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☆ Here are Wednesday's biggest analyst calls: Netflix, Apple, Tesla, Amazon, Bowlero, Exxon & more
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Michael Bloom | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

UBS upgrades Exxon to buy from neutral UBS said in its upgrade of the oil and gas giant that it likes the company's balance sheet. Bank of America reiterates Meta as buy Bank of America says it likes "self-help stocks in an uncertain macro." Bank of America reiterates Nvidia as buy Bank of America raised its price target on the AI beneficiary to $340 per share from $310. Bank of America downgrades CDW to neutral from buy Bank of America downgraded the technology products company after its disappointing earnings report on Tuesday. Wolfe reiterates Amazon as outperform Wolfe says it's standing by its outperform rating on the stock heading into earnings next week. "

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☆ Pentagon explains the mysterious Russian tank at a truck stop in Louisiana — saying it was disarmed and is going to an Army training center
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Sophia Ankel | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A Russian T-90A tank was left at a casino and travel center in Roanoke, Louisiana last week. The Pentagon claimed ownership of the tank on Tuesday, The War Zone reported. It said it was on its way to a US Army training center when the truck carrying it broke down. "I've been here seven years," Valerie Mott, the assistant manager of the casino and travel center, told The War Zone. Its website says that the training center is "responsible for numerous technical achievements in military intelligence, medical research, engineering, and computer technology."

CNN —The US has sensitive nuclear technology at a nuclear power plant inside Ukraine and is warning Russia not to touch it, according to a letter the US Department of Energy sent to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom last month. The Energy Department warned Rosatom in the letter that it is “unlawful” for any Russian citizens or entities to handle the US technology. The Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration told CNN in a statement that the letter is authentic. “The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration can confirm that the letter is legitimate,” said Shayela Hassan, the deputy director of public affairs for the National Nuclear Security Administration. She added: “The Secretary of Energy has the statutory responsibility for authorizing the transfer of unclassified civilian nuclear technology and assistance to foreign atomic energy activities.

☆ Streamers have a Gen Z problem: New data reveals why younger subscribers are more likely to cancel as inflation forces them to choose between Netflix and necessities
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Reed Alexander | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Nearly two-thirds of millennial and Gen Z consumers have canceled a streaming subscription in the past six months, a Deloitte survey found. Canceling the subscriptions meant sacrificing entertainment that provided "comfort" and staved off monotony during the coronavirus pandemic, McMiller said. Insider spoke with five millennial and Gen Z consumers who blamed soaring inflation for driving them to cut subscriptions in favor of essentials like gas or groceries. Overall, 44% of total respondents canceled a paid entertainment subscription within the past six months, including for reasons unrelated to cost savings. Millennials, born between 1983 and 1996, spend an average of $54 per month on streaming subscriptions — the most of any demographic, Deloitte said.

☆ The US dollar's recent slide is flashing a bullish signal for markets
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Filip De Mott | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The US dollar's recent decline is a bullish signal for global markets, DataTrek reports. Since its September peak, the US Dollar Index has fallen by 11.3%. "A weaker dollar at this point in the global economic cycle is both consistent with the past and a generally bullish sign about the future," he wrote. It is, however, how markets signal better times to come." Historically, the US Dollar Index, which compares the greenback's strength to a basket of currencies, spikes in moments of economic crises, such as in 2009 and 2022.

☆ The viral success of Bytedance's new app Lemon8 shows just how pointless a TikTok ban would be
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Amid talk of a TikTok ban, its Chinese parent company Bytedance is pushing a new app in the US called Lemon8. The early success of Lemon8 shows how banning TikTok wouldn't actually solve anything, experts say. As calls for a national TikTok ban escalate, its China-based parent company Bytedance is pushing a new app in the US called Lemon8. In fact, beyond TikTok and Lemon8, Bytedance has another success in its US portfolio: CapCut, a video-editing app. For Lemon8, Bytedance is pushing hard to get creators on the new app.

☆ An obscure, 150-year-old morality law has resurfaced in the legal battle over abortion medication
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Grace Eliza Goodwin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

A federal appeals court discussed an obscure, 150-year-old morality law in its decision on abortion medication mifepristone. A challenge to the legality of sending abortion medications via mail referenced the Comstock Act of 1873. A law professor called the legislation an outdated "zombie law" that was now in danger of being "selectively enforced." The Comstock Act was named after Anthony Comstock, a moral crusader in 19th-century America, according to Middle Tennessee State University's First Amendment Encyclopedia. A 'zombie law' that should've been repealedMurray says invoking this "zombie law" is "rolling back modernity."

☆ Remote Jobs Going Back to the Office, Outsourcing to Cheaper Workers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Jacob Zinkula | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Finding a remote job is getting more and more difficult. That's because competition for remote work in the US remains fierce, the number of job postings are on the decline, and some of the remote jobs that remain are being outsourced overseas. Companies are moving remote jobs overseasSome companies are embracing remote work, but not in the US. Instead, they're outsourcing jobs overseas and saving on labor costs. For Americans who are eager to snag that remote job, it's not all doom and gloom.

