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Monday, January 6, 2025

Nvidia stock closes at new record ahead of CEO Jensen Huang's CES keynote

 Nvidia (NVDA) stock closed at a record high on Monday ahead of CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Shares rose more than 3% to $149.43 — north of Nvidia's previous record closing price of $148.88 per share on Nov. 7, 2024.

As Wall Street analysts head to Sin City to meet with management from top tech companies, all eyes are on the AI chipmaker.

Nvidia typically makes important product announcements at the CES trade show — such as last year’s debut of new desktop graphics chips for gaming and AI — while Huang’s commentary is expected to give investors a preview of what’s ahead for the artificial intelligence giant and the burgeoning artificial intelligence market.

Huang is scheduled deliver his keynote at 6:20 p.m. PST on Monday. It will be livestreamed on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other sites.

His address comes as investors eagerly await the rollout of Nvidia’s latest Blackwell AI chips, which analysts have said will drive a massive new cycle of demand for the company’s products despite fears of a slowdown in AI spending.

After a design flaw pushed back the rollout of its Blackwell lineup and rumors of overheating problems in servers using those chips circulated, Nvidia confirmed in a November earnings call that Blackwell production is ramping up in the current quarter, with the chips shipping to customers ahead of expectations. Stifel analyst Ruben Roy has suggested that the Blackwell AI chips represent a $100 billion market opportunity for Nvidia.

The jump in Nvidia stock on Monday extends its gains from last week when the chipmaker led a rebound in the "Magnificent Seven" tech stocks after a disappointing end to 2024.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang looks on during a press conference during the
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang looks on during a press conference during the "AI Vision For Thailand" event in Bangkok, Thailand, on Dec. 4, 2024. REUTERS/Chalinee Thirasupa · REUTERS / Reuters

In another potential tailwind for Nvidia shares, Truist Securities analyst William Stein said in a note Monday that he believes Nvidia will announce a standalone CPU, or central processing unit — the “brain” of a computer, distinct from Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell GPUs, or graphics processing units — at CES. Stein has said in past notes that such an announcement could open up another $35 billion market opportunity for the company.

Bank of America's Vivek Arya said in a note Monday that while "NVDA stock has essentially stalled over the past 6 months" he expects CES to be a "positive catalyst, re-asserting NVDA's platform dominance." Arya said he believes Nvidia will provide "reassuring updates" on its Blackwell shipments and announcements about its robotics strategy and, potentially, an AI PC partnership.


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-stock-closes-at-new-record-ahead-of-ceo-jensen-huangs-ces-keynote-210955960.html

AbbVie cuts 2024 profit forecast on acquisition expenses

 AbbVie lowered its 2024 adjusted profit forecast on Monday as the drugmaker incurred $1.6 billion in acquisition expenses related to milestone payments as well as research-and-development costs.

The company has been focusing on expanding its pipeline since its blockbuster arthritis drug, Humira, lost patent protection last year.

To that end, AbbVie bought neuroscience drug developer Cerevel Therapeutics, cancer drug developer ImmunoGen and Alzheimer's therapy developer Aliada in 2024 through deals worth over $20 billion in total.

The company forecast 2024 adjusted profit of $10.02 to $10.06 per share, compared with its previous forecast of $10.90 to $10.94. Analysts on average expect $10.94, according to data compiled by LSEG.

It also expects fourth-quarter adjusted profit of $2.06 to $2.10 per share, compared with $2.79 reported last year.

AbbVie is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings on Jan. 31.


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/abbvie-cuts-2024-profit-forecast-214534727.html

Vyne Starts Phase 2b Trial Evaluating VYN201 for Vitiligo

 

  • Once-daily VYN201 gel being evaluated in subjects with nonsegmental vitiligo
  • Top-line data from the 24-week double-blind portion of the trial expected in mid-2025
  • “Repibresib” approved as the non-proprietary name for VYN201 by USAN

' US companies rush to bond market in fundraising flurry'

 U.S. companies rushed to the corporate bond markets on Monday as what is usually a seasonal fund-raising spree over the first few days of a new year gained extra momentum to get ahead of any further rise in Treasury yields - which would increase funding costs - after jobs data on Friday.

