Breaking
Financial Vision Daily
Author

admin

Browsing
In Stocks

Tech vs Semiconductors: Which One Should You Be Trading?

5 Mins Read

As an investor and a technical analyst, there are numerous tools available for you on StockCharts that you can use to find tradable opportunities.

One idea is to begin with a survey of top-performing sectors. It’s Wednesday morning; the Dow jumped 400 points, the S&P 500 ($SPX) hit a record high, and technology stocks spearhead the rally. To begin, under the Charts & Tools tab on Your Dashboard, select Sector Summary (under Research Tools).

If you switch from the default Intraday setting to One Week, you’ll see that the Technology sector is leading the pack.

FIGURE 1. ONE WEEK SECTOR SUMMARY.  The Technology sector is in the top position.Image source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes.

It’s interesting that tech also held the top spot for the last month. Now, let’s zoom in on the industry level by clicking “Technology Sector Fund.” Semiconductors are on top.

FIGURE 2. ONE WEEK INDUSTRY SUMMARY. Semiconductors lead the pack at the industry level.Image source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes.

Looking at this information, it makes sense to identify exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that follow Tech or semiconductor stocks.

To begin your analysis, let’s compare three charts (one that represents the sector, another that represents the industry, and one that focuses on stocks within the industry. We’ll use the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK), Dow Jones US Semiconductors Index ($DJUSSC), and VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH).

Tech Sector, Semiconductor Industry, and Semiconductor ETF

FIGURE 3. ACP COMPARISON DAILY CHART OF XLK, $DJUSSC, AND SMH. They look identical, but are they?Chart source: StockChartsACP. For educational purposes.

The charts are nearly identical, which makes sense as chip stocks were a significant driver in tech. Given the similarity in performance, perhaps XLK provides a more diversified alternative to concentrating on the semiconductor industry. Let’s take a look at XLK’s daily chart.

FIGURE 4. DAILY CHART OF XLK. A rising smaller trend within a larger swing outlines a wide range of support and resistance.Chart source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes.

Looking at the broader tech proxy, XLK, you can see a smaller rising trend within a large swing that outlines a wide range of support and resistance. Drawing a Quadrant Line from the bottom to the top, you can gauge where this trend is relative to the intermediate-term highs and lows. For the trend to continue, price has to break above the Quadrant Line at $237.50, while staying preferably above the bottom quadrant (see blue arrow), where it last bounced, at $202.50.

The High-Low Percent breadth indicator above the chart shows modest bullishness, as the number of 52-week highs outnumber 52-week lows, giving you a slightly bullish reading of 15.38%.

Look at the relative performance between XLK and $DJUSCC in the panel below the chart (comparing the sector to the industry). The sector has been underperforming the semiconductor industry since December 2023 (see zero line) and is currently at -32.79%.

Perhaps a semiconductor ETF might be the way to go. But which one? You have a choice of the following:

  • VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH), which is the most liquid
  • iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), another popular ETF, and
  • SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF (XSD), the smallest of them all by market cap.

Let’s compare their performance to $DJUSSC using StockCharts PerfChart.

FIGURE 5. PERFCHART OF $DJUSSC, SMH, SOXX, SXD. There’s a huge difference in performance between the four.Image source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes.

All three ETFs are tightly correlated to $DJUSSC, but their relative performances are worlds apart. The best-performing ETF is SMH, which happens to be the most liquid and largest by market cap.

Let’s switch to a daily chart of SMH. In the panel above the chart, you’ll notice the sideways-moving On Balance Volume, indicating that buying/selling pressure is virtually at a standstill as if the asset is waiting for something. What might that be? Notice how the last move down from the July high to the August low corresponds with heavy selling pressure, as shown by the Chaikin Money Flow (CMF). Also, notice how the CMF is trending up.

FIGURE 6. DAILY CHART OF SMH. The first top quadrant is one to watch closely.Chart source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes.

It makes you wonder how many traders were short SMH or how many just dumped their shares. If some are still short, where will they close to avoid a squeeze? It will likely be close to the first quadrant, which, for the bears, would break the 75% line if you’re measuring from the top down (magenta circle).

Bullish traders jumped in at the bounce near the bottom, and the real action is likely in the top quadrant. That’s where we’ll see if the trend continues (it would need to break resistance at $281.70) or if things go sideways until a major catalyst shakes it up and out of its range.

At the Close

When deciding what stock or ETF to trade, start with the big picture by looking at top-performing sectors. Then, zoom in on the industries driving them. In this case, tech stocks lead the way, with semiconductors at the forefront.  Despite their visual similarities in performance, each asset showed different relative performance, especially between the $DJUSSC index and the three semiconductor ETFs that were nearly 100% correlated with it.

Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The ideas and strategies should never be used without first assessing your own personal and financial situation or without consulting a financial professional.

Keep Reading
In World news

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese apologizes for ‘hurtful’ Tourette’s syndrome jibe

2 Mins Read

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has apologized after using an ableist slur to taunt political opponents in parliament.

Albanese was speaking during question time on Tuesday when opposition lawmakers repeatedly interrupted him.

“Have you got Tourette’s or something? You know, you just sit there, babble, babble, babble,” he said, before immediately adding: “I withdraw and apologize.”

Albanese later returned to the chamber to make a more formal apology.

“I made comments that were unkind and hurtful. I knew it was wrong as soon as I made the comment,” he said.

