Finance

In this articleJPMLENTKNVDACFOXAA sign is posted in front of the NVIDIA headquarters on May 10, 2018 in Santa Clara, California.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesCheck out the companies making headlines in midday trading.Nvidia — Shares of Nvidia gained 2.3% midday, then closed 0.21% after Bank of America raised its price target on the stock to $900 per share from $800 per share. The bank said “rising AI adoption, expanding use-cases across cloud, enterprise, edge, telco can help NVDA double its content and triple its data center sales over the next few years.”Lennar — Lennar shares added 3.7% after JPMorgan upgraded the homebuilder to overweight from neutral. JPMorgan said Lennar’s stock as “attractive relative to its peers and effectively not reflecting the company’s significant and ongoing business transformation.”Adobe — Shares of the digital cloud giant traded nearly 2.6% higher on the back of better-than-expected quarterly numbers. Adobe reported earnings per share of $3.03 on revenue of $3.84 billion. Analysts expected a profit of $2.81 per share on sales of $3.73 billion, according to Refinitiv.Smith & Wesson Brands — The firearms manufacturer stock surged 17.4% after the company quarterly results that beat analyst expectations. Smith & Wesson’s earnings per share of $1.71 beat a Refinitiv forecast by 69 cents. The company’s revenue of $322.9 million also surpassed an estimate of $259.8 million. Smith & Wesson also raised its dividend by 60% and authorized a $50 million stock buyback.Orphazyme — Shares of Orphazyme plunged nearly 50% after U.S. regulators rejected its application for a drug intended to treat Niemann-Pick disease type C.Fox Corporation — Fox shares gained 1.3% after the company upped its stock repurchase program by $2 billion to a total of $4 billion.Citigroup — The bank stock fell 1.8% midday, putting it on pace for its 12th straight daily loss. Shares of Citigroup are down more than 11% this week.— CNBC’s Tanaya Macheel contributed reportingBecome a smarter investor with CNBC Pro. Get stock picks, analyst calls, exclusive interviews and access to CNBC TV. Sign up to start a free trial today More

Damien Vanderwilt, co-president of Galaxy Digital, Mike Novogratz founder of Galaxy, and Chris Ferraro, co-president of GalaxySource: Galaxy DigitalGoldman Sachs’s efforts to help hedge funds and other big institutional clients wager on bitcoin have taken a step forward.The bank has begun trading bitcoin futures with Galaxy Digital, the crypto investment firm founded by Mike Novogratz, CNBC has exclusively learned.The trades represent the first time that Goldman has used a digital assets firm as a counterparty since the investment bank set up its cryptocurrency desk last month, according to Damien Vanderwilt, co-president of Galaxy and head of its global markets division.The moves by Goldman, the preeminent global investment bank, may reverberate on Wall Street and beyond as banks increasingly face pressure from clients who want exposure to bitcoin. By being the first major U.S. bank to begin trading cryptocurrency, Goldman is essentially giving other banks cover to begin doing so as well, said Vanderwilt, a former Goldman partner who joined Galaxy last year.”There’s a whole dynamic with the major banks that I’ve seen time and time again: safety in numbers,” Vanderwilt said this week in an interview. “Once one bank is out there doing this, the other banks will have [fear of missing out] and they’ll get on-boarded because their clients have been asking for it.”Galaxy was scheduled to announce Friday that it will serve as Goldman’s “liquidity provider” – Wall Street parlance for a company that provides quotes for buy and sell orders –  on CME Group bitcoin futures. Last month, in a memo first reported by CNBC, Goldman said it would sign on “new liquidity providers to help us in expanding our offering.””Our goal is to equip our clients with best-execution pricing and secure access to the assets they want to trade,” Max Minton, head of digital assets for Goldman’s Asia-Pacific region, said in a statement. “In 2021, this now includes crypto, and we are pleased to have found a partner with a broad range of liquidity venues and differentiated derivatives capabilities spanning the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”Goldman is leaning on Galaxy for access to the crypto world because the highly regulated banking industry can’t handle bitcoin directly, according to Vanderwilt.But nothing prevents banks from dealing in financial wagers tied to the price of the underlying coins, and so that is where Wall Street is starting its crypto journey. There are parallels in the commodities realm, in which banks trade exposure to hogs or corn without owning the physical asset, he said.Galaxy, whose management ranks are stocked with ex-Goldman executives familiar with running regulated businesses, positions itself as a bridge for financial companies and crypto venues. The firm, whose shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, will likely offer shares in the U.S. this year.  