Some 22 companies were offering new bonds in the U.S. investment-grade bond market on Monday, taking the tally of new borrowers to 34 in the first few days of 2025.

Syndicate bankers expect to see companies raising nearly $65 billion this week, and perhaps as much as $200 billion this month, in a bond issuance spree that is showing no sign of slowing after a prolific 2024.

"With spreads nearing historic levels and the market ostensibly giving up on the hope of significantly lower risk-free rates, now looks like an opportune time for corporates to fund themselves," said Connor Fitzgerald, fixed income portfolio manager at Wellington Management.

"This is especially the case when you consider the uncertainty the market may have to contend with in 2025 as the incoming administration’s policies - some of which are unorthodox - really start to take shape," he said.

Companies were also issuing bonds to take advantage of credit spreads, or the premium they pay over Treasuries, which are still only a few basis points above their record tightest levels touched on Nov. 30, at 83 basis points on Friday, according to the ICE BofA Corporate Index.

In 2024, investment-grade rated companies raised $1.52 trillion, 26% more than the $1.21 trillion in 2023, making it the second most prolific year on record, according to Informa Global Markets data.

Several large Yankee deals came to market on Monday, including from BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, Hyundai Capital America and Toyota. Tractor maker John Deere and heavy equipment producer Caterpillar are also issuing bonds via their financing arms. 

Monday's slate of bond offerings follows robust debt issuance on Friday, when automakers Ford Motor and General Motors tapped the market.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/us-companies-rush-to-bond-market-in-fundraising-flurry/ar-AA1x42X8

Biden Admin's 'Prank-O-Rama'

 by James Howard Kunstler,

"They found a cure for gluttony. Now do narcissism."

- Peachy Keenan

Poor “Joe Biden” can’t help himself as the suns sets on his ignominious career.

He ordered the American flag to fly at half-staff into January 20, inauguration day, to signal grief and distress at Donald Trump’s swearing-in - not realizing, apparently, that Mr. Trump’s first act in office will be to order the flags raised back up, signaling symbolically the end to America’s grief and distress under “Joe Biden.”

You might wonder: what other sort of vicious mischief the Party of Chaos has in store in the final ramp-up to a momentous change of government? Well, no sooner had ol’ “JB” draped the Wegovy-slenderized neck of Hillary Clinton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, than Bill Clinton went on ABC’s The View to declare he was “open to talking with [‘President Biden’]” about a preemptive pardon for Hillary.

Say, whu. . . ? What crimes did Bill have in mind that such a pardon might avail? Skolkovo? Uranium One? The Clinton Foundation’s sketchy activities in Haiti after the earthquake there? Bill preemptively mentioned the old emails bidness as a ruse. Nothing to see there, folks, he protested. (Just don’t look anywhere else!)

You must imagine that the incoming Solicitor General, John Sauer’s, first act in office will be to ask SCOTUS for a ruling on the legitimacy of preemptive pardons - blanket pardons for crimes alive perhaps in guilty consciences but nowhere extant as yet in the legal system. The justices might detect a certain logical incoherence in that proposition. “Joe Biden” should have just draped wreaths of garlic around the necks of Mrs. Clinton, Liz Cheney, and Alex Soros (standing in for ol’ George).

Judge Juan Merchan did not get a medal. He’s warming up for his January 10 stunt of sentencing of Mr. Trump for the “felony” of recording a payment to lawyer Michael Cohen as a “legal expense” (times thirty-four) so Democrats can holler “nyah nyah, felon!” as Mr. Trump re-enters the Oval Office. Judge Merchan himself has racked-up an impressive list of federal offenses around deprivation of Mr. Trump’s civil rights and due process issues as well as judicial misconduct, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power. Justice may await the judge.

Today, January 6, of course, is electoral vote certification day in a joint session of Congress. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has been making noises about contesting certification on the grounds that Mr. Trump is an “insurrectionist” under the disqualification clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Don’t be surprised if Jamie makes a show of it to justify all his loose talk, but it will only be a performance. He might as well bring a chicken into the chamber and bite its head off.