“I apologized and I withdrew as soon as I said it, but it shouldn’t have happened and I also want to apologize to all Australians who suffer from this disability.”

Albanese’s apology came after strong criticism from figures including shadow minister for health and aged care Anne Ruston.

Tourette’s syndrome is a neurological disorder that involves tics that present themselves in various ways, described by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke as “repetitive, stereotyped, involuntary movements and vocalizations.”

“Mocking a disability is no laughing matter,” Ruston wrote in post on X, adding that the comment was “absolutely despicable behaviour” from Albanese.

“Australians living with Tourette’s deserve the PM’s respect, not his ridicule,” she added.

“I’m incredibly disappointed and just gobsmacked somebody that has the national stage would use that platform and Tourette syndrome to make an insult,” she said.

Maysey, who has three children with Tourette’s, said the disability can be socially isolating.

“This shows we have a very long way to go until Tourette syndrome is taken seriously as a condition,” she added.

Singers Lewis Capaldi and Billie Eilish have both spoken about their experiences of living with Tourette’s.

“The worst thing about it is when I’m excited I get it, when I’m stressed I get it, when I’m happy I get it. It happens all the time,” Capaldi said in February 2023.

A few months later, Capaldi announced that he was taking a break from touring due to the impact of Tourette’s

In 2022, Eilish told David Letterman that the condition can be “exhausting.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Keep Reading
In World news

Italy’s hard-right government set to send sea migrants to Albania in bid to curb arrivals

8 Mins Read

The Italian government is facing a new set of challenges as it prepares to open two migrant processing centers in Albania in October where men rescued at sea en route to Italy will be processed for asylum.

It’s a move which the hard-right administration says will combat human trafficking and allow in only those who have a genuine right to enter the European Union, but which has drawn scorn from human rights groups.

On Friday, the European Court of Justice ruled that the plan to offshore migrants from countries Italy deems “safe” but which the European Union does not, is not legal.

However, the court’s decision is non-binding and Italy and Albania are not prohibited by the ruling from going forward with the plans. The centers – one in the Albanian port city of Shengjin and the other further inland in Gjader – were supposed to open on May 1 after the two nations signed a bilateral agreement last November, but “unforeseen circumstances” including building delays and bureaucracy have repeatedly pushed back the opening.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said last month: “We will start in October. There’s definitely been a few months of delay, there were some normal checks, in which we discovered, for example, that the ground needed to be reinforced. That’s all, very normal variations during construction.”

In August, the Italian government opened a trial detention center near Agrigento, Sicily, intended to mirror those in Albania by housing men from “safe” countries for fast repatriation. A court in Catania ruled the measure illegal under Italian law, but that ruling was overturned and two Tunisian men were deported without having their asylum requests processed on September 11, Piantedosi said in a post on X.

Seaborne migration on the central Mediterranean route, to Italy and Malta, is down by more than 60% on this time last year, according to Italy’s Interior Ministry and Europe’s Frontex agency. The decrease in the central Mediterranean has meant an increase in migrants trying to make it to Greece and Spain, according to Frontex statistics, and is largely due to clampdowns on NGO rescue ships and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s frequent trips to both Libya and Tunisia to apply pressure to keep migrants from leaving.

The drop in numbers notwithstanding, the Italian government is continuing to pursue an anti-immigration platform, which is widely supported by voters with Meloni enjoying a 44% approval rating, according to an Ipsos poll in September 2024.

Meloni’s so-called “Rome Process,” which she says aims to deter illegal migration and to tackle its root causes, has been of great interest to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited the Italian capital in September and pledged €4.75 million to the initiative, her office said.

“We talked about the Italy-Albania agreement, which is a solution that the British government is showing a lot of interest in, and clearly we have offered them all the elements to better understand this mechanism,” Meloni said during a press conference after the bilateral visit.

Meloni said Starmer had expressed interest in using the Albanian centers for migrants crossing the English Channel, but Albanian President Edi Rama told the European Parliament on September 19 that the centers were only open to Italy-bound migrants. “This is an exclusive agreement with Italy because we love everyone, but with Italy we have unconditional love,” Rama said.

Albania lies just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy but is not an EU member state.

In 2023, more than 157,000 people arrived illegally in Italy by boat from Libya and Tunisia, with hundreds known to have died trying, making the issue of sea migration one that all sides of the political spectrum agree must be better managed.

The asylum process is lengthy, meaning many would-be asylum seekers give up and slip into the periphery of Italian society or travel to countries in the north of Europe.

Amnesty International has called the Italy-Albania plan “shameful,” saying intercepted migrants will face a lengthier journey by sea to Albania, a potentially prolonged detention once there, and a likely curtailment of their right to seek asylum.

‘Don’t court the local women’

The centers will house up to 3,800 adult men at a time, who will be guided through the application process for requesting asylum in Italy, the Italian authorities say. If they do not qualify for asylum, they will be deported to “safe” countries, according to the agreement between Italy and Albania.

“We have been told not to be ‘too Italian,’” said the officer, who asked not to give his name since he is not authorized to speak for the unit. “We were given a handbook that outlines how to behave: no nudity, don’t court the local women, and drink coffee sitting down, not standing up at the counter.”

The handbook also describes Albanians as “modest people” and guides the incoming officers on how not to act “superior” to them. Flirting is a no-no. “Avoid courting Albanian women in various contexts and in an extemporaneous manner. It is a conservative society. The man who sees his woman being courted by another man can react badly,” the handbook also warns.

