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By Staff Reporters

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Alarmed by a surge in fraud draining bank accounts through popular mobile payment apps like Venmo, Cash App and Zelle, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr., has sent scathing letters to the CEOs of each company, demanding immediate action to protect consumers.

In the letters, Bragg described the crimes as involving an unauthorized user gaining access to unlocked devices, then stealing significant sums of money from bank accounts by making purchases with the mobile payment apps and using financial information from them to open new accounts.

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And, the U.S. economy expanded at a 3.3% annualized pace in the final quarter of 2023, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.

Why it matters: It’s much stronger growth than economists expected and caps a year of economic resilience as the nation avoided a projected recession.

Here’s where the major benchmarks ended:

• The S&P 500 index rose3.95 points (0.1%) to 4,868.55; the Dow Jones Industrial Average^® (DJI) lost 99.06 points (0.3%) to 37,806.39; the NASDAQ Composite gained 55.97 points (0.4%) to 15,481.92.
• The 10-year Treasury note yield (TNX) increased about 4 basis points to 4.18%.
• The CBOE Volatility Index^® (VIX) rose 0.59 to 13.14.

Tech-related strength helped boost the NASDAQ-100^® (NXD), which includes the NASDAQ’s largest non-financial companies, by 0.6% to a record close. Energy shares were also strong behind continued gains in WTI Crude Oil (/CL) futures, which rose 1.4% and settled near a two-month -high after the Energy Information Administration reported a 7.5% drop in U.S. oil production last week, reflecting disruptions from winter storms. Small-cap shares lagged as the Russell 2000^® Index (RUT) fell 0.7%.

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Filed under: "Ask-an-Advisor", Breaking News, Drugs and Pharma, Ethics, Experts Invited, Financial Planning, Health Economics, Health Insurance, Healthcare Finance, Information Technology, Investing, LifeStyle | Tagged: Cash App, CBOE, Commerce Department, crude oil, DJIA, EIA, Eric Adams, medical debt, mobile payment fraud, Mobile Payments, New York City, NSDAQ, NXD, NYC, RIP Medical Debt, RUT, S&P 500, Venmo, VIX, WTI, Zelle |