Tag: Content Types

AI news is driving tech ‘building blocks’ stocks like Nvidia. But another ‘power’ area will also benefit, say these veteran investors

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Kneel to your king Wall Street.

After forecasting record revenue backed by a “killer AI app,” Nvidia has teed up the Nasdaq
COMP,
-0.61%
for a powerful Thursday open. Indeed, thanks to that chip maker and a few other generals — Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, etc.— tech is seemingly unstoppable:

Elsewhere, the Dow
DJIA,
-0.77%
is looking rattled by a Fitch warning over debt wranglings ahead of a long weekend.

But our call of the day is accentuating the positive with some valuable insight on tech investing amid AI mania from a pair of seasoned investors.

Inge Heydorn, partner on the GP Bullhound Global Technology Fund and portfolio manager Jenny Hardy, advise choosing companies carefully given high valuations in some parts of tech that could make earnings vulnerable.

“But looking slightly beyond the volatility, tech has the advantage of being driven by many long-term secular themes which will continue to play out despite a weaker macro,” Hardy told MarketWatch in follow-up comments to an interview with the pair last week. GP Bullhound invests in leading global tech companies, with more than $1 billion in assets under management. 

“We try to make sure we’re exposed to these areas that will be more resilient. AI is the perfect example of that –- none of Microsoft, Amazon or Google will risk falling behind in the AI race -– they will all keep spending, and that will continue to drive earnings for the semiconductor companies that go into these servers higher,” said Hardy, who has worked in the investment industry since 2011.

“The way that we think about investing around [AI] is in the building blocks, the picks and shovels infrastructure, which for us is really the semiconductor companies that go into the training servers and the inference servers,” she said.

Nvidia
NVDA,
-0.49%,
Advanced Micro Devices
AMD,
+0.14%,
Taiwan Semiconductor
TSM,
-0.34%
2330,
+3.43%,
Infineon
IFX,
-0.33%,
Cisco
CSCO,
-1.02%,
NXP
NXPI,
-4.88%,
Microsoft
MSFT,
-0.45%,
ServiceNow
NOW,
+0.48%
and Palo Alto
PANW,
+7.68%
are all in their portfolio. They also like the semiconductor capital equipment industry — AI beneficiaries and tailwinds from increasingly localized supply chains — with companies including KLA
KLAC,
-1.40%,
Lam Research
LRCX,
-1.33%,
ASML
ASML,
-2.15%
and Applied Materials
AMAT,
-1.96%.

As Hardy points out, “lots of big tech has given us lots of certainty as it relates to AI, lots of certainty as it relates to the amount they are going to spend on AI.”

Enter Nvidia’s results, which Hardy said are proof the “AI spend race has begun…Nvidia’s call featured an impressive roster of companies deploying AI with Nvidia – AT&T, Amgen, ServiceNow – the message was that this technology adoption is widespread and really a new normal.” She said they see benefits spreading across the AI value chain — CPU providers, networking infrastructure players, memory and semicap equipment makers.

Heydorn, who traded technology stocks since 1994 and also runs a hedge fund with Hardy, says there are two big tech trends currently — “AI across the board and power semiconductors driven by EV cars and green energy projects.”

But GP Bullhound steers clear of EV makers like Tesla
TSLA,
-1.54%,
where they see a lot of competition, notably from China. “Ultimately, they will need semiconductors and the semiconductors crucially are able to keep that pricing power in a way that the vehicle companies are not able to do because of the differences in competition,” she said.

Are the tech duo nervous about anything? “The macro economy is clearly the largest risk and further bank or real-estate problems,” said Heydorn, as Hardy adds that they are watching for second-order impacts on tech.

“One example would be enterprise software businesses with high exposure to financial services, which given those latest problems in that sector, might see a re-prioritization of spend away from new software implementations,” she said.

In the near term, Heydorn says investors should watch out for May sales numbers and any AI mentions from Taiwan via TSMC, mobile chip group MediaTek
2454,
-0.42%
and Apple
AAPL,
+0.16%
supplier Foxxconn
2354,
-0.74%
that may help with guidance for the second half of the year. “The main numbers in Taiwan will tell us where we are in inventories. They’re going to tell us if the 3-nanonmeters, that’s a new processor that’s going into Apple iPhones, are ready for production,” he said.

Read: JPMorgan says this is how much revenue other companies will get from AI this year

The markets

Nasdaq-100 futures
NQ00,
+1.90%
are up 1.8% , S&P 500
ES00,
+0.55%
futures are up 0.6%, but those for the Dow
YM00,
-0.34%
are slipping on debt-ceiling jitters. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
3.756%
is up 4 basis points to 3.75%.

For more market updates plus actionable trade ideas for stocks, options and crypto, subscribe to MarketDiem by Investor’s Business Daily. Follow all the stock market action with MarketWatch’s Live Blog.

The buzz

Fitch put U.S. credit ratings on ‘ratings watch negative’ due to DC “brinkmanship” as the debt-ceiling deadline nears. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told investors not to worry as an agreement will be reached.

Best Buy
BBY,
-0.49%
stock is up 6% after an earnings beat, while Burlington Stores
BURL,
+3.19%
is slipping after a profit and revenue miss. Dollar Tree
DLTR,
-0.50%
and Ralph Lauren
RL,
+0.24%
are still to come, followed by Ulta
ULTA,
+0.17%,
Costco
COST,
-0.44%
and Autodesk
ADSK,
+0.06%
after the close.

Nvidia is up 25% in premarket and headed toward a rare $1 trillion valuation after saying revenue would bust a previous record by 30% late Wednesday.

Opinion: Nvidia CFO says ‘The inflection point of AI is here’

But AI upstart UiPath
PATH,
-1.74%
is down 8% after soft second-quarter revenue guidance, while software group Snowflake
SNOW,
+1.13%
is off 14% on an outlook cut, while cloud-platform group Nutanix
NTNX,
-0.55%
is rallying on a better outlook.

Elf Beauty
ELF,
+1.69%
is up 12% on upbeat results from the cosmetic group, with Guess
GES,
-0.80%
up 5% as losses slimmed, sales rose. American Eagle
AEO,
+4.50%
slid on a sales decline forecast. Red Robin Gourmet Burgers
RRGB,
+3.51%
is up 5% on the restaurant chain’s upbeat forecast.

Revised first-quarter GDP is due at 8:30 a.m., alongside weekly jobless claims, with pending-home sales at 10 a.m. Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin will speak at 9:50 a.m., followed by Boston Fed President Susan Collins.

A Twitter Spaces discussion between presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk was plagued by glitches.

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The tickers

These were the top-searched tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m.:

Ticker

 Security name
NVDA,
-0.49% 		Nvidia

TSLA,
-1.54% 		Tesla
GME,
+0.47% 		GameStop
BUD,
-1.94% 		Anheuser-Busch InBev
AMD,
+0.14% 		Advanced Micro Devices
PLTR,
-3.24% 		Palantir Technologies
AAPL,
+0.16% 		Apple
AMZN,
+1.53% 		Amazon.com
NIO,
-9.49% 		Nio
AI,
+2.54% 		C3.ai

Random reads

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Listen to the Best New Ideas in Money podcast with MarketWatch reporter Charles Passy and economist Stephanie Kelton.

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#news #driving #tech #building #blocks #stocks #Nvidia #power #area #benefit #veteran #investors

Would reparations lead to irresponsible spending? Studies on other cash windfalls suggest not, new report says.

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The perception that people often succumb to misfortune and bad decision-making after suddenly receiving large amounts of cash isn’t based in fact, researchers said in a report published Thursday by the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank.

That means potential reparations payouts to Black Americans are unlikely to result in reckless spending, financial ruin and reduced labor productivity, the report’s authors wrote after undertaking a review of prior research concerning consumer behavior after lottery windfalls and inheritances, as well as more minor cash transfers through tax refunds and guaranteed-income programs. 

“There’s what we really describe as kind of an urban myth … that people who receive lottery winnings squander the money very quickly,” reparations scholar William “Sandy” Darity, a Duke University professor of public policy and economist who co-authored the report, said in an interview. “The best available evidence indicates that that’s not the case.”

Whether Black residents and descendants of enslaved people in the U.S. are owed reparative payments has been debated for centuries. But as the country has grown more economically unequal while a stubborn racial wealth gap persists, the reparations movement has picked up traction.

In California, a first-of-its-kind state task force on reparations approved a slate of recommendations for lawmakers this month that, if implemented through legislation, would potentially provide hundreds of billions of dollars in reparative monetary payments to Black Californians to address harms caused by factors including racial health disparities, housing discrimination and mass incarceration. San Francisco, which has its own reparations task force, is also considering one-time reparative payments of $5 million for eligible people.

