IBM and Japan Just Launched a Quantum-Supercomputer Hybrid
Confident Investing Starts Here:
Indeed, Heron is ten times more accurate and faster than the previous Eagle processor, thanks to improvements like a much lower error rate and a speed of 250,000 CLOPS (circuit layer operations per second). As a result, this powerful chip can now handle quantum problems that are too complex for traditional computers. In addition, its close connection with Fugaku will allow RIKEN researchers to explore new hybrid computing methods by combining the strengths of both quantum and classical systems.
The IBM Quantum System Two and Fugaku are directly linked at a low hardware level at RIKEN's Center for Computational Science in Kobe, which creates a platform for real-time collaboration between the two systems. This allows engineers to design tasks that run partly on each system, depending on which one is better suited for the job. IBM and RIKEN hope to prove that today's quantum computers can provide real scientific results. A recent example involves using quantum tools to model iron sulfides, a complex compound found in nature, which was previously thought to require significantly more advanced quantum hardware.
What Is the Target Price for IBM?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on IBM stock based on seven Buys, five Holds, and two Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average IBM price target of $269.46 per share implies 8.3% downside risk.
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The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
US businesses await trade deals as financial markets brighten
U.S. stocks have come roaring back after cratering at the onset of President Trump's trade war, with the S&P 500 index hitting a record high last week following a new agreement with the United Kingdom and the loose confirmation of a broadly defined deal between the U.S. and China. While stock markets are in the black again, formal legal text of the China deal has yet to be released and businesses are bracing for the dozens of country-specific trade deals that are still being worked out. Those include prospective deals with a group of 'key 18' countries, as designated by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. While the White House is pursuing deals on a country-by-country basis following the April 2 launch of novel 'reciprocal' tariffs, deals could also be combined into regional agreements. Trade experts are emphasizing caution amid a negotiation process that has been marked by rapid-fire announcements and reversals. 'If there's anything that I would have observed since April 2 and earlier in the year, it's that the situation changes very quickly and on very short time horizons,' Willy Shih, a professor of business operations at the Harvard Business School, told The Hill on Monday. 'It looks like a China deal and maybe some of these other ones are coming in for a landing, but you never know,' he said. Bessent said last week he's eyeing initial deals with about a dozen of the 'key 18' U.S. trading partners before Labor Day, citing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. 'He expects 10 more deals. If we can ink 10 or 12 of the important 18 — or there are another important 20 relationships — then I think we could have trade wrapped up by Labor Day,' he said. Bessent said negotiations are favoring the U.S. 'Whether it's at Treasury, at USTR, at Commerce — people who've been around for 20 years are in amazement, and they're saying that countries are coming with offers that they can't believe.' 'All these countries are pulling back,' he added. However, trade experts say there's a lot more pushback happening at the negotiating table than the administration is admitting. 'Countries are not cooperating in ways that I think the administration wanted them to cooperate,' Bill Reinsch, head of the international business program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told The Hill. 'The Japanese and the Koreans have come in and wanted exemptions from some of the tariffs – from steel and aluminum tariffs, from automobile tariffs. The Koreans wanted exemptions from all of the tariffs … They're insisting on it and as of last week anyway, hadn't conceded on those points,' he added. The U.S. auto industry was not happy about the U.S.-U.K. trade deal. The Big 3 U.S. automakers sounded happier in a May statement about pricing in the pre-existing U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement than they did about the Trump deal. 'We are disappointed that the administration prioritized the U.K. ahead of our North American partners. Under this deal, it will now be cheaper to import a U.K. vehicle with very little U.S. content than a USMCA-compliant vehicle from Mexico or Canada that is half American parts,' they companies said. Trump's U.K. trade deal brought back tariff rate quotas, a regulation that has fallen by the wayside in the big multilateral trade deals of decades past. Tariff rate quotas change the level of the tariffs depending on the volume of imports and can affect costs and prices through production volumes. The U.K. deal ordered that the first 100,000 U.K. vehicles imported into the U.S. each year will be subject to a tariff of 10 percent while additional vehicles will get a 25-percent tariff under Section 232, which is a national security-related tariff. Tariff rate quotas can add major complexity for firms. They can require different companies from a single country to coordinate to figure out whose vehicles are going to be imported at the lower tariff rate before they hit the quota and higher rates are then applied. 