SEC's Crypto Broker Rules Likely to Get Overhaul, Atkins Says
Only two firms have obtained a 'special-purpose broker dealer' authorization. The low response is the result of what Atkins called 'significant limitations' imposed during the prior administration, Atkins said at a digital asset roundtable held at the SEC's Washington headquarters.
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Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Up 33% Year to Date, Is Netflix Stock Still a Buy?
Key Points Netflix has improved earnings trends and operating margins in the first half of the year. Forecasts for the third quarter are strong. In all, the content lineup for the second half of the year bodes well for viewership. 10 stocks we like better than Netflix › I'll be honest. A few years back I thought that the rising streaming wars would take the wind out of Netflix's (NASDAQ: NFLX) sails. I could not have been more wrong. The stock has gained 33% year to date (at the time of writing), and outpaced the S&P 500 by 45% over the last five years. Why was I wrong? Because the company has significantly improved its net income over the last few years, while creating strong forecasts for the coming quarters. It's done this through a blitz of content, and streamlining operations to improve the bottom line. Netflix hit a low point in 2022, when revenue dipped to 6.64% growth, and net income fell 12.2% year over year to $4.49 billion. Since then, things are coming back, and it's demonstrated in the share price. A good start to the year In the first quarter, top-line growth was slightly slower than 2025, but the benefits of that growth were better. Netflix reported an operating margin of 31.7% versus a margin of 28.1% in 2024, while earnings were $6.61 per diluted share versus earnings of $5.28 in the first quarter of 2024. Year-over-year growth improved in the second quarter, with a 15.9% increase in total revenue, and operating margin of 34.1% compared to 27.2% in Q2 2024. Earnings for the second quarter increased 47.3% to $7.19 due to a combination of increased net income, and a lower overall share count. The second half sounds great Looking into the second half of the year, Netflix provided some upbeat forecasting. Third-quarter results are anticipated to be pretty strong relative to Q3 of 2024. Revenue is anticipated to grow by 17.3% year over year to $11.5 billion, while operating margin is expected to be 17.3% versus 15% the year prior. The real kicker is earnings, which are anticipated to increase 27.2% year over year to $6.87 per diluted share. In all, Netflix has had solid free cash flow, and seems primed to keep going if its lineup for the second half of the year delivers for users. Upcoming content The platform's lineup for the second half of the year kicked off with the highly anticipated (and irreverent) Happy Gilmore 2, and that's just the start. The company is slated to premiere many popular options including Wednesday season 2, Frankenstein, A House of Dynamite from Kathryn Bigelow, and the final season of the extremely popular Stranger Things. This is just to name a few of the upcoming pipeline that is a part of Netflix's continued strategy of attempting to create content for the broadest audience possible. An example of this is partnering with channels overseas to provide content to a global audience. For example, the company noted in its second quarter shareholder letter that it had partnered with TF1, a popular broadcaster in France, to deliver its content to streamers. To me, this is essential to outpacing competitors in this ever-popular space, and keep the stock as a good investment. I would argue that it's going to be virtually impossible to avoid the ever-expanding popularity of streaming, and Netflix seems to be holding onto the reins despite mounting pressure from a variety of competitors including Walt Disney, Paramount Global, and others. Given Netflix's current trend of improving annual net income, I think it is a strong stock to own right now, even after already gaining 33% this year. Should you buy stock in Netflix right now? Before you buy stock in Netflix, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Netflix wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $624,823!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,064,820!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,019% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 178% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 29, 2025 David Butler has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Netflix and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Up 33% Year to Date, Is Netflix Stock Still a Buy? was originally published by The Motley Fool
Fast Company
6 minutes ago
- Fast Company
How to outsmart AI-driven pricing
Recently, Delta Air Lines announced it would expand its use of artificial intelligence to provide individualized prices to customers. This move sparked concern among flyers and politicians. But Delta isn't the only business interested in using AI this way. Personalized pricing has already spread across a range of industries, from finance to online gaming. Customized pricing —where each customer receives a different price for the same product—is a holy grail for businesses because it boosts profits. With customized pricing, free-spending people pay more while the price-sensitive pay less. Just as clothes can be tailored to each person, custom pricing fits each person's ability and desire to pay. I am a professor who teaches business school students how to set prices. My latest book, The Power of Cash: Why Using Paper Money is Good for You and Society, highlights problems with custom pricing. Specifically, I'm worried that AI pricing models lack transparency and could unfairly take advantage of financially unsophisticated people. The history of custom pricing For much of history, customized pricing was the normal way things happened. In the past, business owners sized up each customer and then bargained face-to-face. The price paid depended on the buyer's and seller's bargaining skills—and desperation. An old joke illustrates this process. Once, a very rich man was riding in his carriage at breakfast time. Hungry, he told his driver to stop at the next restaurant. He went inside, ordered some eggs, and asked for the bill. When the owner handed him the check, the rich man was shocked at the price. 