First Solar (FSLR): An In-depth Analysis of Its Overvaluation

Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. (NASDAQ:BWMN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 12, 2023 Operator: Good morning. My name is Emily, and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Bowman Consulting Group Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that many of the comments […] Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. (NASDAQ:BWMN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 12, 2023 Operator: Good morning. My name is Emily, and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Bowman Consulting Group Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that many of the comments made today are considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. As described in the company’s filings with the SEC, these statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause future results to differ from those expressed and the company is not obligated to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements. In addition, on today’s call, the company will discuss certain non-GAAP financial information, such as adjusted EBITDA and net service billing. You can find this information together with the reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP information in the company’s earnings press release and 8-K filed with the SEC and on the company’s investor website at investors.bowman.com. Management will deliver prepared remarks, after which they will be taking live questions from published research analysis throughout the call. Attendees on the webcast may post questions from management to answer on the call or in subsequent communications, but there will be no live Q&A from the webcast attendees. Replays of the call will be available on the company’s investor website. Mr. Bowman, you may begin your prepared remarks. Gary Bowman: Thank you, Emily. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the Bowman Consulting second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. I’m joined here today by Bruce Labovitz, our CFO, and were joined virtually by many of our dedicated employees who are listening in on the webcast. Everything that we accomplished as a result of an extended team effort, and we’re extremely appreciative of the hard work and client-first mindset exhibited by everyone associated with Bowman each and every day. During the second quarter, we welcomed some exciting additions to our organization which will serve as a solid building block for the second half of the year and beyond. We completed five acquisitions, adding roughly $36 million of annualized net service revenue and over 250 new employees to Bowman. Each of these acquisitions presented a compelling strategic rationale with respect to clients, geographies and complementary service offerings. But more importantly, the cultures of each of these companies aligned well with ours. Cultural compatibility is key to rapid and successful integration and facilitating immediate buy-in to the tenets of work sharing and cross referrals which result in accelerated growth opportunities, promotional revenue synergies and expansion of customer wallet share. In addition to the staff we added through acquisition, we organically expanded our workforce during the quarter by adding close to 50 professionals to ensure the timely delivery of work we’ve been awarded over the past six months and expect to deliver to customers over the year ahead. Our pace of new orders in the quarter complemented our M&A activity in the quarter. Once again, with gross orders exceeding $90 million, we achieved a book-to-burn ratio of greater than 1, which means our backlog grew independent of the acquisitions. We believe our industry continues to experience strong momentum as the overall infrastructure market remains in expansion mode fueled by a positive funding and incentivized environment coupled with unprecedented demand for innovation and transformation. I’m pleased with our ongoing progress toward revenue diversification, and I’m also encouraged by the degree of visibility we have into future demand for our broad set of services. In the second quarter, we delivered 13% organic growth. I’m often asked how we consistently achieve well above average organic growth rates and how we approach strategic growth. The answer is we have a multi-pronged top-to-bottom all-in commitment both to continuously expanding our breadth of customer relationships and to deepening the existing relationships we are privileged to enjoy. Organic growth is supported and realized by four primary pillars of our culture. First, a company-wide commitment to capitalizing on revenue synergy opportunities through full and rapid integration of the firms we acquire. Second, an unconstrained commitment to work sharing, cross referrals and utilization optimization promoted by our leadership and supported by our investments in technology; and third, a strong depth of customer knowledge and trust resulting from our long-tenured staff and an unparalleled commitment to individual and professional development; and fourth, our strong ownership culture and our compensation philosophy that focuses for rewards on broad company success while discouraging protected and siloed operations. We believe that our disciplined adherence to these four foundational values enables us to consistently deliver outsized organic growth rates. I’m now going to turn the call over to Bruce to talk about our financial results, after which, I’ll take a few minutes to discuss our markets, our M&A pipeline and our outlook. Bruce? Bruce Labovitz: Terrific. Thank you, Gary. Second quarter was active with five new acquisitions to underwrite, close, account for and integrate. I’m pleased to be here today reporting on another consecutive quarter of growth and positive progress toward our strategic objectives of achieving $500 million of annual revenue combined with above-average margins. Gross revenue for the second quarter increased $20.4 million or 33% to $82.8 million as compared to $62.4 million during the second quarter of last year. Building infrastructure represented 59% of our gross revenue for the quarter, with transportation and power each representing 19% of gross revenue. Year-over-year organic growth of gross revenue in the quarter was over 13%, which included our 2022 McMahon and Perry acquisitions, both of which have now passed their one year anniversary mark. Within the quarter, for-sale residential represented approximately 11% of gross revenue. Commercial, which includes a broad collection of submarkets, including data centers, industrial parks, MEP work, quick-serve restaurants, convenience stores and big box retail accounted for roughly 27% of gross revenue. Suburban and dense urban office is not a huge component of our commercial revenue base. Year-to-date, gross revenue was up $43.9 million or 38% to $158.9 million as compared to $114.9 million in the first six months of last year. Year-to-date, building infrastructure represented 59% of our gross revenue with transportation and power representing 20% and 18%, respectively. Last year, at the midpoint of the year, building infrastructure represented 71% of our gross revenue, with transportation and power representing 12% and 16%, respectively. This diversification has been deliberate and the effort continues to be a focus of our growth initiatives. Organic growth for the six months is 22%, again with McMahon and Perry included in the comparison. During the first half of ’23, for-sale residential represented approximately 11% of gross revenue and commercial accounted for roughly 27%. Net service billing in the quarter, second quarter, increased $17.4 million or 31% to $73.8 million as compared to $56.4 million in the second quarter of last year. Organic growth of net service billing was roughly 12% in the quarter, including McMahon and Perry. Our net to gross ratio remained high at just under 90%, up about 100 basis points from last year. While this ratio will ebb and flow from quarter-to-quarter, our goal is to operate at an 85% to 90% net-to-gross ratio as we grow the top line. Net service billing for the six months increased $37.3 million or 36% to $141.4 million as compared to $104.1 million in the first half of last year. Organic growth of net service billing was roughly 20%, again now including McMahon and Perry. Gross margin for the second quarter was 50.4%, which was 20 basis points higher than gross margin in the second quarter of 2022. Year-to-date, gross margin was 50.6%, which is 20 basis points below the first half of 2022. These margins are in line with what we believe is a normal couple hundred basis point range, which we will experience given our current portfolio of services and assignments. We continue to work toward overhead leverage as we build increasing scale and plateau the rise in costs associated with being a public company. Inclusive of stock compensation not accounted for in cost of goods sold, SG&A was up 200 basis points as a percentage of net revenue in the second quarter and was likewise up in the first half as compared to last year. About half of that increase about 100 basis points is attributable to increased stock compensation, with the balance being overhead labor, bonuses and fringe costs. Completion of several integrations, including McMahon, over the past few months, will, we believe, eliminate some duplication of functionality and contribute to the scaling of margins in the second half of 2023. For the second quarter, we reported a net loss of $600,000 as compared to a net loss of $300,000 last year. For the first half of 2023, we generated a net loss of $100,000 as compared to a net profit of $1.1 million last year. This increase in net loss is attributable both to a buildup of labor in advance of work we anticipate delivering and to increase noncash compensation costs. So turning to adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA was up 46% in the second quarter to $11.1 million as compared to $7.7 million last year. Adjusted EBITDA margin net increased by 150 basis points to 15% as compared to 13.5%. For the year, adjusted EBITDA was up 38.3% to $20.7 million as compared to $15 million last year. Adjusted EBITDA margin net during the first half increased by 30 basis points to 14.7% as compared to 14.4%. As we add acquisitions and headcount, we continue along our nonlinear journey to a consistent high teens adjusted EBITDA margin net when we achieve our $500 million of net service billing. On the tax front, we continue to monitor for guidance with respect to recently adopted changes to Section 174, research and development expense capitalization rules. In the absence of clear guidance to the contrary, we continue to believe we will not be subject to capitalization of our R&D expenses based on the specific circumstances of our business. Because this is evolving tax law, and therefore, ours is an evolving interpretation, we maintain an uncertain tax position, a UTP relating to this potential liability, which reflects through our statement of cash flows before changes in working capital as deferred tax, offset by a long-term payable. We will continue to monitor and report on this consequential issue to our industry. On June 30, and still as of today, we have 14.6 million shares outstanding, including all shares issued in connection with recent acquisitions and $2.5 million in restricted stock awards that will vest between July 1, 2023, and December 31, 2027. We have not made any repurchases under our $10 million stock repurchase authorization. Backlog at the end of the quarter was approximately $295 million, up close to $90 million as compared to June 30, 2022. Backlog revenue is made up of approximately 56% building infrastructure, 25% transportation, 16% power and utility and 3% other emerging revenue areas. Backlog is up over $50 million from year-end 2022, which is in part from acquisitions and in part from sales continuing to outpace revenue. Last week, we announced the closing on a first amendment to our amended and restated credit facility with Bank of America, what we refer to as our revolving credit facility or a revolver. The primary change to the revolving credit facility was an increase in the maximum borrowing capacity from $50 million to $70 million. This increased availability gives us additional flexibility in our M&A program. As of June 30, we had just over $21 million outstanding on the line with $9 million in cash reserves for a net of $12 million. The second quarter involved an extra payroll period with the final payroll falling on the last day of the quarter. While this didn’t affect GAAP results, the timing did add to the amount outstanding under the revolver at the end of the quarter. The revolver is what’s called a zero balance sweep, so the balance ebbs and flows daily. As of today, the outstanding has been reduced under $18 million or around $9 million on a net basis. Net debt at the end of the quarter was $61.2 million, which resulted in a leverage ratio of 1.5 on trailing fourth quarter’s adjusted EBITDA and approximately $1.2 million on the midpoint of forward guidance. Cash flow from operations was $2 million, which included approximately $13 million before working capital with $10 million being expended toward changes in working capital. In connection with the four new acquisitions added since our last conference call, we are increasing our net service billing guidance from a range of $285 million to $300 million to a range of $300 million to $315 million. We’re also increasing and tightening our guidance for adjusted EBITDA from a range of $44 million to $50 million to a range of $47 million to $52 million. This accounts for approximately $14.5 million of net revenue and $2.5 million of adjusted EBITDA projected from new acquisitions based on the timing of the closings. With that, I’m going to turn the call back over to Gary for his concluding remarking. Gary Bowman: Thank you, Bruce. I’m going to turn briefly to our markets and our M&A pipeline before turning the call back to Emily for questions. As I mentioned, we continue to make good progress toward achieving market growth rates and revenue diversification. This quarter, we continued to deconcentrate our presence in the building infrastructure space while growing both our transportation and our power and utility services businesses. Over the course of one year, we’ve reduced building infrastructure revenue as a percentage of total revenue from just above 70% to below 60%, while growing our overall revenue base by 40%. At the same time, transportation revenue grew by 141% and nearly doubled its contribution to our gross revenue from 11% to 20%. Power and Utilities grew 60% year-over-year while increasing its total revenue contribution to gross revenue by nearly 20%, growing from 15% last year to 18% this year. I’m particularly encouraged by several awards we received this quarter. On the utility front, we expanded our relationship with Southwest Gas into Nevada. We’ve had a terrific long-standing partnership with Southwest Gas, and I’m appreciative of their confidence in us and with the great work our team has done for them. On the renewables front, we’re continuing to win substantial solar infrastructure and battery storage projects. We also continue to see the impact of early-stage planning for infrastructure build funded projects with new large and midsized DOT projects. On the building infrastructure front, we continue to experience strong demand for data centers and our homebuilding customers feel that they’ve seen the market bottom out and are experiencing much stronger new home demand so far this year than their business plans anticipated. Our Quick Service Restaurant clients are keeping us busy as they reconfigure their sights to accommodate changing customer habits and we are seeing substantial renewed activity in big box retail. While we continue to diversify our verticals, we’re also concentrating on developing and expanding our services in areas such as geospatial mapping and data capture, hydrology wastewater-related renewable energy solutions and digital services, including digital twinning, augmented reality and hidden infrastructure visualization. Our strong capital position enables us to be opportunistic with respect to investing in organic service line expansion and technology advancement. We’re extremely motivated to maintain a diversified but complementary portfolio of integrated risk mitigating service offerings that enable us to capture the greatest amount of customer wallet share as possible. While we’re not engaged with what is considered to be the hype end of artificial intelligence spectrum, we’ve been introducing practical artificial intelligence tools in several areas of our business. For example, we employ AI in our transportation group, where we’re utilizing computer vision to assist with asset inspection and condition assessment. This technology helps our engineers and designers identify problem payment conditions and mapping integrity issues while enabling us to help our customers with their capital planning. We’re also using AI internally in combination with other technologies such as generative design, 3D modeling, data processing and GIS. These tools allow us to generate smart and intelligent data sources that help our designers make the most informed decisions possible. We don’t approach AI as a replacement technology to us. It’s unleashing the potential of our professional staff to utilize their learned expertise to provide better, timelier and more cost-effective solutions to our customers. As we noted, we’re very active – we were very active in the M&A space in the second quarter, the acquisitions we have closed this year are experiencing strong business conditions, which we believe will enable them to make solid contributions to our future results. I’m pleased to have the leaders and the professional staff from Richter, Fisher, Hole Montes, MTX and infrastructure engineers to join our team. I spent a meaningful amount of my time working with Tim Vaughn, our Director of M&A on developing and advancing our pipeline of opportunities. I’m encouraged by the consistency of our opportunities and the prospect for several more acquisitions during the second half of the year. I’m confident we will once again be discussing newly completed acquisitions on our next earning call. I’ll conclude by reiterating that we continue to maintain a positive outlook towards the remainder of this year and towards achieving our long-term strategic goals over time. Emily, I’ll now turn the call back to you for questions. Q&A Session Follow Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. Follow Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy. Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Brent Thielman with D.A. Davidson. Brent, please go ahead. Your line is open. Brent Thielman: Hi, great. Thanks. Good morning, Gary. I always appreciate an update just on the progress you feel like you’re seeing from revenue synergies, how relevant is that to the low double-digit organic growth you’re seeing in the business, maybe how you’ve been able to leverage all the transactions you’ve done into sort of expanding revenue from new customers, existing customers, so forth. Gary Bowman: It’s quite relevant. It’s – the synergies from – our success in realizing synergies from the acquisitions is a very substantial contributor to our organic growth rate. Brent Thielman: And then I was a little – Gary Bowman: Go ahead, Brent. Brent Thielman: No. Please, Gary, you were adding to that. Gary Bowman: It’s – since we started on our program, it’s been part and parcel of our strategy is to search – is to maintain the cultural compatibility that was consistent with realizing revenue synergies and our culture of work sharing and revenue and referrals, cross referrals is we do that from the first day that an acquisition target comes on board. So we’ve been very successful in realizing the revenue synergies from acquired firms. Brent Thielman: Understood. Okay. I appreciate that, Gary. And then I was a little surprised to see the revenue in the backlog in the transportation vertical a little lower relative to the first quarter. Is there some lumpiness to that business, completion of certain activities. Maybe just your view on the prospects for that vertical here through the rest of the year? I assume there’s plenty of opportunities out there. Gary Bowman: You identified it. It is quite lumpy, and we have some very good prospects coming up for the rest of the year. Bruce Labovitz: Brent, what you – could you be more supportive of what you said you noticed? Brent Thielman: I was referencing just the backlog quarter-on-quarter. Maybe I’m mistaken, Bruce, but – Bruce Labovitz: Backlog. okay. I thought you talked about actual revenue. I thought you talked about actual revenue, sorry. Brent Thielman: Yes. Bruce Labovitz: You’re talking about the composition of backlog – Brent Thielman: Yes, just within the transportation vertical, I guess. Bruce Labovitz: Sorry. Yes. Gary Bowman: Just the timing of orders. Brent Thielman: Yes. Fair enough. And then, Bruce, thanks for the comments just around SG&A going forward. You mentioned some elimination of duplicative costs. I think you called out McMahon that among other things should be a tailwind in terms of just better SG&A leverage here. Is there something unique about that transaction and the overhead with it. I know it was a relatively larger deal for you. I’m just wondering just because the size of the other transactions you’re doing are also getting larger. Bruce Labovitz: Yes. There’s certainly – the difference in scale of acquisitions has impact on sort of the transition costs, right? But just more so is until an acquisition is fully integrated from a system’s point of view, you’re running dual systems. You’re running dual accounting processes, some duplication of payrolls and duplication of the cost of auditing. So yes, there’s some relativity, but it’s more the binary of, are they or aren’t they, that creates some leverage opportunity. So as we’re bringing some of the – the second half of last year had some big acquisitions and a lot of activity. And as we’re completing the integration, certainly we’re seeing some efficiency out of that. Brent Thielman: Got it. Okay. And just last one, I mean, $36 million in acquired revenue through the first half, obviously, very active here in the second quarter. I mean any objectives for the second half of the year in terms of your acquisition program, should we sort of not anticipate the first half pace will be staying, Gary or Bruce? Bruce Labovitz: Yes. We’re not going to put a number on it, lesson learned. But I think that we certainly intend to continue to be active. We have said our goal is always to do as well as last year and try to exceed it but without any specific target that we’re setting, we’re looking for good acquisitions. And as Gary said, we do expect to be talking about additional acquisitions by the time we get on the call in November. So it gives you an indication that we expect to continue to be active. Very pleased with the pipeline we have out there right now. And I think directionally, Brent, generally consistent with what we have been doing, right? While we say there’s opportunity for larger. The sweet spot right now is what you’ve been seeing. Brent Thielman: Understood. Thank you, guys. Bruce Labovitz: Thanks Brent. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Alex Rygiel with B. Riley. Alex, please go ahead. Your line is now open. Alex Rygiel: Gary and Bruce, very nice quarter. What surprised you in the quarter, if anything, either strengthening or weakening or anything of that nature? I’m sorry, what surprised you in the quarter? Any economic – anything about the business that you found – Bruce Labovitz: I guess a pleasant surprise is how soon it seems like the homebuilding industry has bottomed and recovered. We have seen some softening early – late last year and early this year, but lots of optimism amongst our customer base there. So that has certainly been a pleasant surprise. And not necessarily a surprise, maybe a crystallization like I mentioned in the remarks of this trend with the Quick Service Restaurants of the continued reconfiguration. We saw during COVID, it seems to be a permanent trend of reconfiguration of their sites to accommodate this – people aren’t eating in the restaurants now, but it’s more drive-through, more carryout. Alex Rygiel: And then within the transportation business, have you started to see – or even buildings business, have you started to see any federal funding evident yet in backlog, driving customer capital investment? Gary Bowman: We are. Yes, yes. yes. It’s a number of the projects that we are – there are opportunities that we’re providing proposals on that actually we anticipate closing on the next quarter or two, are driven by federal funding. Bruce Labovitz: Yes, we sort of survey the groups and the project managers for directional indication, and there’s certainly that sense of optimism. Remember, we’re at the very early stage in most of these projects, where the predominance of the funding will come to build whatever it is. But it’s the sense of confidence that the funding is available, that they will – that unlocks the willingness to initiate the project. And so it may not always necessarily be – it’s a direct correlation of 1:1, there is a fund, that funds what we do, but it’s a – funding is in place to start the process to feel comfortable to issue the RFPs to get started with the process, and that’s where we benefit the most. Alex Rygiel: And then, Bruce, as it relates to M&A, it sounded like you suggested that there’s increasing opportunities for larger transactions. Can you talk about that in a little bit more detail and any relevant sort of end markets that maybe some of these transactions are targeted at. Bruce Labovitz: Yes. So as we’ve said, the M&A is a spectrum of large and small. I mean, we have what we think is our high-frequency sweet spot that’s a little higher than last year. You’ve looked at the last couple of acquisitions has been in that $8 million to $10 million range. And it really is where we’re focused. We like these low-risk, easy-to-do impactful kinds of acquisitions. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t – similar to last year with McMahon where basically you had higher dollar value acquisitions scattered in there. So in the pipeline, there are larger opportunities. We’ve said that we’re not out hunting for $50 million and $100 million opportunities; sometimes you stumble on a bear, but that doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily looking for one. Where we’re really focused is kind of in that sweet spot of, let’s call it, $5 million to $15 million and then a few that maybe have $2 million and potentially $3 million on the front of them. And a lot of this is you play the opportunities, but you hunt for the – where the game is out the most. Alex Rygiel: Super helpful. Nice quarter. Keep it up, guys. Bruce Labovitz: Thanks Alex. Operator: There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Bowman, I turn the call back over to you. Gary Bowman: Thanks, Emily, and thanks, everyone, for listening to the call this morning. And thanks all the Bowman folks for continued hard work that you put in and to all our investors for the continued support. Good morning. Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect. Follow Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. Follow Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy......»»

Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript June 8, 2023 Planet Labs PBC beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.13, expectations were $-0.15. Operator: Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today’s Planet Labs PBC First Quarter of Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Anna, and I will be your moderator for today’s […] Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript June 8, 2023 Planet Labs PBC beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.13, expectations were $-0.15. Operator: Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today’s Planet Labs PBC First Quarter of Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Anna, and I will be your moderator for today’s call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions-and-answers at the end. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to pass the conference over to our host Chris Genualdi, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may go ahead. Chris Genualdi: Thanks, operator, and hello, everyone. Welcome to Planet’s first quarter of 2024 earnings call. Before we begin today’s call, we’d like to remind everyone that we may make forward-looking statements related to future events or our financial outlook. We also reference qualified pipeline, which represents potential sales leads that have not yet executed contracts. Any forward-looking statements are based on management’s current outlook, plans, estimates, expectations and projections. The inclusion of such forward-looking information should not be regarded as a representation by Planet that future plans, estimates or expectations will be achieved. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and assumptions as detailed in our SEC filings, which can be found at www.sec.gov. Our actual results or performance may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements and we undertake no responsibility to update such forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which the statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. During the call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures. We use these non-GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. We believe that these measures provide useful information about operating results, enhance the overall understanding of past financial performance and future prospects, and allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision making. For more information on the non-GAAP financial measures, please see the reconciliation tables provided in our press release issued earlier this afternoon. Further, throughout this call, we provide a number of key performance indicators used by management and often used by competitors in our industry. These and other key performance indicators are discussed in more detail in our press release. Before we jump in, I’d like to encourage everyone to reference the slides we have posted on our Investor Relations website, which are intended to accompany our prepared remarks. Finally, for each of the customer contracts referenced during this call, please note that the revenue figures we site will generally be recognized over the term of the contract, which can last several years. Further, the terms of these contracts can vary, and many of these contracts can be terminated by Planet or our customers prior to their maturity. As a result, we may not realize the total revenue expected for each such contract. At this time, I’d now like to turn the call over to Will Marshall, Planet’s CEO, Chairperson, and Co-founder. Over to you, Will. Will Marshall: Thanks, Chris, and hello, everyone. Thanks for joining the call today. Our first quarter financial results were solid. We generated $52.7 million in revenue, representing a 31% year-over-year growth, in line with our guidance. Non-GAAP gross margins expanded to 56% up from 45% in the prior year and an 11 percentage point increase, showing the ability for one-to-many data business model to drive significant margin expansion as revenue scales. We ended the first quarter with over 900 unique customers spanning across government and commercial markets. While our Q1 results were in line with our expectations we faced some recent headwinds in April and May, which inform our guidance for the year and I’ll address this in a moment. Before that, I do want to underscore our sustained confidence in the market opportunity. In Q1, we saw the largest quarter for pipeline generation in the company’s history. We saw rapid advancements in AI that are unlocking new possibilities with our dataset. And we saw our products enabling our customers to address some of their most pressing security and sustainability challenges. That is all to say, we continue to see strong demand for our solutions. Let me now address our update to guidance for this year. The primary driver is that sales bookings came in lighter than we expected. In recent weeks, we observed a combination of factors coming together, including extended sales cycles, as well as some of our larger deal opportunities closing with smaller values than anticipated. We believe these recent changes reflect hesitation from customers as they enter the year with heightened budget uncertainty, as well as government procurement cycle is taking longer than we expected. Because of our data subscription business model [lighter] (ph) bookings in the beginning of the year have a more significant impact on the full-year revenue forecast and bookings in later quarters. Furthermore, because we believe this customer behavior may continue, we are revising our guidance presuming these trends go on for the remainder of the fiscal year. To maintain our path to profitability at this lower assumed revenue growth rate, we are adjusting our expense plan. We have significantly [indiscernible] back our headcount expansion plans, which generated savings in the current year. But more importantly, we estimate these changes will reduce our annual run rate expenses by more than $35 million going into next fiscal year. We believe this adjustment to our expense plan supports our standing objective to be adjusted EBITDA profitable no later than Q4 of next year. In scaling back our spend, we’re prioritizing investments that support revenue for our core business and our path to profitability. We’re focusing our resources on our highest ROI customers and opportunities, as well as looking at additional ways to optimize expenses. We are fortunate to have higher gross margins and operational levers in the business that enable us to do this. I’d like to emphasize that through this, we continue to believe we have sufficient capital on our balance sheet to capture the market opportunity, drive strong growth, and achieve cash flow breakeven without needing to raise further capital. As I stated earlier, our conviction in the opportunity for our business over the long term remains strong. Let me expand on some of the recent deals and other signals that give us confidence. Firstly on demand, as mentioned, we generated a record amount of qualified pipeline of opportunities in Q1. It was more than double the quarterly average of the prior year. For some additional color, let me mention that we added five new eight-figure potential customer opportunities to the pipeline for FY 2024 during this first quarter. We’ve never seen anything like the scale of these large opportunities. Generating qualified pipeline lays the foundation for future growth year-on-year. Now it’s up to us to convert that pipeline into bookings and revenue. Secondly, on AI, the recent advances in AI and the potential that generative AI and large language models, in particular, have to unlock value in our data is a further catalyst to our existing tailwinds. On our last call, we shared how our partner Synthetaic ran AI models on our data archive to track the Chinese high altitude balloon to its origin point, synthetics analytics when combined with the Planet Scope archive function almost like a time machine for the earth allowing users to scalably search data back through time going back six years. We’ve added a video to our Investor Relations website under the videos tab that shows Synthetaic’s model running on Planet data and extracting insights. Their solution automates the analysis of large unstructured data sets like ours, so that even a non-technical user can detect objects in minutes or train and deploy AI models radically faster than even traditional AI purchase. It’s hard to overstate the power of this. Being able to search the world for objects on demand has huge value for defense and intelligence customers, civil government, and the sustainability applications too. It’s been inspiring to watch the reaction of customers and prospects when they see the value that the combined capabilities of these models and our proprietary data unlock. Similarly. We also signed a partnership with South Korea-based AI company SI Analytics. SI Analytics plans to use Planet Data for North Korea Ballistic Missile Operations Search project, with the goal of enhancing Global Risk Management and mitigating tensions in Asia and beyond. As you joined us in the user conference in April, you would have seen our demonstration of Queryable California, which you can find online. vaalaa/Shutterstock.com This is a proof-of-concept project from our ongoing collaboration with Microsoft, the global California demo aims to show how next-generation AI can make satellite data more accessible by making it searchable, conversational, and context-aware. Well, only video is available in your browser today, it’s a glimpse of what’s possible when you combine our proprietary data with industry leading AI capabilities. It’s another milestone in our journey towards building Queryable Earth, as a Vision I outlined five years ago at 2018. These AI-centered partnerships are just the beginning. We see AI as a catalyst to help unlock the full potential of our data archive, which has the depth and consistency that others in the industry can’t match, enabled by our unique earth scanning constellation. AI models themselves hold little or no value without data to run on, but Planet Data and AI is an incredibly powerful combination. In short, Planet sits on the treasure trove of real-time and archive data that is an incredible asset for this AI revolution. Thirdly, I’d like to share some additional business highlights that represent the pressing issues that our solutions are helping customers address. In the last month, we closed two multiyear deals with international customers centered around defense and intelligence applications. One in the eight-figures to a partner and one in seven-figures. Overall, in a world of heightened global tensions, the need for greater security and transparency is clear. Recent global events are driving elevated interest in our capabilities amongst the defense and intelligence community. Turning to commercial clients, we extended our strategic partnership with AXA Climate which I previewed on our prior call. AXA is a leading provider of consultancy services helping clients adapt to climate change and biodiversity loss. The partnership aims to offer continued satellite data-driven insights for the development of parametric insurance products. In Q1, we also closed a seven-figure multi-year renewal and expansion with Syngenta which will enable their use of Planet Scope to globally set the foundation for growth, new applications, and R&D and precision agriculture. Syngenta’s existing work with Planet over the last several years has included using SkySat for monitoring corn and soy as well as plot verification. Turning to Climate and Sustainability. We have a few partnerships to mention here. The United Arab Emirates is hosting this year’s Climate Conference COP28, with this context we recently signed a partnership with the UAE Space Agency to build a regional satellite data-driven loss and damage atlas for climate change resilience. The initiative aims to provide our data to countries facing higher degrees of climate risk so that they can better respond make informed policy decisions, and enable financial programs for climate adaptation and mitigation. We are also seeing that sustainability regulation in various geographies is a significant catalyst for wide-scale adoption by civil government. Let me mention a few examples. Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy or CAP drives the need for governments in Europe to monitor for compliance, together with our partner NEO, we closed a new deal with a Dutch paying Agency. We’re delivering Planet Fusion as part of the area monitoring system provided to the Netherlands by NEO as part of their efforts in turn to increase automation of their monitoring. Relatedly Planet won a multiyear seven-figure Open Tender award from the Welsh Government to support the design and implementation of the Rural Investment Schemes and the Sustainable Farming Scheme. Similar to CAP, coming down the pipe, we expect new — the newly adopted and far-reaching EU regulation on deforestation-free product to be a driver. It forces companies bringing any of seven commodities into the EU to prove that they did not cause deforestation all starting next year. In our view, satellite data is the scalable solution for monitoring to ensure compliance. Turning to South America, we recently signed a seven-figure multi-year contract with Bolivia’s Institute for National Agrarian Reform or INRA, is our largest deal in the Spanish-speaking country. INRA is using PlanetScope and SkySat map the country and monitor for good stewardship of public lands and title enforcement. They’re also using our archives to gain insight into previous land use. Planet data has proven more cost-effective than the alternative of flying airplanes to capture inventory for INRA. Finally, on the sustainability thread. The Environmental Resources Management or ERM, a global sustainability consultancy also became a Planet partner. ERM brings deep subject matter expertise to clients across the industry has contributed to more than 20,000 sustainability related projects each year. The partnership is designed to expand our imagery use cases, applications, and reporting capabilities having enabled the decision-makers to address their operational and sustainability goals. These recent wins are indicative of a diversity of customers we can serve and critical needs that our data address. Now to give a brief update on the M&A front. This last week, we launched planetary variables live on planets subscription API enabled through the VanderSat acquisition. These products have opened new opportunities for us in markets like insurance. We’ve also been pleased with our recent acquisition of Salo Sciences, the integration is going well and they have been successfully executing to plan. At our Planet Explore conference, we announced that we would add new planetary variable building on that team’s work and they have already delivered on multiple sales opportunities for Planet. Meanwhile, in Q1, we announced our intention to acquire the business of Sinergise and I’m pleased to say that it’s still on track to close this quarter. We view this Sinergise acquisition as a key part of our strategy to bring the power of earth observation to the mainstream and to position us to support regulatory programs, such as the EU’s common agricultural policy that I mentioned earlier. To summarize, we delivered solid Q1 results and had our strongest pipeline generation quarter in the company’s history. Bookings came in lighter than we expected with some sales taking longer than expected and others landing at smaller values than anticipated. We are responding by adjusting our spending plans, prioritizing our investments on customers and opportunities where we see the highest ROI. And as a result, we are maintaining our profitability objective for next year. Our conviction in the significant scale of the opportunity for our business remains strong. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Ashley. Ashley Fieglein Johnson: Thank you, Will, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. As Will mentioned, our revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2024 ending April 30 came in at $52.7 million, which represents 31% year-over-year growth. As of the end of Q1, recurring ACV or Annual Contract Value was 93% of our book of business. Over 90% of our book of business consisted of annual or multiyear contracts. Our average contract length continues to be approximately two years weighted on an ACV basis. Net dollar retention rate, which we measure relative to the book of business at the beginning of each year was 98%, and net dollar retention rate with Winbacks was 99%. It’s important to understand that at this point in the year, our net dollar retention rate is reflective of only three months. If you look at our prior two years of net dollar retention rate as detailed in our quarterly earnings investor presentation, our net dollar retention rate starts each fiscal year at 100% and then builds through the course of the year towards our final full-year results. The slight decrease in NDRR for Q1 relative to the beginning of the year is primarily due to delays in renewing certain government contracts. For the full year, we are targeting an approximate 120% net dollar retention rate, consistent with the targets that we have shared for the business in the past. Turning to gross margin, we expanded our non-GAAP gross margin to 56% for the first quarter of fiscal 2024 compared to 45% in the prior year. This 11-point expansion of gross margins is driven by the growth of revenue, the efficiency of our agile aerospace approach, and our one-to-many data subscription business model. As a reminder, we include the depreciation and amortization of CapEx in our cost of goods sold, marrying the practices of publicly traded SaaS businesses. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $19.1 million for the quarter. Capital expenditures, including capitalized software development were $7.1 million for the quarter or approximately 13% of revenue. This is lower than we anticipated due to the timing of receiving materials. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $376 million of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, which we continue to believe provides us with sufficient capital to invest behind our growth-accelerating initiatives without needing to raise additional capital. We also continue to have no debt outstanding. At the end of Q1, our remaining performance obligations or RPOs were approximately $138 million, of which, approximately 80% apply to the next 12 months and 99% to the next two years. As we’ve shared on prior calls, RPOs can fluctuate quarter-to-quarter as multi-year contracts come up for renewal. Also, please keep in mind, that our reported our RPOs excludes the value associated with the EOCL contract, as well as other contracts that include a termination for convenience clause which is common in our federal contracts. While our Q1 results were solid, the lighter-than-expected bookings in the past couple of months that Will mentioned earlier have led us to update our outlook for the full year. We are lowering our assumptions for new and expansion business in fiscal 2024, and modeling longer sales cycles and smaller average deal sizes consistent with what we’ve recently observed. I’ll note that we signed two contracts in the last two months that were seven or eight figures in size, but that are not expected to drive significant incremental revenue until Q3 or Q4 this year because of the expected timing of data consumption and the associated revenue recognition. So some of the challenge around our updated revenue forecast is timing, we see a similar challenge as we look forward to Q2 as some of our customers with contracts that are up for renewal in Q2 and Q3 are slowing data consumption to stay within their annual contract allowance. We believe the adjustments we have made to our forecast in response to all of these factors, address the headwinds we saw and position us appropriately for the remainder of the year. With the changes we have made as of the end of Q1, approximately 80% of our revenue forecast for the year is already committed and that’s before factoring in additional renewals, new business, or revenue from the acquisition of Sinergise. Will already outlined how we’re adjusting our expense plans and prioritizing our spend in light of our updated revenue outlook. We expect these adjustments to generate savings in the current year. But more importantly, we expect it to reduce our planned operating expense run rate at year-end by over $35 million to support our targeted path to profitability. I’d like to underscore our commitment to the objective of achieving adjusted EBITDA profitability by no later than the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 or calendar year end 2024. As we’ve said before, we have multiple levers to align our spend to growth rates, both on the CapEx and OpEx side of our business. We expect we can make these adjustments while continuing to maintain our competitive lead in the market. Turning to guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2024, we expect revenue of $53 million to $55 million, which represents growth of approximately 11% year-over-year at the midpoint. Please note, that the year-over-year growth rate is adversely impacted by the revenue upside of approximately $5.5 million that we delivered in the second quarter of fiscal 2023, which was driven by elevated usage with a number of our consumption customers. The heightened usage rates last year create a challenging year-over-year comparison, especially as some customers have adjusted their usage rates down to stay within their annual budget envelope, as I mentioned previously. In addition, the year-over-year growth rate comparison is impacted by the conclusion of a large legacy contract in Q1, which we referenced on our last earnings call. We expect non-GAAP gross margin for Q2 of 48% to 49%. The sequential decline in gross margin reflects the accelerated depreciation of two of our SkySat satellites, which we expect to lower and re-enter the earth’s atmosphere later this year and mid-next year, earlier than initially estimated, which was caused by an unusual increase in solar activity that we and other LEO satellite operators have experienced in recent months. Our approach to earth observation provides us with significant redundancy to our operations, such that we continue to have capacity to onboard new customers and are not concerned with our ability to serve existing customers with the SkySat fleet. Our adjusted EBITDA loss for the second quarter is expected to be between negative $20 million and negative $17 million. We are planning for capital expenditures of approximately $10 million to $14 million. For the full fiscal year ending January 31, 2024, we expect revenue to be between $225 million and $235 million or growth of 18% to 23% year-over-year, which includes approximately $7 million of revenue we expect from the Sinergise acquisition based on an assumed closure in mid-Q2. Our non-GAAP gross margin is expected to be between 52% and 54%, which is lower than prior guidance, both because of the lower revenue guidance and the approximately $5 million of additional depreciation expense. Adjusted EBITDA loss is expected to be between negative $67 million and negative $58 million. We expect CapEx to be approximately $45 million to $55 million or approximately 20% to 23% of revenue, as shared on our prior call, CapEx for this year is driven primarily by investments in our Pelican program, which is on schedule to be ready in advance of the end of life of our SkySat fleet. Overall, we’re pleased with how the program has been progressing and look forward to our first tech demo currently scheduled for launch later this year. Finally, before we turn to Q&A, I’d like to highlight that we’re proud to have published our inaugural ESG report. It is meant to outline our company mission and lay the groundwork for Planet sustainability program while highlighting some of the ways we are making progress toward a more sustainable and equitable world. That includes our second year of reporting carbon emissions data and our first SASB disclosure. This marks just the beginning of our ESG reporting journey and we are excited to share our progress with all of you as we continue to grow and scale our operations and impact. You can find our ESG report on our website at planet.com/esg. Operator, that concludes our comments. We can now take questions. See also 25 Best Beaches in California and 10 Best Coal Mining Stocks to Buy. Q&A Session Follow Protective Life Corp (NYSE:PL) Follow Protective Life Corp (NYSE:PL) We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Ryan Koontz with Needham and Company. You may proceed. Ryan Koontz: Thanks for the question. I’m trying to correlate kind of some of the change in mix in Q1 with the downtick in the outlook for rest of the year, it looked like North America was a little soft and Commercial was quite soft in your fiscal first quarter. Is it fair to kind of extrapolate that that’s a source of weakness for the balance of the year? Will Marshall: Well, I’d say, I mean a lot of it is timing and some of it is the legacy contract. There clearly are some challenges in the economic environment and the commercial customers. But it’s — we’re definitely seeing increased budget scrutiny and longer sales cycles on the government side as well. So, it’s not just that, would you add anything, Ashley? Ashley Fieglein Johnson: No, I think that’s right. If you’re talking about year-over-year comparisons, it’s important to remember, we referenced the one larger contract that completed in Q1 and that was a North America contract. So, that’s certainly going to be one of the factors. Ryan Koontz: Got it. Helpful. And on the change in gross margin outlook, I didn’t quite catch everything you said there about the SkySat decline was there an accelerated depreciation or something that’s impacting gross margin beyond just volume there on the outlook? Ashley Fieglein Johnson: Yeah, yeah. That is exactly right. So, there are two satellites where we’re now estimating a shorter useful life. So, the impact to COGS on this year is roughly $5 million and that’s a relatively recent development. So, it just started at the very tail end of Q1. But most of the impact is hitting Q2 through about Q1 next year. Will Marshall: And if I may just add a little bit of context here. What’s going on is that the sun has really abnormal amount of activity. And what that does is that heats up the top of the atmosphere of earth adding more drag. So, basically, all LEO satellite operators are facing this challenge and this accelerated the end-of-life of these two satellites. Ryan Koontz: That’s really helpful. I’ll pass the question queue, thanks. Ashley Fieglein Johnson: Great. Thank you. Operator: Thank you, Mr. Koontz. Next question is from Trevor Walsh with JMP. You may proceed. Trevor Walsh: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Appreciate it. Will, maybe just to paying off your comments on that — from that last question. Would that abnormal sun activity just potentially affect competitors a little bit more — more in earnest since they might have a smaller fleet and so they have less to kind of be able to defend depending on kind of the backfill if you will, or do you not see that necessarily kind of affecting them in that way? Will Marshall: Yeah. Well, absolutely. So, the most important thing about our fleet is the significant redundancy we have on our system and that’s both on the high-resolution fleet, the SkySat, and the Dove fleet that does the daily scan. Yeah. We, obviously, the other thing to bear in mind is our agile aerospace approach just enabled us to flex to the demand much more swiftly. I mean, Dove, because as we build and — design and build all of these things in-house, we can just flexibly launch more when we need more, and that also helps with this, but I mean the most core factors the redundancy in the fleet......»»

