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☆ Dollar eyes weekly gain; sterling wobbles on lower rate bets, bleak outlook
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Rae Wee | Michael S. Derby | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Against a basket of currencies, the U.S. dollar index fell 0.23% to 112.71, away from a near two-week peak of 113.15 hit overnight. Nonetheless, it was on track for a weekly gain of nearly 2% -- its largest since September. Fed rate futures now point to a terminal rate of about 5.15% by mid-2023, after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point this week. It was headed for a weekly loss of more than 3%, the largest since September's market turmoil triggered by an economic plan that alarmed investors. Reporting by Rae Wee; Editing by Kim Coghill and Ana Nicolaci da CostaOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Forget about making money. Here’s what it takes to write a book
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Bob Pisani | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

If you want an idea of how ridiculous the book publishing industry is, look no further than the proposed Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster merger. Penguin Random House has said it would appeal. A 2018 survey of 5,067 authors conducted by the Authors Guild found that the median income of the authors surveyed had fallen to $6,080 in 2017. Earnings from book income alone was a paltry $3,100, indicating that authors were supplementing their incomes through speaking engagements, book reviewing, or teaching. The Authors Guild report notes the explosive growth of alternative ways for consumers to spend their time (video and streaming).

☆ Investors Lose Taste for Pricey Chinese Liquor as Xi Renews ‘Common Prosperity’ Call
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Weilun Soon | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A production line at the Kweichow Moutai factory in the town of Maotai in Guizhou province, China. Chinese President Xi Jinping has a vision to distribute wealth more equally across the country. Investors are sobering up to what that could mean for the companies that make the nation’s beloved fiery booze. Mr. Xi recently doubled down on his plans for “common prosperity” during China’s weeklong Communist Party congress in October. Investors are worried that this could portend an industry crackdown, or simply be bad for the future sales of luxury baijiu distillers and companies that sell expensive goods to wealthy people.

☆ Snap stock falls nearly 25% after revenue hit by shrinking advertiser budgets
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

In a letter to investors, Snapchat’s parent company said its revenue growth was slowed by several factors, including growing competition and jitters from the advertisers who make up its core business. Shares of Snap fell nearly 25% in after hours trading following the earnings report. In late August, Snap announced plans to lay off some 20% of its more than 6,400 global employees, or more than 1,200 staffers. Much of that loss ($155 million) came from restructuring charges related to layoffs. Snap declined to provide financial guidance for the final three months of the year.

☆ Russia evacuates civilians in Kherson as Putin's military faces Ukrainian advance
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Yuliya-Talmazan-Circle-Byline-Template.Jpg | Yuliya Talmazan | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

The new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine said Tuesday that his troops in the country’s south were facing “a rather difficult” situation after a Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed them back and threatened their supply lines. “Our further plans and actions regarding the city of Kherson itself will depend on the emerging military tactical situation,” Gen. Sergei Surovikin said. “Difficult decisions could not be ruled out,” he added in a rare interview with Russian state television that came not long after he was installed by the Kremlin. Ukraine has been laying the ground for a counteroffensive there for months, striking key bridges and military infrastructure, while also advancing in the east. “The Russian military has been rumored to be pushing for a withdrawal for weeks, with some pushback from the Kremlin, and we may be seeing a reversal of this policy,” he said.

HONG KONG, Oct 18 (Reuters Breakingviews) - It’s mid-afternoon Monday in Beijing and a simple question is doing the rounds: will China’s latest GDP figures be published as scheduled the next day? A day later, there’s still no sign of when the data will land, nor any clear explanation. It invites speculation that the numbers show the economy is in bad shape and are being kept under wraps so they don’t steal the thunder of the ruling Communist Party’s twice-a-decade congress, which began on Sunday. The delay came amid the twice-a-decade congress of the ruling Communist Party which runs from Oct. 16 to 22. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterEditing by Antony Currie and Thomas ShumOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ How the wealthy use life insurance to escape estate tax and why the tactic is now attracting scrutiny
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-12 | by ( Jeffrey Cane | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

I'm Jeffrey Cane, stepping out from behind the 10 Things on Wall Street newsletter curtain to help catch you up on all things financial today. But first: Could I interest you in some life insurance? Yes, life insurance is one answer, but it's life insurance with a twist. This little-known tax tool, which may be coming under increasing scrutiny, is called private placement life insurance, or PPLI. It is effectively a life insurance policy that is owned by an offshore trust.