In all, Italy will provide 500 personnel, including police and military officers, health workers, and staff from the Justice Ministry, at an estimated cost of €252 million (about $278 million), according to Meloni. A local restaurateur in Shengjin has even opened the “Trattoria Meloni” to pay homage to the Italian prime minister for the investment in Albania, which has and will continue to benefit the local areas financially.

Additionally, Italy will pay €670 million (about $738 million) over the initial five-year contract for the centers’ operation and also pay for a second perimeter of security to be manned by Albanian guards to make sure none of the asylum seekers can escape. The cost comes to around 7.5% of what Italy currently spends on its migrant reception centers, Meloni said in June, speaking alongside Rama.

‘Clear risk’

The Shengjin port center will at first have just 880 places and is where all arrivals will be processed. Those who qualify to have their asylum claim heard will then move to the center in Gjader, which will open with 144 beds and then be expanded to hold 3,000 people while they await a response to their application from Italy. The complex also has a maximum-security 20-bed prison and emergency medical services.

The agreement states that only migrants from 22 nations considered by Rome to be “safe countries” will be sent to Albania, including men from Bangladesh, currently the fastest growing demographic arriving in Italy by sea, according to Italy’s Interior Ministry.

Other listed “safe countries” include Egypt, Tunisia and the Ivory Coast, citizens of which make up a large portion of arrivals. The European Court of Justice does not consider Tunisia and Egypt completely safe, which is at the crux of last week’s ruling.

Those who are from countries not deemed safe by Rome, such as Afghanistan and Syria, will initially be taken to Albania but later transferred to Italy for processing once their country of origin is confirmed.

The policy of “offshoring” asylum seekers has been heavily criticized by human rights groups.

“There is a clear risk that the operation intends to hide a strategy to create inaccessible reception centers, far from prying eyes and journalistic investigations, and from the nightmare of having to find a place for them in Italy, where no administrator, of any political stripe, can find them,” said Schiavone.

Piantedosi insists the opening of the Albanian centers is meant to act as a deterrent for migrants seeking to be smuggled into Italy. Meloni, who campaigned on a promise to “stop the boats,” has credited her government’s policies on investments in North African countries and punishing NGO migrant rescue vessels for this year’s decrease in arrival numbers.

The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration says that an increase in deaths of migrants at sea and a rise in migrant boats known to have departed from Libya and Tunisia going missing, presumed sunk, have also contributed to a drop in arrivals.

Questions over how to handle the many thousands of migrants who seek to enter Europe each year, often fleeing war, persecution and poverty and traveling in boats that are barely seaworthy, may be focused on border nations like Italy, Greece and Spain, but the ramifications extend beyond these frontline countries.

A group of 15 European countries, led by Denmark and including Italy, has petitioned the European Union to consider finding “new solutions,” like the Italy-Albania agreement, to help deal with irregular migration and “create a fairer, more humane, sustainable and efficient asylum system worldwide.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Keep Reading
In World news

‘Our dreams were falling down the mountain’: American and British climbers stranded in the Himalayas for three days

4 Mins Read

Fay Manners and Michelle Dvorak were perched high on the snowy face of a Himalayan mountain when disaster struck their quest to become the first to summit its peak.

At more than 6,000 meters (about 20,000 feet) above sea level, a falling rock sliced through the rope carrying Manners’ bag, leaving the climbers stranded in the inhospitable wilderness without vital supplies including their tent, stove, food, crampons and ice axes.

“All I can really remember is just seeing the bag go down the mountain and being really shocked, thinking, ‘How has this happened? Like, what’s going on?’”

But for both climbers, their immediate reaction wasn’t fear for their safety or survival – it was devastation that their mission, which required painstaking preparation, training, and altitude acclimatization, was being cut short when they were so close to their goal.

Manners, a Briton living in France, and Dvorak, an American, had been “absolutely desperate” to reach the summit of the unclimbed peak in India’s northern Uttarakhand state.

Their attempt to climb the nearly 7,000-meter Chaukhamba III began on September 27, as they clambered across ice and rock and slept on narrow ledges. The approach to the mountain alone was incredibly tough, Manners said – they had chosen a maze-like route that navigated endless deep crevasses and precarious snow bridges that risked collapsing in warmer weather. It took three attempts before they could even reach the base of the mountain, she said.

“We were near the end of all the difficulties … (we) maybe had one more day to get to the summit, and then we would have been the first to reach this summit,” Manners said. Instead, “our dreams were just falling down the mountain.”

Without their gear, climbing back down and across the crevasses was near-impossible, so they contacted emergency services for help. But the severity of their situation soon became clear when helicopters failed to spot them on the vast mountain face the next morning – and again the following day.

“We searched all day at the coordinates provided to us by the tour company but did not find anything,” he said.

All the while, the climbers had no food besides two energy bars that they “nibbled on,” and no water, since their stove to melt snow had been lost, Manners said.

Even their dehydrated food was no use without the stove. At one point, desperate and dehydrated, they abseiled to a spot with dripping ice and collected a tiny amount of water during the few hours when the sun was out.

And the conditions steadily deteriorated as they faced a snowstorm, hail and even an avalanche. They huddled together in their wet sleeping bag, hair frozen solid, with nighttime temperatures reaching –15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit).

