Many major websites and services were unreachable for a period Friday afternoon due to issues at Cloudflares 1.1.1.1 DNS service. The outage seems to have started at about 2:15 Pacific time and lasted for about 25 minutes before connections began to be restored.

Early reports suggested Google DNS may also have been affected, but this turned out not to be the case Google Cloud confirmed it had no outages yesterday.

Update: Cloudflare at 2:46 says the issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented. CEO Matthew Prince explains that it all came down to a bad router in Atlanta:

The company also issued a statement via email emphasizing that this was not an attack on the system.

This afternoon we saw an outage across some parts of our network. It was not as a result of an attack, the company said in a statement. It appears a router on our global backbone announced bad routes and caused some portions of the network to not be available. We believe we have addressed the root cause and monitoring systems for stability now. We will share more shortlywe have a team writing an update as we speak.

Discord, Feedly, Politico, Shopify and League of Legends were all affected, giving an idea of the breadth of the issue. Not only were websites down but also some status pages meant to provide warnings and track outages. In at least one case, even the status page for the status page was down.

A DNS, or Domain Name System, is an integral part of the web, connecting domains (like TechCrunch.com) to their IP addresses (such as 152.195.50.33). If the one you or a site use goes down, it doesnt matter whether a websites own servers are working or not users cant even reach them in the first place. Internet providers usually have their own, but theyre often bad, so alternatives like Googles have existed for many years, and Cloudflare launched its service in late 2018.

Cloudflare wrote in a tweet and an update to its own status page (which thankfully remained available) that it was investigating issues with Cloudflare Resolver and our edge network in certain locations. Customers using Cloudflare services in certain regions are impacted as requests might fail and/or errors may be displayed.

Despite much speculation as to the cause of the outage, there is no evidence that it was caused by a denial-of-service attack or any other form of malicious hackery.

(This story has been updated to reflect new information, such as the Google and Cloudflare statements.)

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Cloudflare DNS goes down, taking a large piece of the internet with it - TechCrunch

Antitrust concerns with big tech companies are gaining global attention. Antitrust laws protect consumers by promoting fair competition and preventing businesses from taking over or manipulating a market. In the digital world, companies can use the vast amount of data shared and leverage its value for competition purposes, which then raises concerns about antitrust violations. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) have been looking into big techs influence on competition for quite some time, particularly narrowing in on search engines, social media, and retail markets. Unsurprisingly, how these companies are treating consumer privacy through data collection and distribution is a huge focus. The FTCs most recent probe reviewed acquisitions that several big tech giants made of smaller organizations in the last nine years.

Both U.S. agencies are reviewing the situation and seeking ways to change antitrust policies to regulate big tech more tightly. Potential changes could include increasing FTC regulations on mergers and price fixing. However, there is currently nothing concrete in the works and the DOJ seems to want to avoid any major renovation of antitrust laws. The only thing that is certain is that the FTC plans to issue new guidelines on digital platform enforcements and horizontal mergers.

Since other countries across the globe have started to speak out more forcefully about antitrust issues in the technology industry, many countries plan to rework their anti-competition laws and policies to account for big techs dominant effect on data and the larger market. Some have even formally proposed changes. The primary areas of concerns that regulators are seeking to address is that tech giants will (1) gain so much power that they control big data, (2) implement anti-competition algorithms, and (3) restrict competitors through unfair terms and/or mergers. Below are a few examples of global reactions to the impending antitrust crisis in the tech industry.

The EU has already used enforcement powers under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to police tech companies over consumer privacy issues. Now, the EU is taking swift action to combat competitive behavior. Germany has proposed amendments to the countrys antitrust laws that would more firmly regulate big tech and focus on any business practices that would give them control over a significant amount of data. For example, the new law could prohibit a company from blocking data access to a market competitor. They are awaiting approval and, if all goes well, hope to implement the amendments later this year. Other EU member countries are making similar moves.

Australia is creating a committee specifically designed to monitor and review advertising that big tech companies use that could be deemed anti-competitive behavior.

Additionally, China recently proposed changes to their Anti-Monopoly Law. These changes include increasing fines if companies act inappropriately during a merger or fail to implement binding anti-competitive agreements.

So, what does this all mean for big tech and antitrust issues? First, it is important to remember that matters like this can take time, even when it seems like a global crisis. History demonstrates that some countries move faster than others do when it comes to responding to regulatory issues and implementing new laws. For example, the U.S. has been contemplating a comprehensive federal privacy law for years and has yet to draft one. The DOJ has expressed this is still the way they wish to regulate big tech, so there will likely not be a big antitrust overhaul in the states like there will probably be in other countries. For now, the biggest change in the U.S. will be how the FTC investigates and levies penalties for violations.

Regardless, the global uproar about big tech and antitrust violations will have both short-term and long-term effects. Similar to recent privacy upsets, the biggest issue will be that there is no global uniformity. Even though everyone wants to address the same behavior, each countrys legal system operates differently. They will have different laws or policies that regulate the same conduct yet vary in execution. The differences in policymaking are what makes global data regulation so tricky and keeps big tech on their toes. Also, the fear that lack of uniformity will allow tech giants to continue to get away with anti-competitive actions remains present. One additional worry is that companies may pull business from nations where they think antitrust regulation is too restricting.

The rise in big tech has also placed international data privacy in the realm of antitrust enforcement. There will be more overlap between privacy and antitrust than ever before. Privacy concerns will continue to intensify as the presence and growth of tech giants threaten market dominance. It is crucial for organizations to utilize providers that have sufficient privacy safeguards in place because of increased privacy regulations and the threat of data breaches, companies can use this to their advantage. For example, tech companies can cite consumer privacy protection as a reason not to share data with a competitor and, as a result, continue to gain advantage in the market.

In the modern era, almost everyone needs access to data and the latest technology for both business and personal reasons. Because of this, individuals may continue to use certain services even if privacy is compromised. When a provider dominates the market, it has the ability to skimp on privacy protections and users will have no comparable competitors available. All of this makes policing big tech extremely difficult, as regulators have to balance privacy and competition issues. Deciding which issue should have more weight seems like an impossible task.

Global antitrust policy changes will also affect many other markets, including the legal industry. Access to data is necessary for eDiscovery compliance. Law departments must ensure they utilize providers who have a global presence. Provide must have key capabilities like the capacity to collect data anywhere in the world and distinguish between several languages. However, there may be some roadblocks to international data collection as policies change. If companies pull their business from certain countries due to tighter regulations, it will be more difficult to collect data from that provider if it originated in that country prior to the change. An action like this invokes data preservation concerns and can greatly disrupt the litigation process.

Additionally, litigation and enforcement actions about data privacy may increase. If a company is not allowed to shield data from competitors because it would face antitrust violations, consumer privacy may be at risk and could then increase privacy actions or trigger a decline in business. On the other side, if a company cites consumer privacy as a reason not to disclose data to a competitor and that data becomes subject to litigation, this would interfere with collection. All of this shows that regulators will need to work towards finding a balance between privacy and antitrust issues if they want to regulate big tech successfully.

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The Tension Between Competition and Tech Are Gaining Global Attention - JD Supra

The season for M&A may soon be upon us. The pandemic has squeezed many businesses and made funding harder to get. Weve already seen Postmates sell to Uber and Grubhub sell to Europes Just Eat Takeaway, accelerating a long-awaited consolidation of the food-delivery market. Meanwhile, EW Scripps, grappling with a downturn in advertising, sold a high-growth businesspodcasting firm Stitcherto raise badly needed cash.

Many more deals are possible. One of the most unlikely just a few weeks ago, ByteDance selling TikTok, now seems quite possible. Its also easy to imagine Jeffrey Katzenberg throwing in the towel and trying to sell Quibi, his short-video app designed for phones. The pandemic and the intensely crowded streaming market have marred Quibis launch. The challenge for this kind of high-profile consumer internet firm will be on the buyer side: The antitrust scrutiny already focused on big tech firms like Facebook, Amazon or Apple likely limits their ability to make big acquisitions.

Excerpt from:

The Information's Takeover Target List - The Information

Over the past two years, thousands of tech company employees have taken a stand: they do not want their labor and technical expertise to be used for projects with the military or law enforcement agencies.

Knowledge of such contracts, however, hasnt been easy for tech workers to come by.

On Wednesday, newly published research from the technology accountability nonprofit Tech Inquiry revealed that the Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, have secured thousands of deals with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, IBM, Hewlett Packard and even Facebook that have not been previously reported.

The report offers a new window into the relationship between tech companies and the U.S. government, as well as an important detail about why such contracts are often difficult to find.

Tech Inquiry's research was led by Jack Poulson, a former Google research scientist who quit the company in 2018 after months of internal campaigning to get clarity about plans to deploy a censored version of its search engine in China called Project Dragonfly. Poulson has publicly opposed collaborations between American technology companies and the U.S. and foreign governments that aid in efforts to track immigrants, dissenters, and bolster military activity.

Poulson analyzed more than 30 million government contracts signed or modified in the past five years. The Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies accounted for the largest share of those contracts, with tech companies accounting for a fraction of the total number of contracts.

