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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Trading firm Susquehanna is dipping its toe into sports gambling.</li><li>The space has exploded in the US as dozens of states have legalized <keyword id="20103900" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="online-gambling" source="keywords">online gambling</keyword>.</li></ul>Quants and gambling have been intertwined from the start. Math professor and first-generation quant trader Ed Thorp first rose to fame because he laid out the blueprint for counting cards in blackjack in his 1962 book "Beat the Dealer." A typical night for the late founder of <keyword id="21613450" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Renaissance-Technologies" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Renaissance Technologies" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Renaissance Technologies">Renaissance Technologies</keyword>, Jim Simons, when he was an undergrad at MIT included long-running poker games with his classmates. A <a target="_blank" href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quants-book/">now-infamous poker charity tournament in 2006</a> had some of the biggest names in hedge funds competing, including Citadel's Ken Griffin, AQR's Cliff Asness, and PDT's Peter Muller, who came out on top. But they all knew the real money was in the markets, not poker pots. While some quant types have made their fortunes gambling — such as Bill Benter, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code" target="_blank">the man who "cracked" horse racing</a> — the most ambitious chased basis points, not parlays. Until now. Trading giant Susquehanna <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ft.com/content/88ba9e42-09c2-480a-8b21-43051707f84d">has built out a 15-person unit focused on </a>sports gambling in Dublin and plans to expand into the US. The number of "well-informed, deep-pocketed users" is growing on Novig, a <keyword id="22230743" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="sports-betting" source="keywords">sports betting</keyword> exchange, the startup's founder Kelechi Ukah told Business Insider. With sports gambling exploding in popularity in the US thanks to dozens of states allowing online betting, these traders —known to use copious amounts of data and sophisticated programs to trade securities in markets around the world — are diving in in search of serious profits in a nascent space. The increased presence of top-level quant firms is going to cut into the wins of the average gambler even more, said Jacek Dmochowski, a professor at the City College of New York who has studied the "optimal" way to gamble on sports. Sports gambling in the US is no longer a business done under the table with a shady bookie or on a Las Vegas bachelor party trip. Every night, millions are betting on college and professional games, some to the point of no return — <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/online-sports-gambling-bankrupting-households-reducing-savings-rcna167235">a study from UCLA</a> found that states that legalized gambling have seen a 28% increase in bankruptcies compared to those that didn't. Through the second quarter of this year, online gambling site <keyword id="23047077" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="FanDuel" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="FanDuel" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="FanDuel">FanDuel</keyword> averaged 3.3 million bettors each month. Flutter Entertainment, the owner of Irish gambling company Paddy Power and US-based DraftKings, made more than $7 billion in revenue across its different units in the first half of the year. Executives at MGM spoke on their earnings call at the end of July about timing product releases for the start of football season. While the limits for many of these online platforms are relatively small compared to the trades the world's smartest quants are typically putting on, the space is growing rapidly. "Sportsbooks will have to basically alter their lines in response" to large wagers from <keyword id="23774657" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="trading-firms" source="keywords">trading firms</keyword>, Dmochowski said. "That's going to make it harder for the betting public to make a profit." <h2>Easy wins are already vanishing</h2>The trading firms that are slow to move have already missed out on low-hanging fruit. "It's a very similar dynamic to the electronicification of securities marketplaces in the 70s and 80s," said Ukah, the cofounder of Novig and a one-time Jane Street intern. Just as stock trading evolved from a phone call with a broker who would charge a commission to discount to online brokerages like eTrade to algorithmic trading shops, sports betting has gone from a personal relationship with a bookie to platforms like FanDuel. "The final stage is the algorithmic execution phase," he said. Already, the smartest Novig users are sanding away the easiest returns. Novig, which pulls in odds from different sportsbooks, has seen arbitrages between different sportsbooks' odds disappear after a few seconds now. Two years ago, it was several minutees, Ukah said. "Everyone is much tighter," Ukah said. Dmochowski predicts an "algorithm arms race" between traders and sportsbooks to find "the optimal price." There's demand from Novig users for the exchange to release software that would allow traders to program a bot to trade for them. Ukah said there's no timeline at the moment to release this, but said the portion of the gambling market growing the quickest is from institutions. "It's an uncorrelated, high-volatility asset class," Ukah said. In other words, exactly what trading shops are looking for. Correction: October 29, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misspelled the surname of a famed horse-racing gambler. It's Benter, not Bentley.

Sports betting is the next frontier for Wall Street's smartest quants to conquer 

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Klarna is assembling a team to build a stock-trading tool to compete with Robinhood, according to an internal message seen by BI.</li><li>Klarna said it was at "the very early stages of exploring this concept" and that it might decide not to take it to market.</li></ul>Swedish fintech firm Klarna is hiring a team to build a product that would compete with Robinhood's trading platform by letting customers buy and sell stocks through its app.The company internally advertised four roles to create a team to build the new product, according to an internal Slack message seen by Business Insider.The potential move into trading, which comes as Klarna prepares for a widely anticipated IPO, is a deviation from its core business of providing financial services for consumers to pay for goods in installments, known as buy-now, pay-later services, or BNPL."Our mission is to obliterate the barriers to consumer investing and empower every Klarna user to build their financial future in a single place - the Klarna App," the internal message said. "Think Trade Republic, Robinhood, N26… but with a Klarna-size upgrade."The post, written by Klarna director and domain lead Ludo Lombaard, was shared in the company's "general" Slack channel on October 6.Lombaard said the company is exploring the possibility of "offering customers the opportunity to buy and sell stocks" and exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, in the Klarna app. The message said that Klarna plans to add "the world of consumer investments to our product offering."The company is internally recruiting engineering and trading roles to work on the product, according to the post."We are starting from the ground up. So it is a good time to get involved," the message said, adding that the challenge "is not for everyone.""Expect long days and the exhilarating rush of building something that matters," the post continued.It ended with a quote from the movie "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit": "If you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere, you got to wake up and pay attention."A spokesperson for Klarna told BI: "Klarna continuously explores new product concepts to serve our customers. This exploration does not mean that such a product will eventually go to market."The spokesperson added: "We are at the very early stages of exploring this concept and are putting in place a small team to validate our hypotheses. There are no firm plans for the product and it is possible that, after the team's exploration, we decide not to go ahead."<h2 id="7ad06694-e764-4b62-b50d-d858f1af71fe">Klarna gears up for US IPO</h2>Founded in 2005, Klarna offers short-term financing to customers online and in-store at checkout. It has partnered with more than 600,00 merchants, including Apple, Adidas, and Airbnb.The model has been a mainstay for Klarna, which in 2021 was valued at $45.6 billion — making it the most valuable startup in Europe at the time. Its valuation fell to $6.7 billion in 2022 during a wider market downturn for startups.Klarna is in talks with banks to IPO in the US, at a $20 billion valuation, Bloomberg <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/klarna-said-to-sound-out-banks-for-us-ipo-at-20-billion-value">reported</a> in February.This year Klarna has ramped up its activity in the US, including a partnership with Uber and the launch of a cashback card.In August, Klarna said its <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.klarna.com/international/regulatory-news/klarna-h1-earnings-compounding-growth-generates-27-revenue-rise-sek-11-billion-profit-improvement-and-over-sek-1-trillion-annualized-gmv/">US gross profits</a> increased by 93% for the first half of 2024 on a year-over-year basis.Do you work for Klarna? Got a tip? Contact the reporter Jyoti Mann via the encrypted messaging app Signal at jyotimann.11 or via email at <a target="_blank" href="mailto:jmann@businessinsider.com">jmann@businessinsider.com</a>. Reach out through a nonwork device.

