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In the United States, women are still heavily under-represented in corporate leadership positions. Over the past 14 years, the percentage of female directors at the largest U.S. companies has increased by a meager 0.5% per year, and amounted to 26.3% in 2018, according to the most recent report of Corporate Women Directors International. If this growth rate remains unchanged, it will take nearly half a century to achieve gender parity at U.S. corporate boards. In other countries with similar gender disparities in corporate leadership, legislators have responded by adopting mandatory board quotas. The first country to act was Norway, which...

Good evening fellow FRiends. I posted this in chit chat and hope for some fun feedback to distract from our daily political injections. So my kids much to my dismay on school education these days came home with an interesting assignment. They're to pick 10 stocks from the paper that they want to invest a total of 1,000 make believe dollars in to monitor until the end of the school year. I'm not savvy enough to provide any educated guidance, my portfolio is mainly my Fidelity and Vanguard stuff which I dont have much control of. I can pick funds...

Stocks surged on Friday amid increasing hopes for a U.S.-China trade deal as equities posted another solid weekly gain. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 443.86 points to 25,883.25 as J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs outperformed. The S&P 500 gained 1.1 percent to close at 2,775.60, led by the energy and industrials sectors. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.6 percent to end the day at 7,472.41. Energy shares were boosted by higher oil prices. West Texas Intermediate futures rose 2.2 percent to $55.59 per barrel. Bank stocks also rose broadly. The SPDR S&P Bank ETF (KBE) climbed 2.25 percent. Goldman...

... In claiming that U.S. corporations have somehow become selfish weapons of mass economic destruction, Messrs. Sanders and Schumer encourage readers to look back to those good old days of the 1960s when American businesses were the engines of broad prosperity. The two men remember those times well, and clearly they were highly impressed. That’s why as young men they became stalwart champions of the free enterprise system. Just kidding. That was the era when Chuck Schumer was becoming active in Harvard’s Young Democrats club before volunteering for the left-wing presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy. Later, after graduating from Harvard’s...

... Between 2008 and 2017, 466 of the S&P 500 companies spent around $4 trillion on stock buybacks, equal to 53 percent of profits. Another 30 percent of corporate profits went to dividends. When more than 80 percent of corporate profits go to buybacks and dividends, there is reason to be concerned. This practice of corporate self-indulgence is not new, but it’s grown enormously. Fueled by the Trump tax cut, in 2018, United States corporations repurchased more than $1 trillion of their own stock, a staggering figure and the highest amount ever authorized in a single year. This has become...

U.S. stocks fell sharply on Thursday following a dire quarterly warning from Apple. The iPhone maker blamed a slowing Chinese economy for the shortfall, intensifying fears that the global economy may be slowing down because of the ongoing trade war. A weaker-than-expected reading on U.S. manufacturing added to those fears. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 660.02 points, or 2.8 percent, to 22,686.22 as Apple shares led the decline. The 30-stock index tumbled to its low of the day right before the close, trading down as much as 707.83 points. The S&P 500 pulled back 2.47 percent to 2,447.89 as...

Stocks rose sharply in volatile trading on Wednesday as surges in retail and energy shares helped Wall Street regain most of the steep losses suffered in the previous session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 550 points higher as of 12:58 p.m. ET, while the S&P 500 gained 2.6 percent. The Nasdaq Composite outperformed, rising 3.5 percent. The Dow and S&P 500 briefly turned negative earlier in the day. Retailers were among the best performers on Wednesday, with the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) jumping 3.5 percent. Shares of Wayfair, Kohl's and Dollar General all rose at more than 5.5...

A bruising stock selloff continued, erasing more than 650 points from the Dow Jones Industrial Average as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tried to instill calm into a jittery market. Coming off the stock market’s worst week since the 2008 financial crisis, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell for a fourth straight session Monday as investors continued to weigh the impact of rising interest rates, slowing U.S. growth, and the ramifications of a government shutdown extending into January. With the selloff showing little signs of slowing, Mr. Mnuchin attempted to reassure investors, saying he had spoken...

