6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:25PM EDT · Published Oct 22, 4:54AM EDT

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Chinese stocks surged on hope the government will stimulate the economy. According to Reuters:

Asian share markets swung into the black on Monday as the promise of more stimulus boosted Chinese stocks for a second session and helped offset geopolitical concerns over Saudi Arabia, Italy and Brexit

A rise in crude production due to fracking is straining transportation infrastructure. According to The Wall Street Journal:

As pipeline bottlenecks crimp the U.S. shale boom, some companies are racing to address the next potential constraint on American oil output: the terminals to export crude to foreign markets.

Oil exports have been a key release valve for U.S. producers in the three years since Congress lifted a longtime ban on overseas crude sales. Exports topped 2.1 million barrels daily in September and are projected to approach four million barrels within two years, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics

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The movie “Halloween” broke several records. Accord to Box Office Mojo:

With a staggering, $77.5 million debut, Universal and Blumhouse’s Halloween topped the weekend with the second largest October opening weekend of all-time. The horror film headlined a massive weekend overall weekend, that saw the top twelve combine for over $160 million, making this the second largest October weekend ever.

As already mentioned, Halloween’s $77.5 million three-day debut was the second largest October opening weekend of all-time, coming less than $3 million shy of the record set by Venom earlier this month. That said, Halloween did deliver the largest October opening day of all-time, topping Venom’s $32.5 million. The film’s opening is also the second largest ever for an R-rated horror, topping the $53.8 million opening for The Nun a month ago and behind Its $123.4 million debut last month

The new chairman of CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) has left. According to The New York Times:

Richard D. Parsons, a longtime media executive who less than a month ago was named the interim chairman of CBS to help stabilize the company, said on Sunday that he was stepping down because of illness.

Forced again to reshuffle its leadership ranks, the CBS Corporation named as his replacement Strauss Zelnick, the head of the video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software. Mr. Zelnick, who is widely respected within the media industry, was appointed to the CBS board in early September. He had led the music publisher BMG Entertainment and had served as president of 20th Century Fox.

The value of the largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history rose again. According to CNBC:

The games continue: With no one hitting all winning numbers in Saturday’s Powerball drawing, the jackpot has jumped to $620 million.

And after no one won the top prize in Friday night’s Mega Millions drawing, that haul has surged to a staggering $1.6 billion — the largest jackpot in U.S. lottery history

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) could kill all or part of its dividend. According to CNNBusiness:

General Electric’s 119-year-old dividend is a source of pride inside this once-dependable company.

But GE is no longer reliable. The conglomerate’s financial deterioration — debt is high and earnings firepower is shrinking fast — could force new GE boss Larry Culp to take an axe to the dividend.

One of the only things that GE bulls and bears on Wall Street seem to agree on is that the dividend will get cut.

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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.