Bank stocks haven't been doing too well since the pandemic started and interest rates have been cut down, but that doesn't make them bad investments. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is down after disappointing Wall Street with its first-quarter earnings report on April 15. Over time, Bank of America has grown its business and delivered value for investors.

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. is starting to see consumer spending edge higher after plunging with the start of the coronavirus lockdown.The nascent increase, which follows a 30% drop, is showing up as consumers buy more groceries, restaurant meals, clothing and gasoline, Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said in an interview Friday on CNBC. U.S. aggregate spending averaged about $50 billion over the past four weeks, comparable to levels in the fall of 2017, he said.“It’s starting to grow a little bit,” the CEO said. “You’re seeing the start of a little bit more spending in some areas, in some of the states that have opened up a little bit. So we’ll see where that leads us, because it’s still pretty early on.”Moynihan also gave an update on the bank’s participation in the government’s Paycheck Protection Program run by the Small Business Administration.“This has been a heck of a week in the history of the PPP,” he said. “The SBA’s working posture this week started off a little tough, but has improved dramatically.”Bank of America now has more than 231,000 loan numbers from the SBA, a requirement before the loans can be funded. Over the next 48 hours, it expects to send out 180,000 promissory notes to businesses for a total of as much as $20 billion, according to Moynihan.Customers will have to execute the documents, send them back to the bank, “and the money goes into their account relatively quickly,” he said. The Charlotte, North-Carolina based lender has about 10,000 people working around the clock on the small-business relief program, he said.Here are other takeaways from the interview:“We’ll continue to buy our stock back, because at the end of the day, that is capital that we’re generating that we don’t need to support the business,” Moynihan said. The nation’s eight biggest banks temporarily suspended share buybacks for the first and second quarters. “We have all the capital we need to serve the customers.”The lender is also committed to paying dividends, he said.The trend toward digital and remote work, which started before the pandemic, will reduce the need for physical space, he said. “We’ll have less real estate demand.”(Updates with detail on small-business program in seventh paragraph, comments on dividends and buybacks in bullet points.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) has sold $1 billion in a corporate bond offering to raise funds for efforts against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, MarketWatch reported Thursday.The Charlotte, a North Carolina-based banking giant, is the first major financial services company in the U.S. to fund the frontline COVID-19 responders, according to MarketWatch.The four-year bonds were priced at 1.3% percentage points above the Treasury's to yield 1.486%, people familiar with the matter told MarketWatch.In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, BoA says that the funding will go towards "not-for-profit hospitals," skilled nursing facilities, and healthcare equipment manufacturers and suppliers.The organizations will use the funding for treating coronavirus patients or manufacturing and supplying goods related to testing, prevention, and treatment of the deadly virus.BoA shares closed 4% higher at $21.71 on Thursday. The shares added another 1.3% in an after-hours session at $22.See more from Benzinga * Taiwanese Apple Supplier TSMC To Build B US Chip Factory After Months Of Pressure From Trump Administration * Apple Confirms Acquisition Of Virtual Reality Startup NextVR * Morgan Stanley Analyst Says Many Investors 'Absolutely Adore' Musk's Dominating Strategy(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

All you have to do is check out the stocks owned by Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B). Warren Buffett either personally picked or approved the purchases of every stock included in Berkshire's portfolio. Here are the five best Warren Buffett stocks that you can buy right now, ranked by market cap in descending order.

Although Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) CEO Warren Buffett's annual performance has been a bit hit and miss as of late, it's undeniable that his buy-and-hold investment strategy has worked wonders over the long term. According to Buffett's 2019 annual shareholder letter, the broad-based S&P 500 has returned a hearty 19,784% between 1964 and 2019, inclusive of dividends. Currently, Buffett and his team own 48 securities, factoring in the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting admission that all four major airlines were sold in their entirety.

Casino giant Caesars’ mountains of debt raises uncertainty about its pending merger with Eldorado (ERI) amid the pandemic, says Dan Wasiolek, senior equity analyst at Morningstar.

