The price of used cars has been falling steadily, and steeply, for much of the last year. Unfortunately for car buyers, that could be about to change.
Wholesale prices for used cars being sold at auction have risen sharply in the last few weeks, according to industry data. Higher retail prices on used car dealer lots are likely to be close behind.
According to data from Manheim, the largest wholesale automotive marketplace, prices jumped 4% in just the last two weeks, an unusually large increase in such a short time period. While many in the industry expected the drop in prices wouldn’t last, the sudden increase caught many by surprise.
“We did not anticipate that prices would jump as much as they have,” said Chris Frey, senior industry insights manager at Cox Automotive, which owns Manheim. “It made my eyes jump out.”
Dealers started pulling back on their inventory of used cars as prices were declining late last year and into January. Much of the decline began late last year as a larger supply of new cars became available for purchase.
A shortage of parts, particularly computer chips, caused automakers to scale their production back far below the demand for new vehicles, and push potential new car buyers, even rental car companies, into the used car market. That shortage of new car inventory helped drive both new and use car prices to record levels earlier last year.
But part supplies and computer chip inventory improved in the last half of 2022, and with that used car prices started to decline. In January used car prices were down11.6% from the year earlier, according to the Consumer Price Index, the government’s key inflation reading – the biggest 12-month decline since the depths of the Great Recession in early 2009.
The busy selling seasonfor used cars is only months away — it’stied to when potential buyers get their tax refunds. Now dealers are scrambling to rebuild inventories, and that is driving up prices.
The strong labor market, with employers unexpectedly adding more than 500,000 jobs in January, is also driving demand for used cars.
“If you want to point at one factor that drives demand for cars, it’s jobs,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds. “If you’ve got a job, you’ve got a car.”
Part of the problem in the months ahead can be traced to the early days of the pandemic three years ago. The disruptions to the new car market at that time are about to be felt by today’s used car market.
So the 2020 plunge in car sales meant that few people were signing up for three-year leases on new vehicles, contracts that would normally be coming to an end now and in turn feed those vehicles into the supply of used cars on the markets.
“The repercussions of the pandemic are comingthrough,” Drury said. “Thesupply is definitely not going to be there.” The disruptions in the car markets in 2020 and early 2021 could affect used car prices much of the year.
“We are entering a period of tight supply on 3- and 4-year-old vehicles, which make up the majority of [used] car sales,” said Michael Manley, CEO of AutoNation
(AN), the nation’s largest car dealership, in a call with investors Friday. “And that’s going to impact wholesale prices and ultimately, retail prices.”
It’s tough to know how long the rise in used car prices will last.
The labor market and consumer spending is strong at the moment, but there are still worries about a possible recession. The Federal Reserve appears likely to keep raising interest rates, at least in the near term, which in turn will raise the cost of car loans, and for the financing that car dealers use when purchasing their own inventories.
The drop in used car prices has been a major factor in the slowing of inflation, but a sustained rise in used car prices could make it more difficult for the Fed to pull back on rate hikes.
Overall prices are up 6.4% over the last 12 months, according to CPI, but that reading has fallen for seven straight months. And prices would have risen 6.9% over the same 12 month period if used car prices had posted such a steep decline and instead just stayed unchanged.
So broader economic conditions in the US economy are certain to have an effect on supply, demand and pricing of used cars, which makes forecasting future prices very difficult, said Frey.
“I don’t think this latest increase is a blip. But I imagine prices could come down after spring and tax refunds land,” said Frey. But he added that forecasts are tough to make in the current market.
“We’ve been calling for a 4% decline in prices from December last year to December this year,” Frey said. “We may have to revise that.”
Shares in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company fell as much as 4% on Wednesday, after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that it had sold most of its holdings in the chip giant.
In a Tuesday filing with the United States’ Securities and Exchange Commission, Berkshire Hathaway
(BRKA) said it had about 8.3 million American depository shares of TSMC worth $618 million, having sold 86% of its shares. Just months before, in November, the company held about 60 million American depository shares of TSMC worth $4.1 billion, according to an SEC filing.
Berkshire Hathaway did not provide a reason for the sale and did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment. TSMC had no comment on the share sale.
Shares in TSMC, which accounts for an estimated 90% of the world’s super-advanced computer chips, ended Wednesday more than 3% lower.
Last month, the chipmaker posted strong quarterly and annual earnings, but gave a muted forecast on prospects for 2023 given the global slump in electronics demand because of rising inflation.
Due to TSMC’s record earnings in 2022, its board approved on Tuesday the distribution of $121 billion New Taiwan Dollars ($4 billion) in performance-related bonuses and profit sharing to employees based in Taiwan.
With nearly 65,000 employees on the island as of the end of last year, that would work out as an average of $62,000 per employee – if distributed equally.
The board also approved a plan to inject up to $3.5 billion into the company’s subsidiary in Arizona, which will be part of a previously announced investment of $40 billion in the United States. TSMC announced last year that it’s building a second semiconductor factory in Phoenix and increasing its investment there.
The world’s most important chipmaker, highly sought after by governments globally, is considering opening its first plant in Europe and a second one in Japan. TSMC’s global expansion comes as political tension has heightened between Washington and Beijing.
Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a planned trip to China in response to the flying of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the United States.
In October, President Joe Biden’s administration imposed sweeping new curbs designed to curtail China’s access to technology critical to its growing military power.
Last month, a Dutch maker of semiconductor equipment, ASML, told CNN that “rules are being finalized” on export controls to China, amid reports that the Netherlands and Japan have joined the United States in restricting sales of some computer chip machinery to the country.
A few days later, multiple media outlets reported that Washington was moving to further restrict sales of American technology to Chinese tech giant Huawei.
– CNN’s Chris Isidore and Michelle Toh contributed to this report
The National Archives will give “personal tours” to two activists who sued the federal records agency, resolving a days-old lawsuit the pair brought after staff at the museum told them cover up anti-abortion attire during a recent visit.
A federal lawsuit filed last Wednesday said that the activists were visiting the Washington, DC, museum the same day as the national March for Life in January and “were subject to a pattern of ongoing misconduct by federal government officials, specifically National Archives security officers … who targeted plaintiffs and intentionally chilled their religious speech and expression by requiring plaintiffs to remove or cover their attire because of their pro-life messages.”
The National Archives quickly issued a statement last week clarifying that its policy allows visitor clothing to “display protest language, including religious and political speech,” and said it would investigate the incident.
In court papers filed Tuesday by both sides, the museum promised to work with each plaintiff to arrange a “personal tour” of the museum. Under the deal, staff with the National Archives and Records Administration will also extend “a personal apology on that tour regarding the events” that unfolded last month.
“NARA shall further reiterate to all NARA security officers, as well as all other NARA personnel who interact with the public … that NARA policy expressly allows all visitors to wear t-shirts, hats, buttons, and other similar items, that display protest language, including religious and political speech,” the agreement reads.
A judge must still approve the agreement.
Last month’s March for Life event saw scores of anti-abortion activists travel from all over the US to attend the march, which was the first such event held since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year – the primary goal of the annual protest.
Neville Ray, president of technology for T-Mobile, tweeted late Monday that the company was “addressing a 3rd party fiber interruption issue that has intermittently impacted some voice, messaging and data services in several areas.”
Ray later tweeted that T-Mobile had “seen significant improvement and [is] operating at near normal levels.”
It was unclear which geographical areas were affected by the issues.
AT&T, Verizon and Boost Mobile could not be immediately reached for comment.
Barney is back, and while Mattel has not yet officially confirmed it, we’re guessing he still loves you.
Toy giant Mattel
(MAT) announced Monday that Barney, the friendly (and, let’s be honest, cringe-worthy to a large group of Millennials who watched him as pre-schoolers, and to their parents) purple dinosaur is making a triumphant return to TVs and toy shelves next year. Thanks to the switch from live-action to animation, he’s now also got great big eyes.
The “Barney & Friends” show, featuring the titular violet-hued T-Rex, aired on PBS in the United States from 1992 until 2010. Mattel said Monday that the new show, unlike the original, will be animated. So no beleaguered actor dressed up in a dinosaur costume marching around and singing to young kids.
A spokesperson for Mattel told CNN that it has no specific news to announce yet about whether the relaunched Barney will be on PBS, but added that the company has “confirmed streaming and broadcast partners that we’ll be announcing later in the year.” PBS was not immediately available for comment.
