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5G is here. The new digital wireless technology first started to make waves in 2017, with connectivity tests in Argentina, Norway, and Poland. By late 2018, active 5G networks were starting to appear on a limited basis in various urban areas, and in 2019 the first nationwide networks went into operation in the US and China. As 2020 matures, industry analysts expect to see these networks expand, as providers move into the mid- and high-frequency bands.Looking ahead at the landscape 5G companies will have to navigate, Roth Capital's Scott Searle writes, “5G represents a multi-year product cycle that will drive multiple investable opportunities including incremental dollar content, the emergence and enablement of private networks and Industry 4.0, and incremental bandwidth/applications such as fixed wireless access…”The companies involved in the multiple aspects of the ongoing 5G rollout are going to attract plenty of attention in the coming months. But not all of them are going to bring investors the returns to justify the investment. We’ve opened up the TipRanks database to find two stocks positioned to gain in the 5G world, and also one that may be too risky to try.Viavi Solutions (VIAV)Our first stock is a provider of measurement and fiber test devices for network systems and providers. The company offers business intelligence consulting, custom analytics, installation and integration, field and lab testing, and operational assistance for its networking products. In addition to digital tech, Viavi also offers services in light management and optical coatings to banknote manufacturers.As 5G networks expand from their current phase, enter operation in new areas, and boost performance to the full potential of the technology, Viavi’s products will find increased demand. The company has been involved in 5G since the earliest days of the technology’s design, on the validation, verification, and visibility ends. While not directly involved in installation or hardware of the new networks, Viavi’s position in the 5G chain is essential.Viavi entered 2020 after a particularly strong year in calendar 2019. The company showed four consecutive quarters of rising earnings that consistently beat expectations. Calendar year Q4, which is usually VIAV’s strongest, saw the company post EPS of 19 cents, 18.8% above the forecast. The first quarter of 2020, however, was different. First off, the calendar year first quarter (the company’s fiscal Q3) is typically VIAV’s weakest. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard at revenues. The top line came in at $256.2 million, down 3.4% year-over-year, and well below VIAV’s previously published guidance numbers. The company’s Network and Service Enablement segment led the declines, while Optical Security and Performance Products showed stronger results. EPS for 1Q20 came in at 9 cents, 11% below the forecast – and also 11% below the year-ago quarter.That’s the bad news. The good news is that Viavi has a clear path forward, especially as economic restrictions are lifted in the second half of this year. Writing on the company from Northland Securities analyst Tim Savageaux maintains his Outperform rating on Viavi shares "given continued strength in 5G and 400G optical lab development at equipment OEMs and the overall positive impact of increased carrier network traffic." The analyst added, "…we believe network traffic and subscriber growth may provide offsets in addition to likely easing of lockdowns driving resumed network maintenance and subscriber deployments… We also believe the shares are likely to be supported by VIAV's strong cash flow generation."Savageaux's Outperform rating is backed by a $14 price target, which implies a healthy upside potential of 31% for the next 12 months. (To watch Savageaux’s track record, click here)Overall, it would appear that Wall Street agrees with Savageaux’s assessment of VIAV. The stock has 7 recent reviews, breaking down in a 6 to 1 split of Buy