He found that the majority of the deals with consumer-facing tech companies involved subcontracts, a relationship in which the government contracts with one company, which in turn contracts with another company to complete obligations it doesnt have the resources to fulfill.

Procurement contracts tend to be terse, Poulson said, masking the depth of the ties between tech companies and federal law enforcement agencies and the Department of Defense.

Often the high-level contract description between tech companies and the military looks very vanilla and mundane, Poulson said in an interview. But only when you look at the details of the contract, which you can only get through Freedom of Information [Act] requests, do you see the workings of how the customization from a tech company would actually be involved.

Out of all the companies that surfaced in Tech Inquirys research, Microsoft stood out with more than 5,000 subcontracts with the Department of Defense and various federal law enforcement agencies since 2016.

Amazon has agreed to more than 350 subcontracts with the military and federal law enforcement agencies, like ICE and the FBI, since 2016, and Google has more than 250, according to Tech Inquirys analysis.

The analysis also includes contracts from two agencies under the Department of Homeland Security that arent law-enforcement related, specifically U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Science and Technology Directorate.

Google Cloud spokesperson Ted Ladd said in a statement that the company is proud to work with many federal agencies across the U.S. government.

We remain committed to partnering with the government on projects that are consistent with our terms of service, acceptable use policies, and AI Principles, Ladd said.

Microsoft declined to comment for the article and Amazon did not respond to questions from NBC News.

Russell Goemaere, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense, said it works with a variety of companies to meet its needs.

"We partner with organizations across DoD from the services and components to combatant commands and defense agencies to rapidly prototype, deliver, and scale advanced commercial solutions that save lives, inspire new operational concepts, increase efficiency, and save taxpayer dollars," Goemaere said in an email.

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Silicon Valley is well-positioned to subcontract with more traditional military contractors that lack the cloud and data processing capabilities of companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Examining these contracts and subcontracts, the brief descriptions of services includes cloud storage, databases, app support, administrative tools and logistics analysis.

Cloud solutions and storage for large government clients, however, isnt the type of thing that can be bought off the shelf. Government cloud services are typically tailored to meet the security needs of the agency, according to Poulson, who worked as a professor of mathematics at Stanford University prior to his research role at Google.

Poulson's experience at Google helped inform his research.

In 2018, Google workers staged a protest of defense work over Project Maven, an initiative with the Department of Defense for Google to build artificial intelligence that tracks moving targets for drones. The project spurred thousands of Google employees to sign an internal petition. Some quit in protest.

None of Project Maven's contracts mentioned Google at all, Poulson said, and it was only through employee whistleblowing and investigative journalism that Googles involvement became known.

Googles work with Maven was orchestrated through a subcontract with ECS Federal, a U.S. defense contractor that provides technology services to arms of the Department of Defense and various federal agencies. But just because Google promised not to renew its contract doesn't mean Google products werent still used for the drone project.

Googles senior vice president for global affairs, Kent Walker, reportedly said in an email to employees last year that another technology company that he didnt name will instead use off-the-shelf Google Cloud Platform (basic compute service, rather than Cloud AI or other Cloud Services) to support some workloads for Maven.

Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute at New York University and a former Google employee who also organized protests at the company, said Maven showed how tech companies can work on defense projects while keeping the footprint of their involvement limited.

As we saw in the case of Maven, Dragonfly and other products, once people create a modular component in a tech company, theres really no way to track where that goes, Whittaker said.

Poulson had to navigate layers of obscurity in analyzing the contracts.

The majority of Microsoft's arrangements examined in the report arent directly made to Microsoft, but rather through a network of subcontractors that most people have never heard of or at least wouldnt think to include in a list of military tech providers, including well-known companies like Dell but also far more unrecognized companies such as CDW Corporation, Insight Enterprises and Minburn Technology Group.

Much of Amazon's subcontracting is through firms like Four Points Technology, JHC Technology and ECS Federal. Google also works with ECS federal as well as other lesser-known companies such as The Daston Corporation, DLT Solutions, Eyak Technology and Dnutch Associates. On April 16, ECS Federal announced a newly expanded partnership with Google Cloud to include integrations with Google Analytics and Google Maps. Later that month, ECS Federal received a new $83 million contract for prototyping artificial intelligence platforms for the Army.

Its not clear if Google is a subcontracted partner in the recent U.S. Army contract.

Later, in May, after hiring Josh Marcuse, the executive director of the Defense Department's Defense Innovation Board, as head of strategy and innovation at Google for the global public sector, Google Cloud announced a new partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit to to build a secure cloud management solution to detect, protect against, and respond to cyber threats worldwide.

Tech Inquiry's research comes as technology companies have ramped up efforts to win large military and law enforcement contracts, despite employee activism against the work.

Microsoft and Amazon are currently locked in a court battle over the future of the high profile $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, also known as JEDI, which was awarded to Microsoft in December 2019 to build cloud solutions for the Pentagon. The award was immediately contested by Amazon, claiming Microsoft was favored because of Trumps political grievances with Amazons owner, Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

Over the past two years, rank-and-file workers at Amazon have steadily protested the companys deals with federal and local law enforcement, specifically addressing its facial recognition contracts with police and the companys cloud services used by Palantir, which builds databases for ICE.

Amazon has been responsive to employee activism around climate change, but has resisted calls to stop working with ICE. In 2018, Bezos said the company had no plans to stop working with the Department of Defense.

Microsoft employees likewise petitioned the company to drop its $19.4 million contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the company boasted in a blogpost in 2018 that it was proud to support ICE and that its software allows ICE to utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification of immigrants.

Microsoft President Brad Smith has defended his company's defense work.

But the tension with tech workers remains, Whittaker said.

Its important to recognize that the marketing that happens inside of these companies, assuring workers that what theyre doing is good and that their surveillance program is used for disaster relief and not drone targeting, for instance, is much like the marketing targeted at the public, she said

As Big Techs relationship with American military and law enforcement operations continues to blossom, examining the history of the tech industry reveals that the ties are more endemic to Silicon Valley than todays crop of executives often acknowledge.

Silicon Valley has always been in the business of war, said Margart OMara, a historian of the technology industry and a professor at the University of Washington. And the specific process of contracting and subcontracting with the military is familiar in the Valley too, dating back to the 1950s and 60s.

Lockheed Martin, formerly Lockheed, which has long been among the largest military contractors in the country, was the biggest employer in Silicon Valley until the 1980s, OMara said.

Once personal computers became a consumer product, a new cohort of Silicon Valley innovators sought to distance themselves from the military industrial complex, she said.

One of the main reasons tech became so adamant about thinking differently and emphasizing how theyre a new style of enterprise, is because tech was so closely intertwined with the military. This is also how consumer-facing companies recruit and retain highly-skilled employees who dont want to work for the military, OMara said.

But the defense business clearly never went away.

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Thousands of contracts highlight quiet ties between Big Tech and U.S. military - NBC News

FAANG stocks displayed at the Nasdaq.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Investors and traders have historically turned to less-risky assets such as U.S. Treasurys to weather market volatility and uncertainty. During the coronavirus pandemic, however, they have turned to unlikely place: tech and software stocks.

Shares of Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, and Amazon are all trading at, or near record highs. All four of these stocks are up at least 29% for 2020 and have contributed to the Nasdaq Composite's massive outperformance over the S&P 500 this year. The Nasdaq has surged 17% this year while the S&P 500 remains down over 2% in that time period.

Wall Street flocked into these names because they believe their business models can not only weather this downturn, but thrive in it. This has led major tech and software stocks to seemingly behave like a safe haven Treasury bond, a dynamic that was apparent throughout this week.

"Clearly, the Covid cases going up around the country has gotten people into those software and internet plays," said Christian Fromhertz, CEO of Tribeca Trade Group. "These stocks are clearly the haves and it will stay that way until something changes."

The U.S. reported record numbers this week in daily coronavirus increases. On Thursday, more than 63,000 new coronavirus cases were confirmed in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University. The country's seven-day average of cases also jumped to more than 53,000 this week.

At the state level, Florida's coronavirus-related hospitalizations hit an all-time high. Nevada rolled back a reopening plan for bars in the state.

This grim data put stocks that would benefit from the economy reopening under pressure this week. American Airlines fell more than 8% week to date and United slid nearly 10%. Gap shares dropped more than 3% in that time period.

Big Tech once considered one of the riskiest groups in the stock market shined this week. Microsoft climbed about 3% in that time period while Netflix and Amazon popped more than 10% to record levels. Apple also hit an all-time high, jumping about 5% for the week.

These stocks rose alongside the U.S. 10-year Treasury note. The 10-year yield started the week trading around 0.7%, but later fell to trade around 0.6% (yields move inversely to prices).

Investors argue that what makes these companies so attractive during this pandemic is their steady cash flows and recurring revenues at a time when clarity around the corporate earnings landscape is minimal.

"What these companies have going for them is that whole idea of a strong balance sheet and recurring revenue," said Rebecca Felton, senior portfolio manager at Riverfront. "Recurring revenues, in this type of environment where cyclicals might fade out a bit, is really important."

