The price of Bitcoin
BTCUSD,
was up 90% for 2023 — to $31,375 as of 7 a.m. Eastern time on Friday — but it was still 55% below its November 2021 peak price of $69,355.
But if you believe in a bright future for blockchain and associated technologies, bitcoin might not be the best way to ride the trend. Here’s a chart showing this year’s performance for bitcoin and for exchange-traded funds that hold shares of companies involved with blockchain:
One easy way to jump-start your own tracking of what’s going on in various financial markets is to take advantage of the MarketWatch Data Center. At the top of the page you can click on various market categories, including cryptocurrency.
An important binary question for the cryptocurrency industry is whether or not various digital coins and tokens should be considered securities, as the Securities and Exchange Commission has argued. A partial legal victory for Ripple helped send shares of Coinbase Global Inc.
COIN,
up 24% on Thursday.
For more coverage of all things crypto, check out the Distributed Ledger newsletter.
Banks kick off earnings season
Early on Friday, three of the largest U.S. banks announced their second-quarter results. Here’s coverage from Steve Gelsi and Tomi Kilgore:
- JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo stocks rise as banks blast past earnings targets
- Citigroup stock climbs after profit and revenue fall but beat expectations
In related coverage, Joy Wiltermuth explains why big banks are preparing to borrow a lot of money.
As another earnings season begins, corporate executives are worried. Here’s one way they are trying to maintain profit margins.
Retirement-planning decisions
In the Help Me Retire column, Alessandra Malito works with readers to improve their retirement planning under different scenarios. This week she helps a woman who is 52 years old, has $190,000 in savings and lives alone.
In the Moneyist column, Quentin Fottrell presents ideas to help a reader’s brother who is a combat veteran with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) and limited income and who needs to maximize cash flow from a small investment account.
Brett Arends helps with another difficult scenario: A 61-year-old man who has been laid off has $550,000 in retirement savings and wonders if he can forgo the rat race and retire now.
More about retirement and how to prepare for it:
With inflation ebbing, is the Fed finished raising interest rates?
The consumer-price index for June showed the smallest monthly increase in nearly two years, and the annual rate slowed to 3% from 4% the previous month. Producer-price-index data were even more encouraging.
It would seem the Federal Reserve’s cycle of tightening monetary policy by increasing the federal-funds rate and shrinking its bond portfolio is working. So investors once again will be wondering whether or not the central bank is finished raising interest rates. The Federal Open Market Committee’s next meeting will take place on July 25 and 26, with a policy announcement on the second day. Here’s what to expect, from someone in a position to know.
More inflation coverage:
How investors can prepare for a turnaround in interest rates
The time during which investors could stick with cash and earn yields of more than 5% in bank certificates of deposit or in money-market funds may soon come to an end. When interest rates rise, bond prices fall, and vice versa. The inverted yield curve — 10-year U.S. Treasury notes
TMUBMUSD10Y,
are yielding 3.78%, while one-month Treasury bills
TMUBMUSD01M,
are yielding 5.27% — indicates bond-market investors expect rates to come down relatively soon.
This may be a good time for investors to move money back into income-producing assets whose prices were hit hard, especially in 2022, as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. You might lock in better yields and pay lower prices by starting the process well in advance of the Federal Reserve’s change in direction.
Mike Loewengart, the head of portfolio management for Morgan Stanley Portfolio Solutions, explains how you can begin this process.
ETF Wrap: Bond ETFs just hit the $2 trillion mark, could triple by 2030, says BlackRock
More investing ideas:
- Worried that stocks are too expensive? This value approach can highlight bargains.
- This stock-investing strategy has blown away the S&P 500. Here’s a way to refine it for quality.
A hot stock market
There are warnings every day in the financial media that stocks are overvalued, no matter the market or economic conditions. So far in 2023, the benchmark S&P 500
SPX,
has returned 18.5%, following an 18.1% decline during 2022. That means the index is still down 3% since the end of 2021. (All of these figures include reinvested dividends.)
The S&P 500 closed Thursday at its highest level in 15 months. Joseph Adinolfi talks to investing strategists and economists about what it will take to push stocks higher from here.
Mark Hulbert explains why high bullish sentiment among investors is actually a warning.
What is your tax burden if you inherit a home?
In the Big Move column, Aarthi Swaminathan explains the tax implications for children inheriting their mother’s $700,000 house.
More real-estate coverage:
- The party’s over for America’s housing market, but this real-estate CEO believes it will recover
- ‘There’s nothing in the data that shows prices crash’: U.S. housing market is showing remarkable resilience.
Prime Day
Now that Amazon.com Inc.’s
AMZN,
Prime Day has ended, here’s a look at what drove members’ purchase decisions and what the buying activity can tell us about the private lives of Americans.
Related: Amazon, Microsoft and Google cloud services bet heavily on AI, but do their customers even want it?
Disney and a difficult transition for the entertainment industry
Walt Disney Co.’s
DIS,
Robert Iger returned to the CEO role in November with an initial two-year contract that has now been extended. Therese Poletti looks at Iger’s full fix-it list. Meanwhile, Iger said this week that broadcast television may be nearing obsolescence, which is an interesting point to be made by someone who led Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox — including that company’s film and TV studios and the FX cable network — in a March 2019 deal valued at $71 billion.
This week also marked the first time since 1960 that Hollywood actors have gone on strike at the same time as screenwriters.
The Ratings Game: Disney’s stock is slumping, but one analyst sees a silver lining
Here comes ‘Barbie’
On a more cheerful note for the entertainment industry, “Barbie,” the new movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, will be shown in U.S. theaters beginning July 21. These companies may benefit from what is expected to be a blockbuster success.
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