versus Hold. The average price target, $15.14, is actually more bullish than Savageaux’s, and suggests room for 42% upside growth from the current trading price of $10.68. (See Viavi stock analysis on TipRanks)Cohu, Inc. (COHU)The second stock on our list, Cohu, is a designer and manufacturer of test and inspection equipment in the semiconductor chip sector. COHU shares had been gaining in Q4 and Q1, as demand for semiconductor chips, fueled in part by the expansion of 5G networks. In the six months prior to the current bear cycle, COHU shares posted a gain of 86%. Since the bear cycle began, however, COHU shares have underperformed. The stock is still down 45% from its peak in early February. Cohu’s Q1 results, while rocky, were in-line with analyst expectations. The losses in the earnings report were attributed to slack demand due to the general economic situation – but that is seen as a temporary factor. As economies reopen, latent projects – including 5G network construction – will restart. Cohu’s products essential in the production of the new 5G chips, and are likely to see demand resume soon enough.Krish Sankar, 5-star analyst with Cowen, sees COHU shares as a buying opportunity. The analyst opined, “The 5G adoption (over 50% of mobility bookings) is benefiting the company and coupled with an eventual Auto recovery should drive a strong earnings profile in CY21.” The analyst added, "We like the stock – the upcoming 5G cycle (and eventual Auto recovery) should benefit COHU. Despite the uncertain environment, we do not see any liquidity risk."To this end, Sankar reiterated a Buy rating on Cohu shares, along with a $20 price target. That target implies a solid upside potential of 48%. (To watch Sankar’s track record, click here)COHU shares have a unanimous analyst consensus rating of Strong Buy, based on 5 recent Buy reviews. Shares are selling for a discounted $13.55, while the average price target of $19.60 indicates a robust one-year upside potential of 45%. (See Cohu stock analysis on TipRanks)Netscout Systems (NTCT)The third stock today, Netscout. The company provides solutions for application and network performance management, an important niche in today’s digital and/or cloud-based office world. The importance of Netscout’s products in the 5G ramp is manifest, but does not necessarily outweigh the current market headwinds.NTCT shares lost heavily in the bear cycle’s initial fall, but in volatile trading had regained most of the loss. That was derailed by a mixed fiscal Q4 earnings report.At the top line, results for the fiscal fourth quarter and FY20 were down from one year ago. Quarterly revenues came in at $229.4 million, down from last year’s $235 million. FY revenue slipped from fiscal 2019’s $909.9 million to $891.8 million. Netscout posted a net loss in fiscal 2020, of $2.8 million. From an investors’ perspective, the worst part of the earnings report was the forward guidance: the company withdrew it “given the rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation."Covering this stock for Piper Sandler, analyst James Fish maintained a Sell rating. Simply put, Fish does not see Netscout regaining pre-pandemic business quickly enough to make a solid recovery. He writes, “The company saw some deals occur later in the quarter than anticipated, with others pushed into April… As a reminder, NetScout had pulled forward revenue from FQ4 into FQ3 related to a Tier-1 NA carrier deal and was unable to 're-fill' the bucket… The company is seeing increased demand related to fixed line with carriers, but not on the mobile side.”Fish’s $21 price target predicts a downside to NTCT, of 9%. (To watch Fish’s track record, click here)Wall Street is evenly split on this stock. NTCT shares have received 1 Buy, 1 Hold, and 1 Sell rating in recent weeks, making the analyst consensus view a Hold. Shares are priced at $23.04, and the average price target of $25.33 suggests room for a 10% growth. (See Netscout stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights.

