On a Tuesday night, you can sense the atmosphere in Medford City Hall before anyone says anything. The council chamber smells like an old carpet, burnt coffee, and an overheated radiator. Meeting agendas are used by people to fan themselves. Council President Zac Bears, up at the dais, has the expression of a man who has been suppressing something for a long time as he leans toward his microphone. He says, “This one’s a barn burner,” and he’s right. What’s happening in Medford at the moment is more of a slow-motion civic divorce than a policy dispute. On the one…
Author: Janine Heller
There have been many staged rallies at the Capitol rotunda in Harrisburg, but the one that took place last Friday had a distinct impact. U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon delivered a direct message to the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, while standing next to Republican lawmakers. The Trump-backed Working Families Tax Cuts Act gave rise to the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit, which she wanted Pennsylvania to choose to participate in. She sounded almost perplexed. Why hadn’t Shapiro joined yet, she questioned? Profile SnapshotDetailsFull NameJoshua David ShapiroCurrent Role48th Governor of PennsylvaniaPolitical PartyDemocraticBornJune 20, 1973, Kansas City, MissouriEducationUniversity of Rochester (BA);…
The sound of the number itself is almost cinematic. Depending on which tracker you use and how strictly you define what matters, there could be 650 lawsuits in fifteen months, give or take. There are some lower counts. Some run higher when you include all individual tariff challenges and student visa petitions. There are 316 active cases on the Lawfare project’s board, which tends to be conservative about what it counts. The list is run by Just Security. Another is run by the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Even though they disagree on the number of lawsuits, they all agree that…
Disney is currently experiencing an odd silence, the kind that descends upon a business that once dominated every weekend box office report but is now the subject of more circumspect debate on business television. While the stock’s opening price of $104.42 on Wednesday isn’t bad, it doesn’t thrill investors who bought it at $190 in early 2021. It’s similar to watching an experienced athlete discover what his second act looks like when you look at the chart over the previous year. It’s possible that the market is at a loss for what to do with Disney. The 50-day moving average…
Observing a company that has only been on the public market for two months suddenly trade at a valuation that surpasses one of China’s original internet pillars is peculiar. This month, MiniMax experienced that. The stock closed yesterday at HKD 1,141 in Hong Kong, giving the Shanghai-based AI company a market capitalization of about USD 45 billion following a 24 percent increase on March 9 and another 22 percent the following day. In contrast, Baidu is valued at HKD 338.3 billion. Take a moment to consider that. On paper, a business that made roughly USD 79 million last year is…
Seeing a bank stock rise so quickly is a little unsettling. The share price of HSBA has increased by 45% in the past 12 months and has more than tripled in the last five years. This kind of performance is typically associated with a trendy tech brand rather than a 160-year-old organization with its origins in the waterfront of Hong Kong. That kind of number usually prompts me to hit the warning button. The story might be as good as it seems, but it’s also possible that the quick wins are already behind us. CategoryDetailsCompany NameHSBC Holdings plcStock TickerLSE: HSBAHeadquarters8…
The way Oxy has moved this year has an almost theatrical quality. The stock has gained about 37% so far this year, and you could tell that something had changed when you saw the trading screens light up in March, when it gained 22% in a single month. not only in the figures but also in the perceptions of the business. Suddenly, investors who had written off Occidental Petroleum two years prior were contacting their brokers once more. The tale has a longer history than most people realize. In 1920, Occidental was established in Los Angeles, but it was under…
A certain silence descends upon a stock when the auditors begin to use terms like “material uncertainty.” On a Wednesday in late March, Rex International, an oil company listed in Singapore with fields ranging from the North Sea to the Gulf of Masirah, entered that quiet. Its share price dropped 35.4% to S$0.084 by the end. That’s S$0.046 removed from a counter that, just a few years prior, carried the quiet assurance of a business that had overseen four offshore oil discoveries since going public in 2013. Boards hope that Deloitte’s warning never makes it onto the page. The financial…
A particular type of stock can catch you off guard. A small Singapore-listed name suddenly catches your attention as you scroll through a watchlist, possibly half-distracted. It’s not because the name is well-known, but rather because the chart appears nearly unbelievable. That type of stock is Addvalue Technologies. Over the past year, the share price has increased by 545%, and in certain measurement windows, it has risen as high as 988%. Such numbers have no place in the quiet areas of the SGX. And yet, here they are. A certain type of conversation is taking place in any coffee shop…
These days, traders are aware of a strange energy surrounding the price of Hood shares, but they are not always able to explain it. Over the past year, Robinhood, the once-controversial brokerage that made commission-free trading a generational habit, has done something that its early detractors never anticipated. It has been maturing. Silently at first, then loudly. That change has been reflected in the stock, sometimes in ways that seem almost unrelated to the news flow surrounding it. You can tell that the company’s leadership wants the market to take them seriously now by walking through their Menlo Park offices,…