☆ IMF cuts 2023 growth outlook amid colliding global shocks
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( David Lawder | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The Fund is keeping its 2022 growth forecast at 3.2%, reflecting stronger-than-expected output in Europe but a weaker performance in the United States, after torrid 6.0% global growth in 2021. The IMF kept its 2023 U.S. growth forecast unchanged at 1.0%. The Fund forecast headline consumer price inflation peaking at 9.5% in the third quarter of 2022, declining to 4.7% by the fourth quarter of 2023. A "plausible combination of shocks" including a 30% spike in oil prices from current levels could darken the outlook considerably, the IMF said, pushing global growth down to 1.0% next year - a level associated with widely falling real incomes. The appropriate policy for most was prioritizing monetary policy for price stability, letting currencies adjust and "conserving valuable foreign exchange reserves for when financial conditions really worsen."

☆ 5 signs the world is headed for a recession
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-02 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +12 min

New York CNN Business —Around the world, markets are flashing warning signs that the global economy is teetering on a cliff’s edge. There’s now a 98% chance of a global recession, according to research firm Ned Davis, which brings some sobering historical credibility to the table. In an interview, its CEO was asked whether he believes the slowdown was a sign of a looming global recession. The upshotWhile the consensus is that a global recession is likely sometime in 2023, it’s impossible to predict how severe it will be or how long it will last. Not every recession is as painful as the 2007-09 Great Recession, but every recession is, of course, painful.

☆ German gas consumption too high, says energy regulator
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

FRANKFURT, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Germany's network regulator, which would be in charge of gas rationing in the event of a supply emergency, on Thursday said that household consumption was too high to be sustainable. Last week's usage of natural gas by German households and small industry was 483 gigawatt hours, up 14.5% above the average for that week over the past four years, the Federal Network Agency said. "Without significant savings in the private area of consumption, it will be difficult to avoid an emergency situation in winter." Germany requires more gas imports and its neighbours need to organise stable supplies, he said, but energy savings are the order of the day. Households and small industry account for 40% of consumption while big manufacturing industries require 60% of the country's gas.

☆ Germans will face a gas shortage this winter unless they use less energy - while a new price cap could encourage more consumption
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-29 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Amid colder weather, gas consumption was 14.5% above average compared to 2018-2021, Federal Network Agency data shows. The German government, however, has also proposed a gas price cap, which could incentivize more energy use. But that could be difficult to achieve with the government proposing a price cap that could make using gas more affordable. "Without significant savings in the private sector, too, it will be difficult to avoid a gas shortage in winter," he said in a statement Thursday. To avoid a gas shortage, a reduction of at least 20% in consumption is necessary, the regulator estimated.

Higher interest rates are coming, and they are likely to remain in place for a long time. The Fed last week raised rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, the third consecutive hike of that size. 'RESET' UNDERWAYTo some degree, in fact, the thrust of Fed policy is to force just such a reevaluation. According to one index maintained by the Chicago Fed, overall financial conditions remain below their historical average, or slightly on the "loose" side, a signal that Fed officials may still have, as many of them put it, "work to do." Rising interest rates paid on safe investments like short-term U.S. Treasuries help that effort by changing the prices of a broad array of other assets.

☆ 'We get paid less and we live longer': 2 personal finance experts discuss why it's crucial for women to focus on building wealth and share their top strategies for investing and maintaining financial
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Jennifer Streaks | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Retirement saving for women can be difficult because of pay gaps and time out of the workforce. "It's vital that women understand what their specific challenges to saving and investing will be," Kaufman said to Insider. But it will definitely take more than telling women to just save more money or make more money. "We have to do more than save money in a 401k and a bank account," says Kaufman. Just working and saving money is not going to get you there," Tisdale says.