Mattel did say that the new franchise will include TV, film and Alphabet
(GOOGL)-owned YouTube content as well as music and a vast array of merchandising, including toys (of course), clothing and books. The company’s Mattel Studios unit is working with Nelvana, a studio owned by Canadian media company Corus Entertainment
(CJREF), to co-produce the new series.
“In creating the new series, it was important to us that we properly reflect the world that kids today live in so that the series can deliver meaningful lessons about navigating it,” said Fred Soulie, general manager of Mattel Television, in the news release.
“With our modern take on Barney, we hope to inspire the next generation to listen, care, and dream big,” Soulie added.
Mattel’s television unit, which has also recently brought back its Monster High and Masters of the Universe franchises, is hoping to cash in once again on young and middle-aged adults yearning for the days of their childhood.
So for anyone who grew up on the original Barney show and actually would admit to enjoying him and friends like BJ the yellow protoceratops and Baby Bop the green triceratops, Mattel is hoping they’ll want to buy old school Barney toys and swag.
The company said in its news release that “apparel and accessories for adult fans, featuring classic Barney, are also in development.”
“We will tap into the nostalgia of the generations who grew up with Barney, now parents themselves, and introduce the iconic purple dinosaur to a new generation of kids and families around the world across content,” said Josh Silverman, chief franchise officer and global head of consumer products at Mattel, in the release.
Mattel could use some more big hit toys. The company announced disappointing earnings and sales for the holidays as well as a sluggish outlook last week and its stock plunged more than 10% on the news. Rival Hasbro
(HAS) has also been hurt by weak demand for toys.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the confectionery and chewing gum maker $14,500 for the incident, which it described as “serious” in a report.
“Employees of an outside employer, I.K. Stoltzfus Service Corp., cleaned tanks, including the Dove chocolate batching 20 micron tank, owned by the onsite/host employer, Mars Wrigley,” the report said.
Mars Wrigley failed to provide the contractors with adequate safety training, the document added.
According to Penn Live, a local news site, firefighters rescued the workers by drilling a hole in the bottom of the tank and pulling them out. The chocolate was about waist-high, it reported.
Mars Wrigley did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Let’s be honest: For much of the past decade, tech events have been prettyboring.
Executives in business casual wear trot up on stage and pretend a few tweaks to the camera and processor make this year’s phone profoundly different than last year’s phone or adding a touchscreen onto yet another product is bleeding edge.
But that changed radically this week. Some of the world’s biggest companies teased significant upgrades to their services, some of which are central to our everyday lives and how weexperience the internet. In each case, the changes were powered by new AI technology that allows for more conversational and complex responses.
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a revamped Bing search engine using the capabilities of ChatGPT, the viral AI tool created by OpenAI, a company in which Microsoft recently invested billions of dollars. Bing will not only provide a list of search results, but will also answer questions, chat with users and generate content in response to user queries. And there are already rumors of another event next month for Microsoft to demo similar features in its Office products, including Word, PowerPoint and Outlook.
On Wednesday, Google held an event to detail how it plans to use similar AI technology to allow its search engine to offer more complex and conversational responses to queries. Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Baidu also said this week that theywould be launching theirown ChatGPT-style services. And other companies are sure to follow suit soon.
After years of incremental updates to smartphones, the promise of 5G that still hasn’t taken off and social networkscopycatting each others’ features until they all the look the same, the flurry of AI-related announcements this week feels like a breath of fresh air.
Yes, there are very real concerns about the potential of this technology to spread biases and inaccurate information, as happened in a Google demo this week. And it’s certainly likely numerous companies will introduce AI chatbots thatsimply do not need one. Butthese features are fun, have the potential to give us back hours in the day and, perhaps most importantly, some are here right now to try out.
Need to write a real estate listing or an annual review for an employee? Plug a few keywords into a ChatGPT query bar and your first draft is done in three seconds. Want to come up with a quick meal plan and grocery list based on your dietary sensitivities? Bing, apparently, has you covered.
If the introduction of smartphones defined the 2000s, much of the 2010s in Silicon Valley was defined by the ambitious technologies that didn’t fully arrive: self-driving cars tested on roads but not quite ready for everyday use; virtual reality products that got better and cheaper but still didn’t find mass adoption; and the promise of 5G to power advanced experiences that didn’t quite come to pass, at least not yet.
But technological change, like Ernest Hemingway’s idea of bankruptcy, has a way of coming gradually, then suddenly. The iPhone, for example, was in development for years before Steve Jobs wowed people on stage with it in 2007. Likewise, OpenAi, the company behind ChatGPT, was founded seven years ago and launched an earlier version of its AI system called GPT3 back in 2020.
“ChatGPT exploded onto the market and people’s awareness,” said Bern Elliot, an analyst at Gartner,“but this has been a long time in the making.”
More than that, artificial intelligence systems have for years underpinned many of the functions people may now take for granted, from content recommendations on social media platforms and auto-complete tools in e-mail to voice assistants and facial recognition tools. But when ChatGPT was released publicly in November, it put the power of AI systems on full display for millions in an entertaining and immediately graspable way. ChatGPT simultaneously made it much easier to see how far the technology has progressed in recent years and to imagine the vast potential for the impact it could have across industries.
“When new generations of technologies come along, they’re often not particularly visible because they haven’t matured enough to the point where you can do something with them,” Elliott said. “When they are more mature, you start to see them over time — whether it’s in an industrial setting or behind the scenes — but when it’s directly accessible to people, like with ChatGPT, that’s when there is more public interest, fast.”
Now that ChatGPT has gained traction and prompted larger companies to deploy similar features, there are concerns not just about its accuracy but its impact on real people.
Some people worry it could disrupt industries, potentially putting artists, tutors, coders, writers and journalists out of work. Others are more optimistic, postulating it will allow employees to tackle to-do lists with greater efficiency or focus on higher-level tasks. Either way, it will likely force industries to evolve and change, but that’s not? necessarily a bad thing.
“New technologies always come with new risks and we as a society will have to address them, such as implementing acceptable use policies and educating the general public about how to use them properly. Guidelines will be needed,” Elliott said.
Many experts I’ve spoken with in the past few weeks have likened the AI shift to the early days of the calculator and how educators and scientists once feared how it could inhibit our basic knowledge of math. The same fear existed with spell check and grammar tools.
While AI tools are still in their infancy, this week may represent the start of a new way of doing tasks, similar to how the iPhone changed computing and communication in June 2007. But this time, it could be in the form of a Bing browser.
As Apple looks beyond China to secure crucial supply chains strained by Covid lockdowns and threatened by rising geopolitical tension, India has emerged as an attractive potential alternative to the world’s second largest economy.
And Beijing’s big regional rival isn’t missing a beat in talking up the opportunity. One of India’s top ministers said last month the California-based company wants to ramp up its production in the South Asian country to a quarter of its overall total.
Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said Apple was already making between 5% and 7% of its products in India. “If I am not mistaken, they are targeting to go up to 25% of their manufacturing,” he said at an event in January.
His comments come at a time when Foxconn
(HNHPF), a top Apple supplier, is looking to expand its operations in India after suffering severe supply disruptions in China.
For years, Apple had relied on a vast manufacturing network in China to mass produce iPhones, iPads and other popular products. But its dependence on the country was tested last year by Beijing’s strict zero-Covid strategy, which was rapidly dismantled last December.
Since the middle of last year, Apple has redoubled its efforts to invest in India. But can Asia’s third largest economy deliver?
“Theoretically, it can be done, but it won’t be happening overnight,” said Tarun Pathak, a research director at market research firm Counterpoint.
“[Apple’s] dependency on China is a result of almost two and a half decades of what China put in to develop their entire electronics manufacturing ecosystem,” Pathak said, adding that the company makes nearly 95% of its phones in China.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment from CNN.
But the world’s most valuable companyposted shockingly weak earnings this month, partly because of its recent problems in China.The troubles started in October, when workers began fleeing the world’s biggest iPhone factory, run by Foxconn, over a Covid outbreak.
Short on staff, Foxconn offered bonuses to workers to return. But violent protests broke out in November, when newly-hired staff said management had reneged on their promises. Workers clashed with security officers, before the company eventually offered them cash to quit and leave the site.
While operations at the sprawling campus in Zhengzhou, central China, have now returned to normal, the supply problems hit the supply of iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models during the key holiday shopping season.
Foxconn did not respond to a request for comment.
On top of that, US-China relations are looking increasingly tense. Last year, the Biden administration banned Chinese companies from buying advanced chips and chipmaking equipment without a license.
“I think they will continue to depend on China for a significant proportion of their production,” said Willy Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School, referring to Apple.