"After what happened last time, I'm not holding my breath," said Wellman, president of Integrity Manufacturing Inc in Romeoville, Illinois, a metal-stamping company devastated by the economic slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. government's "Payroll Protection Program" to aid small businesses, part of an economic relief package passed by Congress that is now approaching $3 trillion, opened chaotically earlier this month and ran out of funds in less than two weeks. The Small Business Administration began processing applications for the second tranche of aid on Monday, a process that was once again beset by problems.

Before we spend countless hours researching a company, we like to analyze what insiders, hedge funds and billionaire investors think of the stock first. This is a necessary first step in our investment process because our research has shown that the elite investors' consensus returns have been exceptional. In the following paragraphs, we find out […]

Joining me on the call this morning are Ted Klinck, our Chief Executive Officer; Brian Leary, our Chief Operating Officer; and Mark Mulhern, our Chief Financial Officer. As is our custom, today's prepared remarks have been posted on the web.

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. received approval for 265,500 small-business loans totaling $24.9 billion in relief funds from the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program.Since the program reopened on April 27, the bank has sent 213,000 promissory notes to small businesses informing them that their loans were approved by the SBA, Bank of America said Monday in a statement. The latest tally makes the firm the top lender in the second round of funding, according to the company. The bank also released lending data by state, showing it had funded $3.22 billion of loans in California, $1.38 billion in Florida and $1.03 billion in New York.“We continue to receive and process new applications,” Dean Athanasia, Bank of America’s head of consumer and small business, said in the statement. “We are happy to see the SBA has been processing submissions at a faster rate, and hopefully there is sufficient funding for everyone in need.”Of the loan applications submitted, 98% were for companies with fewer than 100 employees, and 93% were for less than $350,000.The lender pledged to use net proceeds from any PPP fees it receives to support small businesses, communities and nonprofits. Apart from the PPP program, Bank of America’s lending to small-business clients rose 11% in the first quarter to $2.4 billion.The bank has deferred more than 1.3 million payments for mortgages, credit cards and auto loans as part of its response to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s also paused home-foreclosure sales.(Updates with state lending data in second paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said consumer spending is picking up in some areas of the U.S. as government relief programs cushion the credit impact of the coronavirus pandemic.“These measures taken by Congress, by the administration and by the Fed have worked to offset the unfortunate aspects of very high unemployment -- and so far, you’re not seeing delinquencies and things rise,” Moynihan said in a Bloomberg Television interview Tuesday. “We expect to see charge-offs coming later on, as this thing goes on, but the reality is right now you’re not seeing the type of credit damage that you’d expect to see with this amount of downdraft in activity.” Consumer spending is down 2% to 4% this month from a year earlier, and is picking up faster in areas of the country that are reopening, he said. In China, it surged when stay-at-home orders were lifted, but then declined.“That’s what we have to watch in the United States -- there’ll be a burst of activity in some of these places” as people emerge from their homes, but the question is whether they’ll sustain spending on larger purchases such as cars or homes, Moynihan said. While the economy won’t recover to its pre-pandemic size until the end of next year, there are likely to be incremental gains until then, he said.Here are other takeaways from the interview:The lender has granted about 1.5 million payment deferrals. About 35% to 40% of people who asked to delay their credit-card bills ended up paying them anyway, he said.Bank of America has processed 320,000 small-business relief loans with an average balance of $80,000. Of those, 98% are for companies with fewer than 100 employees.High-grade debt issuance will probably have another record month in May after Fed programs stabilized the market, he said. High-yield debt will have a strong month, while convertible bond and equity deals are starting to be done. “The stabilization and the fact those facilities aren’t all used, it’s actually a good thing because that means the market’s doing what they’re doing and providing capital,” Moynihan said.In terms of returning employees to bank offices, “we’ll go back slowly,” he said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) -- A group of lenders led by Bank of America Corp. is preparing to launch the largest leveraged loan sale in two months, the latest test of investor appetite for a market that has struggled to regain full strength in the wake of the pandemic.The banks, which also include Royal Bank of Canada and Barclays Plc, may officially begin syndication of a $1.1 billion term loan to finance the merger between technology companies Xperi Corp. and TiVo Corp. as soon as next week, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Plans are still fluid and the timing could change depending on market conditions.The loan is expected to receive ratings in the BB range -- the highest tier of junk -- that may make it more appealing in the still fragile leveraged loan market, the person said, asking not to be named because the details are private. Representatives for the three banks declined to comment. Xperi and TiVo didn’t respond