Read more: California task force approves sweeping reparations potentially worth billions of dollars

Still, detractors say that granting reparations to Black Americans — as was done for Japanese Americans incarcerated in internment camps during World War II and, on a state level, for survivors who owned property in the town of Rosewood, Fla., before a race massacre destroyed it — is unwise.

Some argue that giving people reparative payments without requiring certain parameters or personal-finance courses could result in irresponsible spending behavior, or that reparations proposals are themselves racist in suggesting that Black people need “handouts.”

“‘One of the important things that lottery winners do with the money is that they frequently set up trust accounts or the equivalent for their children or their grandchildren.’”


— William ‘Sandy’ Darity, a leading reparations scholar

The authors of the Roosevelt Institute report, for their part, said the assumption that Black Americans would be unable to handle sudden windfalls is rooted in racism — noting the racial wealth gap wasn’t created through “defective” spending habits but through policies that pumped money into white households, including unequal land distribution and subsidies for homebuyers.

“Widely held, inaccurate, and racist beliefs about dysfunctional financial behavior of Black Americans as the foundation for racial economic inequality leads to a conclusion that monetary reparations will be ineffective in eliminating the gap,” they wrote. “According to this perspective, if eligible Black Americans do not change their financial mindset and behavior after receiving financial reparations, the act of restitution will be empty.”

How people spend lottery winnings and inheritances

Even so, there’s not really “any carefully drawn-out study of what has happened to folks who have received reparations payments,” Darity said. It’s “impossible to understand” the impacts of such programs, because there haven’t historically been “systems in place that give money directly to individuals” — allowing “anecdotal cynicism and urban mythology” to drive the narrative, the report’s authors wrote.

“The best that we could do is try to think about other types of instances in which people have received windfalls where there has been some follow-up on what the consequences have been,” Darity said.

To see how people really react when they’re granted new amounts of money, the authors examined outcomes both from people who had received “major” windfalls — ones that immediately and majorly change a person’s wealth status, like winning the lottery — and “minor” windfalls, or those that affect a person’s income but don’t meaningfully shift their wealth status, like the stimulus checks doled out earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Darity, who directs Duke University’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, worked alongside the report’s lead author, Katherine Rodgers, a former research assistant at the Cook Center who currently works as a senior associate at the consulting firm Kroll, as well as Sydney A. Grissom, an analyst for BlackRock. Lucas Hubbard, an associate in research at the Cook Center, was also an author of the report. 

They found that while a person’s behavior can vary based on the windfall amount and how it’s framed to the recipient, as well as their previous economic status, their reactions tend to buck stereotypes. 

For example, only 11% of lottery winners quit their job in the findings of one 1987 study that examined 576 lottery winners across 12 states — and none of the people who got less than $50,000 left work, according to the Roosevelt Institute report. However, people were more likely to quit their jobs if they won a sum worth $1 million, had less education, were making under $100,000 a year, and hadn’t been in their job for more than four years.

Studies of lottery winners in other countries have found similarly muted labor responses, the report said. A separate U.S. study from 1993 of the labor effects on people who had received inheritances ranging from $25,000 to $150,000 or more also found that only a “small but statistically significant percentage of heirs left their jobs after receiving their inheritance,” with workers most likely to leave their jobs if they got a big payout. 

But it’s still “less than what the stereotype would say,” Hubbard said in an interview: 4.6% of individuals quit their jobs after receiving a small inheritance of less than $25,000, compared to 18.2% of workers who got an inheritance of more than $150,000, he noted.

Instead, studies have shown that people who get windfalls may be more likely to become self-employed, participate in financial markets, save, and spend money on necessary goods like housing and transportation, the report’s authors wrote. 

“One of the important things that lottery winners do with the money,” Darity said, “is that they frequently set up trust accounts or the equivalent for their children or their grandchildren.”

Small windfalls, including those offered through monthly checks from guaranteed-income pilot programs, have also been shown to be used for essentials like food and utilities without negative effects on employment. The framing of the money received can also have an effect on how it’s spent, the authors said: People who get a payout from bequests or life insurance tend to have more negative emotions about the money and will use it for more “utilitarian” purposes, according to one 2009 study. 

From the archives (March 2021): Employment rose among those in California universal-income experiment, study finds

Reparations wouldn’t unleash ‘flagrant spending,’ researchers say

Despite their findings, “windfalls are not magical panaceas for all financial woes,” the authors emphasized.

For example, a 2011 study cited in the report found that among people who were already in precarious financial positions, lottery winnings delayed, rather than prevented, an eventual bankruptcy filing. Another report from 2006 found that “large inheritances led to disproportionately less saving,” the researchers noted in the Roosevelt Institute report.

“Research over the past two decades has demonstrated that their bounties are not limitless, and, crucially, that informed stewardship of received assets is still necessary (albeit, not always sufficient) to achieve and maximize long-term financial success,” the authors wrote.

But they added that reparations, particularly if “framed not as handouts but rather as reparative payments” to Black Americans, would not unleash “flagrant spending on nonessential goods” based on studies on windfalls, and could instead improve recipients’ emotional well-being and financial stability. 

“Of course, the merits of making such payments should not be assessed solely on the basis of the anticipated economic effects,” the authors said. “Moreover, using the absence of evidence of this type as a justification for delaying reparative payments, such as those to Black descendants of American slavery, is inconsistent with the fact that other groups previously have received similar payments in the wake of atrocities and tragedies.”

From the archives (January 2023): How to pay for reparations in California? ‘Swollen’ wealth could replace ‘stolen’ wealth through taxes.

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This once popular ETF used to hedge against inflation is now out of favor. What investors are doing now.

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Hello! This is markets reporter Isabel Wang bringing you this week’s ETF Wrap. In this week’s edition, we take a look at inflation-protected bond ETFs. They saw significant outflows in the past week as U.S. consumer prices showed signs of moderating in April, though inflation pressures continued to squeeze Americans’ pocketbooks. 

Please send tips, or feedback, to [email protected] or to [email protected]. You can also follow me on Twitter at @Isabelxwang and find Christine at @CIdzelis.

Sign up here for our weekly ETF Wrap.

The iShares TIPS Bond ETF
TIP,
+0.22%,
which tracks an index of Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, has seen outflows of nearly $340 million over the past week. Outflows on Wednesday alone exceeded $100 million following the release of a widely followed inflation report, according to FactSet data. 

The U.S. Consumer Price Index report Wednesday showed inflation cooled to the lowest annual rate in two years, but it still remained about more than double the prepandemic average and well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target rate. 

CPI rose 0.4% in April from the previous month, much faster than the 0.1% increase recorded in March. Prices climbed 4.9% on a year-over-year basis, down from 5% in March. Excluding volatile food and energy categories, the core CPI rose 0.4% monthly and 5.5% from a year ago, both in line with expectations.

Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, said the outflows indicate that investors are responding to inflationary data, and they continue to “be nervous about having exposure to TIPS products.” 

TIPS are a type of Treasury security issued by the U.S. government, which are indexed to inflation to protect investors from a decline in the purchasing power of their money. Unlike other Treasury securities where the principal is fixed, the principal value of a TIPS adjusts with movements in inflation. When it matures, investors get either the inflation-adjusted price or the original principal, whichever is greater. 

“Investors have been racing into TIPS ETFs in 2021 in anticipation of higher inflation, and then they’ve been paring back that exposure ever since,” Rosenbluth told MarketWatch in a phone interview on Thursday. 

“The CPI numbers that came out show that inflation is still here to stay in perhaps different ways than people had been expecting…Now I think there are some mixed signals as to whether or not there are more hikes to occur,” he said. 

Market participants hope that the lower-than-expected inflation data may leave room for the central bank to refrain from raising interest rates further at its June meeting. They also placed a 42% chance that policy makers would begin to trim borrowing costs at their July 25-26 meeting, according to CME FedWatch Tool. 

There is “certainly a risk” for investors who pulled their money out of the inflation-linked bond ETFs to overestimate the disinflationary process and position for the price pressures to fall back to prepandemic levels, warned Tim Urbanowicz, head of research and investment strategy at Innovator ETFs. 

“The risk to see additional hikes probably outweighs the probability that you’re going to see cuts this year,” said Urbanowicz. 

See: ‘The Fed is way late and they’ve already screwed it up.’ This stock strategist is banking on gold, silver and Treasurys to weather a recession.

The divergence between the Fed and the financial markets has driven investors to move back to fixed-income ETFs, especially ultra short-term bond funds. Avoiding interest-rate volatility has replaced inflation protection to be at the forefront of investors’ playbooks, said market strategists.

The SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-bill ETF
BIL,
+0.07%
has seen over $86 million of inflows in the week to Wednesday, while the inflows over the past three months totaled nearly $5.3 billion. The iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF
SGOV,
+0.06%
has recorded a total of $3.9 billion inflows over the same three-month period, according to FactSet data. 

“There is a lot of gravitation towards yield products,” said Urbanowicz. “The flows that we’re seeing on the shorter end of the yield curve continue to be prominent. Also other yield enhancement strategies are becoming extremely popular…as a way to really generate extra income.”

“Inflation was a fear for investors in prior years, and then sentiment has shifted towards interest-rate hikes and interest-rate sensitivity,” said Rosenbluth. “Investors want to manage their interest-rate sensitivity, and in particular, still have a focus on Treasury ETFs given the debt-ceiling crisis, and given what’s going on with inflation.” 

Another example is BondBloxx Bloomberg One Year Target Duration U.S. Treasury ETF
XONE,
+0.04%,
which made its debut in September 2022. The fund has attracted over $514 million of inflows in the past week, and is among the top five ETFs that gathered maximum capital in the week to Wednesday, per FactSet data. 

“It’s rare to see an ETF that new get that level of demand,” said Rosenbluth. 

As usual, here’s your look at the top- and bottom-performing ETFs over the past week through Wednesday, according to FactSet data.

The good…

Top Performers

%Performance

Sprott Uranium Miners ETF
URNM,
-3.18% 		9.3
ARK Innovation ETF
ARKK,
+0.18% 		8.5
Global X Cybersecurity ETF
BUG,
-0.57% 		8.3
VanEck Rare Earth/Strategic Metals ETF
REMX,
+0.12% 		8.1
Global X Uranium ETF
URA,
-3.29% 		8.0
Source: FactSet data through Wednesday, May 10. Start date May 4. Excludes ETNs and leveraged products. Includes NYSE, Nasdaq and Cboe traded ETFs of $500 million or greater.

…and the bad

New ETFs

  • IndexIQ announced on Wednesday the launch of the IQ CBRE Real Assets ETF
    IQRA,
    -1.06%    ,
    an actively managed ETF across real estate and infrastructure equity securities, subadvised by CBRE Investment Management Listed Real Assets LLC.

  • PIMCO said Wednesday that it launched the PIMCO Commodity Strategy Active ETF, which invests in a range of commodity-linked instruments and seek out “diverse sources of excess returns” by incorporating multifactor considerations such as storage costs of physical commodities and historic performance trends.

  • J.P. Morgan Asset Management on Thursday announced the launch of two new ETFs: JPMorgan BetaBuilders Emerging Markets Equity ETF
    BBEM,

    and JPMorgan BetaBuilders U.S. TIPS 0-5 Year ETF
    BBIP,
    -0.16%    .
    BBEM seeks investment results that closely correspond to the performance of the Morningstar Emerging Markets Target Market Exposure Index SM, while BBIP tracks the performance of the ICE 0-5 Year U.S. Inflation-Linked Treasury Index.

Weekly ETF reads



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#popular #ETF #hedge #inflation #favor #investors

Big bank earnings in spotlight following historic failures: ‘Every income statement line item is in flux’.

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JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPM,
-0.11%,
Citigroup Inc.
C,
+0.20%
and Wells Fargo & Co.
WFC,
+2.74%
— along with PNC Financial Services Group Inc.
PNC,
+0.37%
and BlackRock Inc.
BLK,
+0.05%
— report earnings Friday as Wall Street’s fixation on a recession continues to run deep. And following the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank
SIVBQ,
-12.21%,
Signature Bank
SBNY,
+3.97%
and Silvergate Bank
SI,
-2.72%,
along with efforts to seal up cracks in First Republic Bank
FRC,
+4.39%
and Credit Suisse Group AG
CS,
+1.27%,
Wall Street is likely to review quarterly numbers from the industry with a magnifying glass.

“Every income statement line item is in flux and the degree of confidence in our forecast is lower as the probability of a sharper slowdown increases,” Morgan Stanley analyst Betsy Graseck said in a note on Wednesday.

For more: Banks on the line for deposit flows and margin pressure as they reel from banking crisis

She said that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank last month would trigger an “accelerated bid” for customers’ money, potentially weighing on net interest margins, a profitability gauge measuring what banks make on interest from loans and what they pay out to depositors. Tighter lending standards, she said, would drive up net charge-offs — a measure of debt unlikely to be repaid — as borrowers run into more trouble obtaining or refinancing loans.

Phil Orlando, chief investment strategist at Federated Hermes, said in an interview that tighter lending standards could constrain lending volume. He also said that banks were likely to set aside more money to cover loans that go bad, as managers grow more conservative and try to gauge what exposure they have to different types of borrowers.

“To a significant degree, they have to say, what percentage of our companies are tech companies? What percentage are financial companies? Do we think that this starts to dribble into the auto industry?” he said. “Every bank is going to be different in terms of what their portfolio of business looks like.”

He also said that last month’s bank failures could spur more customers to open up multiple accounts at different banks, following bigger concerns about what would happen to the money in a bank account that exceeded the $250,000 limit covered by the FDIC. But as the recent banking disturbances trigger Lehman flashbacks, he said that the recent banking failures were the result of poor management and insufficient risk controls specific to those financial firms.

“COVID was something that affected everyone, universally, not just the banking companies but the entire economy, the entire stock market,” he said. “You go back to the global financial crisis in the ’07-’09 period, that’s something that really affected all of the financial service companies. I don’t think that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

Also read: Banking sector’s growing political might could blunt reform in wake of SVB failure, experts warn

JPMorgan
JPM,
-0.11%
Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has said that Trump-era banking deregulation didn’t cause those bank failures. But in his annual letter to shareholders last week, he also said that the current turmoil in the bank system is not over. However, he also said that the collapse or near-collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and its peers “are nothing like what occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis.”

“Regarding the current disruption in the U.S. banking system, most of the risks were hiding in plain sight,” Dimon said. “Interest rate exposure, the fair value of held-to-maturity (HTM) portfolios and the amount of SVB’s uninsured deposits were always known — both to regulators and the marketplace.”

“The unknown risk was that SVB’s over 35,000 corporate clients – and activity within them – were controlled by a small number of venture capital companies and moved their deposits in lockstep,” Dimon continued. “It is unlikely that any recent change in regulatory requirements would have made a difference in what followed.”

The Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates, along with a broader pullback in digital demand following the first two years of the pandemic, stanched the flow of tech-industry funding into Silicon Valley bank and caused the value of its bond investments to fall.

Don’t miss: An earnings recession seems inevitable, but it might not last long

But the impact of those higher interest rates — an effort to slow the economy and, by extension, bring inflation down — will be felt elsewhere. First-quarter earnings are expected to decline 6.8% for S&P 500 index components overall, according to FactSet. That would be the first decline since the second quarter of 2020, when the pandemic had just begun to send the economy into a tailspin.

“In a word, earnings for the first quarter are going to be poor,” Orlando said.

This week in earnings

For the week ahead, 11 S&P 500
SPX,
+0.36%
components, and two from the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.01%,
will report first-quarter results. Outside of the banks, health-insurance giant UnitedHealth Group
UNH,
+0.70%
reports during the week. Online fashion marketplace Rent the Runway Inc.
RENT,
+3.75%
will also report.

The call to put on your calendar

Delta Air Lines Inc.: Delta
DAL,
+0.69%
reports first-quarter results on Thursday, amid bigger questions about when, if ever, higher prices — including for airfares — might turn off travelers. The carrier last month stuck with its outlook for big first-quarter sales gains when compared with prepandemic levels. “If anyone’s looking for weakness, don’t look at Delta”, Chief Executive Ed Bastian said at a conference last month.

But rival United Airlines Holdings Inc.
UAL,
+1.50%
has told investors to prepare for a surprise loss, even though it also reported a 15% jump in international bookings in March. And after Southwest Airlines Co.’s
LUV,
+0.03%
flight-cancellation mayhem last year brought more attention to technology issues and airline understaffing, concerns have grown over whether the industry has enough air-traffic controllers, prompting a reduction in some flights.

For more: Air-traffic controller shortages could result in fewer flights this summer

But limitations within those airlines’ flight networks to handle consumer demand can push fares higher. And Morgan Stanley said that strong balance sheets, passengers’ willingness to still pay up — albeit in a concentrated industry with a handful of options — and “muscle memory” from being gutted by the pandemic, could make airlines “defensive safe-havens,” to some degree, for investors.

