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Wall Street sinks as rally fizzles amid higher yields

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks dropped Thursday following another mixed set of profit reports from companies, as rising expectations for interest rates keep up the pressure on Wall Street. The S&P 500 fell 0.9%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 249 points, or 0.7%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1%. All three indexes had been up by close to 1% in the morning, before momentum gave out. Stocks have been shaky this week, flipping from gains to losses and back again amid uncertainty about where interest rates and inflation are heading. A still-strong jobs market has investors buying ...

Small businesses optimistic; exploring expansion again

Newswire.com Leading invoice funding company Charter Capital says a shift in optimism among small business owners is fueling expansion initiatives on Main Street again. Full coverage of the topic can be found in “8 Telltale Signs it’s Time to Expand Your Business,” which is now live on charcap.com. The latest report comes on the heels of a Small Business Majority survey which indicates that, although concerns such as inflation and obtaining working capital persist, six in 10 small business owners are optimistic about their business prospects in the coming ...

Gen Z trusts social media for their financial advice

By Jon Dulin Wealth of Geeks “Dave, who?” Dave Ramsey has been a household name in personal finance for decades. His popular radio program often has people call in to air their “Debt-Free Scream” to celebrate their liberation from debt. But while Dave remains popular with many adults, Generation Z is not a fan. Instead, the digital native generation is getting money advice in their natural, digital habitat - social media. One survey last year found that 69% of Gen Z take their financial advice from Instagram, with TikTok being another go-to for money tips. The ...

Primary care a hot target; CVS spends on Oak Street

The Associated Press Big money is pouring into primary care clinics as the nation’s health care giants hunt for ways to cut costs by keeping people healthy. CVS Health said Wednesday that it will spend about $10.6 billion to buy Oak Street Health, which runs clinics that specialize in treating Medicare Advantage patients. The acquisition comes just three months after a nearly $9-billion investment by rival Walgreens in VillageMD’s acquisition of the urgent and primary care chain Summit Health-CityMD. And that deal was announced two months after CVS said it would spend $8 billion ...

AI search engines can now chat with us, but glitches abound

REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Nearly a quarter-century after Google’s search engine began to reshape how we use the internet, big tech companies are racing to revamp a familiar web tool into a gateway to a new form of artificial intelligence. If it seems like this week’s newly announced AI search chatbots — Google’s Bard, Baidu’s Ernie Bot and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot — are coming out of nowhere, well, even some of their makers seem to think so. The spark rushing them to market was the popularity of ChatGPT, launched late last year by Microsoft’s partner OpenAI and now ...

Oil major TotalEnergies doubles profit to billion

PARIS (AP) — France’s TotalEnergies SE doubled its profits in 2022, joining other international oil and gas companies in fattening their bottom lines as high energy prices surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Adjusted net income rose to $36.2 billion, up from $18.1 billion in 2021, the company said Wednesday. Earnings benefited from robust refinery use that let the company capture high profits for turning crude into other fuel products. The figures looked different under international accounting rules that included write-offs on Total’s assets in Russia, where doing ...