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A man holds the South Korea flag outside the National Assembly in Seoul on December 4, 2024, after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared emergency martial law. South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol on December 3 declared emergency martial law, saying the step was necessary to protect the country from "communist forces" amid parliamentary wrangling over a budget bill. Anthony Wallace | Afp | Getty ImagesSouth Korean stocks fell in a volatile trading session Wednesday amid political upheaval that saw President Yoon Suk Yeol reverse a surprise martial law decree that he imposed hours earlier.Minutes before the markets opened, Kim Byung-hwan, vice-minister of economy and finance, said the regulator was ready to deploy 10 trillion won ($7.07 billion) to stabilize the stock market "at any time," loca...

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger speaks while holding a new chip, called Gaudi 3, during an event called AI Everywhere in New York, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023. Seth Wenig | APIntel shares fell 6% on Tuesday, a day after the embattled chipmaker announced the ouster of CEO Pat Gelsinger, whose four-year tenure was marred by market share losses and a major miss in artificial intelligence.The stock had its worst day since early September and has lost more than half its value this year.Intel said Monday that CFO David Zinsner and Intel products CEO MJ Holthaus would serve as interim co-CEOs while the board and a search committee "work diligently and expeditiously to find a permanent successor to Gelsinger." Longtime board member Frank Yeary will serve as interim executive chair.Cantor analysts are skeptica...

Signage outside Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California, on Jan. 30, 2023.David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesIntel is considering hiring an external candidate to replace ousted CEO Pat Gelsinger and has hired executive search firm Spencer Stuart to identify potential successors, according to people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity due to the confidential nature of the discussions.Intel's board has also made overtures to recently departed director Lip-Bu Tan about whether he would be interested in the top job at the struggling chipmaker, said one of the people.An outside CEO would break from tradition at the chipmaker, which has historically promoted from within. While Gelsinger was hired from VMware in 2021, he had spent decades at the company in roles of in...

In the two years since the launch of ChatGPT, stocks have soared to new highs, megacaps have ballooned in size and AI chipmaker Nvidia has become the second-largest stock in the U.S. by market value. But the biggest winner has in fact been a little-known Ohio-based cooling technology stock named Vertiv Holdings. Vertiv has benefited since the debut of the widely accessible chatbot in late Nov., 2022 as investors scoured the market for secondary winners from the buildout of large language models and gargantuan data centers. The first order of attention was what became the megcap technology companies. Nvidia was the 13th largest company in the U.S. when the AI craze took off, notes Jefferies' sales desk. The S & P 500 has rallied about 49%. But while megacap technology stocks have domina...

The market has been generous to investors in 2024, and those who are themselves in the giving spirit can benefit from sharing some of those winnings with their favorite charities. On the holiday calendar, Giving Tuesday comes right after Cyber Monday, marking a day for individuals to consider donating to their favorite charities. With the S & P 500 up more than 26% in 2024, cash might not be the best way to give money to organizations. Instead, a direct gift of appreciated assets, be they stocks, mutual funds or even cryptocurrency, is the savviest way to share the wealth. "Cash used to be the No. 1 asset contributed to the program," said Brandon O'Neill, charitable planning consultant at Fidelity Charitable, a donor-advised fund sponsor. "If you gift an appreciated asset, not only do ...

Stock market trading has been acutely sensitive to economic data in the post-Covid era, with the averages moving sharply on upside and downside surprises. That could be about to change as Donald Trump plans to assume the presidency, bringing with him a high level of uncertainty and making policy possibly more important than the much-watched macro economic data that dominates Wall Street activity. The first test if that holds true: Friday's nonfarm payrolls report for November that Bank of America recommends market participants "tread carefully" when assessing due to noisy data. "The market has never been this reactive to macro data as it has post-COVID. Why? Likely a combination of high data volatility, extreme forecasting challenges, and the Fed's 'data-dependent' posture," Ohsung Kwon, B...