It’s a step toward the vision that Vanderwilt and the other former Goldman executives have for the development of bitcoin’s market infrastructure. As more banks allow clients including hedge funds, pensions, family offices and sovereign wealth funds to trade bitcoin, the depth and breadth of the market improves, which ultimately should lower bitcoin’s famous volatility, he said.”You’re moving the market participants from being north of 90% retail, a huge chunk of which have access to ridiculous amounts of leverage, into an institutional community, who have proper, tried-and-tested rules and regulations about leverage, asset-liability mismatch and risk,” Vanderwilt said. “The more activity that moves into the institutional community, the less volatility there will be.”Banks will be able to offer clients ways to wager on bitcoin using derivatives, taking a page from the world of established finance, he said. That includes arbitrage bets related to the price gap between CME bitcoin futures and bitcoin itself, relative value trades between bitcoin and ethereum, and the creation of bitcoin structured notes.Goldman’s steps in cryptocurrency trading are happening despite sustained skepticism toward bitcoin from other parts of the firm. Most notably, the bank’s chief investment officer for wealth management has called bitcoin a bubble that isn’t appropriate for investors.But if enough trading clients ask for a product, investment banks are obliged to provide it, a dynamic that Vanderwilt has seen in other nascent markets around the world during his two decades at Goldman.”If the phone rings enough times and clients are trying to get exposure, you eventually figure out how to do it for them safely, understanding that your role in the world is to intermediate exposure safely, not to act as a fiduciary,” he said.The milestone brings Vanderwilt full circle with his former life. In 2017, as a senior Goldman trading executive, he was tasked with helping start the bank’s first effort to trade bitcoin futures, a plan that was later shelved. Now he’s helping make it happen from his position at Galaxy.”There’s a lot of irony, I smile about it a lot,” Vanderwilt said. “But I’m really happy, it’s a happy full circle.”Become a smarter investor with CNBC Pro. Get stock picks, analyst calls, exclusive interviews and access to CNBC TV. Sign up to start a free trial today. More

St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard told CNBC on Friday that he sees an initial interest rate increase happening in late-2022 as inflation picks up faster than previous forecasts had anticipated.That estimate is even quicker than the outlook the broader Federal Open Market Committee released Wednesday that caused a hit to financial markets. The committee’s median outlook was for up to two hikes in 2023, after indicating in March that saw no increases on the horizon.Bullard at several points described the Fed’s moves this week as “hawkish,” or in favor of tighter monetary policy than what has prevailed since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.”We’re expecting a good year, a good reopening. But this is a bigger year than we were expecting, more inflation than we were expecting,” the central bank official said on “Squawk Box.” “I think it’s natural that we’ve tilted a little bit more hawkish here to contain inflationary pressures.”The FOMC’s revised forecasts reflect that sentiment.For 2021, the committee raised its expectations for core inflation as measured by the personal consumption expenditures price index to 3% from the March estimate of 2.2%. It also brought its median estimate for inflation including food and energy prices up to 3.4%, a full percentage point jump from the prior outlook.Along with that, the committee hiked its outlook for GDP growth to 7% from 6.5%. As recently as December the committee had been looking for growth of just 4.2%.”Overall, it’s very good news,” Bullard said of the economic trajectory during the reopening. “You love to have an economy growing as fast as this one, you love to have a labor market improving the way this one has improved.”However, he cautioned that the growth is bringing faster-than-expected inflation, adding that “you could even see some upside risks” to price pressures that by some measures are running at their highest levels since the early 1980s.That’s why thinks it would be prudent to start raising interest rates as soon as next year. The Fed dropped its key overnight lending rate to near zero at the outset of the pandemic and has kept it there since.Bullard said he sees inflation running at 3% this year and 2.5% in 2022 before drifting back down to the Fed’s 2% target.”If that’s what you think is going to happen, then by the time you get to the end of 2022, you’d already have two years of two-and-a-half to 3% inflation,” he