Dow Jones Today, Stocks Slumps As Boeing Drags, Bitcoin Retreats; But Coronavirus New Case Declines Continue

Dow Jones Today, Stocks Slumps As Boeing Drags, Bitcoin Retreats; But Coronavirus New Case Declines Continue
ALAN R. ELLIOTT
·6 min read

Copper miners ran strong, Bitcoin eased after topping $58,000, and stocks slumped as Boeing dragged on the Dow.

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  • Boeing planned to replace 777 engine covers before failures: WSJ

    The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday ordered immediate inspections of 777s with Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines before further flights, after an engine failed on a United Airlines 777 on Saturday. Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  • Baidu Is Determined To Show It Has More To Offer

    For two decades, the 21-year-old company has been viewed as an online marketing tool that sells ads through its web search results. But now, the internet company is ready to show it has much more to offer. Last week, it reported fourth-quarter earnings for 2020 that beat market expectations and revealed its ambitious plans to enter the EV land. Many years of investing in AI has finally started to pay off as Baidu is finally monetizing the technology used with smart devices. The company's investments in non-core businesses are also helping it defend its core search platform from rivals Alibaba Group Holding (NYSE: BABA), Tencent Holdings (OTC: TCEHY), and privately-owned ByteDance, whose products are just as popular. The Chinese tech giant has recovered from the worst impact that the pandemic had on its business as advertising rebounded. Moreover, non-marketing revenue which excludes advertising and includes its cloud and autonomous driving business, grew 52% YoY. Baidu is also tapping into capital markets, including a potential second listing in Hong Kong. Baidu beefs up its autonomous and smart transport technology to tap into the EV market as it revealed back in January it would set up a smart electric vehicle (EV) company with Geely. As the domestic economy recovers, the company wants to tap into the fast-growing electric-vehicle market to diversify revenue sources. Figures Full-year revenue for 2020 amounted to $16.4 billion which is flat compared to 2019. Adjusted earnings of $3.08 per share versus analyst estimates of $2.79 per share came after revenues of $4.6 billion versus analyst estimates of $4.7 billion, according to FactSet. The company provided guidance for the undergoing quarter that was ahead of analyst estimates. Revenue is expected to be in the $4.0 billion and $4.4 billion range, representing a growth rate of 15% to 26% YoY, but it does not include the potential contribution from its acquisition of live streaming app YY Live. The acquisition was announced last November and is expected to close in the first half of the year. The guidance is also based on the assumption that its core revenue will grow between 26% and 39% on a YoY basis. EVs Baidu places a lot of emphasis on its Apollo self-driving technology. Last month, the company formed a strategic partnership with the Chinese car company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group to create a standalone electric car company. Baidu is the majority shareholder. Together, they aim to launch a smart EV model in three years. Robin Li, Baidu's CEO Li also said a brand name has been chosen but did not release it. CNBC has confirmed Xia Yiping, co-founder of bike-sharing start-up Mobike, will be the CEO of the new entity. Xia previously worked at Fiat Chrysler (NYSE: FCAU) and Ford before co-founding a company that was part of China's boom and eventual bust in shared-bike start-ups. Even Xiaomi is following Baidu's EV footsteps as the Chinese search engine leader has been basking in newfound investor love as the next EV-maker wannabe. Unlike other EV makers, Baidu's strategy is akin to Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android for smartphones. Outlook Baidu ended an unprecedented year on a solid note and showed it is recovering from the consequences of the global health crisis as its business benefited from an improving macroeconomic environment and the digitalization of businesses and lifestyles. Its commitment to innovation through technology is paying off for the Chinese tech giant. Baidu is well-positioned as a leading AI company with a strong foundation to seize the enormous market opportunities in cloud services, autonomous driving, smart transportation, along with all kinds of new opportunities that AI will inevitably bring to the table. The online marketing company chose to be in the right place, at the right time. This article is not a press release and is contributed by a verified independent journalist for IAMNewswire. It should not be construed as investment advice at any time please read the full disclosure. IAM Newswire does not hold any position in the mentioned companies. Press Releases – If you are looking for full Press release distribution contact: press@iamnewswire.com Contributors – IAM Newswire accepts pitches. If you're interested in becoming an IAM journalist contact: contributors@iamnewswire.com The post Baidu Is Determined To Show It Has More to Offer appeared first on IAM Newswire. Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash See more from BenzingaClick here for options trades from BenzingaNvidia Reports Record Quarterly SalesEVs Are Growing In All Directions© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