“I was close to hypothermia, I think, and I was shaking so violently through the night that Michelle had to hold my legs to just try and keep me warm,” Manners said. “That sleeping bag saved our lives.”

That’s when they knew they had to act, even if they were weak and disoriented, she said. The next morning, they began abseiling down the mountain through thick fog, knowing the journey back to base camp could be “incredibly dangerous” with high chances of serious injury or falling down a crevasse.

But as they reached the bottom, they glimpsed a group of French mountaineers – a rival team that had also been hoping to reach the summit first. Negi, the information officer, said Indian authorities had reached out to the French team for assistance after being unable to locate Manners and Dvorak.

When Manners realized the French team had been sent to rescue them, “all my emotions came out at once, and I had some tears in my eyes,” she said.

With their help, she and Dvorak trekked to the French base camp, munching on cheese their rescuers had brought from France, she said. The Indian Air Force then airlifted them to a nearby hospital on Sunday, three long days after they were stranded.

Both climbers are uninjured and eager to fly home. And their brush with death hasn’t deterred them from following their dreams, said Manners, who encourages women and girls to pursue the sport. She wants to try the summit again next year – perhaps with the French team who rescued them.

When people look at their experience, she hopes they see two strong women who “got really close to the top,” she said. And when things went awry, they were “still able to survive and manage themselves through that really adverse and terrible situation.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Keep Reading
In World news

Helicopter pilot who crashed into a hotel had drunk a ‘significant amount of alcohol,’ report finds

3 Mins Read

A pilot who died when he crashed a helicopter into a hotel in Australia had “significant blood alcohol content” during the unauthorized flight, according to an official report into the incident.

Hundreds of guests and staff were evacuated from the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Cairns in Far North Queensland on August 12, when the aircraft hit the top floor and burst into flames.

At the time, charter company Nautilus Aviation said the pilot was a member of its ground crew who had attended a party the night before the crash to celebrate a promotion.

He wasn’t authorized to fly the aircraft but had access to the helicopter, the keys to which were routinely left inside the aircraft when it was parked inside the hangar.

The report released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) Thursday found that the pilot “was affected by a significant amount of alcohol” and flew “well below the 1,000 ft (304 meters) allowed for flight over a built-up area.”

Investigators did not reach a conclusion as to why the pilot took the helicopter, or if he did so with the intention of crashing it into a hotel.

“For reasons unknown, pilot actions resulted in a collision with a building while conducting an unauthorised and unnecessary flight, while affected by alcohol, late at night and at low heights over a built-up area, and without night flying endorsements,” the report concluded.

The pilot had been out with friends at various venues around Cairns and was seen consuming alcohol, according to witnesses and security camera footage, the report said.

Cameras also caught the moment he positioned one of Nautilus Aviation’s Robinson R44 Raven II helicopters onto a helipad at Cairns Airport at around 1:30 a.m. local time.

For several minutes, the pilot turned off the helicopter’s cockpit and strobe lights before taking off and heading in the direction of Cairns city center, the report said.

Australian Federal Police and airport safety officers were on duty that night but were not near the hangar. The report found they wouldn’t have seen a helicopter that was operating at night with no lights.

“It was apparent that the pilot was wanting to conceal the departure from the airport from air traffic control and airport staff,” the report said.

There was no cockpit recorder or flight data recorder, but investigators pieced together the aircraft’s movements from its GPS tracker and ground radar data.

The report said the pilot was not authorized to fly the plane and while he had flown a Robinson R44 before, he hadn’t done so at night.

It found the helicopter wasn’t upright when it hit the hotel, but there was also no sign of mechanical failure.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Keep Reading
In Business

Walmart-owned Sam’s Club tests a future without checkout lines

6 Mins Read

GRAPEVINE, Texas — When shoppers walk into Sam’s Club’s newest store, they’ll soon see a shiny blue Mercedes-Benz SUV, a sectional sofa and zero checkout lanes.

Welcome to the Walmart-owned membership club’s first all-digital store — and a preview of what could be its future.

Inside the club, which will open in mid-October, customers will have to use a smartphone app called Scan & Go to ring up their purchases as they walk through the aisles. In the area typically reserved for cash registers, the company will display online-only items as wide-ranging as a 12-foot Christmas tree and a five-carat lab-grown diamond. Members can scan QR codes and go straight to the items in the app.

Store workers will have about four times more space for preparing customers’ e-commerce orders for curbside pickup and home delivery, according to Sam’s Club executives.

“It’s kind of the physical manifestation of a journey we’re trying to go on as a company,” Sam’s Club CEO Chris Nicholas said, as he showed off the club before its grand opening.

Since Walmart founder Sam Walton opened the first Sam’s Club in 1983, the membership-based club has become the more tech-savvy arm of its retail-behemoth parent. The club has spun out several key innovations that its parent company now uses, too, such as Scan & Go. It’s also used digital offerings to try to outmatch its largest rival, Costco.

Sam’s Club is doubling down on that strategy with the Dallas-area store, which is reopening nearly two years after it was damaged by a tornado.

Nicholas said upon its reopening, the location will become a testing ground for Sam’s Club’s newest features and emerging technology.

“The idea is that over time, we will be 100% digital engagement as a business, and you’ve got to prove that things work before you scale them,” he said.

He added that he hopes “it feels like what it’s like to shop in the future.”

