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CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Tuesday said that he believes the Federal Reserve could manage to tamp down inflation without throwing the economy into a recession.
“The market hung in there, even in the face of some incredibly negative headlines,” Cramer said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Tuesday said that he believes the Federal Reserve could manage to tamp down inflation without throwing the economy into a recession.
“If we can see the end of the purchasing spree … it’s a huge positive for stocks. It helps that we’ve finally worked out the kinks in the supply chain that were creating shortages all over the place. Put it all together, and there’s a real possibility the Fed can indeed engineer that fabled soft landing for the economy,” he said.

Stocks rose on Tuesday after October producer price index data indicated that inflation is cooling, just one week after a lighter-than-expected consumer price index report spurred a rally.
“The market hung in there, even in the face of some incredibly negative headlines,” Cramer said, pointing to the Associated Press’ report that Russian missiles crossed into Poland, the FTX crypto collapse and uncertainty about the outcome of the U.S. midterm elections as examples.  
He added that in addition to the market’s resilience, retailers likely had to offload their inventory at low prices last month, which could result in another deflationary tailwind. October retail sales data is set for release on Wednesday.
“That’s good for Ollie’s, great for TJX … terrific for the consumer, amazing for the Fed, and therefore perfect for investors. The ultimate bad is a good Christmas story,” he said.
Disclaimer: Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of TJX Companies.

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Ford CEO Jim Farley said the company would be “thrilled” to have union representation at its battery plants, as the automaker attempts to source as many of its own parts as possible for EVs.
Building parts in house makes business sense but also would assist in offsetting an expected 40% reduction in labor to build electric vehicles.

Ford CEO Jim Farley (left) with
Michael Wayland / CNBC

DETROIT – Ford Motor is attempting to build as many of its own parts as possible for its electric vehicles to offset an expected 40% reduction in workers needed to build such cars and trucks, CEO Jim Farley said Tuesday.
Farley compared Ford’s latest efforts to source its own parts to the early days of the auto industry, when companies including Ford controlled most, if not all, of the components going into a vehicle.

“We’re going back to where we were at the beginning of the century. Why? Because that’s where the value creation is. It’s a huge transformation,” Farley told reporters after an auto conference for the Rainbow Push Coalition, a human and civil rights organization founded by Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.
In addition to making sense for the business, he said retaining the jobs and workforce is another reason Ford wants to build more parts in-house rather than purchasing them from suppliers.
He said Ford plans to build such businesses rather than acquire them. For its increasingly popular Mustang Mach-E crossover, the company purchased motors and batteries. Going forward, Farley said that will no longer be the case.
Ford is building twin lithium-ion battery plants in central Kentucky through a joint venture with South Korea-based SK Innovation, called BlueOvalSK, as well as a massive 3,600-acre campus in west Tennessee. The company announced the $11.4 billion investment late last year.
Such joint-venture battery plants have been a point of contention for the United Auto Workers union, as companies such as Ford and General Motors have said it will be up to workers of the plants to decide whether to unionize.

Farley reiterated those comments on Tuesday but also said Ford would be “thrilled” to have such representation.
The comments come as the United Auto Workers union is attempting to organize a joint-venture battery plant between GM and LG Energy Solution in Ohio.
Such joint-venture battery plants have been a point of contention for the United Auto Workers union, as the companies have said it will be up to workers of the plants to decide whether to unionize.
Wall Street has historically considered union representation a negative for companies, since it traditionally drives up labor costs and increases the potential for workforce disruptions such as strikes.
The UAW last month said it had filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of about 900 workers at the GM-LG joint venture, known as Ultium Cells, after the companies refused to recognize the union.

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Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav spoke Tuesday at RBC’s 2022 Global TIMT Conference in New York.
Zaslav said the advertising market was weaker than at any point during 2020’s coronavirus pandemic.
Zaslav said Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia has been “messier” than expected.

David Zaslav
Anjali Sundaram | CNBC

The advertising market is currently weaker than at any point during the coronavirus pandemic slowdown of 2020, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav said at an investment conference Tuesday.
If the ad market doesn’t improve next year, “it’s going to be hard” to hit the company’s $12 billion earnings forecast for 2023, Zaslav said at RBC’s Global TIMT Conference in New York.

