Forbes Daily: Weak Jobs Report Stokes Stock Market Rally

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New York Times bestselling author and Forbes 50 Over 50 honoree Kristin Hannah has many fans, including Bill Gates.

Hannah’s book The Women, which tells a fictional story of military nurses serving in Vietnam, is the bestselling book released in 2024 so far with 829,115 print copies sold, according to data from Circana Bookscan. It’s also the only fiction book on Gates’ summer reading list, with the billionaire Microsoft cofounder calling it a “beautifully written tribute to a group of veterans who deserve more appreciation for the incredible sacrifices they made.”

Still, in a world where you can download anything instantly on a Kindle, overall print book sales are down almost 2 million from this time last year.

FIRST UP

Unemployment hit its highest level since November 2021, according to the June jobs report released Friday morning by the Labor Department, a fact that may make workers nervous but was welcomed by investors hoping for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. At 4.1%, the unemployment rate was above consensus economist estimates, but still in a normal range, and the economy added more jobs than expected, at 206,000.

On the heels of the jobs report, the benchmark S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed at record levels, led by major technology stocks, which benefit strongly from lower interest rates due to their reliance on debt financing and discretionary spending. Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta, five of the six American companies valued at over $1 trillion, each rose 1.2% or more Friday to set new record valuations.

MORE: It’s no surprise that Nvidia was the S&P 500’s best-performing stock during the first half of 2024, but there were several perhaps less predictable winners as the index rose to a record high: power providers Vistra, Constellation Energy and NRG Energy. The utilities sector is typically viewed as an underperformer during macroeconomic periods similar to today’s, but the companies alluded to demand for their services among power-hungry AI data centers. Meanwhile, companies like Walgreens, Lululemon and Intel watched the historic stock market run from the sidelines.

BUSINESS + FINANCE

Former U.S. defense contractor Douglas Edelman and his French wife, Delphine Le Dain have been charged in a decades-long scheme to defraud the U.S. and evade taxes on more than $350 million in income. The case is the biggest brought by the J-5, which brings together tax authorities of Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the U.K., and the U.S. to combat crime on a global level by sharing resources.

In an exclusive excerpt from Madoff: The Final Word, Ponzi king Bernie Madoff’s wife Ruth Madoff is portrayed as a liar. Trained as a bookkeeper, she regularly reconciled the account that housed the $68 billion fraud for decades. But “Ruthie Books” and her two sons were never charged with a crime, and both Bernie and Ruth always vigorously insisted she didn’t know anything about anything.

WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP

ROE is net income divided by shareholders’ equity: A typical number is a percentage in the teens, but a lot of companies can boast of numbers much higher. There was a time when a handsome return on equity was taken as a sign of management skill. Our advice is to keep an eye on it, use it to compare a company to its peers, but be aware of the metric’s limitations.

TECH + INNOVATION ​​

Samsung saw its shares reach a three-year high Friday after forecasting a 15-fold increase in second quarter profits, and smashing analysts’ expectations. The South Korean tech giant has not released much more information, but the impressive forecasts are most likely due to strong performance in its semiconductor unit and the ongoing AI boom.

MONEY + POLITICS

President Joe Biden continues to reject mounting calls to drop out of the presidential race, doubling down on his campaign’s assurance he is not too old, even after his disastrous debate performance last month. In an interview with ABC News over the weekend, Biden admitted the debate was a “bad episode.” Meanwhile, a growing list of billionaire Biden supporters, as well as Donald Trump critics, urged the president to drop his bid, including IAC chair Barry Diller, Netflix’s Reed Hastings, Walmart heiress Christy Walton and crypto investor Michael Novogratz.

Across the pond, the U.K.’s Labour Party secured a widely-expected win in the general election last week, a result seen as the start of a new era in British politics after 14 years of Conservative rule. And in France’s high-stakes parliamentary election, voter turnout surged as the left and center tamped down efforts from the far-right National Rally to grasp power in the National Assembly.

SCIENCE + HEALTHCARE

GLP-1 drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro could also have knock-on effects like protecting against cancer, new research suggests. When prescribed to treat type 2 diabetes, the drugs were associated with a “significant risk reduction” for 10 different cancers, compared to insulin.

