Business

Indian travelers spent $34.2 billion on outbound travel in 2023, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.But the current level of Indian travel is "minuscule" compared with what's to come, Alan Watts, Hilton's Asia-Pacific president, told "Squawk Box Asia" Monday."The story for India is before us," he said. "India outbound will be the story of the next decade."By 2034, Indian travelers' outbound spend is projected to more than double to $76.8 billion, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council's Economic Impact 2024 report — which would make the country the seventh-largest travel spenders in the world, up from 12th in 2023."When you think of India, it has the characteristics of China, which is the second largest lodging market in the world," said Watts. It has "1.4 bil...

UnitedHealth Group signage is displayed on a monitor on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesShares of major health-care companies fell as much as 5% on Wednesday as investors feared pressure from lawmakers and patients could force changes to their business models.The declining stocks include UnitedHealth Group, Cigna and CVS Health, which operate three of the nation's largest private health insurers and drug supply chain middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. They also own pharmacy businesses. Shares of all three companies closed at least 5% lower.The stock reaction on Wednesday appeared to be in response to new bipartisan legislation that aims to break up PBMs, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. PBMs have faced y...

The US Treasury building in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023.Nathan Howard | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThe U.S. budget deficit swelled in November, putting fiscal 2025 already at a much faster pace than a year ago when the shortfall topped $1.8 trillion, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday.For the month, the deficit totaled $366.8 billion, 17% higher than November 2023 and taking the total for the first two months of the fiscal year more than 64% higher than the same period a year ago on an unadjusted basis.The increase came despite receipts that totaled $301.8 billion, about $27 billion more than last November. Outlays totaled $668.5 billion, or nearly $80 billion more from a year ago.The increase in red ink brought the national debt to $36.1 trillion as the month drew t...

Ireland is to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to broaden its definition of genocide - claiming Israel has engaged in the "collective punishment" of people in Gaza.An intervention will be made later this month, deputy prime minister Micheal Martin said, and will be linked to a case South Africa has brought under the United Nations' Genocide Convention. Mr Martin said the Irish government is "concerned" that a "narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide" leads to a "culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimised".The Dublin administration's "view of the convention is broader" and "prioritises the protection of civilian life", he added.Mr Martin, who also serves as Ireland's minister for foreign affairs, claimed there had been "collective punishment...

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesMeta's family of apps including Facebook and Instagram were down on Wednesday, resulting in users being unable to access the services.The widespread outages began around 9:57 a.m. PST and affected the social media company's core apps as well as Threads, WhatsApp and Messenger, according to user-submitted reports gathered by the internet-monitoring site Downdetector.More than 100,000 users experienced problems using the Facebook service at 10:11 a.m. PST, representing the peak of the outages, according to Downdetector.Meta acknowledged the outage via a morning post on social media site X, saying the company is "aware that a technical ...

The Wall Street Bull statue covered in snow on Nov. 15, 2018.Erik Mcgregor | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesA record year for the exchange-traded fund industry recently crossed another milestone, surpassing $1 trillion of total inflows for the first time, according to research firm ETFGI and the Investment Company Institute.The fund that has enjoyed the biggest demand this year is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), which has raked in roughly $100 billion, according to FactSet. The fastest-growing new fund is the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which has attracted more than $34 billion since its launch in January.Top US ETFs by inflows in 2024Fund Ticker YTD Inflows Vanguard S&P 500 ETFVOO$100.1 billioniShares Core S&P 500 ETFIVV$61.0 billioniShares Bitcoin ETF IBIT$34.8 billionVanguard T...

Vahe Kuzoyan, left, and Ara Mahdessian, the founders of ServiceTitan.ServiceTitanServiceTitan, a provider of cloud software to contractors, priced its IPO at $71 a share on Wednesday, above the expected range. The company is set to debut on the Nasdaq on Thursday under ticker symbol "TTAN." ServiceTitan previously raised its price range to between $65 and $67.ServiceTitan sold 8.8 million shares in the offering, which would amount to a raise of almost $625 million. At the IPO price, ServiceTitan is worth about $6.3 billion.Technology IPOs have been sparse since late 2021, when inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of riskier assets. Cloud software stocks quickly went out of favor after remote work during the pandemic had accelerated their growth.In March of this year, so...

Homes under construction in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on Nov. 19th, 2024.Adam Jeffery | CNBCIf President-elect Donald Trump is going to push inflation back down to a more tolerable level, he will need help from housing costs, an area where federal policymakers have only a limited amount of influence.The November consumer price index report contained mixed news on the shelter front, which accounts for one-third of the closely followed inflation index.On one hand, the category posted its smallest full-year increase since February 2022. Moreover, two key rent-related components within the measure saw their smallest monthly gains in more than three years.But on the other hand, the annual rise was still 4.7%, a level that, excluding the Covid era, was last seen in mid-1991 when CPI inflation...

The Nasdaq Composite crossed a closely followed mark for the first time ever on Wednesday. Investors can thank Alphabet 's breakout on the back of a quantum announcement. The tech-heavy index eclipsed the 20,000 level , while the more-concentrated Nasdaq 100 also touched all-time highs. One of the best performers within tech was the Google parent, whose shares surged 5.5% and also hit a new intraday high. Alphabet rallied on Wednesday after the megacap technology company released its first version of an artificial intelligence model. That marks a second day of eye-popping gains for the stock, as shares jumped more than 5% on Tuesday following Alphabet's unveiling of a "breakthrough" quantum computing chip called Willow. GOOGL ALL mountain Alphabet, all-time Alphabet shares are now tracking...

Tech stocks on display at the Nasdaq.Peter Kramer | CNBCAlphabet and Tesla climbed to fresh records on Wednesday, closing at all-time highs alongside Amazon and Meta as the tech megacaps lifted the Nasdaq past 20,000 for the first time.Tech's seven trillion-dollar companies added roughly $416 billion in market cap for the day.For Alphabet, the two-day 11% rally was driven by the company's launch of its latest quantum computing chip, which it revealed on Monday and described as a "breakthrough" and "an important step in our journey to build a useful quantum computer with practical applications" in drug discovery, battery design and other areas.Alphabet closed at $195.40 on Wednesday, topping its prior high of $191.18, which it reached on July 10.Tesla had been below its previous record for ...