Real Estate Daily News Buzz is designed to give news snippets to readers that our (yet to be award winning) editors thought you could use to start your day. They come from various business perspectives, real estate, government, the Fed, local news, and the stock markets to save you time. Here you will find the headlines and what the news buzz of the day will be.
Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average slipped 26.99 points, or 0.2%, to 18,285.40. The S&P 500 index closed down 1.98 points to 2,125.85. The NASDAQ composite rose 1.71 points, less than 0.1%, to 5,071.74.
Benchmark U.S. crude rose 99 cents to close at $58.98 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oil used by many U.S. refineries, rose $1.01 to close at $65.03 in London. Wholesale gasoline rose 4.6 cents to close at $2.041 a gallon. Heating oil rose 1.7 cents to close at $1.946 a gallon. Natural gas fell 3.3 cents to close at $2.915 per 1,000 cubic feet.
With increasing pressure from U.S. regulators, Takata (OTCPK:TKTDY) is now doubling a recall of potentially deadly air bags to nearly 34M vehicles, making it the largest automotive recall in American history. The recall involves passenger and driver-side air bag inflators in vehicles made by 11 automakers and boosts the number of vehicles affected globally since 2008 to more than 53M.
Banks fined more than $5B, to plead guilty to market rigging four of the world’s biggest banks agreed Wednesday to pay more than $5 billion in penalties and plead guilty to rigging the currency markets — a rare instance in which federal prosecutors have wrung an admission of criminal wrongdoing from a major financial institution. Traders at JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland were accused of working together to manipulate rates on the foreign exchange market, where hundreds of billions of dollars and euros change hands back and forth. (AP)
Why many experts missed this: Cheap oil can hurt US economy - If there was one thing most economists agreed on at the start of the year, it was this: Plunging oil prices would boost the U.S. economy. It hasn’t worked out that way. The economy is thought to have shrunk in the January-March quarter and may barely grow for the first half of 2015 — thanks in part to sharp cuts in energy drilling. And despite their savings at the gas pump, consumers have slowed rather than increased their spending. At $2.71 a gallon, the average price of gas nationwide is nearly $1 lower than it was a year ago. In January, the average briefly reached $2.03, the lowest in five years. (ABC News)
Target is beating Walmart in the race to beef up sales. Target Corp. on Wednesday reported a nearly 52 per cent surge in its first-quarter profit on strong sales of more profitable items like fashion and baby products, evidence that its efforts to turn around its business are paying off. The results handily beat Wall Street expectations on all fronts, and the Minneapolis-based retailer boosted the bottom end of its annual profit outlook.(AP)
Fed Minutes Indicate June rate hike unlikely - Federal Reserve policymakers largely agreed when they met last month that it would be too early to start raising interest rates in June, as they debated whether the economy’s winter weakness would fade or persist. While “a few” Fed officials believed that the U.S. economy would be ready to raise rates in June, they were outnumbered by “many” Fed officials who viewed it as “unlikely” that the economic data would be strong enough to justify a hike next month. (AP)
Lowe’s sales and profit rose in the first quarter, but still disappoints as the housing market began to thaw, but the performance was far from what Wall Street had expected and shares slid 4 per cent Wednesday. The performance was a stark contrast to that of its rival, Home Depot Inc., which beat almost all projections Tuesday and raised its outlook for the year. Investor hopes may have been buoyed even further this week after the U.S. released data that appeared to reveal a housing market on the cusp of a boom. According to the Commerce Department, housing starts last month increased to a pace that has not been seen since the start of the recession. (USA)
McDonald’s shut down a restaurant near its headquarters Wednesday after the area was swamped by hundreds of protesters calling for pay of $15 an hour and a union. The restaurant was closed because of traffic concerns, said Heidi Barker Sa Shekhem, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s. The company also told employees in a building targeted by protesters they should work from home, she said. (AP)
ConAgra Foods agreed Wednesday to pay $11.2 million, a sum that includes the highest criminal fine ever in a U.S. food safety case, to settle a federal charge that the company shipped Peter Pan peanut butter tainted with salmonella from a plant in Georgia, sickening more than 600 people and triggering a massive recall eight years ago. Federal prosecutors filed a single misdemeanour charge of shipping adulterated food against the Omaha, Nebraska, based company along with a plea deal Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Georgia. No company executives were charged. (Food Safety News)
Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults who were insured all last year lacked adequate protection from big medical bills based on their income, according to Commonwealth Fund research. The non-profit foundation estimates that about 31 million people between the ages of 19 and 64 were underinsured due in part to the out-of-pocket expenses they have to pay for care. That includes deductibles, or payments a patient has to make before most coverage begins. (Killeen Daily Herald)
A U.S. House committee has voted to get rid of labels on packages of meat that say where the animals were born, raised and slaughtered. The House Agriculture Committee voted 38-6 to repeal a “country-of-origin” labeling law for meat on Wednesday — just two days after the World Trade Organization ruled against parts of it. The labels tell consumers what countries the meat is from: for example, “born in Canada, raised and slaughtered in the United States,” or “born, raised and slaughtered in the United States.” (Houmatoday.com)
Greece will not be able to make a €1.5B repayment to the IMF that falls due on June 5 if there is no deal with its international creditors by then, the government's parliamentary speaker said today. "Now is the moment that negotiations are coming to a head. Now is the moment of truth, on June 5," Nikos Filis, from the ruling Syriza party, told Greek television. Athens' ATG stock index -1.1%. Euro -0.4% to $1.1109.
