Markus Andrews

Traders work on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) floor on Feb. 20, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Spend some time looking at trading volumes, and you’ll notice something interesting: A lot of investors recently are making outsized bets on the stock market.
Most of them are long bets, but some are short.

It’s easy to see this because there is a growing segment of the ETF business that caters to investors who want to make short-term outsized bets on the stock market.
These are leveraged and inverse ETFs. Leveraged ETFs amplify the daily returns of an index or stock using financial derivatives. For example, if an index rose by 1% in a day, a 2x leveraged ETF would deliver a 2% return, a 3x would deliver a 3% return.
An inverse ETF delivers the opposite daily performance. So a 2x inverse ETF would be down 2% on a day when the index rose 1%, and vice-versa.
These leveraged/inverse ETFs are not just growing in assets. They are becoming a greater part of the daily trading volume of the ETF universe, which is becoming a larger part of overall trading.
Who is using these products? It has a lot to do with the general rise in speculative behavior in the market. Trading in options, bitcoin, and other more speculative products has been rising.

“We’re continuing to see more investors lean into leveraged as a way to express short-term views on the market, and given all the volatility and daily market-moving headlines, it’s not surprising we are seeing higher volume and more assets entering the space,” Douglas Yones, CEO of Direxion, one of the largest providers of leveraged/inverse ETFs, told CNBC.

Growing as a share of assets

The first leveraged/inverse ETFs in the U.S. started in 2006 and allowed long or short bets on indexes like the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq 100. Leverage and inverse single-stock ETFs came into existence in 2022, and they too have grown fast.
The largest, ProSharesUltraPro QQQ (TQQQ), which provides 3x leveraged exposure to the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ), has nearly $26 billion in assets. Single-stock ETFs that leverage Nvidia and Tesla also now have substantial assets.
Largest leveraged/inverse ETFs
(assets under management)
ProSharesUltraPro QQQ (TQQQ) $25.7 billion
Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3x (SOXL) $8.5 billion
ProShares Ultra QQQ (QLD) $7.9 billion
ProShares Ultra S&P 500 (SSO) $5.5 billion
Direxion Daily S&P Bull 3x (SPXL) $5.0 billion
Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 2x (TSLL) $3.5 billion
GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA (NVDL) $4.2 billion

Part of this is a bull market effect: Stocks are up meaningfully in the last few years, so overall assets are higher. However, these leveraged/inverse ETFs are not just growing assets, they are becoming a larger part of the ETF universe.
In 2016, when ETFs had about $2 trillion in assets under management (AUM), leveraged/inverse ETFs were about 2% of that AUM, according to Strategas.
Today, ETFs have about $11 trillion in assets under management, but leveraged/inverse ETFs make up about $81 billion of that, or almost 8% of total AUM.

Why are these products growing?

“I do believe there is a generational effect at play, I think there is major appetite among younger traders wanting to play with leverage due to the gains it can provide,” Todd Sohn, head of ETFs at Strategas, told CNBC. “The barriers to entry are extremely low, you can buy these products on your phone.”
Yones estimated that 75% of the ownership of these products were retail traders, and 25% institutional, which included hedge funds, trade desks, large brokerage firms, and “anyone who has a book of positions that wants to be neutral the market.”
He estimated that a small but significant percentage of the retail traders (12%-15% of the total) were from outside the U.S., which aligns with previous reports about growing demand for 24-hour trading coming in part from retail traders in South Korea, Japan, and Europe.

Growing part of daily trading volume

Leverage and inverse ETFs, including leveraged and inverse single-stock ETFs, now routinely show up among the most heavily traded ETFs on a daily basis.
A simple way to look at this is by average daily dollar volume, the total amount of money traded in the ETF on a daily basis.
The top ETFs by daily dollar volume are still ETFs tied to the biggest indexes, mainly the S&P 500, Russell 2000, and Nasdaq 100.
Top ETFs by average 3-month daily dollar volume
SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) $27.7 billion
Invesco QQQ (QQQ) $15.3 billion
iShares Russell 2000 (IWM) $5.7 billion
iShares Core S&P 500 (IVV) $3.9 billion
Source: Strategas
However, the fifth-largest ETF by average daily dollar volume in the last three months is the ProSharesUltraPro QQQ, which provides three times leveraged exposure to the Nasdaq 100.
Altogether, five of the top 20 ETFs by average daily dollar volume are leveraged/inverse.
Leveraged/inverse ETFs: largest avg. 3-month daily dollar volume
ProSharesUltraPro QQQ (TQQQ) $3.8 billion
Direxion Daily Semiconductors Bull 3X (SOXL)$2.1 billion
Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 2x (TSLL) $1.5 billion
ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ (SQQQ) $1.4 billion
GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA (NVDL) $1.3 billion
Source: Strategas

