Business category, Page 208
A late drop leaves Wall Street indexes lower, led by techVideo
Stocks closed lower Tuesday on Wall Street as a late-afternoon sell-off in technology companies helped nudge stock indexes into the red for the second straight day. The S&P 500 lost 0.9%, with most of the pullback coming in the last hour of trading. Apple, Facebook and Google’s parent company all...
Walmart sales still boom as pandemic eases, stimulus helps
NEW YORK — Walmart blew past Wall Street projections in the first quarter with U.S. stimulus payments to Americans helping to boost sales and the company raised its expectations for the year. Sales at stores opened at least a year rose 6%, slowing from the 8.6% increase during the fiscal...
John Dorfman: Regeneron, Weis Markets head up the Do Nothing Club
Stocks that soar or plunge get all the attention. But sometimes the best buys are in stocks that have done nothing for a while. That’s why, each year around this time, I write about my Do Nothing Club. Members of this club are stocks that are not far from where...
Target, CVS latest to permit customers to go maskless
NEW YORK — Target and CVS are the latest retailers to no longer require vaccinated shoppers or workers to wear a mask in its stores. “Given the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)’s updated guidance, Target no longer requires fully vaccinated guests and team members to wear face coverings in...
EU, U.S. agree to temporarily suspend tariffs in steel dispute
BRUSSELS — The European Union and the United States on Monday decided to temporarily suspend measures at the heart of a steel tariff dispute that is seen as one of the major trade issues dividing the two sides. With the decision, “we are walking the talk in our efforts to...
Stocks fall in morning trading on Wall Street as tech lags
Stocks fell in morning trading on Wall Street Monday as the market comes off of its worst weekly decline since February. Big Tech stocks were the heaviest weights pulling the major indexes lower. The sector has been responsible for big swings in either direction over the last few weeks as...
Oprah and CNN: AT&T is merging media business with DiscoveryVideo
NEW YORK — The merger of Discovery and AT&T’s WarnerMedia operations, marrying the likes of HBO and CNN with HGTV and Oprah Winfrey, is another illustration of the head-spinning speed in which streaming has transformed the media world. The companies are essentially placing a $43 billion bet that they’ll still...
Report: Microsoft investigated Bill Gates before he left board
NEW YORK — Board members at Microsoft Corp. made a decision in 2020 that it wasn’t appropriate for its co-founder Bill Gates to continue sitting on its board as they investigated the billionaire’s prior romantic relationship with a female Microsoft employee that was deemed inappropriate, according to a report in...
Help wanted: Western Pa. businesses hurting from lack of worker interest to fill open jobs
Dino’s Sports Lounge is in the same boat as so many other employers — competing to attract workers in a market made all the harder by covid-19 and an extra $300 a week in benefits being pocketed by eligible jobless workers. “I can’t get people to apply,” said Dino DeCario,...
Is extra $300 in federal unemployment assistance stopping people from applying for jobs?
With about 56,000 people in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties reporting they are without a job, businesses still find themselves scrambling to fill vacancies. One reason cited for the challenge is the extra $300 a week in federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Assistance that people have collected since the end of December....
Colonial Pipeline operator says ‘normal operations’ have resumed
ATLANTA — The operator of the nation’s largest gasoline pipeline — hit earlier this week by a ransomware attack — announced Saturday that it has resumed “normal operations,” delivering fuel to its markets, including a large swath of the East Coast. Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline had begun the process of restarting...
IRS records: UPMC CEO Jeffrey Romoff made $9.5M in 2019; pay tops $1M for 32 employees
UPMC CEO Jeffrey Romoff reaped a $530,000 pay increase in 2019, bringing his annual compensation before the covid-19 pandemic struck up to $9.5 million, records filed Friday show. The 2019 pay hike follows a $430,000 increase in 2018, when Romoff made $8.97 million, according to UPMC’s Form 990s required by...