"It feels right to stick with quality and growth that you think you can count on," Felton said.

Microsoft, Netflix and Amazon all have subscription-based services driving recurring revenue on a monthly or annual basis.

When the Fed forces interest rates to zero, they're gonna push investors on the risk curve to get income and growth ... If I'm going to be forced into equities, which is what the Fed's clearly doing, I'm going to own the equities that I feel the best about and large-cap tech has become a safe-haven play.

David Spika

president of GuideStone Capital Management

Last quarter, Microsoft's Office 365 users grew to more than 39 million from 37.2 million in the previous three-month period. Amazon, meanwhile, has more than 150 million paying Prime users. There are more than 180 million paying Netflix subscribers around the world.

Something else making some of these stocks attractive are high dividend yields relative to U.S. Treasurys.

According to FactSet, Apple and Microsoft currently yield 0.86% per share and 0.96%, respectively. The 10-year Treasury note, meanwhile, has a yield of around 0.6%.

To be sure, stocks are inherently riskier assets than Treasurys as they don't have the backing of the U.S. government. Treasurys also give investors a consistent interest payment until they reach maturity, whereas stock dividends are subject to cuts or suspensions at any moment.

Tech stocks also face mounting regulation risk, which could put them under pressure.Chamath Palihapitiya,founder and CEO of investment firm Social Capital, thinks this along with the possibility of higher taxes and new product experiences make for a bearish case in Facebook and Google-parent Alphabet.

"Big Tech's long term success is no longer about better products," Palihapitiya said in a Friday tweet. "They are incumbents and their success is now a multi-variate/multi-dimensional problem of competition, anti-trust, tax and regulatory multiplied by EVERY city, state, country and jurisdiction in which the operate."

Still,David Spika, president of GuideStone Capital Management, thinks using Big Tech as a safe-haven is prudent given how easy U.S. monetary policy is right now.

The Federal Reserve slashed rates to zero in March as part of an effort to support the economy during the pandemic. The U.S. central bank has also embarked on unprecedented monetary stimulus programs, including buying corporate debt.

"When the Fed forces interest rates to zero, they're gonna push investors on the risk curve to get income and growth," said Spika. "If I'm going to be forced into equities, which is what the Fed's clearly doing, I'm going to own the equities that I feel the best about and large-cap tech has become a safe-haven play."

Time will tell how long this will last and when Big Tech equities return to acting like stocks with individual risks.

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Big Tech went from growth stocks to Wall Street's Treasury bond substitute during the coronavirus - CNBC

A technology communitys resources and homegrown talent define its identity, but to reach a bigger stage it will ultimately need to attract others to its cause.

So, in Pittsburgh, it was viewed as a turning point when Google came to the city. Opening an office within Carnegie Mellon University in 2006 that was helmed by a professor it hired from the institution, the big tech company grew the office to 150 employees that led it to open a new office in Bakery Square in 2011.

It was a landmark of economic transformation, anchoring the redevelopment of a former Nabisco factory that now also housesUniversity of Pittsburghs Swanson School of Engineering. And UPMC Enterprises,the universitys venture arm that is committing $1 billion to new life sciences investments, is there, too.

Google was committed because they saw the kind of talent that was coming out of CMU, said Audrey Russo, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Tech Council. It set up a playbook: You get as close as you can to people doing the research and graduating from the best schools. Its something that turned the corner for the region.

The move was also the beginning of a wave of tech companies putting down roots in the city. Facebook moved a team focused on virtual reality, and just opened new offices in the Strip District. In the same area, Uber launched its Advanced Technologies Group in 2015, adding a prominent name to the list of five companies testing self-driving cars on the citys streets in the ensuing years. In fact, the Big 5 are all there: Apple andMicrosoft and Amazon, too, each having grown since planting a flag. Self-driving startup Argo AI brought its own big players to town in a way, as well, recently landing $7 billion from automakers Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen. The company is planning to take more space in the Strip District with an additional 65,000 square feet.

Autonomous vehicle company Aptiv also rolled in, announcing recently that it would move its offices to Hazelwood Green, a development on a former steel mill site along the along the Monongahela River.

It hasnt slowed down even with the COVID-19 pandemic closing offices. Zoom, which has become a household name for videoconferencing in a time of remote work, announced in May that it it will set up a research and development center in Pittsburgh, with plans to split 500 employees between here and Phoenix. In this case, there doesnt even need to be a splashy office opening: The company planned to begin recruiting software engineers who will initially work from home until at least fall of 2020.

As July arrived, software company Mindera said it would expand in the U.S. with a second office in Pittsburgh, with plans to add to an employee base of 500 people in locations like San Diego as well as the U.K., Portugal and India. Itll be based in the Pittsburgh Innovation District, a neighborhood-level tech hub in Oakland where companies are moving in around the knowledge centers of CMU and Pitt.

With each of these moves, talent has been a central part of the equation. While HQs remain elsewhere, these Pittsburgh offices are heavily engineering offices, drawing from a unique cluster of talent thats centered around CMUs expertise in artificial intelligence and robotics. It even showed up in Zooms press release:

With our visionary faculty and exceptionally talented students, Carnegie Mellon is catalyzing revolutionary work to accelerate digital transformation across markets and industries, and we look forward to partnering with Zoom to enhance their remarkable momentum in defining the future of virtual interactions, said CMU President Farnam Jahanian.

And again in Mindera: Mary Lockwood, managing director for the U.S., cited the level of technical talent in the city as well as its welcoming environment and emphasis on partnership as the reasons the company is expanding here.

And again as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would choose Pittsburgh as one of the markets to expand on a wave of remote work hires.

As ambitious projects like Bakery Square and Hazelwood Green show, tech expansion is part of a wave of redevelopment taking place across the city. The tech offices, the self-driving cars and, yes, the kind of walkable, foodie-inclined environments that are attractive to people from all over, are multiplying through neighborhoods like Lawrenceville, Oakland and East End.

Even the terrain is fitting, as the compact, hilly, all-weather nature of the city makes it a good place to figure out if a robot can survive on real streets.

If you can get an autonomous vehicle to work here, it should pretty much be able to work anywhere, said Lou Camerlengo, who started custom design and dev shop fivestar in 1997 and serves corporate clients as well as community clients and economic development groups.

It can be tempting to read this change, coming decades after the city lost one-third of its population when the steel industry collapsed, as a recent phenomenon. After all, it brings together the post-Recession push toward cities and new economies.

Yet its worth remembering that the innovation ecosystem didnt just arrive with Google. After all, the company sought out CMU for its expertise in AI that took decades to develop. The groundwork for Carnegie Mellon and Pitts expertise and resulting talent pool in artificial intelligence and robotics dates back to the 1950s, when then-professor Herbert Simon and Allen Newell are credited with pioneering the field. Even Zoom can trace its legacy to CMU, as the first video call took place 50 years before the company launched.

When it comes to robots, the now-prevalent Roboburgh nickname dates to a 1999 Wall Street Journal article. By turn, the research itself can be traced at least to 1979, when CMUs Robotics Institute was launched. It gained national attention when William Red Whittaker,who is now CTO of moonbound autonomy company Astrobotic,led development of robots to inspect the accident site at Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant near Harrisburg.

Now the Pittsburgh Robotics Network has more than 50 companies. Many of the robotics researchers are developing technology more quietly than commercial startups otherwise would in fact, theyre not seeking any attention. Theyve got funding via government contracts, and are racing to develop technology that will have generational impact.

We call them the unsung heroes of Pittsburgh tech, said Jennifer Apicella, president and CEO of Build412 Tech, which connects technology professionals in Pittsburgh through events and membership. Not only are they providing amazing jobs but amazing experience for our technology professional population doing cutting-edge technological development. Who doesnt want to be a part of that?

Through its schools of medicine and engineering school, the University of Pittsburgh leads a research sector thats one of the top recipients of NIH grant funding to advance discoveries at centers like the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

Like many cities, Pittsburgh also has a base of startup activity, as a group of accelerators and incubators like Alphalab, Idea Foundryand Ascender seek to provide resources that can help new businesses grow. Its in line with the growth of entrepreneurship that came on the heels of the Great Recession in many cities, but didnt start in 2008. Heres a few examples of companies that were founded in Pittsburgh and grew big workforces:

Still, the sector of the economy that include organizations with a specific tech focus doesnt tell the full story of local employment in technology as a whole. For one, the tech growth isnt driving the same employment numbers as the steel industry once did, said Christopher Briem, a regional economist at Pitts Center for Social and Urban Research. Theres been signs of growth in education and healthcare, as well as financial services. And with proximity to the Marcellus Shale, hydraulic fracturing continues to drive big job gains.

Its a much more difficult challenge for a region to maintain competitiveness in any one industry than it was for steel because there was coal in the ground that made it an optimal place to make steel for over a century, he said.

Yet the citys place as an industrial center continues to have a long reach, and some of those big firms that helped build the citys blue collar reputation are also the ones driving innovation. PPG, Westinghouse Nuclear, Alcoa, ANSYS, UPMC and Highmarkhave long been in the region. Its not necessarily the sexiest, but is firmly rooted in an ethos of creating technology that can help advance industries and infrastructure.