“But what they are trying to do, and I think it makes sense, is to add diversity to their supply base so that if something goes wrong in China, they will have some alternatives.”
Shih referred to this strategy as “China +1 or China+ more than one.”
“India is a hugely exciting market for us and a major focus,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said on a recent earnings call.
“Looking at the business in India, we set a quarterly revenue record and grew very strong double digits year over year and so we feel very good about how we performed,” he said.
India is set to overtake China this year to become the world’s most populous country. The country’s massive and cheap labor force, which includes workers with key technical skills, is a big draw for manufacturers.
Asia’s third largest economy also offers a growing domestic market. In 2023, as global recession fears persist, India is expected to remain the fastest growing major economy in the world.
If it can sustain that momentum, India couldbecome only the third country with GDP worth $10 trillion by 2035, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
Analysts say India’s growing consumer base might give it an edge over Vietnam, which has also been attracting greater investment in electronics manufacturing.
The Indian government has rolled out policies to attract investments in mobile phone manufacturing. According to Counterpoint’s Pathak, India accounts for 16% of the global smartphone production, while China constitutes 70%.
There are somesuccessstories: Samsung, the world’s top selling smartphone brand,is one step ahead of Apple and alreadymakes a lot of its phones in India.
The South Korean giant has been diversifying away from China because ofrising labor costs and also stiff local competition from homegrown players such as Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi.
It now makes the bulk of its phones in Vietnam and India, with the latter accounting for 20% of Samsung’s global production.
In 2018, Samsung opened what it called “the world’s largest mobile factory” in Noida, a city near New Delhi, and analysts say the the company may have paved the way for other manufacturers.
Apple devices are manufactured in India by Taiwan’s Foxconn, Wistron and Pegatron. Until recently, the company would typically start assembling models in the country only seven to eight months after launch. That changed last year, when Apple started making new iPhone 14 devices in India weeks after they went on sale.
Some of Apple’s biggest contractors are already pumping more money into India. Last year, Foxconn announced it had invested half a billion dollars in its Indian subsidiary.
Earlier this week, the government of the southern Indian state of Karnataka said it is “in serious discussion of investment plans” with the Taiwanese giant. Foxconn already has factories in the Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Manufacturing in India, however, comes with myriad challenges. It constitute only 14% of India’s GDP, according to the World Bank, and the government has struggled to grow that figure.
“One of the things that China did is they built infrastructure when they could. And I would argue that India did not build infrastructure when they could,” said Shih, referring to highways, ports and transport links that allow easy movement of goods.
Apple will also face a lot more red tape in India if it wants to create sprawling Chinese-style campuses.
“Will India be able to replicate a Shenzhen version?” asked Pathak, referring to China’s manufacturing hub. Building such “hotspots” won’t be easy and would require India to think about issues ranging from logistics and infrastructure to the availability of workers, he added.
Experts told CNN that accessing land in a chaotic democracy like India could be a challenge, while the Chinese Communist Party faces fewer barriers to expropriating real estate quickly for causes it deems important.
India would also have to think about moving beyond simply assembling iPhones through favorable government policies.
“You need to source components locally, which means you need to attract many more companies in the supply chain to set up shop in India,” Pathak said.
Some of the biggest businesses in India may be stepping up. According to Bloomberg, autos-to-airline conglomerate Tata Group is in talks with Wistron to take over the Taiwanese company’s factory in southern India.
Tata and Wistron did not respond to request for comment.
“I am not directly involved in that, but it should be really good for India because this is going to create an opportunity in India to manufacture electronics and microelectronics,” N. Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO of Tata Consultancy Services, the group’s software services arm, told Bloomberg.
While there are significant obstacles in India’s ambition to deepen its relationship with Apple, doing so would be a huge boost for the country and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
‘I think it’ll be [a] big, big win,” said Pathak, noting that growing manufacturing ties with a US giant like Apple will in turn attract other global players in the electronics manufacturing ecosystem to India. “You focus on the big one, the others will follow.”
— Catherine Thorbecke and Juliana Liu contributed reporting.
December consumer prices rose from the month before and did not fall as previously thought, according to revised data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday.
The newly calibrated Consumer Price Index shows that prices rose 0.1% on a seasonally adjusted basis in December from November versus a previously estimated decline of 0.1%.
Every year, the BLS recalculates seasonal adjustment factors for CPI going back five years. (However, the year-over-year data, which is not seasonally adjusted, is not revised.)
The latest annual adjustments show slight shifts in the month-on-month inflation trend for 2022 — with November and October revised up by 0.1 percentage points.
Core CPI, which excludes the more volatile categories of food and energy, saw upward revisions of 0.1 percentage points in December and November to 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively.
“Whether you’re talking about inflation, labor markets, GDP, these things all go through seasonal adjustment procedures and do get revised over time,” said Andrew Patterson, senior economist in Vanguard’s investment strategy group.
“There’s not usually a whole lot of focus on it, but given the magnitude of inflation and the volatility of macro fundamentals these days, it’s probably gotten a little bit more attention than typical,” he added.
The latest BLS tweaks show the importance of not reading into any one data point but instead reviewing a variety of different metrics over a longer-term period, he said, a point that has been repeatedly stressed by officials such as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as they measure the path of inflation.
But the revisions don’t change the overall storyline, Patterson noted.
“We continue to believe that inflation is going to grind down over the course of the year,” he said.
The annual revisions also come just days before the release of the January CPI report, which will debut some modifications of its own: changing its weighting methodology from consumption patterns collected every two years to a single year of spending data.
“This means that this 2023 CPI report will be based on consumer spending patterns that took place in 2021, as opposed to 2022’s CPI data, which was based on spending data over 2019-2020,” William Blair analyst Richard de Chazal wrote in a note Friday. “From the BLS’s perspective, this makes the data more timely and relevant, and a better reflection of actual spending patterns.”
The adjustments could help better gauge economic activity during what’s been a very unpredictable time, noted Diane Swonk, KPMG chief economist, in a Twitter thread this week.
“The U.S. statistical agencies work extremely hard to measure and seasonally adjust the data accurately to reflect what where once considered normal season variations — everything from the surge in extreme weather events we are enduring to the unusual dynamics of an economy that is still emerging from a pandemic have distorted normal seasonal patterns,” she wrote.
“Those shifts, coupled with the rapid pace at which the economy is currently shifting has made measuring current economic conditions more difficult. It is hard to tell where we are, let alone where the economy is headed,” she said.
At least two Philadelphia high school students are facing disciplinary action after a racist video recorded outside of school surfaced on social media showing one girl spraying black paint on another girl’s face as they made racist comments a week into Black History Month.
Two of the girls in the video that began circulating online on Tuesday attend Saint Hubert Catholic High School for Girls, according to Kenneth A. Gavin, the chief communications officer for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. A third girl in the video is not a student there, he said.
“We will not disclose finite details of individual disciplinary actions but the level of behavior calls for a minimum of suspension and counseling and a maximum of expulsion,” Gavin told CNN in an email Wednesday.
In a statement released Wednesday, Franklin Towne Charter High School said the former student who participated in the video or any other students who exhibit such conduct “have no place at our school.”
“The content of this video does not reflect the values and culture of our Towne family,” the school said on it website. It’s unclear whether the former student was enrolled at the time of the video recording.
A Black parent whose daughter attends the Catholic school told CNN the video was sent directly to his daughter and niece as well as other Black students.
When asked whether the video was initially sent to Black students at the school, Gavin told CNN, “At this time it is unknown as to the exact distribution. My understanding is that it was posted and shared on social media.”
Saint Hubert Catholic High School serves roughly 500 students grades 9 through 12 while nearly 1,300 students attend Franklin Towne Charter High School, their respective data shows.Both schools are majority white, the data shows.
The video began circulating on social media a week into Black History Month.
In the video, a girl is seen using black spray paint to color the face of another girl as she says, “You’re a Black girl! You know your roots! It’s February! You’re nothing but a slave… and after this she’s doing my laundry.”
People in the video can be heard laughing as this occurs. One person is seen filming the incident on her phone. The girl who had her face painted black says, “I’m Black and I’m proud.”
The video was taken outside of school and after school hours, a Wednesday statement provided to CNN by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia said.
“We recognize and understand that the actions of these students have reopened societal wounds in a deeply painful way. Those allegedly responsible are not present in school and are being disciplined appropriately,” the archdiocese said.
The archdiocese added the school and the Office of Catholic Education are conducting a review into the incident. “Should that process determine involvement by any other students, they will also face disciplinary action,” the statement said.
