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Stock market news live updates: December 29, 2021

U.S. stocks were mixed in intraday trading Wednesday, struggling to stay afloat after the S&P 500 took a breather in the previous trading session to cease a four-day climb toward its 70th all-time high.

The Dow was up for the sixth consecutive day, while the Nasdaq faltered, further dragged down by continued selling in tech stocks. The S&P was mostly flat.

“The market’s up about 30{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} this year, the S&P on a total return basis,” Hennessy Gas Utility Fund Portfolio Manager Josh Wein told Yahoo Finance Live. “With that in mind, I think the good times will continue.”

Main Street Asset Management CIO Erin Gibbs told Yahoo Finance Live that pullbacks caused by the Omicron variant resemble those that occurred when the Delta strain first took course and are likely to see the same gradual but upward recovery.

“We encourage our clients to stay in the markets, not to get out, because when those recoveries hit and when the sentiment changes, it happens so quickly that often by the time you get back into the market, you’ve already missed out,” she said.

Global COVID-19 cases hit a daily record this week, with more than 1.44 million worldwide infections reported as of Monday, according to Bloomberg. Infections from the highly-transmissible Omicron variant — found to spread 70 times faster than previous strains — comprised much of the newly tracked cases, though studies indicate illness caused by the strain is less likely to be severe or lead to hospitalizations.

The CDC also eased its guidance for quarantining after exposure to the virus, halving its recommendation to isolate upon a positive test from 10 to five days.

December was a volatile month for investors who weighed the strain’s impact on the economy, but recent developments that indicate Omicron may cause milder disease helped markets shake off earlier concerns.

“Perversely, bad news around Omicron might be good news for the markets because it gives the Fed the impetus to continue with these very loose monetary policies,” Opimas LLC Chief Executive Officer Octavio Marenzi told Yahoo Finance Live. “Too much good news for the real economy might actually be quite bad for the markets.”

On Tuesday, U.S. home price growth slowed for the third straight month but continued to climb overall. The Standard & Poor’s S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index. posted a 19.1{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} annual gain in October, down from 19.7{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} from September. The 20-City Composite posted a 18.4{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} annual gain, down from 19.1{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} a month earlier.

Home prices continue to appreciate at double-digit rates — two-to three-times faster than a year ago — across all metropolitan areas, CoreLogic Deputy Chief Economist Selma Hepp said in a statement prior to the results.

“Unfortunately, the rate of home price growth will be limiting for many young buyers who have yet to accumulate sufficient equity gains, and an expected increase in mortgage rates next year will present further challenges,” she said. “Together, these two factors will keep a lid on continued home price acceleration.”

The rest of the week is expected to remain quiet amid the typically-low year-end trading volumes and a light calendar of economic data and earnings releases, though investors will tune in on Thursday for a fresh read on initial jobless claims as they continue to assess the progress of economic recovery.

1:02 p.m. ET: Tesla shares decline after Musk’s stock sale

Shares of Tesla dipped as much as 2.2{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} in intraday trading after CEO Elon Musk sold another $1 billion of company stock.

The latest sale brings him closer to his target of reducing his stake in the company by 10{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}.

The electric vehicle-maker’s stock traded at $1,088.37 per share during the midday session.

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1:00 p.m. ET: S&P 500 wavers, dipping into red

Here were the main moves in markets as of 1:00 p.m. ET:

  • S&P 500 (^GSPC): -0.08 (-0.00{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to 4,786.27

  • Dow (^DJI): +85.76 (+0.24{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to 36,483.97

  • Nasdaq (^IXIC): -56.57 (-0.36{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to 15,725.15

  • Crude (CL=F): +$0.18 (+0.24{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to $76.16 a barrel

  • Gold (GC=F): -$6.80 (-0.38{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to $1,804.10 per ounce

  • 10-year Treasury (^TNX): +5.3 bps to yield 1.5340{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}

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10:19 a.m. ET: Bitcoin poised to see worst month since May

Bitcoin’s (BTC-USD) declines have set December up to be its worst month since May. The token was up slightly, 0.74{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} higher to $47,893.30 as of 10:48 a.m. ET but continues to decline from its record overall.

