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Amazon AMZN continues to ride on its robust cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services ("AWS"). Strengthening AWS offerings, which are constantly driving the company's cloud customer momentum, remains the key catalyst.The latest par

For Immediate ReleaseChicago, IL – June 15, 2023 – Zacks Equity Research shares First Citizen’s Bancshares FCNCA as the Bull of the Day and Icahn Enterprises IEP as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides

In a bid to expand its presence in the generative AI space, Alphabet’s GOOGL Google is leaving no stone unturned to introduce advanced search features.This is evident from the latest announcement of a generative AI-backed online s

Below is Validea's guru fundamental report for MICROSOFT CORP (MSFT). Of the 22 guru strategies we follow, MSFT rates highest using our Twin Momentum Investor model based on the published strategy of Dashan Huang. This momentum model looks for a combination of fundamental moment

With artificial intelligence (AI) accounting for a significant portion of broader market ebullience this year, some investors are pondering this disruptive technology’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) implications. More clarity will avail itself over time, but there are existing avenues through which market participants can access the potency of the AI investment thesis along with [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.

Ken Griffin's Citadel reported a record profit of $16 billion last year, bring its total earnings to $66 billion since its inception in 1990. That makes Griffin the most successful hedge fund manager in history, according to LCH Investments. It also makes him an excellent source

Launched on 06/22/2021, the Engine No. 1 Transform 500 ETF (VOTE) is a passively managed exchange traded fund designed to provide a broad exposure to the Large Cap Blend segment of the US equity market.

Alphabet Inc is cautioning employees about how they use chatbots, including its own Bard, at the same time as it markets the program around the world, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

ChatGPT is only the tip of the iceberg. And the iceberg is massive.

It has taken months of tortuous negotiations for Vodafone and CK Hutchison to agree a deal to create Britain's biggest mobile operator, but from a regulatory standpoint the hard work is only just beginning. The $19 billion tie-up will be scrutinised by Britain's Competition and Markets Authority, the antitrust regulator which made global headlines in April when it blocked Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard.

It has taken months of tortuous negotiations for Vodafone and CK Hutchison to agree a deal to create Britain's biggest mobile operator, but from a regulatory standpoint the hard work is only just beginning.

