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A woman was banned from Walmart after spending hours drinking wine from a Pringles can and riding through the store parking lot on an electric shopping cart

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A file photo of a Walmart sign

  • Police in Wichita Falls, Texas, were called to a local Walmart on Friday after reports of a woman spending hours drinking wine from a Pringles can and riding through the store parking lot on an electric shopping cart. 
  • Police who arrived on scene at 9 a.m. were told the woman had been there since at least 6:30 a.m.
  • Officers found the woman at a nearby restaurant and told her she was no longer allowed at the Walmart. 

A Texas woman has been banned from a local Walmart after spending hours drinking wine from a Pringles can and riding through the store parking lot on an electric shopping cart, police said on Friday.

Police in Wichita Falls, northwest of Dallas, received a call about the woman on Friday shortly after 9 a.m., the Times Record News reported.

When police arrived on scene, officers found the woman at a nearby restaurant and told her she would no longer be welcome at the Walmart.

Read more:Woman allegedly drove 150 miles per hour while drunk to 'teach her son a lesson,' police say

A witness said the woman was driving the electric shopping cart, which is typically reserved for customers with disabilities. The witness also said the woman, whose name has not been publicly released, was drinking wine.

Wichita Falls Police spokesman Jeff Hughes said the woman had been riding around the store's parking lot since 6:30 a.m.

There is no indication that the woman was arrested or charged in the incident, according to the Dallas Morning News.

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If we're living through a “retail apocalypse,” why are e-commerce leaders like Amazon, Alibaba, and JD.com so focused on building brick-and-mortar stores? (AMZN, BABA, JD)

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This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here. Current subscribers can read the report here

If we're living through a “retail apocalypse” that spells doom for brick-and-mortar retail, as many have suggested, why are e-commerce leaders like Amazon, Alibaba, and JD.com so focused on building their own brick-and-mortar networks?

US Consumers Who Made an Impulse Buy Due to Personalization in the Past 90 Days

It's because they want to revitalize physical stores by introducing features associated with online shopping like personalization — and a whopping 65% of consumers said personalization and promotions are most important to their shopping experiences, according to a report from Oracle cited by Chain Store Age.

Brick-and-mortar retailers have the opportunity to reap the same benefits of personalization that e-tailers do, like repeat visits and impulse purchases, but they need to invest in the right technologies and techniques to do so because they currently don’t meet shoppers’ expectations. For example, 41% of consumers expect sales associates to know about their previous purchases, but just 19% have experienced this, according to a report from Segment.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence analyzes how physical retail’s personalization is being outperformed by e-commerce’s, and examines the value personalization holds for brick-and-mortar in particular. We also look at what techniques and technologies are available to help retailers identify and track consumers in-store, and how they can be used to bolster their personalization capabilities. Finally, we examine the different channels through which retailers can reach consumers with their personalized offerings in-store.

The companies mentioned in this report are: Amazon, Alibaba, JD.com, Intel, Mastercard, Target, Velocity Worldwide, RetailMeNot, b8ta, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sitecore, Oak Labs, Calabrio, and Alegion.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

  • Consumers say that a personalized shopping experience can inspire loyalty and increases in spending.
  • But brick-and-mortar retailers aren't meeting consumers’ in-store personalization expectations.
  • The nature of online shopping gives e-commerce the upper hand when it comes to personalization.
  • Physical retailers can close the gap in personalization by identifying consumers when they enter, tracking them throughout their journey, and then using that information to inform individualized offerings.
  • To make the most of personalized offerings, retailers must consider how content is being presented to consumers in-store, and what the strengths of each channel are.
  • If physical retailers fail to improve their in-store personalization, they risk losing sales and market share to e-commerce companies, both online and in-store.

In full, the report:

  • Identifies the values of personalization to physical retailers.
  • Details the reasons e-tailers currently offer better personalization than brick-and-mortar stores.
  • Outlines the technologies and processes that can bolster in-store personalization.
  • Discusses how retailers can best present personalized offerings in-store.

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Trying to predict the stock market has been a lot like the McDonald's commercial with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird from 1993, Morgan Stanley says

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A still of Michael Jordan and Larry Bird in the 1993

  • Morgan Stanley's chief US equity strategist says it will be far harder to predict the market's moves in 2019 than last year.
  • He correctly called the stock market's direction last year amid an injection of volatility. He likened that feat to the iconic 1993 commercial featuring the basketball players Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, attempting to sink the ball in a series of difficult shots.
  • He said in a note out Monday that he expects the market to enter into a challenging time, and would recommend investors consider "lightening up" if stocks rally.

"Off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall, nothing but net."

That's how Michael Jordan concluded the iconic 1993 McDonald's commercial, "The Showdown," alongside fellow basketball legend Larry Bird, competing for a Big Mac and Fresh fries.

The basketball's wild, roundabout journey to reach the hoop in that commercial was just how Morgan Stanley's top US market-watcher, Michael Wilson, described getting the stock market right in the last year.

After all, a confluence of factors like US-China trade uncertainty, global economic slowdown fears, and concerns around the Federal Reserve's interest-rate hiking path have altogether injected volatility into markets around the world for months.

"Calling the market's direction this past year reminds us of one of the greatest commercials of all time - 1993's The Showdown - where Michael Jordan and Larry Bird compete to make a series of successively harder shots through a basketball hoop," Wilson, the firm's chief US equity strategist and chief investment officer, told clients in a report on Monday. "Their final shot attempt is 'off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall, nothing but net.

"After making a series of accurate calls in 2018, we realize it's only going to get harder in 2019. As such, we aren't calling 'swish' at this point and we'll be happy if we can hit the rim."

Read more: Goldman Sachs says stock-market volatility is going to spike 50% in 2019 — and it's formulated the perfect strategy to take advantage of the chaos

Wilson believes the market is entering into a period of time marked by "negative news flow on earnings and the economy," and would recommend investors consider "lightening up" on positions around 2,600 to 2,650 on the S&P 500. That's up 0.7% and 2.6% from current levels.

Corporate earnings season in the US kicked off Monday with Citigroup releasing its fourth-quarter results before the bell. While the bank fell short of analysts' revenue expectations and posted a 21% decline from fixed-income, currencies, and commodities trading, the bank beat in earnings. The results ushered in what is likely to be a volatile earnings season, with Wall Street expecting earnings growth to slow.

And while Wilson and his team correctly forecast the US stock market's direction last year, the firm started 2018 off  with a 2,750 base-case year-end S&P 500 target; the benchmark index closed at 2,506.85, down 6% for the year.

Morgan Stanley's base case remains the same for the end of this year, implying a rise of 6.5% from current levels. In the meantime, Wilson recommends buying stocks "anytime we get near our bear case of 2,400."

He added: "So, if we actually suffer the re-test we are expecting, we would be buyers of that almost regardless of what is going on, assuming it happens on less momentum and better breadth."

Read more:

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NOW WATCH: The equity chief at $6.3 trillion BlackRock weighs in on the trade war, a possible recession, and offers her best investing advice for a tricky 2019 landscape

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: A goal for Insider Inc. this year

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Nicholas Carlson headshot 2018

Dear readers: I just sent this note to our editorial team, and I thought you might want to see it too.

Team!

Last week, I went to the big tech and gadget convention in Las Vegas called CES. I got an excellent tour of the show from Business Insider deputy executive editor Cadie Thompson.

The most fascinating thing Cadie showed me were the self-driving cars — their interiors, actually.