“It is hard to argue against the airlines soaring above the macro storm underneath them (at least in the short term),” the analysts wrote in a research note last week.

The numbers to watch

Grocery-store margins: Albertsons Cos.
ACI,
+0.53%.
— the grocery chain whose merger deal with Kroger Inc.
KR,
+0.96%
has raised concerns about food prices and accessibility — reports results on Tuesday. Higher food prices have helped fatten grocery stores’ profits, even as consumers struggle to keep up. But Costco Wholesale Corp.
COST,
-2.24%,
in reporting March same-store sales results, noted that “year-over-year inflation for food and sundries and fresh foods were both down from February.” The results from Albertsons could offer clues on whether shoppers might be getting a break from steep price increases.

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#Big #bank #earnings #spotlight #historic #failures #income #statement #line #item #flux

Biden’s rebuke of a bold, reform-minded crime law makes all Americans less safe

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President Joe Biden’s support for a Republican-led effort to nullify the Washington D.C. City Council’s revision of its criminal code, signed into law on Monday, plays into the fear narrative that is being increasingly advanced across the U.S.

Biden could have used his platform and clout to clarify the actual substance of the carefully crafted District of Columbia proposal — and adhere to his campaign commitment to reduce the number of incarcerated Americans.

Instead, the president ignored the glaring problems in D.C.’s existing criminal code, which the 275-page long package of revisions was designed to address. This included reforming the draconian and inflexible sentencing requirements that have swelled the District’s incarceration rate and wasted countless resources imprisoning individuals who pose no danger to public safety. By rejecting this decade-plus effort, the president decided that D.C. residents have no right to determine for themselves how to fix these problems.

“ There are communities across the U.S. that see virtually no violent crime, and it isn’t because they’re the most policed. ”

Biden’s decision is the latest backlash to U.S. justice reform coming from both sides of the political aisle.

Instead of doubling down on failed tough-on-crime tactics, Americans need to come together to articulate and invest in a new vision of public safety. We already know what that looks like because there are communities across the country which see virtually no violent crime, and it isn’t because they’re the most policed.

Safe communities are places where people (even those facing economic distress) are housed, where schools have the resources to teach all children, where the water and air are clean, where families have access to good-paying jobs and comprehensive healthcare, and where those who are struggling are given a hand, not a handcuff.

This is the kind of community every American deserves to live in, but that future is only possible if we shift resources from carceral responses to communities and shift our mindset from punishment to prevention. 

“ Too often it’s easier to advocate for locking people up than it is to innovate and advance a new vision for public safety.  ”

In the wake of particularly traumatic years, as well as growing divisiveness that has politicized criminal justice reform, it is not surprising that many people believe their communities are less safe. While public perceptions of crime have long been disconnected from actual crime rates and can be heavily influenced by media coverage, the data tells a mixed story. Homicide rates did increase in both urban and rural areas in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and record levels of gun sales.

While early available data suggests these numbers are trending down, it’s too soon to tell, especially given the nation’s poor crime data infrastructure. What is clear is that there is no evidence that criminal justice reform is to blame for rising crime, despite well-funded attempts by those resistant to change and who are intent on driving a political agenda to make such a claim stick. 

Yet fear often obscures facts; people are scared for their safety and want reassurance. Too often it’s easier to advocate for locking people up than it is to innovate and advance a new vision for public safety. 

We need leaders who can govern with both empathy and integrity – who can provide genuine compassion to those who feel scared while also following the data about how to create safer communities. And all the data points to the need for reform. 

“ Mass incarceration costs U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 trillion annually.”

Mass incarceration costs U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 trillion annually, when you factor in not only the cost of confinement but also the crushing toll placed on incarcerated people and their families, children, and communities. Despite this staggering figure, there’s no real evidence that incarceration works, and in fact some evidence to suggest it actually makes people more likely to commit future crimes. Yet we keep pouring more and more taxpayer dollars into this short-sighted solution that, instead of preventing harm, only delays and compounds it. 

We have to stop pretending that reform is the real threat to public safety and recognize how our over-reliance on incarceration actually makes us less safe. 

Reform and public safety go hand in hand. Commonsense changes including reforming cash bail, revisiting extreme sentences and diverting people from the criminal legal system have all been shown to have positive effects on individuals and communities.

At a time of record-low clearance rates nationwide and staffing challenges in police departments and prosecutor’s offices, arresting and prosecuting people for low-level offenses that do not impact public safety can actually make us less safe by directing resources away from solving serious crimes and creating collateral consequences for people that make it harder to escape cycles of poverty and crime. 

Yet, tough-on-crime proponents repeatedly misrepresent justice reform by claiming that reformers are simply letting people who commit crimes off the hook. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reform does not mean a lack of accountability, but rather a more effective version of accountability for everyone involved. 

Our traditional criminal legal system has failed victims time and again. In a 2022 survey of crime survivors, just 8% said that the justice system was very helpful in navigating the legal process and being connected to services. Many said they didn’t even report the crime because of distrust of the system. 

When asked what they want, many crime survivors express a fundamental desire to ensure that the person who caused them harm doesn’t hurt them or anyone else ever again. But status quo approaches aren’t providing that. The best available data shows that 7 in 10 people released from prison in 2012 were rearrested within five years. Perhaps that’s why crime victims support alternatives to traditional prosecution and incarceration by large margins. 

For example, in New York City, Common Justice offered the first alternative-to-incarceration program in the country focused on violent felonies in adult courts. When given the option, 90% of eligible victims chose to participate in a restorative justice program through Common Justice over incarcerating the person who harmed them. Just 7% of participants have been terminated from the program for committing a new crime. 

A restorative justice program launched by former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón for youth facing serious felony charges was shown to reduce participants’ likelihood of rearrest by 44 percent within six months compared to youth who went through the traditional juvenile justice system, and the effects were still notable even four years after the initial offer to participate.

Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt launched a groundbreaking program last year to allow people convicted of violent offenses to avoid prison time if they commit to behavioral health treatment. As of January, just one of 60 participants had been rearrested for a misdemeanor. 

While too many politicians give lip service to reform, those who really care about justice are doing the work, regardless of electoral consequences. We need more bold, innovative leaders willing to rethink how we achieve safety and accountability, not those who go where the wind blows and spread misinformation for political gain. 

Fear should not cause us to repeat the mistakes of the past. When politicians finally decide to care more about protecting people than protecting their own power, only then will we finally achieve the safety that all communities deserve. 

Miriam Aroni Krinsky is the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, a former federal prosecutor, and the author of Change from Within: Reimagining the 21st-Century Prosecutor. Alyssa Kress is the communications director of Fair and Just Prosecution.  

More: Wrongful convictions cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Wrongdoing prosecutors must be held accountable.

Plus: Senate votes to block D.C. crime laws, with Biden’s support

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#Bidens #rebuke #bold #reformminded #crime #law #Americans #safe

Chips, energy and an Amazon rival: Stock picks from a fund manager with three decades of experience

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Markets are again on the backfoot ahead of Thursday’s open. Credit Suisse shares have shot higher on plans to borrow billions, a day after collapsing and upending already fragile markets.

The European Central Bank raised its key interest rate by 50 basis points as some had expected. That’s as stress returns for some U.S> lenders.

Onto our call of the day, which comes from the manager of the Plumb Balanced Fund
PLIBX,
-1.08%,
Tom Plumb, who has three stock ideas to share. But first, some timely advice from the manager’s three decades of experience.

“The market is really going to be volatile here, but if you look at 1981 to 1982, it was a significant amount of pressure on the stock market, but the fourth quarter of 1982…the S&P 500
SPX,
-0.21%
was up 40%,” Plumb told MarketWatch in a recent interview.

“I think people still have to look at what their comfort with risk is…for the first time in 15 years, they have a reasonable expectation that a balanced portfolio will modify the volatility because they’re earning 4% to 7% on their higher quality fixed income investments,” he said.

“You just have to make sure the companies you own aren’t overleveraged, they’re not dependent on capital and that they’re not standing, as we say, on the railroad tracks for different trends that are really going to be developing,” said Plumb.

That brings us to his first pick, microcontroller maker Microchip Technology
MCHP,
-0.17%,
which he has owned at different periods over 20 years and sits in a sector he likes — chips.

The first microcontroller was put on a car to regulate the fuel injection system in 1987 and the average car now has about 400 of those, controlling everything from temperature, to safety, he notes. Microchip trades at about 14 times forward earnings, and likes the fact they’re normally conservative on the guidance front.

And: Intel’s stock nabs an upgrade: ‘Things are moving enough in the right direction.’