Crescat Capital commentary for the month ended April 30, 2023, titled, “Whistling Past The Graveyard.” US policymakers continue to act ... Read more Crescat Capital commentary for the month ended April 30, 2023, titled, “Whistling Past The Graveyard.” US policymakers continue to act as if they have the stability of the financial system, the economy, and consumer prices under control. Instead, their ongoing deficit spending and debt monetization since the 2008 crisis have created a trifecta of macro imbalances: Historic overvaluation of long-duration financial assets; Systemic solvency problems posed by excessive leverage; and Embedded structural inflation. This unholy trinity foreshadows both secular stagflation and a near-term hard landing. To capitalize on these imbalances, and not be run over by them, we believe investors will need to rotate out of the still-crowded and expensive securities of the last business cycle. And move into the deeply undervalued, high-growth opportunities of the next which include the companies delivering the necessary commodities to meet the world’s basic and aspiring needs. We call this reallocation the Great Rotation. In our analysis, the shift is still in the early innings, and there is much more to play out. Forward-thinking investors should take their cue from global central banks who have been stealth acquirers of gold over the last few years and sellers of US Treasuries. If gold is indeed on the verge of a major breakout, as we believe it is, some of the most rewarding value and growth investments to compound real wealth are likely to be found among the metals exploration companies that own the world’s critical new discoveries. Our two charts in this section show the TSX Venture Exchange Index which is dominated by the world’s precious and base metal explorers. For this index to just get back to its 2011 highs along with gold is a 286% return opportunity. In a broad metals bull market, the upside is likely to be much more. The bull case is particularly strong because the whole world is dependent on these firms to deliver the resources for the new industries of the energy transition, i.e., to provide the metals for solar, wind, grid infrastructure, EVs, and batteries. The die has been cast, and the trajectory is clear. In a joint effort to combat the pressing issue of climate change, both governments and the global citizenry have charted a course toward a greener future through the adoption of renewable energy and electrification. The problem is that the major mining companies have not built the pipeline of metal to deliver what the climate agenda requires. Over the last decade, these companies have instead been behind a declining trend in investment in resource exploration and development. The typical lead time coincidentally is an entire decade to make a new discovery, build a mine, and get it into production. Given such a major imbalance between the world’s needs and its resources, we believe market participants have been underestimating the risk of a substantial upsurge in commodity prices that will drive another wave of structural inflation and a much-renewed interest in the explorers. What an incredible opportunity for the whole mining industry that is likely to get flooded with capital to try to solve the resource shortage problem. We think investors at large are still way behind the curve in figuring this out. Note how the dollar trading volume in the exploration-focused companies has been unusually depressed for the last year while stock prices have shrunk. However, the market may finally be waking up as trading flows in these names appears to be turning. When big money flows into this tiny segment of the market comprised of small and micro market cap stocks, note how it tends to correspond with outsized price appreciation. We are confident that there is an enormous value-oriented and macro growth window that is wide open now. Surprisingly, people are only just starting to wake up to the reality of the resource imbalance. The misallocation of capital that led to broad commodity underinvestment over the last decade was an unintended policy error. At Crescat, we have seen this coming, and so for the last three years, we have been building an expertly crafted activist portfolio of what we consider the best, new value-accretive gold, silver, copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and other key metal deposits on the planet. Over the last two years, our companies have had an average of over 130 drills turning, more greenfield drilling than all the majors combined. As a result, we have built activist stakes in 79 companies with bona fide and incipient discoveries of over 300 million target gold-equivalent ounces of metal according to our geologic expert’s model. We are confident that our activist portfolio of miners is deeply undervalued and has extraordinary appreciation potential given strong demand, short supply, and capital that is set to come pouring back into this wrongfully depressed industry. The allure of metals for the new macroeconomic cycle is not just for monetary purists but also presents an exciting and optimistic outlook for the future in helping to build the infrastructure for a new economy. Recent bank failures, on the other hand, point to structural and contagious problems, a bearish outlook for many still-pumped-up financial assets of a less practical era when money printing and interest rate suppression created a gross misallocation of capital with a multitude of deferred inflationary consequences. At-risk investment categories include long-duration US Treasuries, corporate debt and mortgage-backed securities, sub-investment grade credit, megacap tech, private equity, commercial real estate, and many equities outside the materials and energy sectors. The impending recession that Crescat’s models foresee has been precipitated by financial asset mania, excessive leverage, and inflation and is now being catalyzed by policymakers’ belated attempts to contain this three-headed monster of their own creation. Policymakers are more challenged than ever. In our analysis, the hope of a soft landing or mild recession is a consensus delusion sucking investors into the over-crowded investments of a past era. The pied pipers responsible for the cheery backward-looking view include compromised corporate management, Wall Street, and government bureaucrats. Shrewd investors should tune out all the whistling past the graveyard and get busy with a forward-thinking reallocation to critical commodities. Megacap Tech According to our equity model, growth fundamentals for the biggest tech companies have deteriorated substantially and do not support their valuations which still exceed the peak of the 2000 tech bubble. However, these stocks have rallied on the recent bank rescue package which is understandable but extremely shortsighted. The next leg down could unfold viciously just like in the early 2000s tech bust, especially if the overall economy heads into recession on the back of system-wide tightening of lending standards, which is a high probability. Hedge Fund Positioning Wall Street spin doctors would have you believe that currently high hedge fund short positioning in S&P 500 futures and options is a bullish contrary indicator. The trick is they have only used data over the long bull market to support their case. Going back further to 2007, we can see that hedge funds actually had an even larger short position 16 years ago, right before the top of the market and ahead of the Global Financial Crisis. Investors should strive to determine the fundamental and macro picture for themselves from a variety of data sources and not get sucked in by Wall Street’s sometimes compromised and twisted takes. Yield Curve Out of Control The US Treasury yield curve has generated two sets of recession-signaling inversions in just four years. The curve’s level of extreme inversion since November 2022, given still-excessive equity and fixed-income security valuations, is a blaring macro warning signal of a pending hard landing. We highly encourage you to watch a short video that we created of the US Treasury yield curve’s transformation since 2019. Watch it a few times. It is mesmerizing. Pay attention to the inversions in 2019 that were well ahead of the pandemic. They show that the recession that hit in 2020 was pre-destined based on already historic stock and bond market euphoria independent of Covid. However, the pandemic provided the cover for massive money printing and only a short, mild recession, despite high unemployment. It was a convenient means to extend the bubble even further. As you watch the video, notice the zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP) response backed by record Fed stimulus in 2020 and how the Fed overstayed those policies in 2021. Watch the steepening on the long end in 2021 even amidst all the rhetoric that rising inflation would be transitory. See the continued rise of the long end in 2022 as inflation continued to climb in the first half of the year. Pay attention to the sharp increase in the short end in the later half as the Fed finally admitted it was wrong on inflation. Look at the extreme inversion in recent months, all at a much higher level across the curve than we were in 2019. What the curve is signaling now is a high probability of near-term recession, this time a likely much more serious one that cannot be met with ZIRP given structural inflation. And because of still-excessive valuations, the economic downturn is likely to be combined with a serious bear market. A Case Study on Charles Schwab The insolvency problems recently revealed by rising interest rates that translated into runs and failures at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are merely some of the first casualties of a systemic problem that affects the entirety of the US public and private securities markets. Management of other at-risk institutions and policymakers would have you believe those bank failures were isolated events that have already been contained, but we disagree. As just one important case study, Charles Schwab experienced market losses on its massive portfolio of low-yielding long-duration USTs and agency MBSs of $36.7 billion in 2022. $22.6 billion of this hit was recorded straight to owner’s equity, so it did not even flow through the income statement which instead showed record profits of $7 billion. The other $14.1 of the total $36.7 billion hit was associated with “held-to-maturity” assets so did not even get “marked-to-market” on the balance sheet. After subtracting goodwill of $12 billion, mostly from its richly priced TD Ameritrade acquisition in 2020, the firm was left with ONLY $6.0 billion in tangible common equity at year-end. These portfolio losses essentially entirely wiped out common stockholders’ equity for a firm that boasts more than $7 trillion in client assets. More concerning is that Schwab’s tangible common equity would be negative, i.e., insolvent, at -$8.1 billion if it had to reflect the additional $14.1 billion in market losses. Schwab has $9.9 billion of preferred equity that would absorb creditor losses in a fire sale or run, but that would still leave common equity stockholders with zero. The $12 billion in goodwill is worthless in a distressed situation like this. Instead of adequately disclosing and discussing this issue, Schwab’s Chairman and its CEO have been aggressively painting a rosy picture of their business to both defend their stock and entice new client inflows. In a joint letter on March 23, the pair touted their “conservative approach” and “strong financial foundation” while advising shareholders and clients that it’s “very misleading” to focus on “paper losses”. Then in a follow-up letter on April 6, the two stated that “our business is extremely robust. This March alone, we saw a strong influx of core net new client assets of over $53 billion, the second highest March results in our history.” We find it concerning that investors are this naïve to be moving money over to Schwab amidst these problems. Investors in Schwab’s common stock should judge for themselves whether mark-to-market losses on securities portfolios are relevant or not. We absolutely think they are. It is the same problem that sank Silicon Valley Bank. Higher interest rate and higher inflation macro regimes are ones that affect the entirety of the financial markets and are severely and negatively impactful to leveraged holders of overvalued long-duration financial assets. The problem at Schwab that so many still appear remarkably clueless about is that it made a big bet on long-duration interest-rate assets with mismatched short-term liabilities, and it lost. It is now aggressively trying to essentially cover up these losses while luring in even more customers, creditors, and stockholders with outrageous proclamations. At the same time, company execs have strapped themselves to the mast declaring their intent to keep this large leveraged interest rate bet intact, citing access to liquidity despite a tangible common equity insolvency problem on a marked-to-market basis. What happens if the bet continues to go sour, which is a distinct possibility? The valuation tide for long-duration financial assets is still going out, in our view, and likely won’t be coming back anytime soon. Our concern is that there are a great many parties out there swimming naked. To say that the problem is isolated and not systemic is foolish. It is faced by all banks and brokerage firms today. Even the Fed’s own balance sheet is mismarked and overstated. Private Equity Mismark Private equity is another segment of the financial markets where the lack of marking to market is a systemic problem. In this case, fund managers have been allowed to apply arcane models to value their own portfolios and collect performance fees. The result has been asset values and performance trends that have diverged dramatically from real-world public mark-to-market values and trends. With such a great industry business model, it is no surprise that valuations relative to tangible common equity and overall leverage in the private equity sponsors’ public stock prices are so large. And it is no wonder that these managers have attracted so much in client assets. But with the tide truly going out, however, the mark-to-fantasy valuation feature is morphing into a major bug as clients realize what has really been going on. Inflows drying up and a backlog of outflows is a problem for these richly priced and highly leveraged companies with thin and sometimes negative tangible common equity. Given private equity’s role in the broader credit markets, including corporate debt, commercial real estate, and subprime lending, it is not too difficult to understand that the systemic macro problems today are not just long-duration interest rate risk but credit risk as well. Performance We believe the perversions in the financial and commodity markets year to date have set up an excellent entry point for new and existing investors who are not already fully allocated to Crescat’s strategies on the unwarranted pullback. The convulsions of a dying macro regime combined with the growing pains of a new one, in our view, have teed up a great opportunity to sell short the still speculatively valued investments of the last cycle on a bear market rally and to buy the undervalued scarce resource companies that are key building blocks of the new economy in the decade ahead. After creating a historic financial asset mania in a ZIRP world while pretending that there are no inflationary consequences to high debts and ongoing deficit spending, policymakers have created systemic overvaluation, insolvency, and structural inflation all at once. This trifecta of macro imbalances is a foreboding hurricane with a silver lining. Stagflation is a phenomenon that market participants have not seen in four decades. As a result, we think too many investors are ill-prepared for the transition that is already underway. The good news, in our strong opinion, is that a robust new commodity bull market will emerge amidst further financial asset carnage still to come. This reflexive phenomenon should catalyze the impending recessionary hard landing. In the ultimately ensuing recovery, we expect critical resource industries to continue to lead as the important drivers of the new economic growth cycle to come. We are confident that it is a great time to get positioned. Sincerely, Kevin C. Smith, CFA Member & Chief Investment Officer Tavi Costa Member & Portfolio Manager © 2023 Crescat Capital LLC.....»»