The shadowy claque behind “Joe Biden” has been super-busy cooking up documents for the demented old bird to sign before leaving office, anything that supposedly might discommode the incoming Mr. Trump. “JB” is like a bandit fleeing the scene of a crime, throwing his stolen booty into the road off the back of his truck to trip up the police closing in. Close down offshore oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts for evermore. . . ban gas-powered water heaters. . . any old thing to make life more uncomfortable for the people of this land. The shadowy claque seems oblivious to the fact that the people won’t appreciate these pranks, that they just give more reasons for them to drive a wooden stake through the heart of the Democratic Party — as if it even had one.

Prank-of-the-week, though, goes to Tony Blinken’s State Department. No sooner had Congress defunded his agency’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) — that is, its censorship coordination hub — than the muppets at State redistributed GEC’s personnel to other corners of the agency and scared up new funding for their censorship activities from some dark hidey-hole of sequestered money. Do they suppose no one will find out where these employees went? All that’s necessary is to look up who was on the GEC’s payroll in 2024, and earlier in the hub’s heyday, and see if they remain on the State Department’s payroll now — and then fire the whole lot of them for cause: abrogating Americans’ First Amendment rights. Buh-bye. . . .

You are not out-of-order worrying, of course, that the political Left and the deep state blob behind them might look, in desperation, for other ways to prevent Donald Trump from getting sworn in. There’s the president-elect’s rally in DC the night before the inauguration. Not a few MAGAs are wondering if that’s really a good idea. And the recent garish drone swarms around the USA have put folks ill at ease about a swearing-in on the west front of the US Capitol, out in the open air. I’d even be a little concerned about the mechanicals of Mr. Trump’s airplane as he flies north from Mar-a-Lago to the big event in Washington.

Nobody will surprised if “Joe Biden” does not show up on the dais at the Capitol that fateful day. He at least has one final snub left for Mr. Trump as “JB” departs office with the pardon he will preemptively lay on himself in the wee hours of January 19 — in case anyone might inquire into all those shadow companies that First Son Hunter was running over the years to receive money from China, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, and Gawd knows who else, to be redistributed (i.e., laundered) through the innumerable bank accounts of Biden family members. There is that to consider.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-admins-prank-o-rama

Waste of the Day: Lil Wayne, Chris Brown Spent Covid Millions on Themselves

 Topline: Lil Wayne allegedly spent most of his $8.9 million Covid-19 relief grant on personal expenses like private jets, clothes, and “mystery women,” according to documents reviewed by Business Insider. The rapper is just one high-profile artist named in a report that exposes scores of wasteful charges from some of music’s biggest stars.

Key facts: The grant was meant to help Lil Wayne pay the musicians and technicians in his touring group who could not earn their pay while social distancing made concerts impossible, as well as other “necessary and ordinary” business expenses.

Open the Books
Covid Aid

Instead, the rapper used his taxpayer-funded payout to buy $460,000 of clothes and accessories from high-end brands like Gucci and Balenciaga, Business Insider reported.

He spent $5.3 million of the grant paying managers, accountants and attorneys, including settling a $2.1 million debt with his former manager, Cortez Bryant, Business Insider said.

He billed taxpayers $88,000 for a concert in Coachella, California on New Year’s Eve, 2021. But Instagram posts showed Lil Wayne partying on Sunset Boulevard the same night instead of performing at the show.

The rapper used another $15,000 on flights and hotel rooms for “women whose connection to Lil Wayne's touring operation was unclear,” including a porn actress, according to Business Insider.

Lil Wayne was not the only one playing taxpayers like a fiddle.

Hip-hop artist Chris Brown received a $10 million grant and allegedly placed $5.1 million directly in his own bank account, Business Insider reported.

In addition, Brown billed taxpayers $80,000 for his 33rd birthday party in Los Angeles. The charges included hookahs, “nitrogen ice cream,” and repairs to couches damaged by burn holes.