Footage shot by CNN affiliate KYW showed parents and activists protesting outside Saint Hubert Catholic High School for Girls on Wednesday holding signs that read, “No More Racism” and “Hate Hurts.”
Catherine Hicks, president of the Philadelphia branch of the NAACP, expressed in a statement Wednesday her strong disappointment in the video and called on the school to “ensure action takes place immediately.”
“It is extremely disheartening to have to address this, especially during the observance of Black History Month, that honors the accomplishments and rich history of black people,” the statement said.
“The video showing the egregious acts of Philadelphia Archdiocese white female students spray painting a young lady’s face black is totally unacceptable,” the statement continued. To say the act was done in jest “is not only appalling but shows us the continued cycle of racism that we are constantly fighting against.”
In itsstatement, the archdiocese said: “We take this opportunity to be abundantly clear that there is no place for hate, racism, or bigotry at Saint Hubert’s or in any Catholic school. It is not acceptable under any circumstances or at any time. The use of any racial epithet is inconsistent with our values to treat all people with charity, decency, and respect.”
The archdiocese noted that the students’ behavior violates the code of conduct and the policy on technology use, which applies to students inside and outside the school.
According to the statement, general threats were made Tuesday afternoon against the school community after the video surfaced on social media.
The threats were reported to law enforcement, and no extracurricular activities will be held at the school for the remainder of the week, according to the statement.
Shares of Under Armour Inc. sprinted higher Wednesday toward a nine-month high, after the athletic apparel and gear seller reported a big beat in fiscal third quarter profit and raised its full-year outlook.
Net income for the quarter to Dec. 31 rose to $121.6 million, or 27 cents a share, from $109.7 million, or 23 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding nonrecurring items, adjusted earnings per share of 16 cents was well above the FactSet consensus of 9 cents.
Revenue grew 3.4% to $1.58 billion, above the FactSet consensus of $1.55 billion, as a 25% jump in footwear revenue offset 2% declines in apparel and accessories revenue. Meanwhile, a 2% decline in North America revenue was offset by a 14% increase in international revenue.
The Class C shares UA, +0.09%
shot up 6.8% in premarket trading, which puts them on track to open at the highest price seen during regular-sessions hours since May 5, 2022. The Class A shares UAA, -0.08%
jumped 6.9%.
Gross margin contracted by 6.5 percentage points, due primarily to higher promotions, sales mix impacts and the negative impact of currency fluctuations.
For fiscal 2023, the company raised its adjusted EPS guidance range to 52 cents to 56 cents from 44 cents to 48 cents, but kept its revenue growth guidance at a low single-digit percentage range. The FactSet consensus for EPS was 46 cents, and the FactSet revenue consensus of $5.86 billion implied 2.7% growth.
The Class C shares have soared 53.5% over the past three months through Tuesday, while the S&P 500 SPX, +1.29%
has gained 8.8%.
David Rosenberg, the former chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch, has been saying for almost a year that the Fed means business and investors should take the U.S. central bank’s effort to fight inflation both seriously and literally.
Rosenberg, now president of Toronto-based Rosenberg Research & Associates Inc., expects investors will face more pain in financial markets in the months to come.
“The recession’s just starting,” Rosenberg said in an interview with MarketWatch. “The market bottoms typically in the sixth or seventh inning of the recession, deep into the Fed easing cycle.” Investors can expect to endure more uncertainty leading up to the time — and it will come — when the Fed first pauses its current run of interest rate hikes and then begins to cut.
Fortunately for investors, the Fed’s pause and perhaps even cuts will come in 2023, Rosenberg predicts. Unfortunately, he added, the S&P 500 SPX, -0.61%
could drop 30% from its current level before that happens. Said Rosenberg: “You’re left with the S&P 500 bottoming out somewhere close to 2,900.”
At that point, Rosenberg added, stocks will look attractive again. But that’s a story for 2024.
In this recent interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Rosenberg offered a playbook for investors to follow this year and to prepare for a more bullish 2024. Meanwhile, he said, as they wait for the much-anticipated Fed pivot, investors should make their own pivot to defensive sectors of the financial markets — including bonds, gold and dividend-paying stocks.
MarketWatch: So many people out there are expecting a recession. But stocks have performed well to start the year. Are investors and Wall Street out of touch?
Rosenberg: Investor sentiment is out of line; the household sector is still enormously overweight equities. There is a disconnect between how investors feel about the outlook and how they’re actually positioned. They feel bearish but they’re still positioned bullishly, and that is a classic case of cognitive dissonance. We also have a situation where there is a lot of talk about recession and about how this is the most widely expected recession of all time, and yet the analyst community is still expecting corporate earnings growth to be positive in 2023.
In a plain-vanilla recession, earnings go down 20%. We’ve never had a recession where earnings were up at all. The consensus is that we are going to see corporate earnings expand in 2023. So there’s another glaring anomaly. We are being told this is a widely expected recession, and yet it’s not reflected in earnings estimates – at least not yet.
There’s nothing right now in my collection of metrics telling me that we’re anywhere close to a bottom. 2022 was the year where the Fed tightened policy aggressively and that showed up in the marketplace in a compression in the price-earnings multiple from roughly 22 to around 17. The story in 2022 was about what the rate hikes did to the market multiple; 2023 will be about what those rate hikes do to corporate earnings.
“ You’re left with the S&P 500 bottoming out somewhere close to 2,900. ”
When you’re attempting to be reasonable and come up with a sensible multiple for this market, given where the risk-free interest rate is now, and we can generously assume a roughly 15 price-earnings multiple. Then you slap that on a recession earning environment, and you’re left with the S&P 500 bottoming out somewhere close to 2900.
This is just pure mathematics. All the stock market is at any point is earnings multiplied by the multiple you want to apply to that earnings stream. That multiple is sensitive to interest rates. All we’ve seen is Act I — multiple compression. We haven’t yet seen the market multiple dip below the long-run mean, which is closer to 16. You’ve never had a bear market bottom with the multiple above the long-run average. That just doesn’t happen.
David Rosenberg: ‘You want to be in defensive areas with strong balance sheets, earnings visibility, solid dividend yields and dividend payout ratios.’
Rosenberg Research
MarketWatch: The market wants a “Powell put” to rescue stocks, but may have to settle for a “Powell pause.” When the Fed finally pauses its rate hikes, is that a signal to turn bullish?
Rosenberg: The stock market bottoms 70% of the way into a recession and 70% of the way into the easing cycle. What’s more important is that the Fed will pause, and then will pivot. That is going to be a 2023 story.
The Fed will shift its views as circumstances change. The S&P 500 low will be south of 3000 and then it’s a matter of time. The Fed will pause, the markets will have a knee-jerk positive reaction you can trade. Then the Fed will start to cut interest rates, and that usually takes place six months after the pause. Then there will be a lot of giddiness in the market for a short time. When the market bottoms, it’s the mirror image of when it peaks. The market peaks when it starts to see the recession coming. The next bull market will start once investors begin to see the recovery.
But the recession’s just starting. The market bottoms typically in the sixth or seventh inning of the recession, deep into the Fed easing cycle when the central bank has cut interest rates enough to push the yield curve back to a positive slope. That is many months away. We have to wait for the pause, the pivot, and for rate cuts to steepen the yield curve. That will be a late 2023, early 2024 story.
MarketWatch: How concerned are you about corporate and household debt? Are there echoes of the 2008-09 Great Recession?
Rosenberg: There’s not going to be a replay of 2008-09. It doesn’t mean there won’t be a major financial spasm. That always happens after a Fed tightening cycle. The excesses are exposed, and expunged. I look at it more as it could be a replay of what happened with nonbank financials in the 1980s, early 1990s, that engulfed the savings and loan industry. I am concerned about the banks in the sense that they have a tremendous amount of commercial real estate exposure on their balance sheets. I do think the banks will be compelled to bolster their loan-loss reserves, and that will come out of their earnings performance. That’s not the same as incurring capitalization problems, so I don’t see any major banks defaulting or being at risk of default.
But I’m concerned about other pockets of the financial sector. The banks are actually less important to the overall credit market than they’ve been in the past. This is not a repeat of 2008-09 but we do have to focus on where the extreme leverage is centered.