'Are eggs rare in this neighborhood?' he asked. 'No,' the owner said. 'Eggs are plentiful, but very rich men are quite rare.' Custom pricing through bargaining still exists in some industries. For example, car dealerships often negotiate a different price for each vehicle they sell. Economists refer to this as 'first-degree' or 'perfect' price discrimination, which is 'perfect' from the seller's perspective because it allows them to charge each customer the maximum amount they're willing to pay. Currently, most American shoppers don't bargain but instead see set prices. Many scholars trace the rise of set prices to John Wanamaker's Philadelphia department store, which opened in 1876. In his store, each item had a nonnegotiable price tag. These set prices made it simpler for customers to shop and became very popular. Why uniform pricing caught on Set prices have several advantages for businesses. For one thing, they allow stores to hire low-paid retail workers instead of employees who are experts in negotiation. Historically, they also made it easier for stores to decide how much to charge. Before the advent of AI pricing, many companies determined prices using a 'cost-plus' rule. Cost-plus means a business adds a fixed percentage or markup to an item's cost. The markup is the percentage added to a product's cost that covers a company's profits and overhead. The big-box retailer Costco still uses this rule. It determines prices by adding a roughly 15% maximum markup to each item on the warehouse floor. If something costs Costco $100, they sell it for about $115. The problem with cost-plus is that it treats all items the same. For example, Costco sells wine in many stores. People buying expensive Champagne typically are willing to pay a much higher markup than customers purchasing inexpensive boxed wine. Using AI gets around this problem by letting a computer determine the optimal markup item by item. What personalized pricing means for shoppers AI needs a lot of data to operate effectively. The shift from cash to electronic payments has enabled businesses to collect what's been called a 'gold mine' of information. For example, Mastercard says its data lets companies 'determine optimal pricing strategies.' So much information is collected when you pay electronically that in 2024 the Federal Trade Commission issued civil subpoenas to Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, and other financial companies demanding to know 'how artificial intelligence and other technological tools may allow companies to vary prices using data they collect about individual consumers' finances and shopping habits.' Experiments at the FTC show that AI programs can even collude among themselves to raise prices without human intervention. To prevent customized pricing, some states have laws requiring retailers to display a single price for each product for sale. Even with these laws, it's simple to do custom pricing by using targeted digital coupons, which vary each shopper's discount. How you can outsmart AI pricing There are ways to get around customized pricing. All depend on denying AI programs data on past purchases and knowledge of who you are. First, when shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, use paper money. Yes, good old-fashioned cash is private and leaves no data trail that follows you online. Second, once online, clear your cache. Your search history and cookies provide algorithms with extensive amounts of information. Many articles say the protective power of clearing your cache is an urban myth. However, this information was based on how airlines used to price tickets. Recent analysis by the FTC shows the newest AI algorithms are changing prices based on this cached information. Third, many computer pricing algorithms look at your location, since location is a good proxy for income. I was once in Botswana and needed to buy a plane ticket. The price on my computer was about $200. Unfortunately, before booking I was called away to dinner. After dinner my computer showed the cost was $1,000—five times higher. It turned out after dinner I used my university's VPN, which told the airline I was located in a rich American neighborhood. Before dinner I was located in a poor African town. Shutting off the VPN reduced the price. Last, often to get a better price in face-to-face negotiations, you need to walk away. To do this online, put something in your basket and then wait before hitting purchase. I recently bought eyeglasses online. As a cash payer, I didn't have my credit card handy. It took five minutes to find it, and the delay caused the site to offer a large discount to complete the purchase. The computer revolution has created the ability to create custom products cheaply. The cashless society combined with AI is setting us up for customized prices. In a custom-pricing situation, seeing a high price doesn't mean something is higher quality. Instead, a high price simply means a business views the customer as willing to part with more money.
