Tag: WSJ

Tax Hikes for High Earners Are on the Table in Some States

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tax-hikes-for-high-earners-are-on-the-table-in-some-states-11614162600

Excerpt:

Budgetary pressures vary greatly, despite calls for more federal aid in general and tax hikes in some locales. In New York, state revenue collected from April through December 2020 was 4.1% lower than in the year-earlier period, according to data from the Urban Institute think tank.

In New Jersey, the drop was 2.4%. With tax revenue outperforming earlier projections, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday proposed making a full payment to the state’s pension system for the first time since 1996. California has done even better, with revenue collections growing 1.2%.

While a governor can call on lawmakers to raise taxes, the odds of success for the various proposals depend partly on which parties control state legislative chambers. Additionally, Democrats in Congress have pushed to include money for cities and states in an economic-recovery package, which could shift the equation.

Author(s): Karen Langley

Publication Date: 24 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine Is Equally Effective for Young and Old, Israeli Study Finds

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/israeli-study-finds-pfizer-shot-equally-effective-for-young-and-old-11614204008

Excerpt:

The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE is equally effective across all age groups, including those over 60, according to a new Israeli study, in a boost of confidence to global vaccine efforts.

The Pfizer vaccine provided around 94% protection against developing coronavirus symptoms across all age groups above 16 a week after the second shot of a recommended two-dose regimen, according to a study by researchers from Israel’s Clalit Research Institute and Harvard University. The study also found the vaccine is 92% effective in preventing severe disease.

The results are in line with the vaccine maker’s own clinical trial, but the large size of the study, which covered nearly 1.2 million people, provides more precise insight into older age groups that were sparsely covered by the drugmaker’s trial, according to the study’s authors.

Author(s): Dov Lieber

Publication Date: 24 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

‘The Genome Odyssey’ Review: From Code to Clinic

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-genome-odyssey-review-from-code-to-clinic-11614207479

Excerpt:

The fact that critical information lurks within the three billion or so pairs of letters representing our genetic instructions was a key driver of the Human Genome Project, begun in 1990 and completed, with suitable fanfare, 13 years later. But translating DNA sequence into actionable insight hasn’t been easy. This is a major theme of “The Genome Odyssey,” Euan Ashley’s impassioned, firsthand account of the effort to bring genomic data into clinical practice and help patients like Carson and Chase.

For starters, says Dr. Ashley, a cardiologist and geneticist at Stanford, there was the price — prohibitively high early on. Thanks to advances in technology, the cost of sequencing an individual’s DNA has declined a million-fold since 2003 — the equivalent, he says, of a Ferrari plummeting from $350,000 to less than 40 cents. The time required to decode a genome has plunged to days rather than years or months. When Jazlene, a newborn girl with a dangerously abnormal heart rhythm, arrived at Stanford in 2014, Dr. Ashley and his colleagues were able to identify the genetic cause within days and “practice more ‘precise’ medicine” by fine-tuning the infant’s therapy.

Author(s): David A. Shaywitz

Publication Date: 24 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Hong Kong Stock Market’s Record Year Slams Into a Big Tax Increase

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-stock-markets-record-year-slams-into-a-big-tax-increase-11614153184

Excerpt:

Hong Kong moved unexpectedly to raise taxes on share trading by 30%, putting a damper on the city’s stock-exchange operator just as it was unveiling record annual sales and profits.

….

Paul Chan, the city’s financial secretary, proposed lifting the so-called stamp duty on stocks to 0.13% from 0.1%, as part of Hong Kong’s annual budget. The increase, which is the first in nearly three decades, would effectively add $3 to the cost of each $10,000 of stock traded, for both buyers and sellers. Some securities are exempt.

The looming tax increase pummeled Hong Kong Exchanges shares, even as it reported the equivalent of $1.48 billion in net profit for 2020, a 23% increase and its biggest-ever haul. The company’s stock, which has recently hit record highs, fell as much as 12% before paring some losses to close 8.8% lower. The city’s benchmark Hang Seng Index fell 3%.

