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☆ Gold steadies near nine-month peak with spotlight on U.S. data
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Gold prices hit a nine-month high on Thursday before trading steady, as investors hunkered down for U.S. economic data that could influence the Federal Reserve's policy tightening path. Spot gold was flat at $1,944.96 per ounce, as of 0244 GMT, after hitting its highest since April 2022. "The key question for investors will be how much dollar will strengthen and how this will impact gold prices in near-term." Investors will also scan the U.S. weekly initial jobless claims data due later in the day and U.S. personal consumption expenditures (PCE) data on Friday. Spot silver fell 0.2% to $23.85 per ounce, platinum lost 0.4% to $1,035.16, and palladium was down 0.2% to $1,695.29.

☆ A dead bird of prey with an 'unusual wound' and other suspicious incidents rock the Dallas Zoo
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Tim Stelloh | Tim Stelloh Is A Breaking News Reporter For Nbc News Digital. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

An endangered vulture was found dead at the Dallas Zoo over the weekend with an "unusual wound," facility officials said Monday — the third suspicious incident there in less than two weeks. It isn’t clear whether the death of Pin, a 35-year-old lappet-faced vulture, is linked to the earlier incidents. The zoo said in a statement Monday it asked Dallas police to investigate and did not comment further. Dallas Zoo via NBC Dallas-Fort WorthThe zoo said that in the past 10 days, it had “substantially” increased security measures, including limiting access to outdoor enclosures and adding cameras and overnight guards. "Given the recent incidents at the Zoo, we alerted the Dallas Police Department," the post said.

☆ Jim Cramer says it’s too soon to buy video game stocks like Activision and Take-Two
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Krystal Hur | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

CNBC's Jim Cramer on Thursday warned investors not to pick up beaten-up shares of video game companies like Activision Blizzard and Take-Two Interactive Software just yet. Some of the other names to keep an eye on include Sony, AMD , Microsoft and Nvidia , according to Cramer. Video game companies saw their stocks skyrocket during the height of the Covid pandemic, as consumers hunkered down and turned to at-home entertainment. Nevertheless, the headwinds facing the video game industry will likely abate, though it's unclear when, Cramer said. "While the video game industry came out of 2022 looking like one of the biggest losers … I think it could just turn out to be a temporary problem, not a permanent one.

☆ How eliminating noncompete agreements could make it easier for workers to change jobs
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-15 | by ( Marguerite Ward | Rebecca Knight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Some 30 million workers are subject to noncompete agreements, according to the FTC. The FTC estimated that some 30 million workers are subject to noncompete agreements. In theory, noncompete agreements protect companies from having high-level executives with inside info jump to competitors or start rival shops. Thousands of workers could soon switch jobsMany low-wage workers are subject to noncompete agreements, which the FTC said stifles wages and innovation. andresr/Getty ImagesEnforceable or not, noncompete agreements scare many workers into staying in their current roles, recruiters said.

☆ California Battered Again by Heavy Winds, Rain and Flood Warnings
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Alyssa Lukpat | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

California hunkered down Monday for its fifth storm since Christmas as the already saturated earth raised the risk of major floods. Another storm rolled in on Sunday night as the state was still cleaning up from previous storms that Gov. Gavin Newsom said had killed 12 people. The storms have been generated by “atmospheric rivers,” or plumes of moisture that forecasters said would unleash trillions of gallons of rainfall.

WASHINGTON — Patrick Leahy was swept into the Senate nearly a half-century ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon’s resignation and pardon. Ron Frehm / APSen. Leahy take photos on the inaugural stand during Barack Obama's presidential inauguration at the Capitol on Jan. 21, 2013. Let’s stay here and vote where we can be seen.”Sen. Leahy, D-Vt., walks to the Senate Chamber on Jan. 6, 2021. Ira Schwarz / APSupreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in by committee chairman Sen. Leahy, D-Vt., during her confirmation hearing in 2009 in Washington. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., in the Senate subway.