They looked like little living rooms — places to sit and stare at your phone or watch a show on a huge screen built into the dashboard.

It made me realize we’re only going to get even more screen time.

If not because of self-driving cars, then because of the rise of 5G and increased connectivity.

If not because of 5G, then because of the increasingly thinner, bigger, more flexible TV screens built into walls and glass everywhere you look.

Nielsen says US adults already spend 11 hours a day consuming media.

Is giving even more of our time to "content" a good thing?

For a few years, an ex-Googler named Tristan Harris has been leading a cause against technology companies that optimize their products toward driving user “time spent,” rather than “time well spent.”

He’s pointed out that some technology companies have actually studied the problem of addiction, and reverse-engineered it to make people chase a feeling they’ll forget as soon as they put down their phones.

But mindless “time spent” optimization isn’t just a technology problem.

Journalism has a problem, too.

Thanks to the screens in front of our faces 11 hours every day, the demand for true storytelling and journalism is up.

But, perhaps due to challenging economics, the supply of journalism to fill those hours is weak — diluted or even dangerous.

Some journalism companies fill audiences' screens and feeds with cynical partisanship, outrage porn, de-contextualized reporting, cheap punditry, and even fake news.

This is bad for readers and viewers, but it's also bad for journalists. Stuck making this stuff, they end up viewing themselves as just #content creators and not the informing, inspiring storytellers they ought to be.

Our challenge — and opportunity — is to do better.

We often talk about how the mission for this company is sustainable journalism at scale in the 21st century.

But sustaining is a means to an end. We must be here to do something.

So, what are we here for?

At Insider Inc., we’re here to tell great stories that make people feel that time spent with us is time well spent.

This is core to who we are, even if we aren’t always perfect on this score.

It drives the depth of our reporting and the fairness of our analysis.

Time well spent goes up when time is treated with respect, and we respect our audience’s time. Our audience can see that in our time-saving bullet points at the top of every story, and in our our emphasis on easy-to-consume visual storytelling. Our audience knows we are willing to go long — but only when the story calls for it.

They can see it in our story selection: We tell them what they want to know and what they need to know.

Yet even as proud as I am of these habits, we can do better.

In 2019, my goals — and leadership’s goals — reflect this.

We are tasked with elevating Insider Inc.'s storytelling and journalism.

That means more breakout stories – investigations, features, and documentaries in video, text, photo, and audio.

That means creating video series that people come back to again and again, because they feel we respect the time they gave us.

That means making our sites and our social accounts the go-to places for people who want to follow the ongoing stories that matter to them or delight them most.

Let’s do all this while continuing to avoid the dangerous and dilutive tactics on the rise elsewhere.

Let’s do it by staying true to the acronym we use to define our voice and style — SCHAFFFF: smart, conversational, helpful, accurate, fast, fair, fearless, and fun.

Let’s tell great stories.

Let’s leave people with something when they put down their phones.

Nicholas Carlson

Global Editor-in-Chief, Insider Inc.

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NOW WATCH: China made an artificial star that's 6 times as hot as the sun, and it could be the future of energy

Netflix's 'Sex Education' is its latest hit British TV show

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sex education

  • Netflix's "Sex Education" has an 89% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, and fans have praised how the show addresses relevant issues.
  • Unlike some of its other British Netflix "original" shows, "Sex Education" didn't originate on a UK network, and demonstrates Netflix's evolving production strategy.
  • Netflix will increase the amount of European shows it produces in 2019 to compete with a potential British streaming service, The Telegraph reported in November.

Netflix has built an impressive catalog of hit British TV shows licensed from networks in the UK, or co-produced with them. But with its latest British series, Netflix started from scratch — and it seems to have paid off.

"Sex Education" debuted on the streaming giant on January 11 and stars Asa Butterfield and Gillian Anderson. Netflix describes the series like this: "Insecure Otis has all the answers when it comes to sex advice, thanks to his therapist mom. So rebel Maeve proposes a school sex-therapy clinic."

READ MORE: Netflix's hit British series, 'Bodyguard,' won a Golden Globe and has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes

The show quickly garnered a fanbase over the weekend. People on Twitter praised the show's positive and "healthy" portrayal of male friendships that lack "toxic masculinity," and its "complex characterization of a gay teen of color," among other things.

Below are some Tweets commending the show:

Critics love it, too, and it has an 89% Rotten Tomatoes critic score. The Atlantic's Sophie Gilbert wrote that the show is "patched together so perspicaciously from pieces of existing hits that you can virtually see the stitches ... it works so well is almost annoying."

Allison Shoemaker wrote for RogerEbert.com that the show is "willing to experiment and find a balance that works. And like sex—like good sex anyway—it’s often an absolute pleasure."

The series features a primarily international cast and was filmed in South Wales. But what makes "Sex Education" different than some other hit Netflix British shows as of late is that it didn't originate on a UK TV network.

Unlike "Bodyguard,""The Last Kingdom," or even "Black Mirror"— all of which Netflix acquired streaming rights to (or picked up as originals) after they had aired on BBC networks — "Sex Education" is purely a Netflix original. This is a sign of Netflix bulking up its output of international originals.

Netflix will increase the amount of European shows it produces in 2019 by a third, The Telegraph reported in November. The move comes on the heels of the head of the UK's broadcast regulator pushing British networks to create a streaming service to compete with Netflix, according to The Telegraph.

SEE ALSO: Netflix has been smacked with a lawsuit over 'Black Mirror: Bandersnatch' that claims it 'tarnishes' the 'choose your own adventure' trademark

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NOW WATCH: Watch the extreme workout regimen of a professional ballerina

$457 billion Blackstone has poached a growth equity veteran as it pushes into a new business area

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Jon Korngold

  • Blackstone, the world's biggest private equity firm, is expanding to invest in companies that are too big for venture capital, but not mature enough for traditional buyouts.
  • Jon Korngold, who spent 18 years investing in growth equity at General Atlantic, was tapped to lead the effort.
  • Blackstone's other recent expansion areas include infrastructure, life sciences, and insurance, as the firm looks to more than double its assets under management to $1 trillion over time. 

Blackstone has hired a veteran who specializes in investing in fast growing companies to lead a new business. 

The New York-based firm, which managed $457 billion as of September 30, is betting that a number of new businesses can shoot its assets under management to $1 trillion by 2026. Its latest expansion area is growth equity – investing in companies that are too big for venture capital, but not mature enough for its sizable private equity arm. Blackstone has done some growth investing from its tactical opportunities arm, which invests opportunistically across asset classes, but not through a standalone business.  

Blackstone tapped Jon Korngold to lead the new strategy, the firm said Monday. Korngold spent 18 years at General Atlantic, a $28 billion firm focused on growth equity. 

"The scale, geographic reach and global operating resources that Blackstone can provide fast-growing companies are unparalleled, and will be a real competitive advantage," Korngold said in Monday's statement.

See more:Blackstone raises $9.4 billion for Asia real estate, private equity funds 

Blackstone, which was founded in 1985, has built its business on four areas: private equity, real estate, credit, and hedge funds. Newer growth areas include a lower-risk type of real estate; private equity secondaries; tactical opportunities; and retail and private wealth management.

Blackstone's latest areas of expansion are infrastructure, life sciences, insurance, and the 401(k) space. 

The firm has to play catch-up to some peers who got into the space much earlier. TPG started its growth business, which now manages $13.2 billion in assets, in 2007, while KKR founded its $2 billion growth platform in 2012.  

