Yahoo Finance Daily

A corporate tax-hiking, buy America focused president Joe Biden wouldn’t necessarily crush the stock market and the bottom lines of Corporate America. At least that’s the message to investors and CEOs from University of Chicago professor and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under president Obama, Austan Goolsbee.

The Nasdaq (^IXIC), which touched fresh highs earlier this week, is like “a train that is moving faster than any train we've ever seen before,” says one veteran strategist. “This is a very very strong rally and it looks similar to what happened pre-Covid collapse, where the Nasdaq went up 11 days in a row,” James McDonald, CEO of Hercules Investments, told Yahoo Finance.

The number of jobs lost due to the coronavirus shutdown continue to mount, with the latest weekly total of Americans applying for unemployment benefits coming in at more than 1.3 million, yet again. The latest swath of applications brings the total amount of jobless claims to nearly 50 million over the past four months, wiping out the 20 million jobs added over the last decade by a more than two-to-one margin.

A standout feature of Donald Trump’s presidency has been his tough approach to China on trade. Trump has demanded that China even out a lopsided U.S. trade deficit with China and buy more American products. As leverage, Trump has imposed tariffs on Chinese imports that cost U.S. businesses and consumers around $54 billion per year. Trump’s “phase one” trade deal with China from earlier this year was supposed to include a big boost in Chinese purchases of U.S.

Hot-air balloons and rocket ships eventually return to Earth after splendid shows of upward thrust. The record-setting Nasdaq Composite may soon join that group in a return to home mission. A few market veterans Yahoo Finance has chatted up recently think a cooling off period in the Nasdaq is approaching in the coming weeks. There won’t necessarily be a trigger point that sparks an avalanche of selling like the markets saw back in March as COVID-19 became front page news.

Joe Biden wants to raise taxes, eliminate corporate tax breaks and impose new regulations. With Biden surging ahead of President Trump in 2020 election polls, investors are beginning to worry that a Biden presidency could end the market-friendly policies Trump has propagated. But maybe not. If Biden beats Trump in November, some parts of his agenda could ease the burden on American businesses—especially on trade.

The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has left many companies no choice but to file for bankruptcy. But before they do, many dole out generous bonuses to CEOs and other executives before they run out of cash.

More households paid rent and mortgage payments during the pandemic than expected — but some households, particularly those with children, have struggled to make ends meet during the pandemic. Almost 12 million children in the U.S. live in a household that missed rent or mortgage payments in May — and parents were less confident in their ability to pay in June, according to a U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey report.

Even before the current economic crisis, the federal budget deficit was approaching record levels. Now, after multiple waves of economic stimulus, budget watchers have watched the red ink rise to a level never before seen. “We will have spent as much in the first six months of this crisis as we did on stimulus over five years during the Great Recession,” said Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan DC think tank.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell expressed worry that the U.S. economy is not out of the woods yet, telling Congress Tuesday that failure to properly contain the spread of COVID-19 will set back the recovery. “A second outbreak could force government and force people to withdraw again from economic activity,” Powell said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee alongside Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Day traders are having a moment as they sit home without sports and trade a stock market surprisingly melting up during a major global health crisis. But this group of rebels ginned up on recent gains in the equity market may want to phone a few pros in the financial services sector. Because the most sophisticated investors around are starting to get a bit worried if the markets have gotten overextended for a host of reasons, suggests the father of online trading.

President Trump’s visa ban has shaken the collective business community. But the tech industry is among the most severely affected, and executives have reacted swiftly and vociferously, expressing frustration and disapproval with the decision. Trump signed an executive order on Monday that prevents hundreds of thousands of foreigners looking to work in the United States through the end of 2020.

Signs are starting to emerge that the stock market is getting a little worried about how a president Joe Biden would impact corporate profits and by extension the valuations on equities. “I think it’s [the election] starting to matter a little bit more to daily market performance. I would say really over the past few weeks as we’ve seen the betting odds increase of a Democratic sweep.

GNC has walked through death’s door after knocking on it for years. And it’s likely others will follow suit this year as the COVID-19 pandemic continues its devastation of America’s retail sector. The 85-year-old vitamin seller filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday after years of battling waning sales and a debt load north of $1 billion. GNC plans to shutter up to 1,200 stores across the U.S. The company operates more than 5,800 stores. Meantime, fellow debt-laden mall dweller J.C.

The stock market is back in major rally mode again after a brief downdraft. So, instead of trying to fight the tape as they say on Wall Street trading floors, why not back up the truck and search for additions to the portfolio. Market experts we talk with are divided on what should be the precise investor attack plan right now considering the market has rallied more than 40% off the March 23 lows, according to Yahoo Finance Premium data.