Raphael Stevens

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    Market volatility creating buzz for these two types of ETFs

    Market volatility appears to be boosting demand for two types of exchange-traded funds: leveraged and inverse.
    And, Direxion CEO and ETF money manager Douglas Yones thinks market conditions will keep fueling demand for them.

    “We have a lot of securities in the market that are … up a lot over the last five or 10 years. Market seemingly has been going sideways. We saw Friday’s correction,” he told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “There are people out there that are saying: ‘Hey, maybe I don’t want to be fully invested,’ but also don’t want to take the capital gain on selling a position. What can I do? I can take a long position in a short ETF and inverse ETF. I can basically neutralize my exposure.”
    Leveraged and inverse ETFs give investors the opportunity to make monster bets on the stock market’s direction. Investors can go long or short.

    Arrows pointing outwards

    Yones’ firm is heavily involved in the space. Yones runs the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares (SOXL), which is one of the largest leveraged/inverse ETFs. According to FactSet, Broadcom, Nvidia and Qualcomm are among the ETF’s top holdings.
    As of Wednesday’s market close, Yones’ ETF is up almost 84% over the past two years, but off 36% over the past year. It’s also down more than 16% over the past week.
    “There are market-moving headlines happening two to three times a day. And so, the volatility is growing up, not down,” said Yones. “We think that holds for the whole year.”

    VettaFi’s Todd Rosenbluth also sees growing demand for single-stock leveraged ETFs.
    “Single-stock leveraged ETFs probably sound hard to wrap your head around. But it’s one stock you get the risk-on or in case of inverse risk-off exposure to that and the liquidity benefits of the ETF wrapper,” the firm’s head of research said.

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    India has undermined a popular myth about development

    Thirty years ago Siddharth Dube, a writer, visited a small village in northern India near the site of a historic peasants’ revolt. He found plenty that remained enraging: mud huts, primitive ploughs, “barefoot old men” and “bone-thin children”. One older villager, Ram Dass, recalled the bitter deprivation of his younger years, when he would work long days on someone else’s land for the meagre reward of 1.5kg of grain. On cold nights, the poor stuffed rice stalks into old clothes to keep warm. “What did we know what a quilt was?” A man was lucky to own a single pair of shoes from his wedding to his death. More

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    How to get rich in 2025

    “A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!” In “Pride and Prejudice” Jane Austen did not have to explain to the 19th-century reader what Mr Bingley’s “four or five thousand a year” meant, or why it excited Mrs Bennet. It was obvious. Mr Bingley was an heir. And the surest way to get rich was not by working hard but by marrying the right person. More

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    Nvidia’s auto segment revenue surges to record high on demand for driver-assist tech

    Revenue of Nvidia’s automotive and robotics segment more than doubled year on year to a record $570 million in the fourth quarter 2025 fiscal year.
    Tech for driver-assist could become Nvidia’s next “billion-dollar” business, despite being a small part of its overall revenue currently.
    The company’s automotive segment will likely continue to grow, with real-world applications of autonomous driving to sustain long-term growth of the sector.

    Signage at the Nvidia Corp. offices in Taipei, Taiwan, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025.  Photographer: An Rong Xu/Bloomberg via Getty Images
    Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    U.S. chipmaker Nvidia’s auto segment revenue more than doubled in the latest quarter to a record high on strong demand for driver-assist software.
    While the company’s biggest revenue stream by far is chip systems that power artificial intelligence, Nvidia has predicted its products that power driver-assist technology could become its next “billion-dollar” business.

    Revenue of Nvidia’s automotive and robotics segment rose 103% year on year to $570 million in the fourth quarter of the 2025 fiscal year. That brought the segment’s revenue for the fiscal year to $1.69 billion, above $1 billion for a second-straight year.
    The latest increase in revenue was due to to sales of Nvidia’s “self-driving platforms,” according to the company’s CFO.
    “This growth highlights Nvidia’s increasing exposure to powering ADAS, autonomous vehicles, and robotics through its DRIVE platform and related technologies,” Brady Wang, semiconductor analyst at Counterpoint Research, said in an email.
    CEO Jensen Huang said in Nvidia’s earnings call the company expects that “every single one” of the 1 billion cars on the roads today “will be robotic cars” that collect data which Nvidia-supported AI systems can help refine, according to a FactSet transcript.

    Automotive and robotics is “getting ready to take off,” likely due to investments in autonomous vehicles such as Waymo and Tesla, Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said in an email. Munster also estimated that around 15 companies are building humanoid robots, potentially increasing demand for Nvidia chips.