“They focus on industrial aerospace, defense, auto and auto centers. They have almost no exposure to PCs and cellphone markets,” return free cash to shareholders, with regular dividends over the past 15 years. While not as sexy as AI, Microchip delivers on the basis of a “good, solid company,” he said.

Read: Chip stocks fall as delivery times shrink, Samsung plans to build world’s largest chip complex

His next pick is down to the Ukraine war’s causation of a rethink of energy independence, capacity and companies that can produce commodities such as liquid natural gas. With that Philips 66
PSX,
-0.22%
is “probably the best company in the mid market,” trading at about 7 times earnings, with a 4% dividend yield meaning investors are paid as they wait, he said.

“Earnings obviously are pretty volatile, but their main thing is capacity utilization rates on the refineries. Refineries are only a quarter of their revenues, but it’s 60% of their profits, and then they transport the LNG,” he said. LNG exports will be significant as countries try to diversify energy inputs, and “carbon-based energy is gonna still have a significant place in the world for a long time,” he adds.

His last pick is an old favorite for the manager — Latin America’s answer to Amazon.com
AMZN,
+1.21%
— MercadoLibre
MELIN,
-0.63%

MELI,
-0.58%,
whose shares have been on the recovery road after coming off COVID-19 pandemic-era highs. The company is now “getting to scale and you’re seeing a tremendous increase in not only their revenues, but their profit margins are expanding,” he said.

“So it looks like you’re going to have 28% revenue growth maybe for the next four years at least, and get 50% plus growth in their reported earnings,” he said, noting increasing benefits of electronic transactions and digital advertising.

“So you’ve got three legs: you’ve got the financial, you’ve got the Amazon type, online retailer and the third is the advertising. All of these things are putting them in a spot that’s unique in Latin America, Mexico and South America,” said Plumb.

Last word from Plumb? Like many others, he’s worried that the Fed has moved too fast with rate hikes and that those delayed effects are playing out. He worries about risk to insurance companies and long-term lenders of commercial real estate, which he thinks will be “an area of significant potential risk over the next couple of years.”

The markets

Stock futures
ES00,
-0.54%

YM00,
-0.78%

NQ00,
-0.27%
extended losses after the ECB rate hike, while bond yields
TMUBMUSD10Y,
3.440%

TMUBMUSD02Y,
3.961%
have also turned lower, and the dollar
DXY,
-0.14%
lower. Asian stocks
HSI,
-1.72%

NIK,
-0.80%
fell, while European equities
SXXP,
+0.06%
turned mixed after the ECB hiked interest rates. German 2-year bund yields
TMBMKDE-02Y,
2.466%
are also rising after a big plunge. Oil prices
CL.1,
-1.39%
are weaker.

For more market updates plus actionable trade ideas for stocks, options and crypto, subscribe to MarketDiem by Investor’s Business Daily.

The buzz

“Inflation is projected to remain too high for too long.” That was the ECB statemetn following a 50 basis point rate hike to 3%, a move that some had been on the fence over, given fresh banking stress. President Christine Lagarde will speak soon.

U.S. data showed weekly jobless claims dropping 29,000 to 1.68 million, while import prices declined 0.1%, housing starts rebounded by a 9.8% jump and building permits surged 13.8%. The Philly Fed manufacturing gauge remained deep in contraction territory in March, hitting a negative 23.2, versus expectations of 15.5

Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen is expected to tell the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday that the U.S. banking system is “sound.”

That’s as First Republic shares
FRC,
-29.97%
have dropped 35% to a fresh record low amid reports the battered lender is considering a sale. The lender was cut to junk by Fitch and S&P on Wednesday. Elsewhere, PacWest Bancorp
PACW,
-18.29%
is down 14%.

Meanwhile, “everything is fine,” with Credit Suisse, said the head of top shareholder Saudi National Bank on Thursday, a day after he effectively blew up markets by saying the Middle Eastern bank wouldn’t boost its stake. Credit Suisse shares
CS,
+3.51%

CSGN,
+15.73%
are surging on a pledge to borrow money from the Swiss National Bank and repay debt.

Adobe shares
ADBE,
+2.99%
are up 5% after topping Wall Street expectations for the quarter and hiking its outlook.

Shares of Snap
SNAP,
+6.77%
are up 6%, following a report that the Biden administration has told its Chinese owners to sell their TikTok stakes or face U.S. ban.

Shares of DSW parent Designer Brands
DBI,
+14.13%
are headed for a 2-year low after a surprise profit, but disappointing revenue.

Goldman Sachs is lifting its odds of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months by 10 percentage points to 35%, over worries about the economic effects of small bank stress.

Best of the web

Chinese companies are still trying to get their money out of SVB.

A rare Patek Philippe watch owned by the last emperor of China’s Qing dynasty could break auction records.

An issue with your tissue? ‘Forever chemicals’ are in toilet paper, too.

The tickers

These were the top-searched tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m.

Ticker

 Security name
TSLA,
+0.89% 		Tesla
CS,
+3.51% 		Credit Suisse
FRC,
-29.97% 		First Republic Bank
BBBY,
+8.25% 		Bed Bath & Beyond
CSGN,
+15.73% 		Credit Suisse
AMC,
-2.45% 		AMC Entertainment
GME,
-1.38% 		GameStop
AAPL,
+0.08% 		Apple
NIO,
+0.91% 		NIO
APE,
-8.10% 		AMC Entertainment Holdings preferred shares
Random reads

Cookie Monster NFTs? No thanks, say the furry guy’s fans.

The 8-year old daughter of a Russian President Vladimir Putin ally apparently owns a multimillion-dollar London apartment.

This Spanish ice cream screams childhood days.

Need to Know starts early and is updated until the opening bell, but sign up here to get it delivered once to your email box. The emailed version will be sent out at about 7:30 a.m. Eastern.

Listen to the Best New Ideas in Money podcast with MarketWatch reporter Charles Passy and economist Stephanie Kelton.

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#Chips #energy #Amazon #rival #Stock #picks #fund #manager #decades #experience

White House budget assumes student-debt forgiveness will move forward

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Borrowers across the country are in financial limbo as they wait for the Supreme Court to decide whether the White House’s student-debt cancellation plan is legal. But the Biden administration’s own financial planning presumes the initiative will survive the courts. 

As part of the Department of Education’s funding request to Congress for $2.7 billion for the Office of Federal Student Aid, officials took the costs and savings into account of President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for a wide swath of borrowers, Undersecretary of Education James Kvaal said on a conference call with reporters Thursday.  

The “budget assumes that we will move forward,” with the plan, Kvaal said. 

The fiscal-year 2024 funding request unveiled Thursday marks the latest salvo in a battle over the money Congress will give FSA. If the courts allow the Biden administration’s debt-relief plan to move forward, FSA would be charged with implementing it. That’s made FSA funding a flashpoint for congressional Republicans in recent months. But FSA is also responsible for almost every aspect of the financial-aid and student-loan system, something that could be put at risk if the office doesn’t get enough money from Congress. 

Biden administration officials didn’t provide much detail on the call with reporters about how debt cancellation impacted the Department of Education’s request for funding for FSA. Implementing the debt-relief plan would likely be a cost, but wiping borrowers off the books could also save the agency money because there would be fewer accounts to deal with. 

“My assumption is that if you take cancellation into account, the budget request would be smaller than it would be if you assume cancellation is not happening,” said Sarah Sattelmeyer, the project director for education, opportunity and mobility in the Higher Education Initiative at New America, a think tank.  

That could create challenges if the court strikes down debt cancellation, she said. “The bottom line is, really we need to make sure there are sufficient resources for any situation that might happen with FSA,” she said. “That’s the most important because when there aren’t sufficient funds, students and borrowers bear the brunt of that.” 

Like the IRS, FSA may not ‘seem sexy,’ but it’s important

Though FSA is not a household name, the office is in charge of all sorts of seemingly wonky tasks that touch almost every student and borrower. FSA oversees the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which college students use to apply for loans and grants; it disperses student loans to borrowers; manages the companies collecting student-loan payments; monitors colleges for wrongdoing and more. 

That’s why many researchers and student-loan borrower advocates were concerned when Congress level-funded FSA last year, despite a request from the Department of Education for an uptick of $800 million. Congressional Republicans touted the decision as providing “no new funding for the implementation of the Biden administration’s student-loan forgiveness plan.” 

Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University, compared FSA to the Internal Revenue Service. “It doesn’t always seem sexy,” to lawmakers to increase funding for these types of bodies, she said, but a lack of funds can have a real impact. 

She cited delays in borrowers qualifying for relief under already existing programs as one impact of an underfunded FSA. Last year, the Department of Education said that student-loan servicers weren’t properly tracking the number of payments borrowers made toward qualifying for forgiveness under certain student-loan repayment plans.   