Its not just doing things for the pure science of it, said Kevin Stolarick, the Official Statistician of the Creative Class who got his Ph.D. at CMU and long called the city home before moving to Toronto. Its doing things because theres a problem that we need to solve.

Those problems take time to work out, and they dont always draw the big praise. But theyve created a base of jobs and a foundation to keep pushing technology forward.

I always love the the 15 years it takes to be an overnight success, Stolarick said. Thats a large part of this.

At the same time, some of the largest employers with headquarters in Pittsburgh are also now the largest tech employers. Take PNC. The company doubled in size following the acquisition of Cleveland-based National City Corp. in the wake of the 2008 recession. Now it is positioning itself as a tech company that delivers financial services, rather than the other way around.

And its true of some of the biggest companies across the region: BNY Mellon, Dicks Sporting Goods, Dollar Bank, Federated, Covestro, Lanxess. These jobs often come with stable benefits and the chance to get the experience that comes from working at a large company.

For one, there are places to go from a smaller firm.

When our developers leave here its not uncommon for them to go to a corporate setting, Camerlengo said of fivestar. They are a big actor because everyone really needs that tech talent.

Julia Poepping started her path in Pittsburghs tech industry working in information systems at PPG in the 1980s. It was reflective of that steady, process-driven employment that the city has always been known for.

One of the things that I found when I worked at a large, 120-year-old manufacturing company is they had really good processes. For a long time they were run by engineers, and it was a great place to really learn how to run a business and how to do things responsibly, she said.

All you have to do is ask and somebody is going to figure out how to help you, said Poepping, who chairs RedChairPGH, a nonprofit for gender balance in tech.

The hiring that has taken place on all of these levels has created a dynamic that sees Pittsburgh seeking to fill technology jobs.

Universities like CMU, Pitt and Duquesne are producing talent, yet at some level it becomes a matter of numbers supply and demand. The boom in jobs is creating more openings than an annual graduating computer science program can fill. Justin Driscoll, Pittsburgh campus director for coding bootcamp Tech Elevator, has seen lots of change over a couple of decades in the tech ecosystem. For one, he points to the growth of the neighborhoods where tech companies are based as a destination.

Theres also been a change in jobs. He cited data that shows more than 7,000 tech roles were posted on BurningGlass in 2018. That same year, local computer science schools graduated 650, students, he said. For its part, Tech Elevator is training about 150 new developers a year who werent previously technologists. In an economy where software developers have options from working on a banks customer experience to building robots, theres a need for people to grow the workforce.

The transferability of these skills is really whats fueling this economy and more and more need in the region, Driscoll said.

Along with the proximity to talent, they are attracted by affordability and general quality of life that comes from living in a city of 300,000 people where dollars go further. The restaurant scene is getting national accolades. Plus, the museums, libraries and parks that still bear the names of the giants of industry offer plenty to do.

And, again, theres the ethos that indicates one can get involved: Come to Pittsburgh if you want to build something, Russo said.

Though not all grads will stay, the base of companies creates a place for folks who are graduating to find a job, and a base of talent to attract folks who might be seeking out a new city, or left town and want to return in another stage of life. Build412 Techs Apicella has been taking note of this boomeranging effect, and sees it as a source of attracting talent.

They left for a few years and went to go try something new, and now they come back and bring that experience with them, she said.

Yet its not only those who come from outside that will shape the citys future. A big economic shift means that technology as a profession will shape the city as a whole. That means folks who already live in town have a place, too. Similarly, the path is still being shaped.

It will mean specific roles for people at different levels. Tech Elevator offers training that prepares junior developers. Its a pathway into a well-paying tech job that has good benefits, without requiring a college degree, which presents a new kind of opportunity. But at the same time, its not necessarily the kind of talent thats often sought at a startup. There still needs to be time to learn from more advanced folks, which a larger team can offer.

Our new developers can learn from them and then hopefully one day work at Duolingo, Driscoll said.

Its easy to think in shorthand about tech. Theres Silicon Valley power players and theres CMU robots. Theyre important and will remain so, but with economic change thats bringing outsize growth, its fast becoming apparent that lots of different kinds of organizations will have a role. And that will require both looking outside, and within.

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Pittsburgh Big tech companies are flocking to Pittsburgh. The foundation was laid over decades - Technical.ly Pittsburgh - Technical.ly

Major stock market indices have recovered most of their losses for the year. In some regards, its not surprising, considering the incredible accommodative stance from global Central bankers.

Beneath the surface of the stock market indices lies a somewhat concerning trend of five companies: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (Google) and Facebook, which represent almost 20% of the S&P 500.

Such a large concentration of a few companies pushing the stock market higher has usually led to tears. Let me explain, why.

The S&P 500 index is capitalization-weighted by its constituents. As one company appreciates, their weighting in the index then rises. Microsoft has the largest capitalization of any company, at $1.6 trillion. That is, all of their 7.6 billion outstanding shares, multiplied by the current share price of $211, is worth $1.6 trillion. This represents 6% of the entire index. If Microsoft appreciates 1% in a single day, the contribution to the total index return is 0.06%. However, if McDonalds, which represents only 0.5% of the index with a total market cap of $136 billion, rises 1%, its contribution to the return is 0.005%, or less than one-tenth that of Microsoft.

As illustrated in the example above, if five companies represent almost 20% of the broad stock market, investors need to own these companies in similar weightings if they hope to "keep up" with the market.

Growth investors may need to be even more careful.

The same five companies in the S&P 500 Growth ETF represent over 37% of the fund! Investors are usually very cautious about having 5% of their portfolio in a single stock. In many of the growth indices, Microsoft represents 10%, Apple 9.7%, and Amazon 8%!

The party may end soon.

For several years, technology giants have been probed by regulatory bodies in the U.S. and abroad. Lately, the pressure seems to be increasing.

There are always two sides to the story, however, and it is easy to articulate why these companies should be in your portfolio. But also, be mindful of industry and stock concentration and look to reduce outsized positions.

Beese Fulmer Private Wealth Management was founded in 1980 and is one of Stark Countys oldest and largest investment management firms. The company serves high-net-worth individuals, families, and non-profits, and has been ranked as one of the largest money managers in Northeast Ohio.

Originally posted here:

Ask the Rational Investor: Is big tech too large? - Massillon Independent

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Salesforce and Spotify are among the tech companies joining the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in asking a federal judge to block the White Houses July 6 directive to bar international students from staying in the country if their colleges move largely online in the fall due to pandemic lockdowns.(Axios)

Talking point: The U.S. has so far allowed international students to stay on visa throughout the pandemic by taking more online courses than usually permitted. The new rule revokes this allowancea decision tech companies say does not consider the loss of the tens of billions of dollars that international students contribute to U.S. GDP each year, according to a court filing. International students in the U.S. contributed nearly US$41 billion to the economy in the 20182019 academic year, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators. In an amicus brief filed Monday, the companies sided with Harvard and MIT, which filed a lawsuit last week, and said they would be harmed substantially if the students were removed. Dropbox wouldnt exist without immigrants, a spokesperson for the company, which is part of the brief, told Protocol. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia are also suing the government on the issue. A federal judge is expected to rule by Wednesday.

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Big Tech joins fight against Trump's restrictions on international students - The Logic

After a weeklong break from television, CNBC's Jim Cramer returned to his evening investment education show on Monday to give a preview of the earnings reports to come.

The "Mad Money" host warned that Wall Street is in a tough spot, with the big banks set to report results starting Tuesday.

"If the banks can rally, then maybe we've gone 'through the looking glass,'" he said. "If the banks get hammered, things could get ugly."

The comments came after the S&P 500 which collapsed alongside the other major indexes earlier this year as the coronavirus outbreak took hold around the globe managed to trade in positive territory during the trading session. But that proved to be ephemeral as the broad index ended up sliding nearly 1% at the close.

After making big gains early on, the Dow Jones finished up about 10 points, or 0.04%, at 26,085.80, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.13% to 10,390.84 as a rally in big tech stocks lost its luster later in the day.

The market rose as traders ignored a continued surge in new positive Covid-19 diagnoses across the country. Additionally, Pfizer and BioNTech shares surged after their Covid-19 vaccine candidates received "fast track" recognition from the Food and Drug Administration.

"This is the week when we find out if the real world is going to intrude on the stock market world, and that's what happened today, but tomorrow's the big test," Cramer said.

He went on to present what's circled on his calendar this earnings week. All projections are based on Factset estimates:

JPMorgan Chase

"I don't know if JPMorgan's results will be good enough to offset those of Wells Fargo," Cramer said. "I think we'll hear a lot about bad loans from both of them, though JPMorgan has the balance sheet and diversification to handle the pain."

Wells Fargo

"They've got a ton of personal loans and oil loans," he said. "No wonder they had to cut the dividend, but it is run by Charlie Scharf. He's going to figure it out."

