A screenshot from Echoes of the Plum Grove, which will be available on Indie Pass. Indie.io , which offers a platform to help independent game developers publish their titles, is launching a new subscription service called Indie Pass. The service will cost $6.99 per month and have more than 70 titles, including indie.io's Echoes of the Plum Grove and games from the Fire Emblem -like Dark Deity ser...
A screenshot from Echoes of the Plum Grove, which will be available on Indie Pass. Indie.io , which offers a platform to help independent game developers publish their titles, is launching a new subscription service called Indie Pass. The service will cost $6.99 per month and have more than 70 titles, including indie.io's Echoes of the Plum Grove and games from the Fire Emblem -like Dark Deity series. Indie Pass launches on PC on April 13th. Of course, there are a lot of subscription services that have already made a point of bringing attention to indies, like Xbox Game Pass, Apple Arcade, and Netflix's gaming library. Those subscriptions haven't had quite the same kind of uptake as streaming services for things like TV sho … Read the full story at The Verge.
Mustafa Suleyman has been preparing for his new job description for a long time. Suleyman is Microsoft's inaugural CEO of AI, but after the company underwent a large-scale restructuring in mid-March, he's handed off some duties and shifted focus to chasing superintelligence. Though the news was only made public last month, he tells The Verge , he'd been preparing for the transition for as many as ...
Mustafa Suleyman has been preparing for his new job description for a long time. Suleyman is Microsoft's inaugural CEO of AI, but after the company underwent a large-scale restructuring in mid-March, he's handed off some duties and shifted focus to chasing superintelligence. Though the news was only made public last month, he tells The Verge , he'd been preparing for the transition for as many as nine months - and though renegotiating Microsoft's contract with OpenAI is the thing that officially "unlocked [Microsoft's] ability to pursue superintelligence," he'd been planning even before the ink was dry. "This has been a long-held plan," he … Read the full story at The Verge.
Microsoft Corp. aims to develop large, cutting-edge artificial intelligence models by next year, part of a push to build in-house alternatives to the most powerful AI tools from OpenAI and Anthropic. “We must deliver the absolute frontier,” said Mustafa Suleyman , chief executive officer of Microsoft AI, said in an interview. “Certainly by 2027, the objective is to really get to state-of-the-art” ...
Microsoft Corp. aims to develop large, cutting-edge artificial intelligence models by next year, part of a push to build in-house alternatives to the most powerful AI tools from OpenAI and Anthropic. “We must deliver the absolute frontier,” said Mustafa Suleyman , chief executive officer of Microsoft AI, said in an interview. “Certainly by 2027, the objective is to really get to state-of-the-art” across models that can respond to or generate text, images and audio. Suleyman’s unit on Thursday rolled out a speech transcription model that Microsoft says is more accurate than rival products in benchmark testing on 11 of the 25 most widely spoken languages. But as with the voice and image-generation models released by the Microsoft AI group to date, it’s a specialized tool built for efficiency and trained on fewer data points than general-purpose workhorses like Claude 3 Opus or OpenAI’s GPT-4. Microsoft is assembling the computing horsepower to build more broadly capable models, Suleyman said. The company in October started using a cluster of Nvidia GB200 chips, expanding the computing resources at its disposal. “From there, we’re sort of ramping over the next sort of 12 to 18 months to get to frontier-scale compute,” he said. The flexibility and prowess of AI models is determined in part by the number of servers used to teach them to parse relationships between words, images or audio. Microsoft’s work had long been constrained by contract terms with close partner OpenAI. In exchange for the license to incorporate ChatGPT into its products, Microsoft was prohibited from developing its own broadly capable models. That clause disappeared as part of a renegotiated deal the two companies agreed to last year. Suleyman, who joined Microsoft in 2024 to lead the company’s efforts to infuse AI into its consumer products, saw his remit narrow last month to model development. A reorganization gave Jacob Andreou , a former Snap executive, oversight of Microsoft’s Copilot assistant...
Chicago, April 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Circana LLC today announced that Hélène Bouffard has been appointed Chief People Officer, where she will lead the company’s global people strategy and guide organizational evolution during a period of accelerated growth and increasing AI adoption. Bouffard brings more than 25 years of human resources leadership experience to Circana. Most recently, she s...