    “The performance of that segment is an important story below the fold that’s not getting much attention because it’s small,” he added, “but they can be a much bigger part of revenue going forward.”
    Autos and robotics unit currently accounts for 1.45% of Nvidia’s total revenue.
    Counterpoint’s Wang expects this growth to continue with Nvidia’s “increasing adoption of L2+ and more advanced systems”.
    Several Chinese electric car companies, including BYD, Nio and Zeekr, use Nvidia’s driver-assist chip systems.
    “In addition to autonomous driving, I also anticipate that robotics and physical AI will experience a hype,” Wang added, “followed by real-world applications in the coming years, sustaining the long-term growth of this sector.” More

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    Nvidia warns of growing competition from China’s Huawei, despite U.S. sanctions

    Chip giant Nvidia has flagged heightened competition from Huawei, despite U.S. restrictions on the Chinese telecommunications company.
    In an annual filing Wednesday, Nvidia listed Huawei among its current competitors.
    Since 2019, the U.S. has restricted Huawei’s ability to access technology from American suppliers, from advanced 5G chips to Google’s Android operating system.

    Dado Ruvic | Reuters

    BEIJING — Chip giant Nvidia has flagged heightened competition from Huawei, despite U.S. restrictions on the Chinese telecommunications company.
    In an annual filing Wednesday, Nvidia listed Huawei among its current competitors, including it in the list for a second straight year. The company, blacklisted by the U.S. for national security reasons, did not feature among Nvidia’s competitors for at least three prior years.

    Nvidia listed Huawei among its competitors in four of five categories, including chips, cloud services, computing processing and networking products.
    “There’s a fair amount of competition in China,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC’s Jon Fortt Wednesday.
    “Huawei, other companies, are … quite vigorous and very, very competitive,” Huang said.
    Since 2019, the U.S. has restricted Huawei’s ability to access technology from American suppliers, from advanced 5G chips to Google’s Android operating system.

    Huawei’s revenue exceeded 860 billion yuan ($118.27 billion) in 2024, state media reported, a 22% jump in revenue from 2023, and the fastest growth since a 32% increase in 2016, according to CNBC calculations of publicly released figures. Huawei typically publishes its annual reports in March.

    The company’s revenue barely grew in 2020, and plunged by nearly 29% in 2021. Its consumer segment was hit hard, and even as revenue rose 17% year on year to 251.5 billion yuan in 2023, it was just over half of what the unit generated at its peak in 2020.
    The telecommunications company started to make a comeback in the smartphone market in 2023 with the release of its Mate 60 Pro in China. Reviews indicated the device offers download speeds associated with 5G — thanks to an advanced semiconductor chip.
    Just over a year later, Huawei launched the Mate 70 smartphone series that uses the company’s first fully self-developed operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT. More

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    FDA cancels vaccine advisory meeting for choosing flu strains for next season’s shots

    A March meeting of vaccine advisors to the Food and Drug Administration has been canceled without explanation, a member of the advisory panel told CNBC.
    It comes as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who now leads the Department of Health and Human Services, makes early moves that could affect vaccination uptake and policy in the U.S.
    The meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, is held every March to pick flu select flu strains for shots released in the upcoming fall and winter. 

    FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seen in Silver Spring, Maryland November 4, 2009. 
    Jason Reed | Reuters

    A crucial March meeting of vaccine advisors to the Food and Drug Administration has been canceled without explanation, a member of the advisory panel told CNBC on Wednesday. 
    The meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, is held every March to select flu strains for shots released in the upcoming fall and winter. 

    But Dr. Paul Offit, a member of that panel, told CNBC that he received an email at 4:18 p.m. ET on Wednesday saying that the upcoming March 13 meeting is canceled. He said there was no indication of whether it will be rescheduled.
    “Who canceled this meeting? Why did they cancel the meeting? Will manufacturers now turn to the World Health Organization to determine strains for this year’s influenza vaccines?” Offit told CNBC. 
    The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
    The canceled meeting comes as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now leads HHS, makes early moves that could affect vaccination uptake and policy in the U.S. Kennedy has a lengthy track record of being a vaccine skeptic. 
    It also comes amid a particularly brutal flu season in the U.S. CDC data shows the flu has caused up to an estimated 910,000 hospitalizations since October, which puts the season on track to be the most severe in at least a decade.