The daily reset

These products are bets on short-term momentum, but they have one additional feature that has proven difficult for investors to wrap their head around: they reset on a daily basis.
Because of compounding effects, it can be fiendishly difficult to figure out what actual returns will be on anything more than a daily basis. This means that holding a 2x leveraged product for anything more than a day may result in making substantially less than a 2x return, depending on the direction of the market.
Here’s an example: Suppose the S&P 500 was up 10% one day, then down 10% the next day.
A $100 investment would look like this:
S&P 500: hypothetical $100 investment
Day 0 $100
Day 1 (up 10%): $110
Day 2 (down 10%). $99
After two days of this, you have $99, so you are down 1%. If you had a leveraged product over those two days, it would seem like you would be down 2%, or that you would have $98.
But because of the daily reset, that’s not what happens.
S&P 500: hypothetical $100 investment in 2x leveraged
Day 0 $100
Day 1 (up 10%, leveraged up 20%): $120
Day 2 (down 10%, leveraged down 20%) $96
You actually have $96, instead of $98, and bear in mind this excludes fees.
As time goes on, these calculations get progressively more complex.
As a result, those offering these products routinely state that they are not meant for buy-and-hold investors.
These funds have very large daily turnovers, so most investors seem to understand the risk of holding these products on anything more than a daily basis.
But Sohn told CNBC that all investors in leveraged products needed to be very careful.
“At some point though, it helps to take stock of the risks involved whenever the market takes a turn south,” Sohn told CNBC.
Doug Yones, CEO of Direxion, will be on the ETF Edge portion of Halftime at 12:35 PM ET on Monday, and will also livestream on ETF Edge from 1:30 PM ET. He will be joined by Todd Rosenbluth, Head of Research at Vettafi. More

Elon Musk’s government-slashing effort, DOGE, is temporarily barred from accessing personal data on student loan borrowers, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
The order, issued by Federal Judge Deborah Boardman in Maryland, marks a significant limitation on DOGE’s access to Americans’ personal data.
The judge took issue with DOGE staffers’ ability to see people’s income data and Social Security numbers.

Elon Musk speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., Feb. 20, 2025. 
Nathan Howard | Reuters

A federal judge in Maryland on Monday granted a temporary restraining order barring staffers from Elon Musk’s secretive government-slashing effort, the Department of Government Efficiency, from accessing the personal information of millions of student loan borrowers.
The order, issued by Judge Deborah Boardman, ruled that the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management — the government’s HR department — must stop sharing federal employees’ and student borrowers’ personal data with DOGE officials. It marks a significant limitation on DOGE’s access to Americans’ personal data.

Boardman’s order bars DOGE from the personal information at the Education Department until March 10 at 8 a.m.
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Workers for DOGE have entered government offices in recent weeks, looking to make deep cuts to federal spending.
Boardman’s order came in response to a lawsuit led by The American Federation of Teachers, a union representing 1.8 million members. The AFT sued several federal agencies, including the Education Department, for permitting DOGE access to individuals’ private data.
AFT president Randi Weingarten applauded Boardman’s decision.

“When people give their financial and other personal information to the federal government — namely to secure financial aid for their kids to go to college, or to get a student loan — they expect that data to be protected and used for the reasons it was intended,” Weingarten said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request from CNBC for comment.
There are currently six DOGE “affiliates” working at the Education Department, according to the court order. DOGE has claimed that it needed access to student loan programs to investigate waste, fraud and abuse, Boardman said.

However, the judge said the order that the government didn’t explain why DOGE affiliates at the Education Department “need such comprehensive, sweeping access to the plaintiffs’ records to audit student loan programs.”
Boardman expressed concern that DOGE had access to people’s income information and Social Security numbers.
And she wrote that the plaintiffs would likely be successful in their claim that the Education Department’s disclosure of their records to DOGE staffers violates The Privacy Act, a federal law that applies to federal agencies and is meant to protect individuals’ personal information.
“The data in question includes really sensitive information on a population of people who had to give that information for one clear purpose: borrow money to get an education,” said Ben Winters, the director of artificial intelligence and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America.
“It’s crucial that institutions like governments only allow your data to be used for strictly the purpose you gave it for,” Winters said. More

Some Medicare beneficiaries have until March 31 to make coverage changes.
Here’s what experts say are key factors to consider when comparing your options.

Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Although a broader window for Medicare enrollment has closed, some retirees have another opportunity to make changes to their coverage.
Medicare Advantage open enrollment is available from Jan. 1 through March 31.

Medicare Advantage plans are offered by private insurers as an alternative to original Medicare. Generally, Medicare Advantage may cover Medicare Parts A and B, as well as Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage and other potential extra benefits.
During this open enrollment period, individuals who are already enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan may switch to another Medicare Advantage plan. Alternatively, they may drop their current Medicare Advantage plan and opt for Medicare original coverage.
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To be sure, there will be more options later in the year during a broader open enrollment period that lasts from October to December, when Medicare original enrollees may also opt to change plans.
For beneficiaries who are eligible to make changes during this time, it’s important not to ignore this window, according to Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the program on Medicare policy at KFF, a provider of health policy research.

“Plans can change considerably from one year to the next,” Cubanski said. “If people don’t compare their coverage to other options, they may not know that they’re going to be faced with higher costs.”

Check for significant changes

In order to be confident that you’re getting the best deal, it helps to evaluate how your current Advantage plan may have changed since last year.
You may be faced with higher costs if your personal prescriptions have gone up, for example, or your preferred medical provider is no longer in network.
Digging into those plan changes now can help avoid “bad surprises” later, according to Cubanski.
“Make sure the coverage that you have is going to continue to be the coverage that works best for you,” Cubanski said.