Chicago, April 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Circana LLC today announced that Hélène Bouffard has been appointed Chief People Officer, where she will lead the company’s global people strategy and guide organizational evolution during a period of accelerated growth and increasing AI adoption. Bouffard brings more than 25 years of human resources leadership experience to Circana. Most recently, she served as Director of Human Resources and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) at Amazon.com, Inc.,
10am: Tech and travel drop at open US stocks have started firmly in the red but as has often been the case of late, are quickly trimming losses. The Dow Jones is down just over 1% and the S&P 500 off 0.9%, while the Nasdaq is worst affected, falling 1.4%. Losses on the Nasdaq 100...
10am: Tech and travel drop at open US stocks have started firmly in the red but as has often been the case of late, are quickly trimming losses. The Dow Jones is down just over 1% and the S&P 500 off 0.9%, while the Nasdaq is worst affected, falling 1.4%. Losses on the Nasdaq 100...
INVESTOR ALERT: Pomerantz Law Firm Reminds Investors with Losses on their Investment in Oracle Corporation of Class Action Lawsuit and Upcoming Deadlines - ORCL PR Newswire
INVESTOR ALERT: Pomerantz Law Firm Reminds Investors with Losses on their Investment in Oracle Corporation of Class Action Lawsuit and Upcoming Deadlines - ORCL PR Newswire
Reciprocal tariffs were announced a year ago, on what President Trump referred to as " Liberation Day" for the country. Tariffs were imposed on many countries that the president believed were being unfair to the U.S., and the initial market reaction was one of panic, with the S&P 500 proceeding to fall. In many ways, it was reminiscent of the 2020 crash during the early stages of the pandemic. Sto...
Reciprocal tariffs were announced a year ago, on what President Trump referred to as " Liberation Day" for the country. Tariffs were imposed on many countries that the president believed were being unfair to the U.S., and the initial market reaction was one of panic, with the S&P 500 proceeding to fall. In many ways, it was reminiscent of the 2020 crash during the early stages of the pandemic. Stocks tanked quickly but then would go on impressive runs. While the S&P 500 has been struggling in the early part of 2026, it's still up around 16% over the past 12 months, as investors who stayed the course and remained invested in funds tracking the index would have done fairly well. And one stock within the index that's been downright amazing over the past year is Sandisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) . It's up a mesmerizing 1,200%, making it easily the top-performing stock on the index since Liberation Day. The big question is whether it's still a buy right now. Image source: Getty Images. Continue reading
The carnage in the miners is presenting option investors with a gold-wrapped gift. Newmont has been taken out to the woodshed, down nearly 20% on a "disappointing" outlook that, frankly, the market is misreading. Newmont fell to, and has bounced off of, our favorite chartist Carter Braxton Worth's favored 150-day moving average. At the same time, Newmont's options premiums are elevated. Two-month ...
The carnage in the miners is presenting option investors with a gold-wrapped gift. Newmont has been taken out to the woodshed, down nearly 20% on a "disappointing" outlook that, frankly, the market is misreading. Newmont fell to, and has bounced off of, our favorite chartist Carter Braxton Worth's favored 150-day moving average. At the same time, Newmont's options premiums are elevated. Two-month implied volatility — that's how an options trader thinks about the price of options — is in the 91st percentile. This provides an opportunity to make money if Newmont rebounds off the trend line back toward prior highs, and carries less risk than buying the stock if it falls through. The trade: The bullish risk reversal I want to put on a bullish risk reversal (selling a put to fund a call spread) to capture a move back toward the prior highs. Sell the July $90 strike put @ $5.10 Buy the July $110 strike call pay $11.50 Sell the July $130 call @ $4.25 Net Cost: ~$2.15, or just 2% of the current stock price By selling the put, I'm effectively saying I'm a happy buyer of the world's premier gold producer at a discount to book value, and I'm using that "fear premium" to pay for a vertical call spread that gives me a clean runway to $130, just shy of the prior highs of $134.88. If volatility falls, or over time, the decay of the short 130 call and short 90 put will offset the decay of the 110 call I own. Notice in the chart below that the trade sees profits above $110, although those profits are capped at $130; that's okay because that's close to the prior highs, where the stock will likely encounter resistance. If the stock falls, I risk being compelled to purchase the shares at $90 per share. However, that's acceptable because 1) that represents a 15% discount to the current price, even net of the ~$2 in premium I paid, and 2) that's not far from the six-month lows. The bull case: Top shelf assets at a mid-shelf price Newmont is the only gold miner in the S & P 500 for a reas...
da-kuk/E+ via Getty Images Thesis TD SYNNEX Corporation ( SNX ) is basically a middleman for the tech world, but a really important one. Companies that build the digital backbone (laptops, servers, software, cloud systems) don’t typically deal directly with every business or corner shop. That’s a needlessly sloppy and inefficient way to go about it. Instead, they rely on companies like SNX to hand...
