Left-hander Sean Manaea and the Mets are in agreement on a three-year, $75 million contract, sources told ESPN, keeping the veteran with the team he helped lead to a surprise NLCS appearance.
"Microsoft's outperformed just about every other asset I could have owned," former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Sunday.
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Steve Ballmer said his investment strategy is partly influenced by Warren Buffett.
But Ballmer, whose net worth is larger than Buffett's, has an unconventional investment portfolio.
More than 80% of Ballmer's portfolio is held in Microsoft stock, per The Wall Street Journal.
That puts him ahead of famed investor Warren Buffett by a nearly $10 billion margin.
In an interview published Sunday, Ballmer told The Wall Street Journal that his investment strategy is partly influenced by Buffett, who has long said that since most people picking stocks cannot beat the returns of a general index fund. But there's one key difference.
The Journal reported that Ballmer keeps more than 80% of his portfolio in Microsoft stock. The rest is held in index funds. Ballmer declined to say how large his stake is in Microsoft.
"Microsoft's outperformed just about every other asset I could have owned," Ballmer told the Journal.
Ballmer's investment strategy goes against conventional wisdom, which suggests that people reduce their risk by diversifying their capital across different asset classes. And the world's wealthiest people typically go beyond stocks and bonds to invest in non-liquid assets like private equity and real estate. Ballmer said he is "mostly dialing out of private equity."
To be sure, Ballmer wasn't always going against the trend.
The 68-year-old tried diversifying in the past but said he struggled to find money managers who consistently beat the market.
"The only stock I really study still is Microsoft, because that's still overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly the No. 1 thing that I own," Balmer told the outlet.
Ballmer began his career at Microsoft in 1980 and succeeded founder Bill Gates as CEO in 2000.
According to regulatory filings, Ballmer held 333 million shares, or a 4% stake, in Microsoft when he stepped down as CEO in 2014.
Microsoft's shares are up 16.1% this year. The Seattle-based tech giant has been in front of the AI race with huge bets on startups like Sam Altman's OpenAI and France's Mistral AI.
This would make it the fastest business in Microsoft's history to reach that milestone, Nadella added.
Ballmer attributes his bumper gains in Microsoft's stock to luck.
"Forget the stock price. I had luck, essentially, in getting to listen to the right people," Ballmer told the Journal.
"But I also had luck in terms of my loyalty to the company and not wanting to be a seller as a leader of the business. It turned out to be a great investment thing, too," he added.
Ballmer did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Elvira Nabiullina, Russia's top central banker, expressed that concern on Friday when she kept the key interest rate unchanged. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected her to hike rates to 23%.
"Our politics is aimed at prevention of extreme scenarios, which means that we cannot let the economy overheat further," Nabiullina said at a press conference following the rates decision, according to TASS state news agency.
"It is necessary to make sure that overheating subsides. That said, it is necessary to avoid excessive cooling, which is why we keep a close eye on this," she said.
Nabiullina said the central bank kept the interest rate steady as monetary conditions have "tightened even more than was implied by the key rate increase" in October, when the bank raised the rate from 19% to 21%. Russia started the year with its benchmark interest rate at 16%.
"Consequently, lending growth notably slowed down in November," she said. "We will need some time to assess how steady this deceleration in lending is and how the economy is adjusting to the new conditions."
Russian business leaders complain about high interest rates
Nabiullina's comments came as Russia's inflation hovered around 8% in the year to November, compared to the target rate of about 4%. Staples, like the price of butter and potatoes, have shot up this year. But the central bank's three straight rate hikes since June may be working, the top central banker signaled.
"Tough monetary conditions have evolved in the economy, which are to provide for inflation slowdown in coming quarters," she said, per TASS.
Russian business leaders have been complaining about the central bank's high interest rates, which they say are stifling business activities.
Sergei Chemezov, the CEO of the defense conglomerate Rostec, said in October that record-high interest rates were "eating up" the profit from the company's orders.
"If we continue to work like this, then most of our enterprises will go bankrupt," Chemezov said.
Economic cracks in Russia
Even Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday acknowledged that his country's economy is not in a good place — and he blamed the central bank and federal government.
The Russian leader said that the central bank could have used instruments other than interest rates to cool the economy and that the federal government could have worked with economic stakeholders to improve supply.
"There are some issues here, namely inflation, a certain overheating of the economy, and the government and the central bank are already tasked with bringing the tempo down," Putin said during his marathon annual press conference.
Price rises had been an "unpleasant and bad" outcome, he said.
Given the sweeping sanctions against Russia's economy, Nabiullina faces a challenging job to keep Russia's seemingly resilient economy going.
Economic cracks are emerging as the Kremlin focuses on shoring up its defense industry for its war in Ukraine — but at the expense of other sectors, Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center fellow wrote on Friday.
Prokopenko, a former Russian central bank official, wrote that growth momentum could stall next year, with social and fiscal challenges developing into crises around 2026.
Eliminated from postseason contention earlier in the day, the Dallas Cowboys held off the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 26-24 Sunday, notching a fourth victory in the past five games, prompting owner and general manager Jerry Jones to say "I'm real proud of them."
Apple is reportedly developing smart home locks with face recognition tech.
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Apple is developing smart home locks with face recognition tech.
This move aligns with Apple's growing interest in the home devices market.
Apple's device would compete with Google's Nest and Amazon's Ring in home security.
Apple is reportedly working on bringing its facial recognition technology to home security.
The tech giant is developing a smart lock and doorbell that would allow residents to automatically open their home doors by scanning their faces, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.
The report said that Apple's doorbell system could work with existing third-party locks or the company could partner with one lock provider to sell a complete product. The technology is still in the early stages and could be released at the end of 2025 at the earliest, the report said.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
Not all these developments may come to life. This year, Apple scrapped its car project and stopped efforts to develop a subscription model for the iPhone.
The door device couldgive the company an opportunity for more cross-selling with its other home products and its existing lineup of devices, like the iPhone and Apple Watch.
It could also allow the iPhone maker to compete with Google's Nest and Amazon's Ring. These devices have doorbells with a motion sensor that activates the camera and records a video of the surrounding area.
Such a product could draw the company into new debates about balancing users' privacy rights and working with law enforcement. Through emergency requests, police departments have received videos from Ring without receiving consent from the owner.
Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, are known for prioritizing user privacy. In 2016, Cook refused to cooperate with the US government to unlock an iPhone used by a shooter in a mass shooting and attempted bombing in San Bernardino, California.
