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 (Bloomberg) -- Former national security adviser Susan Rice, a Netflix director, sold some of her shares of the video streaming company worth $305,323 this week as speculation swirls that she is among the candidates to be Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's running mate.A spokeswoman for Rice said the sale was unrelated to politics and was made under a stock trading plan she filed more than three months ago under Securities and Exchange Commission rules."Ambassador Rice's sale of a fraction of her Netflix stock has nothing to do with VP speculation," Erin Pelton said.Rice, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is being vetted as a possible running mate for Biden. He's expected to announce his choice next week.The share sales followed the exercise of options and were disclosed in an SEC filing Thursday night. Netflix stock has nearly doubled in the past year. Rice, who was named to the company's board in 2018, exercised her options at $508.68. As a Netflix board member since 2018, Rice receives 125 stock options a month as part of her compensation package.Rice's net worth was somewhere between $14.7 million and $28.5 million, according to a 2016 financial disclosure statement she made as President Barack Obama's national security adviser. Those assets do not include her two homes, and her husband Ian Cameron's inherited wealth could make their family's assets significantly larger.(Updates with details in fifth paragaph)For more articles like this, please
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 2020 has seen a market trouncing performance from fintech player Square (SQ). Since hitting the skids in mid-March with the price dropping to $38.09, shares have appreciated by an enormous 285%.The latest uptick came after Square's Q2 earnings report blew the estimates out of the water. The banking industry disruptor generated revenue of $1.92 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 64.1% and handily beating consensus by $790 million. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.18 came ahead of the estimates by $0.22.Although gross payment volume - a key metric - declined by 15% from the same period last year to $22.8 billion, the figure still beat the forecasts by 20%.A big chunk of the uptick was driven by Cash App's low-margin bitcoin trading revenue. Even so, removing the Bitcoin gains, Cash App revenue still increased by a hefty 140% up to $325 million. The peer-to-peer app now has over 30 million active users and accounted for almost half of Square's gross profit in the quarter.So, great news all around. But considering the stock's almighty gains so far this year, is it wise to take out a position in Square following the extended run-up?Most certainly, says Rosenblatt analyst Kenneth Hill. In fact, along with reiterating a Buy following the earnings results, the 5-star analyst raised the price target significantly - Hill's new target is $181, up from the previous $136. Investors will be taking home a 23% gain should the analyst's thesis play out over the next 12 months. (To watch Hi
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The coronavirus has infected more than 19.1 million people around the world as of Friday, killing at least 715,555 people.
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Wall Street got the July jobs report it was hoping for, but the market didn't do much with it.
The Labor Department on Friday reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 10.2% last month, from 11.1% in June, as the U.S. added nearly 1.8 million jobs. That total was better than economists' estimates, though far lower than the 4.8 million jobs tacked on in June.
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But investors didn't reap many gains in blue-chip stocks. While the small-cap Russell 2000 soared 1.6% to 1,569, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day with a modest 0.2% improvement, and the S&P 500 inched ahead by a mere 2 points to 3,351.
The Nasdaq Composite fared much worse, declining by 0.9% to 11,010 as hot-running components such as Apple (AAPL, -2.3%), Microsoft (MSFT, -1.8%) and Amazon.com (AMZN, -1.8%) stalled out Friday.
"While the U.S. economy added more jobs and the unemployment rate fell (both better than expectations), the July increase in non-farm payrolls confirms that the rise in new virus cases did slow the economic recovery to some extent," writes Gene Goldman, chief investment officer at Cetera Investment Management, a broker-dealer network encompassing more than 8,000 advisors and $250 billion in assets.
"One worry about
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