Costco has long been “the king of the warehouse club channel,” said Peter Keith, senior research analyst at Piper Sandler. But Sam’s Club has added features to “upgrade the shopping experiences,” he said, such as introducing a permanent station in some of the clubs where a chef makes sushi rolls in front of customers.

And notably, Sam’s Club has differentiated iself by embracing e-commerce offerings and appealing to customers who are seeking easier and faster ways to shop, such as Scan & Go.

“It really eliminates the most painful part of these membership clubs, which is the long lines to check out,” he said.

Sam’s Club and Costco have roughly the same number of U.S. clubs, but Costco pulls in about twice as much annual revenue. Net sales for Sam’s Club totaled $86.2 billion in its most recent fiscal year, compared with $176.63 billion for Costco’s U.S. clubs.

Sam’s Club has made several other key moves to catch up to Costco: It consolidated its private labels from more than 20 different brands into a single one: Member’s Mark. It cut back on the number of unique items it sells, so it focuses on the proven and popular ones. And it recently announced it would raise average hourly wages for nearly 100,000 of its workers ahead of the holiday season.

Sam’s Club also opened The Clubhouse in August, an approximately 37,000-square-foot office building across from the retailer’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. It includes workshop rooms and tools such as white boards, arts and crafts supplies, and cardboard models that will help the retailer to come up with new ideas, test products and collaborate on projects with cross-department teams.

And it’s in the middle of an aggressive expansion, with plans to open about 30 new clubs over a five-year period.

Sam’s Club’s comparable sales in the U.S., a metric that includes sales from stores and clubs open for the previous 12 months, grew 5.2% in the most recent quarter, which ended July 31, compared with the year-ago period. That included 22% year-over-year e-commerce growth.

Nicholas said the new clubs, including the one that’s opening in Grapevine, will be designed to better handle higher volume, too.

For example, the club’s cafe will include a pizza robot that will be able to make as many as 100 pizzas in an hour. It will also test a new system that delivers food orders to an assigned cubby after customers order through Scan & Go.

Like its parent company, Walmart, Sam’s Club has been attracting customers across a wider range of incomes and ages as it focuses on offering convenient ways to shop. About half of the new members that joined Sam’s Club during the most recent quarter were millennials or Gen Z, according to the company.

The company said 1 in 3 members currently use Scan & Go when shopping in clubs. It has recently rolled out new exit technology that automatically checks customers’ shopping carts and allows them to exit the club without an employee looking at a receipt or auditing their cart. Shoppers walk under an archway that’s powered by computer vision and artificial intelligence. That system functions similarly to Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology that’s begun to take hold at events stadiums in addition to some of the e-commerce giant’s physical storefronts.

But Nicholas, the Sam’s Club CEO, acknowledged some shoppers may be reluctant to embrace new technology or a new routine.

Tiffany Zuniga, a mom and a Lyft driver who lives in the Dallas area, said she’s eager to return to Sam’s Club, but is a little wary of the new technology. Zuniga said she used to turn to the club for easy family dinners or supplies for church events, but switched to Costco when Sam’s Club was closed because of tornado damage.

She’s never used Scan & Go and said she hopes the new technology doesn’t come at the expense of customer service.

“Sometimes it can get a little dicey if you scan the wrong thing or need help,” she said. “Hopefully, they will have enough staff on hand.”

As construction crews finished up work on Sam’s Club in Grapevine, the retailer put up signs at the nearby Sam’s Club gas station and car wash to alert customers to the return of the club and encourage them to download the Scan & Go app.

And when customers walk into the newly reopened club, employees will be ready to help them download the app or to tag along on a shopping trip if they need help learning how to use it, the company said.

Nicholas said there will be no change to the number of store workers in Grapevine, but some will have new roles.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Keep Reading
In Business

Amazon same-day prescription delivery expanding to nearly half of U.S. in 2025

2 Mins Read

Amazon plans to bring same-day prescription delivery to 20 more cities next year, the company said Wednesday, marking the latest phase of its push into health care.

As part of the expansion, which will make speedy medicine delivery available in nearly half of the U.S., Amazon said, it is embedding pharmacies in same-day delivery facilities often clustered around major metro areas. The company announced its plans during a press event at one of its warehouses near Nashville, Tennessee.

Amazon in March introduced same-day pharmacy delivery in New York and Los Angeles, after launching the service in Indianapolis, Miami, Phoenix, Seattle, and Austin, Texas. Some of the cities that will be added in 2025 include Boston, Dallas, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and San Diego.

The company has worked to accelerate medication deliveries. It’s been testing prescription delivery by drone in one Texas city. In most cases, the company said, when shoppers order same-day delivery of their medication by 4 p.m. they can receive it at home by 10 p.m.

The prescriptions are offered through Amazon Pharmacy, a section of its website and app that allows shoppers to order medication, with free delivery for Prime members. Launched in 2020, Amazon Pharmacy was born out of the company’s 2018 acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack. The company in January said it had doubled the number of customers it serves in the past year, though it didn’t provide a specific number.

It faces competition from traditional pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens, as well as other large retailers that offer pharmacy services, such as Walmart. Amazon said Wednesday it’s capitalizing on the care gaps created by the growing number of “pharmacy deserts” in the U.S., which can limit a patient’s access to medications and pharmacist care. Chain stores such as Walgreens and CVS have shuttered hundreds of locations recently as they struggle to maintain profitability.

