Good MorningEquity markets continue to struggle with traction in 2025. Despite another round of good labor data, Wednesday's action saw the S&P 500 hover near Tuesday's low and at the low end of a two-month trading range. The ADP figure was weaker than expected but still solid at 122,000 and compounded by a strong initial claims report. The initial claims fell to a 1-year low in the last week of December, with total claims dropping by nearly 100,000, and both figures aligning with healthy labor conditions.
The bad news is that strong labor markets will keep the FOMC from cutting rates aggressively in 2025, if at all. The market expects the FOMC to cut in 2025, but the odds of deep cuts are diminishing quickly, with only a 50/50 chance for two 24 basis point reductions by year's end. If the next round of inflation data is still hot, those odds of two cuts in 2025 could fall to zero. Featured: I was wrong. Dead wrong. (Porter & Company) 
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Markets | | | Wall Street held firmer on Wednesday, a day after strong reports on the economy hurt U.S. stocks by stirring up worries that inflation and interest rates may remain higher than expected.The S&P 500 rose 0.2% to recover a bit of its 1.1% slump from the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average... Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | World shares were mixed on Thursday as the U.S. stock market remained closed to observe a National Day of Mourning for former President Jimmy Carter. London's FTSE 100 climbed 0.8% to 8,319.69 as the value of the British pound slid against the U.S. dollar amid worries about the United Kingdom's econ... Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | The natural gas and liquified natural gas (LNG) industry has struggled for the last few years but is gaining traction today and is expected to sustain itself in 2025. Increasing demand only partially offset by supply supports the price action in LNG and creates a strong tailwind for U.S. LNG st... Read the Full Story |
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Shares of Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ: MRNA) surged over 12% after news of the first confirmed death from the H5N1 bird flu in the United States. At one point, the stock had climbed over 14% before returning late in the trading session. However, the stock retreated after hours, trading at $47.53, ... Read the Full Story |
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Several small and mid-cap companies have captured investor attention over the previous year thanks to NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) disclosed investments in these firms. One recent standout is Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS), a technology company now drawing comparisons to other NVIDIA-backed s... Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | China’s leaders are bracing for shocks to the economy from higher tariffs threatened by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump once he takes office. To help rev up an economy bogged down by a property crisis and disruptions during the pandemic, the ruling Communist Party is rolling out a slew of measures... Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | Federal Reserve officials at their meeting Dec. 17-18 expected to dial back the pace of interest rate cuts this year in the face of persistently elevated inflation and the threat of widespread tariffs and other potential policy changes Read the Full Story |
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Markets | | | A top policymaker at the U.S. Federal Reserve said Wednesday that he still supports cutting interest rates this year, despite elevated inflation and the prospect of widespread tariffs under the incoming Trump administration. Christopher Waller, an influential member of the Fed's board of governors, ... Read the Full Story |
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Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. (NASDAQ: CALM) is the largest producer and distributor of fresh shell eggs in the United States, and it presents a compelling investment case in the current market. As a dominant player in a defensive, essential industry, it offers a degree of stability amidst economic unce... Read the Full Story |
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The aerospace sector had a strong 2024, but 2025 may be even stronger with lower interest rates, fuel costs, and less regulation under Trump’s Presidency. During the year, aerospace giant Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) suffered a number of challenges that hurt its reputation, including a $5.5 billion... Read the Full Story |
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Thursday's Early Bird Stock Of The Day SoundHound AI, Inc. develops independent voice artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that enables businesses across automotive, TV, and IoT, and to customer service industries to deliver high-quality conversational experiences to their customers. Its products include Houndify platform that offers a suite of Houndify tools to help brands build conversational voice assistants, such as Application Programming Interfaces (API) for text and voice queries, support for custom commands, extensive library of content domains, inclusive software development kit platforms, collaboration capabilities, diagnostic tools, and built-in analytics; SoundHound Chat AI that integrates with knowledge domains, pulling real-time data like weather, sports, stocks, flight status, and restaurants; and SoundHound Smart Answering is built to offer customer establishments custom AI-powered voice assistant. The company's products also include CaiNET software that uses machine learning to enhance how domains work together to handle queries; CaiLAN software that arbitrates responses so users get answers from the right domain; Dynamic Interaction a real-time, multimodal customer service interface; Smart Ordering which offers an easy-to-understand voice assistant for restaurants; Employee Assist; automatic speech recognition; natural language understanding; wake words; custom domains; text-to-speech; and embedded voice solutions. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. | | View Today's Stock Pick |
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