Klarna, the buy-now, pay-later firm, is looking to make a Robinhood-like product for trading stocks, an internal job ad shows

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Donald Trump Jr. will not take on a White House role, opting instead for the VC firm 1789 Capital.</li><li>The firm, co-founded by Omeed Malik, funds conservative causes like Tucker Carlson's media venture.</li></ul>The venture capital firm that Donald Trump Jr. is reportedly joining eschews investments that push social and environmental issues and instead focuses on what it calls "EIG," or entrepreneurship, innovation, and growth.The Palm Beach, Florida-based firm, called 1789 Capital — the US constitution went into effect that year — has invested in Tucker Carlson's new conservative media venture, Substack, and BlinkRx, a prescription startup.The president-elect's eldest son — who had an <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-family-then-and-now-photos-2024-11">active role in Donald Trump's presidential campaign</a> and is now on his transition team — told a group of supporters at a conference earlier this week that he would be joining 1789 as a partner, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/us/donald-trump-jr-firm.html">The New York Times first reported</a>. Several people with knowledge of the matter also told <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-12/don-trump-jr-opts-out-of-white-house-to-join-1789-capital?cmpid=BBD111224_MKTDLY&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_term=241112&amp;utm_campaign=marketsdaily&amp;embedded-checkout=true">Bloomberg</a> of Trump Jr.'s plans.The firm was co-founded in 2022 by Omeed Malik — a former Bank of America executive who also founded boutique investment bank Farvahar Partners — alongside author and investor Christopher Buskirk.Malik, who once <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-guilty-verdict-donors-backing-conviction-2024-5">co-hosted a Trump fundraiser that raised more than $10 million</a>, serves as the firm's president and Buskirk as its chief investment officer, according to its website. Both Buskirk and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-political-contributions-by-name-for-trump-vs-harris-2024-8#omeed-malik-10">Malik donated to Trump's</a> 2024 presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee, as well as to other conservative causes and candidates, according to political donation <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=omeed+malik&amp;order=desc&amp;sort=D">records</a>.The firm <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.1789capital.io/">bills itself</a> as "anti-ESG" — an acronym for companies that say they commit to certain environmental, social justice, and corporate governance-focused principles. One of 1789's areas of interest is in companies or industries that have faced negative effects of ESG, its website says. It also focuses on what it calls deglobalization, building out an economy that is parallel to the traditional one, and disrupting industries it deems weighed down by excessive bureaucracy. Like 1789 Capital, Trump Jr. has long been a proponent of the parallel economy, also called the "patriot economy," a term used by MAGA conservatives to refer to businesses that align with their traditional values.And Trump Jr.'s connection to Malik, the president of 1789 Capital, includes the pair's mutual support of a parallel economy platform called PublicSquare.Both <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://time.com/6317479/bud-light-boycott-maga-economy-donald-trump-jr/">Malik</a> and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/maga-amazon-alternative-publicsquare-rcna127418">Trump Jr.</a> have been investors in and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.publicsquare.com/events/town-hall">vocal supporters</a> of PublicSquare, an online shopping marketplace similar to Amazon that <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://investors.publicsq.com/overview/default.aspx#:~:text=Corporate%20Overview,both%20consumers%20and%20business%20owners.">bills itself as a place to connect</a> Americans to "businesses that value life, family, and freedom." In order to use the platform, businesses have to commit to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://support.publicsquare.com/en/articles/6746843-what-values-do-the-businesses-on-publicsquare-have-to-share">PublicSquare's core values</a>, which include the "sanctity of every life," "the family unit," "freedom and truth," and adherence to the US Constitution.Malik and Trump Jr. together rang the New York Stock Exchange's ceremonial opening bell on the day the company went public in 2023, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://time.com/6317479/bud-light-boycott-maga-economy-donald-trump-jr/">Time Magazine reported</a> at the time. Malik didn't return a request for comment from BI.As for 1789 Capital's own investments, the firm has contributed $15 million to the Tucker Carlson Network, the conservative commentator and former <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-raise-millions-new-media-company-neil-patel-report-2023-7">Fox News host's new media venture</a>, according to VC database PitchBook.On its website, the firm doesn't tout its specific investments but does offer a broad list of industries it's interested in, including consumer, fintech, healthcare, B2B SaaS, tech-enabled services, software, infrastructure, energy, and special situations.Representatives for Trump Jr. through the Trump Organization and the Trump transition team didn't respond to a request for comment from BI. Buskirk also didn't respond to requests for comment from BI, nor did the company's chief operating officer, Jordan Cohen.

This is the anti-ESG venture capital firm that Donald Trump Jr. is joining instead of taking a White House role

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Shopify's stock popped 25% on Tuesday after reporting strong revenue and a promising holiday outlook.</li><li>The gains added fuel to Canada's stock rally, helping the market touch record highs. </li></ul>Shopify shares soared Tuesday, lifting Canda's benchmark stock index. Shares of the e-commerce firm popped as much as 25% after reporting revenue that beat estimates and giving strong guidance for the holiday season.With the heaviest weighting on Canada's benchmark index, Shopify's gains pushed the S&amp;P/TSX Composite Index up as much as 1% on Tuesday to touch nearly 25,025, marking the first time the index has crossed the 25,000 threshold.The company, which builds software to power online storefronts, reported earnings per share of $0.35, beating forecasts of $0.26 according to LSEG estimates. Revenue, meanwhile, came in at $2.16 billion versus estimates of $2.12 billion.Going forward, the company says it expects revenue growth in the mid- to high-twenties percentage for the present quarter, above forecasts of around 23% according to FactSet. The strong outlook shows optimism around spending in the upcoming holiday season.Shopify president Harley Finkelstein said the company's strong beat shows it's gaining market share among e-commerce companies. He said the company has attracted an increasing number of key retailers like Reebok, Hanes, and Vera Bradley."Shopify is increasingly the go-to platform of choice, not just for entrepreneurship, but for all of commerce. We are well positioned for extensive growth across different merchant segments, size, geographies, channels and products," Finkelstein said on a call with investors.The company is also making headway in <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/shopify-ai-use-boosts-efficiency-shakes-up-staff-structure-2024-5">incorporating new technology</a>, launching an AI assistant and AI-powered tools for merchants.Analysts from Citi said they have a bullish outlook for the stock, citing a large addressable market, secular tailwinds, and large-scale growth.The latest earnings add fuel to what has already been a hot streak for Shopify stock, which is up over 43% this year. Canada's benchmark index has soared over 19% in 2024.