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The 'Swiss cheese model' explains how the US government shutdown is making air travel more dangerous by the day

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airplane washington dc

  • The government shutdown has sidelined flight-safety inspectors with the Federal Aviation Administration.
  • One of those inspectors told New York magazine that the longer the shutdown goes on, "the more opportunity there is to introduce potential risk."
  • He invoked the "Swiss cheese model" to explain how removing one of the layers of flight safety could make air travel more dangerous.

An unintended consequence of the US government shutdown is that it could make air travel much more dangerous.

Already, the shutdown has sidelined, or forced to work without pay, thousands of airport security screeners with the Transportation Security Administration.

But an interview in New York magazine with a flight-safety inspector revealed just how much worse the situation could get.

Ben Struck, a flight-safety inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration from New York City, has been furloughed since the shutdown began on December 22. He told New York's Nick Tabor that many of the agency's offices nationwide are short-staffed, with only one or two workers out of 15 or 30 granted permission to work.

Read more:Canadian air traffic controllers are buying hundreds of pizzas for US colleagues who aren't getting paid in the government shutdown

Struck said that airline passengers said the shutdown could put airline passengers at risk.

"I can only say that the longer we're not out there doing our jobs, the more opportunity there is to introduce potential risk," he told Tabor.

Struck referenced the "Swiss cheese model" to explain how the lack of safety inspectors could compromise the system. Devised by James Reason, an expert in error management at the University of Manchester, the model compares an organization's defenses against failure as slices of Swiss cheese. 

Flight-safety inspectors are one of those slices of cheese.

"There are all these holes in the cheese, and when all the holes line up and create a single pass-through point, there's the potential for an accident," Struck said.

"Normally, airlines and repair stations have controls in place to either close the holes or shift them around so they don't line up anymore. We are an extra layer to make sure the holes don't align."

Struck isn't the only person in the industry worried how the shutdown will affect air safety. Flight-safety union leaders have pointed to safety risks as a reason the shutdown should end immediately.

"Without a fully functioning FAA, a layer of safety is missing," Mike Perrone, the national president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists group, told The New York Times last week.

"Every day that goes by that the government is shut down, safety is going to be compromised. Every day that goes by, something could occur that causes a crack in the system."

Read the full interview at New York magazine »

SEE ALSO: Canadian air traffic controllers are buying hundreds of pizzas for US colleagues who aren't getting paid in the government shutdown

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NOW WATCH: Airports are dealing with massive lines during the government shutdown as TSA employees are working without pay

Trump's effort to roll out a restrictive birth control policy has been blocked in 13 states, but some women are still at risk of losing free birth control access

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birth control pills

  • On Sunday, a federal judge partially blockedTrump administration rules that allow some employers to drop birth control coverage for religious or moral reasons, Reuters reported.
  • The rules were blocked from taking effect in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. 
  • In his order, the judge wrote that "women in other states are at risk of losing access to cost-free contraceptives when the final rules take effect."
  • But if employers choose to stop offering birth control coverage, they're required to inform their employees about that change.

 

On Sunday, a federal judge in California partially blocked Trump administration rules that would allow some employers to drop birth control coverage for moral or religious reasons. 

A group of 14 attorneys general had requested a nationwide injunction against the rules, but Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. limited the injunction only to the states who challenged the rules, Reuters reported. Gilliam's preliminary injunction blocks the rules from taking effect in the District of Columbia and 13 states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Virginia), the New York Times reported Sunday.

Under the Obama administration, FDA-approved birth control was defined as a preventive service that was required to be covered at no cost. This is sometimes called the "birth control mandate."

Initially, religious houses of worship were the only employers that were fully exempt for the birth control mandate, but in October 2017, the Trump administration released two "interim final rules" that opened up the exemption option to employers who had religious or moral objections to providing birth control coverage. After those interim rules were blocked by federal courts, the Trump administration released revised but similar rules in November 2018

Read more: 4 ways to get birth control that's affordable  — or even free

The first rule allows employers and institutes of higher education to stop providing birth control coverage on the basis of religious beliefs; the second allows them to do so if they have moral objections. (There are some exceptions: Government entities aren't eligible to use either rule to stop providing birth control coverage, and publicly-traded businesses can't use the moral exemption, though they can use the religious one).

These rules were set to go into effect on January 14, but Gilliam's order has blocked them in those 13 states and in Washington, D.C. 

"The law couldn't be more clear — employers have no business interfering in women’s healthcare decisions," California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who led the case, said in a statement Sunday. "Today's court ruling stops another attempt by the Trump Administration to trample on women's access to basic reproductive care." 

Caitlin Oakley, a spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services, told INSIDER that the rules "affirm the Trump Administration’s commitment to upholding the freedoms afforded all Americans under our Constitution."

"No American should be forced to violate his or her own conscience in order to abide by the laws and regulations governing our healthcare system," she added. 

The judge wrote that women living in other states are "at risk of losing access to" cost-free birth control

It appears that people living in the states not covered by the injunction may now lose access to free birth coverage.

"The Court fully recognizes that limiting the scope of this injunction to the plaintiff states means that women in other states are at risk of losing access to cost-free contraceptives when the final rules take effect," Judge Gilliam wrote in the order

Read more:Scientists are testing a new male birth control gel, and some people are furious that it seems more 'simple and convenient' than female options

The Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health research organization, also voiced concern for those living outside the 13 states. 

"We remain concerned about the rules' impact in states not covered by this injunction,"the organization tweeted on Sunday.

But a forthcoming court ruling could change things.

A federal court in Pennsylvania is also expected to make a decision about the Trump administration's rules, according to the National Women's Law Center (NWLC).

"We're watching for another decision today on the rules from a federal court in Pennsylvania,"the NWLC tweeted Monday

On Twitter, Brigitte Amiri, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, expressed hope that the Pennsylvania court will extend the injunction to all states. 

"Fingers crossed for the PA district court & hopefully it will issue a nationwide injunction,"she tweeted Monday

But employers have to make it clear if birth control coverage is going to change

Under the rules, employers who want to stop providing birth control coverage are "not required to file notices" about their decision, an HHS fact sheet said.

But if an employer wants to exclude all or some birth control benefits from its health plans, they have to make that clear in documentation provided to employees, according to the full text of both rules.

Read more:There are 17 different types of birth control — here's how to pick the best one for you

"For any kind of coverage that you have, if your employer is going to be taking it away, you have a right to be notified and you should get notified,"Mara Gandal-Powers, director of birth control access and senior counsel for reproductive rights and health at the NWLC, told INSIDER in November, when the Trump administration announced the final rules. "If you're worried about your employer and this potentially impacting you, really pay attention to the letters or the notices [employers provide], because if it's going to happen, you will get a notice."

Visit INSIDER's homepage for more.

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MORGAN STANLEY: There's a corner of the market perfectly positioned to boom if Wall Street's worst fears of a recession come true

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trader phones

  • Investors are pricing in a possible recession as dark clouds gather over the US economy and corporate America. 
  • This nervousness could send the S&P 500 tumbling below its December lows, according to Mike Wilson, the chief US equity strategist at Morgan Stanley.  
  • Wilson provided an investing recommendation that Morgan Stanley says it would follow "almost regardless of what's going on"— and even if stocks continue selling off.

A potential recession this year or next is not the worst thing in the world.

That's according to Mike Wilson, the chief US equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, who is instead pointing investors in the direction of money-making opportunities. 