Amazon’s online pharmacy is a part of the company’s multiyear effort to make inroads in the health-care industry. The company acquired primary care provider One Medical for roughly $3.9 billion in July 2022. It launched then shuttered its telehealth service, Amazon Care, along with a line of health and wellness devices.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Keep Reading
In Politics

How Kamala Harris’s media blitz went

9 Mins Read

Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest moments in the 2024 election — now with more Baba Booey.

(Did a friend forward this to you? If so, sign up here. And make sure you’re subscribing to the Campaign Moment podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever else.)

The big moment

After much hand-wringing about Vice President Kamala Harris’s lack of unscripted interviews since joining the 2024 race at the top of the ticket, Harris has in recent days undertaken a veritable media blitz. She’s gone on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast and on Howard Stern’s show, on “The View” and on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show.

A few reflections on the key moments, what she said, and what we learned.

Harris’s answer on Biden could be a problem

Even while talking to generally sympathetic hosts in most of these interviews, Harris reinforced the idea that she can create problems for herself in these unscripted settings. The primary example may be her answer about President Joe Biden.

Asked on “The View” what she might have done differently from Biden, Harris responded: “There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”

That’s undoubtedly not how her campaign drew it up.

It’s not an easy question, given that Harris is still serving with Biden. But it’s also clear she needs to carve out some distance between herself and Biden, given how unpopular he is. And there’s a way to massage it without giving Republicans such a potent video clip (a clip at least one House Republican is already using in an ad). For instance, at the debate last month, Harris said, “Clearly, I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump. And what I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country.”

Harris seemed to recognize that stumble Tuesday, emphasizing later in the show that unlike Biden she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet.

Harris’s “60 Minutes” interview also featured plenty of pressing from host Bill Whitaker. Harris resisted and talked around his questions, or offered some of those wordy, convoluted answers Republicans have attacked her for — particularly on Israel.

Her big pitch: Strength

This was a theme running through her appearances, as Harris perhaps sought to overcome questions about whether the country is prepared to elect a woman as president:

  • On “Call Her Daddy,” Harris responded to a reminder that Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) questioned Harris’s humility by subtly pointing to Harris’s lack of biological children: “I don’t think she understands that, there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble,” Harris said.
  • On Stern’s show, Harris asserted that she was proud of putting “a lot of people in jail” and said of threats she faced as a prosecutor, “I refuse to live in fear of the bad guys.”
  • On “60 Minutes,” she disclosed that the gun she owns is a Glock — a stereotypically gritty firearm. (Harris previously told Oprah Winfrey, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.”)

Harris also made a direct play for the mantle of strength in the Stern interview.

“Ultimately, I do believe that this is an election that is about strength versus weakness, and weakness as projected by someone who puts himself in front of the American people and does not have the strength to stand in defense of their needs, their dreams, their desires …” Harris said, while also pitching herself as stronger on national security and foreign policy.

Her campaign soon promoted that segment of the interview.

Her appearances reflected the changing media paradigm

Rarely have we seen a blitz that is so strategically and transparently geared toward specific constituencies and reaching large audiences, including by using nontraditional forums.

The “60 Minutes” and Colbert appearances are par-for-the-course for a presidential candidate, with the former being the long-running highest-ranked news show. But “Call Her Daddy” — an often raunchy, sex-themed show — is a massively popular and generally apolitical show with a huge audience among young women (it’s Spotify’s most popular podcast among women). “The View” was obviously about appealing to women, specifically. And the Stern show, like “Call Her Daddy,” gave Harris an avenue to lots of less-engaged voters.

The potential downside of some of these shows is Harris associating herself with their often-vulgar content. But that ship probably sailed in our politics a long time ago; Trump was a regular guest on Stern’s show for years.

This could put pressure on Trump to branch out

While there’s been plenty of talk about Harris’s not doing interviews, her recent foray might cause Republicans and the Trump campaign to rethink their own media strategy.

Harris has given few interviews, but she is now speaking to shows that could reach lots of casual and undecided voters. Trump … is not really doing that right now. His media-interview diet is heavier, but it’s focused on preaching to the choir, going on Fox News and Newsmax and the like. (He did go on young-male influencers Theo Von’s and Adin Ross’s popular shows in August.) Trump also turned down the forum “60 Minutes” offered because he didn’t want to be fact-checked.

That decision broke a tradition for major-party presidential candidates dating back to 1968.

It’s clear Trump is much more comfortable at rallies and with friendly interviewers; he makes so many false claims that branching out and actually being pressed is not a recipe for success. But there would seem to be a premium on speaking to the broader electorate with undecided voters looming so large late in the campaign.

And Harris basically challenged him to do that. Her answer on strength came on a show Trump used to frequent and, after Stern noted Trump had turned down “60 Minutes.”

A brief moment on hurricane politics

The big national story right now is, of course, Hurricane Milton. Our thoughts go out to the Floridians who will soon be struck by the this hurricane in Florida, as well as to those still recovering from Hurricane Helene in Georgia, North Carolina and other states.

It seems crass to talk about politics at a moment like this. But the campaigns and government officials are already confronting what this means for the vote in 2024 to have a pair of hurricanes strike three key states so late in a presidential election — a situation with little if any precedent. North Carolina officials have quickly moved to ease voting changes, for example.