Citigroup

"Now that Citi's had to suspend its incredible buyback, you've lost the best reason for owning this darned stock," he said. "It's cheap, but it could easily stay cheap."

Delta Air Lines

"The Robinhood crowd, they love the airlines, even as passengers seem to hate them. Will Delta need more help from the government?" he said. "If they say no ... you might want to buy American Airlines, which needs the most help, but only for a trade, please."

Goldman Sachs

"I think they're going to blow away the numbers," Cramer said. "This market's a trader's paradise, which should allow an investment bank like Goldman to put up a remarkable quarter from all that great firepower they've got on the trading desk."

UnitedHealth

"This pandemic's been fabulous for the managed care space because all sorts of expensive surgeries keep being postponed," he said. "That could lead to a huge quarter, but the conference call spells out the future" and the future could be "murky."

Bank of America

"They almost always report excellent numbers driven by their top-notch digitization strategy, but it never seems to matter," Cramer said. "The stock hasn't been able to rise above the rest of the group. No reason this time should be different."

Morgan Stanley

"Morgan Stanley can talk about their merger with E-trade," he said. "I think it works for the same reasons Goldman does almost no collateralized loan exposure."

Johnson & Johnson

"They have a terrific pipeline, and they're super-focused on Covid," he said. "I bet they have a great quarter, but it might not matter, because this stock ran up hard today."

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

"Perhaps the most important report of the week is Taiwan Semiconductor, and that's because it has a huge amount of business with Apple," he said.

Domino's Pizza

"I think they tell a good story, as contactless delivery is the safest way to eat," he said.

Netflix

"I think of Netflix as a worldwide entertainment service that's essential in the age of Covid-19. However, management tends to be pretty self-effacing," he said. "I would like Netflix into weakness."

First Horizon

"This is a great regional bank, it is a top-notch franchise, it's in one of the strongest areas ... and it has branches all over the South," Cramer said. "It's amazingly well-run, and yet the stock sells for just seven times earnings and it sports a massive 6% yield."

Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares of JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Apple and Johnson & Johnson.

Disclaimer

Questions for Cramer?Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBC

Want to take a deep dive into Cramer's world? Hit him up!Mad Money Twitter - Jim Cramer Twitter - Facebook - Instagram

Questions, comments, suggestions for the "Mad Money" website? madcap@cnbc.com

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Cramer's earnings watch: 'If the banks get hammered, things could get ugly' - CNBC

By KIRSTYN BRENDLEN

As New York experienced the worst of the COVID-19 crisis, one image that became all too familiar on the news and social media was that of a health care professional struggling to sanitize and reuse masks, scrubs, and gowns otherwise would have been used only once as supplies of personal protective equipment ran low. With no end and no help in sight, health care professionals started to feel desperate.

That included first responders at Riverdale Hatzalah, a volunteer Jewish ambulance service. Except the local services co-head coordinator Jeffery Moerdler found help within his own family. Even if it was across state lines.

In northern New Jersey, Jeffs nephew Bernie Moerdler was reading the news just like everybody else. One thing set him apart, though. Moerdler, at 19, already has worked with Microsoft and, at the beginning of the pandemic, had to fly home from Israel, where he was studying at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, and working on artificial intelligence programming he hoped would someday detect cancer.

Once home, Moerdler knew hed want to help so he found a pattern for 3-D printing reusable plastic face shields which are typically used alongside masks to protect health care workers from the coughing and sneezing of sick (and contagious) patients.

I had a bar mitzvah, and I actually asked my parents for a 3-D printer, Moerdler said. I heard about it as an emerging technology, and I thought, Wow, Id really like to see what thats all about.

That first printer was one of the first commercially available, he said, and wasnt particularly functional. Over the years, he moved through two more models, and was excited to see the technology get better.

When I came back, I said to myself, Theres nobody doing this, really, in New Jersey, he said. I have the scale, and the printers, and the support and the connections, and I could probably do it pretty easily.

Moerdler mentioned the idea to his friend, Daniel Mezhiborsky, and the project took on a life of its own.

The company that released the design for the shields was the same one who sold Moerdler his printer, and he had worked with them previously testing products.

Right now, Fair Lawn Face Shields the name of Moerdlers project can print around 22 shields per day on five 3-D printers and a laser cutter, which they use to cut down and shape large sheets of plastic into the curved final product.

We have these large pieces of plastic which we then cut down, we cut them down to about the size of a piece of a paper, Moerdler said. And then use the laser cutter to cut that down to the actual shape of the shield. Then the other items including our elastic, which we use in the shields and a chin piece, which is a support piece, which is also 3-D printed, go into the clean room.

Mezhiborsky and Moerdler started crowdfunding online to raise money to keep the project going, he said, raising just shy of $4,000 by the end of June.

The pieces are washed in a bleach solution for two minutes, left to dry, and then sealed into plastic bags and shipped off, Moerdler said, trying to keep everything as clean as possible for the emergency responders and hospitals receiving them.

Jeffrey Moerdler was one of the first people Bernie reached out to about the shields, he said, knowing that he and the Hatzalah crew were responding to calls every day.

I said to him, like, Im thinking of doing this, would you guys need any? Bernie Moerdler said. He jumped on it, once we got started, he was put in the system for orders.

Theyve also delivered to St. Barnabas hospital in Belmont, although the bulk of their business has been to fire departments, nurses and EMS departments in New Jersey.

New York and New Jersey are slowly beginning to reopen as COVID cases and hospitalizations continue to drop, although spikes across the country are keeping everyone on their toes for the oft-discussed second wave of the virus.

To that end, Moerdler said, production of the shields has slowed down somewhat.

We arent stopping anything, so were just going to keep building as much as we can, as long as the GoFundMe continues and things like that, he said. Well just keep on producing as much as we can.

If there is a second wave after production indeed stops, theyll be prepared to boot the operation up again and start churning out shields. Theyre not disposable, Moerdler said, but can be sanitized and reused, which might reduce some of the need for new equipment in the face of future infections.

We want to just help out as many people as possible, Moerdler said. I guess the most important thing is that if anyone knows anyone whether it be a nursing home or a first responders group or anything thats in need, to really just send them to fill out that form.

That form, by the way, can be found at BMoerdler.com/faceshields.

See the rest here:

Big tech, even bigger heart, provides shields to Hatzalah - The Riverdale Press

But these companies still possess massive and almost unregulated power. They control vast stores of sensitive data about billions of people, and can use it however they wish. Theyre capable of smothering or swallowing competitors, censoring unwelcome viewpoints perhaps even turning the tide of an election.

And so, despite all of the good these companies have done, few people trust them. According to a June survey from Brunswick Group, nearly 80 percent of US consumers say technology companies have done a fine job of responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Yet 77 percent favor greater government regulation of Big Tech.

And here it comes.

Theres something to be said for an antitrust crackdown. But other proposed changes could have ugly consequences. For instance, there is one plan that could undermine the security of our private data in the name of law and order. Another would fight the tech companies perceived left-wing bias by gutting the 1996 law that protects free online speech for everybody.

The Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, and a horde of state attorneys general are conducting multiple antitrust investigations targeting Google and Facebook. A lawsuit might be filed against Google this summer, according to The New York Times. Dozens of states, including Massachusetts, have launched their own joint investigation of Googles business practices. Apple is coming under Justice Department scrutiny for the way it runs its lucrative App Store, and some US states are investigating Amazon for its treatment of independent retailers that sell through Amazons online marketplace.

And thats just in the United States. The European Unions antitrust authorities are expected to sue Amazon for anti-competitive practices in the coming months. The EU has also launched an investigation into the way Apple runs its App Store.

But crafting effective remedies wont be easy. You cant break up a Google or a Facebook; their sheer size is what makes them so useful. You could force them to spin off their giant auxiliaries, such as Googles YouTube business or Facebooks WhatsApp mesaging service, but then youve just got four tech giants instead of two.

As for Amazon and Apple, maybe they do abuse their market power. But neither company is a true monopoly. Apple holds about 45 percent of the US smartphone market, while Amazon gets just 5.9 percent of all US retail dollars (as of last year). So by traditional antitrust standards, they may be untouchable.

Indeed, some in Congress think the United States will need new laws specifically designed to rein in the technology companies. And last week, the EU said its starting to draft new regulations. But enacting laws wont happen overnight. And even if the companies are sued under existing law, antitrust suits rarely end quickly. The Microsoft case from the early 2000s, for instance, scraped along for five years. So any benefit for consumers is a long way off.

Antitrust action isnt Big Techs only worry. A lot of powerful people want to set tougher limits on what can be said online. Theres an aggressive private-sector campaign to force social media companies to clamp down on false information and hateful speech. Hundreds of companies, including giants like Coca-Cola, Ford, and Honda, have stopped buying ads on various social media outlets, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

But attempts to limit speech are always scarier when governments doing it.

Consider the EARN IT Act, a bill supported by leading members of both parties. In a bid to target the sexual exploitation of children, the bill would modify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Thats a 1996 law which says Internet companies such as Facebook arent legally liable for the stuff posted by their users. If someone posts something libelous on Facebook, the victim can sue the person who posted it, but not Facebook.