Shopify's 25% gain sends Canada's benchmark stock index to all-time highs

Last Christmas, my partner's parents made an extremely generous offer: We'd been sleeping on a luxuriously cooling, king-size Zinus mattress whenever we visited, and they asked whether we wanted one of our own. The only thing we needed to do was pick a bed frame. Easy, right?Our first thought was to head to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ikea-cut-prices-deflation-red-sea-shipping-crisis-inflation-greedflation-2024-1">Ikea</a> and purchase our current bed frame in a bigger size, but it was out of stock, so <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/luxury-retail-ecommerce-online-sales-stores-wealth-the-realreal-2024-7">we turned to the internet</a>. Searching "wooden bedframe" on the furniture <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wayfairs-opens-first-ever-physical-store-take-a-look-2024-6">e-commerce store Wayfair</a>, whose tagline is "every style, every home," yielded over 13,000 results. Amazon gave us a smaller but not particularly more manageable 6,000, with sponsored or "trending" bed frames that weren't in our price range — or made of wood at all — frequently front-loaded. The task was daunting.We spent hours at a time clicking between product pages and toggling between search parameters, but none of the options ever lined up. Eventually, buying a new bed frame began to feel like a part-time job that neither of us had time for. Almost a year later, we're still crowding into our old, sagging queen with two dogs and a cat.We aren't the only people feeling paralyzed by making a purchase: On the Reddit forum r/Mattress, person after person complains of the time they have spent navigating a maze of distinctions, like "cooling" and "ultracooling," "medium" and "medium firm," or "memory foam" and "hybrid." For some, the task of buying a mattress was too much: "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Mattress/comments/194n1c5/the_mattress_industry_destroyed_me_emotionally/">The mattress industry destroyed me emotionally and spiritually</a>," one post read. "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Mattress/comments/1chv833/this_is_ruining_my_life_just_tell_me_what_the/">This is ruining my life</a>," someone else wrote.It's not just big, life-altering purchases, either: In a recent <a target="_blank" href="https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/consulting/consumer-goods-cutting-through-noise">Accenture survey</a> of 19,000 consumers around the world, 74% of respondents said that they had abandoned an online shopping cart at least once in the past three months because they felt "bombarded by content, overwhelmed by choice and frustrated by the amount of effort they need to put in to making decisions." This inability to commit to a purchase was reported by people shopping for clothes (79%), flights (72%), and even snacks (70%).Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore College psychology professor, famously called this the "<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-too-many-choices-are-screwing-us-up-2016-11">paradox of choice</a>": While having a wider variety of choices can initially make us happier, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-paradox-of-choice-could-explain-why-youre-still-single-2018-2">the more options we have</a>, the harder it can be to choose the best one for us.Schwartz's 2006 book drew inspiration from <a target="_blank" href="https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/345/345%20Articles/Iyengar%20%26%20Lepper%20(2000).pdf">a study</a> that found that shoppers in a grocery store were 10 times as likely to purchase jam after sampling from a display of six jam varieties than they were from a sampling of 24. <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/quit-social-media-online-shopping-30-days-regain-control-productivity-2024-7">Online shopping</a>, which the US Census Bureau estimates accounts for roughly 16% of all retail sales, theoretically makes it easier to find exactly what we are looking for. But it also takes the jam problem and multiplies it by several orders of magnitude: We're inundated with hundreds and thousands of choices. With so much information about those choices, it sometimes can feel impossible to go on. What's more, experts say that many of the tools we rely on to help us sift through all of this information — from product descriptions to search engines to e-commerce filters — may actually be making the process even harder.The golden age of comparison shopping isn't so golden after all.The internet changed not just how we shop but also the number of options retailers can offer. Superstores that used to be limited by their square footage <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/warehouse-nation-boom-ecommerce-jobs-2022-10">could now fill warehouses</a> with thousands of items that would ship straight to customers' doorsteps. As a result, the retail landscape began to lean toward larger stores with more options.Jason Goldberg, the chief commerce-strategy officer of Publicis Groupe, said "category killers" like PetSmart and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-tumultuous-history-of-toys-r-us-photos-2020-8">Toys "R" Us</a> outcompeted the neighborhood mom-and-pop pet and toy stores of yesteryear — only to find themselves losing out to stores with even bigger inventories, such as <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-q3-earnings-shoppers-cheaper-items-high-frequency-good-business-2024-11">Amazon</a> and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-stock-price-sam-walton-family-wealth-billionaires-retail-strategy-2024-10">Walmart</a>. "In the history of retail, businesses with larger assortments have come in, and they've won out over businesses with small assortments," he said.Shoppers, it turns out, love the convenience of the one-stop shop. But that has left us with an ever-increasing number of options. "Amazon's doing what we think the American dream is, which is, have all the choice in the world," Jessecae Marsh, a professor of psychology at Lehigh University, told me. "But choice can be paralyzing." Part of the problem, Marsh said, comes down to the way our brain makes choices. When shopping, we typically start by looking for ways to narrow down the set of choices, such as by filtering out things we can't afford or that aren't the size we want. Then we look for a reason to pick one of the remaining items over the others. "When we try to make decisions, we want a reason behind the decision," she said.This helps explain why ratings and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/insider-reviews-expertise-in-product-reviews">reviews</a> have become such a popular feature on online marketplaces: When we're comparing two similar items, we need to find a piece of information that breaks the tie. A higher star rating, or a slate of glowing reviews from other customers, can be enough to do the trick. The trouble is that having more information at our disposal isn't always helpful. And sometimes, it can render decision-making more difficult.In a <a target="_blank" href="https://cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41235-023-00509-7">series of experiments</a> testing how the presence of diagrams influenced people's ability to correctly answer questions about topics like managing body weight, Marsh and Samantha Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at the Stevens Institute of Technology, found that while some guiding information could be helpful, too much information made picking the right answer almost as difficult as if the participants had received no guiding information at all. While the study, published last year in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, didn't focus on