Consider extra benefits

To be sure, Medicare Advantage plans have received negative attention because in some cases coverage was denied for necessary care.
Medicare Advantage plans are more likely than traditional Medicare to use prior authorization, approval needed before a patient can receive certain services or medications. However, because prior authorizations that have been denied are frequently overturned when they are appealed, that has prompted questions as to whether the plans are avoiding coverage obligations.
Medicare Advantage plans are more likely than original Medicare to offer extra benefits — such as dental, vision and hearing — that elderly beneficiaries need.
Most Medicare beneficiaries — 83% — consider supplemental benefits to be important to their coverage, according to a recent survey from The Commonwealth Fund, a provider of independent research on health care issues.
Notably, a larger share of Medicare Advantage enrollees — 89% — said supplemental benefits are important to them, versus 74% of traditional Medicare enrollees, The Commonwealth Fund found.

“People on Medicare, both older adults and those with disabilities, generally really need dental, hearing and vision services, as well as other benefits that are typically offered by Medicare Advantage plans,” said Gretchen Jacobson, vice president of Medicare at The Commonwealth Fund.
Beneficiaries who are in traditional Medicare may not have coverage for those same services unless they are able to purchase a supplemental plan or they qualify for Medicaid, Jacobson said.

Seek outside help

When it comes to comparing Advantage plans, beneficiaries do not have to go it alone, Cubanski noted.
State-based organizations — the State Health Insurance Program, or SHIP — provide assistance to Medicare beneficiaries to help sort through their plan options.
Unlike insurance brokers or other professionals, these organizations do not have a financial interest to sign people up for certain plans, Cubanski said. More

Annual car insurance premiums would rise by 8% in 2025 if tariffs on Canada and Mexico take effect, according to Insurify. They would rise by 5% without such duties, it said.
Trump proposed a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, which may start in March.
Tariffs are expected to raise costs for cars and parts, making it more expensive for insurers to repair or replace automobiles after a wreck.

Nitat Termmee | Moment | Getty Images

The Trump administration’s tariff policies may raise auto insurance premiums for motorists, according to a new Insurify analysis. This at a time when drivers continue to see costs soar amid pandemic-era inflation.
A 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico — which may take effect as soon as March — would increase annual full-coverage car insurance premiums by 8% to $2,502, on average, by the end of 2025, according to Insurify.

It estimates average annual premiums would rise 5% by year-end, to $2,435, without tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
Tariffs are expected to make cars and auto parts imported from Canada and Mexico — which are major suppliers for the U.S. market — more expensive. As a result, insurers pay out more money in claims when policyholders get into car accidents, and they pass on that financial risk to consumers via higher premiums.
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“When people think about tariffs, they typically think about goods they might get from somewhere else,” said Matt Brannon, a data journalist at Insurify who authored the analysis. “Many times, we don’t think about services like car insurance.”
He called the estimates of tariff impact “conservative.”

Trump tariffs proposed so far

The Trump administration has proposed tariffs on several fronts during its first month in power.
Trump imposed a 10% additional tariff on all imports from China, starting on Feb. 4. Across-the-board tariffs on Canada and Mexico were also set to take effect that day, before the White House delayed them by a month.
About six out of every 10 auto replacement parts used in U.S. auto shop repairs are imported from Mexico, Canada and China, according to the American Property Casualty Insurance Association. Some car components cross the border multiple times before final assembly.
Trump also signed a sweeping plan for retaliatory tariffs on global trading partners, after a review set to be completed by early April. He signed an order to raise duties on aluminum and steel to 25%, up from 10%, and called for a 25% tariff on automobiles, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

Economists don’t necessarily expect all tariffs to take effect. Trump may be wielding them as a tool to extract concessions from trading partners, they said.
“However, using tariffs as a negotiation tool doesn’t mean no imposition of tariffs,” Bank of America Securities economists wrote Friday in a research note. Those experts don’t anticipate Canada or Mexico tariffs will come to pass.
However, if they do, they’d likely exacerbate already soaring premiums for cars, parts and insurance premiums, experts said.

“Threats of 25% tariffs on the North American borders — proposed, now delayed — would disrupt more than three decades of free trade across North America and rattle every corner of the automobile business, while proposed ‘reciprocal’ tariffs would add further price pressure to an auto industry already facing affordability issues,” Cox Automotive wrote in a recent commentary.
Motor vehicle insurance premiums are up by 12% in the past year, according to the consumer price index.
Insurance costs began to rise quickly in 2022 and 2023 as Americans worked from home less often and commuted to work more frequently, Brannon said.
“A lot more people hit the road at the same time, which led to more accidents,” he said. More

The Trump White House and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency have fired tens of thousands of federal workers so far.
The job cuts could ultimately be the biggest in U.S. history. IBM’s purge of about 60,000 workers in 1993 is thought to be the largest corporate layoff.
Federal workers may struggle financially. Local economies such as Washington, D.C., may suffer a recession, though the impact on the broader U.S. economy may be minimal, economists said.

