Tag: jun 22 2021

JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank in terms of assets, will buy Nutmeg Savings and Investment, a British online bank, for a price said by insiders to be about $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. Nutmeg, founded in 2012, has 140,000 customers and €3.5 billion, or about $5 billion, under management. JPMorgan plans to...

In June, July, and August, initial public stock offerings (IPOs) could raise more than $40 billion, according to bankers contacted by the Wall Street Journal. That amount would far surpass 2020’s record $32 billion for the same three-month span, according to data from monitoring firm Dealogic. Through 8 June, IPOs have already raised $63 billion...

When retailers came up short in paying their rents in 2020, some landlords allowed their tenants to pay a percentage of their sales as rent instead of a fixed dollar amount. Now that the economy is reviving, that unusual lease arrangement is continuing in many cases. Percentage-of-sales leases are particularly popular in shopping centers, especially...

Homes for sale draw dozens of bids within days. Many homes sell for $20,000 or more above their asking prices. Bidders waive inspections and appraisals that would fix a realistic price.   The U.S. housing market is gripped by irrational exuberance (see FRENZIED HOUSING MARKET BECOMES EVEN MORE INTENSE) with the average home price reaching a...

A Florida real estate agent received 36 offers on a home recently. Among the offers, 13 were for more than the asking price, 12 were at least $15,000 above the asking price, six waived home inspections, four offered to rent the house back to the current owners until they moved, and 11 agreed that even...

In the most recent week, 412,000 new claims for unemployment benefits were filed, the U.S. labor department reported, breaking a six-week streak of steady declines and missing the median estimate of 370,000 among economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Continuing claims rose to 3.52 million, also failing to meet economists’ estimate, which had called for 3.43 million...

As we reported today, oil prices remain near their yearly high and Global Research raised its Brent crude price forecasts for this year and next, saying that tighter oil supply and recovering demand could push oil briefly to $100 per barrel in 2022. Thus, Wall Street’s betting on crude oil’s future. With billions being invested...

At their mid-June policy meeting, officials of the U.S. Federal Reserve indicated that they are considering raising their benchmark interest rate from its current 0.25 percent, set in March 2020, to as much as 0.6 percent some time in 2023. Thirteen of eighteen officials present at the meeting signaled they expected to vote to raise...