"A key piece" of the US response was being "able to exploit and understand this balloon and its capabilities fully," a US official said Thursday. A high-altitude balloon over Billings, Montana, on February 1.Chase Doak/via REUTERS Lawmakers are scrutinizing the military's response to the Chinese spy balloon that floated over the US this month. Officials say they waited to shoot it down to lower the risk to the public and increase their ability to recover it. US officials say balloons have crossed over the US before as part of a wider Chinese surveillance program. When a US Air Force F-22 blasted a Chinese surveillance balloon out of the sky with an AIM-9X missile on Saturday — a first for the plane and the missile — it brought the balloon's journey across the US to an end.US officials say they first detected the balloon on January 28 as it approached Alaska's Aleutian Islands. It then floated across the US, including over military facilities housing ICBMs and stealth bombers, before its demise roughly 6 miles off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.The eight-day wait and the sensitivity of those bases have alarmed lawmakers, who called defense officials to Capitol Hill on Thursday to explain their handling of the incident. In response to questions about why the military didn't bring down the balloon sooner, the officials stressed that they believed there was a low threat of it gathering valuable intelligence and that shooting it down presented an outsized risk.US Northern Command "assessed that there was no hostile act, hostile intent, or potential impact to critical intelligence capabilities," Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims II, director for operations for the Joint Staff, told the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee. Moreover, Sims said, the command "was continuing to characterize the system."US sailors recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off of Myrtle Beach on February 5.Petty Officer 1st Class Tyler ThompsonSims emphasized that the risks of downing the balloon over land, even while it was over sparsely populated areas of Alaska, were considered too high. "At that time, we didn't understand through the modeling if we shot that what it would do on the ground," Sims said."Ultimately, it came back to maybe a 20-mile by 20-mile piece of ground, and without being able to clear that, we wouldn't do that in combat," Sims said of a potential shoot-down. "I think in this case, we certainly didn't want to take that chance with Alaska or any other Americans throughout the flight path."At the same hearing, Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, said officials were focused on being able to retrieve the balloon."A key piece of this is the recovery, for us to be able to exploit and understand this balloon and its capabilities fully," Dalton said.Six miles off the of the Aleutians, a chain of islands stretching across the Bering Sea, water depth goes "very quickly from about 150 feet to over 18,000 feet," Dalton said."The winter water temperatures in the Bering Sea hover consistently in the low 30s, which would make recovery and salvage operations very dangerous," Dalton said. "Additionally, the northern portion of the Bering Sea has ice cover, which can be extremely dangerous."US sailors recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off of Myrtle Beach on February 5.US Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson"Again, a key part of the calculus for this operation was the ability to salvage, understand, and exploit the capabilities of the high-altitude balloon, and we look forward to sharing that with you in a classified session and also openly as we learn more," Dalton said.The balloon, which was roughly 200 feet tall, carried a payload that officials said weighed several thousand pounds. Most of the debris landed in about 47 feet of water, which "will make it fairly easy" to recover, a senior military official said shortly after the shoot-down. Waters off of Myrtle Beach are 50 degrees on average in February.US military personnel and law-enforcement agencies began collecting debris over the weekend. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III told CBS News on Wednesday that most of the balloon had been recovered and that officials were preparing to recover the cameras and antennas it had been carrying.The balloon's intelligence value has been a point of contention. Lawmakers have expressed concern about what it could reveal about US capabilities, while US officials have said repeatedly that steps were taken to obscure sensitive US hardware and that they believe the US will glean more from the balloon than China was able to gather with it.US officials had mapped the balloon's route and "took measures to protect those sites, per established protocols," Dalton said Thursday. "That included sensitive communications and covering up certain facilities."US officials have also said that the balloon is also part of a worldwide surveillance program.A Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the South Carolina coast on February 4.Randall Hill/ReutersA State Department official said in a statement on Thursday that the US knows China has flown such balloons "over more than 40 countries across 5 continents" and that they are part of a "fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations."High-resolution images taken by U-2 spy planes showed that the balloon was capable of gathering electronic signals like those emitted by military hardware, the official said. The balloon also carried equipment with multiple antennas, including "an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications," as well as solar panels large enough "to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors."At least four similar balloons have crossed over US territory in recent years, though for much shorter periods than the balloon shot down this month.Those balloons weren't identified due to what the head of US Northern Command called "a domain-awareness gap," but Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said Wednesday that "subsequent intelligence analysis" found them to be Chinese surveillance balloons and that US officials had "learned a lot" about how to track them."This last week provided the United States with a unique opportunity to learn a lot more about the Chinese surveillance balloon program — all information that will help us to continue to strengthen our ability to track these kinds of objects," Ryder said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The S&P 500 wrapped up its worst year since 2008, tumbling 20%. Persistently high inflation, a hawkish Fed, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in China weighed heavily on investor sentiment. The S&P 500 wrapped up its worst year since 2008, tumbling 20%. Persistently high inflation, a hawkish Fed, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in China weighed heavily on investor sentiment. The combination has sparked fears of a recession anytime soon.SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, the proxy version of the S&P 500 Index, plunged about 18% last year. Despite the decline, some of the stocks in SPY’s portfolio have risen more than 40%. We have highlighted five stocks from different sectors that have a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy or #3 (Hold) with positive estimated earnings growth for 2023. These are Hess Corporation HES, First Solar Inc. FSLR, Cardinal Health Inc. CAH, Arch Capital Group Ltd. ACGL and Lamb Weston Holdings Inc. LW.Energy was the only top-performing sector in 2022, with 58% gains. This marks the best year on record for the energy sector. Factors like easing Omicron concerns, supply shortages and geopolitical tensions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East have boosted oil prices. Other sectors like utilities, consumer staples and healthcare lost 1.4%, 3.2% and 3.6%, respectively. The housing market has slowed down with higher mortgage rates, higher home prices, falling home sales and rising inventories (read: Energy ETFs Beat S&P 500 in 2022, More Gains Likely in 2023).On the other hand, information technology, communication services and other high-beta sector were badly hit by sticky inflation and aggressive rate hikes from the Fed.The central bank has been on an aggressive tightening policy to fight the skyrocketing inflation. It has raised its interest rate by 475 bps this year in the fastest hikes since the 1980s and sent the benchmark interest rate to 4.25-4.50% - the highest level in 15 years. The central bank now projects at least a 75 bps rate hike, peaking at 5.1% by the end of 2023, 50 bps higher than the previously projected 4.6% back in September. The rate will then be cut to 4.1% in 2024.The tech sector relies on easy borrowing for superior growth, and its value depends heavily on future earnings. A rise in long-term yields lowers the present value of companies’ future earnings, sparking fears of overvaluation.Let’s take a closer look at the fundamentals of SPY.SPY in FocusSPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust holds 503 stocks in its basket, with each accounting for no more than 6% of assets. This suggests a nice balance across each security and prevents heavy concentration. The fund is widely spread across sectors, with information technology, healthcare and financials accounting for a double-digit allocation each.SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust has AUM of $353.5 billion and charges 9 bps in fees per year. The product trades in a heavy volume of around 72 million shares a day on average, ensuring higher liquidity with a tight bid/ask spread, leading to lower trading costs for investors. SPY has a Zacks ETF Rank #3 (Hold) with a Medium risk outlook (see: all the Large Cap Blend ETFs here).Below we have highlighted the above-mentioned five best-performing stocks in the ETF.Best-Performing Stocks of SPYHess Corporation is a global integrated energy company. The company is engaged in the exploration, production, development, transportation, purchase and sale of crude oil, natural gas liquids and natural gas. The stock soared 91.6% in 2022.Hess has an estimated earnings growth rate of 27% for this year. It has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and a Growth Score of A.First Solar is a leading global provider of comprehensive PV solar energy solutions and specializes in designing, manufacturing and selling solar electric power modules using proprietary thin-film semiconductor technology. The stock jumped 71.9% last year.First Solar earnings are expected to grow a massive 1,040.2% this year. The stock carries a Zacks Rank #3 and a Growth Score of B.Cardinal Health is a nationwide drug distributor and provider of services to pharmacies, healthcare providers and manufacturers. The stock climbed 49.3% in 2022.Cardinal Health has an expected earnings growth rate of 13.3% for the fiscal year (ending June 2024). It carries a solid Zacks Rank #2 and a VGM Score of A. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) Rank stocks here.Arch Capital offers insurance, reinsurance and mortgage insurance across the world. The company offers a full range of property, casualty and mortgage insurance and reinsurance lines while focusing on writing specialty lines of insurance and reinsurance. The stock has gained 41.2%.Arch Capital has an estimated earnings growth rate of 38.5% for the next year and a Zacks Rank #3. It has a solid Value Score of B.Lamb Weston is a leading global manufacturer, marketer and distributor of value-added frozen potato products, particularly French fries, and also provides a range of appetizers. The stock soared 41% last year (read: 5 Best-Performing Sector ETFs of 2022).Lamb Weston has an estimated earnings growth of 28.5% for the next fiscal year (ending May 2024). The stock has a Zacks Rank #3 and a VGM Score of A. Want key ETF info delivered straight to your inbox? Zacks’ free Fund Newsletter will brief you on top news and analysis, as well as top-performing ETFs, each week.Get it free >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report First Solar, Inc. (FSLR): Free Stock Analysis Report Hess Corporation (HES): Free Stock Analysis Report Cardinal Health, Inc. (CAH): Free Stock Analysis Report SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY): ETF Research Reports Arch Capital Group Ltd. (ACGL): Free Stock Analysis Report Lamb Weston (LW): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

X-37B Space Plane Lands In Florida After Top-Secret 908-Day Orbital Mission The US Space Force's Boeing X-37B unmanned, reusable space plane successfully deorbited after a record-breaking orbital mission around Earth and landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility on Saturday.  The robotic X-37B landed at 0533 ET after spending 908 days in orbit -- more than four months longer than the previous mission.   It's the sixth Orbital Test Vehicle mission (OTV-6) with top-secret payloads that military researchers were testing in low-Earth orbit. Even though most of the payloads are classified, some have been made public, such as the US Naval Research Laboratory's Photovoltaic Radio-frequency Antenna Module, a small device that converts solar power into radio frequency microwave energy.  Space.com expanded more on the non-classified experiments and technologies being tested: "Technologies being tested in the X-37B program include advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high temperature structures and seals, conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems, advanced propulsion systems, advanced materials and autonomous orbital flight, re-entry and landing." Task & Purpose has speculated some of the mysterious payloads could be "testing surveillance systems to experiments on putting satellites in lower orbits." After the space plane landed, Jim Chilton, senior vice president at Boeing Space and Launch, wrote: "With the service module added, this was the most we've ever carried to orbit on the X-37B, and we're proud to have been able to prove out this new and flexible capability for the government and its industry partners."  Space Force stated that "NASA scientists will leverage data collected after the materials have spent 900+ days in orbit and compare observed effects to ground simulations, validating and improving the precision of space environment models."  "The X-37B continues to push the boundaries of experimentation, enabled by an elite government and industry team behind the scenes. "The ability to conduct on-orbit experiments and bring them home safely for in-depth analysis on the ground has proven valuable for the Department of the Air Force and scientific community. The addition of the service module on OTV-6 allowed us to host more experiments than ever before," Lt. Col. Joseph Fritschen, DAF Rapid Capabilities Office's X-37B Program Director, said.  The X-37B is similar to the retired space shuttle, although the space plane is a fraction of the size, coming in at 29 feet in length and 9.5 feet high, with a wingspan of 15 feet.  Here's a list of the prior X-37 B's top-secret missions in low-Earth obit: OTV-1: launched on Apr. 22, 2010 and landed on Dec. 3, 2010, spending over 224 days in orbit. OTV-2: launched on Mar. 5, 2011 and landed on Jun. 16, 2012, spending over 468 days in orbit. OTV-3: launched on Dec. 11, 2012 and landed on Oct. 17, 2014, spending over 674 days in orbit. OTV-4: launched on May 20, 2015 and landed on May 7, 2015, spending nearly 718 days in orbit. OTV-5: launched on Sept. 7, 2017 and landed on Oct. 27, 2019, spending nearly 780 days in orbit. OTV-6: launched on May 17, 2020 and landed on Nov. 12, 2022, spending over 908 days in orbit. There are rumors the X-37B might be a testbed for space weapons or could be used to capture adversary satellites...  Tyler Durden Sun, 11/13/2022 - 22:30.....»»

NASA’s Asteroid Deflection Worked! – Help With Global Warming? Science Paper Shows How the Cosmic Nudge Strategy Might Succeed NASA’s Asteroid Deflection Worked WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 12, 2022) – NASA has just reported that its test to determine whether it could deflect an asteroid surpassed expectations. Originally expected to reduce the asteroid’s orbit by only […] NASA’s Asteroid Deflection Worked! – Help With Global Warming? Science Paper Shows How the Cosmic Nudge Strategy Might Succeed NASA’s Asteroid Deflection Worked WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 12, 2022) – NASA has just reported that its test to determine whether it could deflect an asteroid surpassed expectations. Originally expected to reduce the asteroid’s orbit by only 73 seconds, the deliberate collision increased the orbital period by an astonishing period of 32 minutes.- giving it a boost more than 25 times as powerful as scientists had hoped for. if (typeof jQuery == 'undefined') { document.write(''); } .first{clear:both;margin-left:0}.one-third{width:31.034482758621%;float:left;margin-left:3.448275862069%}.two-thirds{width:65.51724137931%;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element input{border:0;border-radius:0;padding:8px}form.ebook-styles .af-element{width:220px;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer{width:115px;float:left;margin-left: 6px;}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer input.submit{width:115px;padding:10px 6px 8px;text-transform:uppercase;border-radius:0;border:0;font-size:15px}form.ebook-styles .af-body.af-standards input.submit{width:115px}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy{width:100%;font-size:12px;margin:10px auto 0}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy p{font-size:11px;margin-bottom:0}form.ebook-styles .af-body input.text{height:40px;padding:2px 10px !important} form.ebook-styles .error, form.ebook-styles #error { color:#d00; } form.ebook-styles .formfields h1, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-logo, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-footer { display: none; } form.ebook-styles .formfields { font-size: 12px; } form.ebook-styles .formfields p { margin: 4px 0; } Get Our Activist Investing Case Study! Get the entire 10-part series on our in-depth study on activist investing in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or print it out to read anywhere! Sign up below! (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); Q3 2022 hedge fund letters, conferences and more   Find A Qualified Financial Advisor Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn't have to be hard. SmartAsset's free tool matches you with up to 3 fiduciary financial advisors in your area in 5 minutes. Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests. If you're ready to be matched with local advisors that can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now. This adds plausibility to the suggestion of an astronomer, and also by an MIT-trained engineer with two U.S. patents, that deflecting asteroids might help to change Earth's orbit enough - a scant 0.3% - to counteract global warming, especially after recent calculations in a new paper by a physicist showed more precisely how such a plan could operate. Although the goal of this experiment in cosmic nudging was to test one method for dealing with a possible situation in which an asteroid might endanger the Earth, it has helped prove our ability to alter the trajectory of objects in space. Something which might even lead to further consideration of a radical outside-the-box tactic for fighting global warming without radical reductions in greenhouse gases, says Professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University, an MIT graduate and a Fellow of the World Technology Network with two U.S. patents to his name. Banzhaf showed how increasing Earth's orbit by a mere 0.3% might balance the current global warming crisis caused by the release of greenhouse gasses. He also suggested several techniques which might be used - especially if controllable energy generation from nuclear fusion proves to be possible - to achieve this tiny change in Earth's orbit, including the well-known and previously utilized "slingshot" technique utilizing deflected asteroids. Combating Climate Change Noting that conventional plans for combating climate change do not seem to be making much headway as the warming situation continues to get worse, renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said of the concept that: "It sounds a little crazy but what he's speaking of is what we call geoengineering. . . . So if he wants to think of a geoengineering idea that could help [global warming], I don't have a problem with that, even if it's a little out there." Now a new scientific paper by a physicist suggests how this orbital change could be accomplished. Entitled "Gravity-Assist as a Solution to Save Earth from Global Warming": it says: "We propose an alternative method of using the gravity-assist by the asteroids to increase the orbital distance of the Earth from the Sun. We can manipulate the orbit of asteroids in the asteroid belt by solar sailing and propulsion engines to guide them towards the Mars orbit and a gravitational scattering can put asteroids in a favorable direction to provide an energy loss scattering from the Earth. The result would be increasing the orbital distance of the earth and consequently cooling down the Earth’s temperature." [emphasis added] More specifically, the paper shows how this could be accomplished within a reasonable time frame: "We proposed the solar-sail as the braking tool to decrease the orbit of the asteroids from the asteroid belt orbit to the Mars orbit. The time scale to lower the orbit is about 70 yrs for a 1010 kg mass asteroid. Using the installed propulsion jet engines on the asteroids will decrease this time scale and enable us to do the asteroid maneuvering for a larger number of asteroids. This project can enable us to change the earth’s orbit and cool down its temperature by decreasing the energy flux of the sun received by the earth. This project could be feasible for the future technology on earth." [emphasis added] Below, in more detail, is Banzhaf's original proposal from 2019 to use astronomical engineering - cosmic nudging - to fight global warming; a concept now being widely discussed, including even an article in Scientific American magazine. The New York Times has reported that, as the effects of climate change become more devastating, and the success of massive cooperative global efforts to sufficiently reduce greenhouse gas emissions becomes less likely. Some scientists are proposing - as a completely outside-the-box tactic at least worth studying - a strategy of solar geoengineering in which massive changes in the atmosphere would reflect more of the sun's rays back into space. But many are calling the concept a dangerous and illusory fix. As another outside-the-box idea which might also be worth at least some consideration and analysis, a well known scientist has suggested a cosmic alternative to fight global warming - one which does not require any reduction in the emission of carbon dioxide or methane, nor even difficult-to-enforce widespread international cooperation - and which might even cost less than some of the drastic emission restrictions now being considered, suggests Banzhaf. Increasing The Earth's Orbit The basic concept was originally suggested by Matteo Ceriotti, Lecturer in Space Systems Engineering at the University of Glasgow, and involves very substantially increasing the Earth's orbit to reduce the amount of solar energy reaching its surface when the sun, billions of years from now, expands and becomes much hotter. While Ceriotti's proposal was addressed to a problem still billions of years in the future when Earth would become unbearably hot, the basic concepts involved in changing a planet's orbit are well known. Indeed, the science fiction film "The Wandering Earth" dramatizes - although in an unrealistic and cinematic-type fashion - one such attempt. Ceriotti admits that his proposal, aimed at moving the Earth from its current orbit to one a full 50% further from the sun [from about 93 million miles to 139 million miles, a increase of approximately 46 million miles], similar to Mars', while theoretically possible, is clearly not feasible with today's technology. However, Banzhaf notes that providing a remedy for the more immediate problems of gradual global warming, on a time scale now being considered by many governments and scientific bodies, would require a much less drastic change in the earth's orbit which might in the near future become feasible, especially considering the huge costs and major modifications in life style that the alternative of reducing carbon emissions appears to entail. What Will Happen If The Earth Gets Slightly Warmer The recent and very important UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report analyzed what will happen when the Earth gets even slightly warmer than pre-industrial levels. The UN put the cost of a mere 1.5°C [2.7°F] increase in temperature at $54 trillion in today's dollars, a 2.0°C [3.6°F] increase at $69 trillion, and a 3.7°C [6.7°F] increase at a stunning $551 trillion. To put these costs into context, the latter figure represents more than all the wealth now existing in the entire world. According to NASA, Earth's global temperature in 2013 averaged 14.6°C [57.3°F], or 287.75°K on the Kelvin scale, where 0°K is absolute zero. Thus, an additional 1.5 degrees on the Kelvin scale would mean an increase in absolute average temperature of only about 0.5% [from 287.7K to 289.2K]. Professor Banzhaf points out that the amount of sunlight (heating energy) falling on the surface of a planet is roughly inversely proportional not to its distance from the sun, but rather to the square of its distance from the sun. Thus, for example, moving a hypothetical planet in an orbit originally 50 million miles from the sun to one twice as far [100 million miles] away would cause the amount of energy falling on its surface to be only one fourth - not one half - as great. Using these figures, it appears that it would be necessary to increase the average distance of the Earth from the sun by only about 0.3% [290,000 out of about 93,000,000 miles] to reduce the heat energy equivalent, which various surfaces on the planet are now receiving, by 1.5°C or 1.5°K. Technological Limitations While this represents only a very rough approximation, it does suggest that changing the orbit by a relatively minute amount might be possible using existing technology, and/or new technology (e.g. energy from nuclear fusion) likely to be perfected in a few years if such efforts can be funded by hundreds of billions of dollars provided by major governments, and involve the same extraordinary innovative planning and research of the type used to permit men to live in space and land on the moon. Ceriotti and others have noted that there are many well known ways to change the orbits of bodies in space, and some have actually been used to help redirect interplanetary probes, as well as studied just in case it ever becomes necessary to deflect an asteroid from getting so close to the Earth as to cause serious problems. These alternative methods for changing orbits, some of which appear to be equally applicable (though on a much larger scale) to possibly nudging the Earth into a slightly more distant [by 0.3%] orbit, include: employing an electric thruster, and more specifically an ion drive, which works by firing out a stream of charged particles that propel a body in the opposite direction; using a focused light beam, such as a laser, to change the Earth’s velocity; constructing a huge solar sail floating in space near the Earth; or utilizing a gravitational sling shot; a well-known technique for two bodies to exchange momentum and change their velocities with a close passage; a tactic used several times successfully to propel spacecraft. Some suggest that nudging large asteroids into new orbits, which could then cause a cumulative sling shot effect on the earth over many years, might be the most feasible alternative - both technologically and economically - in the near future. Indeed, says Banzhaf, it might be possible to exploit so-called "Δv leveraging" in which a body such as a large asteroid can be nudged slightly out of its orbit and, as a result, years later, could swing past the Earth, providing a much larger impulse to increase Earth's orbit by a tiny amount. Nudging Asteroids In theory, and perhaps maybe even in practice, large asteroids could be nudged out of their current orbits, and into new ones in a position to help sling shot Earth, by techniques such as a nuclear blast on the asteroid’s surface, having an unmanned spacecraft collide with an asteroid at high velocity which NASA's test involved, using solar sails, or a combination of methods. Other techniques for nudging asteroids into new orbits include providing a continuous push over a considerable period of time by a space “tugboat” connected to its surface, or by a spacecraft hovering nearby. While Professor Banzhaf is certainly not proposing that we abandon plans to limit greenhouse gases in favor of a cosmic nudge strategy, and recognizing that all these orbit-changing possibilities would be enormously expensive. He does suggest that this novel outside-the-box idea be at least considered and seriously evaluated, and compared to the huge economic costs and major lifestyle changes required to stop global warming by slashing the emission of greenhouse gases, or by using massive solar geoengineering. During a recent subcommittee hearing, Congressman Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, seemed to propose that one way to fight climate change would be to alter the Earth's orbit around the sun. Responding to Gohmert's proposal, Congressman Ted Lieu tweeted, obviously tongue in cheek, that he would introduce a bipartisan resolution asking Captain Marvel to help since "she can alter planetary orbits with her superpowers." But Professor Banzhaf suggests that a more practical and realistic step might be for Gohmert and/or Lieu to formally ask the Congressional Research Service, NASA, or some other appropriate body to report on whether a small (approximately 0.3%) increase in the Earth's orbit would tend to counterbalance current global warming. And, if so, how the estimated expense of producing that orbital change compares with the costs (monetary and otherwise) of fighting climate change by substantially reducing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted worldwide. If science can not only guide a vending-machine-sized spacecraft traveling at 14,000 mph to hit a rapidly moving asteroid only 525 foot wide many millions of miles away, but actually determine to the nearest hundredth of a second the precise time of impact [7:14:23 PM Eastern Time], it should be able to determine whether the concept of altering the Earth's orbit by less than half a percent to fight global warming is worth any further study, argues Banzhaf......»»

