Author: arthursheikin@gmail.com

[ad_1] RH’s unique position, with a high-end assortment, relative scale, and a small share of the home furnishings market, leaves room for long-term growth. However, the weak U.S. housing market is a significant headwind. This is something CEO Gary Friedman acknowledged on the earnings conference call last quarter… “While we expect a higher-risk business environment this year due to the uncertainty caused by tariffs, market volatility, and inflation risk, we believe it’s important to separate the signal from the noise. The fact is, we’ve been operating in the worst housing market in almost 50 years. For context, in 1978, there…

[ad_1] No one wants to own cable networks anymore.Would you like to buy some?That is the pitch that Warner Bros. Discovery is making to Wall Street now that it has announced it’s splitting itself into two companies: One will own Warners’ movie and television studio and the HBO Max streaming service; the other — which it’s calling its “global networks” unit — will own a bunch of cable TV networks including CNN, TNT, Discovery and the Food Network.If that sounds familiar, it’s for two reasons:WBD has been contemplating this for a long time.Last summer, it floated the same idea but…

[ad_1] Google is tracking how AI is making its engineers more productive — and has developed a specific way to measure it.Speaking on an episode of the “Lex Fridman Podcast” that aired last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company was looking closely at how artificial intelligence was boosting productivity among its software developers.”The most important metric, and we carefully measure it, is how much has our engineering velocity increased as a company due to AI?” he said. The company estimates that it’s so far seen a 10% boost, Pichai said.A Google spokesperson clarified to Business Insider that…

[ad_1] Jefferies thinks Quaker Chemical could be on the verge of a breakout in both the near and long term. The metal processing fluid company, which does business as Quaker Houghton, was upgraded to buy from hold on Monday. Jefferies also upped its price target to $146 per share from $115, which implies more than 33% upside from Friday’s $109.65 close. While shares have pulled back more than 22% so far in 2025, analyst Laurence Alexander Quaker expects that to change as conditions improve for steel demand and infrastructure spending increases. Also, the company should be able to pass through any…

[ad_1] Qualcomm has agreed to acquire Alphawave Semi, a U.K.-based semiconductor company focused on high-speed data center connectivity, for around $2.4 billion. According to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, the deal will help Qualcomm grow its data center business. “The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high-growth areas, including data center infrastructure,” Amon said in a press release. Qualcomm’s acquisition of Alphawave, which makes a range of wired connectivity and compute technologies, comes a few months after the bigger chip company bought the generative AI division…

[ad_1] ChatGPT’s conversational voice mode just got an upgrade. Over the weekend, OpenAI rolled out an update to Advanced Voice, the feature that lets users have dialogues with ChatGPT out loud. The company says ChatGPT’s voices now sound more natural and fluid, with “subtler intonation,” “realistic cadence” (including pauses and emphasis), and more “on-point expressiveness” for emotions like empathy and sarcasm. Voice mode now also allows users to translate languages more easily. Ask ChatGPT to interpret, and it will continue translating the conversation until you tell it to stop or switch to another language. The feature is available for all…

[ad_1] CNN  —  Last week, Elon Musk was calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment. This week, Musk is back to praising the administration, softening his tone after the two powerful leaders’ very public breakup. The whiplash came as protests erupted in Los Angeles over actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and immigration raids. Over the weekend, Musk deleted some of his most incendiary X posts about the president, including the call for his impeachment and the allegation, without providing evidence, that Trump’s name appeared in documents related to the crimes of convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein. Musk…

[ad_1] (This is a wrap-up of the key money moving discussions on CNBC’s “Worldwide Exchange” exclusive for PRO subscribers. Worldwide Exchange airs at 5 a.m. ET each day.) Investors are looking for opportunities in emerging markets on the back of U.S.-China trade talks and at a cybersecurity play focused on AI and remote work. Worldwide Exchange pick: CrowdStrike Shana Sissel of Banrion Capital sees more upside in CrowdStrike despite the cybersecurity giant seeing a more than 35% gain this year. “It’s the leading player in that space. … Its Falcon XDR technology is incorporating AI, remote work continues to be…

[ad_1] CNN  —  Americans felt a whole lot better about prices and the job market in May, a month that featured a détente in the trade war between the US and China. Consumers’ year-ahead expectations for inflation tumbled in May by 0.4 percentage points to 3.2%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest Survey of Consumer Expectations released Monday. It was the biggest monthly sinking of near-term inflation expectations since November 2022, when price hikes slowed much more than expected and the Federal Reserve delivered another heavy-handed effort to curb decades-high inflation. The May survey appeared to…

[ad_1] Here are Monday’s biggest calls on Wall Street: Goldman Sachs initiates eToro as buy Goldman said the financial services company has a differentiated offering. “We see ETOR as an attractive market share gain story in the fragmented European retail brokerage market, driven by a differentiated offering vs. peers, in terms of: 1) its geographic and product breadth (a pan-European client base that can trade global unlevered and levered equities, currencies, commodities, and crypto); 2) a tech-enabled offering…” Morgan Stanley downgrades Lululemon to equal weight from overweight Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock citing a slew of negative data points. “We’re…