Tobacco stocks slid Tuesday after new Nielsen data showed cigarette sales declined sharply in the past month.

The iShares MSCI Germany ETF (NYSE: EWG) gapped lower on May 23 and then gapped higher on May 24.The interesting thing is that the gap lower caused the ETF to move outside of a trend channel that has defined the various cycles over the last few months and the gap higher moved it back into the channel. The oscillators aren’t in oversold territory, but the stochastic readings did come close and have now made a bullish crossover. One potential concern is the fact that the 10-day moving average just crossed bearishly below the 50-day.

Microsoft and J.P. Morgan Join Forces for Big Bet on Blockchain​ Also in this newsletter Can A.I.Help Treat Mental Health? Artificial intelligence is no longer just a staple of the page and movie screen – it is increasingly and creatively used in a variety of real-world contexts.

Known for its generous dividend yield, one of the largest utility company in the United States – Dominion Energy, is all set to lose its tag of ‘dividend growth machine’ as the company plans to slow down its dividend growth to ensure it remains a great income stock. Sitting at the top end of the spectrum in terms of dividend yield compared to its peers, the company has an impeccable record of increasing its dividend annually for 16 consecutive years.The company has been recently seen moving its business more and more toward assets with regulated businesses or fee-based structures.

Shares of the American sportswear and footwear retailer, Foot Locker, plunged more than 16% on Friday after the shoe retailer reported fiscal first-quarter earnings that missed Wall Street profit and revenue estimates. Company’s adjusted earnings per share for Q1 stood at $1.53 compared to Wall Street’s estimate of $1.60.While the revenue for the quarter stood at $2.08 billion against the expectation of $2.11 billion, despite the net sales increasing by 2.62% during the quarter. On an unadjusted basis, Foot Locker reported fiscal first-quarter net income of $172 million, or $1.52 per share, up from $165 million, or $1.38 per share a year earlier. The main reason for such an unsatisfactory performance of the company is its excessive dependence on major shoe companies like Nike (NKE) who are increasingly bypassing the retailers by directly selling its product to their customers.

Escalating tensions between two of the largest economies of the world, U.S. and China, reached another level at the beginning of this month after President Trump announced an increase in tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods from 10% to 25%.Further, he also threatened to apply 25% tariffs on the remaining imports from China worth around $300 billion. However, according to chief U.S. economist at Nomura - Lewis Alexander, levying 25% tariff on all Chinese goods entering American borders is likely to hurt U.S. economic growth especially when the economy is already showing signs of a slowdown in the recent months. He emphasized that the import tariffs are majorly paid by the American importers and the American consumers rather the Chinese, therefore it can result into core inflation in America growing by 0.5% point over the next 12 months. He further added that owing to this tariff hike the likely impact on U.S. economic growth is how trade developments affect business confidence an

According to a press release, Microsoft and JP Morgan Chase have “signed a memorandum of understanding to form a strategic partnership to accelerate the adoption of enterprise blockchain.” The deal will see Microsoft support JP Morgan’s Quorum distributed ledger platform through their cloud-based Azure Blockchain Service. While the conversation around blockchain in some industries can seem like an exercise in marketing speak, finance has worked to activate its potential to privately and securely transmit sensitive information and continues to develop exciting uses for the technology.Quorum is an especially successful example, offering an “enterprise-focused version of Ethereum” that facilitates high speed, secure transactions “within a permissioned group of known participants” for the financial industry.

Burger King’s veggie plunge seems to be paying off in healthy traffic. The Restaurant Brands International-owned fast food chain started testing a vegetarian version of its Whopper, made with the plant-based Impossible Burger, in several cities starting April. According to a report from inMarket inSights, Burger King locations in its test market, St. Louis, outperformed the chain’s national foot traffic average by 18.5% in April.Outside St. Louis, stores had a decrease in foot traffic by 1.75% from March’s average, according to the study (as reported by CNBC). During its first quarter, the chain reported same-store sales growth of 2.2%, down from 3.8% a year earlier.

Raising tariffs on all Chinese goods that enter American borders will likely hurt U.S. economic growth, which has already shown signs of slowing in recent months, according to Japanese financial firm Nomura.

The stock market and economic outlook in the United States is “deteriorating,” according to an analysis from one of Wall Street’s top investment banks. Renewed trade tensions and a slump in economic data — ranging from falling durable goods and capital spending to a downshift in the services sector — has put U.S. profits and economic growth at risk, Morgan Stanley warned Tuesday.