said. “To me, that would meet our new framework where we said we’re going to allow inflation to run above target for some time, and from there we could bring inflation down to 2% over the subsequent horizon.”Bullard is not a voting member this year on the committee but will get a vote next year. Stock market futures briefly added to losses while the 10-year Treasury yield ticked higher as Bullard spoke.The other dynamic of the Fed’s policy is its $120 billion minimum of asset purchases. Bullard said he thinks it will take several months of discussion before the central bank decides how to begin reducing that pace.He also cautioned that with the economic dynamics uncertain ahead, that also will mean monetary policy will remain in flux.”These are things far in the future in an environment where we’ve got a lot of volatility, so it’s not at all clear any of this will pan out the way anybody is talking about. So we’re going to have to go meeting by meeting to see what happens,” he said.Become a smarter investor with CNBC Pro.Get stock picks, analyst calls, exclusive interviews and access to CNBC TV.Sign up to start a free trial today. More

Take a look at some of the biggest movers in the premarket:Adobe (ADBE) – Adobe reported quarterly profit of $3.03 per share, 21 cents a share above estimates. The software company’s revenue also topped Wall Street forecasts and Adobe gave stronger-than-expected current-quarter guidance. Its shares rose 3.1% in premarket trading.Smith & Wesson (SWBI) – Smith & Wesson reported better-than-expected profit and sales for its latest quarter, as the gun maker’s sales surged 67% compared to the same quarter a year earlier. The company notes that its shipments jumped 70% compared to overall industry growth of 42%. Shares rallied 4.7% in premarket trading.Orphazyme (ORPH) – Orphazyme plunged 52.6% in the premarket after the Food and Drug Administration rejected its experimental treatment for a genetic disorder known as Niemann-Pick disease type C. The Denmark-based biotech company had seen volatile trading in its shares in recent days after it picked up social media attention, falling 10.2% Thursday after a more than 61% surge Wednesday.Delta Air Lines (DAL) – The stock added 1.1% in the premarket following a double upgrade at Wolfe Research to “outperform” from “underperform.” Wolfe said it sees business travel benefiting from pent-up demand later this summer, although it doesn’t think it will return to pre-Covid levels.Manchester United (MANU) – Manchester United lost $30.2 million for the first three months of this year, due largely to the absence of fans at its games because of the coronavirus pandemic. All of the team’s 2020-21 season games were played without spectators.ArcelorMittal (MT) – ArcelorMittal sold its remaining 38.2 million shares of steel producer Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF). The mining company will use the proceeds to fund a $750 million share buyback. Arcelor-Mittal rose 1% in premarket action, while Cleveland-Cliffs added 0.3%.Carnival (CCL) – The cruise line operator disclosed a March data breach that may have exposed personal information of customers of its Carnival, Holland America and Princess brands. It did not disclose how many may have been affected.Fox Corp. (FOXA) – Fox increased its stock repurchase program by $2 billion to a total of $4 billion, helping to send its shares higher by 2.8% in the premarket.Pilgrim’s Pride (PPC) – Pilgrim’s Pride expanded its prepared foods and branded products business by purchasing Kerry Group’s Meats and Meals business. The poultry producer will pay the Ireland-based company about $947 million for that unit.Hasbro (HAS), Mattel (MAT) – The toymakers are on watch following a New York Post report warning of a potential toy shortage this coming holiday season. The paper said thousands of toys ready for shipment remain stockpiled in China due to the lack of shipping containers available for export.Biogen (BIIB) – The drugmaker’s stock was upgraded to “overweight” from “neutral” at Piper Sandler, which cites a number of factors including the likelihood that doctors will prescribe Biogen’s newly approved Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm. Biogen shares rose 1.7% in the premarket.Citigroup (C) – The bank’s stock remains on watch after declining for the past 11 consecutive trading days, losing 14% over that time. More