The digital currency fell below its closely-watched level of $50,000, extending the slide from its all-time high into a fifth week, according to Bloomberg data. The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index fell as much as 4.9{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} on Tuesday to its lowest since early October, while other digital currencies also slumped.

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10:05 a.m. ET: Pending home sales hint housing market is cooling off

The National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index dropped 2.2{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} in November from the prior month, missing analyst expectations. The index, which tracks the number of homes that are under contract to be sold, serves as a leading indicator of the housing market’s health.

Bloomberg consensus estimates forecasted a 0.8{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} increase on the read. Pending sales slid 2.7{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} from the same month a year ago.

“There was less pending home sales action this time around, which I would ascribe to low housing supply, but also to buyers being hesitant about home prices,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

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9:30 a.m. ET: Stocks tick up slightly after futures waver

Here were the main moves at the start of trading:

  • S&P 500 (^GSPC): +4.27 (+0.09{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to 4,790.62

  • Dow (^DJI): +17.54 (+0.05{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to 36,415.75

  • Nasdaq (^IXIC): +21.44 (+0.14{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to 15,803.16

  • Crude (CL=F): -$0.33 (-0.43{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to $75.65 a barrel

  • Gold (GC=F): -$18.40 (-1.02{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to $1,792.50 per ounce

  • 10-year Treasury (^TNX): +3.9 bps to yield 1.5200{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}

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9:05 a.m. ET: U.S. goods trade deficit widens to record 

The U.S. trade deficit in goods ballooned to a record in November as imports soared and exports fell.

The Commerce Department reported that the goods trade deficit expanded by 17.5{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} last month to $97.8 billion from $83.2 billion in October. The new figure tops the previous record deficit of $97 billion posted in September. Goods exports declined 2.1{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}, while imports rose by 4.7{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}.

Meanwhile, wholesale inventories crept up 1.2{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} last month, the report also showed. Retail inventories were up 2.0{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} and retail inventories, excluding autos, which go into the calculation of gross domestic product, rose by 1.3{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}

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7:00 a.m. ET: Contracts on the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq remain muted

Futures markets were mostly flat ahead of the day’s open:

  • S&P 500 futures (ES=F): +4.50 points (+0.09{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}), to 4,783.00

  • Dow futures (YM=F): +15.00 points (+0.04{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}), to 36,297.00

  • Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): +37.50 points (+0.23{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to 16,525.00

  • Crude (CL=F): -$0.40 (-0.53{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to $75.58 a barrel

  • Gold (GC=F): -$14.20 (-0.78{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to $1,796 per ounce

  • 10-year Treasury (^TNX): -1.2 bps to yield 1.493{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}

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6:00 p.m. Tuesday ET: Stock futures open flat

Here’s how markets were moving ahead of overnight trading:

  • S&P 500 futures (ES=F): +3.75 points (+0.08{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}), to 4,782.25

  • Dow futures (YM=F): +8.00 points (+0.02{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}), to 36,290.00

  • Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): +30.75 points (+0.19{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to 16,518.75

  • Crude (CL=F): +$0.09 (+0.12{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to $76.07 a barrel

  • Gold (GC=F): -$4.00 (-0.22{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}) to $1,806.90 per ounce

  • 10-year Treasury (^TNX): -1.6 bps to yield 1.484{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}

—

Alexandra Semenova is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alexandraandnyc

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Live Updates: Today’s Business and Stock Market News

SAN JOSE, Calif. — For the six days that Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the failed blood-testing start-up Theranos, took the stand in her fraud trial, she blamed others, accused a former boyfriend of abusing and controlling her, and reframed her actions as trying to do good for her company.

On Tuesday, Ms. Holmes capped her defense with flat denials.

“I don’t think I did that,” she said in response to a question about whether she had minimized the findings of a devastating regulatory inspection at Theranos. She then blamed her company’s lawyers for “doing a lot of the talking in that meeting.”