Because of this law, Internet companies can maximize free speech and police their forums with a light touch. But under EARN IT, tech companies could be prosecuted if their systems are used by child sex traffickers. Thats surely a worthy goal. But in its present form, EARN IT could let each state set its own standards for deciding whether a social media company can be sued or prosecuted, turning compliance into a 50-state labyrinth of confusion.

An early version of EARN IT was much worse. It could have forced Internet companies to build back doors into the encryption software that protects user privacy. This would make it easier for police to find evidence of sex trafficking, but would also leave a way in for hackers to steal our personal data. Happily, the Senate abandoned this awful idea. But the revised EARN IT could enable state governments to make similar demands. In effect, the law could impose encryption back doors through the back door.

In another threat to online liberty, GOP Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri wants to revise Section 230 to keep social media companies from discriminating against conservative political viewpoints. His rewrite of the law would let people sue companies for up to $5,000 in damages if they feel their postings were unfairly deleted.

Filing lawsuits against Twitter and Facebook would become a cottage industry under such a law. Some people might even post outrageous messages just so they could sue when theyre deleted. And social media companies might respond by putting stricter limits on all online speech left, right, or center.

Incredible as it may seem, Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota want to address concerns over bias with a dose of common sense. Their PACT Act would simply require major social networks to explain why they delete a users messages. Companies would have to publish clear, specific guidelines on what users can and cant post. Users whose posts are deleted would have to be notified within 14 days and would have a right to appeal. And major social media companies would have to publish a quarterly report on what theyre blocking, and why.

The PACT Act is small-ball reform. At best, it might resolve claims of social media bias. But the unaccountable market power of the technology titans remains, as does our distrust. And not even Big Techs brilliant response to a global pandemic will get them off the hook.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeTechLab.

Read the original:

Big Tech saved the day. We still dont trust them. - BetaBoston

By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com The Nasdaq closed at a record high for the second straight day Thursday as investors continued to seek refuge in megacap tech stocks at a time when the spread of the coronavirus threatens a V shape recovery.

The S&P 500 lost 0.52%, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.63% to close at record hghs, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.38%.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), theso-called Fab 5, which collectively make up about 40% of the Nasdaq, ended higher to help keep broader market losses in check.

Total cases rose to about 3.05 million from 2.98 million yesterday, with the death toll rising to deaths 991 from 932, according to the Center for Disease Control.

As the outbreak continues to hit key hotspots including Texas, Florida and California, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases saidstates should opt to pause reopening measures rather than revert to a complete shut down.

"Rather than think in terms of reverting back down to a complete shutdown, I would think we need to get the states pausing in their opening process," Fauci said.

But that did little quash investor jitters of looming shutdowns that threatened to undo the economic progress seen recently.

The U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday that initial jobless claims decreased by about 100,000 to 1.31 million in the week ended July 3, beating forecasts for a decline to 1.3 million.

Continuing claims fell 698,000 to 18.06 million, extending a trend of downside momentum that is "encouraging," Jefferies (NYSE:JEF) said. "Continuing claims are down 2.5 million over the past 4 weeks."

Energy led the selloff, paced by a decline oil prices as the pause of reopening measures in pockets of the U.S. offset signs of a recovery in gasoline demand seen a day earlier.

Financials were not far behind, falling 2% just days ahead of quarterly results from banks. The second-quarter earnings reports for a slew of Wall Street banks are likely to underscore a rough quarter amid rising loan loss provisions and weaker profit from lending activity weighed down by near-zero interest rates.

Elsewhere, AMC Networks (NASDAQ:AMCX)rallied as rumors swirled the company had hired Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) to explore a sale.

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Nasdaq At Record as Investors Bet on Big Tech to Weather Virus Storm; Dow Falls - Yahoo Finance

Information continues to grow and information continues to spread throughout the world. The world thrives on information.

But how is the growth and spread of information going to play out in the future? Especially with the challenges coming from China, specifically in the area of Artificial Intelligence?

To meet this challenge, the United States is exploring how it can possibly generate the resources to meet the requirements of this new world that is before us.

One answer is the National Research Cloud, an initiative that has just received bipartisan support in both houses of the United States Congress.

A National Research Cloud

Last month, Reps. Anna G. Eshoo, (D-CA), Anthony Gonzales (R-OH), and Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) introduced the National AI Research Resource Task Force Act; Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

The Act would create a task force of leaders from the worlds of government science leaders, academics and industry representatives to build a plan for the operation and funding of this national research cloud.

Steve Lohr writes in the New York Times,

The purpose of this organization is to give academic scientists access to the cloud data centers of the tech giants and to public data sets for research.

Mr. Lohr continues,

The cost and need for vast computing resources are putting some cutting-edge AI research beyond the reach of academics.

and,

Only the tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft can spend billions a year on data centers that are often the size of a football field, housing rack upon rack with hundreds of thousands of computers.

Because of this situation, computer scientists have moved to the big tech companies from the university world, and not just because of bigger pay. This has raised a concern. Academic research, which is very often the source of future breakthroughs, is losing out.

The objective of the plan would be for the academics to use the cloud factories of the big tech companies.

"Academic scientists would be government-subsidized customers of the tech giants.

Many see this approach as the only feasible alternative for academics to obtain the resources they need and that society needs. Other paths are just way too expensive.

What Does This Mean?

But this concept raises some real questions about the future of big tech and its relationship with the federal government.

There is enough concern already about the role that the tech giants now play in the world of computing. A National Research Cloud just ties the big giants more closely to the government, to the academic world, and to the total domination of the future of computing.

In some areas, like AI, the U.S. government knows they must keep up and cannot allow China to get ahead of it. Nor, can the United States allow China to get ahead of it in any part of the field of information technology. China is now driving so much of what is going on in the world and the United States must respond. This is similar to how the Soviet Union's Sputnik launch in 1957 spurred America's space program, but arguably on a much bigger scale and with a greater impact on our daily lives.

Cutting-edge technology is essential for both the national security of a country, but it is also a requirement for the maintenance of economic competitiveness. It should be noted that the legislation connected to this initiative is in an amendment to this years defense budget.

How Do You Structure A National Research Cloud?

The implications of this initiative are enormous, for the government, for academics, and for the big tech giants.

First off, there is concern enough about the power that the big tech giants have. There has already been lots of talk what to do with these behemoths. Should the tech giants be broken up? Heavily regulate them? Maybe they should be taken over and run as government agencies?

The situation arises because of the economics of big tech companies: they are scalable in a way not seen before.

The New Domination

Companies like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and so on, are built on a foundation of intellectual capital which allows these organizations to scale their businesses like no others before. This has allowed them to dominate the cloud and data and information.

Now we seeing how these new modern corporations, who can expand the cloud beyond anything that universities and other research facilities can reasonably finance, are coming to dominate even the research world. This push to create a National Research Cloud should be a real wake-up call to the realities of the Information Age.

The alternative is for the government to get involved. And, I believe, the cry for government intervention is going to grow. Monopoly power is just going to grow. Imagine the wealth that might be created if these businesses stay as they are. (As of July 6, each of the four companies mentioned above - Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google - has a market cap in excess of $1 trillion, the first time that's occurred since February.)

The government believes that it must do something. Mr. Lohr mentions that the federal government has long backed major research projects like particle accelerators for high-energy physics in the 1960s and supercomputing centers in the 1980s.

But in the past, the government built the labs and facilities.

Here we are talking about an entirely different relationship. The scale factor is something different from what existed before. The National Research Cloud is the beginning of an entirely different relationship, one that is not yet fully defined.

If big tech is left all alone in this new format, it will become more indispensable, more powerful, and, hence, more valuable. But, can the government allow this monopoly power to grow?

But, what might be the right balance? Or, will government eventually come to take it all under its wing?

To me, this move to construct a National Research Cloud is a move into unknown territory and it is almost impossible to discern how this story will carry out. All one can say is that information is going to continue to grow and spread and a growing portion of this movement is going to impact national interests. The unknowable issue for investors is: what will be the structure that gets us there...gets us to the future?

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

View post:

The National Research Cloud: Big Tech And Academic Research - Seeking Alpha

Part of our education system is doing what they need our Caltechs and MITs and so on are doing what they need but thats not what most of our education system is doing, says Richard Scott, emeritus professor of sociology at Stanford University, who co-authored a book about Silicon Valleys relationship with the school system.

Technology has tried to intervene in education before, without the desired results. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) were heralded as the future of teaching back at the start of the last decade. But high dropout rates and low engagement put paid to that idea.

Online education is not straightforward. Any parent who has spent the last three months standing over bored and restless children spending hours each day staring at their teacher and classmates on Zoom will tell you that its a tough ask.

In Kansas, Summit Learning, which is funded and supported byZuckerberg and Priscilla Chans foundation,was embroiled in controversy after some parents pulled their children out of the public school system because they were unhappy with the levels of screen time involved in the programme.

And any further expansion of tech companies empires is likely to be viewed with suspicion, particularly over their use of data.

In 2015, digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation claimed that Google had been mining students data and sharing it with the companys other services, forcing the business to change some of its practices.

