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Mastercard Inc

Technology

Will the Bakkt Stock Price Go Up?

Bakkt Holdings stock got a boost of 234% last week after Mastercard announced its teaming up with the firm.

This comes after BKKT went public on Oct. 18 via SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) and fell short of its expected IPO price of $10 on the first day.

So, the question is: Will Bakkt stock price continue to go up?

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stocks4

Markets Live Recap: Stocks Begin the Week Strong as Economic Outlook Brightens

Stocks rose 1.6% today as investors felt optimistic about governments around the world reopening their economies amid the coronavirus outbreak.

In addition to some U.S. states, Italy, Germany, and France said they're also looking to ease the quarantine policies that have been in place for the last two months.

If economies can reopen and consumers feel confident, stocks could continue to rally.

But if the COVID-19 curve starts to steepen as a result, that would likely send stocks lower.

And we could break through the recent lows made last month.

Here's what our experts – Chris Johnson, Tom Gentile, D.R. Barton, Jr., and Shah Gilani – think investors should be doing with their portfolios this week.

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stocks

Markets Live Recap: Our Experts Cover Federal Stimulus, Oil, Gold, and Earnings

This morning, the U.S. Senate passed a $484 billion relief package that the House of Representative is expected to approve on Thursday.

$370 billion is intended for small businesses, $75 billion will be for hospital relief, and $25 billion will be used to expand coronavirus testing.

Oil was up about 20% and stocks rebounded on the day, with the S&P 500 closing up about 2.5%.

But it was also interesting to see gold up 3% on the day.

Here's what our experts – Chris Johnson, Tom Gentile, D.R. Barton, Jr., and Shah Gilani – think about the stimulus, oil, gold, and stocks during earnings season.

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Dow Jones

The Dow Jones Today Is Ready to Move on the Fed's Rate Announcement

The Dow Jones today will hang on today’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. Investors have effectively gone “all-in” on expectations for a rate hike. More on this below. The U.S. Central Bank will kick off its meeting with the U.S. in great economic standing (the unemployment rate and the number of Americans seeking jobless benefits currently sit at multi-decade lows). That said, the Fed is largely expected to cut rates in order to boost the U.S. economy during the second half of 2019.

More on this below...

Investing Ideas

FinTech Could Make Big Bank for These Two Stocks (and You)

FinTech was going to make banking obsolete.

That was the consensus not all that long ago.

I remember being at a Bank Director conference several years ago out in Arizona. They hosted a Financial Technology panel talking about all the technological advancements that were coming to banking over the next several years. The FinTech company reps demonstrated some of the next big things in payments, deposit gathering, loan marketing, automatic tellers, and underwriting.

As I looked around the room, it was like seeing Baltimore Colts fans at the end of Super Bowl 3. No one could believe what they had just seen, and they had visions of their demise dancing around in their heads.

In the hall after the session, a coffee pot conversation sprung up on the topic, and several bankers expressed fears that this would be the end of banking as we know it.

I declared BS for a couple of reasons