to requests for comment.U.S. leveraged loans issuance started to come back to life in April with more than $10 billion of deals launching, but that was still the second-lightest month by volume since December 2018, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The pace is lagging that of high-yield bonds, which saw more than $37 billion sold in the same month.Average loan prices are also still trading almost 10 cents below levels seen at the start of March, closing Tuesday at 85.89 cents on the dollar. Still, the Xperi loan would be the largest carrying high-yield ratings to hit the market since early March, the data show.Junk-rated T-Mobile US Inc. and Delta Air Lines Inc. have both tapped leveraged loan investors for larger amounts in recent weeks, but the debt from both issuers was structured in a way that allowed it to receive investment-grade ratings.Lower down the ratings spectrum, issuance of leveraged loans has mostly provided liquidity lifelines to companies whose businesses were hit hard by Covid-19.(Updates with more banks starting in second paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Warren Buffett said it well: "Price is what you pay; value is what you get." Here are three value stocks that are absurdly cheap right now. The Oracle of Omaha said at Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) annual shareholders meeting recently that "banks have behaved very well and are in very good shape" in the midst of the economic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. sent 184,000 applications for rescue loans to the Small Business Administration from Sunday to early Monday morning.The lender is waiting for the SBA to process and approve the loans, according to an internal memo sent Tuesday by Dean Athanasia, president of the consumer and small-business division. Bank of America has 48,000 more client applications ready to submit, and has been uploading those through the SBA’s slower process, he wrote.“Today, we will communicate to each client whose application has been submitted to the SBA, advising them the loan application has been submitted, and we will notify each client promptly when the SBA has acted on the application,” Athanasia wrote. “We expect that will take several days at the earliest based on what the SBA is telling us.”Bank of America is among the big U.S. lenders that have faced criticism from longtime clients who’ve tried to get SBA applications processed to weather the coronavirus pandemic, with many flocking to social media to complain about problems with their loans. The bank is being sued, alongside Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and US Bancorp, for prioritizing large loans and shutting out the smallest firms.The Trump administration said it’s approved more than $52 billion in loan requests for small businesses so far in the relaunch of the coronavirus relief program.The SBA program, launched April 3, has been beset by delays and glitches after guidance on how to process loans wasn’t released until the night before. Many big banks weren’t ready to participate or held back until rules became clearer.Bank of America was the first lender to take applications. Only 1,000 of its latest 184,000 requests have received loan numbers from the SBA, which are required for the loans to be funded, according to a person familiar with the situation. More than half of the customers who received SBA loan numbers Monday have been funded, with the remainder in process today, Athanasia wrote in the memo.Bank of America has processed 239,000 applications to the SBA to date. Of those, 98% were for companies with fewer than 100 employees, while 76% were for companies with fewer than 10 staff, Athanasia wrote. Submissions for less than $350,000 accounted for 93% of the total, while 78% of applications were for less than $100,000. Eight out of 10 requests were for the lender’s small-business clients, as opposed to larger firms.(Adds detail from second paragraph and quote in third paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. priced a $1 billion bond issue to fund Covid-19 relief efforts. It’s the first sale from a U.S. financial institution that explicitly links all proceeds to tackling the virus, Bloomberg data show.The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender sold fixed-to-floating rate notes to fund investments addressing social issues related to the pandemic, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The bonds will yield 1.30 percentage points above Treasuries, said the person, who asked not to be identified as the details are private. Bank of America is sole manager of the bond sale.Borrowers globally have raised a record $102.6 billion of debt this year to combat the impact of the coronavirus. Chinese companies have issued the most so-called pandemic bonds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Paraguay and South Korea’s Kookmin Bank last month sold debt in U.S. dollars for Covid relief.U.S. corporations are catching up. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. issued a $1.25 billion sustainability bond to fund social and environmental impact endeavors, some of which may address the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, USAA Capital Corp. sold an $800 million sustainability bond to fund projects, which may include Covid-19 relief.Social and sustainability bond issuance is expected to nearly double this year to a new record as issuers take advantage of receptive capital markets to respond to the crisis, according to HSBC. Supply jumped 69% in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, according to HSBC, boosted by sales from the African Development Bank and International Finance Corporation.Schroders expects banks to become more active issuers of social bonds given capital relief they are getting from regulators in Europe, as well as incentives to lend to small and medium-sized companies.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

