Author: News Room

OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FINTECH SNARK TANK Small business owners face a credit crisis—and the problem is even worse for minorities. There is a solution—and it doesn’t require regulatory changes. The Small Business Credit Crisis If you search online for “small business challenges,” the list that Google returns is nearly endless. The US Chamber of Commerce boils the list down to the top five of which #2 is “access to credit.” Of small business owners who applied for a business loan in early 2023, six in 10 found it difficult to find affordable financing, and overall, 77% are concerned about their…

A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link. When the bulls come out to play, the bears are ready to pounce. The S&P 500 reached its 17th record-high close of 2024 on Tuesday, though it has since pulled back a bit from that milestone on renewed inflation concerns. The Dow Jones Industrial Average index has also set repeated record highs this year, and the Nasdaq Composite closed in February at a record…

The markets are rallying exuberantly for BTC for a couple of reasons this March. Institutional investors bought deep after the SEC opened up Wall Street access to Bitcoin price exposure through custodial spot ETFs. That only adds to the scarcity shock with the supply halving coming up next month. However, many blockchain crypto trading strategists think it is hard to overstate the importance of the ETF approvals by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The new paradigm does not merely allow regulated investors to do so. It caps off a year of incredibly welcoming and accommodating policies for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies…

Palantir CEO Alex Karp said some staffers at his software company have exited due to his public support for Israel. And he expects to see more walk out the door.”We’ve lost employees. I’m sure we’ll lose employees,” Karp said in an interview Wednesday with CNBC’s “Money Movers.” “If you have a position that does not cost you ever to lose an employee, it’s not a position.”Karp was responding to a question from anchor Sara Eisen about personnel turnover at the company resulting from its controversial stances.Palantir, known for its government contract work in defense and intelligence, has provided its technology…

In February 2024, the question “What is emotional intelligence?” was Googled three times more than it was a decade ago, according to data from Google Trends.The uptick in interest makes sense: in recent years everyone from CEOs to therapists have touted the benefits of having high emotional intelligence or EQ.Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage your own feelings and the feelings of those around you. Those who have higher EQ tend to be better at building relationships both in and outside of the workplace, and excel at defusing conflict.EQ isn’t as easy to quantify as other types of skills…

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that public officials may block people on social media in certain circumstances, tossing aside challenges against local government officials in Michigan and California who blocked followers who were critical of them on Facebook. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court set a clearer standard for when public officials are state actors online and when they can have more control over their social media presence. A second opinion dealing with a related dispute was unsigned and there were no noted dissents. In an era when public officials often communicate with voters…

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Irish chef and cookbook author, Darina Allen came to New York to present The New Ballymaloe Bread Book. We love soda bread and brown bread, but thought it would be timely to sit down with Darina to chat about Irish cuisine. Darina Allen: I’ve been coming to New York for twenty years and I love the fact that here, everybody is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, no matter where they’re from! Do you know that many Irish people had never tasted corned beef and cabbage, supposedly our most famous specialty? You have to…

While I have long argued that volatility does not equal risk, I understand that most would prefer a smoother ride for their investments without sacrificing return. Many are constantly in search of this Holy Grail, yet it can be found in plain sight. Indeed, Dividend-Paying Stocks have outperformed Non-Dividend-Paying Stocks over the past nine-plus decades by a return score of 10.6% per annum to 9.0% per annum based on portfolios constructed by Professors Eugene F. Fama and Kenneth R. French. Equally important, Dividend Payers have achieved that performance advantage with lower standard deviation of returns (lower volatility) as depicted in…

I am always keen to shamelessly remind readers that I am a man who can ‘see around corners’, as they say. In 2018, as I handed in the last draft of ‘The Levelling’ I wrote the following regarding Russia, its broad strategy of ‘total war’ and more specifically its tactic of ‘maskirovka’… ‘Some countries, such as Russia, are already practicing war by “many means”—that is, where traditional military force is mixed with covert action, propaganda, and disinformation. The Russian doctrine of maskirovka, has roots that go back to the fourteenth-century Battle of Kulikovo and was further developed more recently, beginning…

At the start of the digital revolution, Bill Gates said that “banking is necessary; banks are not.” That was back in 1994. After 30 years of digital change disrupting dozens of industries, it’s not clear that he was right. The biggest changes in banking to date focus much more on “how” than “what.” Customers interact with banks way more often now than in the pre-digital days, but those interactions mostly consist of checking balances and moving money between accounts. It’s been 25 years since the start of the dotcom boom and not a single digital-only bank has truly hit scale…