The comments ended Ms. Holmes’s main testimony, which stood out as the rarest of rarities. Few technology executives, let alone a female tech executive, are ever charged with criminal fraud. Even fewer take the stand to defend themselves. Her time on the stand, which is likely to formally finish on Wednesday, was the climax to a trial that has captivated the business world and been held up as a parable of Silicon Valley’s fake-it-till-you-make-it culture on overdrive.

Ms. Holmes, 37, has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of fraud for claims she made as chief executive of Theranos, which she founded in 2003. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in jail.

Her trial is now moving into its end stage. Either side may call final witnesses over the coming days, followed by closing arguments and detailed instructions to jurors for their deliberations on a verdict.

“The jury got to know her over six days,” Jeffrey Cohen, an associate professor at Boston College Law School, said of Ms. Holmes. “If the defense is successful, that might be the decision that will make the difference.”

For most of the proceedings, the jury heard witnesses testify about the details of Ms. Holmes’s alleged fraud. Theranos rose to prominence, raising $945 million in funding, by claiming that its revolutionary machines could perform hundreds of tests using only a tiny drop of blood. The hype made Ms. Holmes a fixture on magazine covers that hailed her as the next Steve Jobs.

But a 2015 expose in The Wall Street Journal exposed problems with Theranos’s blood tests, kicking off a downward spiral of regulatory crackdowns and lawsuits. The company dissolved in 2018, and Ms. Holmes was indicted.


Who’s Who in the Elizabeth Holmes Trial

Erin Woo

Erin Woo📍Reporting from San Jose, Calif.

Who’s Who in the Elizabeth Holmes Trial

Erin Woo

Erin Woo📍Reporting from San Jose, Calif.

Carlos Chavarria for The New York Times

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos, stands trial for two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud.

Here are some of the key figures in the case →

Item 1 of 9

Since her trial began in September, prosecutors have called dozens of witnesses, including former board members, lab directors, employees, investors, patients and business partners. They have revealed the details of falsified documents, outlandish financial projections, unrealistic promises and faked demonstrations at Theranos. Witnesses often spent hours on the tedious minutiae of finance, chemistry, technology and phlebotomy.

Much of the case against Ms. Holmes has relied on her emails and text messages to tie her directly to the company’s problems. Prosecutors must convince the jury that Ms. Holmes knew about the problems and failed to disclose them to the people pouring money into Theranos and to the patients relying on its blood tests to make medical decisions.

In her defense, Mr. Holmes’s lawyers tried showing that the witnesses’ stories were more complicated than they had let on. Defense lawyers hit investors for not doing enough research on Theranos before investing. And they tried blaming lab directors for problems with the accuracy of Theranos’s tests.

Through it all, Ms. Holmes sat up stick-straight in her chair and stared straight ahead, her expression obscured by a mask.

After prosecutors rested their case last month, and before calling Ms. Holmes to the stand, her lawyers introduced brief testimony from a biotechnology executive who joined Theranos’s board of directors after it came under fire from the media and regulators.

Ms. Holmes then offered a variety of excuses for Theranos’s shortcomings. She said others had misinterpreted her statements about what Theranos’s technology could do. She said that, until a 2015 regulatory inspection revealed a host of problems and forced Theranos to void its tests, she believed its tests worked. She said she hadn’t been qualified to run a lab and had relied on the statements of others.

She also admitted to adding the logos of pharmaceutical companies to a series of reports, which implied the drug makers had endorsed Theranos’s technology when they hadn’t. For this, she expressed regret.

Her direct testimony ended with a bombshell revelation that Ramesh Balwani, her former boyfriend, business partner and alleged co-conspirator, emotionally and physically abused her. Through tears, she testified that Mr. Balwani had controlled every aspect of her life — including her schedule, diet and presentation — and had even forced her to have sex with him against her will.

On cross-examination, she choked up again when prosecutors had her read text messages with Mr. Balwani that showed a more affectionate side of their relationship. Prosecutors elicited several more mea culpas from Ms. Holmes, including regret over how she handled the Journal exposé and a positive Fortune cover story about the company that was later heavily corrected.

