Chinese Mid-Cap Stocks to Thrive on AI Boom, Ox Capital Says
Chinese mid-cap stocks will be the next winners as companies take advantage of advancements in artificial intelligence, according to a fund manager at Ox Capital Management Pty Ltd.
'A lot of these mid-cap companies are benefiting from a rapid implementation of AI,' said Sydney-based Joseph Lai in an interview late last month. 'It's very cheap for these companies to implement AI solutions to increase the return on interest.'
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Forbes
29 minutes ago
- Forbes
The Parts Of Long-Term Financial Planning That Everyone Should Know
Confident young Asian woman with smartphone looking out through window while sitting in a cafe ... More having coffee. Making a personal financial plans and investment decisions. Wealth management. Business, banking, finance and investment concept Mapping out your finances for the long haul can help you grow wealth, build a reliable safety net, and weather life's twists and turns. As financial markets become more volatile and retirement planning seems increasingly out of reach, especially for millennials, it's imperative to start as early as possible, securing your financial future. Whether it's not having the right amount of insurance in place, neglecting to contribute to the correct retirement accounts, or not ensuring a seamless estate plan, many people have holes in their long-term financial planning. Learn about six key components you can include in your plan and how each one can strengthen your financial well-being. A will is a legally binding document that outlines how your property should be divided and how personal matters should be managed after your death. It can also designate guardians for your minor children and include instructions for end-of-life preferences. In contrast, a trust is a legal structure in which you, as the grantor, assign a trustee to oversee and manage assets for the benefit of specific individuals or organizations, known as beneficiaries. Both wills and trusts are critical estate planning tools that can help ensure your wishes are carried out and your loved ones are provided for. Having a will allows you to direct assets to the right people and name an executor to settle your estate. A trust offers extra benefits: It can bypass the probate process, saving time and preserving privacy for your heirs, and it can even include provisions for managing your assets if you become incapacitated—something a will cannot do. A taxable brokerage account is a regular investment account that you can open through a brokerage firm using money that's already been taxed. It gives you the flexibility to trade various assets, such as bonds, stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs, without the benefit of tax deferral or shelter. Unlike retirement accounts, a taxable account does not provide upfront tax deductions or tax-deferred growth. Instead, you pay taxes each year on any interest, dividends or capital gains earned in the account. A 401(k) plan is a company-sponsored retirement account that employees can contribute a percentage of their income toward for long-term savings. It can help automate saving, provide tax-deferred growth, and significantly boost your savings through employer matches. 'Given that just 11% of workers in private industry receive a pension, 401(k)s are a key pillar in building a secure retirement,' writes finance journalist Adam Shell. 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If you (the insured person) die during that term, the policy pays out a tax-free lump sum death benefit to your chosen beneficiaries. If you outlive the term, the coverage ends, or you may have an option to renew at a higher rate. Term life insurance is fundamental for anyone who has others depending on their income or care. If you have young children, a spouse or aging parents who rely on you, life insurance ensures they are not left financially stranded. Indexed universal life (IUL) insurance is a form of lifelong coverage that combines a guaranteed death benefit with a cash value element that can grow over time. Unlike term life policies, IUL stays in force as long as you continue to make premium payments. It also includes a savings component that accumulates value, often tied to the performance of a market index, offering the potential for wealth building or protection. 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Associated Press
40 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Meta invests in AI firm Scale and recruits its CEO for 'superintelligence' team
Meta said Thursday it is making a large investment in artificial intelligence company Scale and recruiting its CEO Alexandr Wang to join a team developing 'superintelligence' at the tech giant. The move reflects a push by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to revive AI efforts at the parent company of Facebook and Instagram as it faces tough competition from competitors such as Google and OpenAI. Meta announced what it called a 'strategic partnership and investment' with Scale late Thursday but didn't disclose the financial terms of the deal. Scale said the added investment puts its market value at over $29 billion. It won't be the first time a big tech company has gobbled up talent and products at innovative AI startups without formally acquiring them. Microsoft hired key staff from startup Inflection AI, including co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who now runs Microsoft's AI division. Google pulled in the