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What Should Investors In Conservation Syndications Do When DOJ Seeks Injunction? | Last month, I wrote about the Department of Justice beginning to crack down on abusive conservation easement syndications. DOJ is seeking an injunction against people associated with EcoVest Capital, which according to Peter Elkind of Fortune is the most prolific syndicator of conservation easements. I explained the concept behind conservation easement deductions in that piece last month (and other coverage over the last several years). Here we are going to discuss them from the point of view of investors, which greatly simplifies things. To an investor, the program is something of a black box. The Black Box An investor (Let's go with Terry for a name) in an EcoVest deal pays them some money. Before Form 1040 for that year is due, Terry will get a K-1 showing a charitable contribution that is a multiple of the amount invested (probably between four or five times). So Terry will get back more than the investment in tax savings. That, of course, is the essence of the deal as far as Terry is concerned. In a few years, the property as encumbered by the easement is sold by the partnership. Terry will then get some of the original investment back. Terry needs to make sure the return preparer includes all required disclosures. But now Terry has heard that DOJ is calling the deals all sorts of nasty names. They literally refer to the persons named having "ill-gotten gains". Terry put $20,000 into a 2017 deal and $20,000 into a 2018 deal. Tax savings federal and state were $30,000 in 2017 and are projected about the same for 2018. I was actually asked that question. Not by anybody who has ever been my client, just to be clear. Worst case, as far as I can figure, Terry might have to give back the $30,000 in savings from 2017 along with a 40% penalty. In principle, Terry might avoid the penalty by filing an amended return (or returns if there were state savings) which leaves the question of what to do about 2018. What To Do About Return Not Yet Filed The 2018 question is a lot easier to answer. Terry should ask for the $20,000 back from EcoVest and consider supplementing the fourth quarter estimate, although that probably won't make much difference. I spoke with EcoVest investor relations and they made it clear that they won't just cut a check. Their point of view is that DOJ has arbitrarily struck demanding that five hard-working people, who are connected to EcoVest one way or another, are being asked to take up different work. Due to the government shutdown, they have not been able to respond. The EcoVest representative who only gave me his first name indicated that a statement has been sent out to the twenty or so broker-dealers that they use. I haven't gotten my hands on a copy of that yet. If Terry has the stomach for this sort of thing there could be complaints to various regulatory bodies which might encourage EcoVest to reconsider. I think the stakes are too low to engage a lawyer. Assuming the refund exercise is fruitless, Terry should plan on going on extension. EcoVest has indicated that the K-1s will be issued. But even if they are issued, my inclination would be to extend based on the assumption that the tax savings will not be available and see what develops. My partner often chides me about procrastinating. She is usually right. I've yet to see the dirty dishes spontaneously clean themselves, but I can keep hoping. Here, though, procrastination is the right answer. I don't give audit lottery advice, but this circumstance is different. I really don't think that Terry should amend the 2017 return and give back the tax savings. When you get a K-1, you are supposed to put on your return what the K-1 shows. What Terry should do is verify that the correct disclosures were included with the 2017 return and, if not, possibly amend for that. I really think that engaging a tax attorney is premature. You don't know for sure that your deal is going to be attacked and what the actual outcome will be. If you have the means (and you should if you were a qualified investor), plan to have your tax saving plus 40% or so liquid in a couple of years. Kiss it goodbye mentally now, which will cut your stress a lot. If it develops, as is not that unlikely, that you get to keep it, I think you should donate it to a legitimate conservation organization as a kind of penance for having profited from these shenanigans, but that is just me moralizing. My Sympathies In EcoVest vs DOJ, I am rooting for DOJ. Syndication of conservations easement charitable deductions is a travesty. It doesn't even make good nonsense. The investors are a different story. From what I can gather, somebody told them that these deals are legitimate and there is a sense in which that is true. So they have some sympathy from me. As Learned Hand wrote: Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant. Future investors get less sympathy. IRS Notice 2017-10 indicates the syndicated conservation easements are listed transactions. Reilly's Fourteenth Law of Tax Planning - If something is a listed transaction, just don't do it. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2019/01/21/what-should-investors-in-conservation-syndications-do-when-doj-seeks-injunction/ |
Why Didn't Apple Use Qualcomm's Modems In 2018 iPhones? | Like I said last week in my article entitled If The FTC Case Against Qualcomm Seems Like a Clown Show Right Now, It's Because It Started That Way, if you havent been following the FTC versus Qualcomm case and are in the tech industry, you probably should. Whats likely at stake are future inventors rights to monetize their inventions, the U.S. government becoming an IP price fixer, U.S. 5G competitiveness, and competitiveness in related industries like self-driving cars and smart cities and potentially even national security. One of the things that caught my eye last week was Apple COO Jeff Williams FTC testimony that Qualcomm wouldnt sell it chips for its 2018 iPhones. This could be viewed as support for the FTCs no license-no chips accusation against Qualcomm and be damaging to Qualcomms defense. Williams testified that But in the end, they (Qualcomm) would not support us and sell us chips- I contacted Steve (Mollenkopf), I sent him emails, I called. We tried to get them to sell us chips and they would not. Three days ago, Bloombergs Ian King and Mark Gurman ran a piece from leaked emails in September 2017 between Apple and Qualcomm suggesting Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf did offer to sell Apple its wireless chips for use in 2018 iPhones. The article said that Apple wanted source code for the modems and Qualcomm wanted a commitment to 50% of the supply over two years. If accurate, this article would support what Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf testified to when asked, was there ever a time when Qualcomm withdrew from competing for business at Apple? and Mollenkopf answered, no. While I would have preferred to see the Qualcomm-Apple emails in testimony versus leaked emails, no one so far is questioning the email authenticity with me. Ill assume this wasnt part of FTC evidence because the FTC limited its investigation through 2016. I want to peel back the onion a bit and dig in on a few things. First off, this exchange seems like good, old fashioned negotiating. I spent over 20 years at hardware OEMs and chip companies, did a lot of negotiating from both sides, and this is what negotiation looks like. It appears Qualcomm wanted a volume commitment and Apple, based on Williams testimony, seemed prepared to offer it, given Williams earlier testimony on a desire to dual-source. Apple also appears to want the source code for the thin modem. I will assume that Apple wanted Qualcomms latest X20 LTE modem at the time and the X20 source code. What I dont understand is why Apple wouldnt just keep using the X16 modem, which lined up well right next to Intels XMM 7560 gigabit class modem from a feature and speed standpoint. Apple already had the source code for the X16 modem and continues to ship the X16 in older iPhone models today. In November 2017, Qualcomm asked a San Diego court to force Apple to provide a software audit on how Apple was using its source code. In September 2018, Qualcomm filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Apple for trade secret misappropriation. What is evident from this chain of events from September 2017 to September 2018 is that Qualcomm was worried Apple was going to misappropriate its X20 source code as Qualcomm believed it did with the X16. Apples stock response to these trade secret theft accusations was, "Qualcomm's illegal business practices are harming Apple and the entire industry. They supply us with a single connectivity component, but for years have been demanding a percentage of the total cost of our products - effectively taxing Apple's innovation." Even though Qualcomm had its fears over trade secret theft, according to the Bloomberg emails, the company was still prepared to sell it modems with a volume commitment. To the core of the FTCs suit against Qualcomm is that it wouldnt sell chips unless customers paid for licensing fees. If the emails referenced to in the Bloomberg article are accurate, then it looks like Qualcomm's Mollenkopf was prepared to sell its chips to Apple but Apple didnt like the terms. This all strikes me as negotiation, not anti-trust harm, particularly when Apple could have used the X16 modem with which it already had the source code and is still buying. This he said-she said are what courts are for, to piece through these things and as I have said, Im no lawyer and dont play one on TV. I hope to see a day that Apple and Qualcomm can resolve its differences and focus all on what consumers want- innovative products and great experiences, because Im getting sick of all this. Disclosure: Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided paid research, analysis, advising, or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, including Advanced Micro Devices, Apstra, ARM Holdings, Bitfusion, Cisco Systems, Dell EMC, Diablo Technologies, Echelon, Ericcson, Frame, Gen Z Consortium, Glue Networks, GlobalFoundries, Google (Nest), HP Inc. HewlettPackard Enterprise, Huawei Technologies, IBM, Jabil Circuit, Intel, Interdigital, Konica Minolta, Lenovo, Linux Foundation, MACOM (Applied Micro), MapBox, Mavenir, Mesosphere, Microsoft, National Instruments, NOKIA (Alcatel Lucent), Nortek, NVIDIA, ONUG, OpenStack Foundation, Peraso, Portworx, Protequus, Pure Storage, Qualcomm, Rackspace, Rambus, Red Hat, Samsung Technologies, Silver Peak, SONY, Springpath, Sprint, Stratus Technologies, TensTorrent, Tobii Technology, Synaptics, Verizon Communications, Vidyo, Wellsmith, Xilinx, Zebra, which may be cited in this article. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2019/01/21/why-didnt-apple-use-qualcomms-modems-in-2018-iphones/ |
Will NFL adopt CFL policy for pass interference review after officiating error? | Toronto Argonauts defensive back Matt Black can see the winds of change blowing through the NFL after Sundays controversial finish to the NFC title game just like in the CFL in 2014. The Los Angeles Rams advanced to the Super Bowl with a 26-23 overtime win over the New Orleans Saints the first game of a wild semifinal Sunday that started a debate about rules that happen to be different in the CFL. Greg Zuerlein kicked the game-winning 57-yard field goal after forcing overtime with a 48-yard boot late in the fourth quarter thanks in large part to a blown call in the quarter. On third-and-10 inside the Rams 15-yard line, Saints quarterback Drew Brees threw a pass toward receiver Tommylee Lewis. But Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman not only didnt turn his head to see the ball, but delivered a helmet-to-helmet hit on Lewis at about the five-yard line before it arrived. Amazingly, no flag was thrown. Had a penalty been called, New Orleans wouldve received a fresh set of downs and the chance to run the clock down and kick a short game-winning field goal. Wil Lutzs 31-yard field goal put the Saints ahead 23-20 but St. Louis got the ball at its 25-yard line with 1:41 remaining and drove for a tying field goal. Saints head coach Sean Payton was incensed with the non-call, but could do nothing about it. Had this happened in a CFL game, Payton wouldve had an opportunity to challenge the play. CFL teams can make one challenge per game so long as they have at least one timeout. If the challenge is unsuccessful, a timeout is charged. But a team keeps the timeout if the challenge is successful. Regardless of the outcome, no other challenges can be made. So under CFL rules, Payton wouldve still had to have his challenge and at least one timeout to have the play reviewed. On Sunday, the CFL drew praise from ESPN, which also suggested it was time for the NFL to expand its replay rules. And the Edmonton Eskimos tweeted: If anything has been learned today, it is that the @CFL rules are @NFL rules and that theres less of a chance of seeing the same teams in the championship. Black, entering his 11th CFL season with the Argos, expects the NFL to look hard at making pass interference a reviewable offence. I think this will spur change in the NFL, said Black, a two-time Grey Cup champion. I think youll see the review of this because of that play. But Id want it to go both ways. If theres offensive pass interference then you can challenge it and if theres defensive pass interference then you could do that too. In 2014, the CFL became the first football league to make pass interference reviewable. That came after Hamilton defensive back Evan McCollough wasnt called for contacting Montreal receiver Duron Carter in the end zone late in the Tiger-Cats 19-16 overtime win in the 13 East Division semifinal. Instead of getting the ball at the Hamilton one-yard line, Montreal had to settle for a game-tying field goal. Coaches initially had two challenges but that number was reduced to one in 2017. In the 2015 Grey Cup, a successful challenge by head coach Chris Jones helped Edmonton beat Ottawa 26-20 in Winnipeg. Jones challenged an incompletion that was changed to pass interference and put the Esks on the Redblacks 10-yard line. That set up Jordan Lynchs one-yard TD run with 3:22 remaining and Mike Reillys completion to Akeem Shavers for the two-point convert to erase a 20-18 deficit. Glen Johnson, the former CFL official who later served as the leagues director of officiating, said there was no doubt Robey-Coleman interfered with Lewis. I did (expect a flag to be thrown). Johnson said. Absolutely (it was pass interference) and I say that with all empathy for the official because people just dont know until theyre out there just how hard it is. As an official, way back I went from not liking (replay) to feeling it was a really good tool to help us. And when I went into management I went, This is absolutely mandatory to protect the integrity of the game. The AFC championship game wasnt immune from criticism, either, and it too revolved around a rule unique to the NFL. The New England Patriots, after winning the coin toss for overtime, marched 80 yards on 15 plays capped by Rex Burkheads two-yard TD run to beat the Kansas City Chiefs 37-31. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who threw for 295 yards and three TDs in regulation, never touched the field in the extra session. In the CFL, both teams get the ball in overtime. In the NFL, a touchdown ends the game. That prompted Calgary Stampeders punter Rob Maver to tweet: I say this as an objective viewer: the NFLs overtime rules are complete and utter garbage. But Nik Lewis, the CFLs all-time receptions leader (1,051) now in his first season as the B.C. Lions running backs coach, likes the NFLs overtime policy during the regular season, But he thinks both teams should get the ball in the playoffs. Its a battle to earn the right to go to the next stage, he said. Really, the coin toss decides the game. Black supports the NFLs OT format. If you drive 80 yards and score a touchdown, tell me why the New England Patriots dont deserve to go to the Super Bowl, he said. If New England had to kick a field goal, Mahomes gets the ball back and the Chiefs get an opportunity to march down the field. If they score a TD, were sitting here talking about how amazing a 23-year-old kid is whos taking his team to the Super Bowl. I dont think there has ever been or will ever be another combination like Tom Brady and (Pats coach) Bill Belichick. However, it was the non-call in the NFC contest that drew the most attention. Like Black, Johnson believes the incident will move the NFL closer to allowing coaches to challenge pass interference. I hope it does, he said. I hope it serves as good dialogue for the rules committee. But Johnson believes the CFLs challenge system could be tweaked. The hardest part in figuring all of this out is you want a system, method or approach you can get to that leaves you that challenge for that moment, Johnson said. Had we not had two (challenges) in the 15 Grey Cup, they might not have had that other challenge to use late in the game to fix that PI. I think fundamentally there has to be a system to use replay to get egregious calls fixed. The officials want it, the fans want it, the coaches want it. Everybody wants it. Lewis, though, doesnt see it that way. The reason is its never consistent, theyre judgment calls, said Lewis. Theres not a consistent rule on pass interference so I think its very hard to decide which is interference and which isnt. But theres no doubt that play was pass interference. Still, Lewis said the Saints couldve made the play moot by scoring TDs in a dominant first half rather than settling for field goals. As a player or coach, you know theres going to be calls for and against you that are borderline, he said. So you dont want to put yourself in that situation (where game is decided by officials call). Jim Daley, a former head coach with Winnipeg and Saskatchewan, said with CFL coaches having just one challenge, a viable option could be having the replay official buzzing the game official when theres an obvious miss. It was a huge mistake, an obvious mistake and (NFL) has already admitted that, he said. In the CFL if youve already used your challenge, youre not challenging that play anyway. I just think there might be a process where a review official whos away from the heat of the game but sees the whole picture can somehow reach the game official and review it. | https://nationalpost.com/pmn/sports-pmn/football-sports-pmn/will-nfl-adopt-cfl-policy-for-pass-interference-review-after-officiating-error |
What prop betting lines are available for Super Bowl LIII? | CLOSE Two weeks before the biggest game in football descends on Atlanta, officials say they are doing everything to ensure it's a success. (Jan. 15) AP Super Bowl Sunday means heavily scripted commercials, a star-studded halftime show and a football game (by the way, the Patriots are favored by 1 1/2 points over the Rams as of Jan. 21 per Bovada). It also means lots of wagering on different bets. Here's a look at some of the betting lines that Bovada is presenting days before the start of Super Bowl LIII. YES -110 NO -130 CLOSE Jarrett Bell and Mike Jones from New Orleans and Kansas City on how the Rams and Patriots pulled off their impressive wins to head to the Super Bowl. YES +900 NO -3500 CLOSE SportsPulse: This will likely go down as the worst officiated championship weekend ever. But if you are a fan of chaos and pure insane entertainment it was incredible. Trysta Krick breaks down how the Patriots and Rams punched their ticket to the Super Bowl. Coke or variants -170 Pepsi or variants +130 SUPER BOWL LIII: TV, schedule, kick off time, streaming for Patriots-Rams | https://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/nfl/2019/01/21/super-bowl-2019-prop-bets-mvp-odds-national-anthem-commercials/2637355002/ |
Can Corning Sustain Its Momentum in the Fourth Quarter? | Corning Incorporated (NYSE: GLW) is slated to announce fourth-quarter 2018 results on Tuesday, January 29, 2019. Shares of the glass technologist are down modestly from its exceptional third-quarter report in October as of this writing -- albeit primarily driven by the broader market's decline since then. To be clear, last quarter Corning demonstrated accelerating growth and expanding margins as its investments in innovation and manufacturing capacity began to yield fruit. And if management's commentary is any indication, shareholders should expect to see more of the same next week. Before Corning's Q4 results hit the wires, then, let's have a look at what investors should be watching. Multiple panes of Corning glass. More IMAGE SOURCE: CORNING. A "step change" in profitability Three months ago, Corning Chairman and CEO Wendell Weeks boasted that Q3 marked a "step change in our earnings power," particularly as Corning leveraged its "recent phase of intense operating and capital investments to capture substantial benefits." Remember, Corning is in the home stretch of its four-year Strategic and Capital Allocation Framework announced in late 2015. Under that framework as of the end of last quarter, the company had already returned $11.4 billion (of a $12.5 billion goal) to shareholders through dividends and repurchases, and remained on track to invest $10 billion back into the business to solidify its industry leadership and capture future growth. Next week, the market will expect the company to confirm it has continued to make notable progress toward those goals, as per usual. But shareholders should also listen closely for any updates regarding Corning's targets for the duration of this year, as well as potential plans to extend its framework at the end of 2019. As for this quarter's headline numbers, Corning's latest guidance calls for full-year 2018 sales to "exceed $11.3 billion." Based on its sales of $8.255 billion through the first nine months of the year, that means the fourth quarter should arrive (conservatively) at around $3.05 billion. Meanwhile, Corning does not provide specific consolidated bottom-line guidance. So for perspective, and though we usually don't lend much credence to Wall Street's expectations, most analysts will be looking for Corning's core earnings to increase roughly 14% to $0.57 per share. Breaking it down Corning did offer some broad expectations in October for each of its five primary segments to end the year. At optical communications, its single largest business, fourth-quarter sales should climb in the low-single-digit percent range sequentially, from $1.117 billion last quarter, helped by large ongoing projects from multiple carrier and data center customers. All told, that should mean optical achieves slightly higher year-over-year growth than the 9% increase we saw in Q3. Next, Corning's display technologies segment should benefit from ever-larger television screen sizes. Coupled with the recent ramp of Corning's Gen 10.5 LCD glass substrate facility in China, display technologies should see volume growth slightly above the low-single-digit sequential increase expected from the broader display glass market. At the same time, its revenue and earnings benefit for this segment will be held back by continued annual display glass price declines -- though it's worth noting Corning has done an admirable job moderating those declines in recent years. | https://news.yahoo.com/corning-sustain-momentum-fourth-quarter-004000592.html |
