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☆ How Larry Page's flying-car company of the future turned into a stunning failure
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Although I'm currently pretty homesick and jet lagged, I'm blessed with "the life-changing magic of working from home." One worker told my colleague Rebecca Knight how remote work transformed her life and how returning to the office has killed company morale. The stunning failure of Google founder Larry Page's flying-car company. In April 2022, company morale plummeted when it axed one of its most promising projects, those former insiders say. The company put together a thorough document to help managers navigate pay-related conversations with employees, and Insider got a look.

☆ The US dollar's outlook is complicated. Here's what to know about the currency's standing on the world stage.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The dollar's position as a top reserve currency, however, may be somewhat less certain. They pointed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a catalyst for the currency's drop-off as a reserve currency. "We believe the erosion of the dollar's reserve currency status has accelerated in recent years at an alarming pace," Eurizon said. Here's the takeaway forecasters seem to agree on: The dollar's losing some ground as a global reserve currency, but none at all as far as international trade. What's your outlook for the dollar's role on the world stage in 2023 and beyond?

☆ Apple continues to quietly build on its fintech ambitions
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

In payments, specifically, its made progress via Apple Pay, the Apple Wallet, and the Apple Card. On Monday, Apple took another step deeper into financial services, announcing the launch of a high-yield savings account (4.15%) via its Apple Card. And now, as Goldman tries to salvage what's left of its consumer dreams, Apple continues to roll on. What's not clear, though, is what type of terms Goldman gets for serving as the back-end partner partner. Click here to read more about the top eight executives shaking up payments, including a key leader at Apple Pay.

☆ Why the stock market's running of the bulls might be about to kick off
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Optimists rejoice — Wall Street strategists just pinpointed a handful of trends, indicators, and gauges that all suggest 2023 could see a new running of the bulls. The S&P 500 has already seen a sturdy 8% gain to start 2023, but year-end gains could be even bigger if one of BofA's bullish surprises pan out. "The S&P 500 has now spent more than 25 weeks above its 200-week moving average," Lee said. "Since 1950, there are zero instances of the S&P 500 making a new low once it has recovered above the 200-week moving average and spent at least 15 weeks there." US stock futures rise early Monday, as investors brace for a crucial week of earnings reports to weigh recession risks.

☆ Millennium's new Miami-based engineering program is the latest shot in hedge fund's war for young tech talent
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Insider's Bianca Chan has a first look at Millennium Management's new engineering training program for its Miami office. Click here to read more about Millennium's new training program for engineers in Miami. JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, BlackRock's Larry Fink, Citigroup's Jane Fraser, and Wells Fargo's Charlie Scharf shared thoughts on the banking crisis during their respective earnings calls. The world's largest money manager is open to making some deals in the wake of the banking crisis. Despite all the chatter on the recent banking crisis, JPMorgan's CEO still had thoughts on the state of the wider economy.

☆ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's total pay plummeted in 2022 — but there's more to it than meets the eye
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-15 | by ( Hallam Bullock | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

AWS CEO Andy Jassy, who is set to become Amazon CEO, helped oversee the cloud unit's rise. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's total compensation plunged last year to $1.3 million. It may still seem like a lot of money, but in 2021, Jassy's total pay was over $200 million. Also, keep in mind that Jassy's base salary in 2022 was $317,500, an 80% leap from $175,000 in 2021. Musk's reign of chaos at Twitter may have saved it from collapse, but there's a long way to go.

☆ Why banning TikTok could be a bad idea
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Download Insider's app here. Screenshots from Lemon8 app, Ese Nuesiri / Shantania Beckford1. The rise of Lemon8 proves how pointless a TikTok ban would be. The US government wants to ban TikTok, but its parent company ByteDance is coming out with a new app aimed at the US market. Paayal writes that even if the US banned TikTok, Lemon8 would still exist.

☆ Russia's war economy isn't as resilient as reports would have you believe
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

That brings us to today's main story — economists say the official data coming out of Russia isn't painting an accurate picture of Putin's wartime economy. "These are the things that businesses deliver and consumers purchase in an economy, and they have been absorbing the impact. Our tracker shows a contraction of the Russian economy ahead of the official figures release precisely because we use high-frequency indicators from the private economy." Vehicle sales, imports, credit growth, home prices, and other measures all point to a much less robust regime since Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine began. These four charts tell the story of how war has reshaped Russia over the last year.