Protestors in New York City demonstrate against the push by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who leads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to gut federal services and impose mass layoffs, Feb. 19, 2025.
Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

The Trump administration’s purge of federal workers may ultimately amount to the biggest job cut in U.S. history, which is likely to have ramifications for the economy, especially at the local level, according to economists.
The White House, with the help of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has fired or offered buyouts to workers across the federal government, the nation’s largest employer.

While the precise scale of the job cuts is as yet unclear, evidence suggests it’s at least in the tens of thousands so far, economists said.
The Trump administration directed federal agencies to dismiss “probationary” employees. Probationary workers are more-recent hires who have been with the federal government for only a year or two and who do not yet have full civil service protections.
There were about 220,000 federal employees with less than a year of tenure as of May 2024, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
Additionally, more than 75,000 federal workers have accepted a buyout offer, according to a Trump administration official. They agreed to resign but get paid through September.

The total of these two groups — nearly 300,000 workers — would make these actions amount to the “largest job cut in American history (by a mile),” Callie Cox, chief market strategist at Ritholtz Wealth Management, wrote Tuesday.

That sum doesn’t include others who may be on the chopping block, such as contractors who work at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Career civil servants who got promotions in the past year are also at risk of losing their jobs, since they’re technically on probation in their new role, Jesse Rothstein, a public policy and economics professor at University of California, Berkeley, said in a podcast Thursday.
Job cuts have come from across the government, at agencies including the Internal Revenue Service, National Park Service, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, according to the Associated Press.
“We may soon find out the hard way that people drive the U.S. economy,” Cox wrote.

Assessing the scale of federal job cuts

Arlene Rusch, former Internal Revenue Service worker, shows an email notifying her that she has been laid off, as she leaves her office in downtown Denver, Colorado, Feb. 20, 2025. The IRS began laying off roughly 6,000 employees in the middle of tax season as the Trump administration slashes the federal workforce.
Hyoung Chang | Denver Post | Getty Images

The ultimate number of cuts isn’t likely to be as high as 300,000, economists said.
For example, there may be some crossover: Probationary workers who would have been fired may have accepted a buyout. Also, in some cases, the Trump administration tried hiring back workers who’d been terminated.
Public disclosures show more than 26,000 federal workers have already been fired, excluding buyouts, according to a research note Wednesday from investment bank Piper Sandler.
That’s about the same number of workers who lost their jobs when Lehman Brothers collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, for example.
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But Thomas Ryan, a North America economist at Capital Economics, estimates that between 100,000 and 200,000 federal staffers have probably already been let go.
That would handily beat IBM’s 1993 purge of 60,000 workers, thought to be the largest corporate layoff in U.S. history. Among other notable corporate cuts, Citigroup and Sears, Roebuck & Co. each slashed about 50,000 jobs, in 2008 and 1993, respectively.
“Certainly if all 200,000-plus probationary workers are fired [without replacement] that would be historic,” Susan Houseman, senior economist at the nonpartisan W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, wrote in an e-mail.
Even among prior federal layoffs, the scale of potential cuts appears unprecedented, experts said.
The U.S. Army, for example, eliminated 50,000 jobs in September 2011 as former President Barack Obama withdrew troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The U.S. Air Force announced plans in 2005 to reduce head count by 40,000, the firm said.

We may soon find out the hard way that people drive the U.S. economy.

Callie Cox
chief market strategist at Ritholtz Wealth Management

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracked data on federal mass layoffs from 1995 to 2003. During that period, mass layoffs affected anywhere from roughly 9,000 federal workers per year to 23,000 a year, the data show.
If the current federal job cuts “are not historic yet, it feels like we’re headed in that direction pretty quickly,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.
The White House didn’t comment on the specific scale of cuts.  
“President Trump and his administration are delivering on the American people’s mandate to eliminate wasteful spending and make federal agencies more efficient, which includes removing probationary employees who are not mission critical,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a written statement. “This is part of President Trump’s sweeping effort to save taxpayer dollars, cut wasteful spending, and restore our broken economy.”

Potential economic impact

Job loss can be painful for household finances.
Affected workers who can’t quickly find new jobs may be forced to make ends meet without regular income. Unemployment benefits may offer a temporary stopgap to eligible workers, but they replace only about a third of prior wages, on average, according to Labor Department data.
The majority of workers who suffer job loss are affected long term, as they have trouble finding new full-time jobs and subsequently earn less money, according to a 2016 research paper by Henry Farber, professor emeritus of economics at Princeton University, who studied data from 1981 to 2015.

“There are economic impacts to [laid-off workers], their families, to the businesses they would have bought goods and services from,” said Erica Groshen, a senior economics advisor at Cornell University and former commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“The economic consequences of layoffs are like a domino effect that spread across local economies to businesses that seem to have no connection whatsoever to the federal government,” said Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale University Budget Lab.
Laid-off workers may spend less at businesses such as local coffee shops, restaurants and day care facilities, he said.
There’s a psychological factor to mass layoffs, too, economists said. Other federal workers, fearful for their jobs, may pull back on spending and delay big-ticket purchases. Businesses with ties to the federal government or the federal workforce may stop hiring and investing due to uncertainty.
Washington, D.C., for example, is expected to suffer a “meaningful” increase in unemployment that would push the capital into a “mild recession,” Adam Kamins and Justin Begley, economists at Moody’s, wrote in a note Tuesday.

