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☆ Analysts are getting even more bullish on Microsoft's A.I. prospects after latest earnings report
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft's big swings on artificial intelligence are paying off, and analysts are even more bullish on the tech giant. Rangan has a buy rating on Microsoft and a price target of $335, implying upside of 21.6%. "Azure growth was ahead of expectations with MSFT showing ability to protect margin/EPS in a tough backdrop," Turrin said, who rates the stock as overweight. He also hiked his price target to $345 from $320, pointing to a 25.2% potential gain. Keith Weiss of Morgan Stanley also reiterated an overweight rating on the stock, and hiked his price target to $335 per share from $307.

☆ Microsoft stock rallies on earnings and bullish A.I. outlook
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Rohan Goswami | In Rohangoswamicnbc | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

A sign for Microsoft Corp. at the company's office in the central business district of Lisbon, Portugal, on Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2022. Microsoft shares sustained a nearly 8% jump in pre-market trading Wednesday, a day after reporting third-quarter results that beat analyst expectations on the top and bottom lines. Shares held their gains after a British regulator blocked Microsoft's planned acquisition of video game company Activision Blizzard on Wednesday morning. Analysts responded positively to Microsoft's AI prospects. Morgan Stanley reiterated its overweight rating on the stock and increased its price target to $335.

☆ A $6 trillion AI boom is just starting. Here are 5 ways for investors to capitalize on the tech revolution, according to Morgan Stanley.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Zahra Tayeb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

AI is at an "inflection point" that could allow investors and companies tap into a $6 trillion opportunity, Morgan Stanley said. "We see AI accelerating digital transformation and tech diffusion across the economy," analyst Brian Nowak said in a note. AI-driven search tools could power stronger recommendation engines for social media and e-commerce, create better content-production tools and improve shared-economy marketplaces for transportation and other services, the bank said in the note. "We see AI accelerating digital transformation and tech diffusion across the economy," Morgan Stanley Research's internet analyst Brian Nowak said in a research note. Travel"Though 76% of travel is already being booked online, digital travel platforms are well-positioned to capitalize further on their large and unique data sets.

☆ Goldman Sachs wants to simplify options trading for its clients with this new AI-powered tool
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Goldman Sachs is building out a tool used by institutional clients for pricing derivatives. Goldman Sachs is expanding on a tool aimed at simplifying the complex world of derivatives trading for its institutional clients. At its core, Visual Structuring is making it easier to translate an idea about the markets into a potential options trading strategy. Screenshot of Goldman Sachs' Visual Structuring tool used to price options. Visual Structuring helped them explain the risk they're taking in a way that's easy to monitor and understand.

☆ There's no such thing as a dumb question ... unless you're interviewing someone for a job
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Hiring is never easy, but it's particularly difficult on Wall Street. Emmalyse's story is worth a read not only for Smart's advice but his candidness, a dying trait on Wall Street. These cloud tools are proving to be game changers. Fidelity and State Street are rolling out annuity options within their 401(k) products, The Wall Street Journal reports. As the weather starts to warm up, plenty of people are making the switch to iced coffee.

☆ Here are Thursday's biggest analyst calls: Tesla, Amazon, GE, Home Depot, Elanco, SeaWorld & more
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Michael Bloom | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Goldman Sachs reiterates Tesla as buy Goldman says Tesla's earnings report on Wednesday was a "negative" but that it's standing by the stock. Bank of America reiterates Amazon as buy Bank of America says it's standing by Amazon heading into earnings next week. Bank of America upgrades WestRock to buy from neutral Bank of America said in its upgrade of the packaging solutions company that it sees "transformation benefits." Bank of America downgrades NetApp to underperform from neutral Bank of America said in its downgrade of the hybrid cloud data services company that it sees weaker demand. Morgan Stanley initiates SeaWorld as overweight Morgan Stanley said in its initiation of SeaWorld that it sees an attractive risk/reward.

☆ Balyasny built these 4 cloud-based tools that are critical in the $19.5 billion hedge fund's push into new trading strategies
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Balyasny Asset Management is a multi-strategy hedge fund that has used the cloud since 2017. The firm's chief information officer and chief data officer detail 4 tools it built on the cloud. Balyasny Asset Management is deploying an arsenal of secret weapons that the $19.5 billion hedge fund has been building on the public cloud. The firm's data, applications, and investment teams all operate on cloud-based technologies, added Grimaldi, who is a former managing director at both JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. In turn, the firm's tech and data teams have doubled in size since 2021 to more than 450 people.

☆ Goldman Sachs just upgraded an AI-powered tool that's part of its plan to simplify options trading for its clients
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

☆ Microsoft, Amazon face cloud competition probe as UK regulator raises alarm
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Ofcom said it received evidence showing Microsoft makes it less attractive for customers to run its Office productivity apps on cloud infrastructure other than Microsoft Azure. Microsoft and Amazon were accused by U.K. regulators Wednesday of unfairly restricting competition in the cloud services market, in a significant development that could ultimately lead to an antitrust investigation into their business practices. Ofcom, the British media watchdog, published the initial findings of a market study examining the massive cloud services market. Ofcom opened a review into the sector in September, seeking to find whether firms offering public cloud infrastructure pose any barriers to competition. The regulator proposed referring the case for further investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K. regulator tasked with ensuring markets are healthily competitive.