☆ AMC says it's no longer in talks to acquire theaters from bankrupt Cineworld
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Rebecca Picciotto | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

AMC said it is no longer in talks to acquire theaters from Regal parent company Cineworld, which had filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year. Cineworld, which is based in the United Kingdom, had been in discussions with AMC to hand over some of its theaters after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, AMC said the discussions with Cineworld lenders regarding assets in the U.S. and Europe had ended. The disclosure comes after AMC reported another quarterly loss last month despite an increase in revenue, as the theater chain spent more than it brought in. The world's largest movie theater company has been trying to reduce its debt loads, which were exacerbated during the pandemic when people hunkered down at home and streaming services boomed.

☆ Three Marvel sequels are the most anticipated movies of 2023, according to Fandango
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Rebecca Picciotto | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

A trio of upcoming Marvel movies − the newest installments of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man and Ant-Man franchises − are the top three most anticipated films for 2023, according to a new survey by Fandango. Many of the most-anticipated films are prequels, sequels or films otherwise connected to a well-known franchise. 2023's Top 10 Most-Anticipated Movies Across Categories 1. "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" (Universal )Among the top 10 overall most anticipated films, only "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" isn't part of an established movie series. Last year, 80% said they wanted to see a minimum of five movies in theaters.

☆ Morning Bid: Hawk-eyed
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde's forceful hawkish rhetoric has played Grinch, with little sign yet of a Santa rally as we head towards Christmas and the New Year. And so, investors will parse every inch of economic data coming through in the near term to gauge inflationary pressures and recessionary signals, with flash PMI data from the Eurozone and the UK on deck for the day. Of course, the worry remains on what the audit is likely to reveal, and that has put a lid on gains for these stocks. "Some time away from Twitter is good for the soul," Musk tweeted. loadingKey developments that could influence markets on Friday:Economic events: Nov UK retail sales, Flash PMI data for UK, Eurozone, Sweden's unemployment rate for NovemberReporting by Ankur Banerjee; Editing by Edmund KlamannOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Walmart saw a big dip in customers shopping at its stores on Black Friday this year, study finds. Instead, they may have been flocking to the retailer's website.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Ben Tobin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Walmart saw an estimated 5.3% decline year-over-year for in-store traffic, according to Placer.ai. Nonetheless, Walmart got more search traffic than its rivals from people looking online for Black Friday deals. Walmart saw a 5.3% dip in physical store traffic this Black Friday compared to last, according to estimates from Placer.ai, a location data company. Walmart saw searches for Black Friday discounts spike by 386% year-over-year, per the company. "But I would say overall the high-level reports I've seen have been positive for Walmart on Black Friday across (product) categories."

☆ Stowaways on tanker from Nigeria set for deportation from Spain
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

LAS PALMAS, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Two of three stowaways who were rescued in Spain's Canary Islands after enduring 11 days on the rudder of a fuel tanker from Nigeria have been returned to the ship with the aim of deporting them. In a photograph on Twitter by the Spanish coast guard on Monday, the three stowaways are shown hunkered on the rudder under the hull, just above the waterline of the Alithini II. The ship's captain confirmed to the Red Cross that it had sailed from Nigeria 11 days earlier. The stowaways were treated for moderate dehydration and hypothermia, the Canary Islands emergency services and the Red Cross said. The Spanish-owned Canary Islands are a popular but dangerous gateway for African migrants attempting to reach Europe.

Michael Anderson, a bartender at Club Q, recalled that he heard "a few popping sounds" and initially assumed someone inside the club might have been clapping. In the dark of the club, Anderson saw "a silhouette of a person" clutching a long gun and heard one loud pop after another. "I don't know who stopped him," Anderson told NBC News, "but I'm grateful, because they most certainly saved my life last night." He has processed this much, Loveall said: "You don't need to take lives or cause pain and suffering to people that you don't know, you don't understand. "It's that adrenaline of, 'I can’t think, and I don’t know what to do.'

☆ Airbnb CEO on the tech downturn: ‘It’s like we’re all in a nightclub and the lights just came on’
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —After years of seemingly unstoppable growth, the tech industry is now facing the “ultimate reality check” as it confronts broader economic uncertainty and waves of layoffs, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told CNN on Thursday. Facebook-parent Meta said last week it was cutting 11,000 jobs after nearly doubling its staff during the pandemic. And Twitter recently cut approximately 50% of its staff as new owner Elon Musk races to bolster its bottom line. Chesky said the company is not undergoing layoffs at this time, and in fact is hiring. “We need more diversity in Silicon Valley, but that diversity should not just be demographic diversity.