Close to 100,000 federal government positions will be eliminated or moved from Washington in the next couple of years, Kamins and Begley estimate. A “flood” of job applicants will limit the private sector’s ability to absorb them into the labor pool, they said.
The economies of Maryland and Virginia won’t suffer to the same degree but will be “materially” hurt due to their exposure to government employment, Kamins and Begley wrote.
Layoffs aren’t likely to show up in federal data for another month, and not until September for those who take the severance deal, according to Piper Sandler. Unemployment claims in Washington, D.C., for the week ended Feb. 8 were up 36% from the prior week.

‘Not recessionary’ on its own

Economists don’t expect the job cuts will have a huge impact on the overall U.S. economy, however.
If about 200,000 probationary workers were to lose their jobs, it would shave roughly one-tenth of a percentage point from annual U.S. gross domestic product, said Tedeschi, who served as chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Biden administration.
“This, on its own, is not recessionary,” he said.

Elon Musk, second from the left, walks along the colonnade at the White House on Feb. 19, 2025.
Win Mcnamee | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Ryan, of Capital Economics, said the scope of federal layoffs is relatively small when considered in the context of the U.S. labor market, which added roughly 1.5 million jobs in 2024. He said he expects most displaced federal workers to be rehired quickly since the economy is near full employment, “making any pain short-lived.”
Capital Economics hasn’t downgraded its economic growth forecasts due to the federal layoffs, Ryan said. That assessment includes potential ripple effects felt indirectly through the economy.

“Even adding the knock-on effects, it’s not going to plunge the U.S. into a recession,” Tedeschi said. “Let’s be realistic here.”
But mass layoffs add to the pressure already being placed on the economy by other Trump administration policies, such as tariffs and mass deportations, economists said.
“This was a healthy economy coming into 2025,” Tedeschi said. “And suddenly we have a number of serious potential headwinds that are stacking up. And this is one of them.” More

The McDonald’s logo displayed on a restaurant facade, on December 20, 2024 in Krakow, Poland. 
Artur Widak | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Dividend stocks provide stable income for investors and enhance the overall returns of a portfolio.
However, picking the right dividend stocks from a vast universe of publicly traded companies could be difficult. To this end, the recommendations of top Wall Street analysts can help investors make the right decision, as these experts select stocks of companies that could deliver strong financials to support consistent dividend payments.

Here are three dividend-paying stocks, highlighted by Wall Street’s top pros as tracked by TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance.
McDonald’s
Fast-food chain McDonald’s (MCD) recently reported fourth-quarter earnings in line with market expectations. However, the company’s revenue lagged the Street’s estimates, as sales at the U.S. restaurants were affected by an E. coli outbreak in late October. That said, MCD stock rose on earnings day due to strong international sales and expectations of improvement in the company’s performance in 2025, backed by strategic efforts.
Earlier this month, McDonald’s announced a cash dividend of $1.77 per share, payable on March 17. At an annualized dividend per share of $7.08, MCD stock offers a dividend yield of 2.3%. It is worth noting that McDonald’s is a dividend aristocrat and has increased its dividends for 48 consecutive quarters.
Following the Q4 results, Jefferies analyst Andy Barish reiterated a buy rating on MCD stock and raised the price target to $349 from $345. While the decline in Q4 2024 U.S. same-store sales was largely anticipated, the analyst thinks that modestly positive traffic and continued momentum into Q1 2025 seem favorable.
Further, Barish thinks that recent traffic trends indicate that McDonald’s value messaging is gaining traction, with the McValue menu launch expected to support momentum along with other growth drivers like digital sales, delivery, drive-thru and core menu initiatives. The analyst continues to expect 2025 and 2026 U.S. same-store sales growth of 2.3% and 2.6%, respectively.