Author(s): Joanne Chiu

Publication Date: 24 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Federal Reserve Financial-Services Systems Disrupted for Hour

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-reserve-reports-several-business-lines-disrupted-by-operational-error-11614194912

Excerpt:

One of the services taken offline was the Fedwire Funds Service, which the Fed describes as “the premier electronic funds-transfer service that banks, businesses and government agencies rely on for mission-critical, same-day transactions.” Entities use the service to send or receive payments, settle positions with other financial institutions and to submit tax payments, among other activities.

Also affected were FedACH, an automated clearinghouse network that enables debit and credit transactions, and Fedwire Securities, which provides transfer and settlement services for securities issued by the U.S. Treasury, government agencies and government-sponsored housing enterprises.

The first service to be restored — at 2:17 p.m. ET — was the Fed’s central bank programs, which include setting interest rates and allowing financial institutions to review and manage the money they hold at the Fed, called reserves. Fedwire and FedACH were back shortly before 3 p.m.

Author(s): Paul Kiernan and Orla McCaffrey

Publication Date: 24 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Puerto Rico Bonds, MBIA Stock Jump on Restructuring Settlement

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/puerto-rico-bonds-mbia-stocks-jump-on-restructuring-settlement-11614179542

Excerpt:

A settlement between creditors in Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy case lifted prices of the commonwealth’s municipal bonds and shares of insurance companies that guaranteed payments on the bonds.

Traders have driven up prices of the island’s benchmark $3.5 billion general obligation bond due 2035 by 3.3% to around 78 cents on the dollar after the Tuesday deal removed one of the last logjams in Puerto Rico’s nearly four-year journey through bankruptcy court. Roughly $400 million face amount of the bond changed hands Tuesday and Wednesday, making it one of the most actively traded securities in the municipal-bond market, according to data from Electronic Municipal Market Access.

Shares of the insurers that guaranteed payments on billions of dollars of Puerto Rico’s defaulted bonds also rose as the settlement removed some uncertainty about the amount of claims they would need to pay. MBIA Inc.’s stock has jumped around 13% this week, while Ambac Financial Group Inc.’s shares have gained about 7.2%.

Author(s): Matt Wirz

Publication Date: 24 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Why Cuomo Should Be Worried About a Federal Probe

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-cuomo-should-be-worried-about-a-federal-probe-11613945987

Excerpt:

What caught the Justice Department’s eye was Gov. Cuomo’s claim that New York’s nursing-home deaths were lower than many other states’ and that his March 25 order didn’t contribute to the extremely high number of New Yorkers who died from Covid. Given the virus’s disproportionate effect on the elderly, sick and frail, this seemed unlikely. On Aug. 26, Justice’s Civil Rights Division, relying on its jurisdiction to investigate government-run facilities under the federal Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, asked the Cuomo administration for data on New York’s publicly run nursing homes, which account for less than 5% of nursing homes in the state.

In September, New York produced data showing it had underreported Covid deaths in government-run nursing homes by a third. The undercounting appeared to be due to several factors. First, when a nursing-home resident who contracted Covid died after being transported to a hospital for treatment, New York didn’t count it as a “nursing-home death.” Second, New York didn’t include deaths occurring before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began requiring Covid reporting from nursing homes in mid-May. CMS made reporting prior Covid deaths optional, and New York apparently elected to keep the information to itself.

Author(s): John B. Daukas

Publication Date: 21 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Robinhood, Citadel CEOs Grilled by Lawmakers in Wake of GameStop Saga

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/robinhood-citadel-others-prepare-for-the-gamestop-spotlight-in-washington-11613655854?mod=djemwhatsnews

Excerpt:

Robinhood Markets Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev offered an apology for the company’s decision to temporarily curb trading in some stocks, including GameStop Corp. , on Jan. 28 amid extraordinary volatility.

“Despite the unprecedented market conditions in January, at the end of the day, what happened is unacceptable to us,” Mr. Tenev said after being questioned at a congressional hearing Thursday.