CNN
37 minutes ago
- CNN
Trump suspends tax exemption for cheap shipments
President Donald Trump last week suspended a global trade loophole allowing smaller parcels into America duty-free. This closes a backdoor into the United States for Chinese mega-shippers like Shein and Temu, who could potentially pass the cost of those duties down to consumers. Trump eliminated the so-called 'de minimis exemption,' which had admitted duty-free shipments of goods worth $800 or less into the United States. Giant e-commerce sites used the loophole when shipping hundreds of millions of packages to US consumers. The administration did away with the exemption for goods coming out of China and Hong Kong in May amid the US-China trade war. This latest move extends that to every country around the world. Trump said in an executive order issued on Wednesday that 'many shippers go to great lengths to evade law enforcement and hide illicit substances in imports that go through international commerce' and the risk of 'evasion, deception, and illicit-drug importation are particularly high for low-value articles that have been eligible for duty-free de minimis treatment.' This is more bad news for Chinese retailers and their customers because it shuts down the option of re-routing small shipments duty-free through countries like Vietnam, which is facing a tariff rate of 20%. The executive order also demands that the origin of the package must be declared to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Temu and Shein had already started stockpiling goods and bulk-shipping to US warehouses to lower shipping times. Hours after the de minimis exemption expired for China in early May, Temu announced it was overhauling its shipping model. It said it would send out all American orders via US-based distributors, adding that its 'pricing for US consumers remains unchanged.' But some of Temu's American buyers subsequently complained of higher prices and items were quickly out of stock. Companies also will eventually need to restock their warehouses, and 'by imposing (the suspension of de minimis) for the whole world, there is no other workaround,' Chris Tang, a professor of global supply chain management at the University of California, Los Angeles, told CNN. Companies will now have to pay a hefty import tax even if they ship in bulk, which means customers may eventually have to pay more. The suspension of de minimis will also affect the millions of sellers on Amazon Haul, a discount competitor to Temu and TikTok Shop. Amazon and Temu have not responded to CNN's request for comment. Last week's repeal will affect a massive amount of packages that Americans are accustomed to receiving duty-free, the sheer amount of which has grown exponentially over the past decade. CBP previously told CNN it processes 'nearly 4 million duty-free de minimis shipments a day.' Research indicates that a majority of those shipments come from China and Hong Kong. In total, over the last fiscal year, CBP said 1.36 billion packages came to the United States under the de minimis exemption. When Trump's executive order goes into effect on August 29, most goods shipped internationally will be subject to the tariffs of the country of origin. Those duties will be about $80 per item for a country with a tariff rate less than 16%, $160 per item for a country of a tariff rate between 16% and 25%, $200 per item for a country with a tariff rate above 25%. Some of that cost could be passed down to consumers. Lower-income households will suffer the most from higher prices on Chinese e-commerce sites. About 48% of de minimis packages were shipped to America's poorest zip codes, while 22% were delivered to the richest ones, according to research in February from UCLA and Yale economists. The Trump administration had first slashed the de minimis exemption on China in May, but then cut the tariff on those cheap packages from 120% to 54%. There is also a $100 flat-fee option for those goods. A federal trade court this week declined to block Trump's elimination of the de minimis exemption on goods from China because the issue is already covered in a broader case challenging Trump's tariff policies. As part of Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill,' the de minimis rule was slated for repeal on all countries in July 2027. It even established a civil penalty up to $10,000 for more than one violation of the rule.