Simply put, Wilson's advice to clients is that when the agony of a recession reaches its boiling point, cyclical stocks will be a good buy.

This may appear counterintuitive upon first blush because cyclicals, by definition, track the fate of the economy. If growth is slowing, one might think they'd get hurt. However, Wilson's examination of how investors are already bracing for a recession suggests that the opposite is occurring.

He observed that over the past three to six months, as fears of a slowdown mounted, investors overly skewed their positioning into defensively aligned sectors.

Read more: A Wall Street strategist says the next recession will be a lot like the 2001 collapse — here's why that might not be such a bad thing

The rush for safety has come at the expense of cyclical sectors. For example, Wilson observed that just about one-fifth of momentum strategies on the long side are in consumer staples, but almost one-third of the short side is in energy.

Another way to quantify this widespread risk-averse behavior is by looking at traders' expectations for the Federal Reserve. They're pricing in no greater than an 18% chance that the central bank will raise interest rates this year, according to Bloomberg's world interest rate probability.

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley's index of the market implied rate pace of rate hikes is at its lowest level since March 2008, when the Fed was cutting rates in the last recession. 

Read more: Wall Street experts are ignoring major warning signs being flashed by the market — and their negligence could speed up the next stock crash

This skew towards defensiveness suggests that investors have already priced in a lot of the bad news to come. If the S&P 500 falls to its December lows, "we would be buyers of that almost regardless of what’s going on, assuming it happens on less momentum and better breadth," Wilson said. 

Such a move would be part of a "rolling bottom" that occurs before the next bull market begins, he added. And so, the segments of the market that tend to do well early-cycle will benefit once investors price in a recession. 

There are valid reasons to expect that this process of pricing in a recession is not yet complete and that stocks will fall further. Crucially, earnings season begins in earnest this week and is expected to confirm the bad news that companies like Apple have warned about. Morgan Stanley is going one step further and forecasting an outright earnings recession this year.

Even if it doesn't morph into a full-blown economic crisis, an earnings recession will feel just as crippling for equity investors, Wilson said. The associated dip in stocks below December 2018 levels would be an opportune time to buy cyclicals, which typically benefit from upswings.

SEE ALSO: A top Wall Street strategist reveals a game plan that earned 10% as stocks plummeted last year — and how investors can profit from it now

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The equity chief at $6.3 trillion BlackRock weighs in on the trade war, a possible recession, and offers her best investing advice for a tricky 2019 landscape

'We got under his skin': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocks Trump's income after he dismisses her criticism

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Ocasio-Cortez and Trump

  • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was quick to respond to President Donald Trump when he dismissed her criticism on Monday. 
  • After claiming that she had gotten "under his skin," the new congresswoman joked that the president wouldn't be taxed at her proposed 70% marginal rate for the super-rich because, she speculated, he's not actually super-rich. 
  • "I'd say we'd be taxing 70% of Trump's income, but he probably hasn't made more than $10 million in years — and that's the real reason he's hiding his taxes," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, adding a winking emoji. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is known to clapback at her critics online, and she made no exception when President Donald Trump said Monday he didn't care that Ocasio-Cortez had called him a racist

The 29-year-old lawmaker claimed that Trump's dismissive remark shows she's gotten "under his skin." 

"I bartended for *years* in New York City. I understand guys like this like the back of my hand. We got under his skin," she tweeted, adding a laughing emoji. 

Read more: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the theory that deficit spending is good for the economy should 'absolutely' be part of the conversation

Ocasio-Cortez joked that her proposed 70% marginal tax rate for those who make more than $10 million a year wouldn't apply to Trump because, she speculated, he hasn't met that income threshold in years. Trump has refused to make any of his tax returns public, so it is unclear how much he makes or has historically made, although it is estimated at far above $10 million. 

"I'd say we'd be taxing 70% of Trump's income, but he probably hasn't made more than $10 million in years — and that's the real reason he's hiding his taxes," she went on, ending with a winking emoji. 

Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, rarely talks publicly about the president. She prefers to focus her criticism on her own party and structural issues she's identified in American politics, including the influence of money in politics. 

But in a recent interview with "60 Minutes,"she took aim at Trump, arguing that there's "no question" the president is a racist. 

"When you look at the words that he uses, which are historic dog whistles of white supremacy. When you look at how he reacted to the Charlottesville incident where neo-Nazis murdered a woman, versus how he manufactures crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our borders, it's night and day," she said. 

 

SEE ALSO: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the theory that deficit spending is good for the economy should 'absolutely' be part of the conversation

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NOW WATCH: MSNBC host Chris Hayes thinks President Trump's stance on China is 'not at all crazy'

10 surprising flavors you didn't know you could get at The Cheesecake Factory

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Cheesecake

  • There are more than 30 different cheesecakes on the menu at The Cheesecake Factory.
  • Very Cherry Ghirardelli Chocolate Cheesecake and Cinnabon Cinnamon Swirl Cheesecake are some of the newest menu additions.
  • Seasonal offerings include Pumpkin Cheesecake and Peppermint Bark Cheesecake.

With more than 30 different options, from original to white chocolate caramel macadamia nut, it can be overwhelming to sort through The Cheesecake Factory's cheesecake list — and you may end up overlooking the option you actually wanted but didn't get to before decision fatigue set in.

To help you make this all-important decision, we've rounded up some of the newest and most unique options on the menu, with tempting photos to boot.

Very Cherry Ghirardelli Chocolate Cheesecake is perfectly rich.

One of the latest additions to The Cheesecake Factory's cheesecake list, this one begins with a layer of fudge cake that's topped with cherry cheesecake featuring cherry chunks and (of course) plenty of Ghirardelli chocolate.

And in case you needed an excuse to indulge, for every slice of Very Cherry Ghirardelli Chocolate Cheesecake sold (through February 28), The Cheesecake Factory will donate 25 cents to Feeding America, a nonprofit hunger relief organization.



Celebration Cheesecake will get you in the celebratory mood.

Indulge your inner child with this festive cheesecake topped with rainbow sprinkles. It features layers of vanilla cake, cheesecake, strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla mousse, and cream cheese frosting. P.S. this cheesecake can be shipped to almost anywhere in the U.S., according to The Cheesecake Factory.



Cinnabon Cinnamon Swirl Cheesecake offers unique flavors.

Another recent addition, this cheesecake is made up of layers of Cinnabon cinnamon cheesecake and vanilla crunch cake and topped with cream cheese frosting and stripes of caramel.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Hulu has a new documentary about the disastrous Fyre Festival that captured the internet's attention — watch the trailer

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fyre festival hulu documentary fyre fraud

  • "Fyre Festival" was supposed to be a huge music festival for millennials in 2016 organized by Ja Rule and 26-year-old tech entrepreneur Billy McFarland. 
  • Instead, the three-day party, which cost thousands to attend, turned out to be a nightmare scenario with people stranded at a private beach in the Bahamas.
  • Monday, Hulu released a trailer for a documentary about the Fyre Festival called "Fyre Fraud."
  • The trailer comes a few days after Netflix released a teaser for a similar documentary on the music festival. 
  • Hulu's documentary features an exclusive interview with McFarland, who was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to wire-fraud charges in 2018.
  • While the Netflix documentary will be available Friday, January 18, you can currently watch Hulu's documentary now. Watch the full trailer for "Fyre Fraud" below.

Visit INSIDER's homepage for more.

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NOW WATCH: North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un is 35 — here's how he became one of the world's scariest dictators

Airport employees working for an American Airlines subsidiary are complaining about broken equipment, sprained limbs, and low wages — and they claim it's creating unsafe conditions for workers and flyers (AAL)

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American Eagle baggage handlers

  • A union representing ground agents working for Envoy Air — a subsidiary of American Airlines— has released a survey focused on working conditions and employee pay.
  • The vast majority of survey participants described feeling rushed due to time pressures and chronic understaffing.
  • Many respondents also described skipping over required contraband or damage inspections due to the time crunch.
  • "Envoy has an excellent safety record both in the air and on the ground and always places the safety of its passengers and employees at the forefront of its operations," an Envoy Air spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider.

Envoy Air ground service agents are speaking out about working conditions at the American Airlines subsidiary.

A total of 800 Envoy Air service agents participated in a survey created by their union, the Communications Workers of America. The CWA estimated that 8,000 service agents currently work at Envoy.

The survey highlighted a number of overarching concerns regarding pay, staffing, time pressure, and safety.

CWA is currently negotiating its members' contract with Envoy Air. CWA has represented Envoy Air agents since 2015, and this isn't the first such survey it has published about the working conditions of its members.

Envoy Air maintains a fleet of 150 aircraft, services 150 destinations, and operates over 1,000 flights a day, according to the Irving, Texas-based regional airliner's website. Envoy Air got its start as a number of separate regional carriers, which American Airlines began buying up in the 1980s.

Read more: Pilots working for airlines that transport packages for Amazon are not happy — and many are considering quitting, a survey found

"Envoy has an excellent safety record both in the air and on the ground and always places the safety of its passengers and employees at the forefront of its operations," an Envoy Air spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider.

"Envoy and its customer service agents are working collaboratively toward an initial collective bargaining agreement. This process should occur at the bargaining table and not in the press, out of respect for the negotiating positions of both parties we are not willing to discuss the specifics of any provision being discussed until a full agreement has been presented to the Envoy customer service agents."

79% of respondents to the CWA survey said they felt "rushed" during all or most shifts. As for the reason behind the time pressure, 76% of participants cited understaffing and 74% blamed "demanding flight schedules."

And 53% of survey respondents said they strongly believed they would be disciplined if they failed to meet flight deadlines.

"There's a great deal of blame that's placed on workers," CWA health and safety director Micki Siegel de Hernandez told Business Insider.

When it comes to the issue of understaffing, 70% of respondents said they'd worked on short-staffed teams during all or most of their shifts.

All this rushing sometimes leads to ground agents skipping over required inspections, according to the survey results.

47% of runway ramp agents who responded to the survey said they were "unable to complete every required damage inspection of aircrafts" due to factors like understaffing and time pressure, while 58% of survey respondents who were also responsible for aircraft cabin searches said they didn't have enough time to complete all the required inspections.

American Eagle planes

Tina Moore, an Envoy Air ramp agent from Milwaukee, said that the rushed environment wasn't conducive to always putting worker and passenger safety first.

"We take up to 150 lives in our hands when we make sure that plane is safe and make sure everything is where it needs to be," she said in an interview with Business Insider on Friday. "If a door's not closed right, it can throw the pressure off in the cabin. You don't realize that as a patron when you're flying, all the things that can go wrong if we don't have adequate time to look at these things."

The union survey also claimed that Envoy Air's OSHA logs listed 1,459 injuries and illnesses across all airport employees from January 2017 to September 2018. That included 829 strains and sprains.

Siegel de Hernandez said that many employees, especially new workers still under Envoy Air's six-month probation period, underreported their work-related injuries to avoid retaliation.

She added that a number of the company's OSHA citations — two of which resulted in $9,000 and $1,875 fines in 2017 and 2015, respectively — came about as a result of broken machinery. A total of 51% of runway ramp agents who responded to the survey said they often encountered defective equipment on shifts.

Moore told Business Insider that Envoy Air tends to take American Airlines' "hand-me-downs" when it comes to equipment. Siegel de Hernandez said that employees have expressed to her that, as employees of a regional subsidiary to American Airlines, they feel a bit like unwanted "stepchildren," especially when it comes to pay and equipment.

"They don't get the same kind of attention," she told Business Insider.

Moore said she's frequently encountered malfunctioning belt-loaders — the machines responsible for transporting bags into the planes — in particular. According to Moore, these equipment failures stress already short-staffed teams.

"Nothing surprises us anymore," she told Business Insider. "When equipment fails, we just roll with it. When things break down, we just roll with it. When we don't have adequate staffing, we just roll with it."

Moore also described a high turnover rate on her team. The union estimated that the turnover among Envoy Air ground agents is at an annual rate of around 40%. A total of 75% of the survey respondents said they worked with "inexperienced" coworkers during most shifts.

Envoy Air did not comment on the specific claims in the union survey in its statement to Business Insider, citing the ongoing collective-bargaining process.

An industry-wide phenomenon

American Eagle

Aviation expert and former National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia, who also reviewed the survey's findings, told Business Insider that he doesn't view the alleged working conditions at Envoy Air as an outlier.

He said that low wages are an industry-wide phenomenon when it comes to ground agents working at regional airlines.

"Nobody stays because the rate of pay is so low," Goglia said. "McDonald's is paying $15 an hour now in many locations. That's more than what they're paying passenger service agents, who have a heck of a lot more responsibility."

The CWA has claimed that starting pay at Envoy is $9.48 an hour, and that over half of the airline's agents make under $11 an hour.

When it comes to time pressures, Siegel de Hernandez told Business Insider that it will always be necessary for agents to hustle on the job, given the nature of the airline industry.

"We do want planes out on time," Siegel de Hernandez said. "That's how the airlines function. There will always be time pressure, but when you layer on top of that understaffing, that makes it extremely difficult for people to do their jobs without chronic stress, without taking risks, and without skipping steps that need to be taken."

Envoy Air currently has a 3.1 out of 5 rating on Glassdoor, but that number relies on anonymous reviewers and likely features reviews from Envoy Air employees who are not ground agents.

Moore, who has worked at Envoy for four years, told Business Insider that she and her colleagues do share a "camaraderie that's like none other," but said that this was one of the "only reasons" she and many of her coworkers stuck around.

"We do a bang-up job every day," Moore said. "We're out there in the cold and the rain and the crap and we get you where you need to be."

Are you an employee of Envoy Air with a story to share? Email acain@businessinsider.com.

SEE ALSO: An American Airlines flight attendant is suing the airline for $1 million, accusing another crew member of assaulting her with a scarf and dragging her down the aisle

DON'T MISS: American Airlines has a new policy that could leave economy passengers stranded longer after a delayed or canceled flight

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NOW WATCH: Major airlines are introducing ‘last class’ — a category worse than coach

Some of the biggest names in the hedge-fund industry may have gotten whacked by betting on PG&E at exactly the wrong time (PCG)

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california fire

  • Pacific Gas and Electric Company, California's biggest utility provider, has seen its value plunge by 80% after last November's deadly California wildfire. 
  • The utility on Monday said it intends to file bankruptcypetitions at the end of the month to reorganize under Chapter 11.
  • Eight hedge funds snapped up shares in the third quarter — before the wildfire broke out.
  • Including Monday's loss, those eight firms would have lost $1.8 billion over the past three months if they held on to their positions, according to Markets Insider's calculations.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), California's biggest utility provider, has seen its value plunge after last November's wildfire, the deadliest and most destructive in California history. And eight hedge funds, which loaded up on PG&E shares in the third quarter, could be have lost billions as a result. 

The past three months have been a tough time for PG&E:

With shares sliding 80% since November, PG&E has become a toxic investment for its shareholders. Markets Insider looked at the nine hedge funds with the largest holdings in the utility. Of those, only DE Shaw sold shares in the third quarter. The rest added to their holdings.  

By Markets Insider's calculation, if these eight firms held their entire positions through Monday, they could have lost $1.8 billion over the past three months. 

The firms could have sold their shares before the fire, or in the immediate aftermath, avoiding some of the decline. And they could have hedged their positions, offsetting any losses. 

Below are eight hedge funds that loaded up on PG&E at exactly the wrong time, in ascending order of their positions since their last disclosure.

Millennium Management

Position: 2,381,220 shares

Percent of PG&E outstanding: 0.46%

Position change in the third quarter: +1,494,725

Potential loss: $86.4 million

Millennium Management declined to comment on its investment in PG&E.

 

Source: Bloomberg



Citadel Advisors

Position: 2,864,617 shares

Percent of PG&E outstanding: 0.55%

Position change in the third quarter: +915,781

Potential loss: $104 million

Citadel did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Source: Bloomberg



Appaloosa Management

Position: 3,991,033 shares

Percent of PG&E outstanding: 0.77%

Position change in the third quarter: +2,197,066

Potential loss: $144.9 million

Appaloosa did not immediately respond to request for comment.

 

Source: Bloomberg



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The best men's winter coats you can buy

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The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.

mens winter coats 4x3

  • A good winter coat will keep you warm and dry even when the snow is falling and the wind is howling. A great winter coat will keep you warm, dry, and looking good, too.
  • The Patagonia Men's Topley Jacket is our top pick because it's well insulated, water resistant, and imbued with understated but undeniable style.

Winter is coming, and depending on where you live, that means freezing temperatures, snow, rain, and biting wind that always seems to find the gap between your pants and jacket. But just because the winter weather can be unrelentingly savage, that's no reason not to get outside and get on with your day. With the right winter coat, you can keep the chill at bay while you work or play, and you can even look good while you're at it.

The primary job of a winter coat is pretty straightforward: It needs to keep you warm. This is both a comfort and a safety matter, so make sure to consider the insulation capabilities of a winter jacket over all other factors. It's better to not to die of exposure than it is to look good, so you might have to sacrifice style for welfare. Keep in mind that water resistance plays a big role in warmth. A sodden jacket loses most of its insulation capacity, so if you live in or frequently visit areas with lots of precipitation, you need a jacket that is waterproof (or at least highly water resistant) to ensure that you'll remain warm enough.

You also need to be able to complete a given set of tasks without your coat impeding your abilities. You wouldn't go skiing or work on a construction site in a wool pea coat because the material would restrict your motion and also there's the whole looking ridiculous thing. But you also wouldn't wear a super puffy 800-fill down parka while meeting your friends for a drink in the city on a chilly but clear winter evening. That would be overkill and also look a bit silly. So also make sure to consider when and where you'll wear your coat in terms beyond the environmental factors.

The good news is that lots of men's winter coats are warm, water-resistant, and stylish. Once you have assessed a jacket and determined that it meets your needs in terms of safety and performance, you should absolutely shop based on looks. After all, your winter jacket is the garment people see any time you are out and about in those colder months. Read on to see which of our picks is best for your needs.

Here are the best men's winter coats you can buy:

Updated on 1/14/2019 by Owen Burke: Updated prices and formatting and added a list of other places to shop.

Read on in the slides below to check out our top picks.

The best men's winter coat overall

Why you'll love it: The Patagonia Men's Topley Jacket offers the warmth of a parka in a handsome, stylish jacket that looks right at home above a pair of jeans or dress slacks.

At a glance, the Patagonia Men's Topley Jacket looks like a casual and rather simple jacket. Its design would not have looked out of place in any decade since the 1940s and will likely remain fashionable many decades into the future. Although this jacket may be unassuming in appearance, it's actually quite capable in terms of performance.

The outer shell of this two-layer coat is made from 100% recycled polyester and is waterproof yet breathable. The inner layer is quilted and features 600-fill-power recycled down that provides excellent insulation. Thanks to a zipper secured with a buttoned storm flap, even a harsh, cutting wind will be kept at bay.

But frankly, lots of jackets look rather like this one and can keep you warm and dry, too. What sets this jacket apart from the pack are the details. Its exterior pockets are lined with brushed jersey to keep your fingers warm and cozy. Its removable hood is well insulated, adjustable, and features a laminated visor to keep precipitation off your face (and out of your eyes, most notably). The left chest pocket has a waterproof zipper and a port for headphones. The waist can be cinched shut with an adjustable drawcord that keeps out that biting wind.

Most people who have worn the Topley give it at least a 4.5-star rating, though the latest version of this retro classic is too new to have many reviews. Most professional apparel writers love the jacket, while a writer from WyomingFlyFishing.com loves the way the "urban-friendly" jacket "wraps you in compressible warmth." 

Pros: Stylish appearance, dual-layer design offers excellent insulation, clever design features

Cons: Rather expensive

Buy the Patagonia Men's Topley Jacket at Patagonia for $399.00

Shop all men's jackets and coats at Patagonia



The best waterproof winter jacket

Why you'll love it: You could have a friend spray you with a hose and still stay dry in the Columbia OutDry Ex Gold Down Hooded Jacket, plus, you'd stay nice and warm.

I own a Columbia Sportswear OutDry Ex Gold Down Hooded Jacket and I wear it dozens of times in the winter. When I'm doing any winter camping or hiking, I use it for the duration of the trip, day and night — balled up, the jacket makes a decent pillow for sleeping. By day, it keeps me warm and, as you likely surmised, 100% dry. When you see Columbia's proprietary OutDry tag on one of its garments, you can count on it to be totally waterproof.

I've worn my Ex Gold Down jacket in heavy snow and in driving rain and on some very cold days, and frankly, when paired with a couple layers of innerwear, the jacket kept me too warm once my heart rate was up. But that's a lot better than too cold. The jacket features multiple slender horizontal baffles that keep the 700-fill-power down in place and evenly distributed, and all seams are coated with an external tape, keeping out cold air and wetness.

Another thing you will love about this jacket is its remarkable compressibility. This thing can keep you warm in freezing temperatures, but then pack down small enough to tuck away into your pack or even into a glove compartment or a drawer. Or, like I do, you can roll the jacket up, fold it into its hood, and use it as a pillow. When you're exhausted after hiking all day, it will offer more than enough comfort.

The Columbia OutDry Ex Gold Down Hooded Jacket scores mainly five-star reviews online, with one customer saying he "highly recommend[s] it for anyone who goes backpacking in varying weather conditions." Another owner says it is "the best rain barrier I have owned."

A writer with Trailspace Outdoor Gear Reviews reported staying dry after a five-mile hike in the rain, and noted that the "nylon interior material is soft against the skin and comfortable." A gear tester with GearJunkie.com praised the coat for being waterproof and warm.

Pros: Exceptional waterproofing, compresses well for packing, lightweight

Cons: Limited breathability can cause sweating issues

Buy the Columbia OutDry Ex Gold Down Hooded Jacket at Columbia for $250.00

Shop all men's jackets and coats at Columbia



The best winter jacket for working outside

Why you'll love it: The Caterpillar Heavy Insulated Parka will help to keep you warm and safe as you get the job done despite the winter weather. 

When there's work to be done, you can't let a little thing like blizzard conditions stop you from doing your job. With the Caterpillar Heavy Insulated Parka, winter weather is no obstacle for the hard working man. The exterior of the parka is water resistant and will keep you dry in snow and in moderate rain. The coat features ample insulation for temperatures well below freezing, and thanks to a drawstring waist and hood and adjustable cuffs, the cold air won't be able to seep in anywhere.

But lots of parkas can keep you warm. That's kind of their job, in fact, isn't it? This coat has a leg up on the competition when it comes to use by workers for two primary reasons. The first is the highly reflective strips emblazoned across the chest and back of the parka, which ensure its wearer is highly visible even in low light conditions. The second is the abundance of pockets. The parka has two interior pockets and multiple exterior pockets, perfect for stashing smaller tools and hardware, a pen and pad for notes, a phone or radio, and so forth.

There's one more thing that everyone will love whether you want this coat for work or for warmth while you walk the dog: It costs well under one hundred dollars.

With more than 1,300 reviews in, the Caterpillar Heavy Insulated Parka has a 4.5-star average rating on Amazon. One owner says the "only complaint is that it is almost too warm," while another says it keeps him "toasty warm without being too bulky, has so many pockets I haven’t even found them all yet."

In a winter coat write up, one reviewer with TestFacts.com called the Caterpillar Heavy Insulated Parka the "best winter jacket for men as it boasts a number of features that make it beneficial for the winter season."

Pros: Warmth maintained by secure closures at wrists, hem, and neck, reflective patches, multiple pockets

Cons: Not fully waterproof, sizes run too large

Buy the Caterpillar Heavy Insulated Parka on Amazon from $79.99-$109.99 (prices vary by size)

Shop all Caterpillar Workwear men's jackets on Amazon



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3 top crypto investors give their 2019 predictions for cryptocurrency

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Bitcoin

  • The cryptocurrency market was in disarray last year, but that doesn't mean the crypto world is all doom and gloom.
  • Business Insider gathered comments from three prominent crypto investors to get a sense of the big developments and trends they expect to see in 2019.

While the cryptocurrency market wrapped up 2018 with a slump, it's not all doom and gloom.

We gathered comments from three prominent crypto players to get a sense of the big developments and trends they expect to see in 2019:

Paul Veradittakit, Pantera Capital

Veradittakit is a partner at Pantera Capital, one of the first cryptocurrency investment firms, where he focuses on venture capital and hedge-fund investments. Pantera has rounded up more than $120 million for its third venture fund, known as Venture Fund III, and has used the new funding to invest in projects including the digital-asset platform Bakkt, Blockfolio, StarkWare, and Synthetic Minds.

Amid tightening regulations, Veradittakit has seen a new trend emerge in the crypto fundraising space: Crypto or blockchain-related companies are raising new funds by selling new shares, rather than issuing additional tokens.

"A bunch of companies that raised capital using the initial-coin-offering structure either have managed their treasury poorly or realized that they haven't found a strong use case for their token — they are in need of more capital and to raise an equity round," he said.

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Crypto firms that raised money early on are going backward, fine-tuning their documentation and tightening up know-your-customer rules to identify whether an investor is accredited, he said.

Pantera Capital has invested in more than 40 crypto and blockchain projects through its initial-coin-offering fund. The firm said in a monthly newsletter that roughly 25% of those projects might have run afoul of US securities regulations and may need to refund money to their investors, Reuters reported in December.

Veradittakit laid out three key themes he's watching in 2019.

One is an institutionalization of the crypto space, meaning the industry is likely to see the launches of more fully regulated and licensed products, from security tokens to new crypto derivative products, serving as a bridge between institutional investors and the cryptocurrency market. In addition, custody, trading infrastructure, and data will be important for compliance and performance.

The second is tools for developers to build compliant and better user-interfacing apps. Examples include smart contract auditing and on-ramps, or ways to turn fiat currency into crypto or stablecoins.

He's also keeping an eye on companies that are building applications on top of decentralized protocols. For example, companies that are building markets on Augur, an ethereum-based prediction market protocol that allows users to bet on the outcome of future events, from the results of the presidential election to the price of top cryptocurrencies, to get monetary rewards.

Another example is companies creating a domain service on Handshake, an ongoing cryptocurrency project backed by a slew of prominent venture capitalists in the crypto space including A16z Crypto, Boost VC, Pantera Capital, Polychain Capital and Founders Fund.

Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures

Crypto won't be a haven from overall volatility in the stock market, Fred Wilson, a notable venture capitalist who cofounded Union Square Ventures, said in a blog post on January 1.

"I think we will see major dislocations in the leadership of the United States, a bear market in stocks, a weakening economy, a number of issues with the global economy including a messy Brexit and a sluggish China," he wrote. "All of this will lead to a more cautious stance by investors in the startup economy. And crypto will not be a safe haven for any of this although there will be signs of life in crypto land in 2019."

That said, he expects the crypto bear market to eventually bottom out sometime this year.

"I expect we will see some bullish runs, followed by selling pressures taking us back to retest the lows," he wrote. "I think this bottoming out process will end sometime in 2019 and we will slowly enter a new bullish phase in crypto."

Wilson also said he anticipated seeing meaningful progress and more widespread consumer adoption in areas like stablecoins, non-fungible tokens, and crypto gaming.

Anthony Pompliano, Morgan Creek Digital

Pompliano, also known as "Pomp," is a founding partner at Morgan Creek Digital and a notable crypto Twitter personality. In November, he warned in a Medium post that a wave of crypto hedge funds could shut down because of the incentive fees structure and the prolonged crypto bear market.

Pompliano said he expected some crypto hedge funds to suffer "high water mark issues," referring to a contractual clause that ensures "fund managers only receive their performance fee ... if the fund's net asset value is higher today than in any previous investment period."

After peaking at $20,000 in December 2017, bitcoin has fallen below $4,000 per coin; altcoins also suffered significant losses last year.

"We have seen 50-80% decreases in net asset values in some funds since then," Pompliano said. "This means these fund managers will not receive a performance fee in 2018, which drastically reduces the income of the individual manager."

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Why are Apple Pay, Starbucks’ app, and Samsung Pay so much more successful than other wallet providers?

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mobile payments lumiscapeThis is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

In the US, the in-store mobile wallet space is becoming increasingly crowded. Most customers have an option provided by their smartphone vendor, like Apple, Android, or Samsung Pay. But those are often supplemented by a myriad of options from other players, ranging from tech firms like PayPal, to banks and card issuers, to major retailers and restaurants.

With that proliferation of options, one would expect to see a surge in adoption. But that’s not the case — though Business Insider Intelligence projects that US in-store mobile payments volume will quintuple in the next five years, usage is consistently lagging below expectations, with estimates for 2019 falling far below what we expected just two years ago. 

As such, despite promising factors driving gains, including the normalization of NFC technology and improved incentive programs to encourage adoption and engagement, it’s important for wallet providers and groups trying to break into the space to address the problems still holding mobile wallets back. These issues include customer satisfaction with current payment methods, limited repeat purchasing, and consumer confusion stemming from fragmentation. But several wallets, like Apple Pay, Starbucks’ app, and Samsung Pay, are outperforming their peers, and by delving into why, firms can begin to develop best practices and see better results.

A new report from Business Insider Intelligence addresses how in-store mobile payments volume will grow through 2021, why that’s below past expectations, and what successful cases can teach other players in the space. It also issues actionable recommendations that various providers can take to improve their performance and better compete.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

  • US in-store mobile payments will advance steadily at a 40% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to hit $128 billion in 2021. That’s suppressed by major headwinds, though — this is the second year running that Business Insider Intelligence has halved its projected growth rate.
  • To power ahead, US wallets should look at pockets of success. Banks, merchants, and tech providers could each benefit from implementing strategies that have worked for early leaders, including eliminating fragmentation, improving the purchase journey, and building repeat purchasing.
  • Building multiple layers of value is key to getting ahead. Adding value to the user experience and making wallets as simple and frictionless as possible are critical to encouraging adoption and keeping consumers engaged. 

In full, the report:

  • Sizes the US in-store mobile payments market and examines growth drivers.
  • Analyzes headwinds that have suppressed adoption.
  • Identifies three strategic changes providers can make to improve their results.
  • Evaluates pockets of success in the market.
  • Provides actionable insights that providers can implement to improve results.

Subscribe to an All-Access membership to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to:

This report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports
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7 lessons I never forgot from the best bosses I ever had

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Boss

  • A good boss shows you the ropes of your industry and guides you in achieving your long-term goals.
  • Though you may have had both good and bad bosses, you've most likely walked away with valuable lessons that have stuck with you from a memorable boss.
  • Natalia Lusinski had bosses who taught her meaningful lessons — like that it's OK to say no and to follow her passions — that helped her get to where she is today. 

Chances are that through your career, you've had both good bosses and not-so-good ones. Either way, you probably walked away from each experience with valuable lessons.

"The relationship you have with your boss or supervisor can have an impact on your career — and life — for years to come,"Teague Simoncic, a career coach with Ama La Vida, told Business Insider. "On a day-to-day basis, the way your boss handles conflict or difficulty can teach you a lot about how to handle similar situations in the future."

Simoncic said that all in all, the best bosses are role models and sources of inspiration who may have helpful input on how you can achieve your long-term goals.

"Taking time to develop a meaningful connection to your boss can help lead to lifelong career growth and opportunities," she said.

Here are seven lessons I learned from the best bosses I've ever had — lessons that continue to help me in both my work and my personal life.

SEE ALSO: 5 signs your boss doesn't like you as much as you think

1. I learned effective time-management skills.

I used to work as a writers' assistant and script coordinator on TV shows, doing everything from taking notes in the writers' room and keeping track of storylines to creating episode outlines and proofreading scripts.

I was usually the last person to glance over the final script and would then email it to a crew of about 100 to 200 people. (No pressure!)

At one of my first jobs, my supervisor was a time-management superstar, fielding more than 100 phone calls and countless emails each day. I happened to sit next to him and started emulating the way he prioritized tasks.

For instance, in addition to using an online calendar and to-do list, he had a master handwritten one next to his computer, with tasks organized by most to least important. As he completed tasks, he highlighted them, color-coding them by subject — some in yellow, some in green, and so on.

Today, I still use his time-management and prioritization system. Though I have a color-coded Excel chart for my writing deadlines, I still keep a master handwritten to-do list next to my laptop.



2. You can ask for help if you need it.

I used to hate asking people for help. I believed that I could figure everything out myself.

But when I saw one boss asking her boss for help (I previously thought she knew everything) I realized that asking for help isn't a weakness — it's necessary and can help you complete your tasks more efficiently.



3. It's OK to say no if you cannot do everything yourself.

Sometimes bosses will give you a seemingly endless number of to-dos because in the past you've proved that you can do it all — why wouldn't they pile on more responsibilities? However, if you focus on quantity more than quality, the latter may suffer.

At one TV-production job, I felt bad about saying no to any request and was completely burned out as a result. When my boss learned I was the last person in the office each night, she told me to delegate tasks to a coworker if I had too many things on my plate.

Saying no is critical if you want the quality of your work to speak for itself.



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The race for the Super Bowl is down to just 4 teams

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NFL bracket — Conference Championships

  • The AFC and NFC conference championships are now set, with four teams still alive in the race for Super Bowl LIII.
  • New England will travel to Kansas City to play the Chiefs in what will be Tom Brady and the Patriots' eighth-straight AFC Championship appearance
  • In the NFC, the Saints and Rams will face off once again in New Orleans, this time with a spot in the Super Bowl on the line.

After two weeks of exciting playoff action, just four teams remain in the race for Super Bowl LIII.

In the AFC, Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs will host the New England Patriots in the conference championship. For the Chiefs, it's the first appearance in the AFC title game since 1993, while the Patriots will be playing in the final four for the eighth consecutive season.

Over in the NFC, the Los Angeles Rams will travel to New Orleans to take on the Saints in a matchup that pits the two most dominant teams in the conference all season against each other for the second time this year, now with a spot in the Super Bowl on the line.

Both games are rematches from exciting regular season battles, with the Patriots and Saints both coming out on top the first time around.

Here is the TV schedule for Conference Championship Sunday:

  • 3:05 ET — Los Angeles Rams at New Orleans Saints (FOX)
  • 6:40 ET — New England Patriots at Kansas City Chiefs (CBS)

After Sunday's games, we'll finally know what two teams will compete in Super Bowl LIII.

Tom Brady mocks critics after Patriots' latest evisceration of a playoff opponent

A Chiefs player is bringing a homeless man living in his truck to the AFC Championship game as a thank you for pulling his car out of the snow

Bill Belichick made an unusual decision at the start of the Patriots game to surprise his team — and players say it 'fired' them up

Saints coach Sean Payton wheeled out the Lombardi trophy, a Super Bowl ring, and $200,000 of cash to motivate his players before the playoffs

SEE ALSO: The 40 most dominant athletes of 2018

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10 places from your favorite sitcoms you can visit in real life

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outside cheers bar boston

  • When a sitcom airs for nine or 10 years, the spots that the characters hang out in feel like a part of our lives, too.
  • Thankfully, many of these places were inspired by real places that quickly became pop culture landmarks.
  • Whether it's the titular bar in "Cheers" or the Pawnee City Hall from "Parks and Recreation," there are multiple spots you can check out from your favorite sitcoms.

Picture this: you've spent 10 or 11 years watching a sitcom, and the characters truly feel like a part of your life. Wouldn't you want to visit their beloved hang-out spots?

These 10 locations were either used during filming or inspired the creators to make their own versions in their shows.

Keep scrolling to see what sitcom locations you need to add to your bucket list.

"Cheers" almost exclusively took place within the bar, which shared its name with the show.

Cheers, of "Cheers," was located in Boston, Massachusetts, and for most of its run was owned by Sam Malone, played by Ted Danson. It was normally populated by a lovable group of regulars and employees, including Diane, Norm, Frasier, Carla, and Cliff.

 



The outside of Cheers was actually a bar called the Bull and Finch for years, but was renamed Cheers Beacon Hill in honor of the show in 2002.

The Bull and Finch was opened in 1969 but achieved national fame when its exterior was used for "Cheers" starting in 1982 and until its end in 1993.

After decades of being known as simply "the bar from 'Cheers,'" it was renamed Cheers Beacon Hill in 2002, and you can still visit it in Boston.



The characters in "Friends" spent almost as much time at their favorite coffee shop, Central Perk, as they did in their apartments.

For 10 seasons, this beloved group of friends spent almost all of their free time at Central Perk, a coffee shop located in Manhattan.

Over the course of 10 seasons, Rachel and Joey both worked there, and Phoebe even got married on the street right outside.



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