This will be my last Saturday column — after nearly 8 years as editor-in-chief, I am leaving Yahoo Finance. And the time feels right to be moving on.
Before turning to my time at Yahoo Finance and what the future might hold for the company (and myself), what I’d like to do is take a look back at the last year.
Goodbye to 2022
Let’s start by acknowledging that 2022 was a weird one for investors, with the S&P 500 hitting a record high and high for the year on January 3rd, the first trading day of the year.
Which makes 2022 the first year since 1977 the S&P 500 hit its high watermark for the year on day one, and the first time ever that high for the year also marked a record high for the index.
After that, well, it wasn’t a crash so much as the beginning of a long, slow collapse, particularly for tech stocks and the more speculative parts of the market that made buying stocks seem so fun back in 2021.
With stocks swooning as we headed into the summer, crypto had decamped for its latest “crypto winter.” By the time fall came around in the Northern Hemisphere, it was looking more like an Ice Age for crypto, exacerbated by the Sam Bankman-Fried scandal.
Which brings me to something else I observed in 2022 — a reminder that so many lessons are learned over and over again. It’s a painful process for investors, but one which benefits people in my line of work.
In 2022, Elon Musk, SBF, and the employees of Warner Bros. Discovery were all taught that leverage can 1) make you act like a wingnut, 2) make you allegedly commit massive fraud, or 3) get you fired en masse, respectively. To paraphrase the great sage Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until too much debt punches them in the mouth.
Another notable development in 2022 is that it appears we are in the throes of a new cycle resetting interest rates higher.
I’ve tried to explain what this might mean to you, our audience, and to the Yahoo Finance team, but it’s a difficult concept to wrap your brain around unless you’ve experienced an extended period of rising rates. A concept made more challenging because U.S. investors have lived through one long, extended decline in interest rates since 1982.
Rising rates are bad for stocks, which is why the market went nowhere from 1966 to 1982. I’m not saying we’ll have a 16-year sideways market, but it makes sense to understand why we might.
Right now, most of Wall Street thinks Fed chair Jay Powell didn’t attack inflation early enough and is now playing catch up, which, to continue the conventional wisdom narrative, is certain to tank the economy next year.
I’m not so sure. Why? Because I’ve seen enough rodeos to know that 1) no one can ever predict these things, and 2) one thing everyone loves to do is beat up the Fed chair.
Paul Volcker, who ran the Fed and whipped inflation back in the early 1980s, is now held up as a sainted seer, but I can assure you that is very much with the hindsight of history. I clearly remember the howling when Volcker was doing the hard work of raising rates to the roof to beat down inflation. And I remember asking him years later what people thought of his actions then. “I was pilloried,” he told me.
Goodbye to Yahoo
Now turning to Yahoo. I went back and looked at the first piece I wrote for Yahoo in early 2015, which was about the 20th anniversary of the company. I remember ringing the opening bell on that occasion at the NASDAQ with my-then colleague Katie Couric.
In the piece, I wrote: “Company years are actually not that different from human years…So Yahoo at 20 maybe resembles a young person in his or her sophomore or junior year of college. There’s energy and potential and, yes, some growing pains.”
I pointed out that having, “…had seven CEOs over the past eight years (Semel, Yang, Bartz, Morse, Thompson, Levinsohn, and now Mayer),” hadn’t helped matters.
Yahoo today is almost 28 years old. During the subsequent eight years, we’ve had four CEOs; Marissa Mayer, Tim Armstrong, Guru Gowrappan, and now Jim Lanzone. That’s better, but maybe still too much turnover.
In the same time period Yahoo also went from being an independent public company to a subsidiary of Verizon to its current status as a portfolio company of private equity giant Apollo.
Maybe Yahoo, done with college a while back, is like an old Gen Z-er coming to grips with, gulp, turning 30. Lots to figure out, right?
One thing I’ve come to realize is that all kinds of folks have worked at Yahoo. Besides those mentioned above, there’s also Jeff Weiner, Caterina Fake, Stewart Butterfield, Dave Goldberg, Jerry Yang, Brad Garlinghouse, Dan Rosenzwieg, Sue Decker, and Max Levchin (if board members count), as well as journalists like David Pogue, Sam Ro, Lisa Belkin, Mike Santoli, and Adrian Wojnarowski. And there are dozens more. And now you can add me to the list.
Leaving Yahoo also got me thinking about a goodbye piece I did when I left my job as editor of Fortune in 2014. In that column I wrote about a few things I learned about the business which I think still resonate today:
That you have to balance the idea that nothing really changes with the notion that everything is changing fast—especially the ever-evolving Internet of everything, the biggest change-agent to hit the global economy in our lifetimes. While Facebook, Spotify, Uber, Yelp, and the like—which many of us use multiple times every week, if not every day—are completely new, really cool, and producing all kinds of au courant lessons and rules, it doesn’t give anyone a license to engage in illegal, conflicted, or amoral behavior “in the name of the revolution.” If they do, journalists should call them out on it.
That with so much information available so easily to so many, hard-nosed reporting and critical thinking become more important than ever.
That Watson, HAL, and all the artificial intelligence in the world will never replicate the most important human decision-making, or if the computers ever do, we will have already been taken over by machines, à la some sort of Will Smith movie. (By the way, I’ve always loved the phrase “artificial intelligence.” I know a few people… Oh, never mind!)
