AngloGold Ashanti slides 5.6% as gold miners lag broader market

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[1] Here's Why AngloGold Ashanti (AU) Fell More Than Broader Market (https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/2994818/here ...)[2] Pandora stock heads into the open after a 2.6 percent slide - AD HOC NEWS (https://www.ad-hoc-news.de/boerse/news/corpor ...)

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Sep 24 2026, 00:09

Xi lands in Washington with $30 billion tariff framework on the table

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday for a three-day state visit, opening the first Washington summit with a US president since 2015 and putting a proposed $30 billion mutual tariff-reduction framework at the center of talks that carry a November deadline. "The idea that we would not interact with them at the highest levels is irresponsible. It's outrageous. We have to," Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in New York on Wednesday, defending the engagement as necessary between "the two largest economies in the world." Trump and first lady Melania Trump traveled by Marine One to the Maryland air base to greet Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, a planeside reception that US presidents rarely extend to visiting leaders. The gesture reciprocates Trump's May trip to Beijing, where Vice President Han Zheng met Air Force One instead. A formal arrival ceremony, troop review and black-tie state dinner in the East Room follow on Thursday, with a guest list that includes Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Google's Sundar Pichai. The substance is narrower than the ceremony. Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng has led a trade delegation through preliminary consultations in Washington, and negotiators are working toward a framework covering roughly $30 billion of goods in mutual tariff reductions. Both sides are pressing to extend the tariff truce struck in Busan, which lapses in November 2026 — the same month the US-China trade agreement reached last year expires. Beijing wants energy and rare earth supply guarantees; Washington wants to shield domestic manufacturers from Chinese surplus capacity without reigniting inflation ahead of the midterm elections. ## Rare earths, LNG and a $14 billion Taiwan chip Specific deliverables under discussion include increased Chinese purchases of US liquefied natural gas, agricultural products and aircraft, plus export licenses for rare earth minerals. Negotiators have also floated allowing Chinese electric vehicle factories to be built on US soil, subject to national security conditions. On the technology side, the agenda covers AI regulation and export controls on advanced semiconductors — the issue that drew the sharpest domestic pushback. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and three colleagues held a press conference warning against loosening controls on advanced chipmaking equipment, arguing it would erode the US lead in artificial intelligence. "We can and must both maintain our lead on AI by restricting China's access to our technology and put up guardrails to mitigate AI's risk," Schumer said. Republican senators Mitch McConnell and three others sent a letter urging the administration to proceed with aid and arms sales to Taiwan, noting the US paused a record $14 billion package after the May Beijing summit — a package Trump has described as a "very good negotiating chip." The domestic criticism has been loud enough to constrain the outcome. Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on the Senate floor Tuesday that he would have advised against inviting Xi at all "based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party," adding that "during every minute of dialogue, our commander in chief should keep in mind that his guest is a brutal, unelected, and oppressive dictator." Iran sits underneath the trade file. Washington has accused Beijing of propping up Tehran's economy and supplying components and intelligence, and wants China — the largest buyer of Iranian oil — to press its leverage. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi visited Beijing on September 16 to signal Tehran's willingness to return to diplomacy, days before Xi's departure. The precedent for reading this summit is the May meeting in Beijing, which produced a pause in Taiwan arms sales and no tariff relief. Markets have historically traded the ceremony rather than the communiqué: after the Busan truce was announced, the tariff-sensitive complex rallied on the headline and gave back part of the move once the terms were published. The same asymmetry applies now. If Thursday's closed-door session yields a signed framework on the $30 billion basket and a Busan extension, the de-escalation trade has room to run into November. If it produces only a commitment to keep talking, the November expiry becomes a live risk event with no cushion — and the $14 billion Taiwan package remains the most obvious lever either side can pull. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.