☆ France's OVH expands into India amid growing cloud adoption
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Olivier Sorgho | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

March 20 (Reuters) - French software firm OVHcloud (OVH.PA) has launched its first data centre in India as it expands in the Asia-Pacific region aiming to capitalise on growing cloud adoption amid heightened concerns over data privacy, it said on Monday. The new data centre in Mumbai will provide Indian businesses with local computer and storage infrastructure to meet changing data compliance needs as India digitalises and pushes for more data protection, OVH said. "The Indian market is a very...fast-growing market," CEO Michel Paulin told Reuters, adding OVH had already sold a few hundred servers. "We will continue to recruit in India," Paulin said, adding OVH had created jobs last year in Mumbai to prepare the launch and implement the technical infrastructure. But the need for digital and cloud solutions was still there, Paulin said.

☆ Top Wall Street analysts pick these five stocks for the long term
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Tipranks.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Given the ongoing uncertainty, turning to stock market experts to pick attractive stocks for the long term could be a good decision. Allegro expects to flourish in these two key markets and to deliver low-double-digit percentage revenue growth from fiscal 2023 to 2028. CrowdStrike's adjusted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 (ended Jan. 31) increased 57%, fueled by revenue growth of 48%. The company's adjusted EPS grew 8% and came ahead of Wall Street's expectations, while revenue growth of 18% fell short of estimates. Nonetheless, Oracle is optimistic about the solid potential of its cloud business, which delivered 45% revenue growth in the fiscal third quarter.

☆ 10 stocks that are gaining market share for their disruptive innovations like AI, according to a portfolio manager
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-18 | by ( Laila Maidan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

AI can be placed under the broad category of disruptive technology, which refers to innovations that change consumers' habits and displace old markets. Then, you have public cloud infrastructure that connects it all together, such as Amazon Web Services or the Google Compute Engine which provides infrastructure as a service (IaaS). For this reason, instead of taking the approach of creating something as narrow as an AI ETF, the ETF is focused on anything that signals disruption to an entire industry and changes the status quo. They have a "tremendous" market share in AI applications, and companies are hungry for their products, he noted. Analog Devices (ADI) provides technology that can translate atmospheric information into digital data to mean something to the hardware.

☆ Here's what makes cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks tick and why we like the stock so much
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Zev Fima | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +22 min

Palo Alto Networks (PANW) last month had its best single trading day in about a year, exactly one week after the next-generation cybersecurity company became our newest Investing Club holding. Why Palo Alto Networks? PANW YTD mountain Palo Alto Networks (PANW) 1-year performance Palo Alto Networks is a great way to play a secular growth industry. Taking all of these segments together, Palo Alto Networks is a company capable of delivering on every aspect of cybersecurity under one roof. Palo Alto Networks' ESG practices, meanwhile, are overseen by the ESG and Nominating Committee, which provides counsel to the board in these matters.

☆ Morgan Stanley's favorite stocks to play the $6 trillion A.I. internet opportunity
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Michelle Fox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

The boom in artificial intelligence is just beginning, with a more than $5.9 trillion AI revenue opportunity ahead across the internet industry, according to Morgan Stanley. Alphabet already has about 50% upside to Morgan Stanley's price target and could see another 12% driven by AI. The company has nearly 65% upside to Morgan Stanley's price target and another nearly 9% upside driven by AI. Advertising technology company The Trade Desk has 5.5% upside to Morgan Stanley's price target and another 21.4% AI-driven upside. Lastly, Shutterstock has 13.2% upside to Morgan Stanley's price target and the largest AI-driven upside, at 38%.

☆ PayPal's CEO search amid an uncertain economy will be no easy task
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

In case you missed it, PayPal CEO and President Dan Schulman announced his plan to retire at the end of 2023 earlier this month. Coming off an extremely difficult 2022, and with competition seemingly coming at them from every which way, PayPal has to find a new CEO. I hesitate to compare this to the seemingly never-ending CEO search at Carlyle, but it's easy to see how a difficult quarter or two could complicate this entire search. The rich stay rich thanks to another loophole that helps them save on taxes. Elliott Management's Paul Singer and Two Sigma's David Siegel both played second fiddle to Haidar Capital's Said Haidar in 2022 when it came to comp.

☆ Does anyone want to stay in investment banking these days?
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Banker salaries will get you in first class, but the potential total comp at PE firms and hedge funds will get you flying private. PE firms have been known to grind through people, but nothing quite compares to life at an investment bank. An investment bank's analyst program remains the go-to route to get your foot in the door on the Street. Click here to read more about salaries being offered by top PE firms to 2024 associates. All kidding aside, this deep dive by ProPublica is a fascinating look into how investment firms are helping the ultrarich save on taxes.