☆ Everything you need to know as JPMorgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and other big banks report earnings
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Bank of America and Goldman Sachs come in on Tuesday, with Morgan Stanley bringing up the rear on Wednesday. For a breakdown on the specific numbers, check out Markets Insider and the fantastic 10 Things Before the Opening Bell newsletter. Big banks poured $30 billion into First Republic in the midst of the banking crisis in an effort to shore up the wider market. And what about those pesky shadow banks? Never one to miss a good opportunity, shadow lenders are looking to step up where big banks are stepping back, Bloomberg reported.

☆ JPMorgan just killed Wall Street's WFH dreams
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

But do you think execs will be OK with their subordinates working remote while they are stuck in the office? Plenty of others, most notably Goldman Sachs' David Solomon, have touted the importance of being in the office (blah blah mentorship model blah blah). Now JPMorgan just laid the blueprint for everyone else to force their own employees back in. Here are more details, including the internal memo, on JPMorgan forcing MDs back into the office. Salt Labs wants to help low- and medium-income workers build wealth via an app that operates like a frequent-flyer program.

☆ The housing market's fluctuations of the last year have left the best forecasters torn on what home prices will do in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

That said, today's newsletter focuses on the housing market — and why economists can't seem to agree on what it's going to do next. Some of the top real-estate forecasters in the world expect home prices to drop in 2023. Zillow forecasts home prices to climb 0.5% this year, and CoreLogic predicts a year-over-year increase of 3.7% by February 2024. Last month's financial turmoil that Silicon Valley Bank kicked off has led many analysts to anticipate a cut or pause in rate hikes, which could lead to fluctuations in housing demand and affordability. Prices in New York rose nearly 2% Wednesday as fears of a global supply shock intensified.

☆ Elon Musk dreams of Twitter's AI power
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Elon Musk's personal AI ambitions. Elon Musk was one of the more prominent names on an open letter calling for a pause in AI development. My teammate Asia Martin points out that Musk's position on AI is contradicted by Twitter's investment in generative AI. Twitter's recent purchase of hardware normally used to develop generative AI products shows the extent of this ambition. Read more on Elon Musk's AI ambitions.

☆ Two of Ken Griffin's biggest donations sit on opposite sides of the spectrum
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Griffin, who founded Wall Street giants Citadel and Citadel Securities, donated $300 million to Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). However, it's interesting to see how two of his biggest contributions — DeSantis and Harvard — seem to operate on opposite ends of the spectrum. Click her to read our profile on Ken Griffin's rise to the top of Wall Street. Wall Street is drying out wells to drive up returns in California. Click here for more on the water woes created by Wall Street.

☆ March CPI and the Fed's next steps in its inflation battle: Everything to know
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Phil Rosen here — March's inflation report is due at 8:30 a.m. "Super core inflation in the CPI report has shown no signs of abating yet," he wrote in a note. Below, I'm breaking down how the world's largest asset manager expects the inflation story to pan out in the long-run. But BlackRock isn't convinced that strength can continue. These three under-the-radar signals suggest that a US recession isn't as close as you might think.

☆ More layoffs may still come for tech workers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The tech sector has shed an estimated 330,000 jobs since last year, but my colleague Hasan Chowdhury writes that more cuts will likely come. Here's why tech workers have to brace for more layoffs. The AI arms race has pushed tech organizations to recruit AI talent from university programs aggressively. Google employees reportedly tried to stop Bard. Read Insider's exclusive on the cuts.

☆ Why cutting middle management is a bad idea
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The push to cut middle managers will backfire on tech. Companies like Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce embarked on cost-cutting efforts that "flattened" org charts by removing middle managers, starting a trend across Silicon Valley. Middle managers, or what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls "managers managing managers," saw their roles shrink in the past year as tech companies focus on "individual contributors," increasingly requiring managers to do coding work themselves. But losing middle managers could also impact team morale and how employees look at their futures in the company. It comes despite Musk recently signing an open letter calling for an industry-wide halt to any AI training for several months.

☆ The psychologists who sit between you and your dream job on Wall Street
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Nabbing your dream job might just amount to getting approved by a handful of psychologists and business strategists. Click here to read more about ghSmart, the leadership advisory firm that plays a key role in Wall Street's hiring process. Generative AI startups on the rise. PE firms big bet on food companies isn't paying off. Private-equity firms bought up the companies behind some of your favorite brands of food, but rising interest rates have ruined those investments, The Wall Street Journal reports.