The nation's second-largest city voted Tuesday to increase its minimum wage to $15/hour from $9 by 2020, putting more pressure on cities across the country to enact similar measures. The increase - which the Los Angeles City Council passed in a 14-1 vote - comes as workers across the country rally for higher wages, and several large companies, including Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Walmart (NYSE:WMT), move to raise their lowest wages.
The Japanese economy staged a comeback in Q1, expanding at an annualized 2.4% vs. the previous quarter and beating estimates for a 1.5% print. Despite the seemingly positive figure, economists are still worried about Japanese growth and deflation as most of the expansion was due to a huge build-up of inventories. The Nikkei finished the session at a 15-year high, climbing 0.9% to 20,196.56.
Bank of England policymakers voted unanimously to keep interest rates at a record low of 0.5% when they met this month, minutes from their meeting showed Wednesday. BOE officials also anticipate economic growth in the U.K. to accelerate in the second quarter following a soft start to the year, putting Q/Q growth at 0.7% in Q2, up from 0.3% in Q1.
UBS has finally settled a probe by U.S. authorities over alleged rigging of currency markets by agreeing to pay $545M in combined fines and pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud and allegations that it rigged Libor rates. The move marks the first time the DOJ revoked a non-prosecution agreement in the banking industry, signaling its determination to crack down on repeat offenders. More fines for five of the world's biggest banks are scheduled to be announced later today. UBS +3.1% premarket.
HSBC has become one of the biggest global banks to say it will begin charging clients on deposits in a basket of European currencies to prevent its profit margins from being crushed in a record low-interest rate environment. The unusual steps come after the ECB became the first big central bank to announce a negative deposit rate - in effect a penalty on banks parking their surplus cash - last year. HSBC -0.5% premarket.
ETFs and fixed income mutual funds could potentially pose risks to the marketplace during times of stress, according to a newly released report by the Financial Stability Oversight Council. The report comes just one day before the SEC is expected to propose rules that would require mutual funds and other asset managers to report more details about their holdings.
Altice has agreed to buy a controlling stake in U.S. cable company Suddenlink in a deal valued at $9.1B, boosting the fast-growing European group into one of the world's largest communications markets. Altice (OTC:ATCEY) will acquire 70% of Suddenlink from the company’s owners, P-E firm BC Partners and CPP Investment Board. Yesterday, WSJ reported that Altice also has its eyes on Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) and has held initial talks with the company about a potential deal. TWC +1.3% premarket.
Heating up the competition, Whirlpool (NYSE:WHR) and Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:BUD) have starting selling their B.blend machine in Brazil, putting pressure on Keurig Green Mountain (NASDAQ:GMCR), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), and SodaStream (NASDAQ:SODA). The B.blend has the distinction of being the first all-purpose beverage maker with its capacity to make hot, cold, or carbonated single-serve drinks.
Three months after the companies reached a deal to include tweets within Google's (GOOG, GOOGL) search results, Google is adding Twitter's (NYSE:TWTR) content to its U.S. English mobile results, both via the company's mobile site and its widely-used Android/iOS search apps. PC integration and support for other countries will arrive later. Will the move help Twitter get more users?