Free Republic

You see, at first, when someone says, 'Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,' it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works – but only for a short time. What eventually occurs is: First, homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets. And then, while all this is going on, something even worse occurs. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has long been considered one of the Senate’s budget hawks, recently gave advice that when the stock market tumbles, “it pays to listen.” “The stock market is comprised of millions of people who are simultaneously trading. The market indexes are a distillation of sentiment,” Paul posted Monday on social platform X. “When the markets tumble like this in response to tariffs, it pays to listen.” His remarks come as markets began to dip after President Trump declined to rule out the U.S. economy from sliding into a recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 890...

U.S. Treasuries are now outperforming stocks since Donald Trump was elected President, and some strategists say there’s room for those gains to run. A Bloomberg gauge of U.S. sovereign debt has returned 2.1 per cent since the Nov. 5 vote, beating a gain of 1.6 per cent from the S&P 500 index including reinvested dividends. While long-end Treasuries declined on Tuesday after Trump imposed new 25 per cent trade tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the prospect of further Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts is seen giving bonds a further tailwind. Stocks meanwhile are being sold, as the outlook for global growth...

New York officials are taking precautions against the avian flu after seven cases were detected at live bird markets in New York City. The markets were ordered on Friday to shut down for about one week to combat the illness, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Friday. “The order came after seven cases of bird flu were found in poultry during routine inspections of live bird markets in the New York City boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens,” the outlet said, noting that officials said there have been no cases of the avian flu among New Yorkers. In an...

(NEXSTAR) — While the national housing supply recently reached a four-year high, buying a home in some U.S. cities may be especially difficult in 2025, a new Zillow report suggests. To make its predictions, Zillow reviewed multiple factors — including how quickly homes have been selling, and its own forecast for home value growth — in the 50 most populated cities nationwide. Overall, Zillow’s analysis determined cities primarily on the East Coast could have the hottest housing markets of 2025. For the second year in a row, Buffalo, New York, held the top spot on Zillow’s list. The company pointed...

The New York Stock Exchange will close trading on January 9 to honor a national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter. It is customary for the NYSE to close trading to honor the passing of the president. The last such occasion was in December 2018 for the death of George Herbert Walker Bush. Nasdaq will also close for trading that day. The bond market will close early at 2:00 p.m. ET, per the recommendation of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

US stocks surged to record highs on Wednesday as investors digested Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election over Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 3.5%, or about 1,500 points to close at a record and post its best day since 2022. The benchmark S&P 500 moved up roughly 2.5% to surpass the 5,900 level, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose about 2.9%, also clinching a new record. Outside of the presidential election, Republicans have also flipped the Senate. Control of the House of Representatives remains unclear (and likely will for days or weeks). Trump's policies had...

DJIA up 1448. S&P up 2.3%. Nasdaq up 2.75%

The Real Clear Polling average has Trump up over Harris nationally by 0.1 percent. This race may end up being the closet in U.S. history as a new TIPP poll has both candidates tied on 48 percent on the election eve. And according to the betting markets, Trump has recaptured a slight lead over Harris with less than 48 hours until the polls close after a shock Iowa poll had him behind the VP in the solidly red state.

Betting markets are lining up to show former President Donald Trump with a winning lead over Kamala Harris in the 2024 race for the White House. The Republican currently has a -145 line on BetOnline, compared to Harris’s +125. A negative line means that bookmakers believe the odds favor that person to win, the Independent notes. Other sites show a similar shift to Trump over his Democratic rival with 20 days to go until polling. Fox News reports after favoring Harris for two straight months, traders on PredictIt have now flipped for Trump, mirroring other betting markets that show the...

The stock market’s bull run officially turns two on Saturday. The S&P 500 is up 61 percent since October 12, 2022, when the index hit its bear-market bottom at 3,577.03. We’re about halfway through the median bull market of about 46 months, according to JPMorgan. So if this ends up being a typical upswing, investors have about 22 months of runway left. Yet there’s reason to believe things are going better than usual. Over the past two years, the benchmark index has recovered from sharp pullbacks on its way to scores of record highs.

The cold, hard world of betting markets framing the outcome of the 2024 presidential election were singularly unimpressed by the showing of Kamala Harris during her CNN interview on Thursday evening. Newsweek sought the views of two leading bookmakers and this was the outcome of the pre-taped Harris-Walz chat with Dana Bash: The vice president went from being the favorite to win with odds of 10/11 (52.4 percent) on Thursday to tied with Donald Trump on 19/20 (51.3 percent) each on Friday morning, according to the Star Sports betting company. Over the same period, Trump’s odds of victory in November...

The first Monday in August has arrived with panic sweeping through the finance sector, as nearly $2 trillion was wiped out of the S&P 500 at market open. Investor anxiety over a looming global recession triggered a selloff that sent U.S. stock futures plummeting and raised urgent questions about the Biden’s administration’s economic policies. As trading began on August 5th, a staggering $1.93 trillion was wiped out from the S&P 500, with stock index futures taking a massive hit. S&P 500 futures fell more than 4.4%, while Dow futures were down 3%, translating to a loss of 1,212 points. The...

Multiple brokerages, including Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, UPS, CenturyLink, and Interactive Brokers, are currently down and reporting errors amid market crashes.

https://t.me/beholdisraelchannel/36952 From a Biblical perspective—- what say you?

Stocks fell sharply on Friday with the S&P 500 headed for its worst session in roughly two years, as a much weaker-than-anticipated jobs report for July ignited worries that the economy could be falling into a recession. The broad market index dropped 2.1%, on pace for its biggest one-day sell-off since 2022, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 2.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 911 points, or 2.3%. Friday’s sell-off pushed the Nasdaq into correction territory — down more than 10% from an all-time high set nearly a month ago. The Nasdaq-100, which is made up of the 100 largest...

<p>The twin peaks for the cryptocurrency and the precious metal mark the first simultaneous records for the two since Bitcoin emerged from the shadows more than a decade ago. Yet markedly different drivers are typically thought to move each asset — gold has acted as a haven store of value for millennia, while any Bitcoin role beyond pure speculation is hotly contested.</p>

Stocks dropped on Tuesday after hotter-than-expected inflation data for January spiked Treasury yields and raised doubts that the Federal Reserve would be able to cut rates several times this year, a key part of the bull case for the equity market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 464 points, or 1.2%. It had earlier in the day slipped more than 500 points, or 1.4%, in its biggest drop since March 2023, when it fell 1.63%. The S&P 500 slid 1.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.3%. The consumer price index rose 0.3% in January from December. CPI was up 3.1%...

Just as confidence grew that inflation was tamed, it rears its head again, sending shockwaves through the markets. The Dow Jones takes a nosedive of more than 400 points following January's inflation report, which significantly surpassed expectations. Economists find themselves puzzled as both Core CPI and headline CPI register higher than anticipated for the second consecutive month. The unsettling reality extends beyond these headline figures, with inflation soaring in essential areas: Car Insurance Inflation: 20.6% Transportation Inflation: 9.5% Hospital Services Inflation: 6.7% Car Repair Inflation: 6.5% Homeowner Inflation: 6.2% Rent Inflation: 6.1% Food Away From Home Inflation: 5.1%