  • Twitter to let users charge followers to see premium posts

    Twitter is branching out from advertising to find more ways to make money — both for itself and for its most prolific users, whether those are businesses, celebrities or regular people. In an investor presentation Thursday, the social media company announced a new feature called “Super Follows,” which will let users charge for extra, exclusive material not shown to their regular followers. Twitter users — and the company's investors — have long been asking it to launch a subscription-based model.

  • United 777 was well short of engine inspection deadline, sources say

    Engine maker has urged more frequent inspections of fan blades

  • Lockdown Boosted Savings, But BOE Doubts Much More Will Be Spent

    (Bloomberg) -- Bank of England policy makers are sounding a note of caution about how much excess savings built up during Covid-19 lockdowns will be spent once the economy reopens.The central bank’s Chief Economist Andy Haldane has estimated that as much as 250 billion pounds ($352 billion) will accumulate in the accounts of consumers who were unable to go on holiday, shop or eat out as much as usual. The pace of the recovery depends on whether they spend it or hold onto the savings.While the bank’s official forecast is for 5% of that money to reappear, Deputy Governor Ben Broadbent told lawmakers Wednesday that the demographics of those with the biggest deposits point away from a splurge. The richest households built up the most cash and are least likely to spend, while the poorest were hit hardest by restrictions that closed their workplaces.“A lot of these savings are in the form of liquid assets or deposits, so maybe they could be spent more quickly, but equally they are skewed toward people who are better off -- the old -- who already have savings and are maybe less inclined than the average person to spend out of accumulated assets,” Broadbent said. “The skew itself is noticeable and in and of itself would tend to make you want to aim for a slightly lower number.”His stance was backed by fellow policy maker Jonathan Haskel, who cited the central bank’s latest biannual household survey with NMG Consulting. It found that 70% of people plan to continue to hold excess savings in their bank accounts instead of spending them.What Bloomberg Economics Says...“Given the amount of fuel available and the experience over the summer last year when restrictions were eased and spending picked up rapidly, our view is there’s a bigger risk of consumer spending rebounding faster than we expect once the economy is reopened.”-- Dan Hanson, senior economist. Read his full INSIGHT here.Haldane has presented a more upbeat view in recent weeks. He termed the central bank’s 5% assumption “conservative” in an opinion piece for the Daily Mail newspaper earlier this month and said he sees potential for “much more, perhaps even most of this savings pool to leak into the economy, fueling a faster recovery.”“A year from now, annual growth could be in the double digits,” he wrote. “The economy is poised like a coiled spring.”One thing much of the rate setting committee can agree on is the outsize effect a small change in consumers’ behavior could have on the U.K.’s path out of the crisis. Gertjan Vlieghe explained his own uncertainty in a speech last week:“Given that we have never experienced an economic situation quite like the one we are now in, a wide range of outcomes are possible,” Vlieghe said. “Given the scale of the amounts involved, even small changes in the assumed propensity to spend out of these accumulated savings lead to large changes in the expected out-turns for consumption and the economy as a whole.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • StanChart restores dividend, reaffirms targets as COVID-19 halves profit

    Standard Chartered PLC on Thursday restored its dividend and reaffirmed its long-term profit goals, in a show of confidence about its ability to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic even as its annual profit more than halved. The Asia, Africa and Middle East-focused bank however warned that income in 2021 is likely to be close to last year, showing the challenge it faces to meet its modest profit goals in a world of rock-bottom interest rates. Boosting revenue has been Chief Executive Bill Winters' main headache in recent years, as slowing growth in many of the bank's key markets, a commodities downturn and low central bank rates all conspired to crush income.

  • Americans can’t file their income taxes fast enough — but they should brace for some unwelcome news in their 2020 returns

    As of Feb. 19, only 8 full days into the 2021 filing season, the IRS received 34.69 million individual returns.