☆ Gavin Newsom says he is definitely not running for president in 2024 after his 'vulnerable' 2021 recall
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-25 | by ( Katie Balevic | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Newsom survived a recall election in 2021 when over 60% of voters chose not to recall him. At the Texas Tribune Festival, Newsom said the recall was a "sobering" experience. Gavin Newsom insisted he will not run for president in 2024, in part due to his close recall election last year. Newsom was asked if he was considering running for president in the next election during an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday. The first-term governor survived a recall election in 2021 when over 60% of voters opted not to recall him, Business Insider previously reported.

☆ Is Biden correct that the pandemic is over? Not exactly.
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-24 | by ( Denis Nash | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +9 min

During a CBS “60 Minutes” interview that aired on Sunday, President Joe Biden said the SARS CoV-2 pandemic was over. If Biden was referring to the emergency phase of the pandemic being over, his statement is in some ways correct — at least for now. If Biden was referring to the emergency phase of the pandemic being over, his statement is in some ways correct — at least for now. The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) has had a model long Covid surveillance system in place since February 2021. Displaying long Covid metrics and related trends on the Covid Data Tracker would be helpful.

☆ Morning Bid: After manic week, TGIF
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-23 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Guest walk on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., September 22, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermidRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterA look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Anshuman DagaFriday is shaping up as a slow day. Equity markets are still licking their wounds, U.S. bond yields are at 11-year highs and the dollar is hovering near a two-decade peak. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterStill, investors have probably had enough this week, with the Fed raising rates by 75 basis points as expected but jolting markets with a sobering outlook. read moreA host of central banks including the UK, Swiss and Norwegian raised interest rates this week, providing no signs that borrowing costs are nearing a peak.

☆ Markets Brace for Hard Landing as Fed Delivers Sobering Message
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-22 | by ( Greg Ip | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Stock markets ended the day sharply lower after the Federal Reserve signaled it would continue to aggressively raise interest rates. This time, markets understood quite clearly what the Federal Reserve meant: Inflation is too high and it will likely take a recession to get it down. There is really no other way to interpret the economic and interest-rate projections Fed officials released Wednesday, and Chairman Jerome Powell ’s accompanying remarks.

☆ Goldman, Barclays, SG raise Fed rate projections
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

read moreThe projections signal another 1.25 percentage points in rate hikes by the year-end in the federal funds rate , , which is currently in a 3.00-3.25% target range. Analysts at Barclays Research revised their call for the funds rate to a 75 bps hike in November from 50 previously, and another 50 bps increase in December versus a prior forecast of 25 bps. "This would bring the year-end fed funds target range to 4.25-4.50%", they wrote. Barclays expects another 25 bps rate hike at the February 2023 meeting, pushing the target range to a cycle peak of 4.50-4.75%, but a rate cut later in 2023. Societe Generale economists expect a similar 75 bps hike in November and 50 bps in December.

☆ More Bosses Are Spying on Quiet Quitters. It Could Backfire.
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-19 | by ( Christopher Mims | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

In the battle against “quiet quitting” and other obstacles to productivity in the workplace, companies are increasingly turning to an array of sophisticated tools to watch and analyze how employees do their jobs. The sobering news for America’s bosses: These technologies can fall short of their promises, and even be counterproductive. Patchy evidence for the effectiveness of workplace monitoring tech hasn’t stopped it from sweeping through U.S. companies over the past 2½ years. Since the start of the pandemic, one in three medium-to-large U.S. companies has adopted some kind of worker surveillance system, and the total fraction using such systems is now two in three, says Brian Kropp , vice president of HR research at Gartner . While there is a broad spectrum of how these systems work and what data they gather, many of them include constant monitoring of nearly everything workers do on their devices.