Rapper Christopher Comstock, better known as Marshmello, received a $9.9 million grant. He pocketed the entire amount as “payroll” for himself, his manager told Business Insider in a letter.

Grunge legends Alice in Chains received a $4.1 million grant, $3.1 million of which went directly to the band’s three most prominent members, per Business Insider.

DJ Steve Aoki’s records show he spent $1.9 million on “officer pay.” Aoki is the only known officer of his loan-out company, DJ Kid Millionaire Touring.

The money came from the Small Business Administration’s Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which gave up to $10 million to struggling musicians and concert venues to cover business expenses during the pandemic.

Because Lil Wayne and other artists’ revenue fell by at least 25% when they stopped touring during the pandemic, they were eligible for payouts. The grant rules did not direct the Small Business Administration to consider an awardee’s net worth — only their change in revenue.

Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com

Summary: Previous estimates have found that up to $1 trillion was lost to fraud during the pandemic. How much more was spent on absurd, but technically legal, purchases?

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/01/06/waste_of_the_day_lil_wayne_chris_brown_spent_covid_millions_on_themselves_1082548.html

Pandemic Planners Come for Hoof and Hen…and Us Again

 On December 31, 2024, the world received a year-end parting gift from the good folks at NIAID, Anthony Fauci’s old fiefdom at the National Institutes of Health. NIAID – the same unaccountable and secretive agency that Fauci used to fund the gain-of-function research of Ralph Baric at UNC Chapel Hill and the Bat Lady in Wuhan that resulted in Covid – has a new director, one Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo. 

Marrazzo and another NIAID colleague, Dr. Michael G. Ison, wrote a year-end editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine that accompanies a research paper on recent H5N1 Bird flu cases in the United States, as well as a case report of a lone case of severe illness associated with Bird flu in British Columbia.

Marrazzo and Ison summarize the findings of the research paper and case report as follows:

Investigators now report in the Journal a series of human cases from the United States and Canada. The former series involves 46 case patients with generally mild, self-limited infection with [Influenza type] A(H5N1): 20 with exposure to poultry, 25 with exposure to dairy cows, and 1 with undefined exposure.…Most case patients presented with conjunctivitis, almost half with fever, and a minority with mild respiratory symptoms, and all recovered. The only hospitalization occurred in the case patient with undefined exposure, although hospitalization was not for respiratory illness.

They elaborate on the single case of serious illness:

In Canada, a 13-year-old girl with mild asthma and obesity presented with conjunctivitis and fever and had progression to respiratory failure…After treatment that included oseltamivir, amantadine, and baloxavir, she recovered.

In other words:

  • Over an eight-month period, from March to October 2024, 46 cases of human bird flu occurred in the United States, a country of 336 million people. 
  • There were zero deaths.
  • 45 out of 46 infected persons had known exposure to animals.
  • The majority of the cases consisted of conjunctivitis (commonly known as “pink eye”).
  • Only one US patient was hospitalized, but this was not due to pneumonia – the principal life-threatening complication of influenza – and the patient recovered.
  • One severe case was identified in Canada, a country of 40 million people, in an asthmatic, morbidly obese girl. She was treated successfully with respiratory support and existing antiviral medications, and she recovered.

Does this sound to you like a public health emergency worthy of the legacy media’s recent exhumation of discredited Covid-era fear-mongers like Dr. Leana Wen and Dr. Deborah “Scarf Lady” Birx? Does it justify their hair-on-fire pronouncements on cable news shows everywhere, pushing for indiscriminate PCR testing of animals and emergency authorization of more mRNA vaccines for humans?

Does this sound to you like justification to continue to kill and destroy (pro tip: “cull” means kill and destroy) millions upon millions of farm animals, when most animals who contract Bird flu survive, recover, and develop immunity?

Does this sound to you like justification for another Emergency Use Authorization of another mRNA vaccine?

No? Me neither.

But wait, there’s more.

