds.

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, the world’s biggest hedge fund firm, declares investing in bonds as “stupid” and investors should stick to a “well-diversified portfolio.”

AstraZeneca
AZN,
+0.72%

AZN,
+3.37%
shares are higher after Jefferies upgraded the drug company to buy from hold. AstraZeneca has been in the hot seat as several European countries suspend its COVID-19 shots over reports of blood clots from inoculations.

Finnish telecoms group Nokia
NOKIA,
+0.52%

NOK,
+1.90%
is cutting up to 10,000 jobs to save $716 million over two years.

A team from the U.S. government’s highway safety agency is headed to Detroit to investigate a “violent” crash after a Tesla
TSLA,
+2.05%
vehicle drove under a semitrailer, leaving two people critically injured.

Random reads

Office nostalgia — Redditers swap coworkers-from-hell stories.

When a hacker gets all your texts for $16.

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