Category: MARKET REPORTS

NYC’s iconic Central Park Boathouse restaurant shutters after 66 years until 2021 When you want to eat in Central Park, Central Park is the place to be. At least, for 66 years, the boathouse has been a landmark for city residents, tourists and the strolling mob for Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” concerts. RELATED: As temperatures drop, St. Patrick’s Day parade begins with a quick first stop at Central Park Sadly, the boathouse will serve its last patrons in a little over a year. As the New York Times reported,…

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Southwest CEO announces pay cuts to avoid layoffs, furloughs through 2021 Like American, Southwest is likely to ask Congress for a significant increase in the U.S. aviation tax A Southwest Airlines plane On Friday, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines will announce they are ordering more planes to meet surging demand and delivering fatter profits. But unlike American, the longtime No. 2 carrier which has been chasing its rival for years to be No. 1, Southwest, which is based in Dallas, has chosen to cut its future growth plans. Southwest announced…

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Retailers have been stepping up their efforts to grow e-commerce sales and leverage social media influencers to drive purchases for customers. Most recently the global retail industry is recognizing that influencers are a key driving force behind purchase-purchase conversions within the retail store. Social media influencers are the right people to use in order to bring customers to your site that are influencers, they influence a similar audience to themselves and can lead to significant results. In fact, the best influencers help retailer’s drive up to 40% additional revenue. You…

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Voters attend a presidential debate between Democratic nominee Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Republican candidate Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in the hall of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis on October 4, 2004. Could the Second Presidential Debate Be Held on Zoom? Last year, I was interviewed by Vox when I volunteered to be in charge of working on a young community of like-minded people who wanted to start a cable TV and video station in Los Angeles. As you may know, last month, Vice President Mike Pence…

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A New York judge will hold a hearing Sunday on a landmark ruling that Instagram removed videos in which minors touched themselves in ways that violated the company’s policy on “bias-based violation” — meaning videos that used sexually explicit language and in some cases engaged in actual sexual abuse. The ruling extends a similar ruling this week against YouTube in which a judge said the firm violated federal statutes by banning videos showing people who were LGBTQ. Instagram blocked children from videos that encouraged masturbation — in the same way…

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For many years now, one of the biggest challenges facing the news media has been the rise of Facebook. While the model of social-media-based content aggregation favored by Facebook is generally looked at in the context of engagement, as something best carried out on laptops or desktops, the fact is that the surge in Facebook use has come mainly via smartphone and tablet devices. The same phenomenon — greater ease of use — has meant greater share of the audience for both Facebook and the news media. Facebook was, and…

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Amazon introduced a new personal shopping service that allows customers to virtually shop for the latest tech and fashion with Amazon’s branded virtual assistants. Shoppers can use Alexa or Echo Plus, a smartphone version of the Echo, to virtually shop in Amazon Fashion. This marks the first time Amazon has launched a personal shopping service for men specifically. The virtual shopping experience is like an Amazon Barbie: Make the Echo do what a Barbie does for you: Scare you: Alexa can tell you the price of the item you’re shopping,…

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McAfee has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. After 14 years of ownership by Intel, the company will raise capital to support its global expansion. The Palo Alto, California-based cybersecurity company will be the 10th tech or communication firm to go public in the past 12 months, a wave that’s under way despite technology stocks tumbling in the first quarter of 2019. McAfee will raise $1.4 billion to pay down debt, but management said it would use some of the proceeds to grow the business,…

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The move to fee-only investing is growing. While investors don’t always use that approach, it’s currently at 36.8% of the U.S. population, according to a May 1, 2019 survey of 11,000 households conducted by Yardeni Research. It’s not without a few challenges. Making smart investment decisions in the era of tech IPOs has been hard enough, let alone when Robo-Advisors are being built to perform the same job. I had the opportunity to observe two of our Dimensional Fund Advisors financial advisors – one of whom is former DFA’s Chief…

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While the question of whether or not TikTok may face fraud charges continues to build, another worrisome issue becomes apparent. The TikTok app has nearly a hundred million subscribers in just two years. This month alone, we have seen numerous high-profile users lose their footing in the social media space when the seams appeared to start crinkling. The company not only has had trouble controlling and policing its users, but it has made some sizable blunders as well. TikTok is currently under tremendous pressure. These concerns could make it a…

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