His apology came after House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) interrupted the Robinhood CEO during his opening remarks. Her request was unusual as witnesses are allowed to make opening statements before taking questions from lawmakers.

Author(s): Paul Kiernan and Peter Rudegeair

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

New Jersey Governor to Propose Full Pension Payment for First Time Since 1996

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-jersey-governor-to-propose-first-full-pension-payment-since-1996-11614028204

Excerpt:

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is expected to propose making a full payment to the state’s chronically underfunded pension system for the first time since 1996, a sign that the blow from the pandemic to all states’ finances isn’t as brutal as officials originally feared.

Mr. Murphy, a Democrat, will call for a $6.4 billion payment to the pension system in his budget address Tuesday, senior members of his administration said. The Murphy administration has been ramping up pension payments and originally intended on making a payment of $5.76 billion for the fiscal year that begins in July.

In New Jersey, as in many other states, tax revenues have outperformed earlier projections. When the pandemic hit, states projected revenue would drop off significantly. State revenues ended up falling 1.6% in fiscal year 2020 and were 3.4% lower than projected before the pandemic, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. While states expect revenues to fall 4.4% in fiscal 2021, which ends on June 30 for most, 18 states are seeing revenues come in above forecasts.

Author(s): Joseph De Avila

Publication Date: 22 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Dogecoin Has a Top Dog Worth $2.1 Billion

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/dogecoin-has-a-top-dog-worth-2-1-billion-11613559022?mc_cid=4b04f7e31f&mc_eid=983bcf5922

Excerpt:

The dogecoin market has a pack leader.

Records show that a person, or entity, owns about 28% of all of the cryptocurrency in circulation—a stake worth about $2.1 billion at current prices. The holder’s identity isn’t known, which is common in the opaque world of digital currencies.

It is hard to tell what to make of this giant position in what has long been a small and niche corner of the cryptocurrency world.

Dogecoin was created in 2013 as a satirical homage to bitcoin. Its developers were riffing off the meme of a Shiba Inu dog with bad spelling habits. It wasn’t designed to be used as a form of payment, or as anything except a joke. At the start of 2021, a dogecoin was worth about half a cent, even as bitcoin prices had surged to nearly $30,000.

Author(s): Caitlin Ostroff

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Tiny-Company Boom Makes Markets Look Silly

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiny-company-boom-makes-markets-look-silly-11613666534?mod=itp_wsj&ru=yahoo

Excerpt:

Stocks come and go, but every year a few tiny companies get promoted to the small-capitalization indexes. Some eventually make it all the way to the S&P 500.

What they don’t do is go in the space of 18 months from being a penny stock with a market value of $39 million to be worth more than a dozen S&P 500 companies, yet that is exactly what FuelCell Energy Inc. has done.

FuelCell isn’t alone. Fourteen members of the Russell Microcap index have risen so much that they ended Thursday larger than the smallest S&P stock. One, real-estate broker eXp World Holdings , has a market capitalization of nearly $10 billion, more than double the smallest S&P stock. When the index reset was announced last year, the largest stock in the index had a market capitalization of $840 million.

Author(s): James Mackintosh

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Online-Trading Platform Will Let Investors Bet on Yes-or-No Questions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/online-trading-platform-will-let-investors-bet-on-yes-or-no-questions-11613557800

Excerpt:

Kalshi Inc. expects to launch in March. It plans to let users bet on “yes” or “no” answers to questions about future events. For instance, had the platform existed last year, it might have asked users whether a Covid-19 vaccine would be approved by the end of 2020.

The San Francisco-based startup hopes to benefit from surging interest in trading by individual investors. Individuals have jumped into stocks and options during the past year, using apps like those offered by Robinhood Markets Inc. Kalshi also hopes its marketplace will be used by people and businesses looking to hedge against risks that they face from future events.

Kalshi’s fundraising round comes after it won approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in November to run a derivatives exchange. Sequoia led the Series A round, which brings the total money raised by Kalshi since its 2018 founding to about $36 million.

Author(s): Alexander Osipovich

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal