Category: Financial & Investment Tips

Google’s search ads will soon feature special “buy” buttons. “There is going to be a buy button soon. It’s imminent,” Google Chief Business Officer Omid Kordestani said on Wednesday at the Code conference in Southern California. The move, which was reported earlier this month by the Wall Street Journal, is the latest sign of Google’s ambitions to expand its search engine from being a mere provider of Web links to a one-stop shop where consumers can directly buy whatever strikes their fancy. It could also be a strong counter against Amazon’s pull as a online destination for all things retail, which threatens Google’s most lucrative source of search advertising money. The Wall Street Journal report said that the buy buttons will initially be available only

In its glory days Macau’s casinos were bringing 40{7dabfd103aa443fce219eea47f0f346a11a54ce587a1a0cbb74f06b9f7a304ca} margins and showering the gaming industry with riches. But thanks to China’s anti-corruption drive, that’s all over for now. Since last summer Macau’s 40{7dabfd103aa443fce219eea47f0f346a11a54ce587a1a0cbb74f06b9f7a304ca} margins have turned into 40{7dabfd103aa443fce219eea47f0f346a11a54ce587a1a0cbb74f06b9f7a304ca}-50{7dabfd103aa443fce219eea47f0f346a11a54ce587a1a0cbb74f06b9f7a304ca} casino revenue declines as the Chinese government cracked down on gamblers headed to the island. Luckily there’s one business in the world of gaming that could deliver comparable returns — fantasy sports. “The business has the potential to be as big as Macau over time, said Jason Ader, one of Wall Street’s most brilliant gaming minds and the founder of SpringOwl Asset Management. Ader, who cut his teeth as an analyst at Bear Stearns, was a guest on CNBC’s Fast Money on Wednesday. He said that soon

The Cleveland Cavaliers are in the NBA Finals for the first time since 2007 after sweeping the Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference Finals. While it’s been eight years since the Cavs made it, it’s LeBron James’ fifth-straight trip to the Finals and his sixth overall. A part of the NBA world believes LeBron only has a few peak years left. Some believe he’s already on the backend of his career. James didn’t win MVP this year, yet still averaged 25 points, six rebounds, and seven assists per game while shooting 49{7dabfd103aa443fce219eea47f0f346a11a54ce587a1a0cbb74f06b9f7a304ca} from the field and 35{7dabfd103aa443fce219eea47f0f346a11a54ce587a1a0cbb74f06b9f7a304ca} from three-point range in a “down season.” The LeBron James effect is this: He’s a walking 50-win season. The Miami Heat won 18 more games than the previous season when

When passing an auto accident on the side of road, many people think to themselves, what happened? The Auto Insurance Center, a car insurance news and information site, sought to answer that question. It compiled data on every fatal car accident in the US recorded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Fatal Accident Reporting System from 2009 to 2013. The data includes driver, passenger, and pedestrian fatalities. The findings, shown below in map form, show what causes the most fatalities in every US state. In a majority of states, the mistake of failing to stay in your lane kills the most people. The second-most common behavior was failing to yield the right of way, the leading cause in seven states. To find out which states lead

Washington (AFP) – US Secretary of State John Kerry is set to launch a final high-stakes diplomatic push to seal a ground-breaking nuclear deal with Iran, as some officials warned Wednesday the negotiations may go beyond a June 30 deadline.Kerry will on Saturday once again huddle with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in Geneva, after weeks of behind-the-scenes complex technical discussions in Vienna seeking to narrow the gaps on what would be an unprecedented deal on curtailing Iran’s nuclear program.Iran and the six global powers leading the talks — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — laid down a framework to guide the final accord in eight days of marathon late-night talks in Lausanne in early April.Kerry and his

Most professionals expect to negotiate their salaries when they receive a job offer, seeing it as the best time to get a boost in pay. But according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, companies like Reddit.com, Jet.com, Magoosh, and Elevations Credit Union refuse to haggle over money with potential recruits. These companies have two main objectives for adopting this novel, no-negotiation policy: to foster transparency and help alleviate the gender wage gap. At Elevations, a credit union based in Boulder, Colorado, the salaries are set based on title and published online, according to an NPR podcast. The company did this in response to complaints from employees. Annette Matthies, head of HR at Elevations, told NPR that the policy helped relieve employee

Washington (AFP) – Top football sponsors Coca-Cola, Adidas and McDonald’s pressed FIFA on Wednesday to clean itself up as the newest corruption scandal threatened efforts to market their products via the “beautiful game”.The companies that pay hundreds of millions of dollars to place their ads around World Cup and other global football venues said FIFA needed stronger ethical standards, after seven of its officials were arrested in Switzerland for bribery.The arrests came as part of a US Justice Department case that named nine officials of football’s governing body, and five sports marketing officials, in a number of instances of bribes and kickbacks involving sponsorships over the past two decades.Coca-Cola, which pays an estimated $30 million a year to be one of five official

Memphis (AFP) – The city where B.B. King got his musical start paid final tribute to the blues guitar master Wednesday, as thousands walking in the rain with his hearse shouted, “long live the king!”The procession moved down a historic thoroughfare — Beale Street — the downtown strip famous for its blues clubs and source of King’s showbiz name.”He’s going back home, to this place where, back then, black musicians had a hard time thriving,” said Carver Randle, a longtime friend of King, who died May 14 in Las Vegas at the age of 89.King would move on to become a living legend the world over, with the stature of a Memphis local named Elvis Presley.But King’s ties to Memphis never faded.”B.B. King and

New York City contains the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia. And while Manhattan’s Chinatown gets most of the hype — with its cheap wontons and cheaper knock-off designer purses — many would argue it’s not the most authentic enclave. Flushing, Queens, has emerged as New York’s bigger and better Chinatown. Home to more than 30,000 people born in China, the out-of-the-way neighborhood boasts mouthwatering street food, bubble tea cafés on every corner, and entire stores dedicated to ancient herbal remedies. I set out to explore Flushing’s culinary offerings during a recent visit. I won’t soon forget it.My adventure began in the gutters of Manhattan – its subway system. The number 7 subway line is sometimes called the “International Express” because it connects

The US Department of Justice arrested nine FIFA officials and five sports marketing executives on bribery and corruption charges in a dramatic raid in Zurich on Wednesday. The indictment alleges corporate executives paid bribes and kickbacks to FIFA officials in exchange for the media and marketing rights to tournaments in North and South America. According to the DOJ, most of the major continental tournaments in the Concacaf (North America) and CONMEBOL (South America) regions in the last 20 years were associated with bribery. In a statement, Attorney General Loretta Lynch called FIFA’s alleged corruption “rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted.” At 164 pages, the indictment depicts a system where soccer officials would rise to power, sell media and marketing rights to certain tournaments to marketing companies, and then solicit

Women with cloud computing skills appear to be in high demand in Silicon Valley. A group of quant researchers at Deutsche Bank analyzed a database of several million job listings from job search engine LinkUp. They found various interesting correlations between job listing measures and stock performance, and between job listings and labor market indicators. In addition to that statistical research, the researchers performed a text analysis on listings in different sectors. They found various key words and phrases that were very common in listings in the technology, financial, and energy sectors. In the tech sector, the authors noted that various industry buzzwords like “cloud”, “big data”, and “software as a service” are especially common in job postings. They also observed a possible push back against the