The dollar rose on Friday as a drop in the U.S. unemployment rate for March despite a much lower-than-expected number of jobs created in the month kept the outlook for interest rates intact this year. Investors still expect two more rate increases in 2017, analysts said, although the probability of a June hike has declined to 61 percent from more than 70 percent late on Thursday. U.S. non-farm payrolls increased by 98,000 jobs last month, the fewest since last May, as the retail sector shed empl

Gold pared gains after hitting a five-month high earlier on Friday after U.S. jobs data dampened expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve would raise interest rates and amid rising global security tensions. U.S. employers added the fewest number of workers in 10 months in March, boosting gold which is most attractive to investors in a low interest rate environmentSpot gold was up 0.36 percent at $1,255.82 per ounce, after earlier climbing to its highest since Nov. 10 at $1,270.46 and on track

The toughest U.S. action yet in Syria’s six-year-old civil war has ramped up geopolitical uncertainty in the Middle East. U.S. oil rigs rose for the week ended April 7 by 10, to 672 rigs, data from Baker Hughes revealed on Friday. This marks the twelfth week in a row that drillers added more rigs. Brent crude futures were up 29 cents at $55.17 a barrel after reaching an intraday peak of $56.08, the highest since March 7, shortly after the U.S. missile strike was announced. U.S. West Texas Interm

The missile strikes occured as President Donald Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. A U.S. military official told NBC that 59 tomahawks had been fired from U.S. navy destroyers, which hit an airfield near Homs. The missiles hit aircraft and infrastructure including the runway, NBC reported. There has been no word on casualties yet, but no people were targeted, the official told NBC. The missile attack was launched at 8:40 am HK/SIN on Friday, or 8:

The Federal Reserve March meeting minutes indicated central bank officials are worried the stock market’s multiple has become a bit too rich. If the Fed is right and the P/E ratio is in for a contraction, it’s doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the bull market, or even that stocks will decline, history shows. The chart below shows the median return of the S&P 500 during years in the last two decades when the index’s trailing P/E declined. We used a median return because the 40 percent loss in 2

Microsoft has released a new app that’s only available to iPhone users. “Who’s In?” works with iMessage and lets users choose an activity — like going out to dinner or watching a movie — and then send it out to a group of people. Microsoft hasn’t typically been adept at creating social networks, though. Let’s take a tour.

Apple Clips, the latest application from Apple, is now available to download. Apple Clips might be viewed as a take on Snapchat — it’s about recording and sharing quick video clips with friends, just like Snapchat — but it’s also very different. It doesn’t, for example, have a section for Stories, Friends or advertisements. It’s simple in its execution: you open the app, hit record, add some emoji, and send it off via text message. Let’s take a quick look at how Apple Clips works and what it’s a

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink shared his views on the markets and President Donald Trump’s agenda in an exclusive interview Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “You’re seeing a slowing down of our economy into the first quarter, we’re going to grow probably less than 1.5 percent. Much of it is people are just waiting to see … what’s going to happen with tax reform and deregulation.” On the economy: “You have high confidence in America, but you’re not seeing that translated into sales. BlackRock is the w

Investors should avoid Advanced Micro Devices shares because the company will suffer from competition from Nvidia and Intel this year, according to Goldman Sachs, which initiated coverage on the chipmaker with a sell rating. AMD shares are up 25 percent this year and 406 percent in the past 12 months through Wednesday on anticipation of its new gaming graphics and processor chips. new product launches, cost management and BS [balance sheet] deleveraging) has improved under CEO Lisa Su, we believ

Deutsche Bank lowered its rating on T-Mobile shares to hold from buy, citing a more difficult competitive market due to the expansion of unlimited wireless plan offerings. “We still expect TMUS to exceed its postpaid net add guidance and meet 2017 EBITDA targets; but, we think pricing sees increasing pressure going forward, and expect slowing service revenue growth ahead,” analyst Matthew Niknam wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. ” Net net , we think current consensus estimates and stock pric

