In this edition, performance coatings priced for bargain hunters; tariffs change playbook on technology investments; replacing artificial food dyes unlikely to stain Packaged foods' prospects; and AbbVie, Intel, and Netflix. .

The United States economy is full of innovation. It has to be. Manufacturing industries that dominated the economy decades ago - textiles, televisions, even automobiles to a large degree - have moved overseas, where labor and materials costs are lower. Yet the U.S. economy, even during the pandemic and the recent period of high inflation, has expanded to record levels. If U.S. corporations weren't innovating, creating new products (such as AI and vaccines) and services (such as Zoom calls and Netflix), as well as moving into new markets (clean energy, rare drugs), the domestic economy would not be growing, and capital would not be flooding into the country. Consider that U.S. GDP was approximately $1 trillion in 1930 but was almost $30 trillion at the end of 2024. That's growth of 30-times. Meanwhile, the U.S. population has grown less than 3-times during that time span, to 340 million from 120 million. The delta between GDP growth and population growth has been driven, in large part, by innovation.

Nvidia Corp., based in Santa Clara, California, is a visual computing company with worldwide operations and markets. The company operates through two segments, Graphics and Compute & Networking. The company's four main markets are gaming, professional visualization, data center, and automotive. In calendar 2020, Nvidia completed the acquisition of data-center connectivity leader Mellanox.

Stocks are mixed at midday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down over 1%, mostly as a result of the 22% drop in component stock UnitedHealth Group. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and is up as of this writing and the Nasdaq is flipping from higher to lower and back again. Earnings news is driving individual stocks, while comments yesterday from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell about the economy, tariffs, and inflation are catching ongoing financial press headlines and ongoing pushback from Donald Trump. End of day, volatility is alive and well.