Raphael Stevens

R&B singer R. Kelly was found guilty Monday on all counts in a sex-trafficking and racketeering trial by a federal jury in Brooklyn.
Kelly now faces the possibility of decades in prison. Sentencing is set to take place May 4.

R&B singer R. Kelly was found guilty Monday on all counts in a high-profile sex-trafficking case by a federal jury in Brooklyn, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York said.
The verdict represents the first criminal consequence for Kelly after decades of accusations of sexual assault. In 2008, he was acquitted on 14 counts in a highly publicized child pornography case in New York.

In the current case, Kelly was charged with one count of racketeering, which encompassed 14 underlying acts including sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping, bribery and sex trafficking. He was also charged with eight counts of violations of the anti-sex trafficking law known as the Mann Act.
The criminal proceedings started Aug. 18, spanned about six weeks and included testimony from more than 45 witnesses. The jury, which was made up of seven men and five women, began deliberating Friday afternoon.
Kelly now faces the possibility of decades in prison. Sentencing is set to take place on May 4. The singer also faces charges in Illinois and Minnesota.
Best known for the hit 1996 song “I Believe I Can Fly,” Kelly, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case and did not take the stand in his own defense.
In this case, six people alleged the singer was a serial sexual predator who abused young women and underaged girls and boys for more than two decades.

During the trial several victims were identified as “Jane Does” in the indictments, including the singer Aaliyah, who died in 2001. Aaliyah was referred to as Jane Doe 1.
Kelly infamously married Aaliyah in 1994 when she was just 15 years old by misrepresenting her age as 18 on the couple’s marriage license application.
Rumors of Kelly’s pattern of abuse circulated for years before charges were brought against the singer. “Surviving R. Kelly,” a Lifetime documentary series released in 2019, along with the rise of the #MeToo movement, intensified calls for Kelly to face legal consequences.

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The CDC endorsed an extra dose of Pfizer’s vaccine for people 65 and older, adults with certain underlying health conditions, and frontline workers including teachers, nurses, and grocery store workers. 
“I am not at all concerned about supply,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky clarified her comments regarding Covid-19 booster shots after she told the Atlantic on Monday that she plans on getting a Covid booster shot, but wants to make sure those who are at higher risk get them first.
“I am not at all concerned about supply,” said Walensky on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.” “I do know that here have been some queues in the pharmacies as people have been wanting to get their booster right away, so I merely indicated that I didn’t want to be in a rush above those who are over the age of 65 who might be more at risk than I am, and I’ll wait a week or two, and I will absolutely get mine.”

The CDC endorsed an extra dose of Pfizer’s vaccine for people 65 and older, adults with certain underlying health conditions, and frontline workers including teachers, nurses, and grocery store workers. 
Host Shepard Smith also asked Walensky whether or not the process to approve a vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 should have been fast tracked or sped up, amid surging pediatric Covid hospitalizations. 
Walensky told Smith that it was an “important question” that the agency was addressing “with urgency.” She added that the process was a balance between getting a vaccine for children quickly, but also going through the due diligence of clinical trials to ensure the vaccine is safe and effective. 
Pfizer and BioNTech announced that a smaller dose of its Covid-19 vaccine is safe and generates a “robust” immune response in a clinical trial of kids ages 5 to 11. The data, which included more than 2,200 children, will be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration and other health regulators “as soon as possible,” the companies said. 
“The FDA will absolutely be addressing those data with urgency and as soon as they give their authorization, if that’s what they choose to do, and we expect that they will, then the CDC will absolutely be giving its recommendation soon thereafter that,” Walensky said.

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Piper Sandler is betting big on Best Buy.
Analysts at the firm called the stock “one of our top ideas,” saying its new membership program could be a game changer. The firm has an overweight rating and $150 target on Best Buy.

But, it’s not the only retailer catching Wall Street’s eye. CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Monday asked its traders which name in the space they see as a buy here.
Ari Wald, head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer, said home improvement retailer Lowe’s ticks all the boxes.
“It is what we call hitting the ‘Opco Trifecta.’ It’s got a bullish trend behind it, it’s rated outperform by our fundamental analysts, and, and there are portfolio tail winds supporting the stock as well based on our view of relative strength coming into the consumer cyclicals segment of the market,” Wald said Monday.

Arrows pointing outwards

“The stock has run up and is testing its May peak, marking resistance at $215. We expect a breakout. We recommend buying it ahead of the breakout in anticipation for it given the underlying trend. In the meantime, there’s support at $200, marking its 50-day average,” he said.
Lowe’s shares have risen more than 8% this quarter, better than the S&P 500 and rival Home Depot.

Eva Ados, chief investment strategist at ERShares, pinpointed furniture chain RH and handmade and crafts e-commerce store Etsy as her two favorites.
“In a market where retail companies have shown artificial, if I may call it, growth over the last year – year-over-year comparisons – these two companies actually had good growth last year,” Ados said during the same interview. “Their growth now of 91% for Etsy and 38% for RH is a sustainable growth. It shows a signal that these companies can continue growing.”
Strong sales growth couples with healthy profit to make a winning combination for Ados.
“Etsy has a 22.5% income margin and that’s 20 times higher than the industry average of 1.5% which is extraordinary. And then in the case of RH, the EBIDTA has doubled in the last three years,” she said.
Etsy and RH have had a mixed quarter – Etsy has beat the S&P 500, while RH has traded roughly in line with the benchmark index.
Disclosure: ERShares holds RH and ETSY.
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Both SPD leader and current Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and CDU-CSU candidate Armin Laschet will seek alliances, with another coalition between the parties looking improbable.
A weak showing for the left-wing Die-Linke party, which is projected to have secured less than 5% of the vote, has eliminated the possibility of a coalition that would lurch the country’s economic policy to the left.
This development has reassured business leaders both in Germany and abroad.