On Tuesday, I looked at the history of how hurricanes can affect voting. Here are a few key points:

  • Hurricanes can lead to a drop in turnout: Hurricane Katrina in 2005 led to more than a 10 percent drop in turnout in New Orleans eight months later, as half the city was still displaced. Hurricane Michael late in the 2018 election led to a 7 percent drop in turnout in the affected areas of Florida’s panhandle, amid confusion about polling places.
  • That’s particularly problematic for Trump, given the areas hard-hit by Helene tend to be Republican-leaning. Trump addressed this Monday night, saying, “I believe they’re going to go out and vote if they have to crawl to a voting booth. He added that “we’re trying to make it convenient for them to [vote], but they just lost their house.”
  • A hurricane response can also affect views of incumbents. That effect appeared to help Barack Obama in 2012 after Superstorm Sandy and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 2022 after Hurricane Ian, while it hurt the Republican Party in 2006 (after Katrina) and George H.W. Bush in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew.

Stay tuned. Politics are not the primary concern right now. But these are crucial states — as The Post’s polling averages demonstrate — in a 2024 election which has major consequences for the country, and these hurricanes have thrown everyone a major late curveball.

A pair of momentous poll numbers

2 percent and 5 percent

Those are Harris’s edges on Trump in a New York Times/Siena College poll when it comes to which of the two candidates was more likely to “help you personally” and “help people like you,” respectively.

While those aren’t big gaps, this is the kind of question that has normally favored Trump. A Times/Siena poll just last month showed voters in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina said by an 11-point margin that Trump’s policies would help them rather than hurt them, but by a five-point margin that Harris’s policies would hurt them.

Even in the new national poll, voters said by 12 points that Trump’s policies as president had helped rather than hurt them, and by 20 points that President Joe Biden’s policies had done more to hurt them.

Why this is significant: There are few things that are as immediate a concern for voters as whether a candidate would help or hurt them. And Trump’s advantages on questions like this have helped him overcome concerns about his character. If Harris can truly erase this deficit, that could be huge for her.

Take a moment to read:

  • “Trump secretly sent covid tests to Putin during 2020 shortage, new book says” (Washington Post)
  • “The fight for the House and Senate: Where things stand” (Washington Post)
  • “Local Republicans decry hurricane falsehoods — as Trump spreads them” (Washington Post)
  • “The latest union snub for Harris and Walz underscores a bigger problem for their campaign” (Politico)
  • “How Mike Johnson is navigating Trump — and his first real campaign” (Politico)
  • “The Most Dramatic Shift in U.S. Public Opinion” (Atlantic)
This post appeared first on washingtonpost.com

Keep Reading
In Politics

Millions of non-swing-state Americans are barraged with swing-state ads

4 Mins Read

Donald Trump will reportedly hold his second New York City rally of the campaign cycle later this month, welcoming supporters to Madison Square Garden in the heart of Manhattan. It’s an odd tactical choice, given the city’s overwhelming support for Democratic candidates. It also immediately evoked historical comparisons that were not particularly flattering to the former president.

Perhaps Trump recognizes that he won’t have many more opportunities to headline at the most famous arena in the city where he was born. Maybe his campaign sees some electoral benefit from such an event that escapes the attention of, well, everyone else. Or maybe the campaign recognizes that it’s already been investing heavily in the New York City media market, if unintentionally, so it might as well double down.

Viewers in the metropolitan area have noticed that they’re seeing a surprising number of television ads centered on the presidential campaign, given that New York is almost certainly going to give its electoral votes to Vice President Kamala Harris (despite Trump’s third-straight prediction of victory in the state). But there’s a simple reason for that. New York City is relatively close to Pennsylvania, and the campaigns are desperate to get their messages to Pennsylvania voters.

Remember that there are seven states generally considered to be in play next month. We may be wrong; these states may not be very close or other states may be closer, but for illustrative purposes it’s useful to keep these states in mind.

As you’re similarly aware, the populations of those states — and, by extension, the votes that they tally — are unevenly distributed. In Pennsylvania, for example, voters are heavily clustered in and around Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Often, we consider vote totals by county. The map below shows precisely that: votes cast by county in 2020 (with more votes indicated with larger circles) and the candidate who earned more of those votes (Trump in red, Joe Biden in blue).

Media markets, unlike the electoral college, are utterly indifferent to state lines. If you live in New Jersey but historically received television signals from strong transmitters in New York City, you are lumped into the New York market. These ad hoc but formalized clusterings of county groups are referred to as designated market areas (DMAs). And DMAs go where the customers are, not where voters have similar ballots.

What this means is that there are a lot of places outside of swing states that share media markets with swing-state voters. What that means is that a lot of voters outside of the swing states get hammered with ads intended for the subset of viewers who are in those states.

You can see an approximation of that media-market spillover on the map below.

Before we go further, it’s worth noting that this effect only applies to specific types of advertising. In the modern era of political advertising, it’s possible to narrowly target people by geography, demography and interest in a way that throwing an ad on the broadcast of a traditional television couldn’t. That said, putting ads on broadcast television is often an effective and affordable way of reaching a lot of those voters.

That’s particularly true given that live sports — one of the few television offerings that still offers both large audiences and attentive viewers who aren’t skipping ads — are often carried on broadcast networks. Put an ad in an NFL game and a lot of people will see it, even if some of them live in states your campaign is already certain to win or certain to lose.

There are a number of heavily populated areas that share non-swing-state media markets with swing states. Los Angeles. Minneapolis. New York City. Jacksonville. Salt Lake City. Voters in those places can expect to see campaign ads even if their minds are already made up.