The sniping began shortly after Apple unveiled its new credit card with Goldman Sachs. In an elaborate presentation in March, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed the biggest yet mash-up between the worlds of big tech and big finance, a card that supposedly reimagines consumers’ relationship with plastic.Rivals of the investment bank wasted no time taking shots at the deal.

The investment bank also included the stock it to its Conviction Buy list. Praising new content among Activision’s games including "Storm Rising" and Workshop mode for "Overwatch," "Rise of Shadows" and "The Dalaran Heist for Hearthstone", Goldman said that it sees an "inflection" in the game-maker's earnings path.The analysts also pointed at the upcoming releases of Activision’s  "Diablo Immortal" and "Call of Duty Mobile" games as potential tailwinds for the stock.

The news led to the company’s shares climbing nearly +6.4% in premarket trading on Tuesday. SeaWorld will buy back about 5.6 million shares from the Pacific Alliance Group affiliate.Additionally, Hill Path Capital LP will acquire 13.2 million shares of SeaWorld from a separate affiliate of Pacific Alliance Group, thereby bulking up its ownership in the company. Up to three Hill Path director nominees would be appointed to the board of SeaWorld, as indicated by the latter.

Authentic Brands Group is buying Sports Illustrated brand for $110 million. Sports Illustrated's current owner Meredith Corporation will continue to publish the magazine’s physical and digital copies, after completion of the deal.Authentic Brands Group, on the other hand, will take charge of the business development, licensing and marketing of the magazine’s intellectual property. Authentic Brands will acquire, as part of the deal, all Sports Illustrated brands including Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated Kids, Sportsperson of the Year, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, SI and SI TV. The company will also get the rights to Sports Illustrated's archive of 2 million photos. Last year, Sports Illustrated was offered up for sale, along with Meredith’s other publications including Time, Fortune and Money magazines, which the company had come to own via its purchase of Time Inc.   Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne Benioff became buyers of Time in Septe

Alphabet’s Google will invest 600 million euros ($670 million) to build a data center in Finland , as the company looks to speed up data access. The new investment would count towards a total investment of 1.4 billion euros by Google in Finland so far, as indicated by the company.  The tech giant’s total investment in five data centers in Europe is more than 4.3 billion euros since 2007. The announcement of Google’s latest expansion in Finland comes amidst the company’s plans to up the ante on its video gaming products.In the first quarter this year, Google had accrued capital expenditures of around $4.5 billion, as it spent heavily on data centers, servers and office facilities.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Novartis’ $2.1 million gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy — making it the world’s most expensive drug.

Fiat Chrysler (NYSE: FCAU) has delivered a non-binding letter to the Renault (OTCPK: RNLSY) board proposing a combination of their respective businesses as a 50/50 merger.

In a cunning move, TJX survived even though many of its brick-and-mortar peers crumbled by selling products cheaper than Amazon, quickly rotating products to retain customers, and channeling clearance products from other retailers through its own shelves. As per its latest Q1 filing, TJX’s comparable store sales rose 5% ahead of its 3% growth last year.Even though its net income fell by 2% to $700 million, its buybacks enhanced its EPS by a penny to $0.57 beating estimates by three cents. If its full-year comps rose by 2% - 3%, it would mark the company’s 24th consecutive year of positive comps growth.

In line with its strategy to buy several small acquisitions of start-ups, Apple’s latest haul is Tueo Health, a small start-up committed to developing a system of helping parents monitor asthma symptoms in sleeping children.In 2017, the start-up raised a modest $1.1 million in funding. Tueo Health’s mobile app works with commercial breathing sensors to help manage asthma symptoms in children while they are sleeping.

So perhaps a partnership is on the horizon. However, it is still unclear whether the probable partnership would also mean Fiat eventually joining Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance, the French-Japanese strategic partnership since 1999 joined together through a cross-sharing agreement. Apparently, The Financial Times was the first to get hands on the story.Back in March, it reported that Renault is likely to initiate merger discussions with Nissan within a year which may further lead to the acquisition of Fiat Chrysler. Fiat’s CEO seems to be extremely eager to join the partnership as he believes it may make the company even stronger. If Fiat Chrysler eventually becomes part of the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance, the latter would become the largest global automaker specializing in a plug-in electric vehicle with annual combined sales of 15.6 million cars.