shopping, their results suggested that the more information we wade through when we're trying to make a decision, the more likely we are to come across something that conflicts with our beliefs, which complicates the decision-making process."If you've tried an Oil of Olay moisturizer, and you had a reaction to it, but you're seeing website over website telling you that's the best one, you're now in a position where the information that you're getting doesn't match information that you hold in your own head," Marsh said. "That conflict is always going to be hard for people because they don't exactly know how to resolve it."It doesn't help that the tools we use to reduce overwhelm may actually make things even more daunting. Raluca Ursu, an associate professor of marketing at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, told me that tools like filtering, sorting, and using recommendations could bog us down by revealing new factors to investigate, which leads people to search more — and, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25674430">research has found</a>, be less satisfied with their choices. Search engines such as Google, which present options in a ranked list, <a target="_blank" href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1509/jmr.09.0481?journalCode=mrja">can also lead</a> to a "maximizer" mindset. "Consumers start to believe they can find 'the best option' out there, which can then lead to additional stress and decision paralysis," Ursu told me. The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/search-web-email-google-streaming-online-shopping-broken-2022-4">decline of Google Search</a> probably doesn't help matters, either.Ursu has studied two factors in shopping: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/document/2022-01/SearchGaps_UrsuZhangHonka_Dec2021.pdf">search costs and search fatigue</a>. "Search costs generally reflect the time and effort consumers require to obtain information about a product," she said via email. "How difficult is it to determine this TV's price and technical specifications?" While search costs are typically much smaller online than they are IRL, where you have to jump in a car and drive to a store, search fatigue grows when shopping online because there's more information available and more options to sift through. Ursu guessed that the most exhausting stage of shopping is comparison shopping — when people pore over minuscule details between products to find the best one.If people <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/online-shopping-coping-mechanism-target-pandemic-2021-3">abandon their shopping carts</a> because they get overwhelmed by search fatigue, it can come back to bite retailers. In a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/document/2022-01/SearchGaps_UrsuZhangHonka_Dec2021.pdf">study</a> that looked at browsing data from clothing shoppers in the Netherlands, Ursu and her fellow researchers Qianyun Zhang and Elisabeth Honka found that reducing search fatigue by half led to a slight increase in transactions. They also found that search fatigue tended to affect smaller retailers more than larger ones since people tend to spend all their energy shopping at larger stores first.In fashion, perhaps no company embodies the paradox of choice more than <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/stitch-fix-subscription-clothes-review-work-from-home-2021-9">Stitch Fix</a>, which launched in 2011 with a counterintuitive business model: People who didn't have the time or patience to shop could undergo a virtual consultation with one of the firm's in-house stylists, then receive a subscription box filled with a selection of items that had been handpicked for them. It worked: By 2017, the company had gone public at a valuation of $1.4 billion, only to surge to a $11 billion market cap in early 2021, when many customers were holed up at home."Having someone do that front-loaded effort, that seems really valuable," Marsh said. It's the same thing we would do by bringing a contractor into a house to ask, "What are the options here to expand this bathroom?" After lockdowns ended, the company decided to introduce an option where customers could shop for individual items from categories like "jeans," "Lauren Ralph Lauren," and "workwear under $80." But since that pivot away from its core business, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/stitch-fix-stylists-say-role-company-is-losing-flexibility-2021-8">the company has been losing customers</a> every year. Today, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/sfix-stock">Stitch Fix is valued at $400 million</a>, just a fraction of its market cap at its 2017 initial public offering. Goldberg, the chief commerce-strategy officer, said it's possible that the company's struggles are due to macro factors, like subscription fatigue and a sales slowdown in the clothes business. "Twenty years ago, you spent 6% of your budget on clothes; today, you spend 3% of your budget on clothes," he said. "People used to buy Stitch Fix for clothes to wear to work. You know what people don't do anymore?" Still, the company's decline raises an important point about the value of curation.Short of changing their business models, companies can make things easier on shoppers by simplifying their site designs, reducing friction during checkout, and keeping extraneous information to a minimum. Offering shoppers more personalized search results is another big piece of the puzzle, and the experts I spoke to say <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-amazon-is-using-ai-from-rufus-to-movie-recommendations-2024-7">artificial intelligence may be able to help us</a> winnow our choices down — that's the guiding idea behind <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-amazon-ai-shopping-assistant-rufus-is-like-2024-7">Rufus, a new conversational chatbot</a> from Amazon that answers questions and makes product recommendations. Of course, there's the danger AI <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-scam-spam-hacking-ruining-internet-chatgpt-privacy-misinformation-2023-8">will overwhelm us with spam and slop</a> first.As Marsh sees it, though, the most important thing is shoppers getting to a place where they're dealing with fewer options, even if they believe that more is better. "Whatever people think they want, they should have something a little bit less than that," she said. Marsh recommended researching a category and figuring out what product attributes matter most to you before you start shopping. She also suggested turning the decision over to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides">a consumer guide</a>, a retailer quiz, or someone who has tried a product before you. Many people already do this with<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-luxury-perfume-obsession-tiktok-fragrance-teen-boys-branding-2024-10"> beauty influencers</a>: If you have a similar skin or hair type to someone, seeing what works and what doesn't for them can help narrow down your choices.Still, deciding what to buy can be excruciating — even for people who study decision-making for a living. Recently, after an "extremely overwhelming" experience selecting a bed frame for her own house on Wayfair, Marsh said she realized she was going to need a new rug. "I started looking through the options, and I was like, 'I just can't,'" she told me. "We're going to have to go to a store. I just can't do it again."<a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/emilie-friedlander">Emilie Friedlander</a> is a journalist and editor from Brooklyn, currently based in Philadelphia. She co-hosts <a target="_blank" rel=" nofollow" href="https://theculturejournalist.substack.com/">The Culture Journalist</a>, a podcast about culture in the age of platforms.

