Good MorningEquity markets continue to struggle with traction in 2025. Despite another round of good labor data, Wednesday's action saw the S&P 500 hover near Tuesday's low and at the low end of a two-month trading range. The ADP figure was weaker than expected but still solid at 122,000 and compounded by a strong initial claims report. The initial claims fell to a 1-year low in the last week of December, with total claims dropping by nearly 100,000, and both figures aligning with healthy labor conditions.
The bad news is that strong labor markets will keep the FOMC from cutting rates aggressively in 2025, if at all. The market expects the FOMC to cut in 2025, but the odds of deep cuts are diminishing quickly, with only a 50/50 chance for two 24 basis point reductions by year's end. If the next round of inflation data is still hot, those odds of two cuts in 2025 could fall to zero. Featured: I was wrong. Dead wrong. (Porter & Company) 
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Visual content developers and entertainment and media investors were elated when Shutterstock (NYSE: SSTK) and Getty Images (NYSE: GETY) announced that they were merging. This $3.7 billion deal will combine two of the biggest names in stock photography, video, and music, creating a behemoth strate... Read the Full Story |
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Now that the new year 2025 is getting started, most investors are focusing on getting ahead as far as they can in the first quarter so that they have an open field ahead of them during the rest of the year and not worry so much about the market’s fluctuations and volatility. One of the best ... Read the Full Story |
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Aurora Innovation's (NASDAQ: AUR) share price surged more than 50% following news it had partnered with NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). While there are hurdles to overcome, the share price can easily rise another 100% or more this year because the stock is deeply undervalued. The deal with NVIDIA is part o... Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | World shares were mixed on Thursday as the U.S. stock market remained closed to observe a National Day of Mourning for former President Jimmy Carter. London's FTSE 100 climbed 0.8% to 8,319.69 as the value of the British pound slid against the U.S. dollar amid worries about the United Kingdom's econ... Read the Full Story |
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MercadoLibre, Inc. (NASDAQ: MELI), often referred to as the "Amazon of Latin America," is the largest e-commerce and fintech platform in the region, operating across 18 countries. The company connects millions of buyers and sellers through its extensive online marketplace and a robust suite of s... Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | Federal Reserve officials at their meeting Dec. 17-18 expected to dial back the pace of interest rate cuts this year in the face of persistently elevated inflation and the threat of widespread tariffs and other potential policy changes Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | The world economy resisted battering by conflicts and inflation last year and is expected to grow a subdued 2.8% in 2025, the United Nations said Thursday. In “World Economic Situation and Prospects 2025,” U.N. economists wrote that their positive prediction was driven by the strong although slowing... Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | The wildfires that destroyed homes in multiple sections of the Los Angeles area will test California’s efforts to stabilize the state’s insurance marketplace after many insurers stopped issuing residential policies due to the high fire risk Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday said she will push for new laws to make it harder for hedge funds to purchase large numbers of single-family homes in the state. In a statement, Hochul said she would propose legislation this year that would require a 75 day waiting period before large investme... Read the Full Story |
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In his latest report, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives revealed his top AI picks for 2025. Among them was the firm Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA). The software company already had a great 2024, with shares providing a total return of 91%. Wedbush, as well as other Wall Street analysts, remain bullish on the t... Read the Full Story |
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Thursday's Early Bird Stock Of The Day SoundHound AI, Inc. develops independent voice artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that enables businesses across automotive, TV, and IoT, and to customer service industries to deliver high-quality conversational experiences to their customers. Its products include Houndify platform that offers a suite of Houndify tools to help brands build conversational voice assistants, such as Application Programming Interfaces (API) for text and voice queries, support for custom commands, extensive library of content domains, inclusive software development kit platforms, collaboration capabilities, diagnostic tools, and built-in analytics; SoundHound Chat AI that integrates with knowledge domains, pulling real-time data like weather, sports, stocks, flight status, and restaurants; and SoundHound Smart Answering is built to offer customer establishments custom AI-powered voice assistant. The company's products also include CaiNET software that uses machine learning to enhance how domains work together to handle queries; CaiLAN software that arbitrates responses so users get answers from the right domain; Dynamic Interaction a real-time, multimodal customer service interface; Smart Ordering which offers an easy-to-understand voice assistant for restaurants; Employee Assist; automatic speech recognition; natural language understanding; wake words; custom domains; text-to-speech; and embedded voice solutions. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. | | View Today's Stock Pick |
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