Free Republic

Some nationwide real estate investors, like Cardone Capital’s Grant Cardone, have started telling their teams to pack their bags and leave New York after the verdict in former President Trump’s fraud trial. "We thought this year was the opportunity to come into Chicago, California and New York City. I've been waiting for 40 years now to invest in that marketplace. I was completely confident this was the year to come," Cardone told Steve Doocy on "FOX & Friends" on Wednesday. "And when that ruling happened, it was like, pencils down. Don't touch it. Don't go there." The business leader gained...

Likely based on the attention given to its control of proxy voting, BlackRock has unveiled what it calls “a new proxy voting opportunity in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV).” The multinational investment giant notes that this particular product is its largest and among the most widely held exchange-traded fund. While giving individual investors a say in the votes related to their holdings is a good thing, this new scheme on closer inspection appears to be a way for BlackRock to push climate and social-related policies while making it seem like clients voted for them. Very sneaky. Following U.N. guidance...

The news is breaking today that the person who walked into Lakewood Church in Houston on Sunday afternoon and opened fire was transgender. I have been waiting for more information about this shooting, as a Houstonian, and as a media observer. When the shooting was breaking news, one aspect of the story didn't sit well with me. It seemed as though local law enforcement and the media were not transparent with all they knew. It seemed like they were holding back. Frankly, I was waiting for the shooter to be identified as an illegal alien. It turns out it is...

Three of the five top shareholders in Norfolk Southern — the freight rail carrier under the spotlight for its saftey and environmental record following last month's toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — have been aligned with the eco-conscious, socially aware ESG (environmental, social, governance) investing framework embraced by many leading financial firms in recent years. Asset management firms BlackRock Fund Advisors, JPMorgan Investment Management, and The Vanguard Group were all part of the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, a coalition of ESG-minded money mangers committed to channeling investment capital to firms working toward the goal of net-zero greenhouse...

The U.S. Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued an online FAQ allowing Americans to continue funding China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).The PLA is on the verge of launching its third aircraft carrier as part of its $9 billion dollar carrier program. This hefty price tag represents a small fraction of money the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has received from U.S. investors.China “exploits United States investors to finance the development and modernization of its military” wrote then-U.S. President Donald Trump on Nov. 12, 2020, in an executive order banning investment in Chinese stocks linked to the PLA. In the order, Trump accurately...

It may come as a surprise to some but the head US trader of the same bank that spawns mARKKo Kolanovic’s weekly bullishness, is also one of the most bearish market commentators. Below is the trading desk commentary for JPM’s Elan Luger, head of US trading. The most positive thing I can say about this market is that what had been heavily debated in Q1 is now the overwhelming consensus. Everyone is a bear. China is shutdown, inflation is running wild, Russia / Ukraine continues to impact supply chains, animal spirits are dead, the fed has lost control, QT is...

China’s corporate insiders are cheating small American investors of billions of dollars through advance information that enables lucrative trades just before the stock price falls.The total losses that insiders of Chinese companies listed on American exchanges have avoided by selling prior to price drops are at least $10 billion between 2016 and the middle of 2021, according to a new study of their security filings.Chinese company shares fell an average of 21 percent a year after the Chinese company insiders sold large quantities of stock, compared to a 2 percent rise after insiders from American companies sold. Given inflation, that...

More bad news for an already-crushed industry is making investors wonder how much more these companies can take. Stocks fell sharply as investors heard about a new COVID-19 variant. Cruise ship stocks took huge hits as a result. Investors have to hope that travel-hungry passengers will have the opportunity to sail in 2022 and beyond. Black Friday might not have created the same level of stock market discomfort that prompted the naming of Black Tuesday in 1929 or Black Monday in 1987, but stocks were nonetheless under pressure on the day after Thanksgiving. As of 10 a.m. ET on the...

For the past few weeks, the weekly survey of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) has offered unique insights into emotions and investor sentiment. To say the least, individual investors are nervous. Every week since 1987, AAII conducts a survey. There’s just one question in the survey: Are you bullish, bearish or neutral about the next six months? The results provide useful insights into the current market environment. Over the long run, investor sentiment tends to be more bullish than bearish. This can be seen in the long-term average of the results. In a typical week, 38% of individuals...

For years, I have heard that the only constants in this life are death and taxes, but I suspect this is not true. I think there’s at least one other constant, at least in my life — the Garcon Point Bridge. I have been writing about this Panhandle boondoggle for more than 20 years. Every time I’ve written a story about it, I have been convinced that that would be the last. Then something else happened that made me shake my head and start writing another bridge story. I’ve gotten more mileage out of that bridge than the motorists who...