    Earlier this month, a separate meeting of advisors who help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make recommendations for vaccines was postponed to “accommodate public comment in advance of the meeting,” several news outlets reported. It is also unclear if that meeting will be rescheduled. 
    Kennedy also said last week that he will review the childhood vaccine schedule despite earlier pledges not to do so. He promised that a new “Make America Healthy Again” commission would investigate vaccines, pesticides and antidepressants to see if they have contributed to a rise of chronic illness in the U.S.
    Meanwhile, the Trump administration is weighing pulling funding for Moderna’s bird flu vaccine, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
    The country is grappling with a record-breaking bird flu outbreak that’s impacted dozens of cattle herds along with poultry flocks, which has sent egg prices skyrocketing. Its rapid spread in animals has raised concerns about broader spread to humans.” More

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    Eli Lilly plans at least $27 billion in new U.S. manufacturing investments

    Eli Lilly said it will invest at least $27 billion to build four new manufacturing sites in the U.S. as demand for its weight loss and diabetes injections soars and the company develops new drugs.
    The move comes as companies work to build goodwill with President Donald Trump, who has emphasized reshoring manufacturing to the U.S. and reducing reliance on foreign supply chains. 
    The announcement brings Eli Lilly’s total U.S. manufacturing investments to more than $50 billion in recent years.

    Eli Lilly on Wednesday said it will invest at least $27 billion to build four new manufacturing sites in the U.S., as demand for its blockbuster weight loss and diabetes injections soars and the company develops new drugs for other conditions.
    It comes as drugmakers and companies across different industries work to build goodwill with President Donald Trump, who has emphasized reshoring manufacturing to the U.S. and reducing reliance on foreign supply chains. He has threatened companies — and pharmaceutical businesses in particular — with tariffs if they do not manufacture products in the U.S.

    Eli Lilly made the announcement at an event in Washington, D.C. — emphasizing the political undertones of the strategy. The event featured several speakers from the Trump administration, including Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who explicitly tied the announcement to Trump’s policies.
    Lutnick said the investment is “exactly what the Trump administration is all about, which is building and manufacturing and reshoring in America, investing in America, building in America.” He thanked Eli Lilly for “doing exactly what the president was hoping would happen.”
    Lutnick added that “if you want to understand the tariff policy” of the U.S., “I have just articulated it.”
    The move brings Eli Lilly’s total U.S. manufacturing investments to more than $50 billion in recent years. The other $23 billion is from the company’s investments in new plants and site expansions since 2020, which has helped ease supply shortages of its popular drugs.  
    “This represents the largest pharmaceutical expansion investment in U.S. history,” Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks said at the event. “We’re making these investments … to prepare for the demand we anticipate for future pipeline medicines across our therapeutic areas.”

    Shares of the company closed more than 1% higher on Wednesday.
    Three of the future U.S. sites announced Wednesday will manufacture active ingredients in medications, such as tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s obesity drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro. Ricks noted that there is a “real gap in supply chain in the U.S. as it relates to active ingredient availability in our country.”
    The fourth site will extend the company’s global manufacturing network for future injectable therapies, he added.
    Eli Lilly has not decided on where the four new U.S. sites will be located, Ricks said. The company will be accepting location submissions through March 13 and will announce decisions on new sites in the coming months.
    Eli Lilly said the four new sites will create more than 3,000 jobs for workers such as engineers and scientists, along with 10,000 construction jobs as the plants are built. The company’s other U.S. plants include sites in North Carolina, Indiana and Wisconsin.
    The new investments aren’t solely dedicated to Eli Lilly’s current and future obesity and diabetes treatments. The company is charting its future beyond Zepbound and Mounjaro, with hopes to deliver drugs from its broad pipeline of products for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions.
    Ricks said the company is optimistic about its pipeline across therapeutic areas, including cardiometabolic health, oncology, immunology and neuroscience.
    Still, the new investments build on the success of Zepbound and Mounjaro, which share dominance of the booming market for so-called GLP-1 drugs with Novo Nordisk’s weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic. Some analysts expect the global obesity drug market to be worth more than $150 billion annually by the early 2030s, making it critical for both companies to maintain their share as other drugmakers scramble to join.
    During the event, Ricks took a shot at cheaper compounded versions of its injectable drugs, saying “America faces a growing threat from an influx of counterfeit and compounded medications.”
    Eli Lilly’s efforts to boost the supply of Zepbound and Mounjaro aim to ensure that eligible patients are safely accessing those branded treatments instead of cheaper compounded versions. Patients flocked to those unapproved copycats when the branded drugs were in short supply, or if they didn’t have insurance coverage for the costly treatments. 
    The FDA has since declared the shortage of tirzepatide over, which will essentially bar many compounding pharmacies from making copycats. 
    Hassett said the issue also “disturbs the White House” because offshore producers of copycat drugs are “threatening lives in the U.S.”