This week, prosecutors homed in on the discrepancies between what Ms. Holmes said in her testimony and what investors said she had told them. Numerous Theranos partners and investors testified that they had believed the company had contracts with the military and deployed its technology in medevacs and on battlefields, for example.

One of the prosecutors, Robert Leach, an assistant U.S. attorney, asked Ms. Holmes different versions of the same question repeatedly to hammer the lack of military contracts. She confirmed that Theranos had not had the contracts.

To show that Theranos was never paid for work with the drug maker GlaxoSmithKline, Mr. Leach also repeatedly asked Ms. Holmes about the lack of revenue, posing the question for each year from 2007 to 2014. Ms. Holmes said no each time.

Ms. Holmes resisted many of Mr. Leach’s lines of questioning by testifying that she didn’t recall or didn’t know. She also tried to dispute details in certain questions.

Ms. Holmes’s lawyers questioned her for a second time Tuesday afternoon with a rapid-fire series of statements meant to undermine Mr. Leach’s points and reiterate her initial testimony. Once again, Ms. Holmes said that Mr. Balwani had created Theranos’s unrealistic financial projections and that Theranos’s scientists had put together reports on its technology.

Until a regulatory inspection revealed deeper problems, she testified, she thought Theranos’s lab was “excellent.” Ms. Holmes also repeatedly stressed her concerns over exposing Theranos’s trade secrets as an excuse for withholding information from investors and partners, testifying again that she worried the company would lose its ability to compete. Discussing Theranos’s use of third-party machines would have violated Theranos’s own trade-secret policy, she said.

Mr. Leach tried knocking down that argument by noting that most of Theranos’s investors and partners had signed nondisclosure agreements that Ms. Holmes expected to be followed.

He further noted that, despite Ms. Holmes’s holding a patent for some technology, a patent did not “necessarily mean the invention described in the patent works.” Mr. Leach asked her if she had created a pill that measures lipids in blood, as described in one Theranos patent.

Ms. Holmes smiled, leaned into the microphone and said, “Not yet.”

Erin Woo contributed reporting.

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Today’s Business and Stock Market News: Live Updates

ImageJeff Bezos at the National Press Club in Washington in 2019. Since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in July, Mr. Bezos has significantly raised his profile as a philanthropist.
Credit…Emma Howells for The New York Times

Former President Barack Obama’s private foundation announced on Monday that it had been promised a donation of $100 million from the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The gift, the largest yet for the Obama Foundation, was one in a series of splashy donations by Mr. Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, in recent months. Last week, Mr. Bezos announced $96.2 million in grants to groups working to end family homelessness.

Since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in July, Mr. Bezos has significantly raised his profile as a philanthropist, in addition to traveling to space on a ship made by his rocket company, Blue Origin.

In return for the donation, Mr. Bezos asked that a plaza at the Obama Presidential Center be named for the civil rights leader John Lewis, who died last year. The foundation broke ground on the center, which will include Mr. Obama’s presidential library, a museum, an athletic center and more, earlier this year.

“Freedom fighters deserve a special place in the pantheon of heroes, and I can’t think of a more fitting person to honor with this gift than John Lewis, a great American leader and a man of extraordinary decency and courage,” Mr. Bezos said in a statement released by the Obama Foundation. “I’m thrilled to support President and Mrs. Obama and their foundation in its mission to train and inspire tomorrow’s leaders.”

News of the gift was earlier reported by the online news group Puck.

It was neither Mr. Bezos’s biggest gift in recent months nor his first brush with Mr. Obama’s orbit. In September, Mr. Bezos, standing alongside John Kerry, Mr. Obama’s former Secretary of State, pledged $1 billion through his Bezos Earth Fund for conservation.

Credit…Matt Rourke/Associated Press

Target stores will close their doors for Thanksgiving Day, the retailer announced Monday, and will continue the policy every year moving forward.

The retail giant shut its stores on Thanksgiving Day last year, citing safety considerations during the pandemic. It has also started offering discounts for the holiday shopping season earlier in October instead of reserving those deals for Black Friday.

“What started as a temporary measure driven by the pandemic is now our new standard,” Brian Cornell, Target’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Target announced earlier this month that most stores would reopen at 7 a.m. local time on Black Friday.

