Key News Asian equities were mostly lower overnight as Pakistan and Thailand outperformed and Hong Kong and Indonesia underperformed. China’s markets took a breather last night after a strong run. It was a relatively slow news night without a key catalyst to bring markets lower. Mainland markets opened flat, but followed their Hong Kong counterparts south later in the session. Meanwhile, Hong Kong started to regain some ground mid-session, but ended near worst levels. Profit taking may have been a culprit here as the latest popular trades were all lower, including technology, consumer discretionary, and the electric vehicle ecosystem. Also,…

Name: Yangchen Lama Firm: Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Location: Beverly Hills, CA Team Custodied Assets: $410 million Background: Yangchen Lama grew up in the Himalayas, 17,000 feet above sea level, in a remote village in Nepal without electricity or running water. She didn’t go to school until age 9 when her family moved to Kathmandu, but she quickly excelled and at 12-years-old, was able to come to the U.S. as an exchange student. After graduating from Cornell in 1999 with a bachelors and master’s degree in international finance, she started her career working as an investment banker. In 2007, she…

Key News Asian equities were mixed but mostly higher overnight as Hong Kong and Mainland China outperformed and Indonesia and the Philippines underperformed. DeepSeek announced that it would be restricting access to its servers due to capacity constraints. This is interesting as, while its model was efficient and relatively cheap to develop, ever-increasing demand for querying it still demands a great deal of server space. This led cloud computing and data infrastructure names to continue their rise. Tuya, in particular, gained +43% after advertising to developers that they can access DeepSeek’s models through their system. The electric vehicle ecosystem also…

Key News Asian markets, except for Hong Kong and Mainland China, were lower on Trump’s steel and aluminum tariff talk as the US dollar strengthened overnight. AI continues to fuel Hong Kong and Mainland China’s growth and technology rally, though Trump’s reversal on banning the US Postal Service’s delivery of China packages was a positive. Maybe the US and China are further along in trade talks than the market is anticipating? This could be the reason behind the strength of Hong Kong-listed stocks against a clear negative, i.e. tariffs. Alibaba gained +5.5% as Alibaba Cloud announced the integration of several…

“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing,” said football coach Vince Lombardi years ago. Many investors feel the same way about earnings. Excuse me, Lombardi disciples, but earnings aren’t the only thing. To withstand unexpected hardships or to seize timely opportunities, a company’s financial strength is also key. Once a year in this column, I celebrate financially strong companies with my Balance Sheet Powerhouse list. To make it, a company must: Have a market value of at least $5 billion. Carry debt no more than 10% of the company’s net worth. Be based in the U.S. Have current assets at…

Global holdings in gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have risen at the start of 2025 thanks to soaring European inflows. That’s according to latest data from the World Gold Council (WGC). The organisation said gold funds had added 35 tonnes of material – worth some $3 billion – in January. This took total holdings to 3,253 tonnes, and assets under management (AUMs) to $294 billion. Gold demand continues to soar as concerns over US President Trump’s policy agenda (and particularly concerning trade tariffs) have grown. The yellow metal’s up 11% since 1 January, and struck fresh record peaks around $2,914 per…

On 2/12/25, Exxon Mobil will trade ex-dividend, for its quarterly dividend of $0.99, payable on 3/10/25. As a percentage of XOM’s recent stock price of $108.89, this dividend works out to approximately 0.91%, so look for shares of Exxon Mobil to trade 0.91% lower — all else being equal — when XOM shares open for trading on 2/12/25. 10 Stocks Going Ex-Dividend » Below is a dividend history chart for XOM, showing historical dividends prior to the most recent $0.99 declared by Exxon Mobil: In general, dividends are not always predictable; but looking at the history above can help in…

This story appears in the December/January 2025 issue of Forbes Magazine. SubscribeFacing extinction, Sezzle chopped costs and hit on a strategy for making money from the heaviest users. The stock market noticed. By Hank Tucker, Forbes Staff The future looked grim in mid-2022 for Minneapolis-based Sezzle, an also-ran in the fast-growing buy-now, pay-later fintech business. It had burned through most of the $115 million it had raised in a 2019 initial public offering on the Australian stock market and two subsequent offerings. A rescue deal it had struck to be acquired by a competitor was collapsing, along with both companies’…

First of all, to be very clear: the private sector cannot replace the thousands of staff members, the billions of grant dollars, and the decades of experience that have made the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) the world’s most important government funder of development. The Trump administration’s demolition of USAID is already interrupting clinical trials, not to mention halting demining, anti-trafficking, and violence prevention efforts around the world, to name just a few areas of work. Especially in the places of greatest vulnerability, such as during disasters and after conflict, “aid is the only large-scale capital option,” emphasizes Aunnie…

Worried about the next round of tariffs? Tech disruption from DeepSeek? The geopolitical landscape? All of the above? Fret not my contrarian friend—here are seven wonderfully-sleepy dividend stocks. They yield between 5% and 14.1% and we are discussing them today because all seven boast low betas. This means these shares move less than the overall market. An admirable quality when it comes to a dividend stock because we’re not here for the price drama, we’re here for the payout. Beta represents an investment’s volatility against a benchmark. Stock beta is typically benchmarked against the S&P 500, aka “the market.” Beta…