Supporters wave flags at the Social Democrats (SPD) headquarters after the exit polls were broadcast on television in Berlin on September 26, 2021.
ODD ANDERSEN | AFP | Getty Images

German business leaders have voiced relief after the country’s federal election results quashed the possibility of the next government having a strong left-leaning slant.
Preliminary results on Monday indicated that the center-left Social Democratic Party had gained the largest share of the vote, edging out current Chancellor Angela Merkel’s right-leaning bloc of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union.

The Green Party and the liberal Free Democratic Party are projected to have gained 14.8% and 11.5% of the vote, respectively, effectively rendering them kingmakers with all eyes now on what promises to be a prolonged period of coalition negotiations.

Both SPD leader and current Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and CDU-CSU candidate Armin Laschet will seek alliances, with another coalition between the parties looking improbable.
A weak showing for the left-wing Die-Linke party, which is projected to have secured less than 5% of the vote, has eliminated the possibility of a coalition that would lurch the country’s economic policy to the left.
This development has reassured business leaders both in Germany and abroad.

Taxes not ‘what keeps German business up at night’

Joe Kaeser, chairman of Siemens Energy and former CEO of Siemens, said the Green Party’s success and influence on the campaigning stances of various parties would bode well for the German economy, particularly its high profile energy transition efforts.

He suggested that as green policies became integral across the campaign platforms, the party’s profile may have been “diluted” somewhat.
“If you look at how everything has developed, the Greens have been the first ones to talk about a sustainable social market economy,” Kaeser told CNBC on Monday.
“Remember the recipe in Germany, the social market economy, has always been a good thing to target and to fulfil, and the Greens have added this sustainability matter to the other two, which I thought was a smart idea, and then during the course of the campaigning, everybody became sort of Green.”
Kaeser said the current government should focus on linking up existing renewable energy production at a faster pace, and suggested that market concerns about corporate tax hikes in the event of an SDP-led coalition were overblown.

“Companies go where demand is, where they find good people and where their most decisive production factors are relevant,” he said. “Most of the companies here depend on energy. Even the car industry, which needs to reduce a lot of CO2 emissions, is dependent on getting sustainable, affordable and reliable energy.”
The former Siemens boss argued that the sustainable social market economy formula would be important in dealing with the digitization and automation of the economy, bringing together education, energy and the country’s economic engine room — exports.
“Bringing those three together is really a strong aspiration, and that will decide the future of Germany, whether we can sustain our wealth and our competitiveness or not.”

Taxes, climate and energy

Simone Menne, president of the American Chambers of Commerce in Germany said the prospect of an SPD-led coalition would be good for transatlantic relations.
Menne told CNBC on Monday that she agreed with U.S. President Joe Biden that the SPD was a “solid party” and that a coalition led by either the SPD or the CDU-CSU bloc would reinforce the relationship between Washington and Berlin.
“We are quite happy with the result but the point is it’s a very tight result, and it’s very important that we are fast and they are fast with the negotiations, because we need to make important decisions and Germany has to go forward and not stop because of months of negotiations,” Menne said.

She highlighted that the Chambers’ members had complained of delays to digital infrastructure development in Germany, a problem that any new administration would need to address. Tax policy was also high on the organization’s agenda, and Menne suggested it would be key to ensuring strong economic ties between Germany and both the rest of Europe and the U.S.
“Germany is very high in taxes for companies so that is something they should consider and that may be an interesting point with the Social Democrats, and their relationship with Europe and the transatlantic relationship.”
She also urged the new administration to prioritize a coalition for climate protection and the energy transition, a call echoed by Kerstin Andreae, president of Germany’s BDEW organization representing the energy and water industries, in comments made to Deutsche Welle.
Focus for markets will now turn to the pace of negotiations in the hope of mapping a clear economic policy direction for Europe’s largest economy.

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Harvard Business School is switching to remote learning through Oct. 3 to try to suppress the virus, which is mostly infecting the university’s fully vaccinated graduate students.
The university is requesting that students avoid unmasked indoor events, group travel and gathering with anyone outside their households.
The business school is also mandating Covid testing three times a week for all students regardless of vaccination status.

Harvard Business School
Brooks Kraft LLC | Corbis | Getty Images

Harvard Business School moved all in-person classes for first-year MBA and some second-year students online this week, and increased its Covid-19 testing requirements to try to curb a recent surge in breakthrough cases on campus.
The school, located in Boston, is switching to remote learning through Oct. 3 to try to suppress the virus, which is mostly infecting the university’s fully vaccinated graduate students, according to the institution’s website. Roughly 95% of the university’s students and 96% of its staff are vaccinated. More than 1,000 students are enrolled in the business school’s class of 2023.

“Contact tracers who have worked with positive cases highlight that transmission is not occurring in classrooms or other academic settings on campus,” business school spokesman Mark Cautela said in a statement. “Nor is it occurring among individuals who are masked.”
Cautela added that the university is requesting that students avoid unmasked indoor events, group travel and gathering with anyone outside their households.

CNBC Health & Science

The business school is also mandating Covid testing three times a week for all students, regardless of vaccination status, Cautela said. The university previously required fully vaccinated students to get tested once a week, while unvaccinated students had to submit test results twice per week.
Harvard’s graduate students represent the majority of active Covid cases on campus, according to the school’s online coronavirus dashboard. The university administered 41,864 Covid tests from Sept. 20 to Sept. 25 and found that graduate students comprised 60 of the 74 positive test results recorded over those six days.
Harvard reports that 87 students are currently isolating following Covid exposure, while 28 students are in quarantine. Masks remain mandatory in all indoor settings at Harvard.

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