Walmart has also said it would close its stores on Thanksgiving Day for a second year. Trader Joe’s and Aldi will also be closed for Thanksgiving.

Credit…Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times

[Follow live news coverage on the trial of Elizabeth Holmes.]

The high-stakes trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the collapsed medical start-up Theranos, is headed toward a dramatic finish. The latest twist came on Friday, when Ms. Holmes unexpectedly took the stand in her own defense, after the prosecution rested its case.

She testified for an hour, and is expected to continue on Monday. Ms. Holmes has been charged with 11 counts of fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison on each count. She has pleaded not guilty.

Whether Ms. Holmes would testify had been one of the biggest questions of the trial. Up until Friday afternoon, many legal experts predicted that she would not. The benefits of doing so, the experts argued, could be offset by the risks of cross-examination.

At first, her testimony raised concerns for her defense. Her lawyers’ strategy has been to paint her as inexperienced, led astray by others like her former boyfriend and business partner Sunny Balwani (who is being tried separately).

But on the stand, Ms. Holmes depicted herself as very much in control. She presented herself as an expert in the technology Theranos was developing and detailed how she used that knowledge to attract investors, whose money would eventually be wiped out.

She also rebutted a key argument by prosecutors. The prosecution sought to establish that Ms. Holmes withheld information, particularly financial reports, from investors.

On the stand, Holmes detailed the “very comprehensive diligence process” of Don Lucas, a venture capitalist who eventually invested in Theranos and became its chairman. The defense presented a 2006 email in which Ms. Holmes sent Mr. Lucas detailed financial information. (However, this may undermine another defense argument: that investors were careless and at least partially to blame.)

The trial is also a referendum on Silicon Valley’s start-up culture. If Ms. Holmes is found guilty, it would put truth-stretching start-up founders on notice. But if she is acquitted, it would bolster the tech industry’s “fake it til you make it” approach.

“A non-guilty verdict will vindicate a Silicon Valley culture of celebrating aggressive innovation at the expense of the complete and whole truth,” said Jeffrey Cohen of Boston College Law School.

Stock prices rose on Monday on news that Jerome H. Powell will be renominated for another four-year term as chair of the Federal Reserve, reflecting investor relief that he would remain at the helm of the central bank, whose monetary policy has been a key driver of the market’s remarkable run over the past two years.

“The announcement of Powell’s renomination ensures continuity in the stance on policy,” wrote Ellen Zentner, the chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley, in a note to clients shortly after the announcement.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.9 percent in the first half-hour of trading on Monday, to what would be a new closing high. The benchmark index is up nearly 26 percent this year.

Mr. Powell’s renomination shifted expectations in the bond market, where investors’ movements showed slightly increased expectations for higher interest rates in the coming years.

Treasury bond prices declined, and yields — which move in the opposite direction — rose. Government bond yields, which essentially act as the foundation for interest rates charged on new car loans, mortgages, multibillion-dollar Wall Street bond offerings and more are heavily influenced by market expectations about what the Federal Reserve will do with monetary policy.

Yields on the two-year Treasury note, which had been hovering around 0.52 percent before the announcement, climbed to 0.56 percent. The yield on the five-year Treasury bill, which captures market expectations for how the Fed’s monetary policy will evolve over the next few years, a topic of considerable debate in the market, rose to 1.29 percent shortly after the announcement.

The rise in bond yields suggests that at least some investors were betting that Lael Brainard, a Fed governor whom Mr. Biden will promote to vice chair, could have been instead chosen to lead the central bank. Many progressive groups had championed her to replace Mr. Powell.

Steve Sosnick, the chief strategist at Interactive Brokers in Greenwich, Conn., said the rise in yields were an indication that some bond investors had thought Ms. Brainard, who is believed to be less aggressive about interest rate increases, had a chance to be Mr. Biden’s pick.

Credit…Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via Associated Press

The Walt Disney Company has paused a coronavirus vaccine mandate for employees of its Florida theme park after the State Legislature and the governor made it illegal for employers to require all workers get the shots, a company spokesperson confirmed Saturday.

