Opening Bell: 10.28.16
Wall Street’s Frantic Push to Hire Coders (Bloomberg)
For almost five years, Gregory Furlong worked 50-hour weeks as a shipping clerk at a Best Buy two miles from his childhood home in Wilmington, Delaware. It was a kind of employment purgatory for a computer obsessive who tinkers with motherboards in his free time. So last year, Furlong, 30, enrolled in a three-month coding boot camp that uses HackerRank, a web platform that trains and grades people on writing computer code. After earning a top ranking for Java developers globally, Furlong was hired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in December for its two-year technology training program. This is Wall Street’s new tech meritocracy.
Harvard Called ‘Lazy, Fat, Stupid’ in Endowment Report Last Year (Bloomberg)
McKinsey’s review took a rare, unvarnished look into the culture of a secretive organization, where employees and others complained to McKinsey of an inattentive board and complacent culture -- in their words, “stable, rather than smart, capital” or, less charitably, “lazy, fat and stupid.”
Musk Throws ‘Pie’ at Naysayers as Tesla Posts Rare Profit (Bloomberg)
The profit, Tesla’s first in eight quarters, boosted its shares as much as 5.7 percent Thursday after they had slumped 16 percent this year. It also provided welcome vindication to Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who in an August e-mail obtained by Bloomberg pushed workers to cut costs, deliver every car possible and drive the results into positive territory. “It would be awesome to throw a pie in the face of all the naysayers on Wall Street,” Musk wrote.
Tilton lawyers suggest accountant was more than business partner (NYP)
Amid mundane questioning of the accountant, Peter Berlant, about audits and GAAP-compliant reviews, Tilton’s lawyers showed the CPA an e-mail from 2003 about a dinner the two shared at a Manhattan restaurant. Wasn’t this “the dinner where your wife accused you of having an affair” with Tilton, the lawyer, Mark A. Kirsch, asked. Berlant, under cross-examination by Kirsch, initially denied the interaction — but then said, after being reminded he was under oath: “I don’t know what [my wife] thought.”
Washington state teen gets her head stuck inside a giant pumpkin (UPI)
A Washington state mother filming her children's pumpkin carving exploits captured the moment her teen daughter's head ended up stuck inside her pumpkin. Kristy Ralphs of Vancouver posted a video to YouTube showing what happened when her daughter, Rachel, 16, decided to show off her enormous pumpkin by putting her head inside the hole she had carved in the top. The family shares a laugh which only becomes more rambunctious when Rachel discovers the pumpkin is stuck. "Go tell dad that Rachel has her head stuck in her pumpkin. Hurry, hurry!" Ralphs tells another of her children while Jason, 14, struggles to help his sister out of the gourd.
UBS Profit Falls as Risk-Averse Clients Curb Revenue (WSJ)
UBS Group AG said Friday that net profit declined in the third quarter, as the Swiss bank continued to cope with wary clients. Zurich-based UBS also disclosed a potential wrinkle for its investment banking business in Asia, where a Hong Kong regulator is scrutinizing its work bringing companies to the public markets.
Monthly Record for Mergers, Even as Election Looms (WSJ)
Less than two weeks before voters head to the polls, U.S. companies have unleashed a wave of deals that has made this month the busiest ever for mergers and acquisitions. The deal making culminated in Qualcomm Inc.’s agreement Thursday to buy NXP Semiconductors NV for $39 billion, part of a swirl of consolidation in the semiconductor industry.
Trump will win the election and is more popular than Obama in 2008, AI system finds (CNBC)
An artificial intelligence (AI) system that correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trump ahead of Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the race to the White House. MogIA was developed by Sanjiv Rai, the founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai. It takes in 20 million data points from public platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the U.S. and then analyzes the information to create predictions. The AI system was created in 2004, so it has been getting smarter all the time. It had already correctly predicted the results of the Democrat and Republican Primaries.
Ohio Man, 35, Pleads Guilty To Autoerotic Encounter With Parked Red Van (TSG)
Michael Henson, 35, was arrested in mid-August after police received 911 calls reporting that a man was “pulling his pants down and swinging on stop sign" and getting intimate with an auto. When cops confronted Henson, he was only wearing gym shorts and shoes and "appeared under the influence of some type of narcotic." Which would explain why a witness reported that Henson placed his penis “in the front grill of the van and began humping it as if he was having sex with the van.” Henson communed with the van “for a while” before passing out in a nearby yard, witness Marjorie Evans told police.