Why China stocks are now a buy for US investors

On Tuesday, People’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng announced a series of stimulus measures that one economist called the central bank’s most significant stimulus move since the Covid-19 pandemic. Then on Thursday, the Hang Seng index HK:HSI hit a one-year high after China’s Politburo said additional measures were on the table to support economic growth, according to a state media report.

By Friday, the Hang Seng index was up 13% from a week earlier.

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In this week’s ETF Wrap, Isabel Wang covered the renewed enthusiasm for exchange-traded funds holding shares in China and spoke with industry experts about what the stimulus efforts could mean for investors.

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Another great year for US stocks creates a warning

Through Thursday, the S&P 500 SPX was up more than 20% for 2024, excluding dividends. This follows a 24% gain last year. Joseph Adinolfi reported on the historic significance of this two-year run and what it could mean as investors look to the future.

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Acting HUD Secretary Talks Increasing Housing Supply

Aarthi Swaminathan interviewed Adrianne Todman, Acting Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, who spoke about new government initiatives to increase housing affordability.

The big move: We are empty nesters. Should we buy a house with cash or take out a mortgage and invest?

Rising bond market

Falling interest rates provide a solid base for bond prices.

Read on: Another reason Qualcomm shouldn’t buy Intel? Its bonds could reach junk status.

AT&T has grown, explains its chief operating officer

Above is a chart showing the price movement for AT&T Inc stock. T in the last three years. Shares closed at $21.65 on Thursday and are up 29% for 2024, excluding dividends, and up 61% from their three-year closing low of $13.45 on July 18, 2023, according to FactSet. That low followed a dividend cut in 2022, when the company closed a complicated deal for its WarnerMedia division, which was merged with Discovery to create Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. WBD.

The story continues

AT&T pays a quarterly dividend of $0.2775 per common share, for a yield of 5.13% at Thursday’s close. A declining interest rate environment might bode well for a stock with an attractive dividend, but the company’s chief operating officer, Jeff McElfresh, said this focus on business at AT&T helps even more in an interview with Emily Barry.

A different way to play AI build-out

Nvidia Corp. NVDA dominates financial media coverage of data center hardware deployments to support corporate customers’ efforts to develop artificial intelligence technology. That’s because Nvidia doesn’t yet face threatening competition for GPUs, which are big, expensive pieces of equipment with thousands of parts.

And therein lies another opportunity for investors, according to Oppenheimer analyst Edward Yang. He recommended these two stocks of companies that supply the advanced chips needed by Nvidia and its competitors, amid a “severe structural weakness” in those items.

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The rating game

The Rating Game column provides daily commentary from analysts explaining current market action while looking ahead. Here are examples from this week:

Bank director explains high stock valuation

Steve Gelsi interviewed Dimitar A. Karaivanov, CEO of Community Financial System Inc. CBU of DeWitt, NY, which described the bank’s “unique” business model.

A look at CBU’s price-to-book ratio in a group of 74 stocks in the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index BKX and the KBW Nasdaq Regional Banking Index XX:KRX led to this screen: 11 favored bank stocks still trading at cheap valuations. .

Retirement and succession planning

You’ve probably heard of an irrevocable trust, which can be used as an estate planning tool and for other purposes. But that word “irrevocable” can be alarming, because things happen in life and changes may need to be made. Beth Pinsker explains how irrevocable trusts can be changed.

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Is it possible for Musk to put people on Mars in four years? How about six years?

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk left some leeway when he said in a post on X that he planned to launch “about five” unmanned spacecraft to Mars within two years, with a manned mission to to land on the red planet in four years. or possibly in six years.

James Rogers interviewed Eileen Collins, who commanded the space shuttle Discovery in 2005 for NASA’s first shuttle flight after the Columbia disaster in 2003. She talked about Musk’s timeline and how realistic it could be.

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