Coin News

 It’s Halvening!!! Bitcoin just experienced a major milestone in its short little lifespan. The reward for mining a block (a block = a ledger of transaction data) was just cut in half from 25 bitcoins to 12.5 bitcoins. This means that assuming a price of $650 per coin, going forward miners will make ~$8,125 per block they mine, compared to $16,250 before the halving. But… Read More

Update: Article updated to include details of block #420,000. Everyone is in a party mood today as the rate of bitcoin production just reduced by 50% for only a second time in Bitcoin’s history. Celebratory parties are being held across the world, from Israel to Taiwan, with numerous events held in US and Europe. Meanwhile, […]

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A milestone in Bitcoin’s history, the block reward will be halved for the second time today. Where the first “halving” cut the mining reward...

The post The Halving: Then & Now - a Bitcoin Magazine Infographic appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin price is rearing to go and the community is optimistic for greater things for the conquering Bitcoin. Today’s post revisits the potential scenarios for price (explored yesterday) as we brace for interesting developments at the moment of block reward halving. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3-hour delay. Read the full analysis […]

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The day of the halving is here and the event is certain to influence the price of bitcoin at a time when the value of the cryptocurrency has spiked nearly 50% since the turn of the year. It is the day of the second halving event in bitcoin’s history, one which will see miners’ block […]

The post Industry Executives Weigh In on Bitcoin Halving Effect appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

The bitcoin block reward is set to fall from 25 bitcoins to 12.5 bitcoins in just a few hours. The event, which happens roughly every four years, represents a major shift in the mining landscape, and speculation has swirled about what impact the reward drop will have on the bitcoin mining ecosystem. CoinDesk will be […]

America's largest companies have had negative profit growth for three straight quarters. 

On Monday, when the aluminum giant Alcoa unofficially kicks off the second-quarter earnings season, analysts expect it will report a fourth-straight quarterly decline in year-over-year profits. 

But the broader S&P 500 could be different.

Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, thinks that the first quarter may have marked the inflection point of the earnings recession, defined as two straight red quarters. 

"Given the normal beat rate that you see, even if you just apply the standard rate at which companies ultimately beat expectations — the bar gets set low — you actually could feasibly get back into positive territory in Q2," she told Business Insider.

The low bar Sonders references is Wall Street's habit of tempering expectations ahead of earnings season and then raising them as a growing number of beats occur.She noted that, based on a consensus expectation for S&P earnings of around -3% in Q2 — likely too pessimistic — it's possible that earnings turn positive. If not, Q3 looks definite, she said.

Steve Wood, chief equity strategist at Russell Investments concurred with Sonders assessment of earnings.

"It's going to be a grind, but I think that we're going to get back to some real earnings growth soon enough," Wood told Business Insider.

According to Wood, earnings outside of the energy sector should return to positive territory in the fourth quarter, followed by total earnings hitting the green in the following quarter.

The pregame is going well

One sign that this earnings season could end the recession is that it's already looking better than in recent quarters.

Fundstrat's Tom Lee noted that earnings pre-announcements have been trending higher, and 28% of them have been positive — the most since Q1 2011.

The manufacturing sector is also serving as a bullish signal for the earnings of America's largest companies.

Exports rose in the second quarter, according to the Institute of Supply Management's manufacturing index. The three-month moving average of the ISM's export index rose to 52.8 in Q2, having spent most of 2015 in contraction, indicated by an index value below 50. 

Each one-point increase in ISM export adds 2.2% to S&P 500 EPS growth, Lee said. 

Additionally, a slowdown in the dollar's rally should reduce the drag on multinationals' revenues. 

It's still bad out there for energy

One of the largest drags on earnings for US businesses in the past few quarters has been the energy sector. The decline in profits for energy companies on a year-over-year basis has at times descended to -100% or more. This in turn has decimated aggregate earnings for the S&P 500 and lead to an uptick in "ex-energy" analysis, or data that excludes the entire energy sector.

There has been some hope, however, in the past few months, as oil prices have rebounded from the depths of February. West Texas Intermediate oil prices have recovered from a low of $26.21 a barrel to around $45 a barrel on Friday.

This increase will be a help, according to Lindsey Bell at S&P Global Market Intelligence, but earnings for oil companies are still going to be ugly."The energy sector continues to be the strongest headwind to earnings growth with the consensus estimate at -81.0%," Bell wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.

