Futures Point Mostly Higher After Indexes Tumble; AMD Shares Drop; Gold Rises Back Above $5,000

Millions of Legal Immigrants Are About to Lose Access to Government Loans for Small Businesses

FROM 15 minutes ago

The Small Business Administration is cutting off lending to any business with any amount of non-citizen ownership, excluding more than 5 million business owners from federal loans.

Starting March 1, the SBA will no longer lend to businesses if any of their ownership is not a citizen, down from the 5% foreign ownership currently allowed. The move, announced Monday, is the latest step in President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut off legal immigrants from government funding and services. Before Trump took office again in 2025, the SBA gave out loans to businesses as long as they were at least 51% owned by citizens or lawful permanent residents. (Illegal immigrants were already excluded.)

By removing the ability of lawful permanent residents to receive loans, the SBA is potentially affecting millions of businesses.

The SBA does not publicize how much of the $44.8 billion its two largest programs lent in fiscal 2025 went to noncitizen business owners. However, according to the Census Bureau, noncitizens make up a significant percentage of small business owners: in 2023, 5.2 million owner-operators were not citizens, or 15.9% of all non-employer businesses in the country.

Read the full article here.

–Diccon Hyatt

Texas Instruments Calls $7.5B Acquisition of Silicon Labs ‘Significant Milestone’

FROM 40 minutes ago

Texas Instruments CEO Haviv Ilan believes the company’s roughly $7.5 billion acquisition of Silicon Laboratories is a “significant milestone.” Silicon Labs shareholders are rejoicing.

Silicon Labs (SLAB) stock soared 25% in premarket trading after Texas Instruments (TXN) acquired the smaller semiconductor firm for $231 per share.

“The acquisition of Silicon Labs is a significant milestone that strengthens our long-term embedded processing strategy,” Ilan said. “Silicon Labs’ leading embedded wireless connectivity portfolio enhances our technology and IP, enabling greater scale and allowing us to better serve our customers.”

Texas Instruments, whose shares declined 3%, plans to fund the transaction with a combination of cash on hand and debt financing. It sees the deal closing in the first half of 2027 and expects it to be accretive to its earnings, minus transaction-related costs, in the first full year post-close.

The Financial Times had reported yesterday that Texas Instruments was in advanced talks to acquire Silicon Labs.

100% Stocks? One Expert Makes the Case for an All-Equity Portfolio in Your Working Years

FROM 1 hr 14 min ago

Investing for retirement often means balancing growth with stability. For many investors, it makes sense to hold a portion of their portfolio in conservative assets, such as bonds, to reduce volatility and risk.

However, James Choi, a professor of finance at Yale, suggests that people should keep 100% of their portfolios in stocks for most of their working lives.

In a recent podcast episode of the ‘Behavioral Divide with Hal Hershfield’, Hershfield asked the economist what financial advisors could learn from academics. Choi explained that traditional financial advice is often too conservative when it comes to asset allocation.

“The reason is that a lot of the advice out there does not take into account the biggest economic asset that working people have: their working capital. In other words, the future stream of wage income and Social Security retirement benefits they have coming to them,” Choi said. “The thing to realize is that shocks to your labor income or Social Security benefits are uncorrelated with the stock market’s return.”

Read the full article here.

–Trina Paul

Stock Futures Tick Higher After Indexes Tumble

FROM 1 hr 41 min ago

Futures contracts connected to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were fractionally higher.

S&P 500 futures pointed up 0.1%.

Nasdaq 100 futures were 0.3% higher.