Noting the improving underlying traffic trends in the domestic market and solid same-store sales trends in international markets, Barish thinks that MCD is “best positioned to outperform peers in ’25+ through attractive value proposition from a scaled, global brand.”
Barish ranks No. 566 among more than 9,300 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 57% of the time, delivering an average return of 10.4%. See McDonald’s Stock Charts on TipRanks.
Ares Capital
We move to this week’s second dividend pick, Ares Capital (ARCC). It is a business development company that offers financing solutions to middle-market entities. Earlier this month, Ares Capital announced its Q4 2024 results and declared a dividend of 48 cents per share for the first quarter, payable on March 31. ARES stock offers a dividend yield of 8.2%.
In reaction to the Q4 print, RBC Capital analyst Kenneth Lee reaffirmed a buy rating on ARCC stock and increased the price target slightly to $24 from $23. The analyst stated that the company’s Q4 results were somewhat mixed relative to his expectations. While net asset value per share of $19.89 was modestly above RBC’s estimate of $19.87, core earnings per share of 55 cents slightly fell short of RBC’s forecast of 58 cents per share.
On the positive side, Lee noted that portfolio activity was slightly better than expectations. Meanwhile, leverage at 1.03x was lower than expectations, partly due to the equity capital raised in the quarter. The analyst highlighted that ARCC’s credit performance remained solid amid the current economic backdrop. Specifically, Lee noted that the non-accrual rate increased to 1.7% (amortized cost basis) from 1.3% in Q3 2024, but was still lower than the 2.8% average rate witnessed by the company since the Great Financial Crisis.
Lee revised his 2025 core EPS estimate to $2.10 from $2.13 and the 2026 core EPS estimate to $2.14 from $2.16 to reflect assumptions about a decline in asset yields, partially offset by downward revision in debt costs.
Overall, Lee is bullish on ARCC, as he favors the company’s “strong track record of managing risks through the cycle, well-supported dividends, and scale advantages.”
Lee ranks No. 15 among more than 9,300 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been successful 74% of the time, delivering an average return of 19.1%. See Ares Capital’s Ownership Structure on TipRanks.
Energy Transfer
Let’s look at Energy Transfer (ET), a midstream energy company that operates an extensive network of pipeline and associated energy infrastructure across 44 states in the U.S. The company’s fourth-quarter results and adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization missed expectations. Nonetheless, it plans to spend $5 billion on growth projects this year, including capacity expansion. The rise in capex comes amid growing demand for power to support data centers.
Meanwhile, Energy Transfer announced a quarterly cash distribution of $0.3250 per common unit for Q4 2024, reflecting a 3.2% year-over-year increase. ET stock offers a yield of 6.7%.
Reacting to Q4 results, Mizuho analyst Gabriel Moreen reiterated a buy rating on ET stock with a price target of $24. The analyst said that he was not overly concerned about the FY25 guidance miss, as he thinks that the main story is the company’s notable capex guidance of about $5 billion for this year.
Moreen noted that the capex outlook is way above the company’s $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion annual “run-rate” expectation and seems elevated. Nonetheless, the analyst is constructive on this capex guidance, given that most of the planned spending will be directed towards projects in which Energy Transfer has extensive experience, such as the Hugh Brinson Pipeline, NGL export, transportation and storage, as well as the development of the company’s Permian gathering and processing footprint.
While the 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance missed expectations, Moreen contends that ET has a strong record when it comes to optimization, which could translate into some earnings upside. Overall, the analyst is optimistic about Energy Transfer’s future and expects its robust capex to translate into strong earnings growth beyond 2026.
Moreen ranks No. 62 among more than 9,300 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 78% of the time, delivering an average return of 16.4%. See Energy Transfer Insider Trading Activity on TipRanks. More

Past efforts to jump start a “renaissance” of nuclear power plants in the U.S. have stalled in the face of long delays, steep cost overruns and camceled projects.
Westinghouse Electric says its big AP1000 reactor should become cheaper to build after lessons learned at projects in South Carolina and Georgia.
Nuclear advocates see growing electricity demand from the tech sector as a catalyst that could lead to new construction again.

Cooling towers and reactors 3 and 4 are seen at the nuclear-powered Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, U.S. Aug. 13, 2024. 
Megan Varner | Reuters

Expanding two power plants in Georgia and South Carolina with big, new reactors was supposed to spark a “nuclear renaissance” in the U.S. after a generation-long absence of new construction. 
Instead, Westinghouse Electric Co.’s state-of-the-art AP1000 design resulted in long delays and steep cost overruns, culminating in its bankruptcy in 2017.  The fall of Westinghouse was a major blow for an industry that the company had helped usher in at the dawn of the nuclear age. It was Westinghouse that designed the first reactor to enter commercial service in the U.S., at Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957. 

Two new AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta, Georgia started operating in 2023 and 2024, turning the plant into the largest energy generation site of any kind in the nation and marking the first new operational nuclear reactor design in 30 years. But the reactors came online seven years behind schedule and $18 billion over budget.
In the wake of Westinghouse’s bankruptcy, utilities in South Carolina stopped construction in 2017 on two reactors at the V.C. Summer plant near Columbia after sinking $9 billion into the project. 
But today, interest in new nuclear power is reviving as the tech sector seeks reliable, carbon-free electricity to power its artificial intelligence ambitions, especially against China. Westinghouse emerged from bankruptcy in 2018 and was acquired by Canadian uranium miner Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management in November 2023
The changed environment means South Carolina sees an opportunity to finish the two reactors left partially built at V.C. Summer eight years ago. The state’s Santee Cooper public utility in January began seeking a buyer for the site to finish reactor construction, citing data center demand as one of the reasons to move ahead.
“We are extraordinarily bullish on the case for V.C. Summer,” Dan Lipman, president of energy systems at Westinghouse, told CNBC in an interview. “We think completing that asset is vital, doable, economic, and we will do everything we can to assist Santee Cooper and the state of South Carolina with implementing a decision that results in the completion of the site.”

