Israel kills top Hezbollah figure in Beirut strike, Reuters sources say
Top Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil was killed on Friday in an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs, two security sources told Reuters.
Everyone's watching Netflix this week — Netflix earnings, that is. And it will be a make-or-break moment for the company that's made its name synonymous with streaming itself.
Here's the deal: On Tuesday evening, after the stock market closes, Netflix will report perhaps the in its 25-year history. Investors are on the edge of their seats to see whether this quarter was just Regular Bad or Holy Crap Bad — there aren't any realistic expectations that Netflix will surprise with the kind of good news that made it into one of Wall Street's most hyped companies.
Key background:
So when Netflix reports, that 2 million figure will be on everyone's minds. If by some miracle in comes in less than that, investors can breathe a sigh of relief. On the other hand...
"There will be hell to pay if they report a number that is significantly higher than the 2 million loss being thrown around," Andrew Hare, a senior vice president of research at Magid, told CNN Business.
Other things to watch for:
Details on Netflix's (some would say long overdue) pivot to an ad-supported model.
The crackdown on password sharing
Netflix is still the king of streaming, with 221.6 million subscribers worldwide. But the competition is gaining quickly, offering premium content at a lower price. Disney+ has only been around since late 2019 and already boasts more than 135 million global subscribers. Hulu, which is also owned by Disney, has over 41 million (and, as the Wall Street Journal , Hulu has become Disney's fastest-growing streaming service in the United States.)
Wall Street will certainly take that huge market share into consideration, but analysts say Netflix has got to pad tomorrow's bad news with some concrete ideas about how it'll hold onto the throne. Times are tough, but, as Hare put it: "No one has the stomach for a business losing millions of subscribers every quarter."
Bank earnings largely missed forecasts for the second quarter, but the Vampire Squid of Wall Street is living up to its powerhouse reputation. Goldman Sachs posted a profit of US$2.9 billion, or $7.73 a share — well above expectations of $6.61 a share.
Rivals JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America all missed forecasts, dragged down by the investment banking side of the business. Goldman got a boost from its massive bond trading unit as revenue for fixed-income trading surged (hat tip to Jay Powell and the Fed for raising interest rates.)
Why it matters: "If you didn't look at anything else — you just looked at the bank numbers — you wouldn't be thinking there's a recession around the corner," Mark Conrad, a portfolio manager at Algebris Investments, told my colleague Julia Horowtiz.
Financial anxiety is deepening in China, and that's got massive implications for the global economy.
Here's the deal: Over the weekend, Chinese authorities stepped in to try to quell an uproar from homebuyers who are staging a mass mortgage boycott,
The way homebuying works in China, owners often have to start making mortgage payments before their house or apartment is even built (and you thought the U.S. housing market was wild...). But because of a cash crunch among big developers, many projects have been delayed or stalled.
At the same time, home prices are also falling, putting some buyers underwater. Their unbuilt homes are now worth less than they paid for them, and they don't even serve the most fundamental purpose of, well, providing shelter. Naturally, the people who "own" those non-existent homes are pretty pissed off.
Last week, buyers across 47 cities organized a boycott and suspended their payments.
That rare show of dissent came around the same time another group of citizens staged a protest to demand the central bank help them regain access to their life savings held in accounts that have been frozen by a handful of rural banks.
Protests are, to put it mildly, unwelcome in China, as the government knows all too well how quickly social unrest can spread. That's why the country's banking regulator stepped in on Sunday, urging lenders to increase financial support for real estate developers so they can complete unfinished projects. It also pledged to boost capital buffers for thousands of small banks facing a cash crunch.
The leadership in Beijing is right to be worried. On Friday, China reported its second-quarter gross domestic product grew 0.4% from a year ago — the weakest performance since the first quarter of 2020.
A crisis in the property market is especially problematic for China because real estate makes up a whopping 30% of total economic activity.
"In a worst-case scenario, the issue could trigger systemic financial risk and social instability, given housing's role as a bedrock of the broader financial system," , a managing director at Teneo. "But our base case is that regulators will succeed in containing the crisis by strong-arming state-owned banks into supporting troubled developers so that they can complete stalled projects."
Top Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil was killed on Friday in an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs, two security sources told Reuters.
Since she was a young girl growing up in Vancouver, Ginny Lam says her mom Yat Hei Law made it very clear she favoured her son William, because he was her male heir.
The province's public security minister said he was "shocked" Thursday amid reports that a body believed to be that of a 14-year-old boy was found this week near a Hells Angels hideout near Quebec City.
An Ontario man says it is 'unfair' to pay a $1,500 insurance surcharge because his four-year-old SUV is at a higher risk of being stolen.
Israel’s military has struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, in a dramatic escalation in a year-long period of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Emergency crews in northern Ontario found the bodies of four people inside a home where a fire broke out Thursday night.
A paid passenger on an expedition to the Titanic with the company that owned the Titan submersible testified before a U.S. Coast Guard investigatory panel Friday that the mission he took part in was aborted due to an apparent mechanical failure.
Following the MIND diet for 10 years produced a small but significant decrease in the risk of developing thinking, concentration and memory problems, a new study found.
The Montreal couple from Mexico and their three children facing deportation have received a temporary residence permit.
They say a dog is a man’s best friend. In the case of Darren Cropper, from Bonfield, Ont., his three-year-old Siberian husky and golden retriever mix named Bear literally saved his life.
A growing group of brides and wedding photographers from across the province say they have been taken for tens of thousands of dollars by a Barrie, Ont. wedding photographer.
Paleontologists from the Royal B.C. Museum have uncovered "a trove of extraordinary fossils" high in the mountains of northern B.C., the museum announced Thursday.
The search for a missing ancient 28-year-old chocolate donkey ended with a tragic discovery Wednesday.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is celebrating an important milestone in the organization's history: 50 years since the first women joined the force.
It's been a whirlwind of joyful events for a northern Ontario couple who just welcomed a baby into their family and won the $70 million Lotto Max jackpot last month.
A Good Samaritan in New Brunswick has replaced a man's stolen bottle cart so he can continue to collect cans and bottles in his Moncton neighbourhood.
David Krumholtz, known for roles like Bernard the Elf in The Santa Clause and physicist Isidor Rabi in Oppenheimer, has spent the latter part of his summer filming horror flick Altar in Winnipeg. He says Winnipeg is the most movie-savvy town he's ever been in.
Edmontonians can count themselves lucky to ever see one tiger salamander, let alone the thousands one local woman says recently descended on her childhood home.