Walt Disney World could have been facing fines under the policy, illustrating how even one of the most well-known tourism brands in the state has to deal with the headwinds of political debate over the pandemic response.

Source: State and local health agencies. Daily cases are the number of new cases reported each day. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data.

The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature delivered the bill blocking Covid-19 vaccine mandates on Wednesday and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law on Thursday, casting the measures as an effort to protect workers who could lose their jobs for lack of compliance.

Governor DeSantis, also a Republican, has been at the forefront of the political fight to curtail mask and vaccine mandates, saying the push against those restrictions counters overreach from the federal government. “Nobody should lose their job due to heavy-handed Covid mandates, and we had a responsibility to protect the livelihoods of the people of Florida,” the governor said in a statement.

The Biden administration has ordered vaccinations for workers in large companies and members of the federal work force, but the effort has met resistance across the country. Florida is among states that have challenged federal mandates in court.

The new Florida law prohibits employers from enforcing strict vaccine mandates, allowing employees to choose exemptions that include health or religious concerns, pregnancy or anticipated pregnancy, and having had the virus and recovered from it. Unvaccinated workers could instead undergo periodic testing or wear protective equipment, at the employers’ cost. Fines for violation could cost $10,000 a day per employee violation for businesses with fewer than 99 employees or up to $50,000 per employee violation for larger businesses.

Government entities and school districts are also restricted by the Covid mandate ban.

Disney World previously struck a deal with employees to require theme park workers to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus to keep their jobs, and the company defended that rule in a statement Saturday. “We believe that our approach to mandatory vaccines has been the right one as we’ve continued to focus on the safety and well-being of our cast members and guests,” the statement said.

More than 90 percent of active cast members in Florida have verified they are vaccinated, the company said, before it sent a memo to employees halting the mandate.

Walt Disney’s website tells visitors it has been “very intentional and gradual” in operating safely, recommending guests exercise caution: wearing face coverings, checking for symptoms and getting the shots. “We encourage people to get vaccinated,” it says.

Todd Gregory contributed to this report.

Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Tuesday

  • Retailer earnings: Another week of quarterly financial reports from big retailers will give investors more clues on whether supply chain disruptions are hampering businesses ahead of the holiday season. Best Buy and Dollar Tree are set to publish their reports on Tuesday for the three months ending October. Gap, Nordstrom, American Eagle Outfitters and Abercrombie & Fitch will also report on Tuesday.

Wednesday

  • Fed minutes: The Federal Reserve will publish minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee meeting that was held this month. Investors will get a clearer picture of any disagreements among Fed officials about whether they expect that inflationary pressures will persist.

  • Consumer sentiment: The University of Michigan will publish the final numbers of its survey of consumer sentiment for November. The survey measures how optimistic consumers feel about the overall economy. The index fell to its lowest level in a decade in early November.

Thursday

  • Markets closed: The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, as will bond markets.

Friday

  • Black Friday: The traditional start of the holiday shopping season kicks off. Many shoppers have started early, concerned over whether product shortages and supply chain disruptions will make it harder to find the gifts they want.

Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

By Nicholas Casey and Roser Toll Piraffé

BARCELONA, Spain — Protesters in Barcelona are pushing back against foreign investment firms that have bought up thousands of homes over the past decade and are forcing out residents who can’t pay the rent.

Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

Giant investment firms like Cerberus Capital Management, Blackstone and Lone Star have been snapping up properties across Spain at bargain prices since the global financial crisis that began in 2008. The firms then put them up for rent at a time when the country’s economy was on a stronger footing.

But the pandemic pushed the Spanish unemployment rate up to 15 percent and evictions nationwide spiked in the first half of 2021. The investment firm landlords sent out a slew of eviction notices to tenants across the country or canceled leases for those who fell behind on the rent, residents said.

In the streets of Barcelona, a group called War Against Cerberus decided to fight back.

When lawyers of private equity firms come with police officers to force residents from their homes, members of the group — some of them longtime housing activists — surround the building to block their entry. As residents are pushed out of apartments, the group sends squatters to occupy properties owned by the firms elsewhere in the city — sometimes breaking in to gain entry.