The Apple Watch Series 7 is our new top pick, and Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 is the obvious and best choice for Android users. Prices are accurate at the time of publication.When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more.Antonio Villas-Boas/InsiderSmartwatches can be valuable fitness and health tracking tools, or they can be used for simple time-telling and checking notifications.When thinking about buying a smartwatch, you should identify which features are important to you. For example, do you want a smartwatch to have an always-on display so you can quickly glance at the time without making a gesture? Or maybe you want an advanced electrocardiogram sensor to check their heart for atrial fibrillation, while others have no need for it. The Apple Watch is our favorite smartwatch overall, but it only works with iPhones. Thankfully, you don't have to think about switching to iPhone if you want the best smartwatch — we love Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 for Android phones, too. Learn more about how Insider Reviews tests and researches tech products.Here are the best smartwatches you can buy:Best smartwatch overall: Apple Watch Series 7, $349 on AmazonThe Apple Watch is one of the easiest to use and it has a broad set of health and fitness tracking. The Series 7 is the latest and best version to date, even if it's not much of an upgrade over the 2020's Series 6.Best smartwatch for Android users: Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, $239.99 on Best BuySamsung's Galaxy Watch 4 is basically the Apple Watch for Android users. It's an all-premium smartwatch with an extensive range of health and fitness tracking features. It's just unfortunate that the advanced ECG feature is only available for Samsung phone owners.Best smartwatch for sleep tracking: Fitbit Versa 3, $179.95 on AmazonThe Fitbit Versa 3 is a great all-around health and fitness tracking smartwatch, and it just so happens to shiny for sleep tracking and battery life over others.Best fitness smartwatch: Garmin Forerunner 935 Running GPS Watch, $499.99 on GarminThe Garmin Forerunner 935 is for the fitness enthusiast. It has incredibly long battery life and it measures metrics that more general purpose smartwatches don't include.Best smartwatch overallAntonio Villas-Boas/Insider$349.00 FROM AMAZONOriginally $399.00 | Save 13%$349.00 FROM WALMARTOriginally $399.00 | Save 13%$399.00 FROM APPLE$399.00 FROM BEST BUYThe Apple Watch has long been our favorite smartwatch for its ease of use, comprehensive health tracking, and polished design, and the Series 7 is the best iteration yet, even if it's a minor upgrade over the Series 6. Size: 41 millimeter or 45 millimeter Sensors and health: ECG sensor, blood oxygen sensor, Apple 3rd-gen optical heart sensor, fall detection, NFC, compass, accelerometer, barometric altimeter, GPS, gyroscope, microphone, ambient light sensorAlways-on display: YesSoftware: Apple watchOSBattery Life: Up to 18 hoursWater resistance: 50 metersPros: Large always-on display, polished design and software, wide variety of health-focused and smartwatch-oriented featuresCons: Expensive, shorter battery life than some rivals, only offers basic sleep trackingThe Apple Watch Series 7 is basically the Series 6 with slimmer borders around the screen, larger screens, more durable glass, and slightly faster charging. Apple also added a keyboard for typing out messages, as well as generally larger on-screen buttons and items for easier tapping. It's an added bonus that the Series 7 stuffs all of these minor updates into a watch case that's barely larger than the Series 6.There are no new or improved health sensors on the Series 7 compared to the Series 6, and the processor (performance) and battery life are the same, too. That's all to say that the Apple Watch Series 7 is an excellent smartwatch — it's like buying a slightly improved Series 6 without spending more. The Series 7 can easily be expensive overkill for most people with advanced sensors like an ECG or a blood-oxygen sensor. For those who have no need for such fancy sensors, there's the $280 Apple Watch SE that still feels new and fast at a more reasonable price. However, it's let down by the fact that it doesn't have an always-on display.The best smartwatch for Android usersAntonio Villas-Boas/Insider$209.99 FROM AMAZONOriginally $249.99 | Save 16%$209.99 FROM TARGETOriginally $249.99 | Save 16%$209.99 FROM BEST BUYOriginally $249.99 | Save 16%The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is the obvious choice for Android users looking for a comprehensive, quality, premium smartwatch experience. However, it's a shame that the ECG feature is limited specifically to Samsung phone owners. Display:  40mm (396 x 396) and 44mm (450 x 450) Battery life: about 36 hoursAlways-on display: YesOperating system: Google Wear OS powered by SamsungSensors: Electrical Heart Sensor (ECG), Optical Heart Rate Sensor, bioelectrical impedance analysis sensor, accelerometer, barometer,gyroscope, geomagnetic sensor, ambient light SensorWater resistance: IP68 + 5ATMPros: Premium build and design, comparatively inexpensive, comprehensive fitness tracking and features, good battery life, more apps than everCons: ECG feature limited to Samsung users, included strap with Classic model is badWith smartwatches running Google's WearOS 2 out of our recommendation zone, Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 series is the only real contender for Android users in the US. Thankfully, the Galaxy Watch 4 series is truly excellent. The Galaxy Watch 4 has an array of health and fitness tracking features you'd expect from a premium smartwatch, including workout tracking, heart rate monitoring, blood pressure measuring, an ECG feature, sleep tracking, blood oxygen measuring, and stress measuring. It also has more advanced sleep tracking than the Apple Watch, but I've never personally had much confidence in this feature. Battery life is as expected in a premium smartwatch — that's to say it lasts about a day and a half before it needs a charge. That's with the always-on display, which looks great with the wide variety of customizable watch faces.You can read the full Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 review here.The best smartwatch for sleep trackingFitbit$179.95 FROM BEST BUYOriginally $229.95 | Save 22%$179.95 FROM AMAZONOriginally $229.95 | Save 22%$179.95 FROM WALMARTOriginally $229.95 | Save 22%The Fitbit Versa 3 is a relatively affordable smartwatch that checks all the boxes, but truly shines when it comes to sleep tracking and battery life.Size: One size, dimensions 1.59 x 1.59  x 0.49 inchesSensors and health: Heart rate monitor, NFC, ECG sensor, altimeter, temperature sensorAlways-on display: YesSoftware: Fitbit OSBattery Life: Estimated 6-plus days of battery lifeRead our full guide to the best sleep trackersPros: In-depth sleep tracking, long battery life, plenty of fitness featuresCons: No LTE version, software isn't as polished as the Apple WatchFitbit is far from being the only smartwatch to offer sleep tracking. But if you're looking for a general-purpose smartwatch that can provide deep insights into your sleep, the $229.95 Fitbit Versa 3 is the best pick for most people.Fitbit's sleep tracking goes beyond the basics by offering time spent in REM, light, and deep sleep, as well as the time you spent awake. It also tells you how much time you spent asleep and issues a Sleep Score that tells you about the quality of your sleep.In addition to just seeing data indicating how well you slept last night, you can also view a 30-day average and see how your sleeping pattern compares to others of your age and gender. Some of Fitbit's sleep-oriented features, like metrics that show restlessness, are only available if you subscribe to the $9.99 per month Fitbit Premium service. Still, even in the free tier, Fitbit offers more comprehensive sleep tracking metrics than most smartwatches, especially the Apple Watch. The Versa 3 also offers impressively long multi-day battery life that makes it much easier to track your sleep without worrying about draining your battery during the day. We recommend the Versa 3 over the $299.95 Fitbit Sense since it's more affordable and still has many of Fitbit's most important features. These include heart rate monitoring, the ability to deliver notifications from your phone, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant support, exercise tracking, comprehensive sleep tracking, and a swim proof design. The downside, however, is that there's no LTE option for the Versa 3 for those who want to receive calls and texts when their phone isn't nearby. For iPhone owners, the software and app experience is also much more polished on the Apple Watch than it is on Fitbit's watches.Best smartwatch for fitness enthusiastsGarmin/Facebook$499.99 FROM GARMINThe Garmin Forerunner 935 Running GPS Watch is a fitness enthusiast's dream that has long battery life and measures several metrics you won't find on general purpose watches.Size: 47 x 47 x 13.9 millimetersSensors and health: GPS, heart rate monitor, compass, thermometer, barometerAlways-on display: YesSoftware: GarminBattery Life: Up to 2 weeks in smartwatch mode, up to 24 hours in GPS/HR modeCheck out the 5 best men's running shoes for race training, long distance runs, or casual jogsPros: Long battery life, waterproof, durable glass face, built-in barometer and thermometer, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, and the ability to measure more metrics than we can list hereCons: Expensive, reduced GPS accuracy when running on a track, built-in thermometer only measures temperature right above your skinSmartwatches running Apple's, Samsung's, and Google's operating systems come with decent fitness tracking features and functionality, but then there are smartwatches that bring fitness tracking to a whole other level. We're talking about smartwatches from Garmin. We had a competitive distance runner try the $500 Garmin Forerunner 935 for 1,000 miles — and it's better than any running watch he's ever used. With that testimonial in mind, the Forerunner 935 is our top choice for fitness enthusiasts, at least for those who can allocate up to $500 for a device that's specifically geared towards fitness. When you're spending this much on a fitness tracking device, you're better off reading the full review to find out what's good and what's not about the Forerunner 935. And realizing that the Forerunner 935 is expensive, we know of some less expensive fitness trackers that will work just fine for the majority of fitness folk. What else we consideredFitbitWhile these are our top picks, there are several other options worth considering based on your needs, preferences, and budget. Here's a look at some other contenders: Garmin Solar Instinct: The Solar Instinct is an outdoorsy-oriented watch that has small solar panels that help maintain a massive month-long battery life (as long as you're in the sun for at least three hours a day). It comes with a wide range of fitness and health tracking sensors and features, and it's a great alternative to the Forerunner 935 if you want some extra battery life.Garmin Vivoactive 4: Garmin's Vivoactive 4 is a more affordable alternative to its Forerunner and Fenix lines that still offers more in-depth health features than your standard smartwatch. It also comes with many of the other features around connectivity you'd demand from a watch of its price.Fitbit Sense: The Sense is Fitbit's top-of-the-line smartwatch and its first to offer the ability to measure how your body reacts to stress. The Sense, like Fitbit's other smartwatches, serves as a compelling Apple Watch alternative for non-Apple users and those seeking a more affordable watch. However, we chose the Versa 3 instead as one of our top picks because it has many of the benefits of the Sense at a more reasonable price.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Huxley's New World, Part 2: The War On Science Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation, Huxley makes it crystal clear that he considers the world to be overpopulated, and that science and progress cannot be free to advance without limits. In Part 1 the question was discussed what was Aldous’ real intention in writing the Brave New World; was it meant as an exhortation, an inevitable prophecy or as an Open Conspiracy? An Open Conspiracy closely linked to not only H.G. Wells, who clearly laid out such a vision in his book by the same title, published in 1928, but a vision also in the vein of Aldous’ famous grandfather Thomas Huxley “Darwin’s bulldog” and mentor to Wells. It is from here that we will continue to discuss what exactly were Aldous’ views on such matters, did he in fact believe in the need for a scientific dictatorship? A scientific caste system? Was he actually warning the people that such a dystopia would occur if we did not correct our course or was it all part of a mass psychological conditioning for what was regarded as inevitable, and that Aldous’ role was rather to “soften the transition” as much as possible towards a “dictatorship without tears”? The War on Science “ ‘A New Theory of Biology’ was the title of the paper which Mustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: ‘The author’s mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published.’ … A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose – well, you didn’t know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes – make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being [as happiness and comfort], but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible.” – Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” This is the credo for all scientific dictatorships, to forbid any search for knowledge whose purpose is the discovery of a universal truth, something that “is beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere.” Something that is and will remain always true, and not just true so long as people are led to believe it is so. Thus, a scientific dictatorship must deny purpose by all means and promote an artificial “cushy” conception of happiness and comfort, since the former makes for very bad servants/slaves and the latter for very good ones. Purpose leads to unpredictability in the status quo, there are no sureties for an oligarchic system of governance in a world that is motivated by a purpose towards truth, beauty, and knowledge, as Mustapha Mond succinctly lays out. It is also the case that whenever one discovers a universal truth, it unifies rather than divides, truth is thus the very enemy of tyranny, for it offers clarity. And one can no longer be ruled over when they can see a superior alternative to their oppression. Therefore, under the rule of tyranny, truth must when possible be snuffed out, otherwise it is contorted until it is no longer recognizable, it is broken into fragments of itself in order to create factions, schools of opposing thought that are meant to confuse and lead its followers further astray. To deny purpose is thus the necessary condition to rule within a scientific dictatorship. Whether its controllers believe in purpose or not is irrelevant, since it is simply not admissible. The question thus is, where does Aldous fit into all of this? For starters let us take a look at Aldous’ family roots to see if indeed the apple did not fall too far from the tree… Aldous’ grandfather T.H. Huxley (1825-1895) had made a name for himself by the age of twenty-five and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1950. Within a span of just a few years he would rise to become a leading member of Britain’s scientific establishment. By the late 1700s, discoveries in geology began to contradict the accepted religious view of Creation. It was increasingly found that steady changes were the primary cause of most geological formations which developed over very long spans of time and that these changes had even led to the extinction of certain organisms/creatures. This was the first time that the biblical view of Creation was ever challenged as a mainstream argument within the sciences. By the first part of the 1800s the scientific community was primarily in agreement that living processes and their environments did indeed “evolve.” In the 1820s Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), once friends, had come into severe disagreement over the origins of anatomical forms which lead to a historic debate in 1830, raising issues that have yet to be resolved to this day. In 1838, upon reading Thomas Malthus’ “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” (who is known for calling for the courting of the plague to address the crisis of overpopulation), Darwin formulated his theory for “evolution” based on the “natural selection” of the fittest, he coined the term as an analogy of what he termed the “artificial selection” of selective breeding, with reference in particular to the practice of horse breeding. Darwin saw a similarity between farmers picking the best stock in selective breeding, and a Malthusian “Nature” selecting from chance variants. That is, Darwin’s ideas of “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” implied no directionality to evolution but rather was based upon Nature’s selection of random variants. But how does one part of an organism evolve without affecting the other parts of said organism? According to Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, there is an inherent “potential” in evolution; the potential for change is inherent within the organism, and the shaping of its many parts occurs in a harmonic, coherent way. That is, change moves in a purposeful manner, not a random manner. The evolution of wings for flight, the eyes for sight, the nervous system for thought; Geoffroy was stating that these were not the result of countless minute mutations occurring and being selected upon separate from the other, but that the transformations were occurring with the very intention to create forms of flight, sight and thought. By Darwin rejecting this thesis, he created a paradox within his own theory. Either the potential for change is inherent in the organism in which many parts are able to change in a harmonic/coherent way, or it is not. However, if it is the latter, as Darwin claims it to be, random change of any part by itself without acknowledgement of the whole would more often than not lead to the death of the organism, as seen in studies of embryo formation, or would create a Dr. Moreau’s Island of freaks (which by the bye is another novel by our anti-hero H.G. Wells). The elegant creations we actually do see arise through evolutionary processes would be an extreme rarity in such a world of randomness. With everything we know today of the incredibly intricate details of biochemistry, the coordination of metabolic processes which occur in their thousands of “parts” would all need to evolve as randomly separate processes and yet, would also need to occur simultaneously and in conjunction with the other functioning parts. This would make Darwin’s concept for the selection of random variants within a coordinated functioning whole fundamentally impossible. Not only is the evolution of the eye one of the miracles of evolution, it has countless variations upon itself, such that there is no one standard model for what is an “eye.” Are we thus to believe that this has randomly occurred not only once but thousands of times in each species with its own distinct variation of what is an “eye”? In the early 1850s, Huxley had been introduced to Darwin and by the middle of the 1850s they were in close collaboration. Though Huxley never fully took to Darwin’s theory, he did become an avid defender and promoter of it nonetheless. At the time there was strong opposition to Darwin and Huxley within Europe and the United States. James Dwight Dana (1813-1895), a contemporary of T.H. Huxley, was among the American leadership that opposed this view, and argued that evolution did progress with a directionality, using examples such as the observation that biological organisms were proceeding towards greater “cephalization.” That is, that evolution was forming a general trend towards increasingly sophisticated nervous systems that could respond and interact with their environment. Thus, evolution was towards greater forms of complexity with more sophisticated forms of function. However, Thomas Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog” was vehemently against this view of purposeful directionality in Nature. It did not matter that Darwin’s theory was just that, a theory, which still failed to explain much that was being observed in the evolutionary process. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss this in further detail (for more refer here), one cannot deny two major changes that occurred in “modern science” as a result of T.H. Huxley’s avid promotion of Darwin’s theory of evolution, that 1) Nature, and thus one could say the Universe, was not governed by purpose but rather by randomness, and that 2) man was but a beast, no longer to be among the children of God, no longer regarded as partaking in anything that was divine or sacred. And if man is but a beast what does he care for higher truths? What more does a beast need than the simple forms of comfort and happiness? Modern Science begets Modern Religion begets a Modern Utopia? Before we go on to speak about Aldous’ brother Julian Huxley, I will say just a few words on his father Leonard. Leonard Huxley published in 1926 his “Progress and the Unfit,” which was subsequently used to promote the Eugenics movement, to which H.G. Wells and Leonard’s son Julian were outspoken avid supporters of. Leonard also wrote favourably of his father T.H. Huxley’s views and that of Charles Darwin. In his book, Leonard discusses how modern-day science is only to look at the interdependence of body and mind, that the existence of the soul has been discredited by modern science, and thus that conditions for improvement on the human condition must solely rely upon the social and biological. He goes on to state that modern society has too long tolerated the proliferation of the feeble minded and so creates an ever-lasting burden for itself. He claims that mental defectiveness (which ranged from criminal behaviour, insanity, physical deformities and forms of mental retardation to addictions such as alcoholism and gambling, homelessness, owing massive debt etc. etc.) were all to be considered heritable qualities. Thus, those in possession of such unwanted qualities should be segregated from society or sterilised. He acknowledges that such measures may appear immoral, but that it is only immoral when coercion is used against persons of “normal intelligence,” for those who are deemed abnormal, unable to use reason, such standards of morality do not apply. This also appertained to what were considered to be the “lower” races, to which, T.H. Huxley was outspoken in his view that the “white race” was indeed the most superior race of all and that the “black race” was amongst the most inferior. With “modern science,” what stood in the way of the “mechanics of enforced good breeding” if humankind were to be regarded as no different from other beasts? And if we were judged to have no soul, the application of so-called “morality” was up for interpretation if not deemed entirely irrelevant. Julian Huxley (1887-1975), the older brother of Aldous, after serving in WWI became a Fellow at New College Oxford, serving as Senior Demonstrator in the University Department of Zoology. In 1925 he moved to King’s College London to work as Professor of Zoology. However, after only two years he resigned his chair to work full-time for H.G. Wells and his son G.P. Wells on “The Science of Life.” For those who are not too familiar with the views of H.G. Wells, I think it apt to share a quote, from part of his “new Bible” trilogy, “Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought” published in 1901: “It has become apparent that whole masses of human population are, as a whole, inferior in their claim upon the future, to other masses, that they cannot be given opportunities or trusted with power as the superior peoples are trusted, that their characteristic weaknesses are contagious and detrimental to the civilizing fabric, and that their range of incapacity tempts and demoralizes the strong. To give them equality is to sink to their level, to protect and cherish them is to be swamped in their fecundity. “ I assure you, there is plenty more where that came from. “The Science of Life,” which was also a part of Wells’ “new Bible” trilogy, was to give a popular account of all major aspects of biology as known in the 1920s. It is credited in introducing modern ecological concepts and emphasised the importance of behaviourism and Jungian psychology. At the very end of the 900 page volume, it is written: “To have a world encumbered for a time with an excess of sterile jazz dancers and joy riders may be a pleasanter way to elimination than hardship and death. Pleasure may achieve what force and sword have failed to do. The world can afford it; it is not a thing to fret about. It is only a passing fashion on a grand scale this phase of sterilized “enjoyment.” The great thing is that it should be able and willing to sterilize itself…The types that have a care for their posterity and the outlook of the race will naturally be the types which will possess the future.” This, believe it or not, is H.G. Wells at his best behaviour, amply toned down so to speak. To Wells this is a rather humane proposition, since those who are considered of defective biological stock are simply to be sterilised but are otherwise free to mingle within society, free to live out a comfortable life of pleasures in all their degeneracies with no threat that such contaminants will continue on in the future breeds of humankind. Thus, the age of pleasure will be more effective than the age of the sword (such as WWI), at diminishing the lower castes into a more “manageable” number. Within a generation, the human stock will be purified and a “Modern Utopia,” another book of H.G. Wells, can finally begin. Earth will become a paradise full of plenty, largely made up of a higher caste of reasonable, intelligent, healthy and attractive individuals and we will finally obtain world peace and harmony, until perhaps the next purge…. Besides Julian Huxley acting as Vice-President from 1937-1944 and President from 1959-1962 of the British Eugenics Society, he was also the first director-general of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1946, to which he wrote its mandate “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy” that same year. In it Julian lays out the need for a world government as the only means for avoiding war, and that the full sovereignty of separate nation states should be transferred over to this world government accordingly, under one political unity to which he expands upon, writing: “At the moment, it is probable that the indirect effect of civilization is dysgenic instead of eugenic, and in any case it seems likely that the dead weight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability and disease proneness, which already exist in the human species will prove too great a burden for real progress to be achieved. Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.” (For more on this refer here.) In 1928, H.G. Wells publishes his “The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution,” where he calls for the reform of religion into a “modern religion,” which was only fitting now that science had become a “modern science.” In his concept of modern religion, he states that it will be necessary to strip religion down to its raw elements of service and subordination. Wells also wrote “The New World Order” in 1940, and no doubt, was a guiding influence on Julian’s outlook when he wrote the manifesto for UNESCO. The reader should also know that T.H. Huxley was the mentor of H.G. Wells and introduced him to the writings of Thomas Malthus and Charles Darwin. [Refer to Part 1 of this series for an in-depth discussion on how H.G. Wells influenced the works of Aldous Huxley.] The 20th Century Descent of Man At the very start of the 20th century, the influential International Congress of Mathematicians organised a conference in Paris, France 1900. It was at this conference that David Hilbert, a leading mathematician at Göttingen University was invited to speak on the future of mathematics, where he stressed the need for the field of mathematics to “prove that all axioms of arithmetic are consistent” and to “axiomatize those physical sciences in which mathematics plays an important role.” What Hilbert was calling for in his challenge for the future of mathematics was that all scientific knowledge be reduceable to the form of mathematical “logic” so to speak; that it be contained within a minimum of accepted truths and rules of derivation, which could be proven by consistent and complete formal mathematical proofs. Thus, all scientific knowledge would in the future be deduced from such mathematical models, there was nothing left to “discover” in the typical sense of what defined scientific investigations during the 19th century and earlier, they only need refer to the appropriate mathematical model. In 1900, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead set out to meet Hilbert’s challenge which resulted in the “Principia Mathematica,” published thirteen years later. Although Kurt Gödel would disprove the entire premise for the “Principia Mathematica” with his “incompleteness theorems” which show the limits of provability in formal axiomatic theories, the “Principia Mathematica” is one of the most influential works of the 20th century, on not only shaping modern logic but also formed the basis for the latter development of cybernetics and systems analysis by Russell’s student Norbert Wiener during WWII. Before you conclude that Russell himself didn’t personally believe that irrationality was a fundamental force in the Universe simply because he tried formalizing said Universe, it is worth reading a section of his bitterly misanthropic view of humanity presented in his 1903 “A Free Man’s Worship”: “That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand… Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.” Whether deterministic or random in view, the goal was the same, to promote a concept of the Universe that had no governing purpose, no directionality and no morality, that it was essentially a mechanism, discoverable by a few simple laws. This was not something new, the Enlightenment had already done much to emphasize individualism, skepticism and “science” reduced to the confines of empiricism and agnosticism. With such a view our connection to the Universe becomes inconsequential, with the Universe seen as something cold, unknowable and ultimately dead or dying. Such a concept only further enforces that there is no real meaning to anything, there is no purpose, at least, it is not a purpose that we have any place in. During the First World War, Aldous Huxley spent much time at the Garsington Manor, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, a lover of Bertrand Russell, who believed (as Aldous and Julian would also), in the concept of open marriage. Although T.H. Huxley knew Russell’s parents, Lord and Lady Amberley, it was at the Garsington Manor that Aldous first met Bertrand Russell and the Bloomsbury Group. It is also where he met his first wife Maria Nys, a wartime Belgian refugee who had been invited to stay with Lady Ottoline Morrell. Maria, who was bisexual, had entered into a several year love affair with Lady Ottoline starting at the age of sixteen. Maria did finally accept Aldous’ proposal and they were married in 1919 keeping an open marriage. The Bloomsbury Group or Set, which met regularly at Lady Ottoline’s was an association of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists which reflected in large part the influence of G.E Moore (who wrote the “Principia Ethica” in 1903) and Bertrand Russell who were amongst the founders of analytic philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead was also a member of the group. As Dorothy Parker, American poet and writer, described them in a famous quote of hers, “they lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles”. Aldous Huxley would maintain a loose association with the Bloomsbury Group. It appears Aldous had a similar approach to Russell as he did with Wells, although he seems to have a serious dislike for both men, he nonetheless was greatly influenced by their works. In 1932, Russell exclaims in a letter to his publisher that the “Brave New World” was “merely an expansion of the two penultimate chapters of his ‘The Scientific Outlook,’ “ adding that “the parallelism applies in great detail, e.g., the prohibition of Shakespeare and the intoxicant producing no headache.” Russell went so far as to contemplate charging Aldous with plagiarism, to which his publisher dissuaded him from pursuing. In Russell’s “The Scientific Outlook” published in 1930 he describes a caste system with the need for two separate modes of education, one for the elite ruling class and the other for the slave class. The ruling class is to be concerned with improving the scientific technique, while “the manual workers [are to be] contented by means of continual new amusements.” Aldous echoes this sentiment in his “Brave New World Revisited,” where he writes: “The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries.” Although it is said that Aldous wrote the “Brave New World” as a satire of the works of H.G. Wells, and what appears to be the works of Russell as well, as already shown in Part 1 this is not true. Aldous is incorporating the ideas of Wells and Russell into his works, and though he may find these men dislikeable, he nonetheless never actually contradicts their views in any of his writings or lectures. The entire premise for his “Brave New World Revisited,” published in 1958, instead reinforces those very views. Aldous makes it crystal clear that he considers the world to be overpopulated, that this is a crisis that must be checked, and that science and progress cannot be free to advance without limits. He restresses these very themes again in his last novel “The Island” as well. In “Brave New World Revisited” he writes: “The annual increase of numbers should be reduced. But how? We are given two choices – famine or pestilence and war on the one hand, birth control on the other…how can those who ought to take the pill, but don’t want to, be persuaded to change their minds?…In reducing the birth rate of those industrially backward societies where such a reduction is most urgently needed?…Or consider the backward societies that are now trying to industrialise. If they succeed, who is to prevent them, in their desperate efforts to catch up and keep up, from squandering the planet’s irreplaceable resources as stupidly and wantonly as was done, and is still being done, by their forerunners in the race?” Here we need only replace the word “pill” with “sterilisation” and not much has changed. In fact, as published in The Guardian, “Huxley was in favour of genetic breeding programmes to arrest the multiplication of the unfit. In a particularly unsavoury article, published in 1930 in the Evening Standard, he confessed anxiety about the proliferation of mental defectives and called for their compulsory sterilisation.” Brave New World was written one year later in 1931. It looks like the apple did not fall too far from the tree after all… [Part 3 will discuss Aldous’ role in shaping the Esalen Institute, the Vedanta Society, his relationship to William Sargant and the CIA’s MKUltra, and how Aldous’ form of ideological spirituality went on to shape the drug-counter-culture movement.] Tyler Durden Mon, 11/01/2021 - 23:40.....»»

