Business category, Page 131
Electric skates, pet tech and AI for birds at CES 2023
LAS VEGAS — Tech companies of all sizes are showing off their latest products at CES, formerly known as the Consumer Electronics show. The show is getting back to normal after going completely virtual in 2021 and seeing a significant drop in 2022 attendance because of the pandemic. Exhibitors range...
Futures inch higher ahead of the release of Fed notes
Wall Street pointed modestly higher Wednesday ahead of the release of notes from the most recent Federal Reserve meeting, which investors hope might hint at a less aggressive stance on interest rates, a tool that the Fed has used to tame inflation. Futures for the benchmark S&P 500 index and...
John Dorfman: Robot Portfolio chugs on, up 915% in 24 years
Give that Robot some new polish! The Robot Portfolio is a hypothetical collection of 10 stocks I have compiled each year beginning in 1999. In 24 years, it has achieved a cumulative 915% return, compared with 373% for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The 10 stocks are picked by...
Southwest Airlines sending vouchers to passengers disrupted by holiday meltdown
Southwest Airlines is sending out vouchers worth as much as $300 to clean up the reputational damage from canceling more than 17,100 flights in eight days around Christmas. Dallas-based Southwest Airlines is trying to untangle a mess it made after winter weather swept across the country in the days before...
Wall Street slips in 2023 open after ending dismal year
Stocks gave up an early gain and ended lower Tuesday, a lackluster first trading day of 2023 for Wall Street just days after it closed the books on its worst year since 2008. The S&P 500 shed a 1% gain and finished 0.4% lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped...
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty in New York
NEW YORK — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court Tuesday to charges that he cheated investors and looted customer deposits on his cryptocurrency trading platform. Bankman-Fried, 30, is accused of illegally diverting massive sums of customer money from FTX to make lavish real estate purchases,...
At Southwest Airlines, a day of recovery after week of chaos
Southwest Airlines returned to a relatively normal flight schedule Friday, as the focus shifts to making things right with what could be well more than a million passengers who missed family connections or flights home during the holidays, and many of whom are still missing luggage. The Dallas carrier, which...
Ringing in the new year means staying on the clock for many workers
It’s a night of high expectations for people who want their celebrations to be memorable. But, for those providing service, New Year’s Eve can be a nonstop, thankless grind. The host of servers, bartenders, drivers and others behind the scenes generally make the party possible for revelers. Alcohol flows in...
Explainer: 2023 tax credits for EVs will boost their appeal
WASHINGTON — Starting Jan. 1, many Americans will qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500 for buying an electric vehicle. The credit, part of changes enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act, is designed to spur EV sales and reduce greenhouse emissions. But a complex web of requirements, including...
Southwest hopes to return to full schedule Friday after canceling thousands of flights
The nightmare may be over soon for Southwest Airlines flyers whose holiday travels have been anything but smooth sailing. After canceling thousands of flights because of winter weather and a major technology meltdown, company leaders at Southwest told employees Wednesday that they hope to have a full schedule restored by...
Policy, climate, war make 2022 ‘pivot year’ for clean energy
BENGALURU, India — For renewable energy companies in India, it’s a good time to be in business. One of India’s largest renewable energy firms, Renew Power, will be among the corporations big and small hoping for a piece of a $2.6 billion government scheme that encourages the domestic manufacturing of...
Starbucks refused union contract talks at 21 cafes, NLRB says
Starbucks Corp. has illegally refused to negotiate at 21 recently unionized cafes in Washington state and Oregon, U.S. labor board prosecutors alleged in a complaint. In a Tuesday filing on behalf of the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel, the agency’s Seattle regional director wrote that Starbucks “has been failing...
Rocky ride: Tesla stock on pace for worst year ever
LOS ANGELES — Owning Tesla stock this year has been anything but a smooth ride for investors. Shares in the electric vehicle maker are down nearly 70% since the start of the year, on pace to finish in the bottom five biggest decliners among S&P 500 stocks. By comparison, the...
Pain, few gains for investors as markets slumped in 2022
Investors found few, if any, places to safely put their money in 2022, as central banks in the U.S. and around the globe raised interest rates for the first time in years to fight surging inflation, stoking fear of a global recession. Uncertainty about how far the Federal Reserve and...
Stocks edge higher on Wall Street; Southwest losses mount
Stocks edged higher in morning trading on Wall Street Wednesday as investors count down to the end of the worst year for the S&P 500 since 2008. The S&P 500 rose 0.1% as of 10:12 a.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 12 points, or less than 0.1%, to...
‘Maybe I will cry’: Southwest travelers in Pittsburgh frustrated by cancellations, delays
Barbara Gray and her husband, Ken, stood at the back of a long, winding line of frustrated passengers Tuesday morning waiting to get to the Southwest Airlines ticket counter at Pittsburgh International Airport. Like many others in line, their flight had been canceled — one of at least 35 Southwest...
Emails reveal Sam Bankman-Fried’s courtship of federal regulators
ALAMEDA, Calif. — Before his arrest in mid-December, cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried repeatedly claimed that he was a responsible business leader who sought more regulation of cryptocurrency and wanted his industry to be part of the mainstream financial system. But now that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and...
Holiday sales up 7.6% despite the squeeze of inflation
NEW YORK — Holiday sales rose this year as American spending remained resilient during the critical shopping season despite surging prices on everything from food to rent, according to one measure. Holiday sales rose 7.6%, a slower pace than the 8.5% increase from a year earlier when shoppers began spending...
Judge kept FTX execs’ plea deals secret to get founder to U.S.
NEW YORK — A judge agreed to a request by prosecutors to keep it secret that two of Sam Bankman-Fried’s executive associates had turned against him so that the cryptocurrency entrepreneur would agree not to fight extradition from the Bahamas to the United States, according to transcripts of plea deals...
Buy Now, Pay Later options heat up during holiday season
Whether you’re shopping for tech deals on Amazon or indie crafts on Etsy, you probably noticed there are more options at checkout than just using a credit card. More retailers are using “Buy Now, Pay Later” platforms such as Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay and Paypal to spread out payments in installments....
U.S. economy grew 3.2% in third quarter, an upgrade from earlier estimateVideo
WASHINGTON — Shrugging off rampant inflation and rising interest rates, the U.S. economy grew at an unexpectedly strong 3.2% annual pace from July through September, the government reported Thursday in a healthy upgrade from its earlier estimate of third-quarter growth. The rise in gross domestic product — the economy’s output...
Stocks slide as economic data stokes rate hike worries
Stocks closed broadly lower Thursday on Wall Street as stronger-than-expected reports on the U.S. economy stoked worries about interest rates staying high. The S&P 500 fell 1.4% after having been down as much as 2.9% earlier in the day. The pullback brings Wall Street’s main measure of health back to...
John Dorfman: Sifting through the ashes of 2022’s biggest disasters
Coinbase Global Inc. leads this year’s list of stock-market disasters. Here are the stocks down the most through Dec. 16, among all stocks with a market value of $5 billion or more. • Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN) 85.5% • Snap Inc. (SNAP) 82% • Twilio Inc. (TWLO) 81.8% • Lucid...
Wall Street gains ground, turning higher for the weekVideo
NEW YORK — Stocks closed broadly higher Wednesday on Wall Street and pushed major indexes into the green for the week, as investors welcomed a report showing consumer confidence is holding up better than expected. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite each rose 1.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained...
Musk says Twitter in precarious position, defends cost cuts
SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk is defending his massive cost-cutting at Twitter as necessary for the social media platform to survive next year, due in part to debt payments tied to his $44 billion takeover of the company. “This company is like, basically, you’re in a plane that is headed...