The activists even took over the offices of a Cerberus real estate servicer in Barcelona for a time last year.

Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

According to War Against Cerberus, dozens of families have occupied buildings owned by private equity firms in Barcelona, which has long been a target of outside investors. That can translate into years of courtroom hearings and millions of dollars in legal fees to remove the squatters.

“This property belongs to Cerberus,” said Ana María Banegas, a resident who, along with a dozen other families, has occupied a building in central Barcelona since April and now refuses to leave. “And from this home, we aim to pressure them.”

Miquel Hernández, a spokesman for War Against Cerberus who helped Ms. Banegas find the home where she is squatting, accused the private equity firms of profiting from the economic distress caused by the pandemic.

“They’re treating them like any other asset,” he said, referring to the homes owned by the firms.

The problem has caught the attention of Spain’s national government, led by a left-wing coalition. It has proposed the imposition of rent controls on investment funds and other large landlords.

The proposed legislation, supported by Barcelona’s mayor, Ada Colau, would allow for rent caps for owners with more than 10 properties in areas where rent increases have outpaced inflation.

Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

“We have to civilize a market that has gotten out of control,” said Ms. Colau, a former housing activist who rose to power with an organization that fought against foreclosures. “A problem that was bad before the pandemic has suddenly gotten worse.”

Spain imposed a partial moratorium on evictions for much of the pandemic, but only for those in “vulnerable situations,” such as single parents. In cases that went to the courts, the judiciary was seen as siding largely with the landlords.

In the first quarter of 2021, evictions of renters in Spain rose by 14 percent compared with the same period the previous year, according to the government. By the second quarter of this year, they surged to eight times as many as in the same period in 2020.

Samuel Aranda contributed reporting from Barcelona.

Credit…Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

By Melissa Eddy and Christopher F. Schuetze

VIENNA — As Europe experiences a menacing fourth wave of the coronavirus, Austria entered a nationwide lockdown on Monday and the possibility of a vaccine mandate in Germany was under discussion as the only way to sustainably overcome the pandemic.

“Probably by the end of this winter, as is sometimes cynically said,” the German health minister, Jens Spahn, said on Monday, “pretty much everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, recovered or dead.”

Mr. Spahn has spoken out against a universal vaccine mandate in Germany.

The lockdown in Austria, in which people are allowed to leave their homes only to go to work or to procure groceries or medicines, will last at least 10 days and as many as 20 and comes after months of struggling attempts to halt the contagion through widespread testing and partial restrictions.

While Austria may be the first European country to respond with a lockdown, it may not be the last. That prospect, along with increasingly stringent vaccine mandates, has set off a backlash in Austria and elsewhere, with mass demonstrations in Vienna, Brussels and the Dutch city of Rotterdam over the weekend, sometimes punctuated with violent outbreaks.

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Austrians Protest Lockdown and Vaccine Mandate

Thousands in Vienna over the weekend demonstrated against the measures, which include a nationwide lockdown.

[drums] [chanting] [drums] [whistles] [drums]

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Thousands in Vienna over the weekend demonstrated against the measures, which include a nationwide lockdown.CreditCredit…Lisa Leutner/Associated Press

The new Covid wave is being driven by widespread resistance to vaccines and to the growing prevalence of vaccine and mask mandates. Austrian officials have said they will enforce a nationwide vaccine mandate in February, the first European nation to do so.

Austria, where 66 percent of the population is vaccinated, reported more than 14,000 new cases of the virus within 24 hours on Sunday. Over the past week the Netherlands has been averaging more than 20,000, while Germany has seen roughly double that number.

The German health ministry said on Monday that the country was facing a dwindling supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, which was partly developed in the country, as it races to provide booster shots.

And while the European Medicines Agency is poised to approve the vaccine for use on children 5 to 11 this week, first doses will not begin until Dec. 20, when shots for children are scheduled to be delivered to European Union countries, Mr. Spahn, the health minister, said.