Should We Debunk Junk Science Or Not? | Junk science is everywhere, and it takes many pernicious forms. There are the outright scams, of course, advertised by charlatans aiming to make a quick and easy buck. There are the malicious actors, trying to spread falsehoods and misinformation to score political or economic points instead of promoting honest scientific debate. And there are the lazy and flawed scientists themselves, trumpeting poorly-done, low-quality, and even outright sketchy work in a bid to get some media and public attention on themselves. All of these manifestations have a common theme: they take the name of science and apply it to something that definitely does not adhere to any reasonable definition of the word or bear even the slightest resemblance to the proper practice of the discipline. It obviously needs to be addressed and confronted, lest the problem grow out of control (if it isn't already out of control) and regain some semblance of legitimate scientific identity in the hearts and minds of the general public. It's here, in the how rather than the why of combatting junk science, that two schools of thought emerge: Method 1: Debunk, Full Blast There is bad, junky science, promoted by bad, junky people. They must be defeated. We must take their claims at face value and tear into them, exposing them for the frauds and deceits that they are. The goal of such a debate wouldn't be to change the mind of our opponent - they likely aren't interested in having their mind changed anyway. But people can watch and listen to that debate. Maybe some of those people have an opinion on the subject, but not a strong one, and can be swayed with logic and reason. Most people probably haven't even thought about the issue at all, and this would be a golden opportunity to plant the right kind of seed at exactly the right time. Failing the opportunity for a debate, we can at least provide resources. Videos, articles, podcasts, the works. Bring up dubious claims and bear the full weight of the evidence against them. Highlight examples of bad science so that people know what to look for in the future. Method 2: Avoid, At All Costs But even the mention of junk science gives their proponents credibility. After all, scientists debate each other all the time in open forums. Thus if a scientist is debating someone else, they must hold them as a peer, even a colleague. By giving them the air of legitimacy, we aren't helping ourselves, but them. Even if the debate is "lost" (whatever that means), they can then turn around to their followers and rightly claim that they went toe-to-toe with other scientists. Junk scientists aren't playing by the same rules. Instead, it's best to avoid open confrontation. Instead, explain what science is and how science works, and let it be. Have confidence that the right information will get to the right people and let natural forces do their work. It's best not to...sully our hands, so to speak. Method 3: All of the Above Both approaches have merit. Both schools of thought make very valid points. Both techniques are right in their own ways and wrong in their own ways. In the end, we need to give people tools to decide between junk and valid science on their own. And since "people" is really a collection of billions of individuals, we can't make universal assumptions and apply universal techniques and hope it all works out in the end. The struggle against junk science is much more personal than that; it can only be won through a single human being at a time. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmsutter/2019/01/21/should-we-debunk-junk-science-or-not/ |
Have His Cake and Eat It Too? | Bill Clinton has been pretty good to President Bush about the War on Terror and the war in Iraq up until now. In July of '03 right after the invasion Clinton went on TV and said, "Hey, all you guys ticked at Bush, just remember we all knew we'd have to do something about Saddam someday." That was good. It was actually brave because the Democrats were busy formulating the "Bush lied" lie which is now accepted on the blue side of things as absolute, unquestionable truth, when in fact it is the biggest cowpie I've ever stepped in. But now Clinton has gone off the deep end. Here's what he said to a group of students one presumes Arab students at the American University in Dubai: "Saddam is gone. It's a good thing." I interrupt his statement here because this is where he should have stopped. But he didn't. He went on. "But I don't agree with what was done," Clinton said. "It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors, one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country." Now there is a certain truth in the latter part of the statement. It's obviously been easier to knock Saddam off than unite the country. But uttering the words "it was a big mistake" in an Arab country, in front of an Arab audience, can mean only one thing: The ex-president thinks we shouldn't have gone into Iraq. But he just said Saddam is gone and that's good. Clinton had eight years to get rid of Saddam without a war. It didn't work. It would never have worked. Saddam was busy buying off the U.N. and France. He was busy killing his opponents and CIA spies. He was busy convincing his neighbors and the rest of the world that he had WMDs, because if they thought he didn't the U.S. wouldn't have had time to invade. Iran would have done it first. Clinton has defined the Democrat position on Saddam: We are glad he's gone, now let's stone the guy who ran him out. The beauty of this is that they say it with a straight face. That's My Word. Watch John Gibson weekdays at 5 p.m. ET on "The Big Story" and send your comments to: myword@foxnews.com Read Your Word | https://www.foxnews.com/story/have-his-cake-and-eat-it-too |
Did J.R. Smith call Marcus Smart a "bum" for DeAndre' Bembry incident? | originally appeared on nbcsportsboston.com J.R. Smith appeared to call out one of two players Saturday night on Instagram. Scroll to continue with content Ad We think we have a pretty good guess. After ESPN's "SportsCenter" Instagram account posted a video of Marcus Smart charging at DeAndre' Bembry during Saturday night's Boston Celtics-Atlanta Hawks game, the former Cleveland Cavaliers guard chimed in by writing "such a bum" in the comment section. JR Smith's not a fan of Marcus Smart. pic.twitter.com/SNTxMLeCgv Josh Poloha (@JorshP) January 20, 2019 Technically, Smith's "bum" jab could be directed at Smart or Bembry. But Smith and Smart have serious history. A quick recap: During the 2018 NBA playoffs, Smart confronted Smith after the Cavs guard pushed Al Horford while he was in the air attempting to catch an alley-oop. When Boston and Cleveland met this preseason, Smart and Smith scuffled again, and their beef continued off the court with some nasty postgame remarks and tweets. So, it's safe to say Smith's comments aren't directed at Bembry. Smart has bigger problems to worry about, though: His Celtics will aim for their fourth consecutive win Monday, while Smith has stepped away from the Cavs while seeking a trade. Click here to download the new MyTeams App by NBC Sports! Receive comprehensive coverage of your teams and stream the Celtics easily on your device. | https://sports.yahoo.com/did-j-r-smith-call-045817780.html?src=rss |
Could a Tsunami Happen Here? | Alaska (search) has been hit by massive earthquakes in the past, and is still at risk. So is Washington state. Both are bordered by 700- to 800-mile fault zones. So the U.S. has installed an early-warning system that reads the speed and direction of tsunamis which are generally undetectable until they hit the shore because wave energy travels very deep and at near-supersonic speed underwater. "We live in an area similar, and we should not lull ourselves into thinking it could not happen to us," said Eddie Bernard of Pacific Marine Laboratory (search) in Anchorage. "It could happen to us." Click in the box near the top of the story to watch a report by FOX News' William LaJeunesse. | https://www.foxnews.com/story/could-a-tsunami-happen-here |
Is Green Plains a Buy? | After a rough 2017 investors might have been hoping that things couldn't get worse for ethanol producers. Then 2018 happened. Last year, ethanol prices averaged their lowest selling prices since 2002 -- years before the United States started blending the renewable fuel into its gasoline supply. That spoiled the operations of Green Plains (NASDAQ: GPRE). While it began 2018 as the nation's third-largest ethanol manufacturer, it exited the year a peg or two lower. Management sold noncore assets and 20% of the company's ethanol production fleet, then used the proceeds to retire $495 million in long-term debt. The move should save enough in interest expense to tip the business into profitability, but there are still some questions that won't be answered until year-end results are announced. Let's dig into the details. A man staring at a chalk board with money bags and question marks drawn on it. More Image source: Getty Images. By the numbers Green Plains generates revenue and income from multiple products and services supporting ethanol production. The business also creates animal feed products (primarily byproducts of the overall ethanol production process), sells meat from its cattle feedlot business (one of the largest in the United States with 355,000 head of cattle), and generates income from an ownership stake in Green Plains Partners (a storage and transportation partnership supporting the parent). Vertical integration has become a necessity for improving the margin structure of ethanol production. That was especially true last year. In the first nine months of 2018 the company's ethanol segment reported an operating loss of $60.7 million, compared to an operating loss of $26 million the year before. High-margin products and services in the animal feed, food ingredients, and partnership segments allowed Green Plains to post an overall operating profit -- barely. Metric First Nine Months 2018 First Nine Months 2017 Year-Over-Year Change Revenue $3.03 billion $2.67 billion 13% Operating expenses $3.02 billion $2.64 billion 14% Operating income $8.4 million $34.3 million (75%) Net income ($23.1 million) $29.4 million N/A Operating cash flow less inventory change $31.1 million $54.6 million (43%) Data source: SEC filing. Of course, the slimmed-down business will look a bit different in 2019. Late last year, Green Plains sold off its high-margin vinegar business, which, alongside the cattle feedlot business, helped to generate $34 million in operating income for the food ingredients segment through the first nine months of 2018. Losing that high-margin income will hurt, but the company will save more in interest expense from paying off its term loans. Shedding 20% of its ethanol production will also help to shrink losses in the core segment. The biggest improvements might arrive on the balance sheet. Here's how management last communicated the changes, with the pro forma results indicating the impact from recent transactions: Metric Sept. 30, 2018 (Pro Forma) Sept. 30, 2018 (Actual) Total long-term debt $337.8 million* $832.8 million Net debt ($46.9 million) $598.3 million Shareholders' equity $1.06 billion $898.9 million Book value per share $25.61 $21.70 Net debt to EBITDA 2.5x 6.3x *NOTE: Comprising convertible debt and a revolving credit facility. Data source: Investor presentation. Overall investors have to like the improvements in the table above, but investors will want to make sure these asset sales don't result in sharply lower EBITDA -- therefore hiking up leverage ratios -- going forward. Despite the overnight improvements on the balance sheet, Wall Street hasn't changed its pessimistic outlook for the business. Perhaps analysts are waiting for clearer signals from management on what to expect in the near term, but they haven't updated their earnings expectations for the next 12 months. That much is obvious from a side-by-side comparison between Green Plains and its closest publicly traded ethanol-producing peers Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM) and Valero (NYSE: VLO), notably in the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios. | https://news.yahoo.com/green-plains-buy-034800922.html |
Did Ciara, Russell Wilson respond to Future saying the NFL pro is 'not being a man'? | CLOSE Ciara shared a photoshoot she recently did for Harper's Bazaar that has people wondering what Russell Wilson is doing. Keri Lumm (@thekerilumm) reports. Buzz60 Ciara and husband Russell Wilson seem to be taking the high road. The couple posted Instagram messages that seem directed at her ex, Future, who dissed their relationship Thursday, slamming Wilson for "not being a man" in his marriage to the "Level Up" singer. "Rise Above," Ciara said alongside a photo of herself in a pink and black plaid shirt and sky-high black boots. NFL star Wilson stuck with family, posting, "All that matters. #Love" along with a super-sweet photo of Ciara and Future's 4-year-old son, Future Zahir, kissing his little sister, 1-year-old Sienna, Ciara's daughter with Wilson. Celebrity power couple: Ciara and Russell Wilson's love story The couple haven't publicly discussed Future's appearance on Apple Musics Beats 1 Radio on Thursday. He do exactly what she tell him to do. He not being a man in that position, the rapper, 35, said. You not tellin her, Bro, chill out with that on the internet. Dont even talk to him. Im your husband! You better not even bring Futures name up! He continued, "If that was me, she couldn't even bring his name up. She know that. She couldn't even bring her exes' names up." Ciara and Future were engaged in 2013, but broke off their relationship three months after Future Zahir was born. The singer and Wilson married in 2016. USA TODAY has reached out to Ciara's and Wilson's representatives for comment. Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2019/01/22/ciara-russell-wilson-future/2641749002/ | https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2019/01/22/ciara-russell-wilson-future/2641749002/ |
How hard will adding replay for pass interference be? | A year ago around this time, when the NFL was still wobbling from its time in the political shredder, the idea that the league would dare entertain extending the time of game just to review certain judgment calls on top of the current replay slate seemed ludicrous. A vocal minority of fans were convinced that the game was too choppy. Too soft. Too long. Too bogged down by a rulebook where even the most basic questionswhat is a catch?could not be answered without a mountain of legalese. It wasnt football anymore. How times change. The NFL came roaring back in 2018 and reestablished itself atop the American sports hierarchy. As Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk noted Monday, the AFC championship game just about tripled the most watched World Series and NBA finals games of 2018. Assuming the Super Bowl keeps us fat and happy offensively, there should be plenty of momentum to pacify those on the competition committee who want to review pass interference calls. Reviewing pass interference is a thing we say we dont want until something like Sundays Saints-Rams game happens. While I think theres some interesting revisionist history already being applied to the callmaking it seem like the sole reason the Saints are not in the Super Bowl and that the Rams werent also the victim of some fairly egregious no callsit was significant and horrifying enough to warrant immediate action. And really, this shouldnt take more than a long lunch at the owners meetings to hammer out. It wouldnt even change the game all that much. Make it reviewable, as CBS suggested, only under two minutes and keep the challenge system the way it is. Or, allow coaches to challenge, during the game but keep a minute running clock on the central replay crew, making it so the judgment calls could only be overturned if it was outrageous enough to come across as such to Alberto Riveron in a short period of time. This season confirmed that fans will stick with a good product even if theres an encyclopedic rulebook that can sometimes get in the way of good competition. So, if youre going to have all the rules, make sure theres enough of them on the books to cover your behind in any situation. Sign up for The MMQBs Morning Huddle. HOT READS NOW ON THE MMQB: Albert Breer covers the nightmare day for officials in his Monday column . . . Andy Benoit on how Bill Belichick might try to slow the Rams . . . Jenny Vrentas on the Patriots making the remarkable seem routine . . . and more. WHAT YOU MAY HAVE MISSED: Greg Bishop and Ben Baskin on the early years of the Robert Kraft Patriots . . . Kalyn Kahler with the latest NFL Draft Big Board . . . Tim Rohan on the incredible athletic feats of Young Andy Reid . . . and more. PRESS COVERAGE 1. Andy Reid took some issues with the officiating too, though I doubt hell be able to control that narrative. 2. 3. The Patriots are putting on a unified front ahead of the Super Bowl. 4. Shoot yeah, his agent says. 5. 6. Alex Smith was seen out at a Wizards game. Let the team know at talkback@themmqb.com | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/01/22/how-hard-will-it-be-install-replay-pass-interference |
Why Is Uranus The Only Planet Without Interesting Features On It? | The eight major planets of the Solar System all possess their own unique features. The rocky planets have craters, ridges, mountains and more: evidence of a violent past and interior activity. All the planets except Mercury have atmospheres, where volatile materials form clouds and hazes. On the gas giant worlds, banded structures, storms, and turbulent streams are commonly seen. Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune all display spectacular changes over time whenever we've examined their atmospheres in detail. But not Uranus. Alone among all the planets in the Solar System, Uranus is a light, blue-colored, otherwise featureless world. Even when it was visited up close by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, the most remarkable part of the story was how unremarkable Uranus appeared. To the human eye, Uranus is the only planet without interesting features on it. Here's the scientific story of why. Uranus, as seen from Earth, is just a tiny turquoise disc. Voyager 2, which had previously revealed unprecedented details of storms and bands on Jupiter and Saturn, saw a large, featureless, turquoise globe when it came to Uranus. Even by turning up the image contrast as high as possible, there was practically nothing to see. Uranus appeared to be, quite disappointingly, the most boring planet we could have imagined. Initially, we thought we understood why it was such a featureless world. With such a small size relative to Saturn or Jupiter, it was conjectured that Uranus wasn't able to generate any of its own internal heat, and was therefore only at the temperature you'd expect if it were heated by the Sun. It was blue and featureless because it was cold, distant, and didn't produce its own heat. Its upper atmosphere was a constant 58 K. And that seemed to be the entire story. Of course, that isn't the case at all! Sure, it is cold and distant, and doesn't generate very much internal heat; that part is true. But Uranus is unique among all the worlds in the Solar System for a special property it possesses: its rotation. Unlike all the other worlds, which rotate at some tilt relative to the plane of the Sun's rotation, Uranus is practically on its side, rolling like a barrel instead of spinning like a top. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Uranus in 1986, it was solstice: the side illuminated by the Sun was one of Uranus' polar regions. But as the years and decades ticked by, Uranus moved from solstice towards equinox, when its equatorial region would be illuminated by the Sun instead. Instead of a constant influx of sunlight on one hemisphere, lasting years, there was a rapid day/night shift, coincident with Uranus' rotational period of about 17 hours. Since Uranus takes 84 Earth-years to complete a revolution around the Sun, that means it takes 21 Earth-years to go from solstice to equinox. With Voyager 2 flying by it at solstice in 1986, that implied the best time to view it next would be in 2007, when it was at equinox. We didn't have another mission ready to go at that time, but we did have the Hubble Space Telescope. As you can see, above, there are all the features you would have hoped for the first time. There are swirling clouds, storms, and even characteristic atmospheric bands. There are dark spots and light spots, hazes and clear regions, with differential colors at different Uranian latitudes. Instead of a monochrome, featureless world, we at last found the active atmosphere we had expected all along. The reason for Uranus' uniform color during the solstice is because of its temperatures when it's in continuous day, which produces a haze of methane. Methane, in this state of matter, absorbs red light, which is why the reflected sunlight takes on that turquoise hue. Simultaneously, the methane haze masks the clouds below it, which is what causes Uranus to have the featureless appearance we came to know ubiquitously after the Voyager 2 visit. With its 97.7 degree axial tilt, a solstice Uranus will appear to be a boring Uranus. But that methane haze, so prevalent in the upper atmosphere of Uranus, only represents the top 1% of the atmosphere. Observing in bands other than visible light will reveal even more of its non-uniform properties. Because an equinox-like Uranus will cool off during the night, the methane haze goes from being a top-layer aerosol which is a solid or liquid particle suspended in a gas to particles that mix with the lower atmospheric layers. Thus, when day emerges again, the uppermost layer is partially transparent. And what we've found, when that occurs, is that there are observable changes in the upper atmosphere, which holds clues to the 99% of the unseen atmosphere beneath it. There are storms that are present even in the old Voyager 2 information, visible only by stacking over 1,000 images together and looking for variations between frames. According to astronomer Erich Karkoschka, who did this work back in 2014: Some of these features probably are convective clouds caused by updraft and condensation. Some of the brighter features look like clouds that extend over hundreds of kilometers. [...] The unusual rotation of high southern latitudes of Uranus is probably due to an unusual feature in the interior of Uranus. While the nature of the feature and its interaction with the atmosphere are not yet known, the fact that I found this unusual rotation offers new possibilities to learn about the interior of a giant planet. By looking in wavelengths of light beyond what the human eye can see, such as the infrared, we can construct enhanced-color images. As you'd expect, when Uranus is near equinox, these reveal a slew of features that are invisible to the human eye, including: bands of atmospheric structure, hemispheric differences between the sun-facing and space-facing poles, storms and clouds present in the upper atmosphere, and even a faint ring system that likely results from shattered or tidally-disrupted moons. There are also storms that are visible only in the infrared that intensify and subside. Contrary to our initial observations, Uranus is a feature-rich world, but only if you look at it in the right ways. There are still plenty of mysteries to solve about the second-most-distant planet in the Solar System. Uranus has an oddly tilted but strong magnetic field, about 50 times the strength of Earth's, which rotates like a corkscrew around the planet. The dual presence of carbon and hydrogen suggests that, in the lower layers of the atmosphere, the pressure causes a rain of diamonds to fall. Uranus displays a uniform temperature during solstice, but severe temperature differences across its surface during equinoxes, suggesting that something inherent to it is causing a lag between temperatures and the seasons. And the storms we see, also driven by the seasons, are suggestive of a vortex deeper down in the atmosphere, farther past what we can see. Uranus, to many, is still the most boring planet, and I suppose that's true if you're willing to add a caveat: sometimes. When Uranus is at solstice, it truly is the most boring, featureless world you can find among our eight planets. But the lack of an internal heat source and the fact that it rotates on a tipped-over axis also gives us a unique opportunity to learn how a gas giant planet behaves when its energy balance is driven by the Sun. Uranus, once thought to be a featureless world, turns out to be incredibly rich and diverse. This turquoise world holds a number of mysteries that are suggestive of a complex, internal structure beneath the easily-observable upper atmosphere. So long as there's an energy difference, either between the polar hemispheres or between the day-and-night sides, there will surely be interesting phenomena to investigate. The case for a dedicated mission to Uranus has never been stronger. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/22/why-is-uranus-the-only-planet-without-interesting-features-on-it/ |
