Industry Focus

The 21st Century Cures Act ignites innovation with perks to biopharma and medical device makers. Also, Kite Pharma and Novartis prep plans to pitch their CAR-T cancer therapies to the FDA.

Under Armour announced last week that it would be changing the ticker symbols for its publicly traded A and C shares, but the real story here is the large spread in where those two stocks are trading. We welcome Seth McNew to discuss dual share classes, founder Kevin Plank, and trends for the sports apparel industry.

It’s tempting to think that the American economy is still struggling to recover from the financial crisis, but the data says otherwise. Eight years after the Crash of 1929, the U.S. economy was still mired in the Great Depression. Fast forward to today, eight years after the financial crisis, which was the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, and the economy is looking as robust as ever. In this episode of Industry Focus: Financials, The Motley Fool’s Gaby Lapera and John Maxfield talk about the state of the U.S. economy right now, digging through the statistics and trends that matter most. 

Facebook recently announced a $6 billion share buyback authorization, but investors shouldn’t expect to see the company’s total shares outstanding dip any time soon. We explain why and draw on a couple other examples to show how buybacks are generally used a little differently in tech.

After nearly three decades of claiming the industry is a terrible place to invest, the Oracle of Omaha recently purchased shares in several major airlines – is this a major shift?