Theft and complaints are taking a toll on self-checkout. Now, Walmart () wants you to pay $98 a year for Walmart+ for the self-checkout privilege at some stores. Retailers Scale Back Self-Checkouts The Wall Street Journal reports   Attention, shoppers: Retailers are rethinking your cashier job. Store operators are modifying how they use self-checkout stations in a bid to boost their bottom lines and improve the shopping experience for customers. Some retailers are pulling kiosks out of stores as a way to keep a lid on theft. Others, including Target (TGT), Dollar General (DG) and the regional grocery chain Schnucks, have limited how many items customers can bring to self-checkouts to avoid bottlenecks and alleviate headaches for staff. Schnucks now limits its self-checkout lanes to 10 items or fewer. While the primary intention is to improve customer service and checkout efficiency, Simon said the company expects some reduction of theft as well. “This item limit will help us maintain our costs while keeping the prices lower for our customers,” he said. About a fifth of people who used self-checkouts said they accidentally took an item without paying for it, according to a survey of 2,000 shoppers last year by LendingTree. Some 15% of self-checkout users admitted to stealing an item on purpose. Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, said it removed self-checkout lanes and replaced them with cashier-staffed lanes at locations including stores in Cleveland and Shrewsbury, Mo. When checkout access is limited, some stores are designating self-checkout lanes for Walmart+ customers, […]

Covering key moments in the NASDAQ and my NAS100 week ahead forecast and analysis   Key moments in the NASDAQ | NAS100 week ahead forecast: [] – Intro [] – NAS100 analysis of this week  

Following futures positions of non-commercials are as of April 30, 2024.10-year note: Currently net short 433k, up 79k.In an FOMC week in which Chair Jerome Powell was anything but a hawk, aided by weaker-than-expected economic data including April’s payrolls, the 10-year treasury yield gave back 17 basis points to 4.5 percent. This was preceded by four up weeks in a row, with the last three forming a weekly spinning top, a shooting star and a spinning top.Rates touched five percent last October before dropping to 3.79 percent in December. In the subsequent rally, the 10-year ticked 4.74 percent on April 24th and headed south.The path of least resistance is down. There is horizontal support at 4.35s. The 50- and 200-day moving averages lie around there – 4.38 percent and 4.31 percent, in that order. In the event of a rally, there is resistance at 4.57 percent.Non-commercials, in the meantime, added this week to their net shorts in 10-year note futures, but at the same time their holdings have been more than cut in half since setting a record as of January 16th this year. If the 10-year yield rallies in the near term, these traders will likely use this as an opportunity to continue to cover.30-year bond: Currently net short 23.1k, up 1.9k.Major US economic releases for next week are as follows.Consumer credit (March) is due out Tuesday. Total consumer credit in February was up 2.5 percent year-over-year to $5.05 trillion – a new record. This is comprised of $1.34 trillion in […]

The latest update for the weekly  (COT) report was released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday for data ending on April 30th 2024.This weekly Extreme Positions report highlights the Most Bullish and Most Bearish Positions for the speculator category. Extreme positioning in these markets can foreshadow strong moves in the underlying .To signify an extreme position, we use the Strength Index (also known as the COT Index) of each instrument, a common method of measuring COT data. The Strength Index is simply a comparison of current trader positions against the range of positions over the previous 3 years. We use over 80 percent as extremely bullish and under 20 percent as extremely bearish. (Compare Strength Index scores across all markets in the  or )Here Are This Week’s Most Bullish Speculator Positions:Copper The Copper speculator position comes in as the most bullish extreme standing this week. The Copper speculator level is currently at a 99.6 percent score of its 3-year range. The six-week trend for the percent strength score totaled 27.8 this week. The overall net speculator position was a total of 58,064 net contracts this week with a small decline of -330 contract in the weekly speculator bets. Speculators or Non-Commercials Notes: Speculators, classified as non-commercial traders by the CFTC, are made up of large commodity funds, hedge funds and other significant for-profit participants. The Specs are generally regarded as trend-followers in their behavior towards price action – net speculator bets and prices tend to go in the same directions. These traders often look to […]

Image Source: Unsplash An Introduction This article highlights the 10 clinical-stage AI-powered (designated with *) and psychedelic compound-based (designated with **)  small cap ($400M to $2.0B) drug discovery companies in the  Clinical-Stage BioTech Drug Stocks Portfolio, their stock performances the first of May week, in descending order, and YTD and their areas of focus, along with their latest news, analyses and commentary where available. **Mind Medicine (MNMD): up 17.4% during the first week of May; up 173.2% YTD focuses on the use of LSD and MNMA. Go here for much more extensive information on LSD and here for much more extensive information on MNMA. Latest news, commentary and/or analysis: MindMed Presents Phase 2b Study of MM120 for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)  *Exscientia (EXAI): up 15.9% during the first week of May; down 27.1% YTD reported the first AI-designed drug candidate to enter clinical trials and is collaborating with Bristol-Myers Squibb on a handful of drug candidates and has partnered with Sanofi, GSK and PathAI on drug discovery projects. Latest news, commentary and/or analysis: None  **GH Research (GHRS): up 11.1% during the first week of May; up 101.4% YTD  focuses on the use of mebufotenin, the new International non-proprietary name for 5-MeO-DMT, which stands for 5-MethOxy-N,N-DiMeThyltryptamine. Go here for much more extensive information on DMT. Latest news, commentary and/or analysis: GH Research Reports First Quarter 2024 Financial Results and Provides Business Updates *Absci Corporation (ABSI): up 10.9% during the first week of May; up 21.0% YTD focuses on antibody design, creating new from scratch antibodies (“de novo antibodies”), and testing them in laboratories in a 6-week process. Latest news, commentary and/or […]