☆ An employee reportedly asked to go remote. Her CEO says he outsourced her job to India instead and saved 40% on labor costs.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Grace Mayer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

CEO Johnny Taylor Jr. told WSJ he outsourced an employee's job after she requested it be remote. Hiring someone in India saved the company around 40% in labor costs, he told the Journal. Since the pandemic, some tech companies have hired remote workers overseas, sometimes amid layoffs. Some tech companies have already turned to overseas labor, including in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Insider's Aki Ito reported. The year before, 17% of job postings offered remote work.

☆ US tech stocks close lower in mixed session as investors weigh recession worries alongside potential for another Fed rate hike
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

US stocks ended Monday's session mixed, with the Nasdaq trailing rival indexes. Investors returned from the Good Friday break anticipating another Fed rate hike after the March jobs report. Consumer inflation data and the first bank earnings after Silicon Valley Bank's collapse are due this week. But traders were also continuing to price in expectations the Fed will raise interest rates again by 25 basis points, with those odds rising to 71% during the day. Investors, by odds of nearly 70%, are expecting the Fed to raise interest rates by another 25 basis points, to a range of 5%-5.25% at its May 2-3 meeting.

Credit Suisse's investment bankers are not waiting around to find out if UBS will give them jobs. UBS executives have pulled no punches when discussing the future of Credit Suisse's investment banking teams and trading desks. Jeff CohenA two-decade Credit Suisse veteran, Cohen heads up Credit Suisse's leveraged and acquisition finance business from New York. Previously, Cohen was Credit Suisse's head of global credit products and global head of leveraged finance capital markets. Marco SuperinaA Credit Suisse veteran since 1997, Superina heads Credit Suisse's M&A efforts in the firm's native Switzerland.

☆ LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman credits Buddha as his biggest influence
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

In an interview with The Generalist, Hoffman said he's been most influenced by Buddha. Hoffman also said in the interview that Aristotle initially inspired him to study philosophy. Hoffman, who cofounded LinkedIn, announced he was stepping down from the board of OpenAI last month. Hoffman holds a master's in philosophy from Oxford and even planned to go into academia at one point. Hoffman, who calls himself an "accidental technologist," credits his philosophical instincts as the reason he is in the industry.

☆ Google CEO says he used the company's Bard AI chatbot to plan his father's 80th birthday party
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he used Google Bard to help plan his father's 80th birthday. Pichai said Bard told him he should make a scrapbook for the event. "It's not that it's profound, but it says things and kind of sparks the imagination," Pichai told the Times. Pichai's experience echoes similar stories from early users of Google's competitor, Microsoft's Bing AI chatbot. Pichai told the Times he understands the concerns people have, but remains optimistic about AI technology.

☆ Ukraine's tech entrepreneurs fight war on a different front
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Michael Kahn | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +10 min

It's an example of how some startups in Ukraine's dynamic tech sector are switching to pursue military projects. Pavlo Kartashov, director of the Ukrainian Startup Fund (USF), a government-backed organization that seeds technology startups, told Reuters his group resumed funding in October. Demand from the government has driven the shift to military technology, but most of the entrepreneurs who spoke to Reuters said that patriotic duty also played a role. "There are much more ideas in military technology," said Krasovsky, the founder and chief executive of Swedish-Ukrainian Sigma Software Group. Groups like the Polish-Ukrainian Start Up Bridge - a Polish-government backed venture - offer emerging Ukrainian tech companies small grants to fund basic business needs and a co-working space in Warsaw.

☆ A $200 Russian smartphone aiming to replace the iPhone isn't getting much love — fewer than 1,000 units have been sold since its debut
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russia's AYYA T1 smartphone has sold just 905 units since its October 2021 launch, per Vedomosti. Russia's smartphone market is dominated by Chinese brands, with Xiaomi in the lead, per Statista. The AYYA T1 smartphone — touted as a homegrown alternative to the iPhone — hasn't been very popular. That's about 18% of the 5,000 AYYA T1 smartphones produced for the Russian market so far, per Vedomosti. Russian officials touted the AYYA T1 as a potential alternative to Apple's iPhone, the Moscow Times reported on March 23.

☆ Panic over the rise of AI is hitting a fever pitch
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-02 | by ( Matt Turner | Dave Smith | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

On the agenda today:But first: The panic over the AI boom hit a new peak this week. A prominent AI researcher went further, saying six months wasn't long enough, and "we need to shut it all down." But those fears also make sense against the backdrop of a shaky economy and a distrust of Big Tech. Goldman Sachs has forecast that AI systems could impact 300 million full-time jobs. AI has been described as the next transformational technology, on a par with the creation of the internet or the television.

☆ The S&P 500's gains this year are thanks to just 8 stocks, signaling the banking turmoil isn't over yet, Jim Bianco says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Zahra Tayeb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The S&P 500's gain this year is thanks to only eight mega-cap stocks, Jim Bianco said. Bianco warned banking turmoil might not be over given the broad weakness in the S&P 500. Eight stocks are keeping the YTD gains in the S&P 500 positive." The S&P 500 has been on a choppy ride this year, rising about 5.9% since the start of January to its highest level in about three weeks. Chipmaker Nvidia is the best performer of 2023 in the S&P 500 index with an 87% gain, thanks to its exposure to the fast-growing artificial intelligence industry.

