Author: Money Mechanics

With robust growth in equity trading across Europe, Cboe Europe plans to launch a brand-new trading service on its European Lit order book, designed to enhance execution outcomes for retail traders. Cboe sees the demand for further retail access across Europe and is eager to provide innovative and accessible trading solutions for customers to access some of the best available Lit liquidity in European equities. The new service is scheduled to go live on September 8, 2025, and will grant retail investors the ability to trade stocks and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) across 18 European markets, completely free of charge…

Key Takeaways The U.S. economy needs to add 10,000 to 40,000 jobs per month to maintain the current unemployment rate, according to recent estimates.That “breakeven” job creation rate is far less than the 73,000 jobs added in July.As recently as 2024, economists estimated the job market needed to add as many as 230,000 jobs a month to keep the unemployment rate steady.President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration has reduced the number of job seekers, leading to a lower bar for breakeven employment. When reading about the health of the economy in the coming months, don’t be surprised if you hear…

Intel (INTC) shares surged close to 7% Tuesday after Japan’s SoftBank Group said it would make a $2 billion investment in the struggling U.S. chipmaker. SoftBank will pay $23 for each Intel share, a slight discount to Monday’s closing price of $23.66, the companies announced. “This strategic investment reflects our belief that advanced semiconductor manufacturing and supply will further expand in the United States, with Intel playing a critical role,” said SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who last December announced plans for the firm to invest around $100 billion in the U.S. with President-elect Donald Trump. Last week, Bloomberg reported that…

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is one of the Buzzing AI Stocks on Wall Street.  On August 15, DA Davidson upgraded the stock to Neutral from Underperform with an unchanged price target of $225. According to the firm, declining investor sentiment is appropriate for a business whose organic growth in its core is decelerating along with mounting competitive pressure. However, Starboard has increased its stake in Salesforce by 47% this quarter and “another round of activist involvement may help the company correct course.” DA Davidson Lifts Salesforce (CRM) to Neutral, Keeps $225 PT A professional trader working on a laptop in a busy…

Options trading has become increasingly popular in recent years, and we thought it was time to update our intern’s guide for U.S. options to help you understand options and how options markets work.Options are different to stocksOptions are very different from stocks and futures. Once you buy a stock, you benefit if its price rises and lose if its price falls. You also earn dividends. If you short sell a stock, the reverse is true. We show that in the payoff diagrams below – note that the profit (and loss) for stocks increases in a straight line as stock price moves.…

Palantir (PLTR) shares tumbled Tuesday afternoon, extending recent losses as a high-profile short seller fueled worries the stock could be overvalued after a strong run earlier this year.  The shares fell over 9% to close just under $158, in the fifth straight day of declines. Still, they’ve more than doubled in value in 2025, leaving Palantir the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 for the year so far as demand for the data analytics software company’s Artificial Intelligence Platform drives record sales. Short seller Andrew Left of Citron Research, who voiced concerns about the stock’s valuation in a Fox Business…

Are the summer doldrums here for or is it the calm before a big storm? In a nutshell, there’s a lot going on and that can cause significant investor confusion. Some key items of note: Donald Trump is a workaholic, and he has a rock star personality. He has his fingers in a lot of pies. Also, Jay Powell has a big Jackson Hole speech on Friday. To help clarify the situation for gold. The weekly chart. Suddenly, the clouds are gone, and the gold market sky is clear; a simple triangle formation is in play. The odds (basis Edwards/Magee)…

Chicago Transit’s fiscal issues didn’t emerge in a single year and should serve as a warning for many other transit systems throughout the United States. In 2026, Chicago’s transit network, the veins and arteries of the nation’s third-largest metropolitan economy, will face its most severe financial test in decades. The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), which oversees the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Metra, and Pace Suburban Bus, warns of a looming “fiscal cliff” that could open a $730 million hole in the system’s annual budget. Without decisive action, the region risks a wave of service cuts and fare increases that could…

If you squint, can you see an effect of the deportations of illegal aliens in today’s CPI report?I don’t want to encourage anyone to obsess over every jot and tittle of the report. That’s almost always a fraught exercise. But there were at least a couple of things in the data this month which could indicate both inflationary and disinflationary effects of the deportation campaign. A serious part of my brain is saying ‘come on, there just haven’t been many deportations in the context of the population of illegals, how can we see an effect?’ And that instinct is probably…

Key Takeaways The roughly $270 billion global stablecoins market stands to disrupt the traditional financial services industry, but to what degree remains an “open question,” according to a recent Goldman Sachs report.Goldman analysts say that concerns about the potential disintermediation of companies that provide payment and remittance services are overdone.The firm sees Circle’s USDC taking greater share of the stablecoin market at the expense of Tether’s offshore USDT. The first federal regulatory system signed into law brought about something of a summer awakening for stablecoins. Whether the roughly $270 billion global market in tokens pegged to real-world currencies will grow…