CFRA Research warned investors about bank stocks ahead of earnings results due to high valuations and aggressive Wall Street estimates. The firm cited how the S&P 500 bank industry group has rallied more than 20 percent since the election. “There has been much optimism baked into the market regarding the potential benefits from the Trump administration’s policies regarding tax reform, deregulation and capital spending, and the banks’ shares have been key beneficiaries of that optimism,” investme

TipRanks, a service that ranks Wall Street, identified the best analysts covering the technology industry and found which stocks they like right now. We use a natural language processing algorithm to rank analysts based on two factors:Average return of buy-sell recommendationsSuccess rate of buy-sell recommendationsWe combined the screener’s insights with a database scan for the most popular tech stocks by top analysts in the last month. Here are five favorite stocks from the best-performing tec

Jeff Bezos’ rocketing wealth fuels his space ambitions. The Amazon founder is selling $1 billion of stock a year to finance his dream of colonizing space. Bezos’ space company Blue Origin has similar ambitions and technology to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Both think reusing rockets, rather than letting them burn up on re-entry, will lower the price of space flight dramatically. SpaceX wants to fly people around the moon next year, while Blue Origin plans to start by taking passengers on 11-minute weight

Though 83 percent of parents recently polled by Ally Financial said that saving is one of the most important financial skills for children to learn, close to 9 out of 10 parents admit that they don’t talk to their kids regularly about it. “It’s surprising but believable: Parents feel uncomfortable having conversations with kids about money,” said Jacqueline Howard, director of corporate citizenship at Ally. To that end, the American Bankers Association is holding Teach Children to Save Day on Fr

Everyone’s familiar with the distracted or non-responsive customer service rep. One start-up founder aims to make that phone call more pleasant. Cogito, a voice technology start-up in Boston, is using AI to make customer service representatives “more charming,” chief executive Joshua Feast said to CNBC. “We’ve built a way to numerically measure and understand how well a conversation between human beings is going,” said Feast. Cogito is now being used to give customer service representatives real

Amazon’s $50 million dollar NFL streaming deal shouldn’t worry broadcasters, because it “hasn’t cannibalized television” yet, former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson told CNBC on Wednesday. On Closing Bell, Pilson said it’s important to note a few things when looking at the deal. That could change if the NFL were to give an exclusive deal to an over-the-top (OTT) platform, or social network like Facebook or Twitter. “I don’t see an OTT platform taking away a package from television,” he said. “S

YouTube on Wednesday officially launched its streaming bundle, YouTube TV, starting in select markets around the US. In addition to the content partners YouTube already revealed — including ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, Fox Sports, Comcast SportsNet, and others, today YouTube announced a new deal with AMC Networks. YouTube is looking to distinguish its service from the slew of rivals, from AT&T’s DirecTV Now, to Hulu’s live TV service, which is set to launch shortly. YouTube TV includes access to Yo

The first thing you have to do is decide to become a millionaire, multimillionaire, or billionaire if you want.” To help you start thinking like the wealthy, CNBC rounded up pearls of wisdom from self-made millionaires and billionaires that may change the way you look at money. Struggling to make ends meet with his job at a car dealership, the then 25-year-old Cardone put his mom’s advice into effect. “Even though I hated the job, I decided I would throw myself into my sales job 100 percent,” he

Now, it has its sights set on poaching top talent from life sciences and health care. The Alphabet subsidiary, which aims to use technology to solve “big urban problems,” this month posted new job listings for health care positions, including engineers, a chief health officer (a primary care physician) and a head of community health for an effort called “Care Labs.” Not much has been shared publicly about Care Labs, aside from a Medium post that spells out a big vision to imagine “how care deliv

Ryan Falvey knew his organization, the Center for Financial Services Innovation, was highly regarded at JPMorgan, but he was shocked to see it so prominently featured in CEO Jamie Dimon’s annual shareholder letter. Of the company’s $9.5 billion investment in tech last year, $600 million went to fintech initiatives, including CFSI, Dimon said. “I was completely blown away,” said Falvey, a managing director at CFSI, in an interview on Wednesday. For Dimon, technology has become a central talking p