☆ Signs of pain as easy cash era ends are growing
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

LONDON, March 30 (Reuters) - The easy-cash era is over and markets are feeling the pinch from the sharpest jump in interest rate in decades. Since late 2021, big developed economies including the United States, euro area and Australia have raised rates by almost 3,300 basis points collectively. Japanese, European and U.S. banks stocks, while off recent lows, are still well below levels seen just before SVB's collapse. Reuters Graphics2/ DARLINGS NO MOREAs the SVB collapse showed, stress in the tech sector can quickly ripple out across the economy. Reuters Graphics4/ CRYPTO WINTERHaving benefited from an influx of cash during the easy-money era, cryptocurrencies have felt pain as rates rose last year, then gained on recent signs that tightening could end soon.

☆ Elon Musk's self-driving car project is on a road to nowhere
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Tim Levin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Elon Musk has made developing autonomous driving technology one of Tesla's fundamental goals. "Today it's financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla," Musk said at an event touting the carmaker's autonomous-vehicle development in 2019. That revolutionary software update never came, and by 2022 the goalpost for bringing self-driving cars to the masses had shifted to 2023. Full Self-Driving is far from actually being self-driving, some sayDespite its branding, Tesla's Full Self-Driving Beta currently requires total driver supervision, just like cruise control or smarter features like Autopilot. Likewise, McGehee says self-driving cars need a combination of overlapping sensors — whether that's cameras, radar, lidar, or ultrasonic sensors — to move through the world safely.

London/Oakland, California CNN —First Citizens Bank is buying most of the business of Silicon Valley Bank, the US tech lender that failed earlier this month. Seventeen former branches of SVB will begin operating as “Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank,” on Monday, First Citizens said. The FDIC said First Citizens was getting the $72 billion in SVB loans at a discount of $16.5 billion. “The FDIC estimates the cost of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank to its Deposit Insurance Fund to be approximately $20 billion. It had to be rescued a week ago by bigger rival UBS (UBS) in an emergency takeover orchestrated by the Swiss government.

☆ RBC: Buy these 17 future AI winners as the technology begins to transform the world
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( Marley Jay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

RBC says that AI is one of the most transformative developments in tech in the last 20 years. The firm's tech analysts explained which stocks they think will benefit the most from generative AI. They added that in many cases, the "rising tide" of AI will benefit broad swaths of the market. But it's not just the established tech titans that can profit from the advent of AI technology. Those companies are below, along with their tickers and commentary about each provided by the RBC analysts.

☆ Everyone in Washington is talking about a TikTok ban. But is it really a national security threat?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +16 min

However, more than two years after the Trump administration first issued a similar threat to TikTok, evidence remains unclear about whether the app is a national security threat. “Regarding privacy, we also did not see the TikTok app exhibiting any behaviors similar to malware.”TikTok has cited Lin’s research as part of its defense. He also repeatedly noted that TikTok does not collect more user data than most of its peers in the industry. TikTok later confirmed the incident and ByteDance fired several employees who had improperly accessed the TikTok data of two journalists. “And governments around the world are ignoring their duty to protect citizens’ private information, allowing big tech companies to exploit user information for gain.

☆ Where TikTok users may go if the app gets banned
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —On the eve of a high-profile TikTok hearing this week, the company shared that it now has more than 150 million US monthly active users. “This uncertainty could push some TikTok content creators to focus more on, and possibly begin, pushing their audiences to other social network platforms,” Mogharabi said. Snap’s stock rose in the days leading up to TikTok’s appearance before Congress amid renewed talks among federal officials of a TikTok ban. Alex Brandon/APIf that happens, Lian Jye Su, an analyst with ABI Search, believes users will follow their favorite TikTok influencers and content creators wherever they go. For now, talk of a TikTok ban may still be premature.

☆ Biden administration adds 14 Chinese firms to unverified list
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Being added to the list can potentially start a 60-day clock that could trigger much tougher penalties. ECOM International and HK P&W Industry Co Ltd were among those added to the list. They and the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. “Enforcing our export controls is a crucial part of protecting American national security,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves said in a statement following the announcement. Reporting by Alexandra Alper and Karen Freifeld; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan OatisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Snapchat and Meta lead social media stocks higher as TikTok CEO gives 'disaster' testimony to Congress
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Matthew Fox | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Snapchat and Meta Platforms jumped on Thursday as the CEO of TikTok gave testimony to Congress. CEO Shou Chew sought to quell concerns that TikTok is a Chinese asset that could spy on its 150 million American users. "We would characterize today's testimony by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in the Beltway as a 'disaster' moment," Wedbush said. Both President Biden and former President Trump have called for the social media app to be either banned or sold to a US-based company. According to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, Chew failed at his objective of containing those concerns.

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