Tech companies have also been accused of seeing the education market as a way to begin embedding themselves in students lives.

Its that early brand loyalty if you donate iPads to an elementary school, youve got early Apple users, and then all subsequent use of tech has to be Apple-friendly, says Cherkin.

Galloway says many industry figures believe the value of a degree from elite universities is often simply an expensive signal of someones aptitude, rather than the knowledge gained over three or four years, and that tech may be able to improve that.

When you really think about what is the value of these elite brands, its certification. The value comes out of the admissions department. Tech companies could bring in outstanding testing, they could measure student outcomes and probably do a better job. He says a qualification with Googles stamp on it could hold as much value as one from a traditional university, and potentially at a fraction of the cost.

Does that make it a good idea? Quite frankly, in academia, we deserve it. If its anything like whats happened with tech and other industries, our ability to regulate wont keep up with the pace of change.

I dont know if itll be good or bad. But what Im more certain is, its going to happen.

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Big Tech companies have got universities in their sights - Telegraph.co.uk

Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

Text size

Like an Escher drawing hanging in a students dorm room, the stock market has begun to look rational and irrational simultaneously. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the Nasdaq Composite.

The tech-heavy index has gained 18% this year, after practically ignoring the explosion of Covid-19 cases in places like Florida and Texas. It ended the week with three consecutive highs, and for good reason: The index is composed of the kinds of companies that can not only survive, but thrive, in a world where going about your normal, everyday business could get you sick.

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Yet there comes a point when even the soundest argument starts to sound specious, even to those making it, and that seems to be what is happening now. Deutsche Bank analyst Jeriel Ong went on record with his worries about Apples (ticker: AAPL) rally, yet left his Buy rating intact and raised his price target to $400 from $380. Others warn that the big tech stocks are getting expensive and crowded, yet see no alternative when future economic growthand corporate profitscould be impaired. I compare the current environment to the Twilight Zone, says Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research. There are so many possible ways this could go.

For now, though, it seems to only go upand there may be more to this than fundamental strength. Chris Harvey, U.S. equity strategist at Wells Fargo Securities, notes that when the Russell 1000 Growth index was rebalanced on June 26, the combined share of Apple, Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon.com (AMZN) rose from 25.3% of the index to 28.6%. Just getting to an index weight required a lot of buyingand most active mutual-fund managers were underweight. With those stocks among the years best performers, it meant managers would underperform the growth index by even more unless they started buying.

While the shift toward the biggest techs is most pronounced in the Russell 1000, most indexes are seeing the same. At Thursdays close, technology made up 28% of the S&P 500, up from 21.5% on Nov. 8, 2016, when the Real Estate sector debuted. The Communications Services sector, which includes Facebook (FB), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Netflix (NFLX), has increased to 11.1% from 2.5%.

Economically sensitive sectors have stayed about the same, and are largely immaterialmaterials, utilities, and real estate have 2.5%, 3%, and 2.8% weightings, respectivelyor seen their shares decline. Energy has fallen from a 7.2% weighting to 2.5%, while Financials have dipped to 9.7% from 13.4%.

A friend wondered only half-jokingly how long it would take for the SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded fund (SPY) to have the same weightings as the Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQ), which tracks the Nasdaq 100. But it is also clear how reliant the market is on the tech stocks in the Nasdaq for further gainsand how that could lead to future losses. Its a conundrum for investors, who know they are in the same trade together, says Nordea strategist Sebastien Galy.

Like it or not, were all tech investors now.

Write to Ben Levisohn at Ben.Levisohn@barrons.com

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Tech Stocks Are Getting Scary. Why Theres No Way to Escape Them. - Barron's

The boomers and Xers remember when Microsoft was so dominant that a federal judge ordered it broken up.

That year of peak Microsoft was 2000, the tail end of the dot-com boom. While the company stayed in one piece and moved on, 10 years later its stock price was nowhere near its peak. It became easy to never think of Microsoft except maybe when upgrading to the new Office software suite.

But, of course, peak Microsoft really came last week.

Its also the era of peak Apple, peak Amazon.com and peak Netflix.

These companies are worth so much in the stock market now that their big year has become one explanation for a booming stock market rally since March, when a sharp downturn due to the coronavirus pandemic reversed course.

This might not be a stock market story, either, explained away by factors like bored sports bettors looking for a new way to squander their money. Maybe instead we are seeing more value in companies that provide the stuff that turned out to be essential as the COVID-19 pandemic rolls on, and maybe even well after it winds down.

Microsoft often seems surprising on a list of high-flyers, because it must be well into its sleepy, late middle age by now, right? It has been a quarter-century since release of its groundbreaking Windows 95 operating system for personal computers.

After months of ignoring news of its resurgence, it took less than an hour of reading to see its a genuine powerhouse. It provides an array of software and services that form part of the basic foundation for business, stepping into the kind of role once played by International Business Machines Corp.

Microsoft reported revenue of about $35 billion in its last quarter, up 15% from the prior years quarter, with an operating margin of better than 37%. It generated cash flow from operations in just those three months of $17.5 billion.

Microsoft has been battling for top spot among Americas most valuable companies with Amazon and Apple. Yet because of the structure of its ownership, Microsoft is the biggest factor now in how well the S&P 500 performs and thus our perception of the stock market.

The S&P 500 is a weighted index, so the relative value of the components matters a lot. The heavyweight champ Microsoft outweighs the top 10 Minnesota-based companies, combined as a group, by more than two to one.

Take a Minnesota blue-chipper like Target, a corporate stalwart thats a big part of the states economy. Microsoft has more than 25 times the impact of Target in the S&P 500. Microsoft shares go up in price 5%, and that could be enough to make it a good day in the stock market. Target stock goes up 5% and the needle may not budge.

Valuable, not overvalued

This isnt just a Microsoft story, either. Microsoft stocks strong appreciation this year has trailed Netflix and Amazon. As of last week, just six big technology companies now make up about a quarter of the S&P 500.

These big technology companies are still not wildly overvalued, at least according to strategist Jim Paulsen from the Minneapolis-based Leuthold Group, nothing like technology firms were during the frenzied speculation that powered Microsoft (and even a few comically speculative startups) to new highs 20 years ago.

Moreover, he explained, the professional investors are buying them now because they appear safer to own in a really stressful time, kind of like how fund managers bought the stock of utilities or food companies in an earlier era. As he put it, The rally in tech and new-era is being driven at least in part by bearishness and fear.

What made those old-fashioned defensive companies attractive in a sinking economy is that their businesses held up better because nobody voluntarily cut off their own electric power or quit buying groceries. These things are indispensable.

And thats the word that Gene Munster, analyst and co-founder of venture firm Loup Ventures in Minneapolis, used to describe the tools and products that companies like Microsoft and Apple now sell.

You may not love these companies, their market dominance and hubris, but they do really deliver. Social isolation and working from home made Apples iPhones and iPads as important as a working refrigerator. Need a computer mouse right away because a teenager borrowed one that then went missing? Try Amazon.com.

There are competitors in streaming video including Apple and Walt Disney Co., but Netflix is the cant-miss place for entertainment this year.

Last weekend our family used Netflix to watch a new movie about a comically bad Icelandic musical duo. The movie was fine, but what made this a memorable evening was how five family members could watch one movie together, chatting away, from four different living rooms.

I dont know how much Netflix would have to raise its price to get me to cancel.

Whats essential?

Facebook has been another strong performer of late, yet Munster called it an outlier to his notion of the top firms providing essential services.

Hes not referring to the swelling controversy over Facebooks content algorithms and hate speech. He just cant easily see what its next big opportunity is.

These big technology companies have likely become too important for regulators to ignore, and unwelcome changes for them may lie ahead. But to Munster the winners both provide something essential now and will probably keep doing that as needs rapidly evolve.

How people work five years from now is going to look very similar to the way we worked during the pandemic, Munster said, and employers likely will want all the necessary tools in one package to enable that to work. Microsoft, he said, is in a position to do that.

Even now, counting up the services or products from Microsoft I use took more than the fingers of one hand. Theres writing with Microsoft Word on a Microsoft keyboard, retrieving documents stored in the cloud on OneDrive and connecting with colleagues through the video conferencing and messaging service called Teams.

When Monday morning comes and the mouse is clicked to get into OneDrive, it really needs to work.

And it will.

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Stock market rising on the indispensable companies - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

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Like an Escher drawing hanging in a students dorm room, the stock market has begun to look rational and irrational simultaneously. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the Nasdaq Composite.

The tech-heavy index has gained 18% this year, after practically ignoring the explosion of Covid-19 cases in places like Florida and Texas. It ended the week with three consecutive highs, and for good reason: The index is composed of the kinds of companies that can not only survive, but thrive, in a world where going about your normal, everyday business could get you sick.

Yet there comes a point when even the soundest argument starts to sound specious, even to those making it, and that seems to be what is happening now. Deutsche Bank analyst Jeriel Ong went on record with his worries about Apples (ticker: AAPL) rally, yet left his Buy rating intact and raised his price target to $400 from $380. Others warn that the big tech stocks are getting expensive and crowded, yet see no alternative when future economic growthand corporate profitscould be impaired. I compare the current environment to the Twilight Zone, says Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research. There are so many possible ways this could go.