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In a race to position itself in the latest trade battle between the United States and China, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd made it just under the wire. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker unveiled plans for a $12 billion plant in Arizona on Friday just hours before Washington outlined a proposal to amend tech export rules that could restrict TSMC’s sales to China’s Huawei. A U.S. Commerce Department official said TSMC’s decision to locate the plant in the United States generated “good will” at the department, the drafter of the law that would require TSMC and others to get U.S. licences to sell chips to Huawei.

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(Bloomberg) — Forced into record spending by the threat of another Great Depression, policy makers are blurring the lines between borrowing the money they need and simply creating it.Most modern economies have tried to keep the two activities as separate as possible. The typical setup has been for elected politicians to take charge of budgets, and meet any shortfall by borrowing on bond markets –- while the money-printing machinery was walled off in another branch of government, the central bank.But those barriers began to look porous after the financial crisis of 2008. And in the coronavirus slump, they’ve all but disappeared.With entire industries shuttered and unemployment soaring, only public spending is keeping millions of households and businesses afloat. The governments on the hook for this relief effort are running up some of history’s biggest budget deficits. And they’re paying at least some of the bills with what are effectively loans from their own central banks –- debt that can be rolled over indefinitely, and is really more like money.“We’ve had a merger of monetary and fiscal policy,” says Paul McCulley, the former chief economist at Pacific Investment Management Co. “We’ve broken down the church-and-state separation between the two.” “We haven’t had a declaration to that effect,” says McCulley, who now teaches at Georgetown University. “But it would be surprising if you had a declaration — you just do it.”In the U.S., the Federal Reserve is set to buy $3.5 trillion of bonds this year, according to Bloomberg Economics estimates. Most of that will be Treasuries, covering the best part of a fiscal shortfall forecast to reach at least $3.7 trillion. Nobody knows when the debt will be offloaded from the public balance sheet into the hands of private investors, if it ever is.Similar stories are playing out across developed economies from Europe to Japan — and even in some emerging markets, with Indonesia and Poland joining the fray.Behind the longstanding taboo against what is known as “monetizing debt” lies the fear of inflation. History is full of episodes when politicians grabbed control of the printing presses and splashed too much money around the economy, causing prices to spiral out of control and eroding the real value of all kinds of savings, from bank accounts to bond portfolios.Central banks were kept apart from the rest of government precisely in order to apply the brakes when politicians went too far. That autonomy will likely be needed again one day, says McCulley, who helped steer Pimco through the 2008 financial crisis and came up with terms like “shadow banking” and “Minsky moment” to define it. “It’s just not needed now. So for now, let’s just suspend it.”In the pandemic, economists see the threat as coming from the opposite direction -– with deflation a bigger risk. In slow-growing developed countries, policy has already been tilted that way for years. The challenge was to stimulate economies, not cool them down. When policy makers ran out of room to do it by cutting interest rates, they tried other ways. The effect was gradually to undermine the orthodox separation of monetary and fiscal policies. Looking back, it’s hard to see exactly if or when the Rubicon was crossed.After Japan became the first country to hit zero rates in the late 1990s, its finance ministers stepped up deficit-spending while central bankers started to buy up the resulting debt. The purchases were made via banks, not directly from the finance ministry — and they were billed as temporary holdings, not permanent ones. Those nuances allowed policy makers to argue that no monetization had occurred. Critics weren’t persuaded. But the things they warned about, like a spike in inflation or flight from bond markets, never happened.After the 2008 crash, the debate got replayed all over the world as more countries combined bigger budget deficits with so-called quantitative easing. The Fed bought Treasuries in the open market, through a select list of dealers, and other central banks made similar arrangements. And those policies have been taken even further in the current pandemic.There was no real alternative, according to Stephen Roach, a senior lecturer at Yale. “The economy is in the biggest hole it’s ever been in, so we need massive fiscal stimulus,” he said. “The central bank has to be brought in to fund it.”That doesn’t mean there are no consequences, said Roach, a former nonexecutive chairman of Morgan Stanley in Asia. In the U.S., the Fed-backed spending spree means that “inflation is likely to begin moving up post-virus,” he said. “Bond-holders always get punished in a period of rising inflation.”It’s been decades since developed economies endured anything remotely like that. Inflation has remained subdued or non-existent, however much governments borrowed or central bankers lent. Its long absence has spurred calls for even bolder policies to drag economies out of the virus slump, even if that means further blurring the lines between debt and money.In the European Union, for example, veteran investor George Soros has proposed that member states join forces to issue “perpetual bonds” that never have to be repaid. He suggested they might pay a coupon rate of 0.5% or so. Lower that by a half-point and the securities would basically be cash, says Alessandro Tentori, chief investment officer at Axa Investment Managers in Milan. “There would be no difference between a 0% perpetual bond and a coin.”Minting coins –- platinum ones, worth $1 trillion each -– is what the U.S. Treasury would do under a bill submitted by House Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. The measure would fund stimulus checks for households without adding to the national debt and triggering a fight about repayment down the road, its backers say.If those steps are far-fetched, others are already under way. The Bank of England extended an overdraft to the government. New Zealand’s central bank said it was open to buying sovereign bonds directly. The Bank of Japan has been pegging 10-year government debt around 0%, a policy known as yield-curve control that may get adopted more widely.Governments and their central banks will likely stop short of overtly turning public debt into money, judging that the risks to monetary stability outweigh any benefits, according to Nicola Mai, a portfolio manager at Pimco.“I don’t think you necessarily need that explicit cooperation,” he says. “It’s an implicit cooperation.” But the result isn’t so different: “The bank is effectively backing the sovereign market — allowing the government to spend money.”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.