Why no love for romcoms? | Serenity, opening Friday, finds Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway on a tropical isle where life drifts along in a hazy breeze of booze and sex. Yet this quirky thriller hardly pairs the Interstellar co-stars romantically. She hopes he will murder her sadistic billionaire husband. Its a far cry and years away from when McConaugheys island adventures were such romantic comedies as Fools Gold or How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, both with Kate Hudson. Once romcoms were a Hollywood staple, with Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers writing and directing Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson or Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Theyve gone the way of the dodo. Instead, its bromances that are flourishing, perhaps because theyre absent the complications of sex. Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Kevin Hart are now Hollywoods hottest team after Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. They had previously struck box-office gold with 2016s Central Intelligence (A little Hart and a big Johnson teased the ad). Their Jumanji sequel opens in December. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are three movies into their partnership. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby in 2006 launched an inspired teaming, followed by Step Brothers (2008) and the Christmas misfire Holmes and Watson. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn began with Starsky and Hutch in 2004, sparked in 2005s smash Wedding Crashers and wrapped it with The Internship (2013). Easily the reigning bromance kings are James Franco and Seth Rogen. Theyve never stopped collaborating since Freaks and Geeks in 1999. Consider: Knocked Up (2007), Pineapple Express (2008), This is the End (2013), The Interview (2014), Sausage Party (2016), The Disaster Artist (2017). Still to come: Zeroville, with Franco director and co-star. As to why were in the midst of a bromantic moment, There always seems to be a genre that is hot at the moment. When you look at the last five years, its been Will Ferrell, Dwayne Johnson or Kevin Hart. Jumanji surprised everyone by grossing over $700 million worldwide, said Wilson Morales of BlackFilm.com. Romantic comedies just arent clicking at the box-office. Crazy Rich Asians was more about the culture than the couple. The last successful pairing weve seen is a dramatic story, A Star Is Born, which is an example of star power. | https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/01/22/romcom/ |
How can I use two-step verification in a mobile blackspot? | I cant access calls or texts and want to start protecting my email account from hackers You have frequently advised readers to set up two-step verification to protect the security of their email system. Wed like to do this, but we live in a mobile blackspot, and cant access calls or texts at home. SD, Maidenhead, Berks You are absolutely right to set this up, and we would strongly urge other readers to follow your lead. Two-step verification protects against hacking as it requires the user to input a code every time they log into their email on a computer they havent used previously. Most email systems use the mobile phone networks to send the verification code by text. Only once you have entered it can you access your emails. It will halt most scammers from taking over your account. You only have to do this once on that computer but it may have to be updated every 30 days, if at all. For people like you who dont get a decent mobile service at home (or dont own a mobile), you can ask Google or the email provider to call your landline instead. You can typically add two mobile and landline numbers to the two-step process. A landline is arguably more secure. Alternatively, use a smartphone-based app which automatically generates a one-time passcode using an algorithm. The code changes every 30 seconds. Crucially, you dont need a mobile phone signal or to be online to receive the code. The Guardians tech gurus recommend using Google Authenticator, or Authy. One last thing to consider is upgrading your mobile to 4G. Living where you do, you should be able to get a mobile service. Buying a 4G phone could improve your service and mean you can make and receive calls at home. We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions | https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jan/22/two-step-verification-email-security-mobile |
What are May's options for a plan B that could win over the Commons? | Theresa Mays plan B is to try to get her plan A through the Commons with some tweaks on the Irish backstop. Heres a quick guide to what MPs could vote for, based on dividing the Commons into various groupings, explained below. The numbers of those groups are roughly estimated using public records and voting histories, although these factions could easily splinter further in any of these scenarios. The groupings explained Tories for a second referendum 9 These are the Conservative MPs like Dominic Grieve, Sarah Wollaston, Anna Soubry, Phillip Lee, Sam Gyimah, Guto Bebb, Justine Greening and Jo Johnson who will back any moves for a second referendum and stopping no deal. Conservatives who will block no deal 12 These MPs are not in favour of a second referendum and mostly voted for Mays deal, but will put as many roadblocks as they can in the way of a no-deal Brexit. They include former minister Nick Boles, Nicky Morgan and Sir Oliver Letwin. Brexiters who oppose Mays deal 109 These are the Tory MPs who have voted against the prime ministers Brexit deal. Many are hard Brexiters who would be comfortable with no deal, but others are ex-remainers uncomfortable with the backstop. Should May manage to deliver a firm end date to the backstop, she could win back most of their votes. A minority would also like to see the backstop removed entirely and a reduction of the 39bn payment to the EU. Conservative loyalists and payroll 186 This group include ministers, whips and other frontbenchers, as well as Tory loyalists who are happy to vote for Theresa Mays Brexit deal as it currently stands. Democratic Unionist party MPs 10 The Northern Irish party voted against the governments Brexit deal because of the backstop arrangement, and could be won over if there are some changes to it. Labour for a second referendum 71 Support for a second referendum is likely to be more widespread than this but not all Labour MPs who hold frontbench position have publicly declared support. These 71 MPs are those who have publicly declared their support and would vote for a referendum even if they were whipped to oppose. Labour MPs opposed to a second referendum 30 Labour MPs who do not want the party to back a second vote have been privately keeping track of the number who would actively oppose it, even if it was whipped by the Labour frontbench. Sources claim about 30 would be actively prepared to rebel. Labour loyalists and independents 150 These include Jeremy Corbyns frontbench and the majority of Labour MPs who are likely to follow the Labour whip. Labour Brexiters and MPs who back Mays deal 3 Only three Labour MPs have backed Mays deal as it currently stands though this number would be likely to grow if it became a softer Brexit or if no deal became a more likely possibility. Others could merge into this group depending on the question, including Labour hard Brexiter Kate Hoey. How admirable that MPs want to amend Brexit. It wont work | Matthew dAncona Read more The SNP, Lib Dems and other parties 51 These MPs, who also include Plaid Cymru and the Greens Caroline Lucas, are all supporters of a second referendum. Independents 8 These MPs are not easy to place. Ex-Labour MPs Ivan Lewis and Jared OMara have tended to vote with their former party. Independent MP Sylvia Hermon, former Labour MP Frank Field and the former Lib Dem MP Stephen Lloyd have tended to vote with the government on Brexit issues. Another ex-Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins is a Brexiter, but also a Corbyn loyalist. Dont vote 11 The Speaker, his three deputies and seven Sinn Fein MPs do not vote. | https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/22/what-are-mays-options-for-a-plan-b-that-could-win-over-the-commons |
Should schools fill key roles with volunteers? | It used to be help on the cake stall. Now an academy chain is seeking an unpaid accounts assistant and a free PA News that an academy trust founded by the Conservative peer Lord James OShaughnessy is advertising for unpaid volunteers to fill key roles in its two primary schools was met with disbelief and dismay by teachers earlier this month. The Floreat Education Academies Trust is looking for full-time and part-time volunteers to fill the jobs of finance assistant, office administrator and personal assistant to the chief executive, Janet Hilary, who was paid 128,768 in 2018. Andrew Morrish chief executive, Victoria Academies Trust, West Midlands No, schools shouldnt rely on volunteers although with funding levels at an all-time low, I can understand why school leaders are having to make such difficult decisions. We are at a cliff edge. There are more than 300,000 additional pupils in the system since 2015, the education services grant for academies has been scrapped to the tune of 600m, and almost a third of local authority secondary schools are in deficit. Not to mention the increase in pensions and national insurance contributions. That said, the solution to the problem seems obvious fairer funding for schools so that heads wont be forced to make such decisions. If my dentist wasnt being paid, Id go elsewhere Andrew Morrish Ironically, of course, the role of the volunteer has been the bedrock of the school system for generations, whether its going on school trips, listening to children read, fundraising, or sitting on a governing body. You want your parents to volunteer because its also a way for you to engage with them and demonstrate that you value them. The issue here is that for the first time we are seeing this creeping into key strategic posts. This is a worrying trend that needs to stop as it undermines the work of those highly skilled and trained professionals that have been doing the job for years. There are issues then around confidentiality and safeguarding. Its about public confidence as well I could probably live with going to my dental surgery knowing some of the backroom posts are being covered by volunteers, but if my dentist or assistant was not being paid, Id probably go elsewhere. Running schools is no different. Chris Jagger parent volunteer at a state primary school in Cambridge Yes, I think schools absolutely need to rely on volunteers to do certain kinds of work. If the teacher spent her time listening to children reading, it would take her an entire day to hear each child read for just 10 minutes a week. Yet thats nowhere near enough to improve childrens reading. So I think its good for parents to be involved. I have found it very rewarding, helping children who were struggling and seeing them improve. It wouldnt bother me if my school advertised for a full-time volunteer to fill a key role. But at the same time, its not ideal. Volunteers can usually only commit to a small numbers of hours a week and Id be concerned an unpaid worker wouldnt be able to spend as much time doing the role as is needed. Raj Unsworth chair of trustees, Pride Multiple Academy Trust, Barnsley The simple answer is no. We are all aware funding is an issue, especially in small schools. But there are other options. Top of my list would be to look at staffing structure and collaboration with other schools. The board should ensure money is not wasted on top-heavy leadership. As for collaboration, this could mean sharing a business manager or even a headteacher. The pool of people you are going to attract to volunteer will be limited. These people will still need to be managed and trained in statutory responsibilities, such as safeguarding and confidentiality. Are you going to accept a lower level of performance from an administrator who is not paid compared to another in the school who is? Lorna Jackson headteacher, Maryland primary school, east London No. At Maryland, we use volunteers parents and other family members to enhance the experiences of our children, but not as free labour. To put volunteers in places to fill employment gaps, especially where there is a high level of skill needed, is misguided. Our volunteers are trained, supervised and treated as part of the schools welfare team. We carefully select the activities we need them to support us with. For example, not just listening to children read but also reading to children, as this is very important for children whose first language is not English. The elephant in the room is that funding for schools is diabolical and has been cut year on year. Clearly, anyone turning to unpaid volunteers to fill jobs that qualified people should be doing is desperate. We need to address the funding, not fill the gaps. That is the direction this country is going in. | https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/22/should-schools-fill-key-roles-with-volunteers |
Where does Andy Reid rank among coaches who never won a Super Bowl? | Andy Reid had a good chance to finally get a ring, but his 20th season as a NFL head coach ended the same as the previous 19. Without a Super Bowl title. His quest to raise the Lombardi will continue. Theres no denying that Reid otherwise has one of the best resumes in league history. Reids 195 regular season wins are the eighth-most in league history and he has both Marty Schottenheimer (200) and Paul Brown (213) in his sights. To put it in further perspective, Reid has more regular season wins in similar timeframes than both Chuck Noll (193 wins over 23 season) and Bill Parcells (172 wins over 19 seasons). He took the Eagles to four straight NFC title games in the early 2000s, winning one before falling to the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX. Scroll to continue with content Ad Andy Reid is among the best coaches to never win a Super Bowl. (AP) Whats more, Reids coaching tree is full of thick and sturdy branches and its hard to find anyone in the league who will say a bad word about him, which is rare. There were a lot of people left disappointed on Sunday that Reid couldnt get by Bill Belichick again. The presence of Patrick Mahomes and the trust of the Hunt family should guarantee that Reid gets a few more good shots at winning a Super Bowl. But even if he doesnt, he wont be the first great coach to never win a title. Heres how he currently ranks among the best coaches to never finish a season atop the league: Story continues 10. This isnt a listicle of best coaches to never win a playoff game? Eh, thats still OK. Getting the Bengals into the playoffs seven different times was a great feat for Lewis, who was finally fired after this season. He may not be the peers of the men at the top of this list, but leading one of the greatest defenses of all time (the 2000 Ravens) plus winning in Cincinnati is enough to land him on it. 9. John Fox, Panthers/Broncos/Bears Regular season: 133-123 (.520) over 16 seasons Playoff record: 8-7, two Super Bowl appearances Fox is a tricky one. Take away three dismal seasons with the Bears and his career winning percentage is .569. But take away three seasons of Peyton Manning and it plunges to .456. (Its not lost on anyone that taking Fox away from Manning in Denver resulted in Mannings second Super Bowl ring.) Still, Fox is just one of six coaches to take two different teams to the Super Bowl. 8. Chuck Knox, Rams/Bills/Seahawks Regular season: 186-147 (.558) over 22 seasons Playoff record: 7-11, four NFC title game appearances Fox, then Knox, then box in socks. Sounds like a Dr. Seuss stanza. Knox never made a Super Bowl, but the tough-nosed coach had a knack for turning teams around. He made four conference title games (including three in the mid-70s with the Rams) but could never quite reach the biggest stage. An unsuccessful second tour of duty with the Rams in the 90s marred his overall record a bit, but its hard to argue with 186 wins. 7. Dan Reeves, Broncos/Giants/Falcons Regular season: 190-165 (.535) over 23 seasons Playoff record: 11-9, four Super Bowl appearances Another non-winning member of the two-team Super Bowl club, its also hard to judge Reeves career. Coaching an AFC team in the NFCs era of dominance didnt do him any favors. Don Coryell was an offensive genius with the Chargers. (Getty Images) 6. Don Coryell, Cardinals/Chargers Regular season: 111-83 (.572) over 14 seasons Playoff record: 3-6, two AFC title game appearances Coryells innovations in the passing game earn him a revered spot amongst the coaching fraternity as does the success of his coaching tree (John Madden, Joe Gibbs among others). Unfortunately, Coryells Chargers teams, which made two AFC title games, were the equivalent of the Steve Nash-era Suns. A great show that ultimately wasnt built for postseason success. 5. Andy Reid, Eagles/Chiefs Regular season: 195-124 (.611) over 20 seasons Playoff record: 12-14 over 14 appearances, one Super Bowl appearance Hes the only man on this list who has a job and thus a chance of removing himself from it. Only reaching the Super Bowl once keeps him from being ranked ahead of the coaches below. 4. Marv Levy, Chiefs/Bills Regular season: 143-112 (.561) over 17 seasons Playoff record:11-8, four Super Bowl appearances Levy doesnt have as many wins as other coaches on this list, but think about what he accomplished with those teams. A lot of coaches have won a Super Bowl, but only one has played in four straight Levy. Considering those Bills teams could have easily been torn apart by a mixture of ego, success and disappointment, Levys coaching acumen is unquestionable. 3. Marty Schottenheimer, Browns/Chiefs/Chargers/Redskins Regular season: 200-126 (.613) over 21 seasons Playoff record: 5-13, three AFC title game appearances Schottenheimer is seventh on the NFLs all-time coaching wins list; the six men ahead of him are all in the Hall of Fame and have at least one Super Bowl or NFL title to their names. Schotty was a great regular-season coach, but he suffered from some of the most horrendous luck in the playoffs. Were it not for The Drive, The Fumble, Lin Elliott or Marlon McCree, Schottenheimer might already be occupying a deserved spot in Canton. 2. George Allen, Rams/Redskins Regular season: 116-47-5 over 12 seasons Playoff record: 2-7, one Super Bowl appearance The father of the nickel defense, Allen was known as a football coachs football coach. He never posted a losing season and helped turn around both the Rams and Redskins upon taking over. Allen could never win the playoffs, though, and his one Super Bowl appearance unfortunately came against the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins. Bud Grant reached four Super Bowls, but went 0-4. (Getty Images) 1. Bud Grant, Vikings Regular season: 158-96-5 (.621) over 18 seasons Playoff record: 10-12, four Super Bowl appearances The Vikings are one of the most underrated tortured fanbases and not enough people talk about Grant as the guy who never got the big one. After winning the Grey Cup four times in the CFL, Grant came to Minnesota and dominated the 70s. The Vikings won 11 of 13 NFC Central titles behind the Purple People Eaters and made the Super Bowl four times. Grant won a 290 games between the NFL and CFL, a combined total that puts him just behind George Halas and Don Shula for career coaching wins. Grant and Levy are the only Super Bowl-era coaches in the Hall of Fame who never won a Super Bowl. More from Yahoo Sports: Wetzel: TomBradys message to PatrickMahomes Report: Pacquiao may have suffered serious injury Controversial OT rule costs Chiefs chance vs. Patriots The Rams know it was a bad call. And no, they dont care. | https://sports.yahoo.com/andy-reid-rank-among-coaches-never-won-super-bowl-170329165.html?src=rss |
Will MGIC Investment Corporation Continue to Surge Higher? | As of late, it has definitely been a great time to be an investor in MGIC Investment Corporation. As of late, it has definitely been a great time to be an investor in MGIC Investment Corporation MTG. The stock has moved higher by 2.6% in the past month, while it is also above its 20 Day SMA too. This combination of strong price performance and favorable technical, could suggest that the stock may be on the right path. We certainly think that this might be the case, particularly if you consider MTGs recent earnings estimate revision activity. From this look, the companys future is quite favorable; as MTG has earned itself a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), meaning that its recent run may continue for a bit longer, and that this isnt the top for the in-focus company. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Zacks has just released a Special Report on the booming investment opportunities of legal marijuana. Ignited by new referendums and legislation, this industry is expected to blast from an already robust $6.7 billion to $20.2 billion in 2021. Early investors stand to make a killing, but you have to be ready to act and know just where to look. Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report MGIC Investment Corporation (MTG) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research | https://news.yahoo.com/mgic-investment-corporation-continue-surge-095109888.html |
Will Twin Disc Continue to Surge Higher? | As of late, it has definitely been a great time to be an investor in Twin Disc. As of late, it has definitely been a great time to be an investor in Twin Disc, Incorporated TWIN. The stock has moved higher by 1.8% in the past month, while it is also above its 20 Day SMA too. This combination of strong price performance and favorable technical, could suggest that the stock may be on the right path. We certainly think that this might be the case, particularly if you consider TWINs recent earnings estimate revision activity. From this look, the companys future is quite favorable; as TWIN has earned itself a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), meaning that its recent run may continue for a bit longer, and that this isnt the top for the in-focus company. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Zacks has just released a Special Report on the booming investment opportunities of legal marijuana. Ignited by new referendums and legislation, this industry is expected to blast from an already robust $6.7 billion to $20.2 billion in 2021. Early investors stand to make a killing, but you have to be ready to act and know just where to look. Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Twin Disc, Incorporated (TWIN) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research | https://news.yahoo.com/twin-disc-continue-surge-higher-095809695.html |
