The House of Representatives on Thursday passed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug pricing legislation, a sweeping bill that will allow the U.S. government to negotiate lower prices on the costliest drugs each year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates Pelosi’s bill, if enacted, would save Medicare $456 billion over a decade but also keep eight new drugs from coming to the U.S. market. House Republicans criticized it as highly partisan and warned that the legislation would spur the los

Grand Theft Auto Online’s new Diamond Casino Heist is available starting today, and Rockstar Games has shared more about the activities players may pursue in the big run-up to robbing the Diamond blind. The arcade is a front operation for planning the heist and getting the crew together. The games, whose marketing copy Grand Theft Auto: Vice City fans can probably recite from memory, are Defender of the Faith, Monkey’s Paradise, and Penetrator. Rockstar Newswire has much more (including detailed

Geoff Keighley’s annual video game awards show, The Game Awards, will broadcast live from Los Angeles on Thursday, Dec. 12 at 8:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. PT. The Game Awards 2019 will also stream live on Twitch, Mixer, Facebook, Twitter, Steam, and other platforms. This year’s edition of The Game Awards promises new game reveals — “around 10 new games/projects being revealed,” according to Keighley. And, hey, maybe we’ll see something more from the new Dragon Age game that BioWare teased at last year

But because The Sims attempts to simulate real life, the developers knew that they had to incorporate student loans, which unfortunately are often a pillar of the university experience. The question then became: How much pressure should student loans actually place on the player? In an early crack, student loans weren’t particularly burdensome, but the team realized that designing them that way wouldn’t make things challenging enough. “The intention with debt wasn’t to make student loans feel pu

J.P. Morgan’s downgrade of Starbucks didn’t last for long. The firm upgraded shares of Starbucks to overweight from neutral and hiked its 12-month price target to $94 per share from $90 per share. J.P. Morgan met with Starbucks management and “sensed a new confidence in the team that showed the plan working.” J.P. Morgan downgraded Starbucks for the first time in 15 years of coverage in July because Starbucks’ stock had rallied more than 90% in the past 12 months, which “exceeded expectations.”

An employee wears an orange Home Depot Inc. apron at a store in New York. Buy the pullback and reset in growth expectations for Home Depot, said Credit Suisse. The firm upgraded shares of the home improvement retailer to outperform from neutral and raised its price target to $235 from $225 per share. “We believe HD offers an attractive risk/reward now after its recent pullback, and yesterday’s guidance reset, with optionality on improving external and internal drivers in FY20,” said Credit Suiss

Here are the biggest calls on Wall Street on Thursday:UBS upgraded the company in transferred coverage to a new analyst and said the stock was at an “inflection point.” “We assume coverage of GE with a Buy rating as we believe the stock is at a positive inflection point into 2020, driven by 1) successful de-levering , 2) strong EPS growth of ~12%/29% in 2020/21E and 3) a tripling of ind. FCF to ~$2.3B in ’20e led by Aviation & Healthcare. Power, Renewables and Corporate FCF drags should decline

Dubai property magnate Hussain Sajwani has repeated calls for an immediate halt to construction, warning the city faces “disaster” if oversupply continues. “Nothing has changed,” Sajwani told a CNBC-moderated panel at the Salt Conference in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. “The glut of supply we have, or we are going to have, will have an impact on the market.” Dubai’s real estate market, a crucial component of its economy, is feeling the pain. “I think there is a demand for at least 15,000-25,000 units

A Saudi Aramco logo sits on display during the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Nov. 13, 2018. “It’s not exactly what you might call a free market price,” John Rutledge, chief investment officer at investment firm Safanad, told CNBC in Abu Dhabi shortly after trading began on the Saudi Tadawul. In a statement, Saudi Aramco replied to the suggestion saying, “We believe the demand from a broad base of individual investors and such a w

The European Central Bank (ECB) kept its rates unchanged on Thursday following new President Christine Lagarde’s first monetary policy meeting in Frankfurt. The euro traded roughly flat against the dollar at $1.1132 following the announcement awhile equity markets turned slightly negative after marginal early gains. Lagarde suggested that the growth slowdown was stabilizing but that incoming data since October’s policy meeting “pointed to continued muted inflation pressures and weak euro area gr