I also wrote about the importance of a company’s culture which was sort of my take on Peter Drucker’s famous line: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” which I agree with wholeheartedly.
That doesn’t mean you can be strategy-less—which is like being rudderless—but you have to try to create a work environment where not only everyone is rowing in the same direction, but is also happy and fulfilled. Yes really. And that takes real work.
I also wanted to mention a few things that made me grateful during my time at Yahoo Finance — streaming Warren Buffett’s annual meeting, building out our live shows, and seeing the recognition and awards our reporters and producers garnered. It’s also been a kick doing these columns and my Influencers interview series, both of which I was only able to do with a great deal of help. Mostly though, I will remember all the super-talented people whom I worked with at Yahoo Finance. What an incredible group!
Now under the leadership of Jim Lanzone, Tapan Bhat, and John Marcom I see even greater things ahead for Yahoo Finance—and for you, our audience.
As for me going forward, it’s simple. I will continue to follow the markets, the economy, and society writ large. There’s just too much going on not to.
As the man says, stay thirsty my friends.
Crypto holders had a rough ride in 2022 and returns became a competition for the "least bad" losses.
(Reuters) -For much of the global economy, 2023 is going to be a tough year as the main engines of global growth – the United States, Europe and China – all experience weakening activity, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday. The new year is going to be "tougher than the year we leave behind," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on the CBS Sunday morning news program "Face the Nation." In October, the IMF cut its outlook for global economic growth in 2023, reflecting the continuing drag from the war in Ukraine as well as inflation pressures and the high interest rates engineered by central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve aimed at bringing those price pressures to heel.
In a down year for stocks, the 65% drop in Tesla’s share price stands out for the scale of wealth vaporized and the unorthodox behavior of its CEO, Elon Musk. The collapse of Tesla’s stock price destroyed about $672 billion in market value. And Musk, once hailed as a genius who remade the car industry, appears increasingly distracted by his acquisition of Twitter and is using the social network to vent his frustrations. He insulted one of his critics this week by describing him as having “tiny t
(Bloomberg) — Tesla Inc. shares have fallen so far, so fast that some individual investors are piling in, seeing a chance to pick up what was once Wall Street’s highest flying stock on the cheap. Most Read from BloombergElon Musk Becomes First Person Ever to Lose $200 BillionXi Warns of Tough Covid Fight, Acknowledges Divisions in ChinaTesla Kicks Off New Year in China by Extending Incentive OffersPhilippines Restores Air Traffic Control After Power OutageBut would-be bargain hunters may want t
Oil prices have sunk to pre-war levels. They are unlikely to remain there
STOCK ALERT Tesla investors had a rocky 2022. They hope to start out 2023 with a bang. Tesla (ticker: TSLA) is due to report quarterly deliveries Monday. Tesla typically reports delivery and production figures on the second day of a new quarter.
You may not even realize its presence is lurking around every corner.
In 2017, business magnate Warren Buffett did something that’s somewhat unusual for him. He poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a real estate investment. Buffett has been dismissive of real estate investing in the past. He’s called it a “lousy investment” in part because real estate can be expensive to maintain. Real estate also often requires “sweat equity” or the physical effort needed to upgrade properties or simply keep them from falling into disrepair. Yet in 2017, Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio can be a useful resource for finding quality companies at a good value.
Tech stocks took a beating in 2022. Semiconductor giant Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and telecom company AT&T (NYSE: T) each face their fair share of challenges in 2023 and beyond, but dividend investors would be remiss to ignore these high-yield tech stocks. For much of the past two years, shares of chip giant Intel have been slumping under the leadership of CEO Pat Gelsinger.
First, develop a plan (some might call it a budget), said Robert Gilliland, managing director and senior wealth adviser at Concenture Wealth Management. Take into consideration every single possible expense you anticipate after your husband dies, and account for inflation as well. You can break these expenses down into the short term, such as one to five years, the intermediate term, which would be the six- to 10-year span, and the long term, or beyond 10 years.
We all pay taxes. So why not get some of that money back?
Dividend stocks shine in times like these. They pay investors to wait until market conditions improve, and they often deliver solid returns even when the market flounders. We asked three Motley Fool contributors to identify dividend stocks they would buy hand over fist in 2023.
These stocks could rebound once investors start to feel more confident in the direction of the economy.
Many Americans who picked up investing during the pandemic are cooling on the hobby. Their loved ones say they won’t miss hearing about buzzy stocks and cryptocurrencies.
Medtronic is dividend aristocrat, with 45 straight years of payout increases. But shares in the company, a top maker of medical devices, haven’t been regal performers.
Tesla had a bad year 2022. On the stock market, it was a real nightmare. Tesla stock lost more than 65% of its value to end the year at $123.18. It had started 2022 at $352.26. This fall translates into more than $720 billion of market capitalization which have evaporated in one year, a real disaster for shareholders.
These are high-conviction stocks for the Oracle of Omaha but they're trading at knocked-down prices.
Cash flow remains king.
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has benefited from robust consumer demand and hopes that easing supply chain constraints will boost the tech giant's prospects. *Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of Dec.