The supply crunch might stretch as much as a seven-year event from now, but the spring is loaded already. It isn’t only a supply, demand scenario when talking about silver. Little accounted for is any surprise, and in our opinion, the slightest cough could set this spring off. The sum of fundamental facts is overwhelming […] The supply crunch might stretch as much as a seven-year event from now, but the spring is loaded already. It isn’t only a supply, demand scenario when talking about silver. Little accounted for is any surprise, and in our opinion, the slightest cough could set this spring off. The sum of fundamental facts is overwhelming on how the next large turning point could set silver  into stellar motion. With this many accelerators, it makes this an incredible risk/reward-ratio play. Silver, the loaded spring. if (typeof jQuery == 'undefined') { document.write(''); } .first{clear:both;margin-left:0}.one-third{width:31.034482758621%;float:left;margin-left:3.448275862069%}.two-thirds{width:65.51724137931%;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element input{border:0;border-radius:0;padding:8px}form.ebook-styles .af-element{width:220px;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer{width:115px;float:left;margin-left: 6px;}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer input.submit{width:115px;padding:10px 6px 8px;text-transform:uppercase;border-radius:0;border:0;font-size:15px}form.ebook-styles .af-body.af-standards input.submit{width:115px}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy{width:100%;font-size:12px;margin:10px auto 0}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy p{font-size:11px;margin-bottom:0}form.ebook-styles .af-body input.text{height:40px;padding:2px 10px !important} form.ebook-styles .error, form.ebook-styles #error { color:#d00; } form.ebook-styles .formfields h1, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-logo, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-footer { display: none; } form.ebook-styles .formfields { font-size: 12px; } form.ebook-styles .formfields p { margin: 4px 0; } Get The Full Walter Schloss Series in PDF Get the entire 10-part series on Walter Schloss in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or email to your colleagues. (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); Q3 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more Here are a few facts that we do not see accounted for in price and as that find to be accelerators for the next monthly time frame leg up: increase in demand for physical silver purchase during the previous eighteen months eleven trillion dollars pumped into the economy over the last eighteen months (inflation) electricity prices rising = demand for solar panels increasing (which contain silver) supply logistic constraints all over the world make large shipments of raw materials stuck in various ports (including silver) Silver In US-Dollar, Daily Chart, Signs Of Life Silver in US-Dollar, daily chart as of October 22nd, 2021. With the already present shortages of blanks for minting coins and a driver shortage for armored cars, why is silver trading at these low numbers? There is plenty of evidence that once demand for silver increases further, a short squeeze might be triggered. Consequently, silver prices might soar beyond typical trend steepness. On the daily chart above, signs of life are already evident. The trend-down channel since June this year has recently been broken to the upside. The first indication of a reversal. We have a keen eye on the price levels near the green dotted horizontal lines for possible low-risk long entries. Silver In US-Dollar, Weekly Chart, On The Verge Silver in US-Dollar, weekly chart as of October 22nd, 2021. We have warned numerous times that the two most detrimental factors to market losses are intuition and emotions. Intuition, while one of the most resourceful problem solvers, is worthless in the counterintuitive market environment. Emotions provide for a clouded perception of actual market behavior and a tendency to overwrite one’s rules and cause sabotage to disciplined behavior necessary for execution within one’s market play. Emotions aren’t only fear and greed, or chasing trades and running stops. Over the last forty years, we were less worried about inflation. As a result, we might be a bit  complacent now to validate early warning signals. Procrastination might be a consequence. Be advised that acquisition of physical purchase requires availability and even more knowledge. What to buy? Where to buy it? The Spring Is Loaded. There Is No Room For Research Once It’s Sprung. Prepare your actions in detail. Make a sample purchase for confidence and experience if you haven’t done so already. It is education that supports all subsequent steps and possible surprises to endure. Knowledge will give you the edge over the average citizen. Spot price analysis is helpful as well to keep calm and prepared. The weekly chart above shows a pat situation. Bulls celebrated above the mean (blue line). Fourteen weeks ago, the directional green trend line was violated by price. Bears pushed since then prices to lower levels. Right now, we are right on the verge of price trading near the red resistance downtrend line. This makes not for a low-risk entry zone on this time frame but should price close above this line, it would indicate a possible long trend continuation. Silver In US-Dollar, Monthly Chart, Bullish Engulfing Pattern Silver in US-Dollar, monthly chart as of October 22nd, 2021. It seems the crowd is complacent about all monthly bills and especially food prices going through the roof. Many billionaires, including Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Tudor-Jones, Bill Ackman and Warren Buffett, have stated that Americans aren’t paying enough attention to the fact that we will face consequences of the eleven trillion dollars pumped into the economy over the last eighteen months. The monthly chart reflects these market uncertainties to a certain degree. Silver prices have seen a substantial move up. Even though trading within a sideways range for over a year now, October is exceptionally strong so far. Representing a bullish engulfing pattern from a Japanese candlestick perspective, the majority of sellers in September got stopped out or are underwater. Should prices close above US$ 24 for this month, we would be very bullish on silver. We have already taken nine trades on small timeframes this month, of which seven were successful winning trades. Our quad exit strategy allows the remaining partial positions (the last 25% which we call “runner”) to be exposed at no risk within the markets. All these trades are posted in real-time in our free Telegram channel. Silver, The Loaded Spring There seems to be much confusion regarding the math on silver demand in the news. Boiling it down to a simple equation, we are mining an average of about 800 to 850 million ounces a year. In opposition to this mine supply, industrial demand is about 600 million ounces. With a speculated growth to about a billion ounces of industrial demand, it isn’t so challenging to feel safe on a long-term bet holding physical silver. And we are only talking about one sector of silver demand here… The real kicker will be the investment demand. Feel free to join us in our free Telegram channel for daily real time data and a great community. If you like to get regular updates on our gold model, precious metals and cryptocurrencies you can also subscribe to our free newsletter. This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone. They do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Midas Touch Consulting. About the Author: Korbinian Koller Outstanding abstract reasoning ability and ability to think creatively and originally has led over the last 25 years to extract new principles and a unique way to view the markets resulting in a multitude of various time frame systems, generating high hit rates and outstanding risk reward ratios. Over 20 years of coaching traders with heart & passion, assessing complex situations, troubleshoot and solve problems principle based has led to experience and a professional history of success. Skilled natural teacher and exceptional developer of talent.Avid learner guided by a plan with ability to suppress ego and empower students to share ideas and best practices and to apply principle-based technical/conceptual knowledge to maximize efficiency. 25+ year execution experience (50.000+ trades executed) Trading multiple personal accounts (long and short-and combinations of the two). Amazing market feel complementing mechanical systems discipline for precise and extreme low risk entries while objectively seeing the whole picture. Ability to notice and separate emotional responses from the decision-making process and to stand outside oneself and one’s concerns about images in order to function in terms of larger objectives. Developed exit strategies that compensate both for maximizing profits and psychological ease to allow for continuous flow throughout the whole trading day. In depth knowledge of money management strategies with the experience of multiple 6 sigma events in various markets (futures, stocks, commodities, currencies, bonds) embedded in extreme low risk statistical probability models with smooth equity curves and extensive risk management as well as extensive disaster risk allow for my natural capacity for risk-taking. Updated on Oct 22, 2021, 3:32 pm (function() { var sc = document.createElement("script"); sc.type = "text/javascript"; sc.async = true;sc.src = "//mixi.media/data/js/95481.js"; sc.charset = "utf-8";var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(sc, s); }()); window._F20 = window._F20 || []; _F20.push({container: 'F20WidgetContainer', placement: '', count: 3}); _F20.push({finish: true});.....»»