More notably for the Fed, the job market not only remains strong, it is starting to behave in ways policymakers have hoped for. For the Fed's hoped-for "soft landing" of lower inflation alongside a healthy job market and growing economy, upcoming data on job openings needs to show vacancies in decline. Perhaps more importantly, the labor force gain was the product of strong flows into the job market, not just, as it sometimes is, a decline in people leaving - an important distinction. The number of unemployed people giving up on job searches and leaving the labor force, similarly, was the lowest, at 1.3 million. Both numbers point to the sort of rising pool of labor and growing "attachment" to the labor force that could help ease wage pressures and also help lower the vacancy rate over time.

☆ 'The U.S. and the Holocaust' connects a complex history to the present
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-18 | by ( Review Brian Lowry | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

It's fascinating as history, but sobering as current events. Yet they took a back seat to the more pressing fight against Hitler, first in his quiet support for England, and later with America's entry into the war. Understanding the US's role during the Holocaust requires going back before it, contemplating anti-immigrant sentiment that percolated through the 1920s, auto magnate Henry Ford's virulent anti-Semitism and interest in eugenics and racial superiority. As historian Timothy Snyder notes, Hitler expressed admiration for brutality toward Native-Americans in seizing their lands, seeing it as "The way that racial superiority is supposed to work." Broken into three chapters, the first encompasses the prewar period, the second 1938-42 and the third the conclusion of the war and its aftermath.

☆ How to invest in the education tech trend as schools spend billions to close the Covid learning gap
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-17 | by ( Christina Cheddar Berk | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

In a race to catch up, school districts are putting an increased emphasis on assessments to ferret out students' weak spots. Chronic absenteeism is already a rampant problem that is continuing to worsen, particularly in school districts with low-income students. She also said products need to be engaging for students, while also providing evidence that the methods used are effective. "Districts need products that work," she said. "They don't need products that look sexy or that have, you know, exciting front ends, they need products that are actually going to work and support students to improve learning."

☆ Former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe looks back on the mistakes that led to the startup's collapse
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-06 | by ( Jason Guerrasio | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

Mitch Lowe, who has been a leader at Netflix, Redbox, and MoviePass, is releasing his book "Watch and Learn" on September 6. (L-R) MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe and Helios and Matheson Chief Executive Ted Farnsworth. I never tried to quiet people internally, if they said something wasn't going well I always embraced it. Like you wrote that you "didn't know jack shit" when you first started at Netflix. When I was offered to be CEO of MoviePass, I felt my whole career had led up to this moment.

☆ `If you're a great entrepreneur, you're likely a pretty bad investor,' says Hyatt Family Office founder.
▼ + stars: | 2022-08-09 | by ( Robert Frank | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Successful entrepreneurs often make unsuccessful investors when they sell their companies and become full-time family office chiefs instead, according to a leading family office founder. "It's humbling," said Michael Hyatt, a software entrepreneur and principal of the Hyatt Family Office. "You need to fall on your face and realize that if you're a great entrepreneur, you're likely a pretty bad investor. Hyatt, 48, co-founded and sold two software companies — Dyadem and BlueCat Networks — before launching the Hyatt Family Office in 2017. While he declined to comment on the size of the Hyatt Family Office, industry experts estimate its current assets at between $400 million to $600 million.

Persons: Michael Hyatt, Hyatt, I've, Vanguard ETF's Organizations: Hyatt Family, BlueCat Networks, Family, Hyatt Family Office, Hyatt, Vanguard, Google, Microsoft, Apple Locations: BlueCat, —

☆ Zillow just laid off another 300 people as its downsizing continues. Here are 42 other real estate and mortgage firms that have slashed staff during a brutal time for the industry.
▼ + stars: | 2022-07-20 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Robert Davis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Many layoffs have been at firms focused on mortgages and residential real estate services. Every segment of the real-estate industry, including proptech innovators that concoct new ways to buy and sell real estate and traditional mortgage brokers, is vulnerable to rising interest rates. The downsizing began in the mortgage industry with Better's Zoom layoffs at the end of last year. Some of the latest and notable casualties came from real estate marketplace giant Zillow, consumer lender Finance of America, and international vacation rental company Vacasa. Do you know of other real estate tech or mortgage-related layoffs?

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