Tech as a nuclear catalyst
The United States has tried to revive nuclear power for a quarter century, but the two reactors in Georgia mark the only entirely new construction across that period despite bipartisan support under every president from George W. Bush to Donald Trump.
A fresh start was supposed to have begun more than a decade ago, but was choked off by a wave of closures of older reactors as nuclear struggled to compete against a boom of cheap natural gas created by the shale revolution.
“We went from an environment in the aughts of rising gas imports and rising gas prices to fracking technology unlocking quite a bit of affordable natural gas here in the U.S., and companies didn’t really value the firm clean attribute of nuclear back then,” said John Kotek of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby group, and former assistant secretary at the Office of Nuclear Energy under President Barack Obama.
What’s different in 2025 is the tech sector’s voracious appetite for power translating into a willingness to pay a premium for nuclear. But recent investments in nuclear have focused on restarting abandoned reactors and attempting to bring online smaller, next-generation modular reactors that many believe are the future, if they can be designed and built more cheaply.

The troubled nuclear plant at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that almost melted down in 1979 is expected to resume operations in 2028 after owner Constellation Energy struck a power purchase agreement with Microsoft last September. Constellation wants to restart Unit 1, which shut for economic reasons in 2019, not the Unit 2 reactor that was the site of the accident.
Alphabet and Amazon invested in small nuclear reactors a month later. Meta Platforms, owner of Facebook and Instagram, asked developers in December to submit proposals for up to 4 gigawatts of new nuclear power to meet the energy needs of its data centers.
But while the recent focus in the U.S. has been on restarts and commercializing small reactors, Lipman said the extent of potential demand that has emerged from data centers over the past year has led to renewed interest in Westinghouse’s large AP1000 reactor design.
In any event, there are no operational small reactors in the U.S. today, though startups and industry stalwarts, including Westinghouse, are racing to commercialize the technology. And there only so many shuttered plants in the U.S. in good enough shape to potentially be restarted.
Gargantuan undertaking
Meanwhile, meeting the demand for power is a gargantuan undertaking. Meta’s need for new nuclear power, for example, is nearly equivalent to the entire 4.8 gigawatts of generating capacity at the Vogtle plant, enough to power more than 2 million homes and businesses. Large nuclear plants with a gigawatt or more of capacity — the size of the AP1000 — will be essential to power large industrial sites like data centers because of their economies of scale and low production costs once they’re up and running, according to a recent Department of Energy report.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called for another reactor at Vogtle the same day he dedicated the plant expansion in May 2024. Southern Company CEO Chris Womack believes at least 10 gigawatts of large nuclear are needed. Southern is the parent company of Georgia Power which operates Vogtle.
“The people that are going to own and operate AP1000s traditionally are investor-owned electric utilities,” Lipman said. “When they look at the marketplace for a large reactor, AP1000 is where they turn because it’s got a license, it’s operational.”
Still, nobody in the U.S. is on the verge of signing an order for a new AP1000, he said. Westinghouse is focused on deploying reactors in Eastern and Central Europe, where nuclear projects are seen as a national security necessity to counter dependency on Russian natural gas after the invasion of Ukraine.

FILE PHOTO: In this Sept. 21, 2016, file photo, V.C. Summer Nuclear Station’s unit two’s turbine is under construction near Jenkinsville, S.C., during a media tour of the facility.
Chuck Burton | AP

In addition to the two units in Georgia, Westinghouse also has four operational reactors in China.
But South Carolina’s search for someone to complete the partially built reactors at V.C. Summer will likely draw investment from Big Tech “hyperscalers” building data centers, and large manufacturers like the auto industry, Lipman said.
“That kind of asset attracts industry that relies on 24/7, 365 energy and that’s what you get with an AP1000,” Lipman said. There are ongoing discussions within the industry about whether the tech sector might act as a developer that invests capital in the upfront costs of building new plants, he said.
What went wrong in the South
Any attempt to build new AP1000s in the U.S. again will almost certainly meet with skepticism after the experiences in South Carolina and Georgia.
Lipman said the challenges that the AP1000 construction faced in the South have been resolved. Back then, Westinghouse agreed to the projects before the reactor design was complete, and supply chains weren’t fully formed due to a long period in which U.S. construction was dormant, he said.
“One big lesson learned, maybe the big lesson learned, is designs need to be complete before they hit the field, meaning they have to be shovel ready,” Lipman said. The design for the AP1000 is complete and Westinghouse has its supply chain in place, he said.
“We have winnowed over our list of suppliers,” Lipman said. “They are supporting us globally, and so it’s really easy then to have them make more equipment for deployment.”
“You’re getting economies of scale,” he said.

Ironically, given the overruns in Georgia, the original aim of AP1000 was reduce costs by creating a standardized design that requires less construction materials compared to older reactor types, Lipman said. Components of the plant are prefabricated before being assembled on site, he said.
“You basically assemble, kit-like, major portions of the plant in a modular fashion, a bit like aircraft and submarines are done,” Lipman said. “That was not fully shaken out completely at the Vogtle site.”
The Department of Energy under the Biden administration argued in a September report that future AP1000 builds should be less expensive because they won’t incur costs associated with the first-of-a-kind project in Georgia. Support from the department’s loan office, tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, and shorter construction timelines would substantially reduce costs, according to the report.
Trump plans for nuclear
While President Donald Trump is supportive of nuclear, it’s unclear whether the industry will receive support through DOE loans and the investment tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Those tools were pillars of the Biden administration’s plan to help reduce the cost of new AP1000s.
Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office that directed federal agencies to remove obstacles to development of nuclear energy resources. The same order, however, paused all spending under the IRA. Two weeks later, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright made commercializing “affordable and abundant nuclear energy” a priority in a Feb. 5 order.