  • After the upcoming third stimulus check, will you get a fourth?

    The U.S. House votes Friday on a bill to give you a third payment. Could there be another?

  • Charlie Munger: It's 'absolute insanity' to think owning 100 stocks instead of five makes you a better investor

    Munger says the argument for diversification should be called 'diworsification.'

  • What's the timing on your next stimulus check, once the House approves it?

    Here's what still has to happen, including the big vote scheduled for Friday.

  • GameStop Options Bet That the Stock Will Reach $800 on Friday

    (Bloomberg) -- Shares of GameStop Corp. doubled yesterday and jumped another 19% today. Options traders think the stock can do much better than that.The most-active option traded on the stock Thursday was a contract betting that GameStop shares would spike to $800 on Friday. Some 52,000 contracts changed hands during the session betting on this one-day gain of 636%For other options traders, it was a question of when GameStop would hit the $800 mark, not if. The seventh and eighth most-active contracts were call options wagering that the stock would reach $800 by next Friday or in three weeks. It’s hard to say whether the contracts were mainly bought or sold, two traders said.“It’s speculation gone wild, pure and simple,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers LLC. “It is Exhibit A in the nuttiness that is associated with GameStop.”GameStop’s Reddit-driven roller-coaster ride that roiled markets last month is continuing this week, with shares more than doubling in the final 90 minutes of trading on Wednesday and rising as much as 101% on an intraday level on Tuesday. The rally came as popular tech names from Tesla Inc. to Zoom Video Communications Inc. were battered after U.S. 10-year Treasury yields spiked to 1.6%.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • Biggest Bitcoin Fund Sinks to a Discount as Traders Flee

    (Bloomberg) -- The world’s biggest Bitcoin fund is selling off faster than the cryptocurrency itself.The $32 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (ticker GBTC) has plunged 20% this week, outpacing a 13% decline in the world’s largest cryptocurrency. GBTC’s once-massive premium to its underlying holdings has evaporated as a result, with the price of GBTC closing 0.7% below its underlying holdings on Wednesday -- the first discount since March 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.The vanishing premium suggests that after billions poured into GBTC as investors sought exposure to Bitcoin’s dizzying rally, investors are looking for the exits as the climb stalls, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.“This is panic or profit-taking selling,” said Eric Balchunas, BI’s senior ETF analyst. “It’s almost like the price of GBTC is an amplified version of Bitcoin price.”Bitcoin surged to a record of over $58,000 last weekend, but has stumbled since. The cryptocurrency fell another 1.4% on Thursday, on pace for its worst weekly pullback in a year.Michael Sonnenshein, chief executive officer of Grayscale Investments, acknowledged the risk of GBTC’s premium disappearing while speaking in a panel for the Bloomberg Crypto Summit on Thursday.“It’s certainly a risk, no question about it, but ultimately price discovery in GBTC every day is driven entirely by market forces,” Sonnenshein said.(Updates with comments from Michael Sonnenshein of Grayscale in the sixth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • Estimating The Intrinsic Value Of Ozon Holdings PLC (NASDAQ:OZON)

    In this article we are going to estimate the intrinsic value of Ozon Holdings PLC ( NASDAQ:OZON ) by taking the...

  • Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s Final Financial Disclosures Show Where They Made Their Money

    Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have filed their final financial disclosure forms (known as OGE 278e), covering their non-governmental income for 2020 and the first few weeks of 2021. Both give a...

  • Musk Says He Hopes Rumors That He’s in the SEC’s DOGE House Are True

    Should the rumor be true, evidence that the CEO has been a vocal booster of DOGE it wouldn't be hard to find.