“It is important to ensure that college is affordable,” Baker said. “It is sometimes easier to talk about funding pieces that make college more affordable than it is to talk about compliance and regulatory bodies that are ensuring that this one piece of paper that gets shuffled over to this other desk happens in a timely manner.” If it doesn’t, she added, “you will accidentally pay five months of extra loan payments past when your debt should have been canceled.”  

Over the past few years, FSA has been asked to do even more than what’s typically required. Many of the Biden administration’s initiatives to improve the student-loan experience, including making it easier for borrowers to access Public Service Loan Forgiveness and proposing sweeping changes to the way borrowers repay their student loans, fall under FSA’s purview. 

In addition, FSA is in the middle of overhauling its student-loan servicing contracts in an aim to provide a better experience for borrowers. Things like giving more direction to student-loan servicers about how they communicate with borrowers about their loans, and ensuring student-loan companies are more responsive to issues borrowers and regulators have raised in litigation, are part of that effort and will require resources, said Clare McCann, a higher-education fellow at Arnold Ventures.

“All of that is incredibly important to making sure borrowers are going to have a smooth transition back into repayment, when that does happen,” she said. 

It’s too early to say which of these priorities could be at risk because of Congress’ decision to level-fund FSA last year, Sattelmeyer said. “We don’t have a great idea yet of the tradeoffs FSA is going to make, but they’re going to have to make tradeoffs,” she said. 

For fiscal-year 2024, the Biden administration has asked for a $620 million increase over the amount that Congress enacted for fiscal-year 2023. And if FSA doesn’t get that funding increase, researchers and advocates worry the office will continue to have to make tradeoffs that could hurt students and borrowers.

“D.C. is and remains a political town,” Sattelmeyer said of the possibility that the department’s funding increase for FSA could fall victim to the same forces that scuttled it last year. “I can’t predict the future, but I can say that it is really important to message,” through the budget, “that FSA needs additional resources,” she said. “It’s also important for practitioners and advocates and others in this space to be pushing for additional resources.” 

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#White #House #budget #assumes #studentdebt #forgiveness #move

India is becoming a hot market for investors, but it risks falling victim to its own success

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India is poised to become the world’s most important country in the medium term. It has the world’s largest population (which is still growing), and with a per capita GDP that is just one-quarter that of China’s, its economy has enormous scope for productivity gains.

Moreover, India’s military and geopolitical importance will only grow. It is a vibrant democracy whose cultural diversity will generate soft power to rival the United States and the United Kingdom.

One must credit Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for implementing policies that have modernized India and supported its growth. Specifically, Modi has made massive investments in the single market (including through de-monetization and a major tax reform) and infrastructure (not just roads, electricity, education, and sanitation, but also digital capacity). These investments – together with industrial policies to accelerate manufacturing, a comparative advantage in tech and IT, and a customized digital-based welfare system – have led to robust economic performance following the COVID-19 slump.

These investments — together with industrial policies to accelerate manufacturing, a comparative advantage in tech and IT, and a customized digital-based welfare system — have led to robust economic performance following the COVID-19 slump.

Yet the model that has driven India’s growth now threatens to constrain it. The main risks to India’s development prospects are more micro and structural than macro or cyclical. First, India has moved to an economic model where a few “national champions” — effectively large private oligopolistic conglomerates — control significant parts of the old economy. This resembles Indonesia under Suharto (1967-98), China under Hu Jintao (2002-12), or South Korea in the 1990s under its dominant chaebols.

In some ways, this concentration of economic power has served India well. Owing to superior financial management, the economy has grown fast, despite investment rates (as a share of GDP) that were much lower than China’s. The implication is that India’s investments have been much more efficient; indeed, many of India’s conglomerates boast world-class levels of productivity and competitiveness.

But the dark side of this system is that these conglomerates have been able to capture policymaking to benefit themselves. This has had two broad, harmful effects: it is stifling innovation and effectively killing early-stage startups and domestic entrants in key industries; and it is changing the government’s “Make in India” program into a counterproductive, protectionist scheme.

We may now be seeing these effects reflected in India’s potential growth, which seems to have declined rather than accelerated recently. Just as the Asian Tigers did well in the 1980s and 1990s with a growth model based on gross exports of manufactured goods, India has done the same with exports of tech services. Make in India was intended to strengthen the economy’s tradable side by fostering the production of goods for export, not just for the Indian market.

Instead, India is moving toward more protectionist import-substitution and domestic production subsidization (with nationalistic overtones), both of which insulate domestic industries and conglomerates from global competition. Its tariff policies are preventing it from becoming more competitive in goods exports, and its resistance to joining regional trade agreements is hampering its full integration into global value and supply chains.

“ India should be focusing on industries where it has a comparative advantage, such as tech and IT, artificial intelligence, business services, and fintech. ”

Another problem is that Make in India has evolved to support production in labor-intensive industries such as cars, tractors, locomotives, trains, and so forth. While the labor intensity of production is an important factor in any labor-abundant country, India should be focusing on industries where it has a comparative advantage, such as tech and IT, artificial intelligence, business services, and fintech. It needs fewer scooters, and more Internet of Things startups. Like many of the other successful Asian economies, policymakers should nurture these dynamic sectors by establishing special economic zones. Absent such changes, Make in India will continue to produce suboptimal results.

“ The recent saga surrounding the Adani Group is symptomatic of a trend that will eventually hurt India’s growth. ”

Finally, the recent saga surrounding the Adani Group
512599,
-4.98%
is symptomatic of a trend that will eventually hurt India’s growth. It is possible that Adani’s rapid growth was enabled by a system in which the government tends to favor certain large conglomerates and the latter benefit from such closeness while supporting policy goals.

Again, Modi’s policies have deservedly made him one of the most popular political leaders at home and in the world today. He and his advisers are not personally corrupt, and their Bharatiya Janata Party will justifiably win re-election in 2024 regardless of this scandal. But the optics of the Adani story are concerning.

There is a perception that the Adani Group may be, in part, helping to support the state political machinery and finance state and local projects that would otherwise go unfunded, given local fiscal and technocratic constraints. In this sense, the system may be akin to “pork barrel” politics in the US, where certain local projects get earmarked in a legal (if not entirely transparent) congressional vote-buying process.

Supposing that this interpretation is even partly correct, Indian authorities might reply that the system is “necessary” to accelerate infrastructure spending and economic development. Even so, this practice would be toxic, and it would represent a wholly different flavor of realpolitik compared to, say, India’s vast purchases of Russian oil since the start of the Ukraine War.

While those shipments still account for less than one-third of India’s total energy purchases, they have come at a significant discount. Given per capita GDP of around $2,500, it is understandable that India would avail itself of lower-cost energy. Complaints by Western countries that are 20 times richer are simply not credible.

The scandal surrounding the Adani empire does not seem to extend beyond the conglomerate itself, but the case does have macro implications for India’s institutional robustness and global investors’ perceptions of India. The Asian financial crisis of the 1990s demonstrated that, over time, the partial capture of economic policy by crony capitalist conglomerates will hurt productivity growth by hampering competition, inhibiting Schumpeterian “creative destruction,” and increasing inequality.

It is thus in Modi’s long-term interest to ensure that India does not go down this path. India’s long-term success ultimately depends on whether it can foster and sustain a growth model that is competitive, dynamic, sustainable, inclusive, and fair.

Nouriel Roubini, professor emeritus of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is chief economist at Atlas Capital Team and the author of “Megathreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them” (Little, Brown and Company, 2022).

This commentary was published with permission of Project Syndicate —
India at a Crossroads

More: This perfect storm of megathreats is even more dangerous than the 1970s or the 1930s.

Also read: Freeing the U.S. economy from China will create an American industrial renaissance and millions of good-paying jobs

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#India #hot #market #investors #risks #falling #victim #success

Starbucks workers contend company is busting unions. ‘This will be a priority for me,’ congressman says.

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SANTA CLARA, CALIF. — Starbucks Corp. employees met with U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna at his California office on Friday and contended the company is retaliating against employees who unionize or are trying to organize, and is not bargaining in good faith.

The giant coffee chain denies those allegations. But what the Democratic congressman from Silicon Valley heard Friday from Starbucks
SBUX,
-0.41%
employees and union representatives in a meeting attended by MarketWatch echoes other complaints from around the nation that the company is engaging in union-busting — and he vowed to continue to try to help make sure the employees are treated fairly.

Edith Saldano, who works at a location in Santa Cruz County, sat next to the congressman and told him that the company “has embarrassed us over and over again and has not respected us.” Saldano said that during her store’s first bargaining session in November, Starbucks’ lawyers walked out after three minutes.