J.P. Morgan’s downgrade of Starbucks didn’t last for long. The firm upgraded shares of Starbucks to overweight from neutral and hiked its 12-month price target to $94 per share from $90 per share. J.P. Morgan met with Starbucks management and “sensed a new confidence in the team that showed the plan working.” J.P. Morgan downgraded Starbucks for the first time in 15 years of coverage in July because Starbucks’ stock had rallied more than 90% in the past 12 months, which “exceeded expectations.”

An employee wears an orange Home Depot Inc. apron at a store in New York. Buy the pullback and reset in growth expectations for Home Depot, said Credit Suisse. The firm upgraded shares of the home improvement retailer to outperform from neutral and raised its price target to $235 from $225 per share. “We believe HD offers an attractive risk/reward now after its recent pullback, and yesterday’s guidance reset, with optionality on improving external and internal drivers in FY20,” said Credit Suiss

You’re probably already aware that wealth in America is a tale of haves and have-nots. But new research shows just how big the disparity is in 401(k) plan accounts — workplace retirement savings plans that were created to help all individuals get ahead. There are two main reasons why the 401(k) plan and other workplace retirement savings plans don’t work, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the non-partisan think tank that authored the study. One reason is that roughly half of workers do

Yet there are some less obvious reasons for certain retirees or retirement savers to consider doing a so-called Roth conversion. Also, while there are contribution and income limits that apply to direct contributions made to a Roth IRA, those restrictions don’t exist for assets transferred from other qualified retirement accounts. Here are some of the situations, discussed by Levine, where a Roth conversion might be right for you. For money that’s converted to a Roth IRA, you can avoid the penal

Investor and author Grant Sabatier says building a relationship with your money is the key to having more of it. If anyone knows how to get to $10,000 with sure, definite steps, it’s Grant Sabatier of online personal finance community Millennial Money. Today, Sabatier, who turns 35 this month, is worth more than $1 million and has just published his first book, “Financial Freedom.” Money is only stressful if you don’t build a relationship with it, Sabatier says. “Just make a couple of these chan

An Airbus A320-212 operated by Delta Airlines takes off from JFK Airport on August 24, 2019 in New York City. Delta Air Lines on Thursday forecast continued revenue growth next year, thanks to strong consumer spending, particularly passengers who buy seats at the front of the plane. The guidance sent shares of the airline up by more than 4% in morning trading. Delta’s premium-class revenue is growing at twice the rate of its revenue overall, the airline said in an investor day presentation, reac

Tim Wentworth, President of Express Scripts and Cigna Services, speaking at the CNBC Healthy Returns conference in New York on May 21, 2019. So Cigna’s Express Scripts, one of the biggest pharmacy benefits managers, is throwing them a much-needed lifeline. Right now, Express Scripts and other PBMs like CVS Caremark essentially decide which medications should be covered by health plans. The move will also help the struggling digital health sector. Express Scripts’ chief experience officer Mark Bi

Watch CNBC’s full interview with former White House strategist Steve BannonSteve Bannon, host of radio show and podcast “War Room: Impeachment” and former White House chief strategist in the Trump Administration, joins “Squawk Box” to discuss the latest on China trade, the 2020 election, the House filing articles of impeachment against President Trump and more.

20% believe Boeing 737 Max is safe to fly, Bank of America survey saysRon Epstein, senior equity analyst at Bank of America, joins “Squawk Box” to discuss the latest in the Boeing 737 Max saga and how the stock is impacting the Dow.

Kunins now oversees Axon’s software road map, the list of technologies Axon thinks will be big over the next decade. Axon formally became a technology provider in 2009 when it launched Evidence.com (now Axon Evidence), a cloud-hosting service where police departments store digital assets — namely, video from Axon body cameras. The maker of law enforcement technology like the Taser recently hired an Amazon Alexa executive as it pushes further into cloud offerings. “As the biggest cloud software s