☆ Special Report: FTX's Bankman-Fried begged for a rescue even as he revealed huge holes in firm's books
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Angus Berwick Anirban Sen Elizabeth Howcroft Lawrence Delevingne | Angus Berwick | Anirban Sen | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +22 min

Sequoia was shocked at the amount of money Bankman-Fried needed to save FTX, according to the sources, while Apollo first asked for more information, only to later decline. The booklet flagged the risks of crypto trading, particularly how sudden sales of tokens could trigger a "domino effect" that would lead to a "cascading set of liquidity failures." Using profits from Alameda, Bankman-Fried launched FTX in 2019. From almost nothing in 2019, FTX handled about 10% of global crypto trading this year, a September document shows. At one point, he lived in a penthouse overlooking the Caribbean, valued at almost $40 million, according to two people who worked with FTX.

☆ Home Depot, Lowe's to see higher sales as owners remodel amid rising rates
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Deborah Mary Sophia | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Wall Street analysts see the largest U.S. home improvement chains benefiting as rising interest rates encourage home owners to renovate existing properties rather than move on, while professional contractors have a backlog of work to clear. THE CONTEXTHome improvement chains saw sales and profits surge during the pandemic as Americans hunkered down at home revamped their living spaces. While demand is expected to cool, higher mortgage rates and home prices are providing a new reason for households to remodel their existing properties. "Home Depot and Lowe's no longer have the more captive consumer base they had throughout 2020. Yet consumers very much continue to spend on the home," said MKM Partners analyst David Bellinger.

☆ Jim Cramer says there’s enough pain in the market for the Fed to slow rate hikes
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Krystal Hur | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

CNBC's Jim Cramer on Monday said that there's enough pain in the market for the Federal Reserve to consider easing its pace of interest rate hikes. "There's enough turmoil that the Fed needs to slow down its rate hikes, if only to prevent the headwinds from turning into some sort of weird [Category] 5 hurricane," he said. Amazon reportedly plans to lay off around 10,000 workers starting this week, which would be its largest headcount cut in history. Cramer pointed to the reported layoffs at Amazon and turmoil in other sectors like crypto and software stocks as examples of the Fed's damage. He added that consumers are also starting to feel the weight of the Fed's interest rate hikes, especially as the number of companies laying off their workers increases.

☆ In Search of a 12-Foot Home Depot Skeleton: A Halloween Shopping Spree Gone Wrong
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Kris Frieswick | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

WHILE CYCLING in the suburbs in mid-September, I stopped at a house that demonstrated the most sincere, all-encompassing commitment to Halloween I’d ever seen. Its yard was an entire Halloween cemetery, with a coven of 10-foot-tall animatronic witches gathered around a huge cauldron, casting spells and creating utter, supernatural mayhem. Planning and executing this display had to be the focus of these homeowners’ lives for a good six months. While taking in every undead detail, I thought how fun it might be to embrace a holiday with such creative fulsomeness. Inspired and shamed by CemeteryPalooza, I vowed to step up our game this year.

Weber , which went public in August 2021 and is trading at half its offering price, is the latest example of a recent IPO to attract a bid to go private. Recent IPOs ducking for the door First, to understand why we selected these criteria, let's look at the recent deals. Kennedy Lewis' $4 per share cash offer was an 83% premium to F45's closing price ahead of the deal announcement, even though it was far below the stock's $16 IPO price. Even with the lift from the deal news, shares are only trading at less than half its $14 IPO price. Private equity company AEA Investors had a 28.4% stake in the company, and CEO Jeremy Andrus owns an 11% stake, according to FactSet.

☆ Leslie Jordan loved Instagram and it loved him right back
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-25 | by ( Lisa Respers France | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Scrolling through Leslie Jordan’s Instagram account could make you smile, laugh, and, now, cry. Instagram brought Jordan more fame and offered his audience a platform to connect with a sassy, funny, uncle-type many needed during a dark time. Jordan told the Washington Post in 2020 that he had returned from California to his native Chattanooga on family business and decided to stay to shelter in place with his loved ones. Jordan grew an Instagram following of nearly 6 million people over who reveled in his jokes, observations and stories. You’ve got to help one another.”Jordan’s final post before he died, posted Sunday, gave some chills in light of what was to come.