"Notably, that is also an improvement from -106.6% in the first quarter, though not enough of an improvement to make S&P 500 index growth excluding the sector positive (ex-energy growth is -0.6%)."

Not good.

Cyclical pressures

In addition to short-term trends weighing down profits, businesses are facing cyclical factors that may not be going away anytime soon.

"Wages are not robustly rising, but they are moving in an upward direction and long with dollar strength and oil prices, this is going to make a tough environment for profits," said Wood at Russell Investments.

As reported in Friday's jobs data for June, average hourly earnings are now growing at their fastest pace since the end of the financial crisis. Additionally, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence showing that paying workers is becoming pricier.

Since inflation is low and companies have little ability to pass on increasing costs through higher prices, higher expenses for employee compensation will continue to take a chunk out of earnings going forward.

Additionally, in its third quarter outlook, Russell Investment noted that other cyclical trends will hold back earnings in the long-run.

"A slowing Chinese economy and its ripple effects drove a recoupling of developed and emerging market growth over the last few years," said the note.

"As a result, foreign-sourced earnings have not contributed much to the bottom line since late 2012. Also, our negative business cycle score for the emerging markets suggests that foreign earnings of U.S. businesses are likely to remain sluggish."

Things may be improving for earnings, but based on these factors, don't expect them to experience a boom for a long time to come.

SEE ALSO: JPMorgan's enormous guide to stocks, the federal debt, GDP, and everything else you need to know in markets right now

SEE ALSO: The world according to a $2 trillion investment chief you've probably never heard of

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By Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The focus on Wall Street will shift to corporate earnings next week after a strong June jobs report on Friday gave investors confidence that the U.S. economy was on stable footing and left the S&P 500 within a whisper of a new closing record high.

Earnings next week are expected from big banks JPMorgan Chase , Citigroup and Wells Fargo as well as other financial companies such as BlackRock and PNC Financial Services . Earnings for the sector are expected to decline 5.4 percent.

If bank earnings come in better than expected, the S&P 500 <.SPX> is likely to push through its record highs set in May 2015 after several failed attempts, as Friday's jobs number helped push the benchmark index to less than one point from its closing record high of 2,130.82.

"Banks are definitely in the spotlight," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group in Bedford Hills, New York. "There is some trepidation in the market going into this earnings season, the quarter economically was not particularly strong."

Financials have been the worst performing of the 10 major S&P sector groups this year, down nearly 6 percent, as they were hit by reduced expectations for a U.S. interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve and uncertainty in the wake of the vote by Britain to leave the European Union, or "Brexit."

Second-quarter earnings overall are expected to decline 4.7 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data, the fourth straight quarter of negative earnings, but up slightly from the 5 percent decline in the first quarter.

Investors will be looking for confirmation this quarter that earnings are starting to turn, with analysts anticipating a return to growth in the back half of the year, starting with expectations for a 1.8 percent increase in the third quarter.

"What we are hoping ... is that we are starting to see that we have stepped out of the trough in terms of the economy from the first quarter," said Jim Davis, regional investment manager at U.S. Bank Private Client Group in Springfield, Illinois.

"That second-half pickup could translate into some better earnings outlooks." The current price-to-earnings ratio for the S&P 500 is an elevated 18.2 and an increase in profits would make stocks cheaper.

Other notable earnings expected next week include Alcoa Inc , Yum! Brands , Delta Air Lines and CSX Corp .

The end of the week will give investors some insight on the health of the consumer, manufacturing and inflation with monthly retail sales, the consumer and producer price indexes, the Empire State manufacturing survey and a preliminary reading on consumer sentiment.

Yet even with stocks scraping up against a record high, some investors remain cautious in light of uncertainty about the Fed's plan for rates, upcoming U.S. elections and potential ripple effects as the UK begins to move forward with its exit from the European Union.

"It just strikes me there are just too many things that can go wrong over the next couple of months," said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist, at Federated Investors, in New York.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Linda Stern and James Dalgleish)

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As the bitcoin community seeks consensus on how to address bitcoin transaction time, a meeting this month in Silicon Valley could indicate how likely the chances are for consensus, according to Bloomberg. The proceedings will likely reflect the impact of China’s miners, who are estimated to control 70 percent of all bitcoin mining. Consensus on […]

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