    More CNBC health coverage

    In another sign of the political goals of the announcement, Ricks touted Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, saying that the legislation has been “fundamental” to the company’s manufacturing investments. He called it “essential that these policies are extended permanently this year.”
    Key provisions from that law are set to expire at the end of December — though a reduction in the corporate tax rate will remain in effect.
    That legislation, passed by a majority-Republican Congress during Trump’s first term, was the largest tax code overhaul in nearly three decades that slashed taxes for individuals and businesses. It cut the corporate tax rate to 21%, capped deductions for state and local taxes at $10,000, and expanded the child tax credit, among other efforts. 
    “Long-term progress will also require U.S. policies to continue to protect the intellectual property rights and foster an innovative environment where we can do our work,” Ricks said.
    Novo Nordisk has similarly invested billions in manufacturing to ramp up supply of Wegovy and Ozempic, announcing in 2024 it would take over three sites from contract manufacturer Catalent for $11 billion.

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    Trump plan to freeze funding stymies Biden-era energy rebates for consumers

    Some states like Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Rhode Island have delayed phases of their Home energy Rebate programs for consumers who make their homes more energy efficient.
    They cited a White House freeze on federal funding that conflicts with President Donald Trump’s agenda.
    The rebate programs, created by the Inflation Reduction Act, aim to defray consumer costs for retrofits and utility bills while reducing planet-warming carbon emissions.

    Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images

    Some states have stopped disbursing funds to consumers via Biden-era rebate programs tied to home energy efficiency, due to a Trump administration freeze on federal funding enacted in January.
    The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, had earmarked $8.8 billion of federal funds for consumers through two home energy rebate programs, to be administered by states, territories and the District of Columbia.

    Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Rhode Island — which are in various phases of rollout — have paused or delayed their fledgling programs, citing Trump administration policy.

    The White House on Jan. 27 put a freeze on the disbursement of federal funds that conflict with President Trump’s agenda — including initiatives related to green energy and climate change — as a reason for halting the disbursement of rebate funds to consumers.
    That fate of that freeze is still up in the air. A federal judge issued an order Tuesday that continued to block the policy, for example. However, it appears agencies had been withholding funding in some cases in defiance of earlier court rulings, according to ProPublica reporting.
    In any event, the freeze — or the threat of it — appears to be impacting state rebate programs.
    “Coloradans who would receive the Home Energy Rebate savings are still locked out by the Trump administration in the dead of winter,” Ari Rosenblum, a spokesperson for the Colorado Energy Office, said in an e-mailed statement.

    The U.S. Department of Energy and the White House didn’t return a request for comment from CNBC on the funding freeze.

    In some states, rebates are ‘currently unavailable’

    Consumers are eligible for up to $8,000 of Home Efficiency Rebates and up to $14,000 of Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates, per federal law.
    The rebates defray the cost of retrofitting homes and upgrading appliances to be more energy efficient. Such tweaks aim to cut consumers’ utility bills while also reducing planet-warming carbon emissions.
    California, the District of Columbia, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and Wisconsin had also launched phases of their rebate programs in recent months, according to data on an archived federal website.
    All states and territories (except for South Dakota) had applied for the federal rebate funding and the U.S. Department of Energy had approved funding for each of them.
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    The Arizona Governor’s Office of Resiliency said its Home Energy Rebates programs would be paused until federal funds are freed up.
    “Due to the current federal Executive Orders, memorandums from the White House Office of Management and Budget, and communications from the U.S. Department of Energy, funding for all Efficiency Arizona programs is currently unavailable,” it said in an announcement Friday.
    Rhode Island paused new applications as of Jan. 27 due to “current uncertainty” with Inflation Reduction Act funding and executive orders, according to its Office of Energy Resources.

    The Georgia Environmental Finance Authority launched a pilot program for the rebates in fall 2024. That program is ongoing, a spokesperson confirmed Monday.
    However, the timeline for a full program launch initially planned for 2025 “is delayed until we receive more information from the U.S. Department of Energy,” the Georgia spokesperson explained in an e-mail.
    However, not all states have pressed the pause button: It appears Maine is still moving forward, for example.
    “The program remains open to those who are eligible,” Afton Vigue, a spokesperson for the Maine Governor’s Energy Office, said in an e-mail.
    The status of rebates in the eight other states and districts to have launched their programs is unclear. Their respective energy departments or governor’s offices didn’t return requests for comment.

    ‘Signs of an interest’

    While the Trump administration on Jan. 29 rescinded its memo ordering a freeze on federal grants and loans — two days after its initial release — the White House said the freeze nonetheless remained in full force.
    Democratic attorneys general in 22 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming the freeze is unlawful. The White House has claimed it is necessary to ensure spending aligns with Trump’s presidential agenda.
    David Terry, president of the National Association of State Energy Officials, said he is optimistic the rebate funding will be released to states soon.
    “For these two particular programs, I do not think [the freeze] will stymie the programs,” Terry said. “I see signs of an interest in moving them forward and working with the states to implement them.” More