For now, though, it seems to only go upand there may be more to this than fundamental strength. Chris Harvey, U.S. equity strategist at Wells Fargo Securities, notes that when the Russell 1000 Growth index was rebalanced on June 26, the combined share of Apple, Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon.com (AMZN) rose from 25.3% of the index to 28.6%. Just getting to an index weight required a lot of buyingand most active mutual-fund managers were underweight. With those stocks among the years best performers, it meant managers would underperform the growth index by even more unless they started buying.

While the shift toward the biggest techs is most pronounced in the Russell 1000, most indexes are seeing the same. At Thursdays close, technology made up 28% of the S&P 500, up from 21.5% on Nov. 8, 2016, when the Real Estate sector debuted. The Communications Services sector, which includes Facebook (FB), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Netflix (NFLX), has increased to 11.1% from 2.5%.

Economically sensitive sectors have stayed about the same, and are largely immaterialmaterials, utilities, and real estate have 2.5%, 3%, and 2.8% weightings, respectivelyor seen their shares decline. Energy has fallen from a 7.2% weighting to 2.5%, while Financials have dipped to 9.7% from 13.4%.

A friend wondered only half-jokingly how long it would take for the SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded fund (SPY) to have the same weightings as the Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQ), which tracks the Nasdaq 100. But it is also clear how reliant the market is on the tech stocks in the Nasdaq for further gainsand how that could lead to future losses. Its a conundrum for investors, who know they are in the same trade together, says Nordea strategist Sebastien Galy.

Like it or not, were all tech investors now.

Write to Ben Levisohn at Ben.Levisohn@barrons.com

The rest is here:

Tech Stocks Have Been the Markets Stars. Are They Overbought? - Barron's

You can call it Techpalooza.

The chief executives of four of the most powerful tech companies in the world Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon have agreed to appear in late July before a congressional committee as part of an investigation focused on antitrust.

Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island who has become one of the biggest critics of Big Techs enormous power, told me on Wednesday that Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google and Tim Cook of Apple will testify in what could be an all-day event.

Mr. Cicilline said that the yearlong congressional investigation has included eight round-table discussions, 93 requests for information, 43 experts testifying and five hearings.

Its the first major look at antitrust in this industry in 50 years and a lot of people worldwide are watching how lawmakers deal with tech, he said. But throughout, we know it is impossible to properly conclude this without hearing from the decision makers themselves.

He said that all of the chief executives agreed to appear voluntarily and that logistics are still being worked out for what he hopes will be an in-person hearing in Washington. But safety concerns over the coronavirus may mean that the executives end up testifying remotely.

And while tech leaders have appeared before Congress in the past and there is often less illumination than noise at these kinds of hearings given the growing public alarm about the power of the tech giants, this gathering of the four horsemen of the Techopolypse could be an epic show. Winter may be coming for Silicon Valley.

Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Pichai and Mr. Bezos had indicated in letters previously that they were open to appearing at a hearing, after being invited by Mr. Cicillines antitrust subcommittee, while Apple had said that it was open to sending a top official.

Its clear that the chief executives wanted to appear together, not so much for support frenemies is about as close as I would describe them, and there is intense dislike between some of the companies but in the hopes that a group appearance will keep any one of them from being singled out for intense scrutiny. Some are suggesting that a multiday interrogation, with each chief executive facing a small number of experienced questioners, as well as real people they hurt, would be a better way to grill the tech moguls.

Still, if the lawmakers do their job in the planned format and ask pointed questions about the true impact of these companies power on competition, there could be some important moments.

This hearing will be part of a wider bipartisan inquiry into how the tech giants dominate the digital industry and hurt rivals and consumers.

Along with fines, politicians and regulators are contemplating new laws on privacy and competition, the repeal of a law that gives platforms broad immunity for content on their sites, and, perhaps most drastically, breaking them up.

And while each company has different problems such as a damaging role in the spread of disinformation and hate speech (Hello, Facebook!) the near monopolistic power of their services and what to do about it is the focus of the House investigation.

We have very serious concerns about the absence of competition, Mr. Cicilline said. So we are interested in a wide range of things like their acquisitions, bullying, market power, their favoring of their products and services.

While the House has been conducting its investigation, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have also been looking into competition in tech. So, too, have state attorneys general and also international regulators, most notably the European Commission under its antitrust head, Margrethe Vestager.

Too bad Ms. Vestager wont be asking these tech titans the questions she is the bane of the tech industrys existence, along with Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. How the hearing will be conducted will be critical.

No surprise that I prefer public grillings with a side of shame, but more important will be how the companies portray themselves and how they differentiate themselves. While its convenient to apply the catchall term Big Tech to them, they are not a monolith and some in this group are further along in understanding that with great power comes great responsibility and, more important, accountability.

Hopefully, that is what we are going to finally see at the hearing. Mr. Cicilline said the House will issue a report of its findings later in the year, along with recommendations.

He also said that he had not been an expert in antitrust issues before he took over the helm of the antitrust subcommittee, but that the more I have studied and learned, the more terrifying the power of their large digital platforms is made clear, including the impact on innovation and start-ups.

At the heart of these inquiries, of course, is how can we continue to innovate as power has become more concentrated than ever. I have done innumerable interviews with start-ups and investors in which they talk about the chilling effect of big companies on their business.

Ask yourself, how easy it is to start an ad-based search engine, a social network, a major online retailer or an app platform when these companies completely cover the field with their money and power and might?

Answer: Its not easy, which is why I will try to grab a seat in the front row.

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Here Come the 4 Horsemen of the Techopolypse - The New York Times

Ties between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon are deeper than previously known, according to thousands of previously unreported subcontracts published Wednesday.

The subcontracts were obtained through open records requests by accountability nonprofit Tech Inquiry. They show that tech giants including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have secured more than 5,000 agreements with agencies including the Department of Defense, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the FBI.

Tech workers in recent years have pressured their employers to drop contracts with law enforcement and the military.

Google workers revolted in 2018 after Gizmodo revealed that Google was building artificial intelligence for drone targeting through a subcontract with the Pentagon after some employees quit in protest, Google agreed not to renew the contract. Employees at Amazon and Microsoft have petitioned both companies to drop their contracts with ICE and the military, but neither company has caved to the demands.

The newly-surfaced subcontracts published by Tech Inquiry show that the companies' connections to the Pentagon run deeper than many employees were previously aware. Tech Inquiry's research was led by Jack Poulson, a former Google researcher who left the company in 2018.

"Often the high-level contract description between tech companies and the military looks very vanilla and mundane," Poulson told NBC News. "But only when you look at the details of the contract, which you can only get through Freedom of Information [Act] requests, do you see the workings of how the customization from a tech company would actually be involved."

Subcontracts come about when one contractor can't carry out all the duties of their federal contract and hires a third party to fulfill certain aspects. In many cases, military and law enforcement contractors subcontracted with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft for services like cloud computing and data processing.

The research shows that Microsoft has over 5,000 subcontracts with law enforcement, while Amazon and Google each have several hundred subcontracts.

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment.

Representatives for Google and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Get the latest Google stock price here.

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New records show 5,000+ contracts between big tech and the Pentagon - Business Insider - Business Insider

Stocks closed sharply higher on Monday, led by strong gains in the tech sector, as Wall Street built on the momentum from last week's solid performance and shook off a continued rise in coronavirus cases.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 459.67 points, or 1.8%, to 26,287.03. The S&P 500 popped 1.6% to end the day at 3,179.72. The Nasdaq Compositehit an all-time high, surging 2.2% to 10,433.65.

There were a few reasons for the bullish lift to start the week:

"The economy is doing a lot better than most of the economists think," said Jeff Saut,chief investment strategist atCapital Wealth Planning, to CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday. "We may stall here for a while into the fall, into September, October, November, but I think you're going to get a rocket ship coming in the fall of this year...I think the S&P 500 is going to trade above 4,000."

Monday's gains came even asthe number of coronavirus cases kept surging globally, raising concerns about the world economy and its recovery from the pandemic.

The World Health Organization said Saturday that more than 200,000 coronavirus cases were confirmed over a 24-hour span, a record. At a regional level, the biggest spike was seen in the Americas, where nearly 130,000 new cases were confirmed.

In the U.S., coronavirus-related hospitalizations grew in more than 20 states, including, Florida, Texas, Arizona and Georgia.

"We are currently experiencing a spike in Covid-19 cases, particularly in the sunbelt states that were in the vanguard of loosening social distancing restrictions to facilitate the reopening of their economies," said Marc Chaikin, CEO of Chaikin Analytics, in a post.

"That reopening momentum has been halted by the spike in Covid-19 cases and the temptation to translate this into a bearish outlook for stocks is strong," he added. "Fatalities have not spiked, however, but are a lagging indicator. Thus the next two weeks are critical for a number of reasons."

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Dow gains more than 400 points after big tech rally, Amazon and Netflix hit records - CNBC