The Klarna logo displayed on a smartphone.Rafael Henrique | SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty ImagesLONDON — Europe’s tech sector has already attracted more venture capital investment so far this year than it did throughout the whole of 2020, according to data shared with CNBC.Start-ups in the continent have raised a whopping 43.8 billion euros ($60.9 billion) in the first six months of 2021, figures from Dealroom show, easily surpassing the record 38.5 billion euros invested in 2020.That’s despite the fact that the number of venture deals signed so far is around half the amount agreed in 2020. About 2,700 funding rounds have been raised so far in 2021, versus 5,200 last year, according to Dealroom.Swedish buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna has raised over $1.6 billion in two financing rounds already this year, German stock trading app Trade Republic bagged $900 million in a May fundraise and British payments provider Checkout.com snapped up $450 million in January.It suggests that European tech firms are pulling in far larger sums of money per investment than in previous years, defying the economic uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, which provided a big boost to online services.Guillaume Pousaz, CEO of Checkout.com, said start-ups have often been created in times of crisis, citing the emergence of several new financial technology companies in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis.”When people lose their jobs, people actually spend a lot of time at home or have to reconsider their lives,” Pousaz told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe during the Viva Technology conference in Paris.”When there’s a big transformational change in society, it’s quite often the time that you get the the emergence of a lot of new start-ups. We are particularly excited for this opportunity.”On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to see the creation of at least 10 tech companies in Europe worth over 100 billion euros each by 2030. While Europe is now home to many unicorns — start-ups valued at over $1 billion — it is yet to produce a company with the scale of American and Chinese tech giants.Scale-Up Europe, a group that includes the founders of UiPath and Wise, proposed 21 recommendations to help the region build “the next generation of tech giants.” Among the suggestions are tax credits to corporates for investing in start-ups and regulatory changes that adapt to new innovations.Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, said the U.K. leads Europe when it comes to tech policy, and that there are a number of issues that need to be addressed before the European Union can produce tech giants of its own.”I am concerned with how the regulatory environment in the European Union has developed,” he told CNBC, adding that Britain is focused on rules that make it easier for consumers to move from one tech service to another.Siemiatkowski highlighted EU regulation of web cookies as an example of “poor regulation,” given the multitude of consent messages users receive when they visit various websites. “It’s driving us to become more complacent and less worried about privacy rather than the opposite,” he said.”I hope to see now that the European Union steps up and starts writing really good regulation that helps the liberty and movement of consumers to increase competition in spaces like retail banking but also technology in general,” Siemiatkowski added.Still, as the number of $1 billion start-ups in Europe continues to grow, the number of exits in the continent is also increasing. This year has already seen some notable acquisitions, including Etsy’s $1.6 billion purchase of U.K. fashion resale app Depop and JPMorgan’s takeover of London robo-advisor Nutmeg.As for stock market listings, a number of notable debuts have taken place in London in particular, including food delivery app Deliveroo, cybersecurity firm Darktrace and reviews site Trustpilot. Money transfer giant Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, plans to go public in the U.K. capital soon.Siemiatkowski said it was too early to tell when Klarna, which was last privately valued at $45.6 billion, would go public, but that it was likely to happen in the next one or two years. Pousaz said a Checkout.com IPO was unlikely to happen soon but “of course one day we will be a public company.” More

Treasury yields may be about to break out.Even though yields temporarily fell after this week’s Federal Reserve decision on interest rates, Wells Fargo Securities’ Michael Schumacher expects the benchmark 10-year Treasury Note rate to end the year as high as 2.20%.”The 10-year yield is going up a fair bit through the remainder of the year,” the firm’s head of macro strategy told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Thursday. “Not a steady rise to be sure. But we do think there’s a pretty strong bear case to be made over the next six [to] seven months.”Schumacher attributes the inflation comeback for his forecast — with an emphasis on the next 12 months.”Core PCE which the Fed likes to look at is above 3% for the next year. It’s an amazing number. We have not seen inflation like that in the U.S. on a sustained basis for a very long time,” he said. “This really gets at what the people in the market are focused on: Just how long is that inflation spike going to last? Is it transient? Is it transitory? I don’t know. But it’s troubling, that’s pretty clear.”In his post-Fed decision research