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Iff you're hesitant to make stock purchases at these levels, you're not alone.

NEW POST: Why Warren Buffett Is So Reluctant To Call Stocks A ‘Bubble’ https://t.co/HSqxmgC6ep pic.twitter.com/BPSOjaioMX

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) March 1, 2017

Believe it or not, autonomous vehicles have been many decades in the making.

Even in 1939, General Motors had an exhibit called “Futurama” at the New York World’s Fair that presented a model of the world 20 years in the future. Central to this display was a system of automated highways and vast suburbs, with a focus on how automation could reduce traffic congestion and lead to the free-flowing movement of people and goods.

Since then, many autonomous vehicle concepts have popped up at various times – but they have always fell short due to technical limitations. Only recently, due to advances in technology, have self-driving cars been able to overcome three primary engineering challenges: sensing the surrounding environment, processing information, and reacting to that environment.

Today, the future for autonomous vehicles is bright, and it is expected that there will be millions of self-driving cars on the road by 2035, creating a multi-billion dollar…

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a significant downtick in the number of IPOs issued by companies, but will 2017 break that trend? So far this year we have seen five companies go public on a U.S. stock exchange, and today we saw the first tech IPO of the year with Snap, Inc.

Snap, Inc. is technology and social media company known for its mobile app Snapchat, which allows users to share photos and videos with friends for moments to hours before disappearing. Founded in July 2011, what began as a tech start-up garnered 23 active investors and raised around $2.6 billion in venture capital backing.

Now that Snap, Inc. has gone public with an IPO priced at $17 per share, ahead of the expected $14-$16 a share range, it’s trickier to forecast its performance. Looking at some of Snap’s numbers, investment attractiveness it likely to be in the eye of the…

I found this interesting (the rise) however I have my own reservations because of the possible change in rates and inflation in 2017.  When inflation rises, interest rates also normally rise to maintain real rates within an appropriate range. PE ratios need to decline to reflect the increase in the earnings discount rate. Another way to look at it is that equities then face more competition for money from fixed income instruments. The cost of equities must therefore decline to keep or attract investors.  Then there is the Rule of 20 to consider.  Rule of 20 equals P/E + long term interest rates (average of 10 and 30 yr bond rates).  If at or below 20 minus…

Rules and regulations exist to let us know what behaviors we should expect from the people we do business with. Sometimes, good sense or social convention overtake these rules — and they don’t matter so much. Just about everyone wears seat-belts these days (we all know how much they improve our odds of survival in an accident); the ranks of underage smokers have plummeted (it’s no longer cool). Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, as they say, there’s no cramming it back in.

Such is the case with the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule. On Friday, President Trump asked the Labor Department to review the rule, which requires brokers working with retirement savers to put the interest of their clients ahead of their own. After years of work on it, the regulation was finalized last year by the Obama administration.

At first blush, this looks like a…

Facebook is getting into a new type of networking.

The social media giant said this week that it is rolling out new features in the US and Canada to let businesses post job openings, and prospective workers find and apply to them through Facebook. “This new experience will help businesses find qualified people where they’re already spending their time—on Facebook and on mobile,” the company said in a blog post.

The system Facebook debuted on Feb. 15 aims to minimize hassle for job-seekers and employers, while also giving both more reasons to use Facebook products. Businesses will be able to post jobs and track applications directly from a company…

A parade of up-and-coming musicians from Universal Music took the stage at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles Saturday in a pre-Grammy Awards performance for a room full of the executives who will make or break their careers.

Talent bookers from James Corden’s late-night show, marketing executives from top brands and executives from Spotify Ltd. and YouTube looked on. Sandwiched in between tables for Apple Inc., an imposing player in online music, and Pandora Media Inc., owner of the world’s largest online radio service, sat executives from a new act trying to break onto the scene: Facebook Inc. 

The world’s largest social network has redoubled its efforts to reach a broad accord with the industry, according to interviews…

Apple doesn’t have a solid TV strategy yet. But CEO Tim Cook thinks he can see the writing on the wall—the much loathed cable-TV bundle is on its deathbed.