The eight people trapped in the Hideaway Village motel realized that they may die as geysers shot up through the buckling floors and the deadbolts holding their doors shut snapped like toothpicks under Hurricane Ian’s assault. After the motel crashed and the roof above the women gave way, a motel employee next door pulled them out of the water. The wrecking of the Hideaway Village motel, pieced together through interviews with survivors, reveals how the storm’s death count could have easily been much higher than 135 people, according to an NBC News tally. Hurricane Ian tore the roof off the Hideaway Village motel. But on Sept. 27, the women arrived at the Hideaway Village motel, full of energy, under the impression that the storm’s threats were overstated, Maston said.

☆ Five dads who bonded over trail running bought family vacation homes together in Hawaii. Now they jog under palm trees while their 21 children play.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-15 | by ( Zoe Rosenberg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Ryan Seare, 47, was the first of his neighborhood friends to invest in a Hawaii vacation home. He convinced four other families to join him at a property in Kauai where shares start at $445,000. For his precedent-setting investment, Seare chose Timbers Kauai, an intimate community of 47 homes tucked away on Kauai's southeast shore near a lighthouse, a marina, and a Costco. Between the Seare, Phillips, and Smith families, there are 13 kids ranging in age from 2 to 17. "Sometimes when you're on vacation, you don't want to see people you know, because that's part of vacationing.

Trying to salvage his summit at Doral, Trump himself phoned the group at Camp David, and the moderates gave the president an earful as well. That fall, Bade and Demirjian write, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and House GOP Whip Steve Scalise had desperately tried to hold the line and keep Republicans unified against Democrats' first impeachment probe into Trump. That weekend at Camp David, Bade and Demirjian write, moderate Republicans "charged the president’s chief of staff like a pack of wolves." Mulvaney had suggested to his boss inviting a group of wavering Republicans to Camp David. “We don’t want to have to defend you on this,” Wagner told him, suggesting that he host the G-7 at Camp David.

☆ Ukrainians in Kyiv sang patriotic songs in the city's metro stations as they sheltered from Russia's barrage of missile attacks
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-10 | by ( Natalie Musumeci | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Ukrainians sang patriotic songs as they sheltered together while Russia attacked the country with missile strikes Monday. Online videos showed children singing in a bomb shelter in Kyiv, as well as others singing in metro stations in the city. "Residents of Kyiv sing in a metro station during an air raid alert," the ministry said. As they sheltered in the underpass of the Nyvky metro station in Kyiv, locals also sang the patriotic Ukrainian song called "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow" video showed. Another clip posted to Twitter showed people singing the official anthem of Kyiv as they hunkered down inside a metro station in the Ukrainian capital.

Hurricane Ian had weakened to a Category 1 late Wednesday, but the powerful storm that caused life-threatening storm surges, floods that stranded people in their homes and knocked out power to more than 2 million was not over, officials warned. At 2 a.m., Ian was around 55 miles southwest of Cape Canaveral and moving northeast at 9 mph, the hurricane center said. The storm is believed to be one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded making landfall in Florida. Central and northeast Florida could get 20 inches of rain, and life-threatening storm surge remained a risk for parts of Florida’s western and eastern coasts, the hurricane center said. But it then will likely turn north and approach the northeastern Florida, Georgia and South Carolina coasts Friday, according to the hurricane center.

☆ Blackstone, Apollo brace for deteriorating commercial real estate market that one analyst says could lose 30% of its value
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-29 | by ( Kelsey Neubauer | Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Year-over-year price growth has already slowed for commercial properties, signaling souring outlooks that could reduce values by 20 to 30%, the strategists wrote in a report. Executives at the Bisnow event pointed to high rents on multifamily properties, though growth is softening. Yardi"If this doesn't clear the market, then I don't know what does," Marcus said of her multifamily properties, which she described as large and relatively new. Andrew Holm, a cohead of US investments at Ares, the owner of more than $50 billion in commercial real estate, is hunkered down for the long haul, however. At the Bisnow event, he was so bearish on commercial real estate that he struggled to name a single sector that might be attractive over the next six months.

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