Something strange is going on.On one hand stocks are trading at all-time highs, levitating every day without an apparent care in the world, with traders seemingly complacent that any air pocket in the market will simply mean more accommodation by the Fed which may not taper and which, according to some, may even to more QE. On the other, traditional bear-market signals such as the CNN fear and greed indicator, are deep in neutral territory, having dipped in "fear" territory as recently as one month ago...... while the SKEW index which many view as an indicator of crash preparation, is...

How Democrats Are Using Economic Chokeholds To Restrict Your Gun Rights Without Passing Any New LawsThe State Department announced new sanctions banning the importation of ammunition and firearms from Russia, a decision that comes in the midst of a large ammunition shortage.President Joe Biden’s State Department announced new sanctions banning the importation of ammunition and firearms from Russia, a decision that comes in the midst of a large ammunition shortage that has forced U.S. retailers to depend on foreign suppliers to meet demand. Since 2019, ammunition imports have increased by about 225 percent.President Biden and his elitist allies in woke...

- CPI surged 0.8% MoM (4 times the +0.2% expected) and exploded 4.2% YoY. That is the biggest YoY jump since Sept 2008 (and biggest MoM jump since June 2008). - The core CPI rose 3.0% over the past 12 months; this was its largest 12-month increase since January 1996. - This spooked investors. Contracts for the Nasdaq 100, which is dominated by technology, fell sharply, while those for the benchmark S&P 500 also declined significantly.

... Both AstraZeneca's and J&J's shot are viral-vector vaccines, which introduce a coronavirus gene into the body using a genetically engineered common-cold virus. Some scientists are wondering whether the platform itself could be linked to clotting. ... At an American Medical Association webinar on Tuesday, Peter Marks, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said the US has identified just three CVST cases among the 68 million people who got the double-dose mRNA vaccines. In a Tuesday statement, Moderna also said it had carried out its own comprehensive analysis and found no association between its shot and...

The encrypted messaging app Telegram has raised over $1 billion by selling bonds to foreign investors, its Russia-born founder Pavel Durov said Tuesday. Durov, 36, wrote on his Telegram channel that the bonds were sold to “some of the largest and most knowledgeable investors from all over the world”. He added that this will allow Telegram to grow “while sticking to its values and remaining independent”. Durov said the funds will fuel the app’s monetisation strategy that was outlined in December, according to which the platform will launch paid services this year.

The SEC charged Jessica Richman and Zachary Apte, the co-founders of the poop-testing startup uBiome, with defrauding investors out of $60 million through misleading statements and false representations of the company’s prospects. [T]he charges stem from a 2018 Series C round valuing the company that once appointed ex-Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez to its board at nearly $600 million. Regulators submitted their filing in federal court in San Francisco, and are seeking to bar Richman and Apte from serving in future officer and director positions. Thursday’s indictment describes Richman and Apte as fugitives... Founded way back in 2012, uBiome burst onto...

Now that the $1.85 trillion Biden stimulus is officially being deployed with tens of millions of stimmy checks being sent out this weekend to household across the nation, BofA's Jared Woodard writes that the "most important question" in for investors in 2021 is "what will US households do with their extra money as the economy fully reopens?" or in other words, where will all those stimmy checks go. And while the consensus is that the record “savings glut” will be spent, will the consensus be wrong again? Here, BofA sees two possible outcomes:Big Spending: a sustained real-economy consumption boom, higher...

ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel speculated Reddit investors are “Russian disruptors” Friday night during his opening monologue on his show “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Kimmel said, “GameStop, if you don’t know, is a video game store, and like a lot of businesses, they’ve been struggling because of COVID but also because most people buy games online now.”

The silver shimmer of Silicon Valley is replacing the oil slicks that once gilded the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) in black gold. That silver shimmer is Salesforce.com, and it's replacing the longest-tenured DJIA component: ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM), effective Aug. 31. Exxon's removal adds another red flag to a series of headwinds that have pushed its shares down over 40% for the year. Is there more pain ahead, or is there reason to believe Exxon can turn it around? The fall of ExxonMobil Going back a few years further to 2007, Exxon was the largest company by market capitalization. Limited supply...

KEY POINTS The Korean won weakened sharply on Tuesday against the dollar on unconfirmed reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seriously ill. As of 0239 GMT Tuesday, the Korean won fell 1.54% to trade at 1,239.35 per dollar. The moves came after CNN reported Tuesday, citing an unnamed U.S. official with direct knowledge, that Washington is “monitoring intelligence” that Kim is in “grave danger after a surgery.”