Protara Therapeutics ( TARA ) lost ~22% on Tuesday after the company posted updated interim data from a mid-stage trial for its lead candidate TARA-002 in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. Citing a Jan. 28 data cut of its Phase 2 ADVANCED-2 trial, the company said that patients with Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-unresponsive NMIBC indicated a complete response rate of 68.2% and 33...
Protara Therapeutics ( TARA ) lost ~22% on Tuesday after the company posted updated interim data from a mid-stage trial for its lead candidate TARA-002 in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. Citing a Jan. 28 data cut of its Phase 2 ADVANCED-2 trial, the company said that patients with Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-unresponsive NMIBC indicated a complete response rate of 68.2% and 33.3% after six months and 12 months of therapy, respectively. In the BCG-naïve cohort, CR rates at six months and 12 months reached 66.7% and 57.9%, respectively, compared to 69% and 50% of CR rates recorded in a Nov. 7 data cut. According to the company, the cell-based therapy continued to show a favorable safety and tolerability profile with no Grade 3 or greater treatment-related adverse events. Looking ahead, Protara ( TARA ) reaffirmed its plans to begin its ADVANCED-3 registrational trial for TARA-002 in BCG-naïve patients in H2 2026. The enrollments in the BCG-unresponsive registrational cohort of the ADVANCED-2 are also expected to conclude later this year. More on Protara Therapeutics Protara Therapeutics, Inc. (TARA) Presents at 44th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference - Slideshow Protara Therapeutics, Inc. (TARA) Presents at 44th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Transcript Protara Therapeutics: End Of 2025 Proving Eventful Indeed Protara, CeriBell rise on FDA breakthrough designations Protara Therapeutics slumps 12%, raises $75M equity at $5.75 per share
Seems like the stock market is not the only thing experiencing a volatility storm lately. Last week my friends, family and I were in Park City, Utah, and a massive 2-foot snow storm hit that made for some amazing glade skiing. Sure enough on the way back home, a massive nor'easter hit that closed many of the major East Coast airports. It's been a cold, snowy winter here in upstate New York and wit...
Seems like the stock market is not the only thing experiencing a volatility storm lately. Last week my friends, family and I were in Park City, Utah, and a massive 2-foot snow storm hit that made for some amazing glade skiing. Sure enough on the way back home, a massive nor'easter hit that closed many of the major East Coast airports. It's been a cold, snowy winter here in upstate New York and with just one week until March, it's hard to believe we'll begin looking forward to the spring thaw. I'm also seeing early signs that the market's volatility storm — despite all the global macro and AI capex fears — may be approaching a thaw of its own. As a money manager who focuses on active portfolio management for informed investors (like CNBC Pro readers), even I am starting to get a case of motion sickness from all the back and forth price volatility that has gone nowhere! The Nasdaq 100 is trading at the same price as Oct. 2, 2025! There is so much talk of the great rotation out of growth/technology and into value and defensive areas, yet the Nasdaq 100 is only 4.5% off its all-time highs and still 51% from its 2025 lows. Context is key to prevent those costly emotions driving portfolio decisions. Looking at the Vanguard Growth (VUG) / Vanguard Value (VTV) ratio going back about 20 years we see a clear uptrend into Covid. After that the volatility comes in, but a trained eye will notice a pivot/decision zone in the chart at 2.30-2.10. We're testing this pivot zone for the fifth time. I'm wondering if it will again act as support setting up another period of growth outperformance to value. Another ratio we need to consider is Consumer Discretionary (XLY) / Consumer Staples (XLP) ratio. This chart goes back only 10 years (compared with the 20-year chart above). There is a similar pivot zone and uptrend line (red dashed) just below us at around 1.25-1.20. If this support line holds, it sets up a period of consumer discretionary outperformance to consumer staples. Included ...
The US president fights 1970s battles in a financialised age. America faces not a payments crisis but a slow erosion of industrial and technological power When the US supreme court voted 6-3 last Friday to strike down Donald Trump’s tariffs, he was incandescent . Two judges he had elevated – Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett – were suddenly recast as traitors to the cause. Both were, he insinuate...