From the standpoint of a political campaign, this is admittedly not ideal. They only have so much money, and they have so many people they really want to contact. Wasting money on some hardcore Manhattan Democrat who happens to be watching the New England Patriots play is just that, a waste. But if showing them that ad convinces two Pennsylvania moderates? The return on investment might be worth it.

Just as it might be worth it if a rally in the middle of Manhattan triggers protests and brawls that reinforce your campaign message of tumult and insecurity. Political calculus can be more complicated than it at first seems.

This post appeared first on washingtonpost.com

Keep Reading
In Politics

Vance’s ‘diplomacy’ quote points to problem with any Trump-Putin calls

5 Mins Read

Bob Woodward’s new reporting that former president Donald Trump has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since leaving office raises all kinds of questions. Among them: What might they have talked about? Why the continued cloak-and-dagger on Trump’s talks with Putin? Did any such conversations continue after Russia invaded a U.S. ally, Ukraine, in February 2022, and pertain to that?

All are valid questions, given Trump’s provocative and often-cozy relationship with Putin.

And the significance of nearly all of those questions was quickly made clear, however unintentionally, by Trump running mate JD Vance.

“Even if it’s true, is there something wrong with speaking to world leaders? No,” Vance said Tuesday. “Is there anything wrong with engaging in diplomacy?”

There is, in fact, something potentially wrong — and potentially, technically, illegal — with a former official like Trump engaging in shadow diplomacy with Putin.

And none other than Trump himself has said as much, at least when it involved a Democrat. Trump not only pushed for but also apparently succeeded in getting a political opponent, former secretary of state John Kerry, investigated for alleged “shadow diplomacy.”

Given that, it would seem much more difficult for the Trump campaign to wave this off as a non-story.

Trump’s campaign on Tuesday broadly dismissed Woodward’s book as “made-up stories,” though Trump often falsely denies things that later prove to be true.

It’s one thing for Trump to have talked to Putin and another for this to have involved the word Vance invoked: “diplomacy.”

That could be illegal, under the letter of the law. The Logan Act bars unauthorized private citizens from engaging foreign governments with the “intent to influence the measures or conduct of” those countries, “in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States or to defeat the measures of the United States.” Basically, you can’t seek to undermine the official foreign policy of this country by conducting your own diplomacy. If Trump offered guidance to Putin on his conduct in the war in Ukraine, that would be problematic.

But the Logan Act has never been successfully prosecuted, which was noted when it cropped up multiple times during Trump’s presidency. So it’s not as if Trump’s breaking the law is a particularly live issue.

What is a live issue, though, is the propriety of it. And Trump has made clear that he is against former officials speaking to adversarial foreign governments and undercutting American foreign policy.

Trump not only repeatedly accused Kerry of breaking the law by speaking to Iran during Trump’s presidency, he even pushed for Kerry’s prosecution. And a clear timeline of events suggests this had a real impact, resulting in Kerry’s being investigated by the Justice Department.

The Kerry matter was one of the most significant examples of Trump’s apparently weaponizing the government against his foes — something he has suggested he would do even more if he’s elected to a second term.

Trump’s criticisms of Kerry were spread out, but he repeatedly cited the idea that a former official engaging a hostile foreign country was wrong and even illegal:

  • “The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal,” Trump tweeted in May 2018.
  • “John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people,” he tweeted in September of that year.
  • “You know, John Kerry speaks to them a lot,” Trump said at the White House in May 2019. “John Kerry tells them not to call. That’s a violation of the Logan Act. And, frankly, he should be prosecuted on that.”
  • “I think John Kerry shouldn’t have been speaking — that’s called the violation of the Logan Act,” Trump told Fox News in March 2020.
  • Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attacked Kerry in September 2018, saying, “Actively undermining U.S. policy as a former secretary of state is literally unheard-of.” He called it “unseemly and unprecedented” to have a “former secretary of state engaged with the world’s largest state sponsor of terror” in this way.

Trump’s comments generally focused on the idea that Kerry had strategized with Iran about how to navigate Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama’s administration’s Iran nuclear deal or urged it to wait to negotiate with a Democratic administration. There’s no evidence Kerry actually did that, though, and Kerry denied coaching Iran on the subject. Kerry maintained that there was “nothing unusual … about former diplomats meeting with foreign counterparts.”

But Trump did apparently succeed in getting Kerry investigated.

Former U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman wrote in his 2022 book that Trump’s Justice Department referred the case to his Southern District of New York in May 2018 after a pair of Trump tweets in the two days prior. The Justice Department checked in again right after an April 2019 Trump tweet, and then again the following day.

Berman called the pattern “clear — and outrageous.”

Much more is apparently known today about Kerry’s conversations with the Iranians than Trump’s reported conversations with Putin, given that investigation and the fact that Kerry talked at some length about what was discussed. Berman has called Kerry “innocent” and said two separate districts declined to prosecute Kerry.

Trump’s talks with Putin, meanwhile, have long been a black box.

That perhaps made some sense when Trump was president; official diplomacy often requires secrecy to work. But that doesn’t apply when you’re not actually supposed to be conducting diplomacy. And to the extent Trump might have been doing that with Putin, his own commentary on the subject would sure suggest we need to know more about it.

This post appeared first on washingtonpost.com

Keep Reading