Speaking on the earnings call after Apple posted a record first quarter, Cook said (emphasis added):

The way that we participate in the changes that are going on in the media industry that I fully expect to accelerate from the cable bundle beginning to break down is, one, we started the new Apple TV a year ago, and we’re pleased with how that platform has come along. We have more things planned for it but it’s come a long way in a year, and it gives us a clear platform to build off…

In a high-profile attack on growth-killing red tape, President Donald Trump this week ordered that any agency issuing a new rule find two to repeal.

He will likely discover that the only thing harder than getting something done in Washington is getting it undone.

Vast swaths of rules are untouchable because Congress ordered them to be written or the president himself demanded them. Finding rules to repeal is a tedious and time-consuming affair that usually yields tiny savings, mostly in reduced paperwork. Ultimately, rules are passed because they have benefits, from cleaner air to fewer terror attacks, that voters or presidents aren’t willing to forgo.

The first president to tackle the leviathan was Jimmy Carter who proposed a “regulatory budget” to limit the financial burden of new rules. Every…

Auto loans have shot past the $1 trillion mark in the United States and now make up a significant component of the overall consumer debt picture.

Subprime auto loans – which are riskier loans made to customers with poor credit – have helped to drive the market since the Great Recession. However, with auto loan delinquencies ticking up in recent months, investors have been searching for answers about the sector.

Are we in for some sort of subprime auto loan crisis, or is there another explanation for what is going on?

Subprime Auto Loans: a Shifting Market

The data and perspective in today’s infographic comes from consumer credit reporting agency Equifax, and it helps to explain what is potentially going on in today’s auto loans market.…

With Inauguration Day here, politics and government policy will continue to be a focus area for the markets. Over the past few months, President Trump has outlined a number of areas for potential changes in government policy.

During each corporate earnings season, it is not unusual for companies to comment on subjects that had an impact on their earnings and revenues for a given quarter or may have an impact on earnings and revenues for future quarters. While the majority of S&P 500 companies will report earnings results for Q4 2016 over the next few weeks, approximately 8% of the companies in the index (42 companies) have already reported earnings results for the fourth quarter (through Wednesday). Have companies in the S&P 500 been commenting on government policies that may change under the Trump administration during their earnings conference calls for the fourth quarter?

To answer this question, FactSet searched for the terms “Trump” and “administration”…

Marking a major milestone in home entertainment’s shift to digital formats, video streaming subscription revenues surpassed DVD / Blu-ray sales in the United States for the first time in 2016. While U.S. consumers spent $6.23 billion on subscriptions to services such as Netflix (up 23% from 2015), DVD and Blu-ray sales dropped 9.5 percent to $5.49 billion, according to the Digital Entertainment Group's year-end report.

Looking at the home entertainment market as a whole, it is clear that the future of video distribution is digital. While consumer spending on streaming subscriptions, video on demand and electronic sell-through increased in 2016, all physical formats, both sell-through and rental, suffered double-digit declines. Digital business models now account for 56% of home entertainment spending and could soon…

The impending IPO of Snap Inc., the parent of social media platform Snapchat, is shrouded in mystery, typical of the way business is run at the company. To maintain control of the company, its founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are expected to reportedly hold about 70 percent of the voting power following the IPO, with new investors getting no voting rights.

Ad Dollars On Upward Trajectory

Notwithstanding the limited visibility into the IPO, advertisers are warming up to Snapchat. Ad firm WPP's CEO Martin Sorrel told…

President-elect Donald Trump suggested he would be open to lifting sanctions on Russia and wasn’t committed to a longstanding agreement with China over Taiwan—two signs that he would use any available leverage to realign the U.S.’s relationship with its two biggest global strategic rivals.

In an hourlong interview, Mr. Trump said that, “at least for a period of time,” he would keep intact sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama administration in late December in response to Moscow’s alleged cyberattacks to influence November’s election. But he suggested he might do away with those penalties if Russia proved helpful in battling terrorists and reaching other goals important to the U.S.

“If you get along and if Russia is…

Every year the silicon computer chip shrinks in size by half and doubles in power, enabling our devices to become more mobile and accessible. But what happens when our chips can't get any smaller? George Tulevski researches the unseen and untapped world of nanomaterials. His current work: developing chemical processes to compel billions of carbon nanotubes to assemble themselves into the patterns needed to build circuits, much the same way natural organisms build intricate, diverse and elegant structures. Could they hold the secret to the next generation of computing?

Courtesy of a16z