It’s not necessarily in the banks this time; it is in other sources such as private equity, private debt, and they have yet to fully mark-to-market their assets. That’s an area of concern. The parts of the market that cater directly to the consumer, like credit cards, we’re already starting to see signs of stress in terms of the rise in 30-day late-payment rates. Early stage arrears are surfacing in credit cards, auto loans and even some elements of the mortgage market. The big risk to me is not so much the banks, but the nonbank financials that cater to credit cards, auto loans, and private equity and private debt.
MarketWatch: Why should individuals care about trouble in private equity and private debt? That’s for the wealthy and the big institutions.
Rosenberg: Unless private investment firms gate their assets, you’re going to end up getting a flood of redemptions and asset sales, and that affects all markets. Markets are intertwined. Redemptions and forced asset sales will affect market valuations in general. We’re seeing deflation in the equity market and now in a much more important market for individuals, which is residential real estate. One of the reasons why so many people have delayed their return to the labor market is they looked at their wealth, principally equities and real estate, and thought they could retire early based on this massive wealth creation that took place through 2020 and 2021.
Now people are having to recalculate their ability to retire early and fund a comfortable retirement lifestyle. They will be forced back into the labor market. And the problem with a recession of course is that there are going to be fewer job openings, which means the unemployment rate is going to rise. The Fed is already telling us we’re going to 4.6%, which itself is a recession call; we’re going to blow through that number. All this plays out in the labor market not necessarily through job loss, but it’s going to force people to go back and look for a job. The unemployment rate goes up — that has a lag impact on nominal wages and that is going to be another factor that will curtail consumer spending, which is 70% of the economy.
“ My strongest conviction is the 30-year Treasury bond. ”
At some point, we’re going to have to have some sort of positive shock that will arrest the decline. The cycle is the cycle and what dominates the cycle are interest rates. At some point we get the recessionary pressures, inflation melts, the Fed will have successfully reset asset values to more normal levels, and we will be in a different monetary policy cycle by the second half of 2024 that will breathe life into the economy and we’ll be off to a recovery phase, which the market will start to discount later in 2023. Nothing here is permanent. It’s about interest rates, liquidity and the yield curve that has played out before.
MarketWatch: Where do you advise investors to put their money now, and why?
Rosenberg: My strongest conviction is the 30-year Treasury bond TMUBMUSD30Y, 3.674%.
The Fed will cut rates and you’ll get the biggest decline in yields at the short end. But in terms of bond prices and the total return potential, it’s at the long end of the curve. Bond yields always go down in a recession. Inflation is going to fall more quickly than is generally anticipated. Recession and disinflation are powerful forces for the long end of the Treasury curve.
As the Fed pauses and then pivots — and this Volcker-like tightening is not permanent — other central banks around the world are going to play catch up, and that is going to undercut the U.S. dollar DXY, +0.70%.
There are few better hedges against a U.S. dollar reversal than gold. On top of that, cryptocurrency has been exposed as being far too volatile to be part of any asset mix. It’s fun to trade, but crypto is not an investment. The crypto craze — fund flows directed to bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.35%
and the like — drained the gold price by more than $200 an ounce.
“ Buy companies that provide the goods and services that people need – not what they want. ”
I’m bullish on gold GC00, +0.22%
– physical gold — bullish on bonds, and within the stock market, under the proviso that we have a recession, you want to ensure you are invested in sectors with the lowest possible correlation to GDP growth.
Invest in 2023 the same way you’re going to be living life — in a period of frugality. Buy companies that provide the goods and services that people need – not what they want. Consumer staples, not consumer cyclicals. Utilities. Health care. I look at Apple as a cyclical consumer products company, but Microsoft is a defensive growth technology company.
You want to be buying essentials, staples, things you need. When I look at Microsoft MSFT, -0.61%,
Alphabet GOOGL, -1.79%,
Amazon AMZN, -1.17%,
they are what I would consider to be defensive growth stocks and at some point this year, they will deserve to be garnering a very strong look for the next cycle.
You also want to invest in areas with a secular growth tailwind. For example, military budgets are rising in every part of the world and that plays right into defense/aerospace stocks. Food security, whether it’s food producers, anything related to agriculture, is an area you ought to be invested in.
You want to be in defensive areas with strong balance sheets, earnings visibility, solid dividend yields and dividend payout ratios. If you follow that you’ll do just fine. I just think you’ll do far better if you have a healthy allocation to long-term bonds and gold. Gold finished 2022 unchanged, in a year when flat was the new up.
In terms of the relative weighting, that’s a personal choice but I would say to focus on defensive sectors with zero or low correlation to GDP, a laddered bond portfolio if you want to play it safe, or just the long bond, and physical gold. Also, the Dogs of the Dow fits the screening for strong balance sheets, strong dividend payout ratios and a nice starting yield. The Dogs outperformed in 2022, and 2023 will be much the same. That’s the strategy for 2023.
At its annual Unpacked event on Wednesday, Samsung unveiled its latest Galaxy S smartphones – and the company is betting that focusing on improvements to the camera will be enough to get consumers to upgrade.
The new lineup, which includes the 6.8-inch Galaxy S23 Ultra, 6.6-inch Galaxy S23+, and 6.1-inch Galaxy S23, look similar to last year’s models, but with newphoto features, a longer lasting battery life (with faster charging speeds) and an exclusive chip.
But the standout feature is the new camera. The higher-end S23 Ultra features a new 200 MP adaptive pixel sensor for the first time that supports multiple levels of high-resolution processing at once, enabling what the company called “unprecedented resolution photo quality never before seen on a smartphone camera.”
The new phones offer improved photo and video stabilization, Nightography for photos and videos (allowing the ability to capture shots in low light situations) and a new AI-powered image signal processing algorithm that enhances object details and color tone.
Samsung also introduced its first Super HDR selfie camera, jumping from 30 frames per second to 60 frames per second, for better front-facing images and videos.
The cameras on the Galaxy S23+ and Galaxy S23 even have a subtle new look: the contour housing has been removed, which Samsung said marks a new era of design. The Galaxy S23 Ultra’s display comes with a reduced curvature to create a larger and flatter surface intended to improve the visual experience. Its Enhanced comfort feature allows users to adjust color tones and contrast levels, and lessen eye strain at night. Its vision booster tool also got an update to further cut down on glare.
Ahead of the event, Jude Buckley, executive VP of the mobile business for Samsung Electronics America, told CNN its strategy continues to be staying at the forefront of camera innovation.
“We try to own a few things really uniquely, and the camera is one of the things that we have to stay well ahead of,” he said.
The launch comes at as Samsung and other tech companies confront broader economic uncertainty that could push consumers to rethink their spending. Global smartphone shipments fell by 18% in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to market research firm Canalys.
Earlier this week,Samsung reported that its quarterly profits had plunged to their lowest level in eight years as customers snapped up fewer smartphones and laptops. Its revenue also fell 8% from the prior year.
While the company is keeping prices the same as the prior year, it nonetheless must convince customers to shell out as much as four figures for its new phone lineup in a tough market.
Galaxy S23 Ultra, which comes with Samsung’s signature S pen, will start at $1,199.99, while the Galaxy S23+ starts at $999.99 and Galaxy S23 starts at $799.99.
The new lineup, which is available for pre-order starting on Wednesday, comes in four matte colors: black, cream, green and lavender. Other colors, such as lime, graphite, sky blue and red, will be available for purchase directly on Samsung.com.
The company also showed off its latest flagship PC Galaxy Book3 series: the high-end Galaxy Book3 Ultra ($2,399.99); the Book3 Pro 360 ($1899.99) – featuring a 2-in-1 convertible form factor with S Pen functionality; and the Galaxy Book3 Pro ($1449), a thin clamshell laptop.
While the new features in the S23 lineup may not be revolutionary, some may resonate with its loyal users and keep Samsung competitive in the market.
“The Galaxy S23 family demonstrates just how hard it is to tell a new story in today’s smartphone market,” said Leo Gebbie, principal analyst at CCS Insight. “The latest devices from Samsung are undoubtedly impressive but the emphasis on improvements to camera capabilities and battery life is nothing new. They underscore the difficulty that Samsung and other phone makers have in finding genuinely new ways to promote and sell their products.”
David McQueen, an research director at ABI Research, said manufacturers continue to dole out incremental updates, rather than waiting two years to release a new impactful device, because “the market moves so quickly now.”
“Companies need to be seen to be providing new devices with the latest technology, no matter how unnoticeable the upgrade, to survive,” he said.
Samsung agrees. Buckley told CNN that while some updates are bigger than others, it has to stay on top of the latest trends to remain competitive.
