Market Extra: Traders overwhelmingly expect 25 basis point February rate hike

After a series of supersize rate hikes in 2022, traders are overwhelmingly betting on a standard quarter-point rise from the Federal Reserve at its first meeting of 2023 following a further slowdown in inflation and remarks by policy makers. Fed-funds futures on Thursday reflected a 93.2% probability the Federal Open Market Committee will raise the benchmark rate by 25 basis

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Distributed Ledger: Cooling U.S. inflation may not stop bitcoin from sliding to $10,000. Here’s why

Welcome back! This is Frances Yue, crypto reporter at MarketWatch. I am back from a vacation to the crypto madness, writing this week’s installment from Singapore. Find me on Twitter at @FrancesYue_ or email me at frances.yue@marketwatch.com, if you’d like to share any thoughts on crypto, or this newsletter. U.S. inflation has cooled down in December as expected, while in

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: Will 2023 be the year that pharma M&A makes a comeback?

A handful of acquisitions this week point to a more deal-friendly year for biopharma and biotech companies, though none has generated the kind of excitement seen in years past.    In a flurry of announcements, AstraZeneca AZN, -0.48% AZN, -1.60% announced plans to buy CinCor Pharma Inc. CINC, +0.96% for about $1.8 billion; Italy’s Chisi Farmaceutici said it is buying Amryt

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MarketWatch First Take: Bed Bath & Beyond may be heading for a ‘meme squeeze’

Troubled home-goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond may be heading for a ‘meme squeeze,’ says analyst Ihor Dusaniwsky of S3 Partners. Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. BBBY, +20.87% announced the closure of almost 130 stores on Tuesday as it attempts to resolve its financial woes. The company announced the closures, along with third-quarter results that missed analysts’ top- and bottom-line

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Brett Arends’s ROI: Nobody knows who is going to staff America’s nursing homes

Nursing home operators say they are currently unable to fill 130,000 staff vacancies—a number equivalent to the population of Dayton, Ohio. “This is an unprecedented situation,” says Mark Parkinson, the chief executive of the American Health Care Association/ National Center for Assisted Living. “It’s impossible to exaggerate the challenges faced in providing care, due to the inability to hire workers.” This is, he says,

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Coronavirus Update: COVID subvariant dominant in northeastern U.S. has a growth advantage and may have greater ability to evade immunity than earlier strains, WHO says

The XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant has a growth advantage over other circulating subvariants of the virus that causes COVID-19, and early data suggest it also has a greater ability to evade immunity than previous ones, according to the World Health Organization. In its weekly epidemiological update, the agency said the immune-escape data is based on preliminary lab-based studies and not on

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Market Snapshot: U.S. stock futures little changed in choppy trade after inflation falls in December for 6th straight month

U.S. stocks declined on Thursday after the December consumer-price index showed inflation continued to wane last month, but not by a wide enough margin to change expectations for further Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. How are stocks trading The S&P 500 SPX, +0.10% fell by 28 points, or 0.7%, to 3,941. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.35% shed 173

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: Student loan servicer at the center of debt cancelation case hasn’t paid on one of its own debts in years

In March 2006, about 100 people gathered at a Lake Ozark, Mo., resort to discuss the sale of a student loan organization’s assets.  The board of the state-affiliated Higher Education Loan Authority of Missouri, or MOHELA, had already decided once, a couple of months earlier, to sell $2.4 billion worth of student loans to generate about $450 million for state

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5 Ways Web3 Could Change the World

Web3 or Web 3.0, refers to the next evolution of the internet, in which the internet is more decentralized and focused on empowering individuals with these technologies serving as a game changer. This is based on technologies such as blockchain , smart contracts, and decentralized networks and platforms. These technologies enable peer-to-peer transactions, interactions, and data storage without the need

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Next Avenue: Nursing-home reform may finally become a reality: Three breakthroughs that are turning talk into action

This article is reprinted by permission from NextAvenue.org. Nursing-home reform, long advocated by long-term care analysts and the public, seems to finally be happening. Not a moment too soon. In a 2021 survey by The John A. Hartford Foundation (a funder of Next Avenue), 71% of respondents age 50 and older said they were unwilling to live in a nursing home. The problems

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BTC Miner Northern Data Increases its Crypto Production by 315% in 2022

Northern Data (XETR:NB2), a publicly-listed provider of High-Performance Computing (HPC) solutions from Germany, has published its mining division Bitcoin (BTC) production numbers for December and 2022. Additionally, the company forecasted an annual revenue in the range of EUR 190-194 million. Although December was one of the worst months for Nothern Data mining operations, with only 177 produced BTC, 2022 brought

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Binance Hires When Coinbase Cuts Employment amidst Crypto Winter

Binance, one of the biggest crypto exchanges, wants to continue its hiring spree in 2023 and boost employment by 15-30% in 2023, according to Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the company’s CEO. The declaration comes just a few days after reports that Coinbase, the exchange’s largest competitor, plans to cut its workforce by 20% and stop the bulk of its operations in

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The Moneyist: ‘I grew up poor’: My wife and I have a $1.2 million real-estate portfolio and $250,000 invested in stocks. Are we financially secure enough to start a family?

Dear Quentin, My wife and I have been married for 12 years, and have not started a family yet, with the exception to our two Labradors. We both are in finance, and have several years of technical experience in our professions. We have a $1.3 million dollar real-estate portfolio that has positive cash flow, and have a $125,000 investment portfolio

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