'That's one way you can get to an agreement relatively easily … after you hit a certain ceiling the tariff goes back up,' Shih said. 'We might see more of those kinds of things.' 'If you have to negotiate these things one by one, it's a lot of work. That's why you have broader trade agreements,' he added. Tariff rate quotas on steel could be a part of a forthcoming U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, one source told The Hill. Different negotiating styles and political incentives for Trump and various world leaders are another important dimension of the ongoing negotiations that trade experts believe could show up in the final commercial deals. Trump is more of a top-down negotiator who likes the broad strokes of a deal to be worked ahead of the fine print. On the other hand, Xi Jinping of China, for one example, is more bottom-up, preferring that everything is tied up before a political victory is claimed. Trump's well-branded salesmanship got a dent from the so-called 'TACO' trade criticism on Wall Street, an acronym coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong that stands for 'Trump Always Chickens Out.' The president showed some sensitivity to the term last month, telling a reporter who asked about it that it was a 'nasty question.' Analysts think that a display of strength is in the cards from Trump, and that it could fall on one or several countries. 'He's thinking he needs to show he's tough, so there will be a victim. Maybe there will be several victims,' Reinsch said. 'He'll go after somebody — maybe Vietnam. We have a really large deficit with them now … The Vietnamese have offered a number of concessions, but I don't think if they're good enough for the Americans.' Despite the brightness in financial markets, American producers are still very nervous about tariffs, as reflected in recent surveys and anecdotal data. In Texas, the economic outlook 'generally deteriorated' and 'tariff uncertainty was making it hard for business to plan for the future,' the Federal Reserve's latest anecdotal survey indicates. Perceptions of business conditions in the Dallas Fed's manufacturing survey got worse in June. The central bank branch's uncertainty benchmark rose three points to an index level of 15.2. Staffing professionals told the Fed in May that hiring is being delayed across industries due to uncertainty around tariffs. Tariffs and cost pressures rose to the top issues in the West Monroe second-quarter supply chain poll. 'Tariffs jumped 12 points in impact from the first quarter to become the most-cited issue, overtaking cybersecurity,' the consulting firm said in a release last month. Many businesspeople and trade commentators have wondered whether the return of tariffs and U.S. trade bilateralism represents a fundamentally new moment in the global economy, despite the fact that the U.S. has long been pulling from the World Trade Organization (WTO). International trade experts have frequently described the return of tariffs as violations of international law and the so-called rules-based international order, which the U.S. helped to build in the postwar period. However, multilateralism is plowing ahead on the global stage even as the U.S. excuses itself. Mercosur — the South American version of the NAFTA trade deal that turned into the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement during Trump's first term — reached a free trade agreement with the European Union in December. The Trans-Pacific Partnership — a free trade agreement for Pacific Rim countries – recently saw the United Kingdom join its ranks as the first non-founding country to do so. The U.S. pulled out of the TPP in 2017 after helping to design it. The EU is also planning cooperation with the trading bloc and thinking about it as a way to revitalize the WTO. 'We can think about this as a beginning of redesigning the WTO,' European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last month, Reuters reported. There are still plenty of free traders in Congress and in Washington policy circles, many of whom are looking critically at the unilateral trade push under the current Trump administration and feel that the U.S. is missing out. 'I'm afraid the trade policy here is to try to fashion something that amounts to a trade surplus for the U.S.,' former U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor told The Hill. 'That is not what we should be looking for. What we should be looking for is open markets around the globe. We are the beneficiaries of that, and we always have been.'
Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: Water Tower Place and the death of the vertical mall
When Water Tower Place opened its cosmopolitan doors in 1975, the audacious notion was that all of the upscale delights of a suburban shopping center could be replicated on prime Magnificent Mile real estate by a building that soared 74 stories on a tight urban footprint. Anchored by Marshall Field's and Lord & Taylor, Urban Retail Properties had given Chicago its first vertical mall. There were always ritzy hotel rooms and condominiums (four units housing Oprah Winfrey) on the highest floors, of course, but hordes of shopaholic residents and tourists still relished traveling skyward in Water Tower's gilded glass elevators in search of clothes at Abercrombie and Fitch, Benetton, Fiorucci or Laura Ashley. A camera store, Shutterbug, was up on 7. Fans of art and architecture books could ascend to Rizzoli. Diners could rise in search of Japanese cuisine. In the hierarchy of Water Tower in the last two decades of the 20th century, the higher you were in the retail center, the more exclusive you could claim to be. The anchor department stores helped the tenants on the upper floors, of course. Customers would spill out of Marshall Field's on 6 and take the elevator down, stopping at other stores along the way. All of that is no more. If ever there was a moment to write the obituary of the vertical mall, Water Tower is the ideal corpse. But we come today not to bury what once was the epitome of retail aspiration in Chicago but to outline the chance for a rebirth. Water Tower's problems hardly are confined to this mall alone, of course, but are symptomatic of the broad, internet-induced malaise that has afflicted brick-and-mortar retail. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had plenty of money to spend on his Venetian wedding in the last few days, but malls such as Northbrook Court and others now have become melancholy destinations. In the case of Water Tower, Brookfield Property Partners walked away in 2022 as retail vacancies exploded, turning over the keys to its lender, MetLife Investment Management. By 2023, MetLife seemed to have given up on the idea that consumers would climb for a shopping experience. Water Tower's malaise began to spread, impacting most of the upper reaches of North Michigan Avenue, once Chicago's most sought-after retail block. High-profile stores such as Borders, Ghirardelli Chocolate Co. and Filene's Basement closed across the street. Tourists in search of nostalgia found their destination of choice had changed for the worse. Last week, MetLife tapped commercial real estate services firm JLL to actively market floors 4 through 8 for sale or lease, CoStar News reported. There's a massive 500,000 square feet up there and marketing documents say that MetLife has become resigned to the limits of its retail footprint being just floors 1, 2 and 3. Lots of suburban malls have, or had, three floors. In essence, MetlLfe was for the first time announcing its intention to kill the verticality of Chicago's original vertical mall by cleaving the building in two, meaning it could have two separate owners. But what happens to floors 4 through 8 seems to us more important than you might think. North Michigan Avenue remains in serious need of help, even as the section of Boul Mich near the riverwalk shows signs of renewal, with landlords snapping up commercial space at discount rates, like recently at Tribune Tower. North American Real Estate last week completed the purchase of the 47,000-square-foot retail space on the ground floor of the former home of this newspaper at 435 N. Michigan Ave., CoStar News reported. CoStar did not report the purchase price, but you can bet the value has come down from prices floated prior to the pandemic, especially since Tribune Tower has struggled to find tenants in its new, post-Tribune configuration. To the north, though, there has been even less action, although there is greater potential for radical change. Take, for example, the stalled plan to better connect the Magnificent Mile to the shimmering lake through a wide and architecturally splendiferous new pedestrian bridge crossing DuSable Lake Shore Drive and connecting Michigan Avenue directly to Oak Street Beach and the beautiful Lakefront Trail without forcing pedestrians through a grim underpass. Little has happened since that impressive scheme was envisioned, even though it would be a game-changer when it comes to opening up the Mag Mile to the water and to points north and south. To blow this opportunity as Lake Shore Drive is re-envisioned in coming months would be a huge mistake. One idea we like for the top floors of Water Tower was developed by the group trying to get Chicago to imagine its downtown as a 'cultural stadium,' filled with cool new streetscape ideas, restaurants, markets, public art and free, digitally powered tourist attractions. Lou Raizin, one of the leaders of 'Team Culture,' pitched the idea of opening up the massive repositories of the city's major museums, which have room only to display a small portion of their collections, and allowing visitors to access and walk through them, as already is the case with museums in New York, London and Rotterdam. That's an ideal use for those floors, especially since the Museum of Contemporary Art is a neighbor, although it raises the question, of course, as to who would foot the bill, relatively modest as it would be. This we know. Water Tower does not need more dentist's offices or cosmetic surgeons or tacky torture museums. Vertical malls may, alas, be a thing of the past, but 500,000 square feet is a formidable chunk of real estate in what once was one of the most exciting and aspirational blocks in the Midwest. It needs to be classy to draw the eye and attract both residents and visitors alike. You just have to look up to see the possibilities.
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Nomura Stops Selling JGB-Backed Loans After Regulatory Scrutiny
Nomura Holdings Inc. followed Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. in halting the business of selling loans backed by Japanese government bonds, as regulatory officials tighten scrutiny of the products. 'After extensive internal discussions and a comprehensive evaluation, we have discontinued the sale of JGB repackage loans from the end of June,' a spokesperson from Japan's largest brokerage said Wednesday in a reply to Bloomberg News queries. The impact on revenue is 'extremely limited,' she said, declining to comment on the value of outstanding repackaged JGBs Nomura has sold to local financial firms.