'I just can't': Why so many consumers are sick and tired of online shopping

Tesla attracts millions of job seekers annually. The few who receive offers typically face a calculated gamble: Accept lower base pay up front for the chance of a potentially lucrative future payout.Business Insider secured access to an internal Tesla pay database, covering nearly 100,000 employees as of December 2021. That data, along with public filings and interviews with people who have worked for the automaker, reveal the company's pay strategy. Tesla offers lower base salaries than its tech and automotive peers but offers substantial stock grants.Even Tesla's top earners must bet on the company. This high-risk, high-reward system is coupled with a selective hiring process that has in the past included <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-email-tesla-approve-new-hires-2023-5">Elon Musk's sign-off for every hire</a>.Using Tesla's internal salary database, BI looked at median base pay for the roughly 13,000 full-time, salaried, US-based employees across the internal job categories that Tesla uses to define workers in business units, such as engineering, manufacturing, or data management. (BI excluded pay for hourly workers, many of whom work in manufacturing, as it was not possible to accurately calculate their median annual pay based on hourly payroll data.)BI further broke down the data to look at median base pay by job title, analyzing the numbers for full-time, US-based, salaried roles with at least five employees.The base pay for these titles, which include directors of engineering and managers who work in Tesla's service centers fixing vehicles, ranges from about $35,000 to $324,000, according to the data.Nine current and former workers told BI the pay structure has largely remained in place since December 2021 and is ultimately part of Musk's quest to hire only the most <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tells-twitter-tesla-staff-be-hardcore-old-email-2022-11">"hardcore" workers</a>."The whole system is set up to find the fanatics," a current Tesla worker with knowledge of the company's hiring process said. "They could get better pay somewhere else, but we want the people who are die-hard Tesla."A former Tesla recruiter who worked with the company until 2024 said the automaker's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-hired-at-tesla-job-interview-process">interview process</a> for engineers — which typically entails at least nine interviews and can take months — and the company's pay structure are designed to weed out workers who are looking to just "clock in and clock out.""It's a culture thing," the former recruiter said. "It's not even about how smart you are or how much you know. They're looking for a willingness to learn and put in the extra hours."Tesla, Musk, and the company's board of directors did not respond to requests for comment.In a December 2023 <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="c-link" href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000162828024002390/tsla-20231231.htm">regulatory filing</a>, Tesla reported it employed more than 140,000 people worldwide. In April, Tesla told staff it planned to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="c-link" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sent-tesla-employees-email-announcing-layoffs-read-memo-2024-4">cut more than 10% of its workforce</a>. A June <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="c-link" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/21/tesla-has-downsized-by-at-least-14percent-this-year-internal-number-shows.html#:~:text=Tesla%20internal%20records%20viewed%20by,includes%20hourly%20and%20salaried%20workers.">estimate</a> from CNBC placed Tesla's headcount at just over 120,000.Using separate data from the Securities and Exchange Commission, BI compared the company's median base pay with that of traditional automakers and the six largest tech firms by market cap. Tesla lags behind all of them except Amazon. While there are a variety of factors that can affect a company's median salary — for example, Amazon's large warehouse workforce or Apple's large retail workforce — the data is consistent with what four current and former Tesla employees say: Tesla's base salaries are generally less than competitors'.Nvidia, Ford, Meta, and Amazon declined to comment on their employee compensation packages. Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet did not respond to a request for comment. GM said it has doubled its staff in Silicon Valley over the past six months and is competitive in hiring talent away from tech firms.Nine current and former people in engineering and sales said that Tesla's stock grants make it easier to accept lower base salaries. Tesla stock could make them rich, if only on paper. On November 8, the automaker's stock surged more 8% in the wake of Donald Trump's re-election, hitting a market cap of $1 trillion.Some Tesla employees can receive millions of dollars in stock. In 2020 and 2021, 44 US-based employees were offered stock worth more than $1 million, according to the database.To get a sense of which employees were more likely to take home large grants, BI broke up stock grants based on job category. The data show that most workers in engineering received stock grants above $25,000. The value of the stock is based on the value of the shares at the time they were granted, but it's subject to change based on Tesla's share price.Of the stock offerings at Tesla, about 75% were restricted stock units, or RSUs, while nonqualified stock options made up 21%, and were given exclusively as merit-based compensation, according to BI's analysis of US-based, full-time workers. Only 4% of employees — including many executives and other high-level workers — received the stock as incentive stock options, or ISOs.Zaheer Mohiuddin, the cofounder of <a target="_blank" href="http://Levels.fyi">Levels.fyi</a>, said RSUs are very common in tech, while incentive stock options are typically reserved for longtime high-level employees or nonpublic companies. RSUs are typically included in standard compensation packages, while nonqualified stock options and ISOs are often used as additional incentives.RSUs give employees actual shares that vest over time, while ISOs simply provide the right to purchase stock at a preset price before expiration — which is potentially profitable if the stock price rises above that level, but also requires the employee to have money on hand to pay for the stock in the first place.Outside of one person within Tesla's executive job category who had no stock amount listed, Tesla executives received stock offerings worth between $950,000 and $20 million, according to the database, which displayed the latest stock amount for each employee as of December 2021. All but one of the executives' offerings were ISOs.Tesla is far from the first company to enhance base pay with stock grants. Companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon have been known to offer employees healthy stock grants. Employee survey data from 2024 from the compensation-benchmarking company <a target="_blank" href="http://Levels.fyi">Levels.fyi</a> found that Tesla's median base pay and stock grants for US-based software engineers are slightly lower than that of US-based software engineers at Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet, collectively.Over the past five years, Tesla's stock has spiked well over 1,000%; that performance potentially makes those grants attractive.Greg Selker, a managing director at the executive recruitment firm Stanton Chase, told BI that while other Big Tech companies might have higher base pay and equity grants to match, Tesla's strength also lies in its image."There's a mission-driven element to it that allows Tesla to get away with paying less," Selker said. "These people are working to bring about the decarbonization of the planet."Musk has previously described what the stock options can do for employees. "We give everyone stock options; we've made many people who are just working the line — who didn't even know what stocks were — we've made them millionaires," he <a target="_blank" href="https://fortune.com/2023/11/30/tesla-elon-mus-unionize-staff-millionaires-stock-options/">said</a> last year.BI examined the median stock grants and the percentage of employees who received grants for each job category and found that a majority of workers in nearly every category received some type of stock grant.Tesla's pay strategy has more in common with other Silicon Valley companies like Google or Meta than it does with traditional automakers, Harley Shaiken, an auto industry and labor expert, told BI. Traditional automakers like GM or Ford rely on higher base pay while companies like Tesla, which has seen higher stock returns over the past five years, can attract talent through stock grants, Shaiken said."Tech workers are looking for the opportunity for a big payday, not just an incremental salary bump," he said.One former sales manager said Tesla's stock offerings initially attracted him to the role, but he compared them to "golden handcuffs.""The stock is the major hook. You might be unhappy in your role, but you just decide, 'I'm going to keep my head down and wait a few months longer until I vest,'" he said.Tesla's stock offerings have given some workers opportunities for major paydays. Drew Baglino, Tesla's former senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, and Zachary Kirkhorn, the former CFO, were awarded $20 million each.Other executives, including Musk's right-hand man Omead Afshar, received $10 million in stock offerings, according to the database."It's part of the benefit of taking a chance on a company like Tesla," one engineer who joined the company in 2015 told BI. "You might have to deal with the aches and pains of a startup — the long hours, some of the uncertainty — but there can also be a significant payoff."Aaron Greenspan, a vocal critic of Musk and the founder of PlainSite, an organization that provides access to legal documents and advocates for legal transparency, first referenced Afshar's stock grant in a lawsuit filed against defendants including Musk and Tesla, accusing them of defamation, among other claims. Lawyers for Musk and Tesla have called his claims "largely unintelligible allegations." The lawsuit is ongoing.Tesla awards stock grants with promotions and annual reviews and bases them on the company's performance, according to the salary database and conversations with four current employees. Last year, the company cut back on merit-based stock awards for staff, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-19/tesla-skips-merit-based-stock-awards-squeezing-compensation">Bloomberg reported</a> and the four employees told BI. In June, Musk told staff he planned to award <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-stock-option-grants-awards-elon-musk-email-2024-6#:~:text=Tesla%20will%20reward%20employees%20for,at%20Tesla%20earlier%20this%20year.">additional stock grants for "exceptional performance."</a> During annual performance reviews in July, managers were limited to recommending no more than 20% of their team to be considered for the extra award, two people with knowledge said. Tesla typically awards employees restricted stock units that vest over a period of four years, the data show.Selker said historically Tesla workers have been able to count on their stock continuing to grow."It's a bet they have to make," he said. So far, stock grants have "proven to be better than cash in your pocket.""Now, if the stock were to become inconsistent or halve, then Tesla will have to change its strategy," he added.Tesla's stock has experienced significant volatility this year, slumping as low as 44% in mid-April from its price at the start of the year. Following Donald Trump's re-election, it's up nearly 30% overall year to date.At least one longtime Tesla staffer worries about new hires."I feel lucky that I got in early, but I see a lot of younger engineers expecting to reap the same benefits," they said. "And I'm not sure they will."Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at <a target="_blank" href="mailto:gkay@businessinsider.com">gkay@businessinsider.com</a> or <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="c-link">248-894-6012</a>.