“Our heritage is technology, and we have a very fierce competitor who has done an amazing job over many, many years,” Buckley said, in an apparent reference to Apple. “And if your technology, if your value proposition is based in technology, you’ve always gotta be at the forefront. If you were the first to go to every two years, that’d be a painful two years.”
Dell plans to lay off roughly 5% of its workforce, the company said in a regulatory filing Monday, in the latest example of tech companies cutting costs in an uncertain economic climate.
Dell has about 133,000 employees, the company told CNN. At that level, the 5% cut would represent more than 6,500 employees.
The computing giant cited the “challenging global economic environment” for the cuts. In a letter to employees, Jeff Clarke, Dell’s vice chairman, said steps the company has already taken — such as restrictions on employee travel and a pause on external hiring — are insufficient.
“What we know is market conditions continue to erode with an uncertain future,” Clarke told employees. “The steps we’ve taken to stay ahead of downturn impacts – which enabled several strong quarters in a row – are no longer enough. We now have to make additional decisions to prepare for the road ahead.”
The move comes as layoffs continue to spread throughout the tech industry. Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others have each announced plans to cut thousands of workers as the companies adapt to shifting pandemic demand and fears of a looming recession.
Dell has also been grappling with reduced demand for personal computers.
Consulting firm Gartner said last month that worldwide PC shipments fell more than 28% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to the same period the prior year. This marked the largest quarterly shipment decline since Gartner began tracking the PC market in the mid-90s.
Dell, in particular, saw a 37% decline in PC vendor unit shipments during the final three months of 2022 compared to the year prior, according to Gartner.
Apple supplier Foxconn says its January monthly sales hit a record high as it bounced back from Covid-19 disruptions in China.
In a sales update on Sunday, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant reported revenue of 660.4 billion Taiwan dollars ($22 billion) in January, 48% more than the same period a year ago and its highest-ever level for that month. Revenue was up nearly 5% compared to the previous month.
The manufacturer attributed its performance to a strong rebound at its sprawling campus in Zhengzhou, central China.
The site, which is home to the world’s biggest iPhone factory, was crippled late last year by Covid-19 restrictions and workers’ protests.
Now, operations there are “returning to normal,” and product shipments have jumped, Foxconn said.
The company also said a “better components supply” helped boost sales.
Two of Foxconn’s most-watched divisions: smart consumer electronics, which includes smartphones and televisions, and computing products, which includes laptops and tablets, both “showed strong double-digit growth,” it said.
The figures underscore how Foxconn’s Zhengzhou campus, also known as “iPhone city,” is roaring back to life after the massive setbacks.
The company’s troubles started in October, when workers left the site because of concerns about Covid-related working conditions and shortages of food. Short on staff, bonuses were later offered to workers to return.
But violent protests broke out in November, when newly-hired staff said management had reneged on their promises. Workers clashed with security officers, before the company eventually offered them cash to quit and leave the site.
The headaches had led analysts to predict that Apple would likely speed up its supply chain diversification away from China.
CEO Tim Cook said the company’s problems in the country had hurt its supply of the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max during the key holiday shopping season.
Foxconn has since managed to stabilize operations at its facility. Last month, Chinese state media reported that the Zhengzhou plant was almost back to normal, reaching 90% of capacity as of the end of December.
The company also expressed confidence for the road ahead. On Sunday, it said in a statement that its outlook for the first quarter would likely meet analysts’ expectations, without providing specifics. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expect the firm’s revenue to grow 4% during the January-to-March period.
Foxconn’s shares rose 1.9% in Taipei on Monday.
— CNN’s Wayne Chang and Juliana Liu contributed to this report.
If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll know I wear a lot of hats: romance author, parent of funny tweenagers, part-time teacher, amateur homesteader, grumbling celiac and the wife of a seriously outdoorsy guy.
Because I’m an author with a major publisher in today’s competitive market, I’ve been tasked with stepping up my social media brand: participation, creation and all. The more transparent and likable I am online, the better my books sell. Therefore, to social media I go.
It’s rare to find someone with no social media presence these days, but there’s a marked difference between posting a few pictures for family and friends and actively creating social media content as part of your daily life.
With a whopping 95% of teens polled having access to smartphones (and 98% of teens over 15), according to an August Pew Research Center survey on teens, social media and technology, it doesn’t look like social media platforms are going away anytime soon.
Not only are they key social tools, but they also allow teens to feel more a part of things in their communities. Many teens like being online, according to a November Pew Research Center survey on teen life on social media. Eighty percent of the teens surveyed felt more connected to what is happening in their friends’ lives, while 71% felt social media allows them to showcase their creativity.
So, while posting online is work for me, it’s a way of life for the tweens and teens I see creating and publishing content online. As a parent of two middle schoolers, I know how important social media is to them, and I also know what’s out there. I see the good, the bad and the viral, and I’ve have put together some guidelines, based on what I’ve seen, for my fellow parents to watch for.
Here are eight questions to ask yourself as you check out your children’s social media accounts.
If you don’t, it’s time to start. It’s like when I had to look up the term “situationship,” I saw that ignorance is not bliss in this case. Or really any case when it comes to your children. Both of my children have smartphones, but even if your children don’t have smartphones, if they have any sort of device — phone, tablet, school laptop — it’s likely they have some sort of social media account out there. Every app our children wish to add to their smart devices comes through my husband’s and my phone notifications for approval. Before I approve any apps, I’ll read the reviews, run an internet search and text my mom friends for their experience.
If I’m still uncertain about an app, I’ll hold off on approving it until I can sit down with my children and ask them why they want it. Sometimes just waiting and forcing a short discussion is enough to convince them they no longer want it. In our household, I avoid any apps that run social surveys, allow anonymous feedback or require the individual to use location services.
If you don’t have your family phone plan all hooked together with parental controls, I’d advise setting that up ASAP. Because different devices and apps have different ways to monitor and set up parental controls, it’s impossible to link all the options here. However, a quick search will give you exactly the coverage you are comfortable with, including apps that track your child’s text messages and changing the settings on your child’s phone to lock down at a certain time every night.
The top social media platforms teens use today are YouTube (95% of teens polled), TikTok (67%), Instagram (62%) and Snapchat (59%), according to the Pew Research Center survey on teens and social media tech. Other social media platforms teens use less frequently are Twitter, Reddit, WhatsApp and Facebook. Most notably, Facebook is seeing a significant downturn in teen users. This list isn’t exhaustive, however. I would check out your children’s devices for group chat apps (such as Slack or Discord) and also scroll through their sport or activity apps where group chat capabilities exist.
I’ve seen preteens and teens using their real names, birthdate, home address, pets’ names, locker numbers or their school baseball team. Any of that information could be used to identify your child and location in real life or using a quick Google search. All of that is an absolute “no” in our house.
I also tell my kids not to answer the fun surveys and quizzes that invite children to share their unique information and repost it for others to see. These can be useful tools for predators and people trying to steal your children’s identity.
What I do: I made the choice a long ago to withhold the names of my children and partner. It’s not an exact science, and I know some clever digging could find them. For my husband, it’s for the sake of his privacy and also the protection of his professionalism. Just because he’s married to a romance author doesn’t mean he should have to answer for my online antics, whatever they may be. For my children, I want to avoid anything embarrassing that could be traced back to them during their college application season.
Even if your children keep their social media profiles private (more on that later), their biographical information, screen name and avatar or profile picture are public information.
Do an internet search of your child’s name to see what’s out there and scroll through images to make sure there isn’t anything you wouldn’t want to be made public. In our household, I’ve asked my children to use generic items or illustrated avatars in their social media bios.
What I do: Parents who do have active social media accounts may want to do a search of their own names. When my first book was published in 2019, I did a search of my name and images and found many photos of my children that came directly from my social media pages. I hadn’t posted pictures of them, but I did use a family photo as my profile photo and those are public record. Once I deleted them, the photos disappeared.
Another “no” in our household is posting videos or photos of our home or bedrooms. Something that feels innocent and innocuous to your middle schooler may not feel that way to an adult seeking out inappropriate content.
I learned this from one of my children’s Pinterest accounts. My kid loves to create themed videos using her own photos and stock pictures, and she’s gained over 500 followers in a short period of time. She has completely followed our rules and I know, because I check and follow her myself — but it hasn’t stopped the influx of adult men following her content.
What we do: Over the holidays, I sat with her and went through each follower one by one and blocked anyone we decided was there for the wrong reasons. In the end, we blocked close to 30 adult men on her account. (I also know that some predators cleverly disguise themselves as children or teens, and we may not catch them all, but this is still a worthy exercise.)