Delta will require new hires to be vaccinated against coronavirus
Delta Air Lines will require new employees to be vaccinated against covid-19 starting Monday. The airline won’t impose the same requirement on current employees, more than 60% of whom are vaccinated, a Delta spokesman said Friday. Delta has about 74,000 employees. American, United, Southwest and Alaska airlines, however, said they...
Stocks move higher, but are still headed for weekly losses
Stocks were solidly higher in morning trading Friday, but the market is still on track to end the week in the red after three days of steep drops earlier in the week. Investors continue to focus on the possibility of inflation as the U.S. economy recovers from the coronavirus pandemic....
Amazon seeks to hire 75,000; offers $100 to vaccinated hires
NEW YORK — Amazon is seeking to hire 75,000 people in a tight job market and is offering bonuses to attract workers, including $100 for new hires who are already vaccinated for covid-19. The jobs are for delivery and warehouse workers, who pack and ship online orders. Amazon, which already...
Stocks climb after three days of losses, led by Big TechVideo
Wall Street followed up a three-day losing streak with a broad stock market rally Thursday powered by Big Tech companies and banks. The S&P 500 notched a 1.2% gain, clawing back almost half of its loss from a day earlier, when it had its biggest one-day drop since February. Even...
Tesla to stop accepting Bitcoin for car payments
Electric car maker Tesla will stop accepting Bitcoin as a payment, CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday, citing environmental concerns. “We are concerned about rapid increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk said on Twitter. He...
As chip shortage goes on, cars are scarce and prices are up
DETROIT — For the next few months, Charlie Gilchrist figures his 11 car dealerships in the Dallas-Fort Worth area will sell just about every new vehicle they can get from the factories — and at increased prices. In normal times, that would be cause for joy. Not so much now....
Stocks sink again on Wall Street as inflation worries mount
Inflation worries rattled Wall Street on Wednesday, pulling the Dow Jones Industrial Average more than 680 points lower and placing the major stock indexes on track for their worst week in more than six months. The selling came as investors reacted to a surprisingly big jump in inflation last month...
U.S. job openings soar to highest level on record
WASHINGTON — U.S. employers posted a record number of available jobs in March, illustrating starkly the desperation of businesses seeking to find new workers as the economy expands. Yet total job gains increased only modestly, according to a Labor Department report issued Tuesday. The figures come after the April jobs...
Georgia governor waives state’s gas tax for now due to pipeline outage
CHAMBLEE, Ga. — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he is suspending state taxes on motor fuels through Saturday to offset increasing prices after a computer hack led a key pipeline that carries fuel to much of Georgia to shut down. The Republican said Tuesday that he wanted to provide price...
Wall Street opens lower led by more drops in Big Tech stocks
BANGKOK — Shares dropped Tuesday in Asia after selling of several Big Tech companies pulled U.S. benchmarks lower. Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Hong Kong declined while Shanghai advanced. Despite reassurances from the Federal Reserve and a much weaker than expected U.S. jobs reading last week, investors have refocused on the...
Japan’s Nissan sees smaller loss, promises sales recovery
TOKYO — Nissan reduced its losses in the January-March quarter as restructuring efforts kicked in, despite damage to sales from the coronavirus pandemic, the Japanese automaker said Tuesday. Nissan Motor Co.’s quarterly losses totaled $743 million, a fraction of the $6.5 billion in red ink it racked up last year....
John Dorfman: Why I relish low-debt stocks
When it comes to picking stocks, most investors go gaga over earnings and pay little attention to a company’s financial strength. I say that a strong financial position is far more important than whether a company “beat consensus” by 10 cents a share in the latest quarter or failed to...
Pipeline hit by cyberattack could be back by week’s end
WASHINGTON — The operator of a major U.S. pipeline hit by a cyberattack said Monday it hopes to have service mostly restored by the end of the week. Colonial Pipeline offered the update after revealing that it had halted operations because of a ransomware attack the FBI has linked to...