Internal Tesla salary database shows Elon Musk's strategy: Lower salaries, bigger stock grants

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Amazon rose as much as 7.6% on Friday, its biggest intraday gain since early February.</li><li>The stock surge was driven by better-than-expected third-quarter earnings, as well as a strong outlook.</li></ul><a target="_blank" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/amzn-stock">Amazon</a> stock saw its best day in nine months on Friday.It climbed as much as 7.6% to $200.50, its steepest intraday gain since Feb. 2, after a strong third-quarter earnings report. Shares traded around $199 as of 12:30 p.m. in New York, less than 1% from all-time closing highs set in July.The tech titan <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-stock-earnings-report-call-live-updates-2024-10">beat estimates</a> for both revenue and earnings-per-share, led by strength in cloud computing and cost-efficiency efforts. It also forecasted fourth-quarters sales in line with Wall Street expectations.In a turnaround from last year's record low sales growth, Amazon Web Services — the firm's AI-driven cloud platform — maintained stable momentum. Cloud revenues rose 19%, and CEO Andy Jassy indicated that Amazon's blowout $75 billion investment for 2025 will largely benefit AWS.During the firm's earnings call, Jassy explained that AI was driving the investment boost.He expressed that the technology is "a really unusually large, maybe once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity. And I think our customers, the business, and our shareholders will feel good about this long term; that we're aggressively pursuing it."The company's cost cutting efforts have allowed the firm to pursue larger investments in these areas. With more efficiencies suggested ahead, Bank of America expects continued margin expansion through 2025.Amazon also delivered a retail beat, despite low expectations. Although Wall Street was concerned that headwinds would weaken the firm's consumer base, its online store grew 7% year-over-year, outpacing consensus estimates of 4%.According to the bank, efficiencies in the cost of servicing customers and ad growth helped drive the estimate-beat.

Amazon stock jumps most in 9 months as cost cuts, cloud spark earnings beat

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A number of bank research desks have raised their S&amp;P 500 price targets in recent weeks.</li><li>The adjustments come as the index continues its bull market run, up 3% in the last month and 23% this year.</li></ul>The bull market hasn't weakened in the fourth quarter, and top bank research desks have been rushing to raise their S&amp;P 500 price targets into year-end. Strategists from Goldman Sachs, UBS, BMO, and Deutsche Bank have raised their year-end price targets on the S&amp;P 500 in recent weeks as the benchmark index continues to hit record highs. On Monday, it notched its 46th all-time high of 2024. UBS strategists Jonathan Golub and Patrick Palfrey upped their 5,600 price target to 5,850 for the end of the year, marking their fourth upgrade since late last year.The target is just slightly above the level the index is trading at on Wednesday, but the analysts forecast a 9% rise in the next 15 months and raised their target for 2025 from 6,000 to 6,400 in a note on Tuesday. Earlier this month, meanwhile, Goldman Sachs raised its target on the index to 6,000 by December, marking the fourth increase since late last year. The call, from the firm's chief equity strategist David Kostin, is the second highest among those tracked by Bloomberg.Kostin said the estimates were driven by a steady macro outlook and greater margin expansion."The primary driver of the upward revision to our 2025 EPS estimate is greater margin expansion," Kostin said, adding, "The macro backdrop remains conducive to modest margin expansion, with prices charged outpacing input cost growth."Kostin's price target is just behind that of BMO's chief equity strategist, Brian Belski, who raised his forecast from 5,600 to 6,100 last month. Belski's new target implies a nearly 5% gain through the rest of this year.Belski said his upgrade was based on strong market gains so far this year, which he says typically leads to stronger-than-normal gains in the fourth quarter."We continue to be surprised by the strength of market gains and decided yet again that something more than an incremental adjustment was warranted," Belski said in a note.He added that Federal Reserve easing and a broadening market rally will only help fuel further gains.Deutsche Bank also raised its year-end target for the S&amp;P 500 last month, up to 5,750 from 5,500. The bank's strategists pointed to strong corporate earnings and inflows, rising stock buybacks, and higher risk sentiment."We see S&amp;P 500 earnings growth continuing to run robustly in the low double digits, in line with typical growth rates outside of recessions," the strategists said in a note.The strategists' target raises come amid a chorus of strategists turning decidedly more upbeat on the market. JPMorgan's chief equity strategist Dubravko Lakos-Bujas <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/wall-street-biggest-bear-jpmorgan-stock-market-outlook-interest-rates-2024-10">recently recommended</a> investors should get less defensive after a strong September jobs report."While it is too soon to assume that this is a turning point, it does suggest that a recession is unlikely in the near term, especially since surprisingly strong job growth and a downtick in the unemployment rate broke a slowing trend in the job market," he said in a note earlier this month.Lakos-Bujas kept his 4,200 price target for the S&amp;P 500 unchanged, though.The more upbeat 2024 forecasts come as the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-outlook-bull-rally-anniversary-earnings-interest-rates-sp500-2024-10">bull market charges on</a>, with the S&amp;P 500 up 3.2% in the last month and 22.6% this year. Several risks persist, though, with the upcoming US presidential election in November, an unclear trajectory of monetary policy easing from the Fed as economic data comes in mixed, and as war in the Middle East continues to threaten stability in the region and beyond."Fiscal and monetary policy uncertainty, and potential election outcomes, make 2025 returns far from certain," UBS analysts said.

Top Wall Street analysts are boosting stock market forecasts as the bull market charges on

