Category:

Risk Management

Hurricane Laura slams Louisiana, kills six, but less damage than forecast

Laura was downgraded to a tropical depression by the NHC at 10 p.m., and the forecaster said it will move to the mid-Mississippi Valley later on Friday and then to the mid-Atlantic states on Saturday.

Laura caused less mayhem than forecasts predicted – but officials said it remained a dangerous storm and that it would take days to assess the damage. At least 867,000 homes and businesses in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas remained without power on Thursday afternoon.
“This was the most powerful storm to ever make landfall in Louisiana,” Governor John Bel Edwards told a news conference. “It’s continuing to cause damage and life-threatening conditions.”

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Bears are going extinct in US stock market’s $13 trillion rebound

“It looks like all those fund managers over the past quarter went from being bearish and expecting a stock market crash to now bullish,” Shawn Cruz, senior market strategist at TD Ameritrade, said in an interview. “Sentiment’s turned positive about equities in general but also sentiment is turning positive for a return to growth.”

The tide is getting harder to fight with retail investors flocking to unprofitable companies such as Nikola Corp. and Moderna Inc. More money managers are forced to embrace the rally, ignoring this year’s profit contraction and banking on fiscal and monetary stimulus. At 26 times forecast earnings, the S&P 500 was trading at the highest multiple since the dot-com era.

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