6 Most Important Financial and Economic Stories Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 11:13AM EST · Published Jun 9, 4:59AM EDT

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6 Most Important Financial and Economic Stories Today — © https://www.flickr.com/photos/iphonedigital/

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has hired Dr. Sumbul Desai, who runs Stamford’s digital health initiatives. Apple has digital health products, primarily for Apple Watch. More and more of these may be transferred to the iPhone to create additional consumer features to differentiate it from other smartphones.

Hudson Bay, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, will cut 2,000 jobs in North America. It becomes the latest victim of the carnage in the brick-and-mortar retail business that has caused companies like Sears Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD) and Macy’s Inc. (NYSE: M) to close hundreds of stores. Industry experts predict layoffs and the shuttering of stores is far from over as they are cannibalized by Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and their own e-commerce efforts.

Japan’s Softbank, the majority owner of Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) will buy Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) robot arm, Boston Dynamics. Softbank is in the midst of raising a $100 billion investment fund.

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Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) is the most shorted tech stock, according to Bloomberg. One reason is that millions of its shares will become “unlocked,” which means insiders and other investors will be able to sell shares that were previously restricted. According to the news agency:

Investors are skeptical that the company, which owns the Snapchat photo-sharing app, can grow quickly enough to justify its valuation — now at about $22 billion — given aggressive competition from Facebook Inc., which has been copying some of Snapchat’s features. That’s helped drive short interest in Snap up to 28 percent of the free float, or shares available to be traded publicly, according to data from Markit Group Ltd. The increase comes before the first lockup expiration on the shares — on July 30 — when certain stakeholders and executives will be free to unload their positions for the first time since the March 1 IPO.

Snap shares last traded at $18.25, down from $29.44, the high point after its IPO

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) will offer buyouts to 15,000 salaried workers, mostly in the United States and Asia. The car maker has struggled recently, which cost CEO Mark Fields his job. He was replaced by Jim Hackett. This is Hackett’s first major move as he tries to turn around the company.

Nasdaq posted its 38th daily high during the year, which has not happened since the 1999 internet bubble.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.