Where does LSU baseball stand in the preseason rankings? | LSU baseball has no shortage of expectations in 2019. Coming off one of the more difficult seasons in the Paul Mainieri era, LSU brings back most of its core talent and arguably the No. 1 signing class in the country. Mainieri sees the projections calling LSU one of the two or three best teams in the country, and he said he welcomes them. He told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune two weeks ago he uses it as reinforcement to his team that its not just he who thinks LSU is one of the best teams in the country. He hopes it gives them confidence. Now, most the main preseason college baseball rankings have been published, confirming LSU is right at the top. Heres where the main outlets have the Tigers. Baseball America: No. 2 Baseball America has the Tigers just behind fellow SEC power Vanderbilt. Eight SEC teams are in BAs Top 25, and Florida is just behind LSU at No. 2. Baseball America wrote: The Tigers got a huge boost following the draft when the draft-eligible trio of right-hander Zack Hess and outfielders Antoine Duplantis and Zach Watson opted to return to Baton Rouge and the top-ranked recruiting class in the country landed on campus. LSU this year will have an experienced pitching staff to go with a potent lineup. D1Baseball.com: No. 2 Just like Baseball America, D1Baseball has the Tigers just behind Vanderbilt. Florida is No. 6, and Georgia and Ole Miss are No. 9 and No. 10, respectively. Perfect Game: No. 1 Perfect Game is the highest-profile site to have LSU at No. 1, followed by Oregon State and Vanderbilt. The site wrote: LSU is guided by Paul Mainieri, whose Tigers finished as the runner-up just two years ago with several familiar faces. Outfielders Antoine Duplantis and Zach Watson and staff ace Zack Hess were all drafted yet returned for another season. Shortstop Josh Smith and another starting pitcher, Eric Walker, missed most or all of the 2018 season due to injuries and appear to be ready to return healthy and strong. "Add in still-developing young talent and another strong wave of incoming freshmen and you have one of the deepest rosters in college baseball. Collegiate Baseball Newspaper: No. 1 This was the first of the outlets to rank the Tigers up top, with Vanderbilt just barely behind LSU. "The Tigers, winners of six national titles, will field its best ball club since 2017 when LSU finished second at the College World Series. LSUs last title came 10 seasons ago in 2009. Entering that spring, LSU was also ranked No. 1 by Collegiate Baseball. Five returning position player starters are back and six superb pitchers. Plus, key players return after sitting out virtually all last season because of injuries. | https://www.nola.com/lsu/2019/01/where-does-lsu-baseball-stand-in-the-preseason-rankings.html |
Is Marsico 21ST Century Fund (MXXIX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now? | Starting with Marsico 21ST Century Fund (MXXIX) should not be a possibility at this time. MXXIX has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 5 (Strong Sell), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance. Objective We classify MXXIX in the Large Cap Growth category, an area rife with potential choices. Large Cap Growth funds invest in many large U.S. companies that are expected to grow much faster compared to other large-cap stocks. To be considered large-cap, companies must have a market cap over $10 billion. History of Fund/Manager Marsico is responsible for MXXIX, and the company is based out of Denver, CO. The Marsico 21ST Century Fund made its debut in February of 2000 and MXXIX has managed to accumulate roughly $225.99 million in assets, as of the most recently available information. The fund's current manager, Brandon Geisler, has been in charge of the fund since October of 2011. Performance Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 7.17%, and is in the bottom third among its category peers. But if you are looking for a shorter time frame, it is also worth looking at its 3-year annualized total return of 9.14%, which places it in the middle third during this time-frame. When looking at a fund's performance, it is also important to note the standard deviation of the returns. The lower the standard deviation, the less volatility the fund experiences. The standard deviation of MXXIX over the past three years is 13.36% compared to the category average of 13.01%. Over the past 5 years, the standard deviation of the fund is 12.86% compared to the category average of 12.62%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade. Risk Factors It's always important to be aware of the downsides to any future investment, so one should not discount the risks that come with this segment. MXXIX lost 58.48% in the most recent bear market and underperformed comparable funds by 9.64%. This could mean that the fund is a worse choice than comparable funds during a bear market. Investors should not forget about beta, an important way to measure a mutual fund's risk compared to the market as a whole. MXXIX has a 5-year beta of 1.01, which means it is likely to be as volatile as the market average. Alpha is an additional metric to take into consideration, since it represents a portfolio's performance on a risk-adjusted basis relative to a benchmark, which in this case, is the S&P 500. Over the past 5 years, the fund has a negative alpha of -1.07. This means that managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns. Holdings Investigating the equity holdings of a mutual fund is also a valuable exercise. This can show us how the manager is applying their stated methodology, as well as if there are any inherent biases in their approach. For this particular fund, the focus is primarily on equities that are traded in the United States. Currently, this mutual fund is holding 95.37% stock in stocks, and these companies have an average market capitalization of $23.71 billion. The fund has the heaviest exposure to the following market sectors: Technology Other Services Retail Trade With turnover at about 90%, this fund makes more trades per year than the comparable average. Expenses As competition heats up in the mutual fund market, costs become increasingly important. Compared to its otherwise identical counterpart, a low-cost product will be an outperformer, all other things being equal. Thus, taking a closer look at cost-related metrics is vital for investors. In terms of fees, MXXIX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 1.21% compared to the category average of 1.05%. MXXIX is actually more expensive than its peers when you consider factors like cost. Investors should also note that the minimum initial investment for the product is $2,500 and that each subsequent investment needs to be at $100. Bottom Line Overall, Marsico 21ST Century Fund ( MXXIX ) has a low Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively weak performance, average downside risk, and higher fees, Marsico 21ST Century Fund ( MXXIX ) looks like a somewhat weak choice for investors right now. | https://news.yahoo.com/marsico-21st-century-fund-mxxix-120012336.html |
Is USAA World Growth Fund (USAWX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now? | USAA World Growth Fund (USAWX) is a potential starting point. USAWX carries a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 2 (Buy), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance. Objective USAWX is classified in the Global - Equity segment by Zacks, an area full of possibilities. Even though Global - Equity mutual funds invest in bigger markets like the U.S., Europe, and Japan, these kinds of funds aren't limited by geography. Rather, they offer an investment strategy that utilizes the global economy to provide stable returns. History of Fund/Manager USAA Group is based in San Antonio, TX, and is the manager of USAWX. Since USAA World Growth Fund made its debut in October of 1992, USAWX has garnered more than $1.35 billion in assets. The fund is currently managed by a team of investment professionals. Performance Of course, investors look for strong performance in funds. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 4.09%, and is in the middle third among its category peers. But if you are looking for a shorter time frame, it is also worth looking at its 3-year annualized total return of 6.2%, which places it in the middle third during this time-frame. When looking at a fund's performance, it is also important to note the standard deviation of the returns. The lower the standard deviation, the less volatility the fund experiences. The standard deviation of USAWX over the past three years is 10.66% compared to the category average of 10.33%. The fund's standard deviation over the past 5 years is 11.12% compared to the category average of 10.27%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade. Risk Factors Investors should always remember the downsides to a potential investment, and this segment carries some risks one should be aware of. In the most recent bear market, USAWX lost 47.96% and outperformed its peer group by 4.61%. This could mean that the fund is a better choice than comparable funds during a bear market. Investors should note that the fund has a 5-year beta of 0.94, so it is likely going to be less volatile than the market at large. Another factor to consider is alpha, as it reflects a portfolio's performance on a risk-adjusted basis relative to a benchmark-in this case, the S&P 500. Over the past 5 years, the fund has a negative alpha of -3.58. This means that managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns. Expenses For investors, taking a closer look at cost-related metrics is key, since costs are increasingly important for mutual fund investing. Competition is heating up in this space, and a lower cost product will likely outperform its otherwise identical counterpart, all things being equal. In terms of fees, USAWX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 1.10% compared to the category average of 1.16%. So, USAWX is actually cheaper than its peers from a cost perspective. This fund requires a minimum initial investment of $3,000, and each subsequent investment should be at least $50. Bottom Line Overall, USAA World Growth Fund ( USAWX ) has a high Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively similar performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, this fund looks like a good potential choice for investors right now. This could just be the start of your research on USAWXin the Global - Equity category. Consider going to www.zacks.com/funds/mutual-funds for additional information about this fund, and all the others that we rank as well for additional information. We have a full suite of tools on stocks that you can use to find the best choices for your portfolio too, no matter what kind of investor you are. Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research | https://news.yahoo.com/usaa-world-growth-fund-usawx-120012738.html |
Is American Century Allocation Cap Growth Investor (TWGTX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now? | Large Cap Growth fund seekers should not consider taking a look at American Century Allocation Cap Growth Investor (TWGTX) at this time. TWGTX holds a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 4 (Sell), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance. Objective We classify TWGTX in the Large Cap Growth category, an area rife with potential choices. Large Cap Growth funds invest in many large U.S. companies that are expected to grow much faster compared to other large-cap stocks. To be considered large-cap, companies must have a market cap over $10 billion. History of Fund/Manager TWGTX is a part of the American Century family of funds, a company based out of Kansas City, MO. Since American Century Allocation Cap Growth Investor made its debut in November of 1983, TWGTX has garnered more than $981.22 million in assets. Joseph Reiland is the fund's current manager and has held that role since February of 2018. Performance Of course, investors look for strong performance in funds. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 7.5%, and is in the middle third among its category peers. But if you are looking for a shorter time frame, it is also worth looking at its 3-year annualized total return of 7.14%, which places it in the bottom third during this time-frame. When looking at a fund's performance, it is also important to note the standard deviation of the returns. The lower the standard deviation, the less volatility the fund experiences. Compared to the category average of 9.89%, the standard deviation of TWGTX over the past three years is 13.08%. Looking at the past 5 years, the fund's standard deviation is 12.6% compared to the category average of 9.76%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade. Risk Factors Investors should always remember the downsides to a potential investment, and this segment carries some risks one should be aware of. In TWGTX's case, the fund lost 51.97% in the most recent bear market and underperformed comparable funds by 3.13%. This could mean that the fund is a worse choice than comparable funds during a bear market. Investors should note that the fund has a 5-year beta of 1.07, so it is likely going to be more volatile than the market at large. Because alpha represents a portfolio's performance on a risk-adjusted basis relative to a benchmark, which is the S&P 500 in this case, one should pay attention to this metric as well. TWGTX has generated a negative alpha over the past five years of -1.29, demonstrating that managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns. Holdings Examining the equity holdings of a mutual fund is also a valuable exercise. This can show us how the manager is applying their stated methodology, as well as if there are any inherent biases in their approach. For this particular fund, the focus is largely on equities that are traded in the United States. As of the last filing date, the mutual fund has 98.27% of its assets in stocks, with an average market capitalization of $308.36 billion. The fund has the heaviest exposure to the following market sectors: Technology Retail Trade Non-Durable This fund's turnover is about 44%, so the fund managers are making fewer trades than comparable funds. Expenses Costs are increasingly important for mutual fund investing, and particularly as competition heats up in this market. And all things being equal, a lower cost product will outperform its otherwise identical counterpart, so taking a closer look at these metrics is key for investors. In terms of fees, TWGTX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 1% compared to the category average of 1.05%. From a cost perspective, TWGTX is actually cheaper than its peers. Investors should also note that the minimum initial investment for the product is $2,500 and that each subsequent investment needs to be at $50. Bottom Line Overall, American Century Allocation Cap Growth Investor ( TWGTX ) has a low Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively similar performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, American Century Allocation Cap Growth Investor ( TWGTX ) looks like a somewhat weak choice for investors right now. Then go over to Zacks.com and check out our mutual fund comparison tool, and all of the other great features that we have to help you with your mutual fund analysis for additional information. For analysis of the rest of your portfolio, make sure to visit Zacks.com for our full suite of tools which will help you investigate all of your stocks and funds in one place. Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. | https://news.yahoo.com/american-century-allocation-cap-growth-120012853.html |
Is T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Balanced (TRPBX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now? | T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Balanced (TRPBX) is a possible starting point. TRPBX holds a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 3 (Hold), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance. Objective TRPBX is classified in the Allocation Balanced segment by Zacks, which is an area full of possibilities. Here, investors are able to get a good head start with diversified mutual funds, and play around with core holding options for a portfolio of funds. Allocation Balanced funds look to invest across a balance of asset types, like stocks, bonds, and cash, though including precious metals or commodities is not unusual; these funds are mostly categorized by their respective asset allocation. History of Fund/Manager T. Rowe Price is based in Baltimore, MD, and is the manager of TRPBX. T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Balanced made its debut in June of 1994, and since then, TRPBX has accumulated about $2.20 billion in assets, per the most up-to-date date available. The fund is currently managed by Charles M. Shriver who has been in charge of the fund since May of 2011. Performance Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund carries a 5-year annualized total return of 4.82%, and it sits in the top third among its category peers. If you're interested in shorter time frames, do not dismiss looking at the fund's 3-year annualized total return of 6.19%, which places it in the top third during this time-frame. When looking at a fund's performance, it is also important to note the standard deviation of the returns. The lower the standard deviation, the less volatility the fund experiences. The standard deviation of TRPBX over the past three years is 6.89% compared to the category average of 8.13%. The standard deviation of the fund over the past 5 years is 7.01% compared to the category average of 8.16%. This makes the fund less volatile than its peers over the past half-decade. Risk Factors Investors should always remember the downsides to a potential investment, and this segment carries some risks one should be aware of. In the most recent bear market, TRPBX lost 38.38% and underperformed its peer group by 1.98%. This could mean that the fund is a worse choice than comparable funds during a bear market. Investors should not forget about beta, an important way to measure a mutual fund's risk compared to the market as a whole. TRPBX has a 5-year beta of 0.59, which means it is likely to be less volatile than the market average. Alpha is an additional metric to take into consideration, since it represents a portfolio's performance on a risk-adjusted basis relative to a benchmark, which in this case, is the S&P 500. Over the past 5 years, the fund has a negative alpha of -0.49. This means that managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns. Expenses Costs are increasingly important for mutual fund investing, and particularly as competition heats up in this market. And all things being equal, a lower cost product will outperform its otherwise identical counterpart, so taking a closer look at these metrics is key for investors. In terms of fees, TRPBX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.55% compared to the category average of 0.88%. From a cost perspective, TRPBX is actually cheaper than its peers. While the minimum initial investment for the product is $2,500, investors should also note that each subsequent investment needs to be at least $100. Bottom Line Overall, T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Balanced ( TRPBX ) has a neutral Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively strong performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Balanced ( TRPBX ) looks like a somewhat average choice for investors right now. Don't stop here for your research on Allocation Balanced funds. We also have plenty more on our site in order to help you find the best possible fund for your portfolio. Make sure to check out www.zacks.com/funds/mutual-funds for more information about the world of funds, and feel free to compare TRPBX to its peers as well for additional information. If you are more of a stock investor, make sure to also check out our Zacks Rank, and our full suite of tools we have available for novice and professional investors alike. Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. | https://news.yahoo.com/t-rowe-price-personal-strategy-120012488.html |
Is the Huawei conflict undermining the Canadian dollar? | Briefing highlights Canadian dollar at 75 cents Global markets sinking so far New York poised for weaker open What to watch for today From todays Globe and Mail Canadian dollar slips The Canadian dollar slipped to 75 US cents today, driven down by generally downbeat economic sentiment. But theres another issue out there. Socit Gnrale believes the mounting tensions between Canada and China are helping to push the loonie lower. Story continues below advertisement We are seeing a situation today where the global risk sentiment is a little bit downbeat, said foreign exchange strategist Alvin Tan. But on top of that is the continuing fight that began with the arrest in Vancouver of Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who was detained at the request of the U.S., which wants her extradited on allegations related to violations of sanctions against Iran. No charges have been proven in court. As Lawrence Martin, Robert Fife and Steven Chase report, the U.S. has told Ottawa it will press ahead with a formal bid for Ms. Mengs extradition. And again today, Chinese authorities demanded she be released. China has also detained, and is still holding, two Canadians it accuses of threatening its national security. This affects the currency because markets could speculate China could take further action against Canada, Mr. Tan said. Which is interesting because U.S.-China relations are at the heart of the matter. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement But Beijing is desperate for a trade deal with Washington amid tit-for-tat tariffs, and its unlikely that they want to rock the boat, Mr. Tan said. Elsa Lignos, Royal Bank of Canadas global head of foreign exchange strategy in London, said, however, that the loonie doesnt appear to be wildly out of whack with where it should be today. Indeed, the Huawei issue has a bigger impact when it raises questions about relations between the U.S. and China, which affects all asset classes, she said. Read more Stocks sink Global markets are sinking across the board, and New York is poised for a weaker open, amid that general downbeat climate. Tokyos Nikkei lost 0.5 per cent, Hong Kongs Hang Seng 0.7 per cent, and the Shanghai Composite 1.2 per cent. Story continues below advertisement In Europe, Londons FTSE 100, Germanys DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were down by between 0.4 and 0.6 per cent by about 6:25 a.m. ET. New York futures were also down. Read more What to watch for today Statistics Canada is expected to report a downbeat month for the countrys manufacturers. Economists project the agencys monthly sales report will show shipments down by between 0.5 and 1 per cent in November, following a drop of 0.5 per cent in October. A weaker showing from the auto industry is believed to be behind it. This weakness reflects earlier-reported declines in both automobile exports and auto production, said ROB assistant chief economist Paul Ferley. Lower overall manufacturing sales are expected to be abetted further by weakening crude oil prices sending the nominal value of petroleum and coal sales down 7.5 per cent in the month, he added. Story continues below advertisement More news From todays Globe and Mail | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/briefing/article-is-the-huawei-conflict-undermining-the-canadian-dollar/ |