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Walmart stock has soared 58% this year to record highs, making its founding family richer than ever.</li><li>Retail legend Sam Walton's three surviving children are each worth more than $100 billion.</li></ul>Walmart stock has soared to record highs, lifting the retailer's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/life-of-the-walton-family-behind-walmart-and-sams-club-2018-12">founding family</a> to new levels of wealth. Experts say its signature strategy has fueled the stellar run, and they're not surprised to see the Waltons reap the rewards.Shares of Walmart have jumped 58% this year to about $83, valuing the company at nearly $670 billion at Wednesday's close. The stock surge has added more than $32 billion to the fortunes of each of founder Sam Walton's three surviving children — Jim, Rob, and Alice.The siblings rank among the world's 20 wealthiest people and have net worths <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wealth-billionaires-musk-bezos-zuckerberg-net-worth-jensen-huang-waltoans-2024-8">in excess of $100 billion</a>, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Together they're <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/walton-family-wealth-walmart-record-stock-billionaires-retail-rich-list-2024-8">far richer than Elon Musk</a>, who tops the rich list with a $237 billion net worth.Walmart generated $643 billion in net sales and $27 billion in operating income last year. The Sam's Club owner has about 10,500 stores worldwide and employs around 2.1 million people, including almost 1.6 million in the US — roughly 1% of the workforce.The megaretailer and its biggest shareholders owe much of their success to selling everyday products at low prices, David King, the Higdon Professor of Management at Florida State University and the coauthor of a 2017 case study on Walmart, told Business Insider.Value for money is top of mind for many shoppers, who've been hit in recent years by higher prices for basics such as food, fuel, and housing, and higher monthly payments on their credit cards, car loans, mortgages, and other debts.Inflation skyrocketed to a 40-year high of more than 9% in mid-2022 and remained above the Federal Reserve's 2% target in September. The central bank sought to curb the pace of price growth by raising interest rates to above 5% between March 2022 and July 2023, and only made its first cut this September.<h2 id="2abcc6e7-15b4-464c-9f4e-c778b703cf0f">Logistics network</h2>Walmart also benefits from ubiquity, with 90% of the US population living within 10 miles of one of its stores, according to its website. The retailer has steadily expanded by entering smaller markets that could only support one large retailer — limiting competition — then using its scale economies to undercut mom-and-pop stores and drive them out of business, King said.The company has also built a national logistics network to support its growing store count and thus bolster its purchasing power, enabling it to negotiate ever-lower prices from suppliers and offer greater value and convenience to customers, King added. He noted that Walmart and its associated businesses accounted for 16% of Procter &amp; Gamble's sales last year.Art Weinstein, a marketing professor at Nova Southeastern University in Florida who's published academic research on Walmart, attributed its <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://businessinsider.com/walmart-finding-groove-should-terrify-target-2024-5">success</a> to similar factors.He told BI the stock's outperformance reflects inflationary pressures and investors perceiving Walmart as a "safe investment in troubling world markets."Weinstein credited Sam Walton's philosophy of centering the customer plus the company's low prices, one-stop shopping experience, supply chain expertise, strong partnerships with suppliers, vast scale in grocery retailing, and innovations such as the Walmart+ subscription program.<div type="image" title="exterior of a walmart" height="3109" width="4664" msid="114543373" hostid="261" sizebytes="626096"></div><h2 id="c237c42e-eee2-4359-abf8-7b50afd3e99c">Family fortunes</h2>Sam Walton shrewdly structured his fledgling company as a family partnership in 1953, giving 20% stakes to each of his four children. Put differently, he <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/walton-family-sam-walmart-stock-billionaires-estate-planning-inheritance-wealth-2024-8">handed 80% of Walmart to his kids</a> when it was worth next to nothing, sparing them from paying billions of dollars in estate taxes to inherit his stock after he died in 1992.King told BI he wasn't surprised to see the Waltons near the top of a rich list dominated by technology bosses like Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg."Walmart is a family firm that is in its second generation, or the initial value created by Sam Walton has not been split across multiple heirs," King said.The late John T. Walton's son, Lukas Walton, ranks in the top 50 of Bloomberg's wealth index with a nearly $37 billion fortune. But it's true the vast majority of the family fortune remains in the hands of Sam Walton's children."Wealth rarely lasts past the grandchildren or three generations, as the number of heirs in the third generation increases and they are used to living wealthy," King said.The management professor added that the Waltons have retained more of the company over the years because Walmart, unlike many tech companies, has largely self-financed its scaling."The wealth is more concentrated, because Walmart used mostly internal growth that funded expansion from revenues," he said. "In contrast, tech billionaires are more dependent on external investors to scale up, giving more ownership to investors, versus founders."<h2 id="3dfe9f76-de5b-4d2b-86f2-4207e3cf2b49">$100 billion club</h2>Weinstein, the marketing professor, also told BI he wasn't surprised to see the Waltons in the $100 billion club, as the US stock market rewards strong business performance.Tech firms and founders are "generally the most high-profile wealth creators as it is easier to scale online companies which benefit from the network effect, and tech firms may be perceived as sexier, more interesting, and revolutionary," he said, giving Musk's empire of businesses including Tesla and SpaceX as an example."Walmart's success takes largely a different path by truly mastering the daily business fundamentals," Weinstein added.Yet he ticked off several threats to Walmart. It faces <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-fulfilment-creating-pressure-for-amazon-wells-fargo-says-2024-10">competition</a> from local rivals like Amazon and Target, as well as Chinese upstarts such as <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-shein-temu-and-amazon-compare-2023-8">Temu and Shein</a>.The company might struggle to find talent when it's already the largest employer in the US, and bagging great executives could be tough when top graduates tend to prefer management consulting and tech gigs. Retail's long working days and weekend shifts are also a "turn-off for many excellent employees," he said."One potential concern is that Walmart attracts older customers," he added. "Will their products and stores <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-tiktok-attracts-gen-z-shoppers-2020-1">appeal</a> to millennial and Gen Z shoppers going forward?"

Why Walmart stock keeps hitting new highs, making the Waltons richer than ever

<ul class="summary-list"><li>CrowdStrike explained in a memo how a faulty update caused a global Microsoft IT outage on Friday.</li><li>CrowdStrike said on Wednesday that its Rapid Response Content update contained an undetected error.</li></ul>Many of the world's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/major-disruptions-airline-bank-london-stock-exchange-microsoft-outage-2024-7">airlines, banks, and retailers came to a grinding halt last Friday</a> after a faulty update caused a global Microsoft IT outage. Now the cybersecurity firm behind the update, CrowdStrike, is explaining what happened.In a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.crowdstrike.com/falcon-content-update-remediation-and-guidance-hub/">memo released Wednesday</a>, CrowdStrike said an update to its Rapid Response Content, which is "designed to respond to the changing threat landscape at operational speed," contained an "undetected error."That error — explained in CrowdStrike's full memo, included below — caused <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/crowdstrike-global-it-outage-one-defective-it-update-sparked-chaos-2024-7">chaos around the world</a>. <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/united-american-warn-pilots-of-communication-issues-amid-grounding-2024-7">Thousands of flights were canceled</a>, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mass-it-outage-911-lines-down-parts-of-us-havoc-2024-7">emergency 911 services went down</a>, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/supermarkets-fast-food-chains-retailers-disrupted-global-it-outage-2024-7">retailers closed stores or accepted only cash payments</a>, and some <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mass-it-outage-companies-operations-airlines-affected-microsoft-crowdstrike-2024-7">hospital operations were delayed or disrupted</a>.CrowdStrike quickly deployed a fix, but <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/crowdstrike-outage-why-taking-time-companies-recover-2024-7">it took time to go into effect</a>, with some systems <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fix-windows-computer-blue-screen-death-what-to-try-2024-7">requiring a manual reboot</a>.It amounted to the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/global-it-outage-y2k-24-years-later-crowdstrike-cyber-expert-2024-7">largest IT outage in history</a>, and some companies, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-flight-cancellations-delays-worst-hit-airline-it-outage-2024-7">such as Delta Air Lines</a>, are still recovering from the fallout.Read CrowdStrike's memo below:

Read the memo from CrowdStrike explaining how its update broke the world's computers

