Microsoft Announces $60 Billion Buyback Program and Dividend Increase

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Microsoft Announces $60 Billion Buyback Program and Dividend Increase. 💻 The company unveiled a $60 billion stock buyback plan and a 10% quarterly dividend hike, raising its payout to 83 cents per share. While the dividend yield remains low compared to other Dow components, the buyback is among the largest announced this year, following Apple and Alphabet. MarketWatch reports.

✈️ BoeingBrake: Boeing imposes hiring freeze, takes steps to conserve cash after strike starts. Reuters reports.

🎮 ChipSlip: How Intel lost the Sony PlayStation business. Yahoo Finance reports.

⚖️ ByteBattle: TikTok faces tough questions from court over challenge to US law. Reuters reports.

📉 iShift: Apple stock slides as big iPhone 16 bet sputters. Yahoo Finance reports.

🚀 OncoBoost: Pfizer says its experimental drug for deadly condition that causes appetite and weight loss in cancer patients shows positive trial results. CNBC reports.

🎯 Targeted: Target to hire 100,000 seasonal employees, launches early holiday promotions. Yahoo Finance reports.

(All pricing and percent gains are based on Early Pre-Market from 4:00 AM to 7:00 AM Eastern Time)
Benzinga reports.

1. $SMSI: Smith Micro Software
Total gain: +96.94%

2. $GLMD: Galmed Pharmaceuticals
Total gain: +62.01%

3. $WHLR: Wheeler Real Estate IT
Total gain: +31.83%

4. $ALLR: Allarity Therapeutics
Total gain: +27.21%

5. $MSC: Studio City Intl Hldgs
Total gain: +26.57%

*Analyzing the markets with Richie Naso, a Wall Street veteran of over 40 years and former member of the NYSE.

THE UNANIMOUS EXPECTATION:

On Wall Street is for the Fed to deliver the first cut to interest rates in more than four years on Wednesday, and traders are rekindling hopes it may offer bigger-than-usual relief.

On Friday, traders were seeing roughly a coin flip’s chance that the Fed could deliver a large cut of half of a percentage point, instead of a more traditional quarter of a point, according to data from CME Group.

TECH STOCKS LOOK PRICEY:

“Our cycle model, the Regime Indicator, just shifted from Upturn to Downturn,” wrote the stock market strategists at BofA Securities this past week. That had my attention, even though my own model, Tactical Sloth, calls for ignoring market cycles. I don’t do sector or theme rotations. I’ll do a tire rotation, but grudgingly.

Sector swappers are abuzz about power companies outrunning artificial-intelligence giants since the end of June.

The closing price of the top three market percent gainers trading near or above $3 on September 16.

*All pricing and percent gains are based on regular market trading hours from 9:30am to 4:00pm Eastern Time

1. $NCNA: NuCana
Total gain: +147.24%
The company presented final data from the Phase 2 NuTide:701 study on NUC-7738 in combination with pembrolizumab for patients with metastatic melanoma, who were refractory to or had relapsed after prior PD-1 inhibitor therapy, at the ESMO Congress Benzinga reports.

2. $DRMA: Dermata Therapeutics
Total gain: +46.84%
The stock appeared to be moving on no notable news.

3. $IMRX: Immuneering
Total gain: +41.58%
The stock appeared to be moving on no notable news.

*Estimate and Actual numbers represent Earnings Per Share in US Dollars

FERG: Ferguson
4Q 2024
Before Market Open
Estimate: 2.860
Actual: N/A

Time (ET) / Report / Period

8:30 am - U.S. retail sales - August
8:30 am - Retail sales minus autos - August
9:15 am - Industrial production - August

“Prices are never too high to begin buying or too low to begin selling.”

― Edwin LefèvreSourced in:
“Reminiscences of a Stock Operator”, by Edwin Lefèvre, published in 1923