Facebook’s rebranding into Meta Platforms ( NASDAQ:META ) to reflect its growing focus on bringing the “metaverse to life” generated a lot of interest in the futuristic idea. Metaverse is an emerging digital concept based on virtual reality, augmented reality, and other advanced technologies. While macro pressures have forced some companies to postpone their metaverse projects, the long-term potential of the concept continues to be exciting. We used TipRanks Stock Comparison Tool to place Roblox ( NYSE:RBLX ), Nvidia ( NASDAQ:NVDA ), and Meta Platforms against each other to find Wall Street’s top metaverse pick.    Roblox (NYSE:RBLX) Roblox is an online gaming company that allows users to create and play games as well as interact with other players. The gaming-oriented metaverse company’s Q1 revenue grew 22% to $655.3 million, with average daily active users rising also rising 22% to 66.1 million. However, the loss per share worsened to $0.44 compared to $0.27 in the prior-year quarter. The company assured investors that it anticipates its bookings growth to surpass its compensation expense growth in Q1 2024. Roblox is expanding its user base by making continued improvements to its platform.   Is Roblox a Buy or Sell? On Tuesday, Canaccord analyst Jason Tilchen initiated coverage of RBLX stock with a Buy rating and a price target of $48. The analyst highlighted that while Roblox commenced its journey as a gaming hub for young kids, it has evolved to become “one of the leading destinations for immersive gaming and social interactions in persistent virtual worlds.” Tilchen added that the company’s investments to create more realistic “avatars” and communication features have helped it attract older users and venture into new international markets. Overall, the analyst believes that Roblox has a long-term opportunity to enter new verticals as technological advancements drive the mainstream adoption of the metaverse. Wall Street is cautiously optimistic on Roblox, with a Moderate Buy consensus rating based on 11 Buys, four Holds, and three Sells. The average price target of $43.73 implies about 9% upside. Shares have rallied nearly 42% year-to-date. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) The metaverse will need immensely high computing power and chip giant Nvidia is well-positioned to address this requirement. The company is already seeing high demand for its advanced chips, as several tech companies are aggressively investing in generative artificial intelligence (AI).  In 2021, Nvidia unveiled its Omniverse Enterprise offering that enables companies to create AI models, robotic simulations, and build digital twins of factories. In March, the company announced a collaboration with Microsoft ( NASDAQ:MSFT ), under which Microsoft Azure will host a new cloud offering from Nvidia called Nvidia Omniverse Cloud. This service will enable enterprise users to design, develop, deploy, and manage industrial metaverse applications. Additionally, at the GTC event held in March, Nvidia announced six new NVIDIA RTX Ada Lovelace architecture graphic processing units (GPUs) for laptops and desktops, which will help in meeting the demands of AI and the metaverse. What is the Prediction for Nvidia Stock? On May 30, CFRA analyst Angelo Zino reiterated a Buy rating on Nvidia after CEO Jensen Huang held a live keynote at the COMPUTEX conference in Taipei, where he announced a slew of new accelerated computing products. Zino believes that NVIDIA's accelerated computing GPUs stand out to be the biggest beneficiary of the AI wave. Zino contended that while bears will point to Nvidia’s “daunting” P/E valuation multiple, he thinks that investors need to be more forward-looking for a high-growth company like NVDA. He argued that a low 40s P/E based on the calendar year 2024 earnings is within NVDA's five-year historical forward P/E range and justified given his expectation that the company’s EPS can grow at a five-year CAGR of more than 25%. With 32 Buys and four Holds, Wall Street has a Strong Buy consensus rating on Nvidia stock. The average price target of $449.92 implies nearly 10% upside. Shares have skyrocketed over 180% so far in 2023. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) Meta’s rebranding in 2021 to emphasize its focus on evolving into a metaverse company sparked a lot of interest in investors about its growth potential. However, the mounting losses of the company’s Reality Labs division, which houses its metaverse projects like developing virtual and augmented reality devices and other foundational technologies for the metaverse, has been concerning. In Q1 2023, Meta’s Reality Labs division recorded an operating loss of nearly $4.0 billion. Last year, the division recorded an operating loss of $13.72 billion on revenue of $2.16 billion. While CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to invest in the metaverse, he is focused on bringing down the company’s overall costs in this “year of efficiency.” During the Q1 earnings call, Zuckerberg said that the narrative about the company shifting away from its focus on the metaverse vision is not accurate. He said that the company has been focusing on both and AI and metaverse for years now and will continue to do so. Is META Stock Worth Holding? On Wednesday, Wolfe Research analyst Deepak Mathivanan increased the price target for Meta stock to $330 from $300 and reiterated a Buy rating. Meta is a top pick at Wolfe Research. Mathivanan believes that few companies have all the building blocks required to create and deploy generative AI experiences that can significantly boost revenue and free cash flow growth, and Meta is one among them. Wall Street’s Strong Buy consensus rating on Meta is based on 37 Buys and five Holds. The average price target of $287.32 implies about 6% upside. Shares have jumped about 126% so far this year. Conclusion Metaverse is an emerging concept that could gain immense traction in the years ahead. Currently, Wall Street seems more optimistic about larger players like Meta Platforms and Nvidia compared to Roblox. While Nvidia has outperformed the other two stocks year-to-date, Wall Street sees comparable upside in the three stocks from current levels. As per TipRanks’ Smart Score System, Nvidia scores a “Perfect 10,” implying the stock could outperform the broader market.    Disclosure