Saldano fought back tears as she recounted that she had “waited all day” and lost out on a day’s worth of work, which she really needed because she was “houseless” at the time in an area known for its high cost of living. She handed Khanna the employees’ contract proposal.

“We’re asking that you read it over and that you talk to them,” said Saldano, who added that she also sits on the national bargaining committee.

Khanna agreed to take a look and told Saldano: “I appreciate you for fighting not just for yourself but for everyone.”

The congressman has prided himself on being pro-labor and standing with low-wage workers, including Silicon Valley janitors and California’s fast-food workers, through the years. Khanna told the Starbucks employees Friday he has also met with the company’s unionized workers in Los Angeles, and that he hopes to help persuade the company — which is in transition and is set to have its new chief executive officially take over in a couple of months — change its approach to the growing movement to unionize at hundreds of its stores.

The National Labor Relations Board has accused Starbucks of illegally firing workers who have unionized, and the company is facing hundreds of charges of violating labor laws. Judges have ruled against the company in some of those cases. Starbucks in turn has filed complaints with the NLRB, accusing the union of not bargaining in good faith.

In-depth: Unions’ push at Amazon, Apple and Starbucks could be ‘most significant moment in the American labor movement’ in decades

A couple of other Starbucks employees who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal at a Bay Area store where they’re seeking to unionize also gave emotional testimonies at Khanna’s office on Friday. They spoke of having their hours reduced to the point where they don’t qualify for benefits, and being understaffed and overworked in physically demanding jobs.

“They run us into the ground until we’re too fatigued, and we’re replaced with cheaper baristas,” one of the employees said. “We’re organizing because we’re powerless as individuals.”

The other said Starbucks “is dominating the market by any means necessary,” and that employees “need the support of congressmen” and other leaders.

Brandon Dawkins, vice president of organizing for SEIU Local 1021, said possible retaliation by the company is also “putting fear into stores that want to unionize… they see what the unionized workers are going through.”

Khanna thanked the employees for their “courage,” and said “this will be a priority for me just like last Congress,” and outlined how he plans to continue to try to help.

Starbucks spokesman Andrew Trull said Friday that allegations that the company has not bargained in good faith are “simply false.” Trull said Starbucks has “come to the table” for more than 85 bargaining sessions at different stores since October.

“At each of these sessions with Workers United, Starbucks has been met by union representatives who insist on broadcasting in-person sessions to unknown individuals not in the room and, in some instances, have posted excerpts of the sessions online,” Trull said.

As for the allegations that Starbucks is reducing the number of hours available for employees who unionize, Trull said “Starbucks has a longstanding practice of adjusting store hours to reflect seasonal changes in customer demand.”

A spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United said longtime Starbucks employees say “the current pattern of reducing hours does not fit the history in the company.” In addition, the union spokesperson said the company is complicating scheduling of meetings by not allowing bargaining committee members unpaid time off; that the union and the company have agreed to virtual bargaining sessions; and that the union introduces participants for every meeting.

Outgoing Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz refused to appear before a Senate committee last week that wanted to ask him about the accusations of labor-law violations by the company.

The company’s letter to Sanders said that since Schultz is on his way out as CEO, the company was offering its chief public affairs officer, Al Jones, to appear before the committee instead.

The chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, said in a statement lasst week that he intends “to hold Mr. Schultz and Starbucks accountable for their unacceptable behavior.”

In October, Khanna and 30 other lawmakers sent a letter to Schultz, urging him and the company to work with the unions that have formed at hundreds of Starbucks stores around the nation.

For more: Starbucks urged to work with unions in letter from members of Congress

Since then, the congressman’s staff has been in touch with the company, whose representatives have told them that Starbucks is allowing workers to exercise their rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

Khanna told the employees on Friday that he has corresponded with new Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan and expects to meet with him after he takes over April 1.

“I’m hopeful that between the approach to him and the approach to some of the board members, who I know, that they may see the light — allowing for reasonable unionization and reasonable terms,” Khanna said. He mentioned that Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
-1.56%
last year came to a neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is a Starbucks board member.

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Tindered out? How to avoid creeps, time wasters and liars this Valentine’s Day

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Michelle has had her fair share of bad dates.

A divorced mother of four children, Michelle, 52, resolved to maintain her sense of humor when she returned to the dating market, and signed up for Hinge, an online dating service that includes voice memos, in addition to audio and video functions that enable two interested parties to talk to each other without sharing their phone numbers. 

Given that she had not dated since she was in her 20s, Michelle, who asked for her surname to be withheld, was thrown into the world of online dating, right swipes, ghosting, men who were actually living overseas, married men, men who lied about their age and men who posted photos that were 10 years old. She split from her husband of nearly two decades in 2014. 

Hinge is part of Match.com’s
MTCH,
+1.22%
group of apps along with OKCupid, Tinder, Bumble, and Christian Mingle, among others. The company promotes itself as the app that is designed to be deleted by its users. It’s a bold statement in the era of online dating, when people scroll through profiles — swiping right for yes and left for no — in search of their perfect mate.

But Hinge, like many other dating apps, introduced a video function in 2020 to help push people to “meet” during the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic. Dating experts advise applying the same rules you would to a Zoom
ZM,
+3.06%
call: dress smartly, use an overhead light rather than a backlight that casts you in shadow, and don’t sit in front of yesterday’s pile of dirty laundry.

“‘It’s amazing how many guys use a picture from 10 years ago. You can barely recognize them when you meet them.’”


— Michelle, 52, a divorced mother of four who searched for love online

A video date will reveal a lot more than a profile picture. “It’s amazing how many guys use a picture from 10 years ago,” Michelle said. “You can barely recognize them when you meet them. I discovered that someone who is very quick to ask for your email address or your number is more likely to be a scammer. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of scamming on dating apps.”

She’s not wrong. Nearly 70,000 Americans lost $1.3 billion to romance scams through social media and dating apps last year, up from 56,000 the year before, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That’s broadly in line with the amount of money lost the previous year, but up significantly from the $730 million lost in 2020. 

Through her work as a social worker, Michelle has learned to evaluate people and look for red flags. She has used those skills when online dating. She watches out for “goofy stuff” like a man who is writing like a character from a romance novel. “The Lifetime Channel Christmas Love Story is not happening on Hinge,” she said. “Those are the things that I kind of find funny.” 

Other red flags: Someone who lies about their age, is unwilling to meet, won’t turn on the video chat function — what have they got to hide? — and a man who is cheap. “Why did I drive 45 minutes to meet you and you can’t even buy me a cup of coffee? I don’t want someone who is stingy. Either they’re really miserly, have poor judgment, or poor people skills.”

The perilous side of handheld love machines

Dating apps are the ultimate love machine, churning out potential partners every two seconds, someone who is taller, younger, hotter, richer, broader, slimmer, sexier, kookier, weirder — and the list goes on. All of life’s parade is a swipe away. Millions of people use dating apps — from Grindr for gay men to Facebook Dating for pretty much everyone.

There is a balance between keeping people swiping and helping them find love. It’s a numbers game, and can be as addictive as playing the slots. EHarmony promotes its Compatibility Score, while OKCupid asks users to answer an almost limitless number of questions in order to match with more appropriate people. But critics say it leads to the gamification of people’s love lives.

Jenny Taitz, author of “How to Be Single and Happy: Science-Based Strategies for Keeping Your Sanity While Looking for a Soul Mate,” said one of the most common complaints about dating apps is the constant game of cat and mouse. Each user is probably talking to several people at the same time, and it’s tough to get people off the apps and into the real world.

If you like someone, she says, move to a video chat to test the chemistry. “It’s time-consuming, but you need to move from a pen pal to an in-person meetup,” she said. “It could be something that you do all the time, so you really have to have limits. If you’re having four dates a week, does that mean you’re not making time for friendships where you have an investment?”

“‘The same person who volunteers at a soup kitchen might easily ghost someone. There is so much detachment.’”


— Jenny Taitz, author of ‘How to Be Single and Happy’

Anonymity can often lead to ghosting, when people just disappear or stop answering messages. “We need to treat people like they would treat their future child or best friend,” Taitz said. “Bad behavior is so pervasive, and people are not held accountable for their actions. The same person who volunteers at a soup kitchen might easily ghost someone. There is so much detachment.”

Some studies have linked dating apps with depression, while other studies have found that online dating has led to a string of robberies through hook-ups on Grindr, and can also make it easier for sexual predators to find victims. These problems obviously exist in the real world, but social media and dating apps can provide an easier path for bad actors. 