The Apple Watch is our top pick. But Google’s Wear OS update could mean better choices for Android users are coming. Table of Contents: Masthead Sticky The Apple Watch is easy to use and comes with plenty of health features, making it our favorite smartwatch. Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 series is the best choice for Android device owners. We don't recommend smartwatches running on Google's WearOS 2 operating system while we wait for WearOS 3 next year. See our guides to the best Apple Watches and smartwatches for women for more buying advice. The best smartwatches are useful for making sure you're kept in the loop when your phone's not in reach. They're also a great motivational tool for staying in shape and keeping tabs on your overall wellness.Smartwatches come in many different sizes, designs, and they can vary greatly when it comes to features. Before making a buying decision, ask yourself whether you want a watch primarily for fitness and sleep tracking, or whether style is your top priority. It's also a good idea to think about what watch operating system works best with your phone. For example, Apple watches only work with iPhones, Samsung and Google's WearOS3 powered by Samsung works with both Android. Google recently announced changes to its Wear OS platform coming later this year that include more customization, enhancements to battery life, and deeper integration with Google services. We had a taste of what's to come with the Galaxy Watch 4, and the future is looking good for Android users.I've been reviewing tech products for nearly a decade, and that includes testing smartwatches over the course of the past seven years. That means I've tested and researched many wearables from companies like Apple, Fitbit, Samsung and others and have a strong sense of what makes a good smartwatch for the price.Here are the best smartwatches you can buy:Best smartwatch overall: Apple Watch Series 6Best smartwatch for Android users: Samsung Galaxy Watch 4Best smartwatch for sleep tracking: Fitbit Versa 3Best fitness smartwatch: Garmin Forerunner 935 Running GPS Watch The best smartwatch overall Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider The Apple Watch has long been our favorite smartwatch for its ease of use, comprehensive health tracking, and polished design, and the Series 6 is the best iteration yet, at least until the Series 7 comes out in the fall. Size: 40 millimeter or 44 millimeter caseSensors and health: Compass, ECG sensor, blood oxygen sensor, always-on display, NFC, optical heart sensor, fall detectionSoftware: Apple watchOSBattery Life: Up to 18 hoursCheck out our guide to the best AirPodsPros: Large always-on display, polished design and software, wide variety of health-focused and smartwatch-oriented featuresCons: Expensive, shorter battery life than some rivals, only offers basic sleep trackingThe $400 Apple Watch Series 6 is Apple's most expensive smartwatch, and for good reason. With an always-on display that's brighter than the Series 5's, fast charging, new color options, and blood oxygen monitoring, it's the best Apple Watch you can buy. Apple also sells the less expensive Apple Watch SE for $280, another great choice if you want an Apple Watch that still feels new and fast at a more reasonable price. But you'll be missing out on advanced health features like blood oxygen level monitoring and the ability to take an ECG from your wrist.Those features may not matter for everyone; if you're the type of person that just wants to stay active and challenge yourself with fitness goals, the  SE will do just fine. It's these features combined with the Series 6's always-on display and faster charging that make it our top choice in the lineup.More broadly, the Apple Watch stands out from other smartwatches for its modern design that easily fits with any style, broad customization options, smooth performance and wide variety of apps, and polished software. Our writers and editors have tested dozens of WearOS and Fitbit watches over the years, and the Apple Watch has consistently been the best when it comes to the overall experience.That doesn't mean it's perfect, though. The Apple Watch's biggest drawbacks compared to rivals from Fitbit and other companies are its high price tag, shorter battery life, and lackluster sleep tracking. The best smartwatch for Android users Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is the obvious choice for Android users looking for a comprehensive, quality, premium smartwatch experience. However, it's a shame that the ECG feature is limited specifically to Samsung phone owners. Display:  40mm (396 x 396) and 44mm (450 x 450) Battery: 247mAh (40mm) and 361mAh (44mm), about 36 hoursOperating system: Google Wear OS powered by SamsungSensors: Accelerometer, Barometer, Gyro Sensor, Geomagnetic sensor, Electrical Heart Sensor (ECG), Optical Heart Rate Sensor (HRM), Bioelectrical impedance analysis sensor, Light SensorWater resistance: IP68 + 5ATMPros: Premium build and design, comparatively inexpensive, comprehensive fitness tracking and features, good battery life, more apps than everCons: ECG feature limited to Samsung users, included strap with Classic model is badWith smartwatches running Google's WearOS 2 out of our recommendation zone, Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 series is the only real contender for Android users in the US. Thankfully, the Galaxy Watch 4 series is truly excellent. The Galaxy Watch 4 has an array of health and fitness tracking features you'd expect from a premium smartwatch, including workout tracking, heart rate monitoring, blood pressure measuring, an ECG feature, sleep tracking, blood oxygen measuring, and stress measuring. It also has more advanced sleep tracking than the Apple Watch, but I've never personally had much confidence in this feature. Battery life is as expected in a premium smartwatch — that's to say it lasts about a day and a half before it needs a charge. That's with the always-on display, which looks great with the wide variety of customizable watch faces.You can read the full Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 review here. The best smartwatch for sleep tracking Fitbit The Fitbit Versa 3 is a relatively affordable smartwatch that checks all the boxes, but truly shines when it comes to sleep tracking and battery life.Size: One size, dimensions 1.59 x 1.59  x 0.49 inchesSensors and health: Heart rate monitor, NFC, ECG sensor, always-on display, altimeter, temperature sensorSoftware: Fitbit OSBattery Life: Estimated 6-plus days of battery lifeRead our full guide to the best sleep trackersPros: In-depth sleep tracking, long battery life, plenty of fitness featuresCons: No LTE version, software isn't as polished as the Apple WatchFitbit is far from being the only smartwatch to offer sleep tracking. But if you're looking for a general-purpose smartwatch that can provide deep insights into your sleep, the $229.95 Fitbit Versa 3 is the best pick for most people.Fitbit's sleep tracking goes beyond the basics by offering time spent in REM, light, and deep sleep, as well as the time you spent awake. It also tells you how much time you spent asleep and issues a Sleep Score that tells you about the quality of your sleep.In addition to just seeing data indicating how well you slept last night, you can also view a 30-day average and see how your sleeping pattern compares to others of your age and gender. Some of Fitbit's sleep-oriented features, like metrics that show restlessness, are only available if you subscribe to the $9.99 per month Fitbit Premium service. Still, even in the free tier, Fitbit offers more comprehensive sleep tracking metrics than most smartwatches, especially the Apple Watch. The Versa 3 also offers impressively long multi-day battery life that makes it much easier to track your sleep without worrying about draining your battery during the day. We recommend the Versa 3 over the $299.95 Fitbit Sense since it's more affordable and still has many of Fitbit's most important features. These include heart rate monitoring, the ability to deliver notifications from your phone, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant support, exercise tracking, comprehensive sleep tracking, and a swim proof design. The downside, however, is that there's no LTE option for the Versa 3 for those who want to receive calls and texts when their phone isn't nearby. For iPhone owners, the software and app experience is also much more polished on the Apple Watch than it is on Fitbit's watches. Best smartwatch for fitness enthusiasts Garmin/Facebook The Garmin Forerunner 935 Running GPS Watch is a fitness enthusiast's dream that has long battery life and measures several metrics you won't find on general purpose watches.Size: 47 x 47 x 13.9 millimetersSensors and health: GPS, heart rate monitor, compass, thermometer, barometerSoftware: GarminBattery Life: Up to 2 weeks in smartwatch mode, up to 24 hours in GPS/HR modeCheck out the 5 best men's running shoes for race training, long distance runs, or casual jogsPros: Long battery life, waterproof, durable glass face, built-in barometer and thermometer, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, and the ability to measure more metrics than we can list hereCons: Expensive, reduced GPS accuracy when running on a track, built-in thermometer only measures temperature right above your skinSmartwatches running Apple's, Samsung's, and Google's operating systems come with decent fitness tracking features and functionality, but then there are smartwatches that bring fitness tracking to a whole other level. We're talking about smartwatches from Garmin. We had a competitive distance runner try the $500 Garmin Forerunner 935 for 1,000 miles — and it's better than any running watch he's ever used. With that testimonial in mind, the Forerunner 935 is our top choice for fitness enthusiasts, at least for those who can allocate up to $500 for a device that's specifically geared towards fitness. When you're spending this much on a fitness tracking device, you're better off reading the full review to find out what's good and what's not about the Forerunner 935. And realizing that the Forerunner 935 is expensive, we know of some less expensive fitness trackers that will work just fine for the majority of fitness folk.  What else we considered Fitbit While these are our top picks, there are several other options worth considering based on your needs, preferences, and budget. Here's a look at some other contenders: Garmin Solar Instinct: The Solar Instinct is an outdoorsy-oriented watch that has small solar panels that help maintain a massive month-long battery life (as long as you're in the sun for at least three hours a day). It comes with a wide range of fitness and health tracking sensors and features, and it's a great alternative to the Forerunner 935 if you want some extra battery life.Garmin Vivoactive 4: Garmin's Vivoactive 4 is a more affordable alternative to its Forerunner and Fenix lines that still offers more in-depth health features than your standard smartwatch. It also comes with many of the other features around connectivity you'd demand from a watch of its price.Fitbit Sense: The Sense is Fitbit's top-of-the-line smartwatch and its first to offer the ability to measure how your body reacts to stress. The Sense, like Fitbit's other smartwatches, serves as a compelling Apple Watch alternative for non-Apple users and those seeking a more affordable watch. However, we chose the Versa 3 instead as one of our top picks because it has many of the benefits of the Sense at a more reasonable price.Michael Kors Access Lexington 2: Michael Kors has been making smartwatches alongside Fossil for years now. If you like MK, you'll probably like this watch as it has many of the same features. What we look forward to testing Tech companies and fashion houses alike are always launching new products, and these are the smartwatches that we're looking forward to testing soon.Apple Watch Series 7: We're looking forward to testing Apple's new Series 7 when it releases later this fall. The main draw here will be centered around the refreshed design, as well as some important updates to the always-on display and some nifty new features, like an on-screen keyboard for easier messaging.Smartwatches with Google's new Wear OS: Google's WearOS 2 is in dire need of replacement, and the company is currently working on that. Samsung and Google have already partnered to create a Google/Samsung hybrid version of WearOS 3 for the Galaxy Watch 4 that instills confidence. WearOS 3 is officially slated for a 2022 universal release, and we're looking forward to testing out smartwatches running on the new WearOS 3 when they're released. But for now, please, don't buy a smartwatch that runs on WearOS.Skagen Jorn Hybrid HR: With its minimalist design and low-power screen, the $195 Skagen Jorn looks promising for those who prioritize sleek looks and long battery life in a smartwatch. The company says it should last for up to two weeks on a charge thanks to its e-ink screen, which draws less power than traditional LCD or OLED screens. It has many of the core features you'd expect from a smartwatch, like the ability to deliver smartphone notifications, monitor activity and fitness, and measure your heart rate. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The third-quarter was an average-to-downbeat period for investors, mainly due to rising rates. The third-quarter was an average-to-downbeat period for investors, mainly due to rising rates. A cooling U.S. economy, falling consumer confidence, a series of bank downgrades also made matters worse for Wall Street. However, all were not downbeat for the broader market as there were ebbing U.S. recession fears along with several upbeat economic data points and a decent Q2 earnings season.The S&P 500 (down 0.7%), the Nasdaq (down 2.1%) and the Russell 2000 (down 2.5%) have slumped in the third quarter while the Dow Jones (up 0.7%) gained (as of Sep 22, 2023). Against this backdrop, let’s discuss the ETF areas that emerged winners in the third quarter and those that were hit hard.Top IndustriesCannabis – Roundhill Cannabis ETF (WEED) – Up 37.3%In a significant development, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recently initiated a review of marijuana's classification under the Controlled Substances Act. This move has the potential to impact the burgeoning marijuana industry favorably, which has faced federal restrictions despite state-level legalization efforts (read: Behind the Recent Surge in Marijuana ETFs).Uranium Miners – Sprott Junior Uranium Miners ETF (URNJ) – Up 35%Growing energy concerns and the increasing need for dependable and eco-friendly energy sources are also fueling the surge in uranium ETF. The ability of nuclear power to cut carbon emissions has brought it back in the public eye. Oil Services – Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF (PXJ) – Up 18.3%The wind is at the back of the Oil and Gas-Field Services Industry as it is poised for growth in the coming year, driven by favorable crude pricing and robust demand for oilfield services. The industry comprises companies that play a pivotal role in supporting exploration and production activities (read: Time for Oilfield Services ETFs?).Shipping – SonicShares Global Shipping ETF (BOAT) – Up 11.4%Global trade is showing promising signs of recovery, as evident from the insights of Vincent Clerc, the CEO of shipping giant Maersk. This, in turn, has proved to be tailwind for the shipping ETFs (read: Time for Shipping ETFs Amid Improving Global Trade Scenario?)Flop IndustriesSolar Power – Global X Solar ETF (RAYS) – Down 25.2%There has been soft U.S. demand for solar equipment. The demand is more lukewarm in states like Texas and Arizona where cheaper electricity prices make the economics of residential solar less attractive. high borrowing costs are also hurting solar companies’ businesses.Defense – Global X Defense Tech ETF (SHLD) – Down 23.2%The aerospace and defense stocks recorded a dip in performance in the third quarter. Like most businesses, higher interest rates can be held responsible for this slump. The underlying Global X Defense Tech Index seeks to provide exposure to defense technology companies that are positioned to benefit from technology, services, systems and hardware that cater to the defense and military sector.Lithium Miners – Sprott Lithium Miners ETF (LITP) – Down 22.5%Lithium carbonate prices have slumped recently, due to the decline in demand for electric vehicles. Battery manufacturers for electric vehicles have gradually reduced their input purchases since the beginning of the third quarter due to their inventories reaching capacity and the depletion of funds from prior government-led incentives, per tradingeconomics.Biotech – Virtus LifeSci Biotech Clinical Trials ETF (BBC) – Down 20.8%Biotech stocks have been on a roller-coaster ride. Rising rate worries weighed on the segment heavily as the segment hails from the high-growth one. Want key ETF info delivered straight to your inbox? Zacks’ free Fund Newsletter will brief you on top news and analysis, as well as top-performing ETFs, each week.Get it free >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Global X Defense Tech ETF (SHLD): ETF Research Reports Virtus LifeSci Biotech Clinical Trials ETF (BBC): ETF Research Reports Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF (PXJ): ETF Research Reports SonicShares Global Shipping ETF (BOAT): ETF Research Reports Global X Solar ETF (RAYS): ETF Research Reports Roundhill Cannabis ETF (WEED): ETF Research Reports Sprott Lithium Miners ETF (LITP): ETF Research ReportsTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

Michael Leskinen has been appointed as the new CFO of United Airlines (UAL). United Airlines UAL announced that Michael Leskinen has been promoted to chief financial officer and executive vice president.His new duties require him to oversee corporate finance, treasury, financial planning and analysis, tax, accounting, investor relations, procurement, internal audit, risk management and corporate strategy. Leskinen will also join the airline's Executive Team.United Airline’s CEO Scott Kirby stated, “With two decades of experience on Wall Street and five years as a leading finance executive at United, Mike brings a unique understanding of the public markets combined with an in depth understanding of our airline and our industry.”Earlier this year, UAL announced that prior CFO Gerry Laderman would remain in the role until his successor was appointed and then serve as EVP, Finance until his planned retirement in Sep 2024.Leskinen joined United Airlines in 2018 as the managing director of Investor Relations and was promoted to vice president of Corporate Development and Investor Relations in 2019. In 2020, Leskinen led the multi-divisional team that successfully raised $6.8 billion of financing secured by the airline's MileagePlus loyalty program, an industry first giving United Airlines critical financial flexibility to manage through the pandemic.Prior to UAL, Leskinen was an executive director at J.P. Morgan Asset Management from 2013-2017, where he led the firm's investment efforts in aerospace, defense and airlines.Zacks RankUAL currently carries Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).Key PicksSome better-ranked stocks for investors interested in the Zacks Transportation sector are GATX Corporation GATX and Triton International Limited TRTN.GATX, which presently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), has strengthened its railcar leasing operations. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.For third-quarter and full-year 2023, GATX’s earnings are expected to register 36.6% and 14.3% growth, respectively, on a year-over-year basis.Triton, which currently carries a Zacks Rank #2, is benefiting from its consistent efforts to reward shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.Triton has an impressive liquidity position. Its current ratio (a measure of liquidity) was 3.83 at the end of second-quarter 2023. A current ratio of more than 1 often indicates that the company will be easily paying off its short-term obligations.  5 Stocks Set to Double Each was handpicked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in 2023. Previous recommendations have soared +143.0%, +175.9%, +498.3% and +673.0%. Most of the stocks in this report are flying under Wall Street radar, which provides a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor.Today, See These 5 Potential Home Runs >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report United Airlines Holdings Inc (UAL): Free Stock Analysis Report GATX Corporation (GATX): Free Stock Analysis Report Triton International Limited (TRTN): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

In this article, we will talk about the 10 most mentally stimulating jobs according to Reddit. If you are interested in reading our in-depth industrial analysis along with a more extensive list, head straight to the 25 Most Mentally Stimulating Jobs According to Reddit. 10. Ethical Hacker  Average Salary: $106,617 Ethical hackers test and secure […] In this article, we will talk about the 10 most mentally stimulating jobs according to Reddit. If you are interested in reading our in-depth industrial analysis along with a more extensive list, head straight to the 25 Most Mentally Stimulating Jobs According to Reddit. 10. Ethical Hacker  Average Salary: $106,617 Ethical hackers test and secure computer systems from cyber threats. Many companies hire ethical hackers to identify and fix vulnerabilities in their systems while ensuring cybersecurity to protect sensitive data. To read more about cyber security, check out our article on the highest-paying countries for cyber security experts......»»

In this article, we will look at the 10 high-paying jobs that don’t require math. If you are interested in reading about our in-depth analysis of emerging trends in jobs along with a more extensive list, head straight to the 25 High Paying Jobs That Don’t Require Math. 10. Midwife Average Salary: $109,022 Midwives are […] In this article, we will look at the 10 high-paying jobs that don’t require math. If you are interested in reading about our in-depth analysis of emerging trends in jobs along with a more extensive list, head straight to the 25 High Paying Jobs That Don’t Require Math. 10. Midwife Average Salary: $109,022 Midwives are healthcare professionals specializing in maternal and newborn care. They provide prenatal, childbirth, and postnatal care to expectant mothers. It is one of the jobs that don’t require math......»»

In this article, we will look at the 10 best jobs for people who love travelling. If you are interested in reading about our in-depth industrial analysis of the tourism industry along with a more extensive list, head straight to the 35 Best Jobs for People Who Want to Travel.  10. International Business Consultant Average […] In this article, we will look at the 10 best jobs for people who love travelling. If you are interested in reading about our in-depth industrial analysis of the tourism industry along with a more extensive list, head straight to the 35 Best Jobs for People Who Want to Travel.  10. International Business Consultant Average Salary: $81,997 International business consultants travel extensively to help companies navigate the complexities of global markets. Traveling allows them to engage with clients face-to-face, build rapport, and provide on-site guidance. It is one of the business jobs that require international travel......»»