After a ho-hum 2022 in which the stock lost 3.5% on a total-return basis, Microsoft ( NASDAQ:MSFT ) is back with a bang in 2023, with a gain of over 41.5% year-to-date. Investor interest in artificial intelligence (AI) is surging, and few companies are better positioned to capitalize on this next wave of technological advancement than Microsoft. Microsoft invested $1 billion in ChatGPT and Dall-E parent company OpenAI from 2019 to 2021, long before AI was the talk of the town, and doubled down with a massive $10 billion investment in OpenAI this year. Additionally, Microsoft is incorporating ChatGPT into its Bing search engine, which could help it to at least chip away at some of Alphabet’s ( NASDAQ:GOOGL ) ( NASDAQ:GOOG ) dominance in search through Google. Microsoft is also leveraging AI to improve its Azure cloud offerings.  If you are looking to gain exposure to this tech behemoth in your portfolio, one way to do so would be via ETFs. This allows investors to invest in Microsoft while also gaining exposure to other technology stocks that could benefit from similar themes and growth drivers. Because Microsoft is the second-largest company in the world, with a massive market valuation of nearly $2.5 trillion, you'll find the stock in plenty of ETFs. However, one Microsoft ETF particularly stands out as a long-term winner, with a proven track record of performance, low management fees, and a massive stake in Microsoft -- the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund ( NYSEARCA:XLK) .   Big-Time Microsoft Exposure The Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund is an ETF from State Street that invests in the technology sector of the S&P 500 ( SPX ), and it has a massive position in Microsoft. In fact, because Microsoft is such a large component of the S&P 500, it makes up nearly a quarter of this $46 billion ETF’s assets.  You can get an overview of the rest of XLK’s top 10 holdings using the chart below from TipRanks’ holdings tool. As you can see, Microsoft is XLK’s largest holding with a 23.7% weighting, but the second-largest holding, Apple ( NASDAQ:AAPL ), isn’t far behind with a 22.9% weighting. Together, the two tech giants account for nearly 50% of assets. Altogether, XLK has 66 holdings, and its top 10 make up 71.4% of the fund. Beyond these two dominant technology names, Nvidia ( NASDAQ:NVDA ) is XLK's third-largest holding. Nvidia’s semiconductors are crucial for powering generative AI applications like ChatGPT and Dall-E. Nvidia is joined by other leading semiconductor names like Broadcom ( NASDAQ:AVGO ) and Advanced Micro Devices ( NASDAQ:AMD ) in the top 10.  Beyond these stocks, you'll also find enterprise software names like Salesforce ( NYSE:CRM ), Adobe ( NASDAQ:ADBE ), and Oracle ( NYSE:ORCL ) that harbor their own AI ambitions. Salesforce will be holding an "AI Day" on June 12th and is working on a spate of new products to bolster its core CRM offering. Adobe is incorporating generative AI into its offerings with its Firefly product, which has rejuvenated the stock and propelled it to its highest level in over a year. Meanwhile, Oracle is a legacy tech name like Microsoft, but that doesn't mean it can't learn new tricks. Oracle is investing in AI startup Cohere (which Salesforce and Nvidia have also invested in) and will integrate its tools into its products. When it comes to Smart Scores, it's hard to beat XLK’s top 10 stocks. The Smart Score is TipRanks’ proprietary quantitative stock scoring system. It gives stocks a score from 1 to 10 based on eight key market factors. The score is data-driven and does not involve any human intervention. A Smart Score of 8 or above is equivalent to an Outperform rating. As you can see in the chart, eight of XLK’s top 10 holdings feature Smart Scores of 8 or above. XLK itself has an ETF Smart Score of 8.  Investor-Friendly Expense Ratio Another reason XLK is attractive is its low expense ratio of just 0.1%. This means that an investor allocating $10,000 to XLK would pay just $10 in fees in year one, and this beats many of the other ETFs you will find in the market today.  Reliable Track Record Lastly, XLK is a long-term winner that has built a stellar performance track record over the years. The ETF is up 34.7% year-to-date, but it’s not just a flash in the pan. As of the end of May, over a three-year time frame, XLK has a total annualized return of 19.9%. This return is even more impressive when you remember that it’s taking last year’s bear market into account. Over a five-year time frame, XLK has returned 20% annually, and over the past 10 years, it has returned 19.6% annually.  Is XLK Stock a Buy, According to Analysts? XLK enjoys a favorable view from Wall Street analysts, who collectively assign it a Moderate Buy rating. The average XLK stock price target of $176.64 represents upside potential of just 2.8% from here. Of the 946 analyst ratings on the ETF, 63.6% are Buys, 31.9% are Holds, and just 4.4% are Sells. The Takeaway -- An ETF for Microsoft Lovers There are other major tech ETFs out there with large positions in Microsoft. For example, the Invesco QQQ Trust ( NASDAQ:QQQ) has a 12.9% position in the stock. QQQ is an excellent ETF, and while this is a large Microsoft position, it’s far below XLK’s 23.7% weighting. Furthermore, QQQ’s expense ratio of 0.2% is very reasonable, but it’s above XLK’s 0.1% expense ratio. The Vanguard Information Technology ETF ( NYSEARCA:VGT) is another top tech ETF. It has a sizable 19.3% position in Microsoft, but this is still slightly behind XLK’s. Nonetheless, VGT’s 0.1% expense ratio is equivalent to that of XLK’s. In reality, all three of these are great ETFs, but XLK is the top choice for ETF investors looking for large Microsoft exposure.  It’s also hard to beat XLK's total returns over time, and based on this track record, its low expense ratio, and 23.7% weighting towards Microsoft, this is a great ETF for investors who want to gain exposure to Microsoft while also being diversified into other stocks. Disclosure

Time is running out on a deadline for Microsoft to complete its $69 billion merger with Activision Blizzard, compelling the companies to ask a U.S. judge on Wednesday to quickly get the ball rolling on the Federal Trade Commission's legal bid to block the deal from closing.

(RTTNews) - A US judge has granted the Federal Trade Commission's request to temporarily block Microsoft Corp's (MSFT) acquisition of video game maker Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard asked a U.S. judge on Wednesday to quickly schedule a case management conference in the Federal Trade Commission's legal bid to block the companies from completing a $69 billion tie-up.

Advanced Micro Devices AMD is expanding its portfolio for generative AI with its Instinct MI300 Series accelerator family, strengthening its competitive position against NVIDIA, which is currently dominating the space.The recently

The Board of Directors of Caterpillar voted today to raise the quarterly dividend by ten cents, an 8% increase, to one dollar and thirty cents per share of common stock, payable August 18, 2023, to shareholders of record at the close of business on July 20, 2023. Caterpillar h

Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp's co-founder, is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday during his visit to China, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp's co-founder, is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday during his visit to China, two people with knowledge of the matter said.