Julie Valentine, a researcher, sexual-assault nurse examiner, and associate dean of Brigham Young University’s College of Nursing, analyzed 1,968 “acquaintance” sexual assaults that occurred between 2017 and 2020. She and her fellow researchers concluded that 14% of these sexual assaults resulted from a dating-app’s first in-person meeting. 

“One-third of the victims were strangled and had more injuries than other sexual-assault victims,” the study found. “Through dating apps, personas are created without being subjected to any criminal background checks or security screening. This means that potential victims have the burden of self-protection.” 

All those coffees take time and money

A spokeswoman for Match.com said it does not release data on how many people have actually used the video chat function. If people did use the function more often without sharing their phone number, it would in theory provide a layer of protection, help weed out bad actors, and help people decide whether a prospective date is compatible early in the process.

Cherlyn Chong, the Las Vegas-based founder of Get Over Him, a program to help women get over toxic relationships, does not believe the video chat function is as widely used as it should be. Chong, who describes herself as a dating coach and a trauma specialist, encourages her clients to use every method available to screen dates, in addition to meeting in a public place.

So what if a man did not want to video chat? “If they didn’t want to video, that’s fine,” Chong said. “But their reaction to the request would be a litmus test. We would know he is probably not someone to date, as he is not flexible. It’s also very telling if a woman explains that it’s a safety issue. The response of the guy in that situation would also be another litmus test.”

“Once you give someone their phone number, you don’t know what they are going to do with it,” Chong said. She said one of her clients encountered a man who shared her phone number with others, and sent it to a spam site on the internet. “You want to believe in the best of people,” she said, “but there are people who misuse your number because they can’t handle rejection.”

“‘A couple of cocktails in New York City? You’re looking at $60 to $100, or a few hundred dollars for a pricier meal.’”


— Connell Barrett, author of ‘Dating Sucks, But You Don’t’

Connell Barrett, author of “Dating Sucks, But You Don’t,” said video dates are a good first step. “You can see your date, and read their body language,” he said. “Because physical contact is off the table for a video date, it can free both singles to let go and not worry about the pressure about moving in for the first kiss. Good chemistry happens when there’s less pressure.”

Video dating also saves you time and money, especially if you’re the one who picks up the tab. “A couple of cocktails in New York City? You’re looking at $60 to $100, or a few hundred dollars for a pricier meal,” he said. Regular daters could end up spending up to $1,500 a month in bigger cities, if they’re dating a lot and eating out, Barrett added.

How much you spend will clearly depend on your lifestyle. Members of The League, a dating app that’s geared towards professionals, spend up to $260 a month on dates, followed by $215 a month for singletons using Christian Mingle, $198 for people signed up to Match.com, and $174 for Meta’s
META,
+3.03%
Facebook Dating subscribers, according to a recent survey. 

A video call allows people to get a sense of the person’s circumstances and personality, and can avoid wasting an hour having coffee with someone you will never see again. Be fun, be playful, don’t ask about exes or grill the other person “60 Minutes”-style, Barrett said. “A big mistake people make in dating is trying to impress the other person,” he said.

Video dating goes back to the 1970s

Jeff Ullman created the first successful video-dating service in Los Angeles in 1975 called Great Expectations. People recorded messages direct-to-camera. “We started with Betamax, moved to VHS, and upgraded to CD-ROMs,” he said. “As long as there are adults, there will be the hunt for love, and there will be the longing for ‘I’m missing someone, I’m missing something,’” he told MarketWatch.

“The best and the brightest did not go into dating services in the 1970s and 1980s,” he said. “I only went into it because I wanted to change the world. What I wanted to do was turn pity to envy. Our videos were 5 or 6 minutes long. There were no stock questions. They had to be ad-libbed. The only similar question was the last one: ‘What are the qualities that are most important in a relationship?’” 

He turned Great Expectations into a national franchise where customers paid $595 to $1,995 a year for membership ($1 in 1975 is around $5 today). “We did not hard sell you. We did a ‘heart sell.’ We had all kinds of Type As — doctors, lawyers, studio production chiefs, who all thought they were God’s gift, or God’s gift to womankind, but when they talked about their loneliness, they cried.”

People will always be searching for that perfect mate, Ullman said, whether it’s through videos, words, photos, psychological compatibility, A.I., or through arranged marriages or matchmakers. “But there is no perfect match. My wife Cindy and I are well matched. She’s not perfect. I’m not perfect. The moment either one of us begins to think we’re perfect is the moment we introduce negative forces.”

“‘What I wanted to do was turn pity to envy. Our videos were 5 or 6 minutes. There were no stock questions.’”


— Jeff Ullman, created Great Expectations, a video-dating service in Los Angeles in 1975

Before TikTok and Skype, people were not as comfortable in front of the camera, particularly if they had to talk about themselves. “We always hid the camera,” Ullman said. The 1970s decor of dark wood and indoor plants made that easier. “When we were finished, they’d say, ‘When are you going to start?’” But they were already on tape. They were, he said, happy with the first take 95% of the time.

Ullman required his franchisees to give members a three-day right to cancel for any reason — including “I’m not going to tell you” — if they changed their terms of service. “They just had to mail us or fax us their notice. Half of my franchisees were about to revolt.” Until, he said, they realized they could not afford to have a bad reputation in an industry where people were putting their hearts on the line.

It all started with a Sony-Matic Portable Videocorder gifted to him by his parents when he graduated from UC Berkeley in 1972. “They were very expensive, but they were portable. Whenever I went anywhere, whether it was a parade or a demonstration, which were common back then, they always let me in because they thought I was from “60 Minutes.” It gave us a sense of power.”

Fast forward to 2023: That power is in the hands of the $3 billion online dating industry and, perhaps to a lesser extent, in the hands of the singletons who are putting their own messages out into the world through words and pictures. In the 1970s, most people were still meeting in person. These days, your online competition is, well, almost every single person within a 50-mile radius.

Watching out for those ‘green flags’

Video dating has come in handy for singletons like Andrew Kneeshaw, a photographer and publican in Streete, County Westmeath, a small town in the Irish midlands. He’s currently active on three dating sites: Plenty of Fish, Bumble and Facebook Dating. In-app video calls have saved him — and his potential dates — time, gasoline and money spent on coffee and lunch. 

“Even someone local could be 15 or 20 miles away,” he said. He’s currently talking to a woman in Dublin, which is more than an hour away. “Hearing someone’s voice is one thing, but seeing that they are the genuine person they are supposed to be on the dating site definitely does help.” He could spend upwards of 20 euros ($21.45) on coffee/lunch, excluding gasoline.

He did go on a dinner date recently without having a video call, and he regretted it. “Neither of us felt there was a spark,” Kneeshaw said. So they split the check as they would likely never see each other again? “That sounds terrible, but yes,” he said. “I go on a date at best once a week. If you’re doing it a few times a week, it does add up very quickly.”

Ken Page, a Long Beach, N.Y.-based psychotherapist and host of the Deeper Dating podcast, is married with three children, and has compassion for people like Kneeshaw who live in more remote areas. In New York, he said, some people won’t travel uptown if they live downtown, and many more people won’t even cross the river to New Jersey. 

“‘If it’s a video chat, you have the opportunity to get to know them more, and have that old-fashioned courtship experience.’”


— Ken Page, a psychotherapist and host of the Deeper Dating podcast

He said green flags are just as important as red flags when deciding to move from a video date to an in-person date. “Is their smile warm and engaging? Are you attracted to the animation they have in their face? You just get tons more data when you see the person. You save money, and you save time before you get to the next step.”

In-person first dates can be brutal. “Your first reaction is, ‘they’re not attractive enough, I’ve got to get out of here,’” Page said. “If it’s a video chat, you have the opportunity to get to know them more, and have that old-fashioned courtship experience where attraction starts to grow. The ‘light attractions’ have more opportunity to grow without the pressure of meeting in person.”

Dating apps are a carousel of romantic dreams. The focus is on looks rather than personality or character. “There are so many people waiting online,” Page said. “That does not serve us. Unless the person really wows us, we swipe left. If you do a video chat, you will be more likely to get to know that person — instead of only getting to know the ‘9s’ and ‘10s.’”

And Michelle? The divorced Californian mother of four said she finally met a guy on Hinge last October, and they’ve been dating since then. “He’s just a fabulous guy. He actually moved slower than what I had experienced with other guys I had dated.” She kept her sense of humor and perspective, which helped. “He said, ‘You’re so funny.’ I didn’t have anything to lose.”

“It’s almost going to Zara
ITX,
+1.55%,
” she said. “Nine times out of 10 you may not find something you like, but one time out of 10 you do.”

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#Tindered #avoid #creeps #time #wasters #liars #Valentines #Day