In their editorial, NIAID experts Marrazzo and Ison fail to mention the following:

  • There have been zero cases of human-to-human transmission of this virus.
  • The current circulating clade of the virus has been determined by independent researchers to very likely have originated at a US Government gain-of-function laboratory, namely the USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory (SEPRL) in Athens, GA.
  • Multiple bioweapons laboratories, including the Yoshihiro Kawaoka lab at the University of Wisconsin, and the Ron Fouchier lab in the Netherlands (both of which have been affiliated with NIAID and with work done at SEPRL) have been doing gain-of-function research on Bird flu for many years, including experiments so outrageously dangerous that their work prompted President Obama’s ultimately unsuccessful ban of gain-of-function research in 2014.
  • In 2019, NIAID reapproved and resumed funding Kawaoka and Fouchier’s dangerous work at increasing human transmissibility of Bird flu – the very same gain-of-function research that had prompted Obama’s ban.
  • According to its package insert, Audenz, the current Bird flu vaccine, was associated with death in 1 out of every 200 recipients, compared to 1 in 1,000 placebo recipients.
  • According to openthebooks.com, and as reported in the New York Post, NIH scientists received royalties totaling $325 million from pharmaceutical companies and foreign entities over more than a decade.

So, what are our friends at NIAID’s recommendations?

For one, they stress the “urgent need for vigilant surveillance of emerging mutations and assessment of the threat of human-to-human transmission.”

Are they advocating for the willy-nilly testing of entire livestock herds, as promoted by Birx, which is sure to create a preponderance of false positives? 

Are they calling for the continued mass killing and destruction of millions upon millions of farm animals, whenever a fraction of the animals test positive for the virus?

Instead of PCR-swabbing every cow, chicken, and farm worker on Earth, how about we stop creating new mutant variants of H5N1 in the labs, since that’s where the current problem originated? How about we stop funding such utter madness with our tax dollars, funneled through corrupt government agencies like NIAID? 

After all, you don’t save Tokyo by creating Godzilla.

But Marrazzo and Ison make no mention of this common-sense, sane approach.
Instead, they also stress the need for more – you guessed it – vaccines. They write:

we must continue to pursue development and testing of medical countermeasures…Studies have shown the safety and immunogenicity of A(H5N1) vaccines…studies are ongoing to develop messenger RNA–based A(H5N1) vaccines and other novel vaccines that can provide protection against a broad range of influenza viruses, including A(H5N1).”

Aside from attesting to the “safety” of a product where 1 in 200 users die, the use of the word “countermeasures” is extremely telling. It is a military term, not a medical one. We have already seen this game played with Covid. The gain-of-function lab research is done to produce a lab-manipulated, weaponized version of a virus, a version that is transmissible among and toxic to humans – in other words, a bioweapon. The vaccine is the countermeasure to the bioweapon. The vaccine is the intellectual property of those who created the bioweapon, and it is worth a fortune once the weapon has been unleashed. It is as simple as that.

“Pandemic preparedness” is a gigantic, deadly protection racket. I have described it in the past as arsonists running the fire department. That is precisely what happened with Covid, and that is what is being attempted with H5N1 Bird flu.

Moving forward to a new administration that has expressed a commitment to rooting out corruption in the pharmaceutical/medical/public health realm, improving the health of citizens, and restoring trustworthiness in medicine, I recommend the following steps to combat the H5N1 Bird flu, and to end the “pandemic preparedness” racket that threatens to hold the world hostage again and again, as it did during Covid.

  • Immediately end and outlaw all gain-of-function and other bioweapons research in and funded by the United States, and apply all possible diplomatic pressure to eradicate it from the Earth.
  • Eliminate all special protections from liability for vaccines, including the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and the PREP Act.
  • Refocus Infectious Disease research on new therapeutics, rather than power-seeking and profit-driven vaccine development.
  • Completely reform the National Institutes of Health, and close the incorrigibly corrupt NIAID altogether.

The fear pornographers must be discredited. We must make realistic and sensible decisions about our food supply.

We must learn the lessons of Covid, and live in knowledge rather than in fear. 

We must end the protection rackets, confidence games, and shakedowns that government insiders impose on us like mafiosi.

Happy New Year!

C.J. Baker, M.D. is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-pandemic-planners-come-for-hoof-and-henand-us-again/