Tag: heard on the street

India’s Infrastructure Push Is Key to Taking on China
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India’s Infrastructure Push Is Key to Taking on China

The coming few years will be a litmus test for India’s ambition to become a manufacturing hub rivaling China. A big question mark is how quickly it can build out the infrastructure it needs to really seize the opportunity. There have been signs of progress recently, but New Delhi’s cramped fiscal space means it needs to do more to entice private-sector investors, too.India is experiencing a manufacturing renaissance of sorts led by Apple and its Taiwanese suppliers—after decades of failed efforts. As recently as the fiscal year ended in March 2018, India was a importer of smartphones to the tune of more than $2 billion. Last fiscal year, India was a net exporter of $11 billion worth. About half of that was Apple products, according to investment bank Macquarie.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones &a...
The Chip Wars Are Metastasizing
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The Chip Wars Are Metastasizing

It’s getting harder—both technically and financially—to make semiconductor chips smaller. The fight for chip tech supremacy has begun to migrate into a new area: how to package chips together to achieve better performance.The rise of artificial intelligence will further boost demand for advanced packaging technologies—and create openings for challengers such as China to compensate for weaknesses in other parts of the supply chain.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
How Can Spending Be Up When People Feel Down?
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How Can Spending Be Up When People Feel Down?

Dec. 26, 2023 11:00 pm ETAccording to the Misery Index, Americans shouldn’t be all that miserable. But they might only recently have started to catch on.Invented by the economist Arthur Okun, the Misery Index is the simple summing of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. It first rose to prominence in the 1976 presidential election, when Jimmy Carter highlighted its high level in his campaign to unseat President Gerald Ford. This came back to bite him: When President Carter was running for re-election against Ronald Reagan in 1980, the index was even higher.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
How to Ride the Biotech Roller Coaster
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How to Ride the Biotech Roller Coaster

With stocks starting to price in interest-rate cuts next year, the biotech sector has emerged as a winner for investors seeking riskier bets with more distant payoffs.But investing in this industry is tricky because biotech is a sector of haves and have-nots. While every industry has its winners and losers, the gap in biotech is bigger due to the binary nature of drug development. Many companies spend years testing one medical approach or platform. In the end, either the idea works or it doesn’t, and that could be the difference between tripling your investment or losing it all. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
China’s Yuan Is Quietly Gaining Ground
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China’s Yuan Is Quietly Gaining Ground

Chinese assets have had a terrible year—but China’s currency is gaining ground as an international payments option.The yuan’s status as a global currency still faces a huge obstacle in the form of China’s own capital controls. Even so, rising willingness to conduct trade in yuan could help insulate China’s economy, at least to an extent, in the event sanctions were imposed in a hypothetical future conflict with the West. It also could become a source of structural support for the yuan itself, even assuming weaker-than-expected Chinese growth in the years to come.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
How the Fintech Rally Could Fizzle in 2024
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How the Fintech Rally Could Fizzle in 2024

Financial-technology companies have rallied in 2023 even as rates rose. Some could now face risks from falling rates, as well as stepped-up competition.Higher rates did hit “fintech” stocks in many ways. Not only do growth stocks in general often trade at lower multiples during periods of rising rates, but fintechs in particular had benefited from near-zero rates for funding loans and encouraging risk-taking by trading customers.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Big Banks Need More Out of Wall Street
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Big Banks Need More Out of Wall Street

As the calendar turns for the biggest banks, a big question mark looms: Where will growth come from next year?A major feature of the global Wall Street banks is the diversity of their revenue sources. They don’t just make money from lending and deposits, like many regional banks, but also via trading and corporate advisory fees. And while volatile interest rates are known to scare chief executives and corporate boards from making big acquisition moves, they can sometimes be a big boost for trading desks.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
The Medicare Gold Rush Is Slowing Down
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The Medicare Gold Rush Is Slowing Down

The popularity of private Medicare plans has been a huge driver of profits for insurance companies in recent years. There are signs the gold rush isn’t quite what it once was.Investors have been worried all year as the Biden administration phases in a new system that insurers say will reduce federal payments to Medicare Advantage plans. Developments last week at the top two insurers in the Medicare business, UnitedHealth Group and Humana, raised more questions. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Nvidia’s Rivals Prepare Their AI Assault
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Nvidia’s Rivals Prepare Their AI Assault

Nvidia was never going to have the artificial intelligence market all to itself. The past year has certainly made it seem that way, though. Nvidia’s sales have more than doubled—and its market value more than tripled—as major tech companies snapped up the company’s chips to capitalize on the explosive interest in generative AI sparked by the launch of the ChatGPT online chatbot a year ago. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, two of Nvidia’s largest competitors, have seen their data-center sales shrink lately as the tech giants operating those networks have redirected their spending toward Nvidia’s specialized chip platforms. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8