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Comcast continues to hemorrhage TV customers The cable TV industry isn't performing very well amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. AT&T lost an astounding 900,000 cable subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, and now, Comcast has reported significant losses of its own for Q2. In an earnings report published today, Comcast claimed that it lost 477,000 pay-TV subscribers over the past three months. That number isn't nearly as significant as AT&T's losses, but it's still not an easy blow for Comcast to ignore, especially since the company's quarterly cable TV losses only seem to be growing. In Q1 2020, roughly 409,000...

JPMorgan economists cut their second-quarter forecast even more, now expecting the economy will decline by 40%The economists said the 16.8 million jobless claims filed in the last three weeks indicate a huge surge in job losses, which they estimate at 25 million in April. A number of Wall Street firms expect contractions in the second quarter of 30% or more. JPMorgan economists issued an even more dire forecast, now foreseeing a 40% decline in the nation’s gross domestic product for the second quarter and a surge in April’s unemployment rate to 20% with 25 million jobs lost.In an earlier forecast, they said...

Investors came into this earnings season with high expectations. They weren’t high enough. Companies in the S&P 500 are on track to deliver earnings-per-share growth of 24 percent for the second quarter. When the quarter started in April, Wall Street was expecting a 19 percent jump, according to FactSet. So far, about three quarters of the companies in the index have reported. If the current pace holds, it would mark the second straight quarter that growth has been close to 25 percent. The big profit gains are an encouraging sign to investors because stock prices tend to track with profits...

The U.S. economy is expanding at a 4.8 percent annualized rate in the second quarter, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow forecast model showed on Friday. The forecast has been climbing higher following the release of a series of good economic data. On May 25, the measure foresaw four percent GDP growth. This rose to 4.7 percent Thursday and ticked even higher on Friday following the better than expected jobs report for May. The Atlanta Fed forecasts a big boost in private sector fixed investment, which includes capital investment in machinery, land, buildings, vehicles, and technology. Earlier, the Atlanta Fed saw...