The Dow Jones now is flat as markets prepare for a busy round of earnings reports from the banking sector.
This morning, we'll be looking for earnings reports from JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup (NYSE: C), and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC).
This could be the worst quarter for financial companies since Q4 2008.
Read for more of what's moving the Dow today...
The NASDAQ continues to surge in July – up more than 10% so far.
Major indices don't seem to be hurting from the latest update in COVID-19 cases – and news that corporate profits fell 44% in Q2.
by Shah Gilani
Our Shah Gilani calls this time "The Era of the Income-Challenged Investor."
And with good reason.
Fed policymakers just voted to keep benchmark short-term interest rates down near zero and they're likely to stay there until 2022.
In fact, the Fed's held rates so low for so long that there are no decent-yielding fixed-income investments.
And the stock market's no exception.
Thanks to the pandemic, 40 S&P 500 companies suspended dividends and another 18 cut them completely in the first five months of the year.
But that doesn't mean there aren't great dividend plays available.
Lots of companies pay fat dividends to their stockholders, earn plenty of money regularly to keep paying them, and offer a wealth-building "kicker" called appreciation.
Today, Shah's going to tell you about three of his favorites.
The WorldWide Developers Conference has certainly been a tailwind for tech stocks as the Nasdaq Composite hit another all-time high today.
Shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) lead the way (the latter two also hit record highs).
Since everyone knows about the moves in these mega-cap tech stocks, our experts – D.R. Barton, Jr. and Shah Gilani – gave advice on some other names.
The consensus among our experts here at Money Morning is that the worst for the economy is still yet to come…
Instead of a quick "V-shaped" rebound, they're expecting longer, drawn out, "W-shaped" recovery for stocks.
But that doesn't mean some companies aren't worth owning now…
If you're patient and know what to look for, you can trade in and out of stocks with defined momentum.
The trend is your friend.
And it gives you a higher probability of making fast money in this volatile market.
It's important to pay attention to the nuances in this market.
And our experts know exactly what to look for.
The OPEC oil cartel and other oil-producing countries, mainly Russia, spent most of last week hashing out a deal to cut oil production and put an end to oil's 60% price drop.
Under the so-called OPEC+ umbrella, the group finally agreed to a deal over the weekend.
Oil futures shot up, but fell back before trading Monday.
Oil opened up, but then fell.
That's because there's a huge Reality Gap between what the oil deal needed to do, and what it actually entails.
Here's D.R. with the details...
Today's markets live afternoon session was a wild one.
The Dow was up 4% in the first half of the trading day, but was ultimately met with selling resistance midway through the day and closed slightly lower.
While that sounds concerning, the constant volatility we're seeing today is actually creating a multitude of opportunities to make fast profits.
The Dow Jones rallied 800 points at open today after a long week of coronavirus-induced volatility.
But there could be signs of stabilization ahead…
A slowdown in death rates across Europe has many people hoping the U.S. rate will peak soon.
Meanwhile, Japan has unveiled a new stimulus package worth 20% of GDP to help stave off negative economic impacts of the outbreak.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average could finish the day with sizable gains as geopolitical flares between the U.S. and Iran are now in check.
And investors have a busy week of earnings to look forward to.
More on Iran, and who's set to report earnings this week, below.
by Tim Melvin
Government finances are in a perpetually sorry state. That's not news; everywhere you turn, you'll hear all about it.
But what doesn't grab many headlines is the crisis in Americans' personal finances – problems that make the Treasury seem tightly squared away in comparison.
There's the retirement crisis, where one in five American adults have nothing socked away for retirement. You've got the cash crisis, in which nearly 40% of American adults can't meet a surprise $400 expense, like a mid-range hot water heater repair or doctor bill.
And then there's the "un-banking crisis." A stunning 7 million homes in the United States don't use a bank for anything at all; 18% have "minimal interaction" with the banking system.
It's grim, no doubt, but it's a fairly easy problem to solve; however, it won't be a traditional banker type that does the solving.