We also talk to our children about how to protect themselves. They wouldn’t want those strangers standing in their bedroom; therefore, they don’t want to post videos of their bedroom or bathroom or classroom for strangers to view.
This is a tricky one for lots of reasons. For content creators to build their following, they need to remain public on social media. If your child is an entrepreneur or artist hoping to grab attention, locking down their account will prevent that from happening.
That said, a way around this is to have two accounts. First, a private one, locked down and only used for family and close friends, and second, a public one that lacks identifiers but showcases whatever branding the child is hoping to grow. I’ve come across some well-managed public accounts for children who have giant followings and noticed they are usually run by parents, who state that right in the profile. I like this. If your children want public profiles because they are hoping to catch the attention of a talent scout, having the accounts monitored by a responsible adult who has their best interest in mind is a healthy compromise.
This is the exception, however. Most tweens and teens today use their social media for socializing with local friends. The benefit of keeping their account as private (or as private as can be) is threefold. It allows them to screen who follows their content, thus preventing our Pinterest fiasco. It prevents strangers from accessing their content and making it viral without their permission. And it protects them from unsolicited contact with strangers.
Not all social media platforms have the option to make your account “private.” For example, YouTube has parental controls that can be adjusted at any time. TikTok and Instagram can be made private (which means users must approve followers) by making the change in the account settings. Once the account is private, a little padlock will show next to the username.
Snapchat allows users to approve followers on a case-by-case basis as well as turn off features that disclose a user’s location. Notably, Snapchat also informs users when another user takes a screenshot of their story, which is a feature other social media platforms don’t have yet.
Most group chat apps don’t have the ability to go private so much as they ask users to approve of follower requests. Take time to discuss with your children who they allow to follow them and what personal information they allow those followers to know. It’s also a great time to teach them the art of “blocking” those individuals who are unsafe or unkind.
My suggestion is to log in, scroll around and even ask your children to teach you about the platforms they use. Then, when they roll their eyes at you, go ahead and tell them about your first Hotmail email address and the way you picked the perfect emo playlist on your Myspace page … and when they’re bent over laughing, sneak a peek at their follower list. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.
In less than three months, four of the big five US tech companies have cut tens of thousands of employees combined, shattering myths about the industry’s seemingly unstoppable growth in the process.
But there has been one notable exception: Apple.
To date, Apple
(AAPL) has not announced any substantial cuts, thanks in part to slower headcount growth than some of its peers during the pandemic and continued demand for its core products. Some analysts think more modest cost cuts could be coming, however.
The iPhone maker is set to report earnings results for the final three months of 2022 on Thursday after the bell. It is expected to post a rare year-over-year decline in revenue.
While these expectations show the strain Apple’s business is under, Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives said in a note this week that pent-up demand for upgrading iPhones remains strong. “Apple will likely cut some costs around the edges, but we do not expect mass layoffs from Cupertino this week,” Ives wrote.
Tom Forte, a senior research analyst at DA Davison, agreed there will be staff reductions, but likely not as drastic as those at other large tech companies. “Apple will cut headcount,” he said in a recent interview on Bloomberg TV, but suggested the cuts would come through attrition or reductions at the retail level.
“While they haven’t done so yet, like everyone else, they will adjust their headcount for the current level of demand,” he said.
Fueled by a surge in demand for digital products earlier in the pandemic, Big Tech went on a massive hiring spree.
Amazon
(AMZN) and Meta each doubled their headcount between the third quarter in 2019 and the third quarter 2022, according to data shared in the companies’ securities filings. Alphabet, meanwhile, grew its headcount 64% during that time, and Microsoft grew its staff by more than 50% over approximately the same period.
Apple, by comparison, grew its headcount by a more modest 20%. As of September 2022, Apple said it had approximately 164,000 full-time employees.
Many tech CEOs, with varying degrees of remorse, have blamed over-hiring in the early days of the pandemic for the mass layoffs now. As pandemic restrictions eased last year, the demand for digital services shifted back toward pre-pandemic levels. Inflation pinched consumer and business spending, and rising interest rates evaporated the easy money tech companies had tapped into. And one-by-one, amid the whiplash, household names in Silicon Valley began announcing widespread layoffs to adjust to the new environment.
While Apple has not announced layoffs, its business has been strained in other ways. Like other Big Tech companies, it has faced threats of antitrust action in the United States and EU. Earlier this month, Apple also said CEO Tim Cook had agreed to a massive pay cut this year, following a shareholder vote on his compensation package after its stock fell about 27% in 2022.
As consumer spending tightened, global smartphone shipments plunged 18% in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to market research firm Canalys. Apple’s business also faced supply chain hurdles linked to China’s Covid lockdowns and unrest that hit a key production site in Zhengzhou, China late last year.
Still, Apple’s business is weathering the downturn better than some of its fellow tech giants. In its most-recent earnings report, the company reported sales grew 8% year-over-year and that the company hit a September quarter revenue record for iPhone.
Thursday’s earnings results will show whether Apple can keep defying gravity.
“Apple continues to innovate with high-quality, industry-leading products supported by a powerful digital platform,” analysts at Monness, Crespi and Hardt wrote in an investor note Tuesday. “However, regulatory headwinds persist and we believe the darkest days of this downturn are ahead of us.”
Hideya Tokiyoshi started his career as an English teacher in Tokyo about 30 years ago.
Since then, his salary has stayed pretty much the same. That’s why, three years ago, after giving up hopes for higher pay, the schoolteacher decided to start writing books.
“I feel lucky, as writing and selling books gives me an additional income stream. If not for that, I would’ve stayed stuck in the same wage loop,” Tokiyoshi, now 54, told CNN. “That’s why I was able to survive.”
Tokiyoshi is part of a generation of workers in Japan who have barely gotten a raise throughout their working lives. Now, as prices rise after decades of deflation,the world’s third largest economy is being forced to reckon with the major problem of falling living standards, and companies are facing intense political pressure to pay more.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is urging businesses to help workers keep up with higher living costs. Last month, he called on companies to hike pay at a level above inflation, with some already heeding the call.
Like other parts of the world, inflation in Japan has become a major headache. In the year toDecember, core consumer prices rose 4%. That’s still low by comparison with America or Europe, but represents a 41-year high for Japan, where people are more used to prices going backwards.
“In a country where you haven’t had nominal wage growth over 30 years, real wages are declining quite rapidly as a result [of inflation],” Stefan Angrick, a Tokyo-based senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNN.
Last month, Japan recorded its biggest drop in earnings, once inflation is taken into account, in nearly a decade.
In 2021, the average annual paycheck in Japan was $39,711, compared with $37,866 in 1991,according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
That means workers got a pay bump of less than 5%, compared to a rise of 34% in other Group of Seven economies, such as France and Germany, over the same period.
Experts have pointed to a series of reasons for the stagnant wages. For one, Japan has long grappled with the opposite of what it’s facing now: low prices. Deflationstarted in the mid-1990s,because of a strong yen — which pushed down the cost of imports — and the bursting of a domestic asset bubble.
“For the past 20 years, basically, there has been no change in consumer price inflation,” said Müge Adalet McGowan, senior economist for the Japan desk at the OECD.
Until now, consumers wouldn’t have taken a hit to their wallets or felt the need to demand better pay, she added.
But as inflation rises, people are likely to start making “strong” complaints about the lack of raises, predicted Shintaro Yamaguchi, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo.
Experts say Japan’s wages have also suffered because it lags in another metric: its productivity rate.
The country’s output, measured by how much workers add to a country’s GDP per hour, is lower than the OECD average, and “probably the biggest reason” for flat wages, according to Yamaguchi.
“Generally, wages and productivity growth go hand-in-hand together,” McGowan said. “When there’s productivity growth, firms perform better and [when] they do better, they can offer higher wages.”
She said Japan’s aging population was an additional issue because an older labor force tends to equate to lower productivity and wages. The way people are working is also changing.
In 2021, nearly 40% of Japan’s total workforce was employed part-time or worked irregular hours, up from roughly 20% in 1990, according to McGowan.
“As the share of these non-regular workers has gone up, of course the average wages also stay low, because they make less,” she said.
Japan’s unique work culture is contributing to wage stagnation, according to economists.
Many people work in the traditional “lifetime employment” system, where companies go to extraordinary lengths to keep workers on the payroll for life, Angrick said.
That means they’re often very cautious about raising wages in good times so that they have the means to protect their workers when times are tough.
“They don’t want to lay people off. So they need to have that buffer in order to be able to keep them on the payroll when a crisis hits,”he said.