<ul><li><keyword id="35210" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sebi" source="Orion">SEBI</keyword> has put out a consultation paper on <keyword id="152818" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="algorithmic-trading" source="Orion">algorithmic trading</keyword> by retail investors yesterday.</li><li>The market regulator has suggested additional restrictions before executing an algo trade to which online broking firms providing such services have raised their concerns.</li><li><keyword id="6377626" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="algo-trading" source="Orion">Algo trading</keyword> means a sell/buy order gets executed automatically when the pre-defined levels are met.</li></ul>A consultation paper by India’s market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), that came out on December 9, regarding algorithmic trading by retail investors is a topic of concern for online trading platforms offering automated services to trade in the stock market. Algorithmic/algo trading means a sell/buy order gets executed automatically when the predefined levels are met. For example: You have 10 stocks of ABC company bought at ₹10 and you feel the stock will move up to ₹20. In such a case you can put an upper limit to the selling price and execute a trade beforehand. This sets you free from monitoring the stock every minute and executing the trade conveniently. So, definitely it feels like algo trading is the future, but apparently there are many concerns for the regulator regarding the misuse of such automated products especially by retail investors who have a small ticket size (average amount of investment). "This kind of unregulated/unapproved algos pose a risk to the market and can be misused for systematic market manipulation as well as to lure the retail investors by guaranteeing them higher returns. The potential loss in case of failed algo strategy is huge for retail investor [sic],” said SEBI in the consultation paper. Some of the key factors from <keyword id="12710158" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sebi-consultation-paper" source="Orion">SEBI consultation paper</keyword> that indicates it wants to control algo services for retail investors. <ul><li>Stock exchanges — BSE, NSE — should approve all algo trades before execution from stock brokers.</li><li>Stock exchanges need to develop a system to ensure that only those algos which are approved by the exchange and having unique algo ID provided by the exchange are being deployed.</li><li>Brokers shall also deploy suitable technological tools to ensure that appropriate checks are in place to prevent unauthorised altering/tweaking of algos.</li><li>All algos developed by any entity have to run on the servers of broker wherein the broker has control of client orders, order confirmations, margin information etc</li><li>Stock brokers need to have adequate checks in place so that the algo performs in a controlled manner.</li><li>Stock broker is responsible for all algos emanating from its application programming interface (APIs) and redressal of any investor disputes.</li></ul>SEBI has put out the paper to seek comments from various stakeholders including market intermediaries. One of the online broking platforms that offer algo services to investors says that SEBI may want to control the automated process. “SEBI has put [out] a consultation paper with the intent of curbing unregulated algo platforms that promise guaranteed returns. But the way it's planned will mean brokers will have to stop offering APIs. This will be 2 steps back in a tech-first future,” said Nithin Kamath, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of <keyword id="759851" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="zerodha" source="Orion">Zerodha</keyword> in a tweet. Deepak Shenoy, founder and CEO at wealth management firm Capitalmind said the problem isn’t algorithms, it's the way humans are misusing the technology. “The problem wasn’t the algorithm. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. But the human thinking that technology could save the day was exactly what ruined the day. Too many people blindly relied on technology that didn't know how to deal with the compounding effects of its own actions,” said Shenoy. Head of investment platform Dhan — Pravin Jadhav — also shared his views on SEBI’s recommendations saying SEBI is not intending to ban it, but wants more accountability on such trades. “SEBI wants stock exchanges to know which orders are coming from where and how; as a regulator it is a very fair ask [sic]. If you are worried because you are doing something wrong, then you shouldn’t be doing that in the first place,” said Jadhav. SEBI’s growing concerns over misuse of the automated features to trade in stocks is in line with the increasing popularity of algo trading platforms especially for young investors. In the consultation paper, SEBI is asking brokers to get exchange approvals for every algo trade, which is ‘an extremely tedious and complex process’ as per Kamath. Disallowing APIs will just shift investors from using broker APIs to third party automation tools which aren't in the control of the brokers. API establishes an online connection between a data provider (i.e., stock broker) and an end-user (i.e., client). SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/metro-brands-that-is-open-for-ipo-is-aggressively-planning-on-opening-new-stores-despite-covid-19s-impact-on-its-profits/articleshow/88204220.cms">Metro Brands is aggressively planning on opening new stores despite COVID-19’s impact on its profits</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/pharmeasy-ipo-is-now-facing-a-rejection-plea-from-traders-lobby/articleshow/88207514.cms">After chemists’ body, traders demand rejection of PharmEasy’s IPO</a>

Tech-enabled broking firms like Zerodha raise concerns over SEBI’s views on algo trading

<ul class="summary-list"><li>JPMorgan's top strategist had something positive to say about stocks for the first time in a while.</li><li>JPMorgan chief equity strategist Dubravko Lakos-Bujas said investors should get less defensive.</li></ul>Strategists at JPMorgan <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-outlook-risk-fed-hawkish-policy-error-marko-kolanovic-2022-10?utm_medium=ingest&amp;utm_source=markets">have been bearish on the stock market</a> since October 2022.But that seems to be changing, based on a Tuesday note from <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/jpm-stock?miRedirects=1&amp;utm_medium=ingest&amp;utm_source=markets">JPMorgan</a> chief global equity strategist Dubravko Lakos-Bujas.While Lakos-Bujas didn't update his firm's year-end <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/index/s&amp;p_500">S&amp;P 500</a> price target of 4,200, which implies a steep 27% decline from current levels, he did recommend investors turn less bearish on the market."We are neutralizing our long Defensive and short Cyclicals view," Lakos-Bujas said.The Federal Reserve cutting interest rates and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-stimulus-fix-economy-xi-jinping-stock-market-2024-10">China unleashing new stimulus measures</a> are driving the change in Lakos'-Bujas' sentiment."Policy support from the world's largest economies are coming at a time of surprisingly resilient US growth with tight labor markets, ongoing government deficit spending, and record highs across equities, credit, and housing," Lakos-Bujas said.The bank also pointed to the solid health of US consumers, who have <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/americans-richest-theyve-ever-been-with-164-trillion-net-worth-2024-9">collectively added $50 trillion to their wealth since Covid.</a>According to data from the Federal Reserve, US consumers have about $185 trillion in assets, made up mostly of stocks and bonds, homes, and cash, and just $21 trillion in debts. That's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/americans-richest-theyve-ever-been-with-164-trillion-net-worth-2024-9">a healthy balance sheet.</a>Lakos-Bujas is also encouraged by solid corporate earnings growth, which is expected to accelerate from 3% over the past two years to 12% over the next two years."US corporates have been increasingly focused on recycling pre-tax income into investment spending rather than returning after-tax profits to shareholders through buybacks, which is also helping to stimulate the economy," Lakos-Bujas explained.Part of that has been driven by the AI tech boom, with mega-cap tech companies expected to accelerate their R&amp;D and capex investments to more than $500 billion per year."In our view, these drivers, along with US Exceptionalism, are helping offset the uneven macro weakness," Lakos-Bujas said.He added: "While it is too soon to assume that this is a turning point, it does suggest that a recession is unlikely in the near term, especially since surprisingly strong job growth and a downtick in the unemployment rate broke a slowing trend in the job market."But Lakos-Bujas didn't turn completely bullish on stocks. The strategist warned that the November Presidential election could inject volatility into markets depending on the outcome, and lower interest rates could represent a headwind for corporate profits, particularly in the financial sector.

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