leaders of AI chatbot company while Amazon made a deal with San Francisco-based Adept that sent its CEO and key employees to the e-commerce giant. Amazon also got a license to Adept's AI systems and datasets. Wang was a 19-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he and co-founder Lucy Guo started Scale in 2016. They won influential backing that summer from the startup incubator Y Combinator, which was led at the time by Sam Altman, now the CEO of OpenAI. Wang dropped out of MIT, following a trajectory similar to that of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who quit Harvard University to start Facebook more than a decade earlier. Scale's pitch was to supply the human labor needed to improve AI systems, hiring workers to draw boxes around a pedestrian or a dog in a street photo so that self-driving cars could better predict what's in front of them. General Motors and Toyota have been among Scale's customers. What Scale offered to AI developers was a more tailored version of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which had long been a go-to service for matching freelance workers with temporary online jobs. More recently, the growing commercialization of AI large language models — the technology behind OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Meta's Llama — brought a new market for Scale's annotation teams. The company claims to service 'every leading large language model,' including from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft, by helping to fine tune their training data and test their performance. It's not clear what the Meta deal will mean for Scale's other customers. Wang has also sought to build close relationships with the U.S. government, winning military contracts to supply AI tools to the Pentagon and attending President Donald Trump's inauguration. The head of Trump's science and technology office, Michael Kratsios, was an executive at Scale for the four years between Trump's first and second terms. Meta has also begun providing AI services to the federal government. Meta has taken a different approach to AI than many of its rivals, releasing its flagship Llama system for free as an open-source product that enables people to use and modify some of its key components. Meta says more than a billion people use its AI products each month, but it's also widely seen as lagging behind competitors such as OpenAI and Google in encouraging consumer use of large language models, also known as LLMs. It hasn't yet released its purportedly most advanced model, Llama 4 Behemoth, despite previewing it in April as 'one of the smartest LLMs in the world and our most powerful yet.' Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, who in 2019 was a winner of computer science's top prize for his pioneering AI work, has expressed skepticism about the tech industry's current focus on large language models. 'How do we build AI systems that understand the physical world, that have persistent memory, that can reason and can plan?' LeCun asked at a French tech conference last year. These are all characteristics of intelligent behavior that large language models 'basically cannot do, or they can only do them in a very superficial, approximate way,' LeCun said. Instead, he emphasized Meta's interest in 'tracing a path towards human-level AI systems, or perhaps even superhuman.' LeCun co-founded Meta's AI research division more than a decade ago with Rob Fergus, a fellow professor at New York University. Fergus later left for Google but returned to Meta last month after a 5-year absence to run the research lab, replacing longtime director Joelle Pineau. Fergus wrote on LinkedIn last month that Meta's commitment to long-term AI research 'remains unwavering' and described the work as 'building human-level experiences that transform the way we interact with technology.'
CBS News
an hour ago
- CBS News
Buy now, pay later: Interest-free payment plans gain popularity but carry risks
Buy now, pay later: What to know about latest shopping trend Buy now, pay later: What to know about latest shopping trend Buy now, pay later: What to know about latest shopping trend More shoppers are turning to "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) services that promise interest-free installment payments at checkout, both online and in stores. BNPL services offer an alternative to high-interest credit cards but are raising concerns about overspending and hidden financial pitfalls. How it works Instead of paying the full price upfront, consumers using BNPL services like Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay can split their purchases into multiple payments, often four, without interest. Sydney Klein, who used Klarna to buy a pizza oven, said, "I was ok I'm gonna get this, but I can't pay five to six hundred dollars right now, so at the bottom was 4 interest-free payments to be made every two weeks." She added, "I hooked it up to my debit card; it was super easy and every two weeks they took out the payment." The pros and cons April Lewis-Parks, director of education at Consolidated Credit, says BNPL is about managing cash flow. "It really is cash flow," she said, noting the plans can help consumers afford everyday items. But she also cautions that some users end up in debt, and her organization is working on a pamphlet to educate the public on BNPL best practices. While BNPL usually doesn't impact credit scores, late payments can trigger penalties and overdraft fees, prompting critics to warn about the risks of impulsive spending.