Its seniority-based pay system, where workers are paid based on their rank andlength of service rather than performance, lowers incentives for people to change jobs, which in other countries generally helps push up wages, according to McGowan.
“The biggest issue in Japan’s labor market is the stubborn insistence on pay by seniority,” Jesper Koll, a prominent Japan strategist and investor, previously told CNN. “If genuine merit-based pay were introduced, there would be much more job switching and career climbing.”
Last month, Kishida warned the economy was at stake, saying Japan risked falling into stagflation if wage rises continued to fall behind price increases. The term refers to a period of high inflation and stagnant economic growth.
Raising wages by 3% or more a year was already a core goal of Kishida’s administration. Now, the prime minister wants to take another step further, with plans to create a more formalized system.
Asked for details, a government spokesperson told CNN that new “comprehensive economic measures will include expanded support for wage increases, integrated with an improvement in productivity.”
Authorities plan to roll out guidelines for companies by June, said a representative from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Meanwhile, the country’s largest labor group, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation or Rengo, is now demanding wage increases of 5% at this year’s talks with the management of various companies. The annual negotiations kick off this month.
In a statement, Rengo said it was making the push because workers were making “inferior wages on a global scale,” and needed help with rising prices.
Some companies have already acted. Fast Retailing
(FRCOF), the company behind Uniqlo and Theory, announced last month that it would boost salaries in Japan by up to 40%, acknowledging that compensation had “remained low” in the country in recent years.
While inflation was a factor, the company wanted to align “with global standards, to be able to increase our competitiveness,” a Fast Retailing spokesperson told CNN.
According to a Reuters poll released last month, more than half of the country’s big firms are planning to raise wages this year.
Suntory, one of Japan’s biggest beverage makers, may be one of them.
CEO Takeshi Niinami is weighing a 6% raise for its Japanese workforce of approximately 7,000 people, according to a spokesperson, adding that it was subject to negotiation with a union.
The news may prompt other businesses to follow suit.
“If some of the biggest companies in Japan raise wages, many other firms will follow,” if only to stay competitive, said Yamaguchi. “Many firms look at what other firms do.”
An unopened first-generation iPhone from 2007 is hitting the auction block Thursday – with an estimated value of $50,000.
Originally on sale for $599, the first iPhone offered early Apple adopters a 3.5-inch screen with a 2-megapixel camera, plus 4 GB and 8 GB storage options, internet capabilities and iTunes. It had no app store, ran on a 2G network and was exclusive to AT&T’s network.
Cosmetic tattoo artist Karen Green was gifted the 8 GB version and never broke the seal, according to her appearance on daytime television program “The Doctor & The Diva” in 2019. An appraiser on the show valued the phone at $5,000 at that time.
Since then, another unopened first-generation iPhone like Green’s auctioned off for over $39,000 in a listing by LCG Auctions that closed in October. LCG Auctions is also listing Green’s phone, with bidding opening at $2,500.
Green and LCG Auctions did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The iPhone changed the way billions of people around the world communicate, make payments, do their jobs, take photos and even how they wake up in the morning. It killed dozens of industries (camcorders, MP3 players, flip phones) and gave life to many more.
Speaking at Apple’s annual Macworld expo in 2007, then-Apple boss Steve Jobs opened his presentation with: “We’re going to make some history together today.” Jobs called the new smartphone a “revolutionary mobile phone” that will feature an iPod, phone and what he called an “Internet communicator.”
“It’s bad out there today,” said Jobs of mobile Web browsers. “It’s a real revolution to bring real Web browsing to a phone.”
Apple enthusiasts will have until February 19 to bid on the tech relic.
Muhammad Radaqat, a 27-year-old greengrocer, is worried. He doesn’t know how much an onion will cost next week, let alone how he’ll be able to afford the fuel he needs to heat his home and keep his family warm.
“All we’re being told by the government is that things are going to get worse,” Radaqat told CNN.
His anxiety reflects the mood of a nation racing to ward off an economic meltdown. Faced with a shortage of USdollars, Pakistan only has enough foreign currency in its reserves to pay for three weeks of imports.
Thousands of shipping containers are piling up at ports, and the cost of essentials like food and energy is skyrocketing. Long lines are forming at gas stations as prices swing wildly in the country of 220 million.
A nationwide power outage last month made people even more alarmed. It brought Pakistan to a standstill, plunging residents into darkness, shutting down transit networks and forcing hospitals to rely on backup generators. Officials have not identified the cause of the blackout.
Pressure is growing on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government to unlock billions of dollars in emergency financing from the International Monetary Fund, which sent a delegation to the country this week for talks.
Pakistan’s currency, the rupee, recently droppedto new lows against the US dollar after authorities eased currency controls to meet one of the IMF’s lending conditions. The government had been resisting the changes the IMF requested, such as easing fuel subsidies, since they would cause fresh price spikes in the short term.
“We need the IMF agreement to go through as soon as possible for us to save the ship,” said Maha Rehman, an economist and the former head of analytics at the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan.
Pakistan is experiencing what economists call a balance-of-payments crisis. The country has been spending more on trade than it has brought in, running down its stock of foreign currency and weighing on the rupee’s value. These dynamics make interest payments on debt from foreign lenderseven more expensive and push the cost of importing goods higher still, requiring even bigger drawdowns in reserves that compound the distress.
The country is also grappling with rampant price increases. The country’s central bank has hiked its key interest rate to 17% in a bid to clamp down on annual consumer inflation of almost 28%.
Someissues the country faces are specific to Pakistan. Political instability and efforts to prop up its currency, for example, have weighed on investment and exports, according to Tahir Abbas, head of investment research at Arif Habib, the country’s largest securities brokerage.
Historic floods last summer have also led to huge bills for reconstruction and aid, adding to strains on the government budget. The World Bank has estimated that at least $16 billion is needed to cope with damage and losses.
Yet global factors are making the situation worse. The economic slowdown has weighed on demand for Pakistan’s exports, while a sharp rally in the value of the US dollar last year piled pressure on countries that import significant volumes of food and fuel. Prices for these commodities had already spiked due to the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, requiring larger outlays.
The IMF has warned repeatedly that this could stress vulnerable economies. While it forecasts that emerging market and developing economies will see a modest uptick in growth this year as the dollar comes offits highs, global inflation falls and China’s reopening spurs demand, the ability to manage debt loads remains a concern.
It estimated this week that 15% of low-income countries are already in debt distress, while another 45% are at high risk of struggling to meet their obligations. An additional 25% of emerging market economies are also at high risk. Tunisia, Egypt and Ghana have all sought IMF bailouts worth billions of dollars in recent months.
“The combination of high debt levels from the pandemic, lower growth and higher borrowing costs exacerbates the vulnerability of these economies, especially those with significant near-term dollar financing needs,” the IMF wrote in its world economic outlook this week.
For Pakistan to avoid default, talks with the IMF to restart its stalled assistance program must succeed, according to investors and economists. The IMF’s delegation arrived on Tuesday and is set to stay through Feb. 9.
“Availability of the IMF loan is critical,” said Ammar Habib Khan, a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council.
But Farooq Tirmizi, the CEO of Elphinstone, a startup geared at Pakistani investors, said that even if the IMF program resumes, it won’t fix all the problems, since the main issues plaguing Pakistan are “not economic, but political, with a government in place that is not willing to make structural changes.”
Pakistan’s economic crisis was at the center of a political showdown between Sharif and his predecessor, Imran Khan, last year. Khan was ousted by a no-confidence vote in April after Sharif accused him of economic mismanagement.
The situation has remained turbulent since then. Pakistan has gone through three finance ministers in less than a year. The last two were part of the current government, raising questions about whether Sharif can hold onto power. The country is expected to hold a general election this summer.
The tumult comes as Pakistan faces a fresh wave of attacks by militants. Earlier this week, a suicide bomb ripped through a mosque in the city of Peshawar, killing at least 100 people. It was one of the deadliest attacks in the country in years.
People are suffering in the meantime. Farmers who lost cotton, date, sugar and rice crops to flooding still need help. The World Bank predicted in October that as many as nine millionPakistanis could be pushed into poverty without “decisive relief and recovery efforts to help the poor.”
High inflation is only boosting pain for households struggling to make ends meet. Food prices in January rose 43% year over year, according to data released this week.
Attention focused recently on a man in the southern province of Sindh who lost his life in a scramble to obtain a bag of subsidized flour handed out by local authorities. He was crushed to death by the crowd alongside him.