da-kuk/E+ via Getty Images Thesis TD SYNNEX Corporation ( SNX ) is basically a middleman for the tech world, but a really important one. Companies that build the digital backbone (laptops, servers, software, cloud systems) don’t typically deal directly with every business or corner shop. That’s a needlessly sloppy and inefficient way to go about it. Instead, they rely on companies like SNX to handle that whole process. It purchases large quantities of technology products and services, then sells them to many smaller businesses, such as IT consultants, resellers, and managed service providers. Those smaller businesses then sell, set up, or support these products and services for the final customers. It’s not complicated once you see it. They basically run on margin plus services. Seeking Alpha It's been a while since I last covered SNX with a Buy based on its undervaluation, steady earnings growth, and exposure to higher-growth areas like cloud and data infrastructure. Since then, shares have delivered an exceptional total return, comfortably outperforming the S&P 500 ( SP500 ) by a wide margin. Fresh off Q1 2026 earnings and a predictably upbeat market response, the stock is back on its upward track. And after going over the latest data, I’m still leaning bullish, as the core business remains resilient and the growth drivers behind its recent momentum are still firmly in place. Breakdown of TD SYNNEX’s Q1 2026 Earnings Distribution gross billings growth : +17% YoY Hyve gross billings growth: +95% YoY. My first read is that the quarter’s strength came from two very different parts of the business both doing well simultaneously. Looking at the distribution side of things, company’s management said demand was strong across multiple areas: infrastructure, security, software, PCs, and even networking, which had been weak before but is now starting to recover. In Hyve , I wasn't surprised to see that the main reason for growth was strong demand from hyperscaler customers,...
RiverNorthPhotography/iStock Unreleased via Getty Images My Investing Philosophy I invest for total return with a focus on rising dividends. I am retired and prefer a growing income over mere appreciation that could come or go. I like the certainty of dividends, but I also like to invest in quality companies that I consider to be temporarily out of favor leading to their being undervalued. You can...
RiverNorthPhotography/iStock Unreleased via Getty Images My Investing Philosophy I invest for total return with a focus on rising dividends. I am retired and prefer a growing income over mere appreciation that could come or go. I like the certainty of dividends, but I also like to invest in quality companies that I consider to be temporarily out of favor leading to their being undervalued. You can learn more by checking out my profile . Company Background T. Rowe Price Group ( TROW ) is an asset management company offering services to individuals, institutional investors, retirement plan and others. The company manages equity and fixed income mutual funds invested in securities from around the globe. As more investors are drawn toward ETFs (exchange traded funds) as opposed to mutual funds, TROW has begun to launch ETFs in order to compete and remain relevant to investors. Asset managers have low variable costs, therefore as revenue rises EPS (earnings per share) rise even faster. AUM (assets under management) grow in two ways: increases in contributions and a rising value of underlying assets managed. The value of assets can be volatile over the short term, but the long-term trend is up. TROW can also improve its EPS through the repurchase of outstanding shares, which it has been doing, albeit at a relatively slow but steady pace. The company reported $1.8 trillion AUM at the end of February 2026, up from $1.61T at year-end 2024. The increase is fully attributed to market appreciation and income. Earnings Quarter 4 earnings , reported February 4th, missed consensus estimates by $0.02/share at $2.44 compared to $2.12 in the same period of 2024, a rise of 15%. The shares dropped 3.7% as a result of the miss. That caught my eye and I decided to take a deeper look hoping to find a bargain. Net flows of contributions have been negative over the last five years, the worst happening in 2022 and 2023 as a result of the huge drop in the overall market (especially tech stock...
Data from Dealing Matrix show 157 dim sum bonds were issued offshore in March 2026, raising more than 150 billion yuan ($21.8 billion). Photo: VCG Issuance of offshore yuan-denominated “dim sum” bonds surged 180% in March from a year earlier as borrowers took advantage of China’s low interest rates to sidestep elevated global funding costs. The jump underscores a shift in global debt markets. Stub...
Data from Dealing Matrix show 157 dim sum bonds were issued offshore in March 2026, raising more than 150 billion yuan ($21.8 billion). Photo: VCG Issuance of offshore yuan-denominated “dim sum” bonds surged 180% in March from a year earlier as borrowers took advantage of China’s low interest rates to sidestep elevated global funding costs. The jump underscores a shift in global debt markets. Stubborn inflation in the West and geopolitical conflicts have reduced expectations for U.S. Federal Reserve rate cuts, prompting more issuers to tap cheaper, more predictable yuan financing.