According to Warren Buffett, diversification is only needed if you don't know what you're doing.

While the coronavirus outbreak caused the stock market to plunge by more than 35% from its all-time highs in late March, it has rebounded rather sharply, currently down by just over 10% in 2020. Despite the strong performance since its March lows, there are still some excellent bargains in the stock market for patient, long-term investors.

The stock market meltdown presented too tempting of an opportunity to invest in great companies at attractive prices. Two stocks that I bought in April were the kinds of stocks that Warren Buffett would love. Here are those two Buffett stocks that I added to my portfolio last month -- and why I plan to scoop even more shares in May.

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. was the first on Wall Street to issue a pandemic bond. It hopes to set a trend.The bank priced a $1 billion bond offering May 14 to fund projects addressing social issues related to Covid-19, the first sale from a U.S. financial institution that explicitly links all proceeds to tackling the virus. Response from investors has been enthusiastic, said Karen Fang, the bank’s global head of sustainable finance.“ESG is not just a bull market luxury,” Fang said in an interview, citing the bank’s own research. “ESG is a bear market necessity.”Corporations, governments, multilateral organizations and development banks have raised a record $108.4 billion of debt this year to alleviate the impacts of the deadly virus, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Chinese companies have sold most of the so-called pandemic bonds, raising about $48.3 billion.Bank of America’s bond came about in March as the virus spread through the U.S. and much of the country began to shut down. Senior executives, including Vice Chairman Anne Finucane and Chief Operating Officer Tom Montag, were involved in internal discussions on the bond, which took weeks to construct.The pricing for the fixed-to-floating rate notes earmarked for lending to the health care industry was aggressive. The deal priced tighter than the lender’s regular benchmarks, Fang said, and the bonds will yield 1.30 percentage points above Treasuries.Strong PipelineBank of America has raised more than $8 billion through environmentally and socially themed bonds and has a “very strong” pipeline, Fang said. Other virus-related debt includes Pfizer Inc.’s $1.25 billion sustainability bond and USAA Capital Corp.’s $800 million offering to fund projects that may include Covid-19 relief.While the deal makes sense for a lender like Bank of America with a large presence in green and social bond markets, it might not open the floodgates for similar transactions, according to CreditSights analysts.“We’re a little doubtful we’re going to see an imminent increase in ESG-type offerings from the banks,” CreditSights’ chief of ESG and sustainability Josh Olazabal and the head of U.S. financials Jesse Rosenthal, wrote in an email. “It will really come down to the issuer’s internal goals around ESG products and investors.”Still, ESG-focused investors like Nuveen and Eaton Vance Management anticipate that more commercial banks will follow suit. Other lenders that have “the focus and expertise” to originate such loans will seek to replicate Bank of America’s deal, according to Vishal Khanduja, head of investment-grade portfolio management at Eaton Vance.“We expect other sponsors to continue to innovate the structure and provide investable impact opportunities at scale,” Khanduja said Tuesday in an interview.Nuveen, which oversees about $1 trillion in assets, has already had discussions with underwriters from two banks because there is interest in similar deals, according to Stephen Liberatore, head of the responsible fixed-income strategy team.“This was the leader,” Liberatore said of Bank of America’s bond. “Now that others are seeing what’s expected and how it can be done, there’s a template for other banks.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

MACAU, May 14, 2020 -- Studio City International Holdings Limited (NYSE: MSC) (“Studio City” or the “Company”), a world-class gaming, retail and entertainment resort located in.