The opposition to the lockdown and vaccine mandates in Austria is being fueled in part by the far-right Freedom Party, which has used its platform in the Austrian Parliament to spread doubt about the effectiveness of the vaccines and to promote ivermectin, a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms that has repeatedly failed against the coronavirus in clinical trials.

But the fury is not limited to far-right activists, as the throngs that filled Vienna’s streets on Saturday attested. The police estimated the crowd at 40,000, with many families and others far outnumbering the right-wing extremists.

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TAL Education Group Provides Updates on Business Operations

BEIJING, Nov. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — TAL Schooling Team (“TAL” or the “Firm”) (NYSE: TAL), a primary K-12 just after-faculty tutoring services provider in China, now offered updates on the Firm’s organization operations in response to the latest regulatory developments relating to right after-faculty tutoring expert services, like the Views on More Assuaging the Load of Research and After-School Tutoring for Pupils in Compulsory Schooling, released in July 2021 by the Normal Office of the CPC Central Committee and the Normal Office environment of the Condition Council (the “View”) and the relevant implementation procedures, laws and actions promulgated by knowledgeable authorities.

In compliance with the Viewpoint and applicable policies, polices and steps, the Corporation plans to stop featuring academic topics to college students from kindergarten by quality 9 (“K9 Tutorial AST Solutions”) in the mainland of China by the conclusion of December 2021. The Corporation expects that the cessation will have a considerable adverse affect on the Company’s revenues for the fiscal calendar year ending February 28, 2022 and subsequent periods. In the fiscal year ended February 28, 2021, the revenues from featuring K9 Academic AST Products and services accounted for a significant the vast majority of the Company’s full revenues in the calendar year.

By leveraging its top-edge education and learning technology, substantial good quality material and substantial practical experience, TAL will continue on to operate and acquire the portion of its enterprise that is not associated to K9 Tutorial AST Services, and will also check out other chances to offer schooling companies in accordance with related principles and laws.

The Business will keep on to seek steering from and cooperate with authorities authorities in a variety of provinces and municipalities in China in connection with its attempts to comply with the policy directives in the Viewpoint and any linked implementation regulations, laws and steps. The Organization will additional alter its business enterprise operations as needed, and update its shareholders as suitable.

Risk-free Harbor Assertion

This announcement is made up of ahead-wanting statements. These statements are made below the “safe harbor” provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These ahead-hunting statements can be identified by terminology this kind of as “will,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “future,” “intends,” “programs,” “thinks,” “estimates” and similar statements. The Firm may perhaps also make published or oral forward-looking statements in its studies filed with, or furnished to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in its once-a-year studies to shareholders, in press releases and other prepared materials and in oral statements manufactured by its officers, directors or personnel to 3rd functions. Statements that are not historic details, including statements about the Company’s beliefs and anticipations, are forward-looking statements. Ahead-on the lookout statements entail inherent hazards and uncertainties. Information and facts pertaining to these challenges and uncertainties is included in the Firm’s experiences filed with, or furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All info offered in this press launch is as of the day of this push launch, and TAL Schooling Group undertakes no duty to update this sort of info or any ahead-seeking statement, apart from as essential under applicable law.

About TAL Instruction Team

TAL Training Team is a top K-12 after-school tutoring products and services company in China. The acronym “TAL” stands for “Tomorrow Advancing Lifetime”, which reflects our eyesight to endorse top rated understanding prospects for Chinese college students as a result of both of those significant-excellent teaching and content material, as very well as leading edge software of technologies in the schooling experience. TAL Education and learning Team presents in depth tutoring solutions to learners from pre-university to the twelfth grade as a result of a few adaptable course formats: small classes, individualized top quality expert services, and on-line classes. Our tutoring companies address the core educational topics in China’s college curriculum as effectively as competence oriented applications. Our ADSs trade on the New York Stock Trade underneath the symbol “TAL”.

For even further information, be sure to contact:

Echo Yan
Trader Relations
TAL Education Group
Tel: +86 10 5292 6669-8809
E-mail: ir@tal.com

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View first information:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tal-training-group-presents-updates-on-enterprise-functions-301423024.html

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