note, Schumacher said the Fed is still coming to terms with the inflation spike. According to Schumacher, the biggest risk facing the bond market and economy is the Fed’s potential response to the strong economic comeback. If the Fed gets spooked, it would likely hike rates next year instead of waiting until at least 2023.So far, Schumacher’s bond market outlook is on target.Coming into 2021, Schumacher predicted the 10-year yield would hit 1.15% to 1.35% by this year’s halfway point — with the caveat it could reach as high as 1.50%. He made the forecast when the yield was below 1% and months before the Covid-19 vaccines were widely available.On Thursday, the 10-year yield closed at 1.51%. It’s up almost 4% over the past week, but down 8% over the past three months.He also doubts the dollar, which initially surged on a more hawkish Fed, will continue to extend its gains.”For the first quarter of this year, the U.S. and arguably the U.K. had a tremendous advantage over most of the Western world in terms of Covid vaccinations. Now, a lot of countries are catching up, and you could view that as a proxy for future economic activity,” Schumacher said. “The dollar is losing some of those tailwinds.”Disclaimer More

BEIJING — Chinese dancer and TV host Jin Xing is confident the entertainment industry will return to normal, and that the arts will be more prized post-pandemic.In China, where stringent lockdowns helped control the domestic spread of Covid-19 within months, Jin’s private dance company was able to resume national touring last year, she told Tania Bryer as part of the virtual CNBC Evolve Global Summit.The troupe is now in “very good condition,” Jin said. She expects all of China’s theaters to open up this year, followed by live stadium concerts.While most of China has resumed normal business activity for more than a year now, the country has had to deal with small-scale coronavirus outbreaks, most recently in the southern export hub of Guangzhou city. The uncertainty, as well as the persistent spread of the virus overseas, have contributed to a muted recovery in Chinese consumer spending.Jin has seen the ups-and-downs of China’s development since the 1960s.She became an award-winning military dancer as a teenager, then found similar success as a dancer in New York before returning to China. Jin is best known today as China’s earliest openly transgender celebrity, who also hosts television shows.Audience becomes ‘super quiet’In the wake of the pandemic, new protocols like virus tests and face masks have created a new dynamic between performers and their audience — especially when they are allowed to meet offline rather than online.Jin Xing (in red) performs for the first time in over 20 years and the first time ever as a female during a dress rehearsal on January 31, 2012, before opening at the Joyce Theater.Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty ImagesAt a recent performance in the city of Nanjing, near Shanghai, all 1,900 members of the audience were wearing masks, Jin said.That meant the audience was “super quiet” and “concentrating on what’s happening,” rather than chatting with each other, she said. That creates a “fantastic” environment for an on-stage performer, she added.Another TV show takes offJin has also found success with young people online.This spring, the first season of her reality TV dating show “Ni hao ling yi ban” aired on video platform iQiyi. The show’s name translates roughly to “Hello, (my) other half” and focuses on Chinese who have studied at top overseas universities before becoming entrepreneurs in China.”They have huge success in the professional way. But in their private life, there’s still (a) big gap,” Jin said, noting that regardless of education, contestants face the same question of what kind of family they want to create.Read more about China from CNBC ProChina’s Gen Z are set to spend big – analysts pick 3 stocks that could be winnersCiti upgrades Nio, says growing EV demand in China can lift stock more than 50%Chinese yuan will become a top reserve currency sooner than expected, says Ray DalioThe matchmaking show is set for another season later this year, she told CNBC.Whether on stage or online, Jin hopes her work can contribute to more quiet thoughtfulness among viewers, particularly after the shock of the pandemic.Humans can never make enough money, she said, but people can “slow down.” More

AS ECONOMIES REOPEN, labour shortages are still worsening. In America the number of unfilled vacancies, at 9.3m, has never been so high. Job postings in Canada are 20% above pre-pandemic levels. Even in Europe, slower out of the post-lockdown gates, a growing number of employers complain of how hard it is to find staff. Debates over labour shortages have focused on welfare policy and economic disruption. But the phenomenon has a deeper lesson. It tells us something about the myths of automation.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More