“The long talked about nuclear renaissance is finally going to happen, that is a priority for me personally and for President Trump and this administration,” Wright told CNBC in a Feb. 7 interview. Wright was previously a board member of Oklo, a nuclear startup that aims to disrupt the status quo of the industry by deploying micro reactors later this decade.
Wright emphasized commercializing small reactors and said private capital would drive the construction of new plants. Before the November election, Trump was skeptical of building large reactors, citing the cancelled project in South Carolina.
“They get too big and too complex and too expensive,” he told Joe Rogan in an October interview.
Lipman said the first Trump administration was pro-nuclear, and he expects the president will support the industry in his second term.
“If there’s going to be gigawatt scale deployment in the U.S., decision making needs to accelerate,” Lipman said. “The business model, the investment climate, any legislative changes that might be in the offing at the state level or the federal, now is the time to address those pertinent issues.”
— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report. More

Now that the Biden administration’s SAVE plan has been blocked, millions of student loan borrowers will need to find a new way to repay their debt.
The adjustment will likely be challenging, experts said.
“Borrowers who were in SAVE will have to pay more on their federal student loans, in some cases double or even triple the monthly loan payment,” higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz said.

Damircudic | E+ | Getty Images

Student loan borrowers who expected smaller monthly payments under the new Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan received some bad news on Feb. 18, when a U.S. appeals court blocked the program.
As a result, millions of people will need to switch to a new repayment plan soon.

The adjustment will likely be challenging, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
“Borrowers who were in SAVE will have to pay more on their federal student loans, in some cases double or even triple the monthly loan payment,” Kantrowitz said.
The recent appeals court order, in addition to blocking SAVE, also ended student loan forgiveness under other income-driven repayment plans.
Here’s what borrowers need to know.

Why was the SAVE plan blocked?

The Biden administration rolled out the SAVE plan in the summer of 2023, describing it as “the most affordable student loan plan ever.” 

However, Republican-backed states quickly filed lawsuits against the program. They argued that former President Joe Biden, with SAVE, was essentially trying to find a roundabout way to forgive student debt after the Supreme Court blocked his attempt at sweeping debt cancellation.

SAVE came with two key provisions that the the legal challenges targeted. It had lower monthly payments than any other income-driven repayment plan offered to student loan borrowers, and it led to quicker debt erasure for those with small balances.
(Income-driven repayment plans set your monthly bill based on your income and family size, and used to lead to debt forgiveness after a certain period, but the terms vary.)
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Feb. 18 sided with the seven Republican-led states that filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education’s repayment plan.

What happens to my forbearance?

While the legal challenges against SAVE were playing out, the Biden administration put student loan borrowers who had enrolled in the plan into an interest-free forbearance. That plan said the pause on any bill could last until December.
But now, Kantrowitz said, “It will likely end sooner under the Trump administration, within weeks or months.”

Do I need to enroll in another plan?

The answer is yes, you need to enroll in another plan.
Borrowers should start looking now at their other repayment options, experts said.
The recent appeals court order against SAVE also ended student loan forgiveness under many other income-driven repayment plans, including the Revised Pay-As-You-Earn repayment plan, or REPAYE.
Currently, only the Income-Based Repayment Plan, or IBR, leads to debt cancellation.
However, if you’re pursuing Public Service Loan Forgiveness, you should be eligible for debt cancellation after 10 years on any of the IDR plans, said Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit that helps borrowers navigate the repayment of their debt. (PSLF offers debt erasure for certain public servants after 10 years of payments.)
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“It’s also important to point out that all the IDR plans cross-pollinate for forgiveness,” Mayotte said. “If someone has been on PAYE for eight years and now switches to IBR, they will still have eight years under their belt toward IBR forgiveness.”
There are several tools available online to help you determine how much your monthly bill would be under different plans.
Meanwhile, the Standard Repayment Plan is a good option for borrowers who are not seeking or eligible for loan forgiveness and can afford the monthly payments, experts say. Under that plan, payments are fixed and borrowers typically make payments for up to 10 years.

What if I can’t afford the new payments?

If you can’t afford the monthly payments under your new repayment plan, you should first see if you qualify for a deferment, experts say. That’s because your loans may not accrue interest under that option, whereas they almost always do in a forbearance.
If you’re unemployed when student loan payments resume, you can request an unemployment deferment with your servicer. If you’re dealing with another financial challenge, meanwhile, you may be eligible for an economic hardship deferment.
Other, lesser-known deferments include the graduate fellowship deferment, the military service and post-active duty deferment and the cancer treatment deferment.
Student loan borrowers who don’t qualify for a deferment may request a forbearance.
Under this option, borrowers can keep their loans on hold for as long as three years. However, because interest accrues during the forbearance period, borrowers can be hit with a larger bill when it ends. More