☆ The Fed warned of a looming credit crunch. Americans say it’s already arrived.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

We just saw a more extreme distribution play out in the stock market, too. Just 20 names drove 90% of the gains in the S&P 500 over the first three months of the year. The Fed has been warning of tightening credit conditions since last month's handful of bank failures, but policymakers spoke as if it were some future event. Remember, a so-called credit crunch means lenders raise the bar for borrowers, and people have to meet stricter parameters to get a loan. "The credit crunch has started," Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, said in response to the report.

☆ After gaining control of our reporter's phone, a hacker ripped her off for $10,000. She set out to find them.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Hallam Bullock | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

You can see pictures of the massive meatball here — but I warn you, it looks exactly how you would expect. Now, before the scientists start serving up Dinosaur DNA, let's take a look at the top tech stories this week. Once the hacker had control of Hartmans' phone, they didn't waste any time. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk plans to build a town named "Snailbrook" — but he isn't the only billionaire creating their own utopia. Some of Lee's friends and colleagues, including Elon Musk, have lambasted the "violent crime in SF."

☆ Leaked Amazon memo shows plans to reduce employee stock awards in 2025
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Leaked Amazon memo shows plans to reduce employee stock awards in 2025. The company is considering increasing the cash portion of compensation to help cushion employees against its stock price going down in the future. In other news:The late Cash App founder Bob Lee. Cash App creator Bob Lee died after a reported stabbing in San Francisco Tuesday. Silicon Valley is grieving the loss of the founder of Cash App and the former chief technology officer at Square.

☆ The bank taking over SVB's venture-debt business doesn't seem to know a lot about venture debt
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

But first, can you explain what venture debt is? The venture debt community, which has grown considerably as equity funding has dried up, is skeptical that First Citizens is the best firm for the job, Insider's Darius Rafieyan reports. Reporting from the first annual Venture Debt Conference in New York, which First Citizens seemed to be absent from, Darius details how attendees and panelists questioned the family-run regional bank's ability to take over the complex and nuanced business that is venture debt. I'm all for learning on the job, but that type of knowledge seems like a prerequisite for buying a business with more than $70 billion in venture debt. But, if First Citizens is as ill-equipped to take over SVB's venture-debt business as some believe, that only further complicates the matter.

☆ The dollar's dominance on the world stage isn't going away. Here's why.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The move makes sense, given Russia's growing status as a pariah state, but it also highlights a push to unseat the dollar as a dominant force in global trade. But to strategists at the Carson Group, a scenario where the dollar isn't the world's primary reserve currency simply isn't in the cards in the near future. Are you convinced that the dollar won't lose its status as a dominant global reserve currency? Some companies in this batch of oil stocks have upsides of up to 180%, according to strategists at Bank of America. An expert from the World Gold Council pointed out that history says gold performs well in a recession.

☆ Google's AI chatbot Bard is still being rushed
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google contractors say they don't have enough time to verify correct answers from the company's AI chatbot, Bard. Bard got off to a less-than-ideal start when it gave an incorrect answer at Google's launch event earlier this year. Some of the contractors told Insider that they just aren't given enough time to corroborate and check the most accurate answer. Google CEO said he sticks to fun and creative questions with Google's Bard AI chatbot. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, told The New York Times that he learned through trial and error what type of questions to ask Google's AI chatbot.

☆ Frank's founder just got hit with federal charges, but questions remain about JPMorgan's handling of the deal
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Drop any Wall Street (or non-Wall Street) questions you have for me here. A quick refresher: JPMorgan accused Javice of juicing Frank's customer numbers in a lawsuit filed at the end of last year. Prosecutors charged Javice with wire fraud affecting a financial institution, securities fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy. I've joked about it before, but Taylor Swift really should teach a class on this stuff for Wall Street. It's not the president or Wall Street or Congress that's to blame.

☆ The commercial real estate market is showing some cracks
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

But before we get too intergalactic, this morning we're stopping off in the commercial real estate space. In the wake of March's bank tumult, commercial real estate has frequently been noted as the next domino to fall — and one corner of the market is already showing signs of stress. A few things to remember:Higher interest rates have made it more expensive for both American households and large commercial real estate owners to buy or refinance property. Small and medium-sized banks hold 80% of US commercial real estate debt outstanding. What are the biggest risks, in your view, facing the commercial real estate market for the second quarter of 2023?

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