In this article, we will look at the 35 best jobs for people who want to travel. If you want to skip our in-depth industrial analysis of the tourism industry, head straight to the 10 Best Jobs for People Who Want to Travel. The Global Rise of Sustainable Tourism In 2023, we observe a consistent […] In this article, we will look at the 35 best jobs for people who want to travel. If you want to skip our in-depth industrial analysis of the tourism industry, head straight to the 10 Best Jobs for People Who Want to Travel. The Global Rise of Sustainable Tourism In 2023, we observe a consistent and lasting emphasis on sustainable tourism. For example, the Sustainable Tourism for Development Programme is an initiative by The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) that will provide funding and technical assistance to developing countries to help them develop and implement sustainable tourism strategies. Moreover, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has released a new report on the economic impact of sustainable tourism. The report found that sustainable tourism contributed $3.5 trillion to the global economy in 2022 and supported 330 million jobs.  In line with the trend, Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) has been contributing to sustainable tourism by recognizing the importance of environmental responsibility in the travel industry. In response to growing traveler demand for eco-friendly options, Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) recently signed the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Travel and Tourism. Moreover, the company’s Open World social impact and sustainability strategy focuses on three key pillars: Inclusive Access, Economic Mobility, and a Prosperous Planet. One of the most notable achievements is the Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE)’s commitment to decarbonizing its operations and mitigating climate change impacts. As part of this initiative, Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) is developing a comprehensive Climate Action Plan and they are actively promoting sustainable travel options to travelers, recognizing that 90% of consumers seek sustainability in their travel choices.  The company has been highly impressive with its financial standing as well. Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) delivered impressive results in the second quarter of 2023, marked by a 7% increase in lodging gross bookings which was the highest ever for this quarter. Additionally, the company achieved a record-breaking second-quarter revenue growth of 6%, accompanied by substantial earnings growth and margin expansion. Notably, Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE)’s commitment to shareholder value was also evident in its accelerated share repurchases that amounted to a record $1.2 billion year-to-date. In the first quarter, Aristotle Atlantic Core Equity Strategy made the following comment about Expedia Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE): “Expedia Group, Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) provides online travel services for leisure and small business travelers. The company offers a wide range of travel shopping and reservation services, as well as provides real-time access to schedule, pricing and availability information for airlines, hotels and car rental companies. Expedia serves customers worldwide. We see Expedia benefiting from the growth of booking travel online, both for leisure and in corporate travel. The company also benefits from rapid growth in alternative accommodations, vacation home rental, through VRBO. The main sources of revenue and profitability are from hotel and vacation home rental. Additionally Expedia has exposure to airline ticket sales and automobile rentals. Post the COVID-19 pandemic, Expedia’s debt has been reduced and share repurchase has resumed and we would expect a dividend to be reinstated.” The Era of Experiential Tourism After sustainable tourism, we also see how experiential tourism is on the rise, as travelers seek out unique and authentic experiences that connect them with local cultures and destinations. This trend is being driven by a number of factors like the growing popularity of social media, the desire for more meaningful travel experiences, and the increasing availability of experiential tourism experiences. One way to see the rise of experiential tourism is in the popularity of online platforms for booking experiential tourism experiences. Platforms such as TripAdvisor Experiences have made it easier for travelers to find and book unique and authentic experiences at their destination.  TripAdvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) also facilitates experiential travel by offering travelers access to over 300,000 bookable experiences in more than 250,000 destinations worldwide. After analyzing 12 months of review data from millions of travelers, TripAdvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) has also compiled the Travelers’ Choice Best of the Best “Things to Do” Awards which provides a definitive guide to extraordinary activities and excursions. TripAdvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) is also one of the Travel Stocks Billionaires Are Loading Up On. Methodology To list the best jobs for people who love to travel, we identified jobs that involved frequent travelling and thus, shortlisted a total of 50 jobs. Out of the 50 jobs, the 35 jobs with the highest average salaries in the US have been selected. We acquired data on average salaries from BLS. in case of non-availability of data, we have relied on average salary data from Indeed.com and Glassdoor.com. Here is a list of the best jobs for people who love to travel 35. Tour Guide Average Salary: $37,790 A tour guide job is interesting because it allows one to share their passion for travel, history, and culture while meeting people from different backgrounds and enjoying each day differently. 34. Stagehand Average Salary: $40,118 Stagehand jobs often involve frequent traveling as they are hired to set up and dismantle stage equipment and sets for events or performances in different locations. 33. Wildlife Photographer Average Salary: $44,958 Wildlife photographers travel to capture different animal species in their natural habitats, requiring mobility to access remote locations. It is one of the best jobs for people who love to travel.  32. International Event Coordinator Average Salary: $46,765 International event coordinators travel to plan, organize, and oversee events in different global locations to ensure that logistics and cultural considerations are met. 31. Global Brand Ambassador Average Salary: $47,856 These professionals travel to represent and promote a brand while building relationships, attending events, and expanding the brand’s reach internationally. 30. Travel Agent Average Salary: $48,250 Travel agents may travel to explore destinations, inspect accommodations, and gain firsthand knowledge to better advise and plan trips for clients. (link with without experience jobs article) 29. Travel Photographer Average Salary:  $48,876 Travel photographers travel to capture beautiful landscapes, variety in cultures, and experiences to create visually compelling stories and images for publications or clients. It is one of the jobs that require international travel with no experience.  28. Archaeological Illustrator Average Salary: $53,420 Archaeological illustrators frequently travel to archaeological sites to observe and document artifacts, ruins, and excavation processes. It is one of the best jobs for people who love to travel.  27. Interpreters Average Salary: $53,640 Interpreters may travel to facilitate communication at international conferences, meetings, or in regions with different languages and cultures. 26. ESL Teacher Average Salary: 54,348 ESL teachers often travel abroad to teach English in foreign countries. It is one of the most respected jobs in the world.  25. Travel Vlogger Average Salary: $56,780 These individuals explore destinations to create engaging content and share personal experiences. They also offer travel tips and insights to their audience. It is one of the traveling jobs that pay well with no experience.  24. Archaeologist Average Salary: $59,673 Archaeologists usually travel for fieldwork, research, and site exploration, as they investigate and document historical and cultural artifacts and sites. Its one of the fun jobs if you love travelling.  23. Chef Average Salary: $60,210 The job of a chef is such that it requires them to explore regional cuisines, source authentic ingredients, and engage in cross-cultural culinary exchanges so that they can brush their culinary repertoire. It is one of the most fun jobs that pay well. 22. Actor Average Salary: $61,000 Traveling is a major part of the acting profession as actors travel for film, theater, or TV productions, auditioning, filming on location, or even for promotions. It is one of the most profitable professions in the world.  21. Athletic Recruiter Average Salary: $62,425 Athletic recruiters travel to evaluate prospective athletes and build relationships with coaches and prospects.  20. International Trade Analyst Average Salary: $62,928 International trade analysts travel to assess global markets, meet with clients, and gather firsthand market insights for strategic decisions. 19. Truck Driver Average Salary: $64,012 Truck drivers have to travel extensively to transport goods and commodities across various locations and fulfill delivery requirements. 18. Geologist Average Salary: $66,597 Geologists keep moving from one place to another to conduct fieldwork, analyze rock formations, and gather geological data for research and environmental assessments. 17. Scuba Diving Instructor Average Salary:  $66,617  Scuba diving instructors provide underwater training and certification. They enable individuals to explore the world’s aquatic wonders. It is one of the fun travel jobs that pay well.  16. Influencer Average Salary: $67,113  Influencers travel to different destinations to document their experiences and engage with followers through content creation and social media. To read more about content creation, do check out our article on the highest-paid YouTubers in the world.  15. Travel Writer Average Salary: $67,640 Travel writers explore destinations to gather firsthand experiences and information in travel writing. It is one of the jobs that require international travel sometimes.  14. External Auditor Average Salary: $70,989  The job requires excessive traveling as auditors have to assess and verify financial records and compliance with regulations for different client organizations. It is one of the jobs that require travel and pay well.  13. International Aid Worker Average Salary: $71,327 To provide humanitarian assistance and support in crisis-affected regions and developing countries, aid workers need to travel internationally.  12. Fashion Designer Average Salary: $73,434  Fashion designers often travel to gather inspiration and attend fashion shows. Their jobs also involve meeting their clients frequently and visiting manufacturers while scouting materials. 11. International Sales Representative Average Salary: $81,180 International sales representatives travel frequently to negotiate deals and expand business opportunities in global markets. It is one of the best jobs for people who love to travel.  Click here to see the 10 Best Jobs for People Who Want to Travel. Suggested Articles: 30 High-Paying Remote Jobs Without a Degree or Experience 25 Highest Paying Jobs in the World 17 Highest Paying Government Jobs Without a Degree Disclosure: None. 35 Best Jobs for People Who Want to Travel is originally published on Insider Monkey......»»

An in-depth analysis of institutional and insider ownership, earnings, and future prospects of Newpark Resources IncCheck out First Eagle Investment Stock Picks » Download GuruFolio Report of First Eagle Investment (Updated on 09/21/2023)Related Stocks: NR,.....»»

The Federal Reserve's decision to pause interest rates opens up investment opportunities in technology mutual funds such as FSELX, PRSCX and KTCAX. Federal Reserve recently announced its decision to keep interest rates unchanged, maintaining the range between 5.25% and 5.5%.The Fed made the decision based on revised economic growth projections, which have taken a notably optimistic turn. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is now expected to surge by a robust 2.1% for the current year. This upward revision reflects the Federal Reserve's strong confidence in the economy's direction and its belief that a recession is not imminent.Consumer behavior plays a crucial role in maintaining this confidence. With consumers driving about two-thirds of economic activity, their resilience is truly remarkable. They continue to spend even in the face of challenges like escalating energy costs and the resumption of student loan repayments. This unwavering spending underscores the prevailing strength of consumer sentiment, as evidenced by sustained levels, despite decreasing savings. Recent data from Federal Reserve Bank of New York reveals that credit card debt has already surpassed $1 trillion.Additionally, the labor market's performance provides another reason for optimism. Initial jobless claims have significantly dropped since late January, a clear sign that the labor market remains exceptionally tight. In the week ending Sep16, first-time filings totaled a seasonally adjusted 201,000, well below the Dow Jones estimate of 225,000 and marking a notable decrease of 20,000 from the previous week. Continuing claims also declined, totaling 1.662 million. These labor market indicators further underscore the strength and resilience of the broader economy.All these economic indicators make the technology sector an attractive investment choice. Higher interest rates typically exert pressure on tech companies’ future cash flows, limiting their ability to invest in innovation and impeding their growth potential. This is because rising interest rates make borrowing more expensive for tech firms, leading to increased cash outflows and potential losses. With the overall economic outlook showing signs of improvement, technology mutual funds offer a potential path to long-term growth and stability in these uncertain times.From an investment standpoint, we have selected three tech mutual funds, which are expected to hedge one's portfolio against any economic downturn and provide attractive returns. Mutual funds, in general, reduce transaction costs and diversify the portfolio without commission charges mostly associated with stock purchases (read more: Mutual Funds: Advantages, Disadvantages, and How They Make Investors Money).These mutual funds, by the way, boast a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1 (Strong Buy)or 2 (Buy), have positive three-year and five-year annualized returns, minimum initial investments within $5000, and carry a low expense ratio.Fidelity Select Semiconductors Portfolio Fund FSELX seeks capital appreciation. FSELX invests most of its assets in common stocks of companies principally engaged in the design, manufacture, or sale of electronic components.Adam Benjamin has been the lead manager of FSELX since Mar 15, 2020. Most of the fund's holdings were in companies like NVIDIA Corp. (32.2%), Marvell Technology, Inc. (8.3%), and NXP Semiconductors N.V. (8.1%) as of May 31, 2023.FSELX's 3-year and 5-year returns are 30.4% and 27.6%, respectively. The annual expense ratio is 0.69% compared with the category average of 1.05%. FSELX has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1.To see how this fund performed compared to its category and other 1 and 2 Ranked Mutual Funds, please click here.T. Rowe Price Science and Technology Fund PRSCX seeks long-term capital growth by investing in common stocks of companies expected by T. Rowe Price to benefit from the development, advancement, and use of science and technology. PRSCX advisors invest in foreign stocks, futures and options.Kennard W. Allen has been the lead manager of PRSCX since Dec 31, 2008. Most of the fund's holdings were in companies like Microsoft Corp. (10.8%), Alphabet Inc. (5.3%) and Salesforce, Inc. (5.1%) as of Jun 30, 2023.PRSCX's 3-year and 5-year returns are 4.4% and 11.7%, respectively. The annual expense ratio is 0.82% compared with the category average of 1.05%. PRSCX has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1.DWS Science and Technology Fund KTCAX seeks capital appreciation by investing most of its assets in common stocks of U.S. companies in the technology sector. KTCAX advisors use in-depth research to select a diverse portfolio of technology companies with robust and sustainable earnings growth, large and growing markets, leading products and services, and strong balance sheets.Sebastian P. Werner has been the lead manager of KTCAX since Nov 30, 2017. Most of the fund's holdings were in companies like Microsoft Corp. (8.2%), NVIDIA Corp. (8%) and Apple Inc. (7.7%) as of Apr 30, 2023.KTCAX's 3-year and 5-year returns are 6.5% and 13.8%, respectively. The annual expense ratio is 0.91% compared with the category average of 1.05%. KTCAX has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1. Want key mutual fund info delivered straight to your inbox? Zacks' free Fund Newsletter will brief you on top news and analysis, as well as top-performing mutual funds, each week. Get it free >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Get Your Free (PRSCX): Fund Analysis Report Get Your Free (FSELX): Fund Analysis Report Get Your Free (KTCAX): Fund Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

IPOs are the lifeblood of the stock market but can also present risk. Strategist Andrew Rocco walks you through pitfalls to watch, and 3 IPOs set to outperform over the next 6-12 months. IPOs (initial public offerings) are the lifeblood of the stock market. Newly public offerings provide allow investors to invest in high-growth, disruptive companies that often have yet to reach their full potential. However, mindlessly entering IPOs is a surefire way to lose money and lose it fast. For example, Arm Holdings (ARM) and Maplebear (CART) (aka Instacart), the two most hyped IPOs of 2023, began trading late last week and are already more than 20% off highs.Image Source: TradingViewImage Source: Zacks Investment ResearchBelow are three pitfalls to avoid when buying IPOs:Buying During an Uncertain Market Condition Like any other stock, IPOs are susceptible to general market conditions. Because 75% of stocks follow the market direction, a shaky market often means shaky IPO performance. Since IPOs are “risk on” assets, downside performance can be even more amplified in a poor market. Currently, stocks are trying to navigate the most seasonally tricky period of the year.Image Source: Ryan Detrick, Carson ResearchFailing to Wait for EquilibriumAn investor can conduct fundamental analysis until they’re blue in the face; however, the ultimate arbiter of supply and demand is a price and volume chart. When an IPO first starts trading, it is very difficult to determine the value and whether it is priced properly because there is little in the way of price history.Getting Involved During the Lockup PeriodA lockup period refers to a predetermined timeframe after a company goes public during which company insiders, such as founders, employees, and early investors, are restricted from selling their shares in the company.Once the lockup period concludes, IPOs often face selling pressure – as insiders look to unload shares (especially of “hot” IPOs) at bloated prices. More supply in the market leads to short to intermediate-term pressure on a stock. An excellent precedent to look at is Meta Platforms (META), formerly Facebook, in 2012 after its IPO. The highly anticipated IPO consolidated for more than a year before taking off.Image Source: TradingViewOut of the many recent IPOs, only some have proven to be attractive. However, below are 3 IPOs with the most significant potential over the next 6-12 months: The Sun is Shining on NEXTrackerZacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock NEXTracker (NXT) specializes in advanced solar tracking systems for solar power plants. The company’s unique product helps solar panels to follow the sun’s path throughout the day. By doing so, NEXTracker’s systems optimize the angle at which solar panels receive sunlight, increasing energy generation efficiency.Strong GrowthUnlike many recent IPOs, NXT is both profitable and growing rapidly. Last quarter, revenue jumped 19% as EPS ballooned 167%, year-over-year. Meanwhile, Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest growth of 504.17% for 2024 EPS.Image Source: Zacks Investment ResearchRelative Strength2023 is turning out to be a challengin year for most solar stocks. For example, Enphase Energy (ENPH) is down 52.8%. However, NXT is bucking the trend in a big way and is up 39.7% - a blatant sign of relative performance.Image Source: Zacks Investment ResearchDriving Towards Profits Automotive accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the United States. On average, more than 45,000 people die each year from car accidents. In the past ten years, the number of accidents in the U.S. has increased steadily following the advent of the smartphone and the general population’s subsequent addiction to such devices.  What if there was a way to drastically decrease the number of automotive accidents and fatalities?Autonomous Driving TechnologyMobileye Global is at the forefront of autonomous driving and the advanced driver-assistance system technology space. The company produces AI technology, including semiconductor chips, software, and cameras. While you may not have heard of Mobileye, you have most certainly heard of its customers. The Israel-based company has been in business for more than twenty years and is gaining momentum by inking partnerships with several leading automakers, including General Motors (GM), Honda Motor (HMC), and Toyota (TM).Catalyst Rich PeriodWednesday morning, a Citigroup (C) analyst bumped up his MBLY price target to $72 (the stock currently trades at ~$40) as he sees a “domino effect” in the autonomous vehicle space.Consistent Earnings WinnerMBLY has beaten Zacks Consensus Estimates for every quarter since going public.Image Source: Zacks Investment ResearchGamifying Language LearningLearning a new language can be a tedious, frustrating process. However, the digital language-learning education platform Duolingo (DUOL) is finding a niche by “gamifying” language learning through its unique mobile app. The convenient and engaging platform is catching on, and investors are noticing. After trading as low as $60, DUOL is back above its IPO price of $102 and is attempting to break out of a multi-year base structure.Bottom Line Uncertain market conditions, lack of equilibrium, and lockup periods can provide treacherous conditions for brand-new IPOs. However, within the minefield of IPOs exist some gems such as NXT, MBLY, and DUOL.Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Citigroup Inc. (C): Free Stock Analysis Report Toyota Motor Corporation (TM): Free Stock Analysis Report Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (HMC): Free Stock Analysis Report ARM Holdings PLC (ARM): Get Free Report General Motors Company (GM): Free Stock Analysis Report Enphase Energy, Inc. (ENPH): Free Stock Analysis Report Maplebear Inc. (CART): Get Free Report Meta Platforms, Inc. (META): Free Stock Analysis Report Duolingo, Inc. (DUOL): Free Stock Analysis Report Nextracker Inc. (NXT): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»