Will Technology Kill Or Save The High Street? | Just weeks after British retailers suffered major losses during the festive period, new research shows that 39 percent of Britons would not care if all high street stores closed down. The study, carried out by Awin, also revealed that 68 percent of recipients did most of their shopping online. Many cited ease and cheaper prices for their preference for online over high street shopping. 31 percent thought the High Street would be gone within five years as the shift to online giants continues. Indeed, this year alone more than 23,000 shops are forecast to close in the UK, according to an annual report from the real estate agent adviser Altus Group. Retailers are certainly trialing it. Across the globe, stores are offering experiences to dazzle, delight and augment the usual shopping experience. For example, Macy's has revitalized its department store chain with new technology initiatives, including VR and AR. In pilot stores, the company found that a VR tool which virtually placed Macy's furniture into photos of shoppers homes increased the overall basket size by more than 60 percent versus non-VR furniture sales. Fashion retailers are also using tech. Far from being a gimmick, smart mirrors can enhance the shopping experience in a useful way by allowing customers to try on different colors and styles easily. MemoMi promises to re-invent the experience of luxury shopping with trying on without taking off. This high-fidelity, digital imaging software platform delivers live color change to what you are wearing or allows you to try on clothes, add accessories, plus change patterns and colors without actually trying on a single item. Timberland has trailed a virtual fitting room using smart signage units in its shopfronts. Passers-by could try on the whole collection simply by using hand gestures. Enabled by Kinect technology, static shopfronts became interactive changing rooms as people tried new looks, shared them with friends on social media and, most importantly, bought items from the range. Zara has embraced AR by bringing virtual models to life in-store. The two-week initiative was rolled out across 120 stores globally. It allowed customers who downloaded the Zara AR app to hold up their phone to certain store windows or a sensor within the store and see models come to life on their screens walking and talking - wearing selected items from the Zara range, which they could click through and buy. Zara is not the first brand to use AR. Brands such as Burberry and Gap have also dabbled. VR is also being used to drive traffic in-store, with brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Topshop, and Dior all employing the technology. To kick off the summer season in 2017, the flagship Topshop store on Oxford Street in London created an interactive pool scene in its shop window complete with a VR water slide. The beauty of the digital experience was not only the fun and excitement it added to shopping trips, but the ability to include brand advertising along the VR ride. Practically, VR allows brands to showcase lines and accessories that may not all fit in a physical store. VR can also transport customers to another place. For example, shoppers could be taken on a virtual journey of how a garment was made to give them a better understanding of the product and brand or, as Coach did, given access to coveted runway shows. Goldman Sachs forecasts the market for AR and VR in retail will reach $1.6 billion by 2025. With their ability to create a more immersive, interactive and richer experience, AR and VR in retail hold promise to create the differentiated brand experiences that drive conversions, repeat visits and higher revenue. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/solrogers/2019/01/22/will-technology-kill-or-save-the-high-street/ |
Have We Learned The Alcoa 'Keystone Habit' Lesson? | Paul ONeills tenure at the helm of Alcoa is now the stuff of legend. Introduced to a group of investors and analysts in October 1987, he didnt talk about revenue and expenses and debt ratios and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. I want to talk to you about worker safety, he told the Wall Street crowd. Every year, numerous Alcoa workers are injured so badly that they miss a day of work, he continued. Our safety record is better than the general American workforce, especially considering that our employees work with metals that are 1,500 degrees and machines that can rip a mans arm off. But its not good enough. I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries. When one attendee asked about inventories and another asked about capital ratios - the standard vocabulary for these kinds of sessions - ONeill returned to the same theme. Im not certain you heard me, said the new CEO. If you want to understand how Alcoa is doing, you need to look at our workplace safety figures. If we bring our injury rates down, it wont be because of cheerleading or the nonsense you sometimes hear from other CEOs. It will be because the individuals at this company have agreed to become part of something important: Theyve devoted themselves to creating a habit of excellence. Safety will be an indicator that were making progress in changing our habits across the entire institution. Thats how we should be judged. One of the investors told author Charles Duhigg he bolted for a phone after hearing ONeills declaration. The board put a crazy hippie in charge and hes going to kill the company, the investor said he told his clients. I ordered them to sell their stock immediately, before everyone else in the room started calling their clients and telling them the same thing. It was literally the worst piece of advice I gave in my entire career. A prescient investor would have gone long on Alcoa stock. By the time ONeill retired in 2000, the companys annual net income was five times larger than before he arrived, and its market capitalization had risen by $27 billion, wrote Duhigg in his bestselling book, The Power of Habit. Someone who invested a million dollars in Alcoa on the day ONeill was hired would have earned another million dollars in dividends while he headed the company, and the value of their stock would be five times bigger when he left. Whats more, Duhigg wrote, all that growth occurred while Alcoa became one of the safest companies in the world. Before ONeills arrival, almost every Alcoa plant had at least one accident per week. Once his safety plan was implemented, some facilities would go years without a single employee losing a workday due to an accident. The companys worker injury rate fell to one-twentieth the U.S. average. (The Alcoa chapter can be read here. Full disclosure: Alcoa was a client of SafeStart, where I am an executive advisor.) ONeill hasnt been at the helm of Alcoa for nearly two decades. The Power of Habit was published seven years ago. There are three possibilities. A. It was just an anecdote, a situation unique to Alcoa at that time and ONeills management style. We shouldnt read too much into it. B. The key to Alcoas turnaround was not safety per se, but obsessing over something important - a keystone habit, as Duhigg would call it. For ONeill, it was safety. But a company can get comparable results from focusing on customers, innovation, operational excellence, employee engagement or some other goal integral to the companys success. C. The connection between performance and the discipline needed to achieve a stellar safety record is robust and unique. A leadership team that cracks the code on keeping people safe will simultaneously drive higher levels of performance in ways otherwise difficult to accomplish. The evidence accumulated since ONeill stepped down and especially since The Power of Habit was published appears to contradict A, support B and give a nod toward C. Putting safety first is one of the best strategies, and sometimes the best strategy, for getting an organization to realize its potential. Beyond the loss and suffering they cause, accidents are expensive. The National Safety Council estimates that in 2015, work injuries cost companies $142.5 billion and the more common off-the-job accidents cost an additional $358.3 billion. Lost production time from on- and off-the-job mishaps that year totaled 360 million days. The work-related accidents alone cost $45.8 billion in lost wages and productivity, $31.4 billion in medical costs, $46.1 billion in administrative expenses, damage to vehicles of $3.6 billion and fire damage of $4.3 billion. The NSC estimates the average worker needs to produce goods or services worth $900 in a year just to offset the cost of work injuries at his or her firm. In isolation, safety investments have a strong direct return on investment. For example, a six-year study of an energy firm found that strategic investments in occupational safety and health cost the company EUR 0.8 million. However, EUR 1.8 million were saved in the same period, resulting in a 2.20 cost-benefit ratio. The trend in cost savings is strongly positive. No one is arguing that reducing these costs, large as they are, is enough by itself to turn a company around or make it substantially more profitable. Instead, those who study these things for a living find, as ONeill asserted, that safety is a natural rallying point because its as much in the employees interest as in the companys. They also find that, if executed well, safety demands the kind of universal attention and teamwork from which which every other corporate initiative benefits. "To protect workers," Duhigg wrote, "Alcoa needed to become the best, most streamlined aluminum company on earth. A simplistic view of accidents considers just the proximate causes - the stuff that can be diagrammed and written in concrete terms in an OSHA report. But the research on accident prevention shows connections throughout the organization, from leadership to culture to employee engagement to sleep. Effective risk prevention, wrote three members of the civil engineering faculty at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, can only be achieved by a global correlation of causal factors including not only production ones but also client requirements, financial climate, design team competence, project and risk management, financial capacity, health and safety policy and early planning. Those are the operational realities. Compounding their effect are the motivational truths. When employees believe their employer is aiming to keep them safe, it unleashes the kind of reciprocity that affects more than just the accident rate. In a 2012 CNN interview, ONeill called it discretionary energy delivered when employees are treated with dignity and respect every day. . . A down payment on that is nobody ever gets hurt here, because we care about our own commitment to our safety, and we care about the people we work with. And it swells up to into everything you do, so it creates the sense of pride about the organization you're involved in. Confirmation of that reciprocity has since emerged in a 2016 study of 6,207 truck drivers. It found that their perceptions of the company safety climate (based on questions such as, My company uses any available information to improve existing safety rules) were predictive of their levels of job satisfaction, engagement and the subsequent turnover rate. Evidence of that can be found in a 2016 analysis of returns for those organizations that won the Corporate Health Achievement Award, established in 1995 by the American College of Occupation and Environmental Medicine to recognize the healthiest, safest companies and organizations in North America. Seven researchers tracked what would have happened if an investor bought stock in CHAA-winning companies at the beginning of 2001 and rebalanced the portfolio each year when new winners were announced (including doubling or tripling down on companies that earned the award multiple years). Companies that scored high in the CHAA safety category outperformed the market by three times, achieving a return of 314% compared to the S&Ps 105% during the same period. This study adds to the growing evidence, wrote the analysts, that a healthy and safe workplace correlates with a companys performance and its ability to provide positive returns to shareholders. Thats the evidence. But even now, its frequently not the conviction of senior executives. Many still have it backward, believing safety and performance are antagonistic. Many business leaders have an implicit but unfounded belief that, while it is necessary to reduce workplace injury risk, there is a trade-off between profits and the expenditures necessary to keep workplaces safe, George Washington University professor and former OSHA administrator David Michaels wrote just last year in the Harvard Business Review. Companies can be successful and safe at the same time. The reality is that virtually all workplace injuries are preventable, and safety management and operational excellence are intimately linked. Maybe its because safety is such a visceral issue - lives and limbs - that our minds balk at connecting it with financial performance. No! It should be safety for its own sake, were including to think. It should stand alone, its importance self-evident. With good intentions, we keep it sequestered. When we say Safety First, we dont mean, This is the first step to tripling the stock price. We mean, Most important, lets not get anyone hurt in the process. Perhaps because were naturally uneasy confusing the sounds of heartbeats and stock tickers, we resist asserting safety as ONeill did, as the lead indicator of competent management and employee engagement, and the first promise a company should make to its workers. A CEO who properly connects this foundational, compassionate concern to financial imperatives, disconsonant as it may feel, will not only make more money, but better integrate safety into the strategy of the company, protecting lives in the process. That would make it a very good habit, indeed. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/roddwagner/2019/01/22/have-we-learned-the-alcoa-keystone-habit-lesson/ |
Did a fan shine a laser pointer in Tom Brady's face during the AFC Championship Game? | originally appeared on nbcsportsboston.com The crowd at Arrowhead Stadium is known to get rowdy, but one fan may have crossed the line during Sunday night's AFC Championship Game. Scroll to continue with content Ad KMBC reporter William Joy shared videos of what appears to be a laser being shined in Tom Brady's face during multiple plays. Watch below. . . Our photographer, Turner Twyman, caught someone pointing what appears to be a laser pointer in Tom Brady's face last night. Play between the "muff" that wasn't and Sorensen int. @NFL, @Patriots and @Chiefs all told me they weren't aware of the incident. pic.twitter.com/ejWBQ6i64C William Joy (@WilliamKMBC) January 21, 2019 It happened one other time that we've seen on a pass to Hogan. You be the judge. If so, they failed. Story continues In vintage Brady fashion, the Patriots quarterback led New England late in the fourth quarter and then in overtime with a 75-yard touchdown drive to advance to his ninth Super Bowl. Click here to download the new MyTeams App by NBC Sports! Receive comprehensive coverage of your teams and stream the Celtics easily on your device. | https://sports.yahoo.com/did-fan-shine-laser-pointer-232154926.html?src=rss |
Is P&G taking Nelson Peltz's advice for a rebound? | CLOSE Founded in 2005, New York City-based Trian Fund Management says it "seeks to invest in high quality but undervalued and under-performing public companies and to work constructively with the management and boards of those companies." What this will mean for Cincinnati-based P&G isn't clear. Wochit Procter & Gamble's stock has rebounded from a rocky 2018. The Cincinnati-based consumer product giant has also unveiled eye-catching advertising and new products. It's also made a string of strategic acquisitions. Analysts say P&G still has a long way to go to reignite steady sales growth, despite the company's stock hitting an all-time high (adjusted for splits) of $96.90 last month. While the company delivered the strongest quarter in five years in October, executives took pains not to label it a breakthrough following a year of turnaround and tepid growth. Analysts say the company's stock is likely benefitting from market jitters as trade tensions and recession fears prompt a "flight-to-safety" shift by some investors to stable sectors, including companies like P&G, which sell consumer staples. In November, P&G seemed to take a page from Peltz when it announced a restructuring of business units. "It's a controlled response to suggestions by Peltz," said Terry Kelly, principal at Cincinnati-based Barlett & Co., noting the investor lambasted P&G's "bureaucracy" during his 2017 campaign for a board seat. Kelly said P&G delivered a solid first quarter, but needs to generate several more before anyone declares the company fixed. P&G will update investors on its turnaround progress on Wednesday when it reports its second-quarter results. Wall Street expects the Cincinnati consumer products giant to generate a $3.2 billion profit before one-time items on sales of $17.2 billion, according to Zacks Investment Research, a Chicago firm. Last year, P&G reported a $2.5 billion profit on sales of $17.4 billion for the same period. Here's what to look for in the report: Enhance your skins appearance and reduce unevenness over time with Opt. Skincare just got smarter, but thats just the start. Were always innovating our products to improve your everyday life. #PGLifeLab#CEShttps://t.co/nhwVRVAy57pic.twitter.com/SNOTJMIP9r P&G (@ProcterGamble) January 11, 2019 Were joining forces with @tristanwalker and @walkercobrands to better serve consumers of color around the world. Learn more about @bevel and @formbeauty , which are joining the P&G family of brands. https://t.co/jwAdyC905Wpic.twitter.com/yYV9YXpmu0 P&G (@ProcterGamble) December 12, 2018 Buy Photo Procter & Gamble is based in Cincinnati. (Photo: Enquirer file/Cara Owsley) For the latest on P&G, Kroger, Fifth Third Bank and Cincinnati business news, follow @alexcoolidge on Twitter. Read or Share this story: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/2019/01/22/is-p-g-taking-nelson-peltzs-advice-for-a-rebound/2594664002/ | https://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/2019/01/22/is-p-g-taking-nelson-peltzs-advice-for-a-rebound/2594664002/ |
Does Journalism Have a Future? | The wood-panelled tailgate of the 1972 Oldsmobile station wagon dangled open like a broken jaw, making a wobbly bench on which four kids could sit, eight legs swinging. Every Sunday morning, long before dawn, wed get yanked out of bed to stuff the cars way-back with stacks of twine-tied newspapers, clamber onto the tailgate, cut the twine with my mothers sewing scissors, and ride around town, bouncing along on that bench, while my father shouted out orders from the drivers seat. Watch out for the dog! hed holler between draws on his pipe. Inside the screen door! Mailbox! As the car crept along, never stopping, wed each grab a paper and dash in the dark across icy driveways or dew-drunk grass, crashing, seasonally, into unexpected snowmen. Back porch! Money under the mat! He kept a list, scrawled on the back of an envelope, taped to the dashboard: the Accounts. They owe three weeks! He didnt need to remind us. We knew each Doberman and every debt. Wed deliver our papersWorcester Sunday Telegramsand then run back to the car and scramble onto the tailgate, dropping the coins wed collected into empty Briggs tobacco tins as we bumped along to the next turn, the newspaper route our Sabbath. The Worcester Sunday Telegram was founded in 1884, when a telegram meant something fast. Two years later, it became a daily. It was never a great paper but it was always a pretty good paper: useful, gossipy, and resolute. It cultivated talent. The poet Stanley Kunitz was a staff writer for the Telegram in the nineteen-twenties. The New York Times reporter Douglas Kneeland, who covered Kent State and Charles Manson, began his career there in the nineteen-fifties. Joe McGinniss reported for the Telegram in the nineteen-sixties before writing The Selling of the President. From bushy-bearded nineteenth-century politicians to baby-faced George W. Bush, the paper was steadfastly Republican, if mainly concerned with scandals and mustachioed villains close to home: overdue repairs to the main branch of the public library, police raids on illegal betting establishmentsWorcester Dog Chases Worcester Cat Over Worcester Fence, as the old Washington press-corps joke about a typical headline in a local paper goes. Its pages rolled off giant, thrumming presses in a four-story building that overlooked City Hall the way every city paper used to look out over every city hall, the Bat-Signal over Gotham. Most newspapers like that havent lasted. Between 1970 and 2016, the year the American Society of News Editors quit counting, five hundred or so dailies went out of business; the rest cut news coverage, or shrank the papers size, or stopped producing a print edition, or did all of that, and it still wasnt enough. The newspaper mortality rate is old news, and nostalgia for dead papers is itself pitiful at this point, even though, I still say, theres a principle involved. I wouldnt weep about a shoe factory or a branch-line railroad shutting down, Heywood Broun, the founder of the American Newspaper Guild, said when the New York World went out of business, in 1931. But newspapers are different. And the bleeding hasnt stopped. Between January, 2017, and April, 2018, a third of the nations largest newspapers, including the Denver Post and the San Jose Mercury News, reported layoffs. In a newer trend, so did about a quarter of digital-native news sites. BuzzFeed News laid off a hundred people in 2017; speculation is that BuzzFeed is trying to dump it. The Huffington Post paid most of its writers nothing for years, upping that recently to just above nothing, and yet, despite taking in a hundred and forty-six million dollars in advertising revenue in 2018, it failed to turn a profit. Even veterans of august and still thriving papers are worried, especially about the fake news thats risen from the ashes of the dead news. We are, for the first time in modern history, facing the prospect of how societies would exist without reliable news, Alan Rusbridger, for twenty years the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, writes in Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now. There are not that many places left that do quality news well or even aim to do it at all, Jill Abramson, a former executive editor of the New York Times, writes in Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts. Like most big-paper reporters and editors who write about the crisis of journalism, Rusbridger and Abramson are interested in national and international news organizations. The local story is worse. First came conglomeration. Worcester, Massachusetts, the second-largest city in New England, used to have four dailies: the Telegram, in the morning, and the Gazette, in the evening (under the same ownership), the Spy, and the Post. Now it has one. The last great laying waste to American newspapers came in the early decades of the twentieth century, mainly owing to (a) radio and (b) the Depression; the number of dailies fell from 2,042 in 1920 to 1,754 in 1944, leaving 1,103 cities with only one paper. Newspaper circulation rose between 1940 and 1990, but likely only because more people were reading fewer papers, and, as A. J. Liebling once observed, nothing is crummier than a one-paper town. In 1949, after yet another New York daily closed its doors, Liebling predicted, If the trend continues, New York will be a one- or two-paper town by about 1975. He wasnt that far off. In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, as Christopher B. Daly reports in Covering America: A Narrative History of the Nations Journalism, the big kept getting bigger. Conglomeration can be good for business, but it has generally been bad for journalism. Media companies that want to get bigger tend to swallow up other media companies, suppressing competition and taking on debt, which makes publishers cowards. In 1986, the publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle bought the Worcester Telegram and the Evening Gazette, and, three years later, right about when Time and Warner became Time Warner, the Telegram and the Gazette became the Telegram & Gazette, or the T&G, smaller fries but the same potato. Next came the dot-coms. Craigslist went online in the Bay Area in 1996 and spread across the continent like a weed, choking off local newspapers most reliable source of revenue: classified ads. The T&G tried to hold on to its classified-advertising section by wading into the shallow waters of the Internet, at telegram.com, where it was called, acronymically, and not a little desperately, TANGO! Then began yet another round of corporate buyouts, deeply leveraged deals conducted by executives answerable to stockholders seeking higher dividends, not better papers. In 1999, the New York Times Company bought the T&G for nearly three hundred million dollars. By 2000, only three hundred and fifty of the fifteen hundred daily newspapers left in the United States were independently owned. And only one out of every hundred American cities that had a daily newspaper was anything other than a one-paper town. Then came the fall, when papers all over the country, shackled to mammoth corporations and a lumbering, century-old business model, found themselves unable to compete with the upstartsonline news aggregators like the Huffington Post (est. 2005) and Breitbart News (est. 2007), which were, to readers, free. News aggregators also drew display advertisers away from print; Facebook and Google swallowed advertising accounts whole. Big papers found ways to adapt; smaller papers mainly folded. Between 1994 and 2016, years when the population of Worcester County rose by more than a hundred thousand, daily