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Tesla’s HR is ruffling some feathers, announcing to employees that should they decide to not return to work immediately they could lose unemployment benefits.

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Reddit, the popular online forum, is beta testing two Ethereum-based tokens for users to earn rewards for contributing content, The Block has learned.The post Reddit to launch Ethereum-based tokens for cryptocurrency and Fortnite subreddits appeared first on The Block.

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Nvidia uses their AI expertise to fight COVID-19. Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley joins the On The Move panel to discuss.

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(Bloomberg) — The pound is back to being the pariah of the currency world as renewed Brexit risks worsen the troubles of a market still reeling from the shock of the pandemic.Sterling fell a fifth day against the dollar on Friday after the latest negotiations between the U.K. and the European Union seemed set for a stalemate, with both sides refusing to compromise on key issues such as trade and movement of citizens. The pound is already the past month’s worst-performing Group-of-10 currency and options signal more pain ahead.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatened to walk away from the talks this week if enough progress wasn’t made. That raises the risk that the U.K. will end its transition period on Dec. 31 without a free-trade deal — putting further strain on an economy that’s already facing the worst recession in three centuries.“Brexit has reared its head again,” said Ned Rumpeltin, the European head of currency strategy at Toronto-Dominion Bank. “After hibernating since the end of last year, it looks like Brexit isn’t quite finished as a bearish factor for sterling. G-10 currencies remain highly risk-driven against the dollar, but the return of these concerns could emerge as a significant differentiator for sterling.”Buffeted by successive elections, failed parliamentary votes and shifts in monetary policy, volatility in sterling was at one point on par with those seen in riskier, emerging-market nations. The pound is already among the most volatile among G-10 currencies, second only to Norway’s krone this year.The pound has fallen 1.7% this week to around $1.22, on track for the worst such decline in almost two months. A close on Friday below the $1.2166 — a level that proved to be a key chart support in recent weeks — could set the stage for further losses, according to Rumpeltin.Lee Hardman, a strategist at MUFG, sees the U.K. currency slipping to $1.20 or even lower in the short term. While the consensus call in a Bloomberg currency survey is for sterling to climb 3% from current levels to end the year at $1.26, this is significantly lower than the $1.33 predicted just two months ago.“There is an increasing risk that investors view the outlook for the U.K. more negatively relative to elsewhere, thus encouraging increased speculative selling,” MUFG’s Hardman said. “The U.K. is in the unique position of having a considerable risk on the horizon in relation to the E.U. trade negotiations.”Two-month pound-dollar risk reversals, an options gauge of positioning that cover the June 30 deadline for any extension of a Brexit transition period, continue to signal a markedly bearish outlook for the U.K. currency.Bloomberg’s pound-dollar volatility calendar shows traders are not yet looking for significant price swings in the pair either at year-end or on June 30, suggesting the risk of market complacency that could leave sterling susceptible to wide fluctuations if Brexit talks turned more tense.The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier is due to give a press conference Friday on this week’s round of negotiations.“Do I expect a significant deterioration in talks at this stage? No, as there are still the June and September rounds before the hoped October “soft” deadline,” said Jordan Rochester, a currency analyst at Nomura International Plc. “But it would help focus minds if Barnier turns up the temperature. We remain short sterling.”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.

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Stock futures were lower Friday morning after a whipsaw session on Thursday, as investors continued to weigh new economic data and earnings results against hopes of a speedy economic reopening.

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