Sep 23 2026, 23:55

L.A. pins 4,495 film jobs on Paramount merger concessions

Rob Bonta holds the leverage, and Los Angeles knows it. The California attorney general is trading away an antitrust lawsuit for enforceable conditions on a $111 billion studio combination, and the county's own analysts calculate that 4,495 direct film and television job-years sit in the balance between 2027 and 2030, with total employment exposure near 10,360 job-years. "The question is, 'Does this have any teeth? Does this advisory board really have any sort of impact in making sure that news organizations like CNN remain independent?'" Michael Schneider, executive television editor at Variety, said of the Editorial Independence Board that Paramount has offered as a concession. "We'll just have to wait and see." Two reports, pointing in opposite directions, frame the argument. A study commissioned by the Los Angeles County Department of Economic Opportunity and produced by CVL Economics put the exposure at 4,495 direct film and television job-years and roughly 10,360 total job-years, alongside $1.26 billion in wages, $4.06 billion in business output and $547 million in tax revenue. CVL described those figures as "employment capacity at risk" rather than a layoff forecast. A separate draft from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., commissioned by Paramount and leaked to Politico, projected the completed merger would add as much as $1.01 billion in economic growth over five years, while a collapse would cost the state as much as $21.2 billion a year. That draft also estimated a full corporate exit from California would eliminate between 28,990 and 57,980 jobs and cut annual output by $10.6 billion to $21.2 billion. The transaction is frozen pending an antitrust suit filed by California and 11 other states. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland has set trial for March 2. Paramount faces a tighter deadline: if the deal does not close by Oct. 1, it owes Warner shareholders roughly $7 million per day in a "ticking fee." Bonta has said he is willing to negotiate over concessions that would prompt him to drop the suit, and has complained about what he calls Paramount's under-the-table maneuvering. ## A rally, a ticking fee and a 30-film pledge Opponents gathered outside Paramount Studios on Tuesday, organized by the Block the Merger Coalition, with actors, writers and local officials pressing to halt the transaction. Burbank City Councilmember Konstantine Anthony said upward of 30,000 redundant positions could be at risk as administrative and distribution operations combine across the two companies. Actor Constance Marie framed the dispute as a labor question: "Censorship has never been good for people of color, and that is why I'm here to say this is not good, and it's not good for labor, and we're a dominant part of the labor workforce." The rally followed a settlement between Paramount owner Skydance and 12 states, California among them, in the antitrust case. Schneider said the merger now looks close to certain. "At this point, I'm not sure there's much left to block this merger," he said. "It does seem to be happening and it's going to happen in the next couple of weeks." He added that overlap between the two companies points to cost cuts before the holidays, since the fourth quarter is already underway. What the concessions are worth depends on which commitment holds. Paramount has pledged the merged company would produce 30 feature films a year for three years; an analysis of that pledge found it could generate almost $20 billion in additional U.S. economic activity and support more than 90,000 jobs nationwide. The LAEDC draft treated the 30-film commitment as a firm anchor, though no written, enforceable guarantee exists. The combined company would carry a debt overhang estimated at $79 billion to $82 billion, which raises questions about Paramount's claim that it can generate $6 billion in annual savings by selling real estate and consolidating streaming services rather than cutting staff. The LAEDC specified it did not examine the likelihood or potential impacts of consolidation after a completed merger. For Los Angeles, the concession package is the variable that decides the outcome. If Bonta secures enforceable production and employment commitments, the county's exposure stays near the low end of the CVL range and the 30-film pledge becomes the floor for local stage and crew work. If the suit proceeds to the March 2 trial and Paramount's ticking fee keeps accruing at $7 million a day, the company's stated alternative — relocating headquarters and thousands of jobs to Georgia, Tennessee or Texas — becomes a live negotiating threat rather than a hypothetical. The companies aim to finalize the merger in October. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.

Sep 23 2026, 23:27

Ginkgo Bioworks slides 8.4% to $8.58 in company-specific selloff

A single-session loss of 8.43% took Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings Inc. (DNA) down to $8.58 on Sept. 23, a drop steep enough to separate the synthetic-biology company from a broader market that moved far less. No company filing, earnings release or disclosed regulatory action accompanied the decline. Traders pointed to three candidate drivers rather than one confirmed cause: a de-risking wave through pre-revenue biotech names, thin liquidity in a small-cap float that magnifies order-flow imbalances, and a rates backdrop that keeps pressuring long-duration cash-burning equities. None of the three has been confirmed by the company. "Single-session drops of this size in a small-cap synthetic-biology name are usually flow, not fundamentals," said Sarah Lin, an equity analyst covering U.S. biotech at Edgen Research. "When there is no 8-K and no guidance change, the tape is telling you about positioning, not about the science." The move was company-specific in the literal sense: DNA's decline outpaced the broader market's session change by a wide margin, and no peer in the synthetic-biology group fell by a comparable amount on the same day. That divergence is the core fact of the session — a stock falling on its own weight rather than being dragged by an index. For context on scale, Ginkgo operates a foundry model that sells cell-programming capacity to partners across pharma, agriculture and industrial chemicals, a business that depends on continued capital access while programs mature. A stock trading in the single digits with a small float is structurally more sensitive to a single large seller than a large-cap peer would be. The cross-asset backdrop offered little help. Treasury yields held near recent ranges, keeping the discount rate applied to future cash flows elevated for companies that are not yet profitable, and the dollar's firm tone added a second headwind for a business with international partners. Neither moved enough on the day to explain an 8.43% single-name decline on its own. What matters next is whether a disclosure follows. Ginkgo's next scheduled corporate update is the event that would either supply the missing catalyst or confirm that the drop was positioning-driven. Until then, holders are marking a loss on a move that has no documented fundamental trigger — which cuts both ways: absent a filing, there is nothing new to price in, and absent a filing, there is nothing to stop the selling from continuing. The stock's near-term path now hinges on volume. If the decline came on above-average turnover, it points to institutional exit; if it came on thin volume, it points to a liquidity air pocket that can reverse as quickly as it formed. Neither scenario is confirmed by the data available at the close. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.