home delivery of the T&G declined from more than a hundred and twenty thousand to barely thirty thousand. In one year alone, circulation fell by twenty-nine per cent. In 2012, after another round of layoffs, the T&G left its building, its much reduced staff small enough to fit into two floors of an office building nearby. The next year, the owner of the Boston Red Sox bought the newspaper, along with the Boston Globe, from the New York Times Company for seventy million dollars, only to unload the T&G less than a year later, for seventeen million dollars, to Halifax Media Group, which held it for only half a year before Halifax itself was bought, flea-market style, by an entity that calls itself, unironically, the New Media Investment Group. The numbers mask an uglier story. In the past half century, and especially in the past two decades, journalism itselfthe way news is covered, reported, written, and editedhas changed, including in ways that have made possible the rise of fake news, and not only because of mergers and acquisitions, and corporate ownership, and job losses, and Google Search, and Facebook and BuzzFeed. Theres no shortage of amazing journalists at work, clear-eyed and courageous, broad-minded and brilliant, and no end of fascinating innovation in matters of form, especially in visual storytelling. Still, journalism, as a field, is as addled as an addict, gaunt, wasted, and twitchy, its pockets as empty as its nights are sleepless. Its faster than it used to be, so fast. Its also edgier, and needier, and angrier. It wants and it wants and it wants. The daily newspaper is the taproot of modern journalism. Dailies mainly date to the eighteen-thirties, the decade in which the word journalism was coined, meaning daily reporting, the jour in journalism. Early dailies depended on subscribers to pay the bills. The press was partisan, readers were voters, and the news was meant to persuade (and voter turnout was high). But by 1900 advertising made up more than two-thirds of the revenue at most of the nations eighteen thousand newspapers, and readers were consumers (and voter turnout began its long fall). The newspaper is not a missionary or a charitable institution, but a business that collects and publishes news which the people want and are willing to buy, one Missouri editor said in 1892. Newspapers stopped rousing the rabble so much because businesses wanted readers, no matter their politics. There is a sentiment gaining ground to the effect that the public wants its politics straight, a journalist wrote the following year. Reporters pledged themselves to facts, facts, and more facts, and, as the press got less partisan and more ad-based, newspapers sorted themselves out not by their readers political leanings but by their incomes. If you had a lot of money to spend, you read the St. Paul Pioneer Press; if you didnt have very much, you read the St. Paul Dispatch. Unsurprisingly, critics soon began writing big books, usually indictments, about the relationship between business and journalism. When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda? Upton Sinclair asked on the jacket of The Brass Check, in 1919. In The Disappearing Daily, in 1944, Oswald Garrison Villard mourned what was once a profession but is now a business. The big book that inspired Jill Abramson to become a journalist was David Halberstams The Powers That Be, from 1979, a history of the rise of the modern, corporate-based media in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his reporting from Vietnam for the New York Times, took up his story more or less where Villard left off. He began with F.D.R. and CBS radio; added the Los Angeles Times, Time Inc., and CBS television; and reached his storys climax with the Washington Post and the New York Times and the publication of the Pentagon Papers, in 1971. Halberstam argued that between the nineteen-thirties and the nineteen-seventies radio and television brought a new immediacy to reporting, while the resources provided by corporate owners and the demands made by an increasingly sophisticated national audience led to harder-hitting, investigative, adversarial reporting, the kind that could end a war and bring down a President. Richard Rovere summed it up best: What The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Time and CBS have in common is that, under pressures generated internally and externally, they moved from venality or parochialism or mediocrity or all three to something approaching journalistic excellence and responsibility. That move came at a price. Watergate, like Vietnam, had obscured one of the central new facts about the role of journalism in America, Halberstam wrote. Only very rich, very powerful corporate institutions like these had the impact, the reach, and above all the resources to challenge the President of the United States. It was weird. He got on his knees and put this rock on my finger and asked me to spend the rest of my life with just him! Theres reach, and then theres reach. When I was growing up, in the nineteen-seventies, nobody I knew read the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal. Nobody I knew even read the Boston Globe, a paper that used to have a rule that no piece should ever be so critical of anyone that its writer could not shake hands the next day with the man about whom he had written. After journalism put up its dukes, my father only ever referred to the Globe as that Communist rag, not least because, in 1967, it became the first major paper in the United States to come out against the Vietnam War. The view of the new journalism held by people like my father escaped Halberstams notice. In 1969, Nixons Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, delivered a speech drafted by the Nixon aide Pat Buchanan accusing the press of liberal bias. Its good politics for us to kick the press around, Nixon is said to have told his staff. The press, Agnew said, represents a concentration of power over American public opinion unknown in history, consisting of men who read the same newspapers and talk constantly to one another. How dare they. Halberstam waved this aside as so much P.R. hooey, but, as has since become clear, Agnew reached a ready audience, especially in houses like mine. The press regarded Agnew with uncontrolled hilarity, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., observed in 1970, but no one can question the force of Spiro T. Agnews personality, nor the impact of his speeches. No scholar of journalism can afford to ignore Agnew anymore. In On Press: The Liberal Values That Shaped the News, the historian Matthew Pressman argues that any understanding of the crisis of journalism in the twenty-first century has to begin by vanquishing the ghost of Spiro T. Agnew. For Pressman, the pivotal period for the modern newsroom is what Abramson calls Halberstams Golden Age, between 1960 and 1980, and its signal feature was the adoption not of a liberal bias but of liberal values: Interpretation replaced transmission, and adversarialism replaced deference. In 1960, nine out of every ten articles in the Times about the Presidential election were descriptive; by 1976, more than half were interpretative. This turn was partly a consequence of televisionpeople who simply wanted to find out what happened could watch television, so newspapers had to offer something elseand partly a consequence of McCarthyism. The rise of McCarthy has compelled newspapers of integrity to develop a form of reporting which puts into context what men like McCarthy have to say, the radio commentator Elmer Davis said in 1953. Five years later, the Times added News Analysis as a story category. Once upon a time, news stories were like tape recorders, the Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors commented in 1963. No more. A whole generation of events had taught us betterHitler and Goebbels, Stalin and McCarthy, automation and analog computers and missiles. These changes werent ideologically driven, Pressman insists, but they had ideological consequences. At the start, leading conservatives approved. To keep a reporters prejudices out of a story is commendable, Irving Kristol wrote in 1967. To keep his judgment out of a story is to guarantee that the truth will be emasculated. After the Times and the Post published the Pentagon Papers, Kristol changed his spots. Journalists, he complained in 1972, were now engaged in a perpetual confrontation with the social and political order (the establishment, as they say). By 1975, after Watergate, Kristol was insisting that most journalists today . . . are liberals. With that, the conservative attack on the press was off and running, all the way to Trumpismthe failing New York Times, CNN is fake news, the press is the true enemy of the peopleand, in a revolution-devouring-its-elders sort of way, the shutting down of William Kristols Weekly Standard, in December. The pathetic and dishonest Weekly Standard . . . is flat broke and out of business, Trump tweeted. May it rest in peace! What McCarthy and television were for journalism in the nineteen-fifties, Trump and social media would be in the twenty-tens: license to change the rules. Halberstams Golden Age, or what he called journalisms high-water mark, ended about 1980. Abramsons analysis in Merchants of Truth begins with journalisms low-water mark, in 2007, the year after Facebook launched its News Feed, the year everything began to fall apart. Merchants of Truth isnt just inspired by The Powers That Be; its modelled on it. Abramsons book follows Halberstams structure and mimics its style, chronicling the history of a handful of nationally prominent media organizationsin her case, BuzzFeed, Vice, the Times, and the Washington Postin alternating chapters that are driven by character sketches and reported scenes. The book is saturated with a lot of gossip and glitz, including details about the restaurants the powers that be frequent, and what they wear (Sulzbergerthe Times publisherdressed in suits from Bloomingdales, stylish without being ostentatiously bespoke, and wore suspenders before they went out of fashion), alongside crucial insights about structural transformations, like how Web and social-media publishing unbundled the newspaper, so that readers who used to find a fat newspaper on their front porch could, on their phones, look, instead, at only one story. Each individual article now lived on its own page, where it had a unique URL and could be shared, and spread virally, Abramson observes. This put stories, rather than papers, in competition with one another. This history is a chronicle of missed opportunities, missteps, and lessons learned the hard way. As long ago as 1992, an internal report at the Washington Post urged the mounting of an electronic product: The Post ought to be in the forefront of this. Early on, the Guardian started a New Media lab, which struck a lot of people as frivolous, Rusbridger writes, because, at the time, only 3 per cent of households owned a PC and a modem, a situation not unlike that at the Guardians own offices, where it was rumored that downstairs a bloke called Paul in IT had a Mac connected to the internet. A 1996 business plan for the Guardian concluded that the priority was print, and the London Times editor Simon Jenkins predicted, The Internet will strut an hour upon the stage, and then take its place in the ranks of the lesser media. In 2005, the Post lost a chance at a ten-per-cent investment in Facebook, whose returns, as Abramson points out, would have floated the newspaper for decades. The C.E.O. of the Washington Post Company, Don Graham, and Mark Zuckerberg shook hands over the deal, making a verbal contract, but, when Zuckerberg weaseled out of it to take a better offer, Graham, out of kindness to a young fella just starting out, simply let him walk away. The next year, the Post shrugged off a proposal from two of its star political reporters to start a spinoff Web site; they went on to found Politico. The Times, Abramson writes, declined an early chance to invest in Google, and was left to throw the kitchen sink at its failing business model, including adding a Thursday Style section to attract more high-end advertising revenue. Bill Keller, then the newspapers editor, said, If luxury porn is what saves the Baghdad bureau, so be it. More alarming than what the Times and the Post failed to do was how so much of what they did do was determined less by their own editors than by executives at Facebook and BuzzFeed. If journalism has been reinvented during the past two decades, it has, in the main, been reinvented not by reporters and editors but by tech companies, in a sequence of events that, in Abramsons harrowing telling, resemble a series of puerile stunts more than acts of public service. Merchants of Truth has been charged with factual errors, including by people Abramson interviewed, especially younger journalists. She can also be maddeningly condescending. She doffs her cap at Sulzberger, with his natty suspenders, but dismisses younger reporters at places like Vice as notable mainly for being impossibly hip, with interesting hair. This is distracting, and too bad, because there is a changing of the guard worth noting, and its not incidental: its critical. All the way through to the nineteen-eighties, all sorts of journalists, including magazine, radio, and television reporters, got their start working on daily papers, learning the ropes and the rules. Rusbridger started out in 1976 as a reporter at the Cambridge Evening News, which covered stories that included a petition about a pedestrian crossing and a root vegetable that looked like Winston Churchill. In the U.K., a reporter who wanted to go to Fleet Street had first to work for three years on a provincial newspaper, pounding the pavement. Much the same applied in the U.S., where a cub reporter did time at the Des Moines Register, or the Worcester Telegram, before moving up to the New York Times or the Herald Tribune. Beat reporting, however, is not the backstory of the people who, beginning in the nineteen-nineties, built the New Media. Jonah Peretti started out soaking up postmodern theory at U.C. Santa Cruz in the mid-nineteen-nineties, and later published a scholarly journal article about the scrambled, disjointed, and incoherent way of thinking produced by accelerated visual experiences under late capitalism. Or something like that. Imagine an article written by that American Studies professor in Don DeLillos White Noise. Peretti thought that watching a lot of MTV can mess with your headThe rapid fire succession of signifiers in MTV style media erodes the viewers sense of temporal continuityleaving you confused, stupid, and lonely. Capitalism needs schizophrenia, but it also needs egos, Peretti wrote. The contradiction is resolved through the acceleration of the temporal rhythm of late capitalist visual culture. This type of acceleration encourages weak egos that are easily formed, and fade away just as easily. Voil, a business plan! Perettis career in viral content began in 2001, with a prank involving e-mail and Nike sneakers while he was a graduate student at the M.I.T. Media Lab. (Peretti ordered custom sneakers embroidered with the word sweatshop and then circulated Nikes reply.) In 2005, a year the New York Times Company laid off five hundred employees and the Post began paying people to retire early, Peretti joined Andrew Breitbart, a Matt Drudge acolyte, and Ken Lerer, a former P.R. guy at AOL Time Warner, in helping Arianna Huffington, a millionaire and a former anti-feminist polemicist, launch the Huffington Post. Peretti was in charge of innovations that included a click-o-meter. Within a couple of years, the Huffington Post had more Web traffic than the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Its business was banditry. Abramson writes that when the Times published a deeply reported exclusive story about WikiLeaks, which took months of investigative work and a great deal of money, the Huffington Post published its own version of the story, using the same headlineand beat out the Times story in Google rankings. We were learning that the internet behaved like a clattering of jackdaws, Rusbridger writes. Nothing remained exclusive for more than two minutes. Pretty soon, there were jackdaws all over the place, with their schizophrenic late-capitalist accelerated signifiers. Breitbart left the Huffington Post and started Breitbart News around the same time that Peretti left to focus on his own company, Contagious Media, from which he launched BuzzFeed, where he tested the limits of virality with offerings like the seven best links about gay penguins and YouTube Porn Hacks. He explained his methods in a pitch to venture capitalists: Raw buzz is automatically published the moment it is detected by our algorithm, and the future of the industry is advertising as content. Facebook launched its News Feed in 2006. In 2008, Peretti mused on Facebook, Thinking about the economics of the news business. The company added its Like button in 2009. Peretti set likability as BuzzFeeds goal, and, to perfect the instruments for measuring it, he enlisted partners, including the Times and the Guardian, to share their data with him in exchange for his reports on their metrics. Lists were liked. Hating people was liked. And it turned out that news, which is full of people who hate other people, can be crammed into lists. Chartbeat, a content intelligence company founded in 2009, launched a feature called Newsbeat in 2011. Chartbeat offers real-time Web analytics, displaying a constantly updated report on Web traffic that tells editors what stories people are reading and what stories theyre skipping. The Post winnowed out reporters based on their Chartbeat numbers. At the offices of Gawker, the Chartbeat dashboard was displayed on a giant screen. In 2011, Peretti launched BuzzFeed News, hiring a thirty-five-year-old Politico journalist, Ben Smith, as its editor-in-chief. Smith asked for a scoop-a-day from his reporters, who, he told Abramson, had little interest in the rules of journalism: They didnt even know what rules they were breaking. In 2012, BuzzFeed introduced three new one-click ways for readers to respond to stories, beyond liking themLOL, OMG, and WTFand ran lists like 10 Reasons Everyone Should Be Furious About Trayvon Martins Murder, in which, as Abramson explains, BuzzFeed simply lifted what it needed from reports published elsewhere, repackaged the information, and presented it in a way that emphasized sentiment and celebrity. BuzzFeed makes a distinction between BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News, just as newspapers and magazines draw distinctions between their print and their digital editions. These distinctions are lost on most readers. BuzzFeed News covered the Trayvon Martin story, but its information, like BuzzFeeds, came from Reuters and the Associated Press. Even as news organizations were pruning reporters and editors, Facebook was pruning its users news, with the commercially appealing but ethically indefensible idea that people should see only the news they want to see. In 2013, Silicon Valley began reading its own online newspaper, the Information, its high-priced subscription peddled to the information lite, following the motto Quality stories breed quality subscribers. Facebooks goal, Zuckerberg explained in 2014, was to build the perfect personalized newspaper for every person in the world. Ripples at Facebook create tsunamis in newsrooms. The ambitious news site Mic relied on Facebook to reach an audience through a video program called Mic Dispatch, on Facebook Watch; last fall, after Facebook suggested that it would drop the program, Mic collapsed. Every time Facebook News tweaks its algorithmtweaks made for commercial, not editorial, reasonsnews organizations drown in the undertow. An automated Facebook feature called Trending Topics, introduced in 2014, turned out to mainly identify junk as trends, and so news curators, who tended to be recent college graduates, were given a new, manual mandate, massage the algorithm, which meant deciding, themselves, which stories mattered. A lot of that was stuff on Trending Topics. (Last year, Facebook discontinued the feature.) BuzzFeed surpassed the Times Web site in reader traffic in 2013. BuzzFeed News is subsidized by BuzzFeed, which, like many Web sitesincluding, at this point, those of most major news organizationsmakes money by way of native advertising, ads that look like articles. In some publications, these fake stories are easy to spot; in others, theyre not. At BuzzFeed, theyre in the same font as every other story. BuzzFeeds native-advertising bounty meant that BuzzFeed News had money to pay reporters and editors, and it began producing some very good and very serious reporting, real news having become something of a luxury good. By 2014, BuzzFeed employed a hundred and fifty journalists, including many foreign correspondents. It was obsessed with Donald Trumps rumored Presidential bid, and followed him on what it called the fake campaign trail as early as January, 2014. It used to be the New York Times, now its BuzzFeed, Trump said, wistfully. The world has changed. At the time, Steve Bannon was stumping for Trump on Breitbart. Left or right, a Trump Presidency was just the sort of story that could rack up the LOLs, OMGs, and WTFs. It still is. In March, 2014, the Times produced an Innovation Report, announcing that the newspaper had fallen behind in the art and science of getting our journalism to readers, a field led by BuzzFeed. That May, Sulzberger fired Abramson, who had been less than all-in about the Times doing things like running native ads. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed purged from its Web site more than four thousand of its early stories. Its stuff made at a time when people were really not thinking of themselves as doing journalism, Ben Smith explained. Not long afterward, the Times began running more lists, from book recommendations to fitness tips to takeaways from Presidential debates. The Times remains unrivalled. It staffs bureaus all over the globe and sends reporters to some of the worlds most dangerous places. It has more than a dozen reporters in China alone. Nevertheless, BuzzFeed News became more like the Times, and the Times became more like BuzzFeed, because readers, as Chartbeat announced on its endlessly flickering dashboards, wanted lists, and luxury porn, and people to hate. O.K., toss and turn and sigh so loud that I have to wake up and ask you whats wrong. The Guardian, founded as the Manchester Guardian in 1821, has been held by a philanthropic trust since 1936, which somewhat insulates it from market forces, just as Jeff Bezoss ownership now does something similar for the Post. By investing in digital-readership research from the time Rusbridger took charge, in 1995, the Guardian became, for a while, the online market leader in the U.K. By 2006, two-thirds of its digital readers were outside the U.K. In 2007, the Guardian undertook what Rusbridger calls the Great Integration, pulling its Web and print parts together into a single news organization, with the same editorial management. The Guardians own success is mixed. As of 2018, it was in the black, partly by relying on philanthropy, especially in the U.S. Reader revenue, in the form of donations marked not as subscriptions but as voluntary memberships, is expected to overtake advertising revenue before long. Raising money from people who care about journalism has allowed the Guardian to keep the Web site free. Its also broken some big stories, from the Murdoch-papers phone-hacking scoop to the saga of Edward Snowden, and provided riveting coverage of ongoing and urgent stories, especially climate change. But, for all its fine reporting and substantive Long Reads, the paper consists disproportionately of ideologically unvarying opinion essays. By some measures, journalism entered a new, Trumpian, gold-plated age during the 2016 campaign, with the Trump bump, when news organizations found that the more they featured Trump the better their Chartbeat numbers, which, arguably, is a lot of what got him elected. The bump swelled into a lump and, later, a malignant tumor, a carcinoma the size of Cleveland. Within three weeks of the election, the Times added a hundred and thirty-two thousand new subscribers. (This effect hasnt extended to local papers.) News organizations all over the world now advertise their services as the remedy to Trumpism, and to fake news; fighting Voldemort and his Dark Arts is a good way to rake in readers. And scrutiny of the Administration has produced excellent work, the very best of journalism. How President Trump Is Saving Journalism, a 2017 post on Forbes.com, marked Trump as the Nixon to todays rising generation of Woodwards and Bernsteins. Superb investigative reporting is published every day, by news organizations both old and new, including BuzzFeed News. By the what-doesnt-kill-you line of argument, the more forcefully Trump attacks the press, the stronger the press becomes. Unfortunately, thats not the full story. All kinds of editorial decisions are now outsourced to Facebooks News Feed, Chartbeat, or other forms of editorial automation, while the hands of many flesh-and-blood editors are tied to so many algorithms. For one reason and another, including twenty-first-century journalisms breakneck pace, stories now routinely appear that might not have been published a generation ago, prompting contention within the reportorial ranks. In 2016, when BuzzFeed News released the Steele dossier, many journalists disapproved, including CNNs Jake Tapper, who got his start as a reporter for the Washington City Paper. It is irresponsible to put uncorroborated information on the Internet, Tapper said. Its why we did not publish it, and why we did not detail any specifics from it, because it was uncorroborated, and thats not what we do. The Times veered from its normal practices when it published an anonymous opinion essay by a senior official in the Trump Administration. And The New Yorker posted a story online about Brett Kavanaughs behavior when he was an undergraduate at Yale, which Republicans in the Senate pointed to as evidence of a liberal conspiracy against the nominee. Theres plenty of room to argue over these matters of editorial judgment. Reasonable people disagree. Occasionally, those disagreements fall along a generational divide. Younger journalists often chafe against editorial restraint, not least because their cohort is far more likely than senior newsroom staff to include people from groups that have been explicitly and viciously targeted by Trump and the policies of his Administration, a long and growing list that includes people of color, women, immigrants, Muslims, members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, and anyone with family in Haiti or any of the other countries Trump deems shitholes. Sometimes younger people are courageous and sometimes they are heedless and sometimes those two things are the same. The more woke staff thought that urgent times called for urgent measures, Abramson writes, and that the dangers of Trumps presidency obviated the old standards. Still, by no means is the divide always or even usually generational. Abramson, for instance, sided with BuzzFeed News about the Steele dossier, just as she approves of the use of the word lie to refer to Trumps lies, which, by the Posts reckoning, came at the rate of more than a dozen a day in 2018. The broader problem is that the depravity, mendacity, vulgarity, and menace of the Trump Administration have put a lot of people, including reporters and editors, off their stride. The present crisis, which is nothing less than a derangement of American life, has caused many people in journalism to make decisions they regret, or might yet. In the age of Facebook, Chartbeat, and Trump, legacy news organizations, hardly less than startups, have violated or changed their editorial standards in ways that have contributed to political chaos and epistemological mayhem. It often feels like the latter. Sometimes what doesnt kill you doesnt make you stronger; it makes everyone sick. The more adversarial the press, the more loyal Trumps followers, the more broken American public life. The more desperately the press chases readers, the more our press resembles our politics. The problems are well understood, the solutions harder to see. Good reporting is expensive, but readers dont want to pay for it. The donation-funded ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force, employs more than seventy-five journalists. Good reporting is slow, good stories unfold, and most stories that need telling dont involve the White House. The Correspondent, an English-language version of the Dutch Web site De Correspondent, is trying to unbreak the news. It wont run ads. It wont collect data (or, at least, not much). It wont have subscribers. Like NPR, it will be free for everyone, supported by members, who pay what they can. We want to radically change what news is about, how it is made, and how it is funded, its founders state. It will stay above the fray. It might sometimes be funny. Its slated to dbut sometime in 2019. Aside from the thing about ads, it sounds a lot like a magazine, when magazines came in the mail. | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/28/does-journalism-have-a-future?mbid=synd_digg |
Can Tencent Music Stock Bounce Back in 2019? | One of last year's more disappointing IPOs was Tencent Music Entertainment (NYSE: TME), but China's leading streaming music service is starting to make waves. The stock that has been a broken IPO since its third day of trading -- falling below last month's initial $13 price tag -- roared back with its biggest daily gain on Friday. A few analysts initiating bullish calls on the stock last week may be helping, but Chinese growth stocks bouncing back into fancy is the real driver. Investors are starting to get into a good groove with the streaming giant that controls roughly 75% of China's music streaming consumption. The key now is building on Friday's hearty 11% gain. A young woman listening to music on white-and-pink headphones. More Image source: Getty Images. Pumping up the volume A number of major Wall Street pros kicked off their coverage of Tencent Music Entertainment last week. HSBC initiated coverage with a buy rating and a $16 price target. Alex Yao at JPMorgan is also going with a $16 price goal. He is tagging the shares with an overweight call. He sees Tencent Music Entertainment as one of his coverage universe's most sustainable growth names. KeyBanc analyst Hans Chung has a more ambitious $19 price target, and naturally an overweight rating. Piyush Mubayi at Goldman Sachs initiated with a buy call and a target price of $18.20. Not all of the new calls were bullish, however. Hanjoon Kim at Deutsche Bank and John Egbert at Stifel are initiating neutral hold ratings on the stock with price targets of $14.50 and $14, respectively. It's important not to read too much into last week's six initiations. All of the analysts served as underwriters for last month's IPO. The shares spent most of last week hovering near its IPO price, so it would be a shock if they weren't all bullish or at least neutral. They just convinced some of their best clients to load up on the stock at $13 in last month's IPO, and they're not going to turn on the stock as long as the fundamentals remain intact. Tencent Music Entertainment is in a good place. The timing of its IPO certainly could've been better, but the fundamentals have all the traits of a market darling. The company operates all four of China's most popular streaming music apps. It draws an audience of more than 800 million unique monthly active users across all of its platforms, and listeners are pretty loyal. The average daily active user spends 70 minutes streaming. Music streaming isn't as compelling to investors as video. It's harder to stand out with differentiated content, the one thing that tends to set the video platforms apart. However, Tencent Music Entertainment isn't a slow grower despite dominating its niche. Revenue soared nearly 84% through the first nine months of last year with profitability more than tripling in that time. Chung at KeyBanc feels that it's still early in Tencent Music Entertainment's growth story. He sees revenue potentially soaring sixfold a decade from now and margins expanding as it's able to use its market leadership to negotiate more lucrative label deals and improve the monetization of its industry-leading usage. Tencent Music Entertainment deserves better than last month's chilly market reception, especially since it's generating less than a third of its revenue directly from its music services. The lion's share of the high-margin revenue is coming from social entertainment services, led primarily by the virtual gifts that users can bestow musical acts and other active users. Wall Street and Tencent Music Entertainment got off on the wrong foot last month, but now it seems as if the two are finally playing in the same key. More From The Motley Fool Rick Munarriz owns shares of Tencent Music Entertainment Group. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | https://news.yahoo.com/tencent-music-stock-bounce-back-140500878.html |
Could Russell Wilson and the Seahawks consider the uncommon contract path of Tom Brady? | Maybe, but it's hard to think they'd be this consistently excellent. Ive heard it talked about some. And Im sure its been thought about often. By fans. By the Seahawks. By the quarterback himself. Serious question. But complicated, too. If you havent noticed, a QBs paycheck can barely fit in the bank these days. Aaron Rodgers averages $33.5 million annually, Matt Ryan makes $30 million and Kirk Cousins $28 million. Given that Wilson, 30, just had another great season and owns the second-best passer rating ever (behind Rodgers), he might end up receiving a $35 million-a-year extension offer before the season begins. Seeing that its nearly impossible to compete for a championship without an elite quarterback, yeah, it is probably. Business Insider recently estimated that Tom Brady has given up about $60 million over his career so that the Patriots can fill their needs in other areas on the roster. Now, hes about to play in his ninth Super Bowl after his 16th 10-win season. Maybe, but its hard to think theyd be this consistently excellent. And seeing how Brady still has earned more than $200 million over his career, its hard to think hes missing the money when hes considered the best to ever play. (That and the fact that his wife is the breadwinner.) But just because Brady made a decision doesnt mean Wilson or any other player should follow suit. Football is the most violent team sport in the world, and can snatch up a career with one big hit. This is why Earl Thomas sat out of training camp and complained about not getting an extension offer before breaking his leg in Week 4. This is why Kam Chancellor, however irrationally, sat out the first two games of the 2015 season. Regardless of profession, regardless of pay scale, you cant begrudge someone for getting every penny of what theyre worth. Even if its a ridiculous figure like $35 million, its still $35 million that they earned. Still, its worth pointing out a recent Washington Post article, which showed that the six highest paid quarterbacks in the league all missed the playoffs this year. Theres nuance to this, as one of those QBs was the injured Jimmy Garoppolo, and the seventh-highest paid was Drew Brees, whose Saints had the best regular season in the NFL. But the data cant be dismissed outright. The dream scenario for most GMs is a stud quarterback on a rookie contract. You can build around those guys with particularly shiny objects. The Eagles won a Super Bowl last year with second-year QB Carson Wentz behind center most the season, and the Rams and Chiefs are set up nicely with Jared Goff and Patrick Mahomes. Of course, that doesnt mean you cant win big games after shelling out big bucks for a quarterback. The Broncos were one of the best teams in football after signing Peyton Manning, and won a Super Bowl against the Panthers after Cam Newton was extended. You need a top-tier QB in this league to win, and the Seahawks need to keep Wilson. No one is questioning that. And if Wilson does sign a $35 million deal, he shouldnt hear a cry of criticism even if hes in the midst of an $87 million contract right now. Just know that, from Frank Clark to Bobby Wagner, there are some expensive pieces the Seahawks need to hold on to in order to stay competitive. If they cant pay the guys they want to, Pete Carroll and John Schneider basically have to nail the draft. Sure. Definitely. I dont think its ones place to say how another man should handle money. Whether its Wilson or any other athlete, entertainer or entrepreneur its that persons life and that persons family. Plus, you dont want to create a scenario where future quarterbacks feel pressure to take less for fear of looking selfish. Its interesting to think about, though. Brady is a couple weeks away from trying to win his sixth Super Bowl for a team that made 13 AFC championship games in 18 years. Ridiculous. But while some would argue that Bradys right arm has been the Patriots most valuable asset, it might actually be his right hand. You know, the one that signs the contracts. | https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/seahawks/calkins-column-on-wilson-contract/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_all |
Why Is Everyone In Such A Lather Over Gillette's "Toxic Masculinity" Ad? | Gillettes We Believe spot that highlights toxic masculinity has aroused a ton of attention (over 22 million views on YouTube as of this writing) as surely the company hoped. And predictably, haters gonna hate a lot of the reactions are negative. Its almost as if a major company took a stand on a highly divisive social issue even though it knew it would alienate a lot of customers. Oh wait; Nike's Colin Kaepernick ad recently did that. The company courageously withstood a boycott -- and by some accounts a $6 billion increase in revenues. Thatll teach them to link their brand to a controversial topic. The Gillette ad elicits two types of negative responses: Type #1. How dare you impugn men and further demonize our God-given right to be alpha males? A good representative of this genre is the Fox commentator who wrote, Enough with the gender shaming, Gillette. Before too long, theyll be telling us to shave our legs. This would actually be a genius move on P&Gs part, given how many more blades we would have to buy to keep our legs smooth as well as our faces. Type #2. Just tell me you make the best razor. Im not interested in your opinions about the meanings of masculinity. This tweet is typical of that genre: Just sell some damn razors and keep your social justice stupidity out of it. I cant say much about the testosterone crowd that falls into Type #1. I guess if youre not part of the solution, youre part of the problem. But I can address Type #2, insofar as this reaction raises the fundamental question of what a brand should or should not be. If anyone (especially a marketing professional) thinks that Gillette just makes razors, Starbucks just makes coffee, or Nike just makes shoes, I respectfully suggest its time to take a course on consumer behavior (Im happy to oblige). When youre back in school, be sure to pay attention when your professor starts to talk about lifestyle marketing. Hopefully youll understand that a successful brand embodies much more than the tangible goods (or intangible services) that bear its logo. A brands architecture is built around meanings, values, and yes, sociopolitical statements. Especially in todays postmodern consumer culture, ignore this axiom at your own peril: We dont buy products because of what they do. We buy them because of what they mean. Every product needs a value proposition, and if consumers choose it, that proposition essentially is a story that resonates with them. The item is merely a physical expression of the brands underlying narrative. Sure, sometimes were tempted to buy an alternative just because its cheaper which is why Gillette is so worried about prevailing in the "shaving wars Million Dollar Shave Club and other challengers are waging. But once we move beyond a value-oriented segment, the real battles are to capture consumers hearts and minds, not just their jowls. The threats Gillette sees in its rearview mirror are exactly why this hallowed brand needs to make a stand. If it competes on price alone, the brand is destined to have the value of a discarded razor blade. The act of shaving fundamentally links to gender identity, so Gillettes blades (or Harrys, et al) are merely a tool that allows of the population to give physical form to an underlying ideal. Tools can easily be replaced, but narratives cannot. To invoke a timeworn yet still-valid marketing clich, A company sells a nail. A consumer buys a 3/4 hole. Never underestimate the markets ability to produce alternative ways to create that hole. We see this clearly when we look at a mans beard and what it signifies. Beards were a no-no for over a century; in the early to mid-1800s people commonly associated them with socialists and others on the margins of society. Friedrich Engels (who co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx) once sponsored a moustache evening to taunt the clean-shaven members of the bourgeois class. Then in the latter part of the century the beard movement came into fashion as the Gold Rush and the Civil War made shaving optional; and some rebelled against a world of woman-faced men. As Robber Barons like full-bearded Jay Gould and Andrew Carnegie flouted their millions, beards now became linked to rich capitalists. The pendulum swung yet again, however, as workers rebellions evoked images of bearded men committing violent acts against their bosses. King C. Gillette invented the safety razor in 1901, and the clean-shaven look was back. Now, the pendulum has moved again: Googles co-founder Sergey Brin, Goldman Sachss chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder and chief executive of Salesforce, all sport prominent facial hair. So, even a mans decision to shave or not to shave (that is the question) is not necessarily linked to the same underlying meanings as time goes on. Gillette needs to keep its brand narrative relevant, and it looks like its gambling on riding the #MeToo wave. The immediate, cynical response is to note that were all talking about Gillette instead of Dollar or Harrys question answered. But more fundamentally, Gillette is making hay out of its brand architecture: Although it has done its part in the past to promote the very toxic masculinity it now criticizes, the brand now has the opportunity to resurrect its hallowed tagline but to update it with a slight change of emphasis. Its no longer The best a man can GET. Now, its The BEST a man can get. The devil is in the details. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelrsolomon/2019/01/22/why-is-everyone-in-such-a-lather-over-gillettes-toxic-masculinity-ad/ |
How Is Blockchain And Artificial Intelligence Changing The Face Of Asset Management? | Asset management has a rich and traditional past that has helped build many people's fortunes over the years; many of the worlds uber-rich have their backgrounds in hedge funds and other forms of smart asset management. However, like everything at this juncture in time, there is a change in the wind and asset management is not immune. The access to funds, and investing opportunities have been opened up and become more inclusive. But with that, there has been a demand for better performance or lower fees from this new breed of investor. Large mutual funds were used to getting away with charging annual fees of 2-4 percent, despite average or poor performance as they had the backing of an institutionalised elite. Nowadays, those that are looking to participate in the market have moved en masse away from these types of investments and instead focused on very low fee, index-based, managers. The demand increase for these types of funds and management has caused intense competition to develop as there is far more option and ease when it comes shifting money and investments around. For this reason, asset management has had to start looking forward rather than languishing on its stuffy past. Big Data, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence are all tools that are starting to find their feet in the asset management market as different companies and managers look to utilise these different burgeoning technologies to give themselves a competitive edge. Successful asset management services are reliant on vast amounts of data, so it immediately makes sense that the science behind Big Data and the analytical power that comes with it be pointed towards asset management. More so, Big Data is fuel for AI and as such, it can not only provide descriptive market insights but can also recommend prescriptive actions for future to maximise return on investment based on proper data fed to it. Then there is Blockchain which is also starting to show its collaborative powers within data services and its affiliation with these other technologies, such as AI and IoT. Thus, the tokenisation and distributed ledger that blockchain offers makes complete sense in this financial space of asset management. Understanding the need to evolve Asset, or wealth, management is a term that was first seen in 1933, and since then it has been slowly evolving and changing - but always looking to deliver the same outcome for customers. Asset management has also grown in recent times where major banks and financial institutions have come in to offer services while hedge funds are also playing a huge role. But, the capitalist and elite nature of this investing ecosystem has always been quite exclusionary and closed-minded, a standpoint which is no longer so freely accepted. The general global trend has become far more inclusionary regardless of the sector, but especially when it comes to wealth and access to money. Edgar Radjabli, the Managing Partner of Apis Capital Management, an asset management company that is utilising blockchain and AI in their services, explains how things are changing, out of necessity. Traditional asset management is changing because investors are demanding better performance or lower fees, explains Radjabli. In the past, large mutual funds could get away with charging annual fees of 2-4%, yet continued to underperform the market. As a result, for those that are looking to simply participate in the market, they have moved in masses away from these types of investments and focused on very low fee, index-based managers. That being said, higher net worth investors who can invest in hedge funds are looking for funds that significantly and consistently outperform the market. To do so, those asset managers need to develop strategies that are more advanced than ever, and that is where AI comes in. In the past, asset managers would create strategies from backtested data and let them run, hoping that what worked in the past will continue to work. Alternatively, they rely too much on discretionary trading, lacking a clear and consistent direction and making them prone to human mistakes and breakdown in discipline or risk management. The demands of the investor, be they participatory first-timers or even hardened veterans throwing large sums of money around, have certainly gotten higher. The result are sought, and those results are just not coming from traditional methods, but the reliance on new technologies is helping. Radjabli adds how blockchain is also playing its part: Blockchain technology also offers the opportunity for asset managers to implement innovative administrative protocols. Typically, asset managers use a third party administrator to record ownership of shares or LP interests by investors. This can make it difficult to administer huge numbers of shareholders. Blockchain technology allows this because all ownership is registered by an immutable, independent and permanent ledger. Also, blockchain protocols like Stellar allow an investor to hold multiple Asset Tokens in one account. So they could easily be invested in a hedge fund like Apis, a piece of real estate in NYC, a gold mine, and a startup company. Until now, this was not possible because all of those investments would be administered separately. Moving with the times It is not only Radjabli and Apis that are seeing