TRAVEL + LIFESTYLE

Boeing pleaded guilty to fraud in a deal with the Justice Department that will allow the plane maker to avoid facing trial in a federal criminal case linked to deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019. In a court filing late on Sunday, Boeing agreed to pay an additional fine of $243.6 million—the same penalty the company had paid as part of a settlement in 2021 that it was later accused of violating.

TRENDS + EXPLAINERS

A federal court ruled against the FTC and issued a temporary ban on non-compete agreements, but while widely watched, the decision only applies to plaintiffs involved in the first legal challenge to the FTC’s ban on non-competes from April. Judge Ada Brown of the Northern District of Texas noted her court intends to rule on the merits by August 30.

DAILY COVER STORY

Why Inflation Battered Argentinians Are Turning To Crypto

TOPLINE Inflation has become as much a part of Argentine identity in recent years as asados, its world famous beef barbecues cum social events. In fact, a poignant example of the country’s soaring inflation, which registered a cumulative 276% over the past 12 months, is that the diet of Argentines is changing. Demand for beef, the country’s main food staple, is falling as Argentines resort to less-expensive proteins like pork and chicken. With prices that some forecasters see rising as much as 600% this year, steak is off the table.

But while Argentinians, who tend to eat twice as much beef per capita as hamburger-happy Americans, are just now starting to resort to food substitutes, they have been looking for ways to swap out of their ever-weakening peso for decades. In fact, Argentines have used black-market establishments, nicknamed locally “cuevas”(caves) or “arbolitos” (little trees), to purchase dollars for at least 50 years.

But now a new way of obtaining dollars has taken off: cryptocurrencies. In fact, Argentina’s crypto adoption is higher as a percentage of its global population than any other country in the Western hemisphere. Of 130 million visitors to 55 of the largest exchanges worldwide—a proxy for usage—2.5 million came from Argentina, a Forbes study with SimilarWeb analytics firm data found.

Argentines are not playing the meme coin lottery or trying to strike it rich with the next hot token. Instead, they typically buy and hold tether (USDT), a synthetic dollar with a market value of $112 billion. “Argentina is an anomalous market where many people buy USDT and don’t leave room for much else,” said Maximiliano Hinz, head of Latin America for crypto exchange Bitget. “We don’t see this elsewhere. Argentines buy spot tether and don’t do anything with it.”

But while stablecoins such as tether might seem like a perfect escape hatch from Argentina’s inflationary woes, they come with their own set of risks. The country has not created any regulations to reign in this wild industry, and the world’s most-trustworthy exchanges and marketplaces (as rated by Forbes) are not the choices most widely used by Argentinians.

FACTS + COMMENTS

Netflix and the streaming services of NBC, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery have all increased their number of paid U.S. subscribers so far this year, as the streaming wars intensify and more customers cut the cord with traditional cable. Netflix is by far the fastest-growing streaming service of the year:

2.6 million: The number of subscribers Netflix added from the end of December to the end of May

90 million: The number of paid subscribers that Starz, Apple TV+, Hulu and Disney+ had at the end of May combined, as they’ve lost subscribers this year

$635 billion: How much the subscription economy is expected to be worth by 2025

STRATEGY + SUCCESS

It’s no secret that financial literacy in the U.S. is lacking, and it leads to a key emotion influencing how people of every age handle their money—not necessarily excitement or uncertainty, but shame. If you feel shame about your finances, it could be worthwhile (literally) to talk to someone. A financial therapist can help uncover any psychological causes, and from there, financial coaches and advisors are resources to fill in any knowledge gaps on a one-time or ongoing basis.

VIDEO

QUIZ

For all its ups and downs, the market value of all cryptocurrencies rose by $661 billion in the first six months of 2024, according to CoinGecko. Bitcoin accounted for the vast majority of that gain, but the dominant currency was outdone by several “meme coins.” Which of the following tokens did not outperform bitcoin in the first half?

A. Dogwifhat

B. Floki

C. A;slkdjf

D. Pepe

Check your answer.

ACROSS THE NEWSROOM

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Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire.