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The Labour Party, LP, presidential candidate in the 2023 general elections, Peter Obi has given the Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Communication and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga, 72 hours to pay N5bn damages for defamation.

Obi also demanded that Onanuga tender a public apology published in four national newspapers over the widespread defamation and libel or face legal action.

The former Anambra State Governor demanded that Mr Onanuga retract his wild allegation, linking him to the planned mass protest scheduled for August.

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Nearly eight million people with federal student loans have found themselves in a familiar place: waiting for courts to decide their financial future. 

Last week, the Department of Education put everyone enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan into forbearance—pausing all payments and interest—after a federal appeals court blocked the department from implementing the plan. The forbearance gives some financial relief to borrowers while they wait for courts to decide the fate of the proposed changes and the SAVE plan as a whole. 

The order by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals was a victory for Missouri and other states that had sued the administration of President Joe Biden to stop the SAVE plan.

The plan was created in 2023 and lets people repay their student loans while making lower payments than older plans. It was one of several legal challenges against the plan by Republican state attorneys general, who argued the administration overstepped its constitutional authority when it offered borrowers more generous repayment terms.

The latest legal developments have once again created uncertainty and financial chaos for borrowers who had entered repayment plans based on information from the department and the companies that service student loans on behalf of the government. Some vented their frustration on social media. 

“I made years-long calculated decisions based on the data and loan rules,” one borrower posted on a Reddit forum devoted to discussing student loans. “This is insane.” 

Like older income-driven repayment plans, payments on the SAVE plan are based on how much income the borrower makes, not how much they owe, and borrowers who make payments for 20 to 25 years have any remaining debt forgiven—payments are set at 10% of borrowers’ disposable income.

The department launched SAVE last year after the Supreme Court blocked President Joe Biden’s plan to offer up to $20,000 of forgiveness to each federal student loan borrower. It replaced the REPAYE income-driven plan, and borrowers can make lower payments while still making progress towards forgiveness, because of how it calculates disposable income. The plan also stops interest building up on loans for borrowers who make their income-based payments.The department had planned a series of changes to take effect in July that would make the plan a better deal for borrowers, including reducing payments to 5% of disposable income for undergraduate borrowers from 10%, forgiving debt after 10 years of payments instead of 20 for borrowers with lower initial balances. 

The forbearance itself is a double-edged sword because borrowers enrolled in SAVE won’t make progress toward eventually having their loan forgiveness during the payment pause, the department said on its website. That goes for borrowers in SAVE who were on track to have their loans forgiven after 10 years of payments under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program for government and nonprofit workers.

That change affects borrowers who were automatically transferred onto the SAVE plan from REPAYE, some of whom had been making payments for years and were close to having their loans forgiven. One borrower on Reddit said they had paid for nearly 20 years and were months away from forgiveness.“It feels like my life keeps having these moments where I almost make it to some kind of mountain top and then just get kicked back to the bottom,” the borrower posted on Reddit. 

Another borrower said they were a medical student nearing graduation and had been looking forward to having manageable monthly payments under the SAVE plan instead of the $1,800 to $2,200 per month they would have paid under older plans.Others said they had consolidated their loans to get onto the SAVE plan, an action that can result in thousands of dollars of interest being capitalized and added to the balance of a loan. Some switched from other repayment plans, or were moved to the SAVE plan involuntarily because the REPAYE plan was discontinued.

“So I switched to SAVE plan to make payments more affordable and now I’m forced into forbearance that won’t count for PSLF, which I need to pay off my loans,” one borrower posted on X. “How is this fair?”

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United Parcel Service (UPS) customers are trading down, another signal from the second-quarter earnings season about the search for value options across the U.S. economy.

"We saw customers trade down between services," the shipping giant's new CFO Brian Dykes said on a conference call Tuesday, a transcript of which was provided by AlphaSense. "Specifically, we saw customers shift from air to ground and from ground to SurePost."

SurePost is the company's "budget" business-to-consumer service. Newer e-commerce customers in particular were "highly leveraging" SurePost, executives said on the call.

Shares of UPS were sinking Tuesday after the company reported second-quarter profits that fell year-over-year and missed analysts' estimates while also narrowing its sales outlook. UPS "revenues fell in the U.S. despite an e-commerce driven return to growth in volumes, indicating that pricing pressures remain a headwind to top-line expansion," CFRA analysts wrote Tuesday.

FedEx (FDX) stock also moved lower Tuesday.

A range of companies have highlighted both consumer and corporate customers' search for lower-price options for goods and services in recent quarterly reports. Coca-Cola (KO) executives also noted a "slightly greater" consumer focus on value in its at-home market during its own earnings conference call earlier today.