this, but companies on the scale of IBM have also started dipping into new technology to aid in asset management offerings. IBM have recently introduced the Maximo Network on blockchain, a product designed to complement the industry leading asset management capabilities already offered by Maximo (an Enterprise Asset Management tool that lets an individual maintain all asset types, check their health in real time and streamline global operations, from procurement to contract management - this is also done utilising IoT) IBM state their reasons why blockchain specifically can enhance asset management. Firstly, they believe it enables open collaboration, creates asset and transaction transparency and finally, enforces consistency. This is also backed up by Radjabli, who identifies much of blockchains power, regardless of sector, when it comes to simplifying and making operations more efficient. He also touches on the power that AI has in helping with creating investing strategies that are dynamic. Blockchain is perfectly suited for asset management to simplify administration and reduce costs, as well as provide innovative asset structures that maximise investor returns. AI provides the opportunity to build "evolving strategies" which consistently read and digest new market data, Radjabli adds. Still work to be done. Of course, like most other sectors that are looking to utilise and implement new and emerging technologies, there is still a long way to go in making them the industry standard, but it is clear that the likes of AI and blockchain have a place in this industry. There have already been attempts to upgrade and advance the asset management industry, but in comparison to what AI and blockchain can offer, these advancements seem a little superficial and quite specialised. There has been a rise in so-called robo-advisors which are attempting to automate the investing process. These robo-advisors are based on Modern Portfolio Theory and the Efficient Market Hypothesis and use a method to determine exactly how to invest on your behalf. While there are often times when these automated investors are successful, they are not an all-encompassing answer and appear to be more of a stop-gap while right technologies acclimatise to the asset management market. Robo advisors are not really AI or blockchain, says Radjabli. While they have a great place as a cheap automated way to invest in the broad stock market, and certainly are better than mutual funds, they do not provide any long term performance benefits. The more interesting implementation of AI, specifically machine learning, is for innovative asset managers who are building evolving strategies that learn to adapt to the market, and generate better long term returns than "pre-packaged" strategies that are just based on back-tested data or traditional economics. A tokenised future Another benefit of blockchain that perhaps is still also a long way off is the tokenisation of assets. Already we are seeing instances where traditional investment assets are being tokenised on the blockchain to make the management of these assets far more accessible and efficient. There is no doubt that tokenisation will come more and more into play in the financial sector, including investing and asset management, once the regulatory standpoint has been found. Radjabli agrees with the above, adding that those who use the other benefits of emerging technology along with the tokenisation will be able to offer the most attractive options to investors. The future of Asset Management will move towards investments being offered as Asset Tokens, rather than being administered by specialised administrators on their own ledgers (although the administrators will not go away, they will adapt their systems to use blockchain). The future of high performing hedge funds inevitable will favour those that incorporate AI and machine learning to build "evolving strategies' that learn from the present and will outperform traditional buy and hold or passive investing, he concludes. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/darrynpollock/2019/01/22/how-is-blockchain-and-artificial-intelligence-changing-the-face-of-asset-management/ |
Is DCP Midstream a Buy? | Last year was a roller coaster for DCP Midstream (NYSE: DCP). Units of the midstream master limited partnership (MLP) were up more than 25% at one point before plunging to end the year, finishing down more than 25%. As a result of that sell-off, DCP Midstream now has a cheaper valuation and a higher yield that's currently up to 9.3%. While that payout certainly looks attractive, income seekers need to know that this high yield comes with a higher risk profile. In light of that, it might not be the best option for their portfolio. Two men holding signs with arrows pointing up and down with buy and sell written above them. More Image source: Getty Images. Drilling down into DCP Midstream DCP Midstream is one of the largest gathering and processing companies in the country, with operations spanning across several fast-growing oil and gas producing regions, including the Permian Basin, DJ Basin, and STACK/SCOOP play of Oklahoma. It's also one of the largest producers of natural gas liquids (NGLs). What sets the company apart from many others in the midstream sector is how it makes its money. While most midstream MLPs mainly collect fee-based income as volumes flow through their systems, a significant portion of DCP Midstream's revenue comes from commodity-based margins, which is the difference between what it pays for a raw commodity like liquids-rich natural gas and the price it sells higher-valued products like NGLs. Those margins tend to ebb and flow with commodity prices, which can have a big impact on DCP Midstream's cash flow. Overall, DCP Midstream gets about 60% of its earnings from fee-based assets and the other 40% from margin-based activities. That's a much higher percentage than most midstream companies, which target getting less than 15% of their income from commodity margins. While DCP Midstream uses hedging contracts to cut its commodity price exposure in half, it still has greater exposure to price volatility than most peers. Last year's plunge in oil prices sent units of DCP Midstream plummeting since those lower prices will have a negative impact on the company's cash flow. A gas pipeline under construction. More Image source: Getty Images. Working hard to reduce this exposure In addition to hedging half of its commodity price exposure, DCP Midstream has taken several other steps to reduce the risk that a prolonged slump in commodity prices would force the company to cut its lucrative dividend to investors. One way it has done that is by maintaining conservative financial metrics. For example, the company covered its distribution by a healthy 1.35 times during the third quarter, which is well above the 1.2 times target of most MLPs. In addition, DCP Midstream's leverage ratio stood at a comfortable 3.6, while many peers aim for a leverage ratio of 4. | https://news.yahoo.com/dcp-midstream-buy-154900464.html |
Where Do Account People Go? | Last year, I examined my Linkedin network to see where my creative peers had gone with their advertising careers. The analysis and its results were surprising to me, plus I got back in touch with folks I hadnt spoken to in decades. Several were surprised I could now do math. This year, I tackle the same exercise with my account management friends, combing through connections to see where people have gone, how many are still at agencies, at consultancies, or moved on to other roles. Research sample: Of my 1,900+ connections, ~120 were account executives when I first met them. As in the creative study, I only consider people with 15 years minimum experience in the industry. Obviously, my statistics are biased towards my experiences and the people and firms with whom I spent the most time. I then did eight interviews to understand why and give context. Here are my findings: Theyre still in agencies. About 50% of account people in my network are still in classically-named advertising, marketing, media or digital agencies, such as Ogilvy, BBDO, R/GA, Digitas, Horizon or Merkle. Thats a bit lower than I expected. Another 8% have gone to media platforms such as Amazon, Facebook or Essence. Only about 6% started their own firm, which is lower than the creatives (14%). About 8% are currently independent consultants, substantially lower than creatives. Theyre also at the consultancies. As you can read in any trade, a fair number of folks (12% in my roster) have moved to a consulting firm like I have. Many of my peers, from creative to planning to account management, are now at Accenture, Deloitte or its owned agencies and several others at IBM and PWC. So if you count these as agencies, then youve really got a whopping 62% still at agencies and, adding in those contracting as indies, almost 70% in account roles. Theyre the client. 22% of my network of former account managers, however, have gone client-side to a major marketer or a marketing role at a non-profit, far higher than creatives, but lower than some I interviewed expected. Two people told me they were asked by their clients to join their organization, which is surely a sign youre doing something right. About 11 are currently Chief Marketing Officers, and several more have been in the last five years. A fair number are at non-profits or brands focused on a passion or purpose. You'll hear from several of these now-clients down below. They shifted roles. At agencies and client-side, I found a large number of folks taking on different roles than traditional account or brand management, though, admittedly still in a marketing context. For example, several run operations or serve as chief digital officer or work in research. One is a chief innovation officer. One is an ethnographer. One is an executive recruiter. One is in HR. One, however, is an investigator at the FCC. As with the creative talent research, I wanted to hear from several who made shifts: Adam Gargani was an account supervisor when I was a baby copywriter at FCB/Leber Katz. We worked on Rayovac batteries, making TV, radio, print, coupon ads and even early e-commerce. Now Adam leads EVergreen 9, a research and brand consultancy. For him, it wasnt actually a career change into research, but a "natural path of my professional development. On the accounts I worked, I spent more time developing strategy and understanding markets than producing advertising." Allison Knapp Womack has worked in account management at multiple agencies, including Wunderman, Ogilvy and Doremus, where she was president of the New York office before becoming the global strategy officer. She credits the confluence of three factors agency experience + business school + outside board positions on finding what would be next for her. Shes now CMO of Enterprise Community Partners, which delivers capital, programs and advocacy for affordable housing. Her financial services and nonprofit clients were a great background to have, and so was her volunteer board work in international development, children's rights and equality for girls. Allison's answer to when you know its time to switch: "When your volunteer work becomes more compelling than your day job, its telling. Paul Suchman has held senior account and strategy roles at WPP and Omnicom and was global CMO of commercial real estate icon CBRE. Pauls trajectory has been all B2B, also including technology, financial services, professional services, and manufacturing. He sees a lot of parallels among them complex challenges, disparate business lines, global footprint, competing agendas. Done well, he says, Creativity and strategy become a secret weapon for these organizations. He sees differences not just in culture between corporate and agency, but in career fit. "When youre an agency person, youre the consummate undergraduate. You work on a portfolio of accounts and you change your focus depending which client is most important that day. When you become the CMO, you have picked a major. Pauls advice is to make the decision by mid-career if you want to be a consummate undergrad or declare a major. Rich Kim worked on the Cisco Systems team at Ogilvy with me. He stayed for 10 years, transitioning from account management to strategy and planning. There, his activities, conversations and deliverables were more embedded in a CMO context, which made it a natural shift to client-side brand marketing at Hulu. Now hes a director of marketing at Amazon Prime Video doing a lot in social, media and measurement (and where theyre obviously having quite an awards season!). Rich sees account management roles as a plus on multiple fronts: first, it's great for client service (i.e., no matter where you are, you have clients); secondly, it helps you learn to be a good operator, with an ability to execute. Marketers can struggle when they don't understand the creative process or experience first-hand things even as specific as production issues, musical licensing, and more. Third, from his time on the other side of the table, he thinks he can now help get the best out of agencies. Interestingly, while my stats were just 22% who went client-side, Richs instinct is that the client-side marketing world is more like 50% of people with agency account experience. Andrea Derby and I worked together on the British Airways business at Ogilvy, and then she went to BBDO. Shes now Director of Advertising and Brand at UPS. There is such a great opportunity to make a business impact on the client side. And working at agencies is great training for client roles. Agencies teach you how to lead and collaborate. And they also give you a creative foundation that leaves you curious and always looking for new ways to solve challenges. Susan Chung, former Chief Operating Officer at HNW, a marketing technology firm, was one of the colleagues I spoke to who had made one of the bigger shifts, deep into the operations of a company, farther from classic account management. For her, it was an evolution not a stretch, an opportunity to flex other muscles. "In account management, you are fundamentally running a business within a business managing client/customer relationships, dealing with staffing issues, monitoring budgets and profitability so making the transition into a larger operations role was really about changing my mindset and priorities of the job. While its admittedly far more common to get promoted from finance into key operational roles, the challenges when she met HNW were more growth-oriented rather than fiscal management. Her advice since there are so many interesting opportunities out there: Be open minded about job titles, especially since there are new ones being created every day. Think about the things you love to do when you are at your best and focus more on the responsibilities and the role within the organization. And I wanted to talk understand sticking with account management: I first asked Julie DeAngelis, now at TBWA/Chiat/Day. "My job in account management is to be a connector internally and with clients, she said, "and the agency model fosters that so well. The range of clients has also been appealing for her, across categories, for-profits and non-profits, Fortune 100 companies and smaller ones. "Ive learned something from all of them. My last question was around advice for others. "When youre earlier in your career, money, title and cach can play a big part in where you work," she said. "Im so much more interested in the culture of my agency whats important to them, how do they treat their employees, who do they want to work with. Marketing and advertising is so beyond a 9-6 job that you need to be invested in your work it needs to be your passion. Lastly, I rang my friend John Dunleavy. John is the account persons account person a business-led client partner with a heart for creative. From spirits to software, hes led accounts at Publicis, Grey, Saatchi & Saatchi, McCann and is now Global President of Team IBM at WPP. Hes a wise and candid voice for why account people might want stay as account people. John came into the business for the lunches and stayed for the creativity. What he means is that in London, Saatchi was the it" agency and advertising was glamorous and fun for your career in your 20s. At some point, though, you get serious he said, and when he moved to the states, he started working with David Droga at Publicis. "Its the first time I engaged with serious creative people [with ideas] who not only impacted a clients business but also popular culture and society overall Now the last decade working in tech, hes found that hes working with brands that can impact society if they choose to. "As an agency partner, you have an opportunity to do that. Note: John doesnt like the term account management. He prefers "Business Leadership." Thats what you should be doing. "Strategy and creative have become more important and clients are happy to pay for these because they see value here." To John, its up to good account people to reassert themselves and the role to add real value. Account folk are different. This exercise revealed to me, at least through my reporting, that the differences between creative and account management career paths are significant. In addition to the stronger entrepreneurial instincts of creatives setting up their own shops, I saw more intentional choices by account people. Creative folks are often still in creative because they havent figured out yet what else to do. Account executives who still are account executives really like the problem-solving and their role in the business. They build highly transferrable skills, with the mindset a critical asset to different environments and settings. All this seems to make it easier to constantly tackle different challenges, embrace and find a voice in technology's changing part or move to the client side. Tweet 'em at me. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/matzucker/2019/01/22/account-people/ |
What is an airsoft gun? Are they legal in Arizona? | CLOSE The Arizona Republic enhanced this footage of Antonio Arce's, 14, shooting by a Tempe police officer. Arizona Republic A non-lethal airsoft gun is at the center of the controversial Tempe police shooting of 14-year-old Antonio Arce. Police have said the boy stole the gun from a vehicle and ran from police. A Tempe officer chased Arce down an alley and shot him as he was running away. An airsoft gun often resembles a traditional firearm but shoots non-lethal, plastic pellets. They are used for target practice and military-style games, similar to paintball guns or BB guns. They are sometimes described as non-powder guns or imitation firearms. Federal law does not consider an airsoft gun to be a firearm, but it does have some regulations for them. Federal law requires these guns to be sold with an orange tip on its muzzle, distinguishing it from a lethal firearm. But states vary in their requirements about whether that orange tip must be kept on. Arizona has no state laws regulating the sale of airsoft guns. Tempe police said 14-year-old Antonio Arce carrying a replica 1911 airsoft gun when he was shot by an officer. Federal law requires individuals be 18 or older to purchase an airsoft gun, but does not regulate how old someone must be to use an airsoft gun. States and cities vary widely in their regulation of airsoft guns. In New York state, it's illegal for someone under 16 to possess an airsoft gun. In Minnesota, it's illegal for someone under 18 to have an airsoft gun without a parent's permission. Several states ban the devices on school grounds. RELATED: Boy shot by Tempe police didn't steal airsoft gun, truck owner says Arizona has no state laws regulating airsoft guns. Some municipalities do have regulations for air, spring or CO2 (carbon dioxide)-operated BB guns, pellet guns or slingshots. In Glendale, it's a Class 1 misdemeanor to discharge air guns or BB guns within city limits. Tempe does not have non-powdered gun codes. Tempe ordinances do state that an airgun is not a firearm. CLOSE Hundreds of people walk through the neighborhood where 14-year-old Antonio Arce was shot by a Tempe police officer earlier this week. Nathan J. Fish, The Republic | azcentral.com READ MORE: Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2019/01/22/what-airsoft-gun-tempe-police-shooting-antonio-arce/2633991002/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2019/01/22/what-airsoft-gun-tempe-police-shooting-antonio-arce/2633991002/ |
Is Corbus Pharmaceuticals a Buy? | For a while, investors were snapping up the stocks of any company remotely associated with marijuana, convinced investing in weed was the next way to get rich. Pot stocks cooled off in 2018, but certain companies working on cannabis-based drugs continue making steady progress on new therapies. Corbus Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CRBP) is one such company -- a clinical-stage biotech that's developing drugs for rare inflammatory diseases that work by targeting the body's endocannibinoid system. Inflammatory and fibrotic, or scarring, diseases arise when the body's immune system goes out of control. Inflammation is the natural response to invasion or injury to the body, with the immune system working to clear the affected body part of pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants. Once the cause of cell injury is removed, the body normally resolves the inflammation response. A bottle of pills More Image Source: Getty Images For reasons not completely understood, certain rare diseases cause the body to turn on the immune response without ever triggering the resolution process, and the ongoing inflammation causes tissue damage or even tissue death. The traditional approach to these diseases is to inhibit the inflammation response, but the downside is that in doing so, the immune system is suppressed, depriving the body of its natural defenses with potentially serious consequences. A new approach to inflammation Corbus' lead drug, lenabasum, takes a different approach by targeting the natural mechanism that resolves inflammation, effectively flipping the "off switch" for the process, rather than targeting the system that triggers and maintains the immune response. Corbus has been making progress in advancing lenabasum, formerly called resunab and anabasum, through clinical trials for treatment of four rare diseases: systemic sclerosis, dermatomyositis, cystic fibrosis, and lupus. The endocannabinoid system is the master regulator of inflammation in the body and includes two main receptors, designated CB1 and CB2. Lanabasum targets CB2 receptors, which are expressed on immune cells and, when activated, initiate a series of events that result in a shift from a production of pro-inflammatory mediators to production of pro-resolving mediators. Systemic sclerosis causes organ inflammation and fibrosis and is the most lethal of the systemic autoimmune diseases, with a 10-year mortality rate of up to 60%. There are about 200,000 patients with the disease in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, presenting a market opportunity for Corbus of between $1.4 billion and $2.2 billion. Phase 2 test results for lenabusam have been positive, with 87% of patients showing significant improvement. Corbus is currently conducting a phase 3 study for lenabasum in systemic sclerosis and expects data in 2020, with a commercial launch in 2021. Dermatomyositis is another rare and serious autoimmune disease that's characterized by skin and muscle inflammation and has a 30% five-year mortality rate. This condition represents a market opportunity of between $1 billion and $2 billion to treat 80,000 patients. Eighty-four percent of the participants in the phase 2 trial had a meaningful improvement, and a phase 3 trial has begun. There currently are no drugs targeting inflammation for sufferers of the progressive genetic disease of cystic fibrosis, and the 70,000 patients in Corbus' target markets represent a market opportunity of $700 million to $1 billion. Corbus is conducting a phase 2 trial measuring the effectiveness of lenabasum in reducing lung inflammation in cystic fibrosis patients, with data expected in 2020. | https://news.yahoo.com/corbus-pharmaceuticals-buy-171919391.html |
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