The US president fights 1970s battles in a financialised age. America faces not a payments crisis but a slow erosion of industrial and technological power When the US supreme court voted 6-3 last Friday to strike down Donald Trump’s tariffs, he was incandescent . Two judges he had elevated – Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett – were suddenly recast as traitors to the cause. Both were, he insinuated, under the sway of foreign interests. The court ruled that the tariffs overstepped the powers the US Congress granted under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Mr Trump responded by reaching for a 1974 trade law, invoking “international payments problems” to slap on a 10% tariff for 150 days. Mr Trump was moulded by the 1970s. His political DNA was formed in that era’s crises and he governs as if America were still in the Nixon era of shock politics . In some ways there are parallels. The political mobilisation around economic insecurity echoes that period, as does distrust in elite authority. This explains why many populist politicians on the right reach for the 1970s, which fits the mood of decline and rivalry and offers a narrative of “restoring strength”. Internationally, Mr Trump also sees the world through the 1970s lens of industrial rivalry and trade grievance. But the world today is in a far more financialised and interdependent state. Continue reading...
Huw Pill warns combined effect of national insurance and minimum wage hikes hit youth employment in particular The negative effect of a combined increase in employers’ taxes and minimum wages has been “particularly acute” for young people, the Bank of England’s chief economist has warned. Huw Pill said on Tuesday that the increase in national insurance contributions (NICs) from April last year and...
Huw Pill warns combined effect of national insurance and minimum wage hikes hit youth employment in particular The negative effect of a combined increase in employers’ taxes and minimum wages has been “particularly acute” for young people, the Bank of England’s chief economist has warned. Huw Pill said on Tuesday that the increase in national insurance contributions (NICs) from April last year and the government’s efforts to equalise the “national living wage” had caused a particular issue for young people trying to find jobs. Continue reading...
Yahoo Finance Host Josh Lipton tracks today's top moving stocks and biggest market stories in this Market Minute, including Wall Street analysts upgrading their ratings on AI chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM) and Alphabet-owned (GOOG, GOOGL) Waymo expanding its robotaxi services to Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando Stay up to date on the latest market action, minute-by-minute, with Yahoo Finance's...
Yahoo Finance Host Josh Lipton tracks today's top moving stocks and biggest market stories in this Market Minute, including Wall Street analysts upgrading their ratings on AI chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM) and Alphabet-owned (GOOG, GOOGL) Waymo expanding its robotaxi services to Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando Stay up to date on the latest market action, minute-by-minute, with Yahoo Finance's Market Minute.
Liverpool council’s success in negotiating with landlords is a model of how to save to invest in housing Local authorities are experiencing some of the highest temporary accommodation bills on record. Councils in England spent £2.8bn last year on homeless accommodation – a 25% increase on the year before and a 100% increase since 2020. How did the bill get so high? The government’s redistribution ...
Liverpool council’s success in negotiating with landlords is a model of how to save to invest in housing Local authorities are experiencing some of the highest temporary accommodation bills on record. Councils in England spent £2.8bn last year on homeless accommodation – a 25% increase on the year before and a 100% increase since 2020. How did the bill get so high? The government’s redistribution of social housing stock from public to private hands is largely to blame. Instead of creating the “property-owning democracy” Margaret Thatcher envisioned, her right to buy created a nation of landlords, selling off 2m social homes – 41% of which are now rented out . This, alongside cuts to housing benefit so steep that the subsidy now covers only 2.4% of rental properties in England , ensures a steady queue of homeless people knocking on council doors – with similar problems faced by the devolved administrations. Councils end up paying landlords eye-watering amounts to house homeless people in the same properties that the government sold for as little as 30% of their market value . Continue reading...
Frank Brennan IBM ( IBM ) shares sold off on Monday on the basis that Anthropic's ( ANTHRO ) Claude Code product can translate COBOL, prompting concern about the tech giant's legacy business. However, investment firm Jefferies said the sell-off, which caused IBM shares to sink their most in 26 years, overlooked the fact that IBM is already disrupting itself. “We believe the concerns overlook that ...
Frank Brennan IBM ( IBM ) shares sold off on Monday on the basis that Anthropic's ( ANTHRO ) Claude Code product can translate COBOL, prompting concern about the tech giant's legacy business. However, investment firm Jefferies said the sell-off, which caused IBM shares to sink their most in 26 years, overlooked the fact that IBM is already disrupting itself. “We believe the concerns overlook that IBM is already disrupting itself, with watsonx Code Assistant for Z embedding GenAI directly into the mainframe to refactor COBOL into Java and modernize apps with full system context,” Jefferies analyst Brent Thill wrote in a note to clients. “Importantly, IBM's software reaccel hinges not on mainframe but on broader momentum across hybrid cloud, AI, automation and data.” Thill, who has a Buy rating on IBM, also has a $370 price target on the stock. Thill added that Watsonx Code Assistant for Z—which has already been in production for more than two years—removed the traditional burden of modernizing mainframes by using generative artificial intelligence to refactor the COBOL coding language into Java. It can also explain production code, and modernize apps, while at the same time, preserving critical logic. “Embedding these capabilities directly into the Z platform gives IBM a structural advantage over horizontal code assistants, which may be powerful but lack native access to mainframe data, tooling, and operational context,” Thill explained. “Modernization on mainframe is rarely just code translation and documentation; it requires deep integration with operational resilience, performance tuning, and change management, areas where IBM already sits at the center. More broadly, IBM is positioning itself to live in a multi‑model, agentic world by partnering with providers like Anthropic, OpenAI and others. Those agents ultimately need to be infused into enterprise data & hybrid cloud architectures, where IBM differentiates through its data layer, connectors, and platform int...