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Small-cap stocks moved higher early Tuesday. The Russell 2000 was recently up nearly 1%, outperforming the S&P 500 in morning action.

The morning's trading follows a surge in interest in smaller shares. DataTrek Research said in a note Monday that, based on Google Trends, searches for "IWM"—the iShares Russell 2000 exchange-traded fund—recently jumped to multiyear highs.

That comes as the index itself has climbed lately, outperforming the S&P 500 over the past month and, according to Goldman Sachs research, posting its best performance against the Nasdaq 100 since 2002 in a recent two-week period.

"Now, the Russell’s longer-run underperformance versus the S&P 500 has started to reverse, and small investors are taking notice," DataTrek wrote. "Attention drives capital flows. When that focus and money goes into a single stock, it is fair to call it a 'meme' investment."

Some of their recent rise can be attributed to investors' belief that interest-rate cuts are on the horizon, since lower rates can benefit smaller companies that often carry more debt than their larger counterparts. Second-quarter earnings, however, could take some steam out of smaller shares if they point toward a weaker second half—especially, perhaps, if big companies turn in stronger results.

DataTrek believes small caps can continue to perform. "When that interest and capital flows to an entire segment of the market, we have trouble dismissing it outright as a fad," its note read. "No doubt U.S. small caps will be volatile over the next few months, but we still believe they can do well" over the balance of the third quarter.

Comerica Wealth Management predicts two interest-rate cuts this year, a backdrop it said Monday provides "the potential for future tailwinds as the U.S. economy avoids recession."

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Sherwin-Williams (SHW) shares rose Tuesday after the paint maker posted better-than-forecast second-quarter adjusted profit on higher residential sales. The paint maker also raised its 2024 profit outlook.

Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $3.70 jumped 12.5% year-over-year and beat the $3.46 consensus estimate of analysts polled by Visible Alpha. However, revenue of $6.27 billion was up less than 1% and trailed expectations of $6.33 billion.

The company raised its full-year outlook for both EPS and adjusted EPS. EPS for 2024 is now seen between $10.30 and $10.60, up from April's guidance of $10.05 to $10.55, while adjusted EPS projections were revised up to a range of $11.10 to $11.40 from $10.85 to $11.35.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Heidi Petz said residential sales were driving demand for the company's paint products, although "General Industrial demand was soft in all regions."

"We are clearly seeing a return on last year’s growth investments in residential repaint, where volume increased by a mid-single digit percentage in a down market," Petz said. "We’re also encouraged by growth in new residential, where we expect continued momentum over the back half of the year."

Sherwin-Williams shares were 3.3% higher at $333.02 as of 10:18 a.m. ET Tuesday. They have gained about 7% this year.

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Shares in NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXPI) fell sharply ahead of Tuesday’s opening bell after the Dutch-based chipmaker issued a weaker-than-expected current quarter outlook amid a slowdown in spending by automotive customers and rising geopolitical risks.

The company guided third-quarter net sales between $3.15 billion and $3.35 billion, with the high end of that forecast falling short of the $3.36 billion expected by analysts. It sees adjusted earnings in the period of $3.42 per share at the midpoint, missing the Street estimate of $3.61 a share.

For the three-month period ending June 30, sales in the chipmaker’s automotive segment contracted 7% from a year earlier to $1.73 billion, recording its largest quarterly revenue decline in more than three years, as customers in auto end markets reined in spending due to macroeconomic uncertainty.

Like other chipmakers, NXP also faces increasing geopolitical risks from Beijing’s volatile trade relations with Washington and Brussels, with tightening export curbs potentially slowing the company’s sales to China, a country that represented around 33% of NXP’s total revenue last year.

The chipmaker’s share price has oscillated within a rising wedge over the past twelve months helping to establish easily identifiable support and resistance areas. This well-known pattern, consisting of two upward-sloping converging trendlines, typically occurs after an uptrend and signals a potential reversal in a security's price.

Interestingly, share turnover has increased in recent trading sessions, possibly indicating market participants expect post-earnings volatility. Indeed, the stock sits poised to open sharply lower Tuesday, bringing the lower portion of the rising wedge pattern into play.

NXP shares were down 7.9% at $261.38 in recent premarket trading.

Looking ahead, investors should monitor the $248 level, an area on the chart where the price will likely find support from the wedge’s lower trendline. It’s also worth pointing out that there will be a greater chance of the stock resuming its longer-term uptrend from this level if the relative strength index (RSI) flashes an oversold reading below 30 at the same time.

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