Saudi officials have pressed international companies to invest in the kingdom and move their regional headquarters to Riyadh in order to benefit from government contracts. "We are finalising the plans for opening the Riyadh region. He added that Oracle would also expand the capacity of its cloud region in Jeddah, which the company first opened in 2020. The company made the announcement as global tech companies gathered for a major tech conference in the Saudi capital. Though Oracle lags its bigger rivals in the race to corner the cloud computing market, it was among the first large tech companies to open a data centre in Saudi Arabia.

☆ Elliott Management's Jesse Cohn just picked his next target for an activist campaign: an ailing software giant
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A battle is on the horizon between Jesse Cohn and Salesforce. But the first rule of activist investing is you HAVE to talk about your activist investment. Jesse Cohn, a managing partner at the hedge fund Elliott Management, is leading his firm's latest activist campaign against troubled tech giant Salesforce via a multibillion-dollar stake. Activist investing, as we've previously covered, is set to be all the rage in 2023. Click here to learn more about Jesse Cohn, a tenacious activist investor who just set his sights on Salesforce.

☆ Microsoft set to report earnings after market close
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the company's Ignite Spotlight event in Seoul on Nov. 15, 2022. Microsoft will report fiscal second-quarter results after the close of regular trading on Tuesday. As of Monday's close, Microsoft shares were down 18% over the past year, slightly underperforming the Nasdaq. The growth engine of Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud unit is the Azure public cloud. Analysts polled by CNBC and FactSet are expecting revenue growth for the Azure and other cloud services category of close to 31%.

☆ Inside THL's investing playbook for how the PE firm uses the public cloud to be aggressive in the bidding process
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The cloud has become a key piece of private-equity firm THL's investment playbook. But for THL, the cloud has become an important part of the investing giant's playbook for winning over acquisition targets. He likened the due diligence and courtship process for founders and CEOs to speed dating with a bunch of investment firms. But the cloud, with its promise of cost savings and easy innovation, is helping THL stand out in the bidding process, Benaquista said. Eventually, as part of the move to the cloud, THL was able to split up Ten-X's commercial and residential businesses with the aim of selling the former.

☆ KKR's top tech exec details the firm's 3-year migration to the public cloud, and how the PE giant is leveraging the tech to streamline how deals get done
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

KKR is moving its technology and infrastructure to the public cloud by year end. The finish line is in sight for Emilia Sherifova, KKR's top tech exec who is spearheading the firm's multi-year migration to the public cloud. KKR's cloud migration has been years in the making. Under Sherifova, KKR has more than doubled its number of cloud-focused engineers, she said, declining to specify numbers. No longer are regulatory and security concerns barring finance players from moving mission-critical systems, like exchanges' matching engines and banks' core banking platforms, to the public cloud.

☆ Blackstone used this data tool to upend its real-estate business. Now it's being deployed across its PE portfolio.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Carter Johnson | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Blackstone Chief Technology Officer John Stecher told Insider that Blackstone now uses Data Direct — previously called Real Estate Data Direct — across both its real estate and private-equity portfolios. From real estate to private equityInsider first detailed the launch of Data Direct, then known as Real Estate Data Direct (REDD), last year. That led to the roll out of the data tool to other parts of the business, like Blackstone's private-equity portfolio, and to new business lines next year. Data Direct, at its heart, is a data tool, and its success is predicated upon importing reliable information in the first place. Having good, clean data has made Data Direct very successful," he added.

☆ Banks vs. Fintechs: Why all the billions in the world can't help Wall Street crush its digital rivals
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Bianca Chan | Reed Alexander | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

To compete, banks have written fat checks to acquire fintechs — tech, talent, and all. But on Wall Street, old habits die hard, and Goldman has struggled to make Marcus, a big fintech bet, a success. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Wall Street leaders have been at the helm of a push to get their employees back to their desks. It's more that the very things that make Wall Street, well, Wall Street are preventing it from embracing the ethos of Silicon Valley. And perhaps, for Wall Street, that's the moral of the story.

☆ Execs from top firms like Morgan Stanley and Vanguard share tips for how to cut costs when moving to the public cloud
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Carter Johnson | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

When Vanguard first made a push into the public cloud, Michael Carr, the firm's chief technology officer, knew realizing savings was a key part of the move. Collaboration is keyAs with most technology applications, there's a human behavior element to cloud cost savings. At Capital One, it took years to build a culture of collaboration between technology and finance teams within the bank's centralized cloud expense management division, Johnston said. Before, the finance team would send the tech team an aggregate bill at the end of each month and "that was kind of the end of the story," Johnston said. Speaking the same language has instilled a greater sense of empathy across different teams, like finance, technology, business, and others.

☆ ESG will be a heavy focus for tech leaders in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Bob Violino | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Reducing the carbon footprint of IT operationsThere are a number of drivers moving ESG forward. One area of focus will be the need for reporting on ESG progress, as required by regulations. Nearly half of the respondents said their organization could not accurately report its carbon footprint. Efforts appear to be underway to enhance ESG reporting strategies. By 2024, IDC said, 75% of large enterprises will implement ESG data management and reporting software as a response to emerging legislation and increased stakeholder expectations.

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