John Drost/iStock via Getty Images On Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, South African energy and chemical giant Sasol Limited ( SSL ) announced its earnings results for the first half of the 2026 fiscal year. This statement may be somewhat surprising given that we are only in February of 2026; however, Sasol operates under a fiscal year that runs from July through June. As a result, this financial report is ...
John Drost/iStock via Getty Images On Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, South African energy and chemical giant Sasol Limited ( SSL ) announced its earnings results for the first half of the 2026 fiscal year. This statement may be somewhat surprising given that we are only in February of 2026; however, Sasol operates under a fiscal year that runs from July through June. As a result, this financial report is for the six-month period that ended on Dec. 31, 2025. For the most part, these results were rather disappointing, as they came in substantially below what the company reported during the equivalent period of 2024. However, once we look more closely at the results, we see that the weakness was driven by a combination of non-cash expenses and factors that are out of the company’s control. Thus, the year-over-year weakness here, while still far from what we want to see, may not be indicative of actual problems at the company. In fact, once we look beyond our initial disappointment, we see that Sasol is currently offering a reasonable investment proposition at a price that could make it worth the risk. Earnings Results Analysis Here are the highlights from Sasol’s earnings report for the first half of the 2026 fiscal year: Sasol reported turnover (a figure akin to revenue) of R122.387 billion for the first six months of the 2026 fiscal year. This represents a slight 0.23% increase over the R122.102 billion that the company reported in the prior-year period. The company reported an operating profit of R12.545 billion for the six-month period that ended on Dec. 31, 2025. This represents a 20.29% decline compared to the R15.738 billion that the company reported in the year-ago period. Sasol took an impairment charge of R3.9 billion against the reported value of the Production Sharing Agreement in Mozambique. The impairment charge is due to the fact that the company now expects that it will take longer to monetize the expected natural gas output from the production than was previou...
FedEx Seeks Tariff Refund With Lawsuit Against US Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times, FedEx is suing the United States Feb. 23, seeking a full refund on President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) lacked authorization. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade, seeks ...
FedEx Seeks Tariff Refund With Lawsuit Against US Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times, FedEx is suing the United States Feb. 23, seeking a full refund on President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) lacked authorization. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade, seeks to recoup all duties paid by FedEx as a result of IEEPA orders and any interest accrued, plus attorney’s fees. The Tennessee-based shipping giant focused its lawsuit mainly on the emergency tariffs imposed on Mexico, Canada, and China, and the 10 percent baseline tariff on all imports to the United States, which went into effect on April 5, 2025. In the Learning Resources v. Trump case, the Supreme Court ruled Feb. 20 that Trump’s tariffs violated the emergency powers law he invoked last year to impose levies on China, Canada, Mexico, and other countries. Tariffs enacted under other laws were not affected by the ruling. The president declared a national emergency under IEEPA starting on Feb. 1, 2025, to address the flow of illicit drugs across the northern and southern borders, and to stop the synthetic opioid supply chain from China. Trump continued taking more steps to implement emergency orders with tariffs last year and earlier this year, addressing global threats. The latest tariffs targeted Iran on Feb. 6. The president issued an order Feb. 20 ending IEEPA tariff actions. In a dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the federal government may be forced to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid tariffs under IEEPA “even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.” Kavanaugh also said he expected it could be a “mess.” During a press conference Feb. 20 following the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump said the ruling didn’t do enough to address the refund issue, which could tie up the federal government in c...
March NY world sugar #11 (SBH26 ) today is up +0.10 (+0.69%), and May London ICE white sugar #5 (SWK26 ) is down -0.30 (-0.07%). Sugar prices are mixed today, with NY sugar climbing to a 2.5-week high. Strength in the Brazilian real (^USDBRL ) is supportive for sugar prices....
March NY world sugar #11 (SBH26 ) today is up +0.10 (+0.69%), and May London ICE white sugar #5 (SWK26 ) is down -0.30 (-0.07%). Sugar prices are mixed today, with NY sugar climbing to a 2.5-week high. Strength in the Brazilian real (^USDBRL ) is supportive for sugar prices....