Fox News contributor Robert Wolf discusses how artificial intelligence could affect the markets.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZqYtU68GjU

U.S. equity futures rose Wednesday after Beijing acknowledged the 90-day deadline set by President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to find a solution to the two nations' trade dispute.... ....gains come after the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 799 points Tuesday in a massive equity rout that stemmed from worries...

US equities fell Wednesday, turning around after opening higher.

A 48-minute YouTube video at the URL.

The news from the Treasury Department that the federal deficit has hit a six-year high of $779 billion should give President Trump added incentive to reset his agenda for 2019, regardless of whether or not the anticipated Democratic blue wave in the midterm elections materializes next week. A key element of that agenda should be the introduction of a financial transaction tax dedicated to all economic security payments (that is Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance and other forms of public assistance). Such a tax will address two of the biggest threats to our continued economic health: the federal...

control of Congress With the odds for a blue wave fading, the market is pricing in a split Congress after the mid-term election, and strategists expect stocks to rally no matter the outcome. However, on the outside chance Republicans sweep, the market could actually do better in the year after the election. For the bond market, strategists see slightly higher rates if Republicans win both houses because of the prospect of more tax cuts and more U.S. debt

Stocks fell in volatile trading Thursday, a day after the major indexes suffered steep losses sparked by higher rates and a sell-off in tech shares. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 650 points lower, bringing its two-day losses to more than 1,400 points. The S&P 500 dropped 2.1 percent and was on pace for a six-day losing streak. The broad index also broke below its 200-day moving average for the first time since May. The Nasdaq Composite pulled back 1.5 percent and entered correction territory. The major indexes fell after some of the major tech names failed to recover from...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell over 300 points on Wednesday as tech names like Intel, Microsoft and Netflix were in the red, helping to also bring the Nasdaq Composite down over 100 points. The S&P 500 was also down just over 30 points as of 11:00 a.m. ET.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed Friday, extending its record-setting run to a second consecutive session. The Dow rose 86.52 points, or 0.32 percent, to 26,743.50. The S&P 500 ticked 1.08 points lower to 2,929.67. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 41.28 points, or 0.51 percent, to 7,986.96. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 set intraday records in early trade Friday. On Thursday, the two major stock market indexes also set records, with the Dow rallying over 251 points to close at a record high for the first time since January. The S&P 500 also climbed to an all-time...

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 12 (Reuters) - St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard on Wednesday credited U.S. President Donald Trump with boosting U.S. economic growth in a way that may prove to be sustainable by lifting productivity. "I definitely think that the political change had an influence; I think that this is a pro-business administration that wanted to pursue strategies that were focused on economic growth," he told reporters after speaking at CFA Society Chicago, pointing to the reduction in corporate tax rates and improvements in business sentiment under Trump. Bullard said he currently estimates the economy is capable...

President Trump, in an exclusive interview with Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt, warned that the “market would crash” if he's ever impeached -- while questioning why Democrats would even consider that course in the future. “I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job,” Trump said, in the interview which aired Thursday on "Fox & Friends." The president weighed in on calls from the left to pursue impeachment if Democrats seize the House in the midterms. That speculation kicked up following the plea deal struck by his former attorney Michael Cohen claiming the president was involved in...

FACEBOOK TROUBLES GROW – FACING LAWSUIT LIABILITIES OF ...BILLIONS? 30-plus complaints piled up just over Cambridge Analytica The investor and consumer doubts that sparked a near-20 percent plunge in its market value – some $100 billion plus – isn’t the only concern for the giant web company Facebook these days. A report at PJMedia outlines the billions in liabilities the company may have because of a number of crises in recent months. One was the scandal over allowing Cambridge Analytica to breach its users’ privacy and collect data for political purposes. “The company is facing massive fines and possible government...