  • Crypto Exchange Asks Customers To Return Bitcoin After Selling It At 88% Discount

    What Happened: The largest crypto exchange in Southeast Asia, Philippines-based PDAX, experienced a technical failure that led to Bitcoin trading at $6,000 – an 88% discount to its current price. Following the incident, PDAX asked its customers to return their Bitcoins, threatening legal action, a local news outlet Bitpinas has reported. According to the exchange’s CEO, the system error was not due to a hack but a technical “glitch” caused by a massive surge in trading activity. Why It Matters: The initial outage is said to have taken place on February 18; however, since then, reports have surfaced on social media of customers being locked out of their exchange accounts and being asked to “return their Bitcoin.” “After almost 24 hours, they sent me a demand letter and SMS, requesting me to transfer back the BTC, or they “may” be compelled to take legal actions against me.” said one trader who believed his purchase was well within his rights without violating any laws or regulations of the trading platform. See also: How to Buy Bitcoin (BTC) Rafael Padilla, an attorney representing the affected users who are currently locked out of their accounts, commented on the issue on Facebook. “Our client’s trade transaction was legitimate under applicable laws, decided cases, and of course according to PDAX’s very own terms and conditions/user agreement.” According to Padilla, PDAX has opted to lock users out of their accounts because it cannot unilaterally reverse the transactions. An official statement from PDAX claims that 95% of accounts have been restored, but according to the report, many users are still locked out of their accounts. “It’s very understandable that a lot of users will feel upset they were able to buy what they thought an order was there for Bitcoin at very low prices. But unfortunately, the underlying Bitcoins were never in the possession of the exchange, so there’s never really anything there to be bought or sold, unfortunately.”, said PDAX CEO Nichel Gaba in a press conference earlier today. Image: vjkombajn via Pixabay See more from BenzingaClick here for options trades from BenzingaElon Musk's Tweet About Dogecoin Sends Price Up 10% In 30 Minutes AgainMicroStrategy Buys Additional .026B Worth Of Bitcoin, Surpasses Tesla's Bitcoin Holdings© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

  • Engine failure on a Boeing 777 plane this weekend turned out OK. Here's why

    Engine failures on commercial planes happen with some frequency. Modern jets are designed to fly safely for a while even after one engine quits.

  • Bitcoin Uses More Electricity Than Any Method Known To Mankind, Says Bill Gates

    Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) founder Bill Gates is concerned about Bitcoin’s impact on climate change. What Happened: “Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind,” Gates told CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin in a live-streamed Clubhouse session on Wednesday. Researchers at Cambridge have found that by consuming over 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year, BTC electricity consumption is more than the whole of Argentina. In fact, some critics have argued that when an electric car company like Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, it unwittingly may have undermined its environmental image. See also: How to Buy Bitcoin (BTC) Why It Matters: Gates went on to tell Sorkin that there was a more efficient way of doing digital currency that wouldn’t require such high usage of electricity. Gates seemed to hint that a digital currency might be in the works at his foundation. “There are other ways of doing digital currency that our foundation is involved with which are done in local currency,” he said. “The transactions are not secret, they’re reversible. You can’t use it for ransom or things like that, and yet the transaction fees are so low that it's empowering the poorest.” What Else: While the energy requirements to mine and produce Bitcoin are still considerably high, cryptocurrency analytics firm Arcane Research finds that Bitcoin contributes to only 2.3% of digital tech emissions. Bitcoin’s climate footprint of 37Mt CO2 is still minuscule compared to other digital industries. The total GHG emissions from digital tech are estimated to 1600Mt, with Bitcoin contributing to roughly 2.3% of the digital tech emissions. pic.twitter.com/n3hWiFfpxm — Arcane Research (@ArcaneResearch) February 16, 2021 Image: World Economic Forum via Wikicommons See more from BenzingaClick here for options trades from BenzingaCrypto Exchange Asks Customers To Return Bitcoin After Selling It At 88% DiscountElon Musk's Tweet About Dogecoin Sends Price Up 10% In 30 Minutes Again© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

  • Making Sense of India’s Markets

    Feb.24 -- Sohini Andani, fund manager at SBI Mutual Fund, discusses the RBI’s monetary policy and what it means for markets. She speaks during the “India Focus” segment on “Bloomberg Markets: Asia.”

  • Medical school graduate sees nearly all of his $440,000 in student loans discharged

    A medical graduate who had about $440,000 in student debt saw 98% of his loans cancelled by a bankruptcy court in California, according to a recent filing.