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Zaslav’s comments signal a change in rhetoric from large traditional media executives who generally said this summer that advertising slumps weren’t significant for them even as digital media players saw a pullback. Advertisers have reduced spending as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates to cool inflation, pressuring equities including media companies’.
Things got “a lot worse” during the past few months, Zaslav said.
Warner Bros. Discovery has had its valuation cut in half this year. Other companies reliant on advertising, such as Snap, Meta and BuzzFeed, have all fallen more than 65% this year.
Merging Discovery with WarnerMedia earlier this year has brought a series of unforeseen challenges because some assets were “unexpectedly worse than we thought,” Zaslav said.
HBO went from making more than $2 billion in 2019 to losing about $3 billion last year as content spending surged, according to Zaslav. The CEO has changed course for HBO Max as it gets set to merge with Discovery+ next year, including eliminating low-rated shows and bigger budget movies made only for the streaming service.

“It’s messier than we thought, it’s much worse than we thought,” Zaslav said. He added, however, that he didn’t want to buy a company “that was really well run” because it would have limited the upside of the merger. Zaslav has been cutting costs since the deal closed in April and plans to lay off over 1,000 more employees before the end of the year, CNBC reported last month.

Sports rights

Zaslav also said Warner Bros. Discovery would stay disciplined when NBA rights renewal discussions accelerate next year.
“We don’t have to have the NBA,” Zaslav said. The company has plenty of sports offerings without it, he added.
Still, Zaslav reiterated he’d like to do a deal with the NBA. He recently renewed star broadcaster Charles Barkley’s contract for 10 years, though the contract includes a clause where Barkley could leave if Warner Bros. Discovery doesn’t renew its carriage agreement. The NBA’s national TV contracts expire after the 2024-25 season.
Any NBA deal will need to be future-looking, said Zaslav, incorporating both the company’s streaming service and sports assets, including Bleacher Report, which reach younger audiences.
Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery fell more than 1% on Tuesday.
WATCH: Warner Bros. Discovery surprises markets with wide losses

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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway revealed its increased stake in media company Paramount Global.
Shares of Paramount, the owner of broadcast network CBS, cable channels and streaming service Paramount+, rose Tuesday.

In this photo illustration, the Paramount Global logo is displayed on a smartphone screen.
Rafael Henrique | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Paramount Global’s stock got a boost Tuesday after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway upped its stake, a fresh signal that the media and entertainment company could be an acquisition target.
Berkshire disclosed in public filings late Monday that it now owns more than 91 million shares in Paramount. Buffett’s firm first disclosed its new stake in Paramount in May.

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Paramount’s stock closed more than 5% up at $19.44 on Tuesday.
The increased position makes Berkshire the largest outside investor of Paramount’s class B shares at around 15%, or worth about $1.7 billion, as of Monday’s closing price, Wells Fargo & Co. analyst Steven Cahall said in a note.
Paramount is controlled through its class A shares by National Amusements, chairman Shari Redstone’s holding company.
The disclosure of the initial stake had a similar affect on Paramount’s share in May.
Paramount owns “Top Gun: Maverick” movie studio Paramount Pictures, as well as the broadcast network CBS, cable channels including MTV and VH1, the premium network Showtime, and fledgling streaming service Paramount+.

The company reported earlier this month that Paramount+, its answer to other premium streaming services like Netflix and Disney+, added 4.6 million subscribers, bringing its total to 46 million customers.
KeyBanc Capital Markets said in a research note Tuesday that it interprets Berkshire’s increased position as a sign that the firm either believes Paramount will be successful in the streaming wars, or that it’s a likely acquisition target.
“We believe a more realistic outcome is Paramount is acquired by a competitor,” KeyBanc said in Tuesday’s research note, citing likely buyers as technology or media companies that could use Paramount’s film studio and library to become a top competitor.
Paramount had missed analyst expectations when it reported its third-quarter earnings earlier this month, with its quarterly revenue dropping 5% compared to the prior year as it continued to suffer from cord cutting and falling advertising revenue.
In particular the company noted that its advertising revenue was down as macroeconomic headwinds began to hit. The media industry is bracing for a downturn in advertising. Earlier on Tuesday Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said the ad market is weaker now than at any point during the coronavirus pandemic-caused slowdown of 2020.

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Drought conditions are worsening in the U.S., and that is having an outsized impact on the real estate that houses the internet.
Data centers generate massive amounts of heat through their servers because of the enormous amount of power they use. Water is the cheapest and most common method used to cool the centers.

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In just one day, the average data center could use 300,000 gallons of water to cool itself — the same water consumption as 100,000 homes, according to researchers at Virginia Tech who also estimated that one in five data centers draws water from stressed watersheds mostly in the west.
“There is, without a doubt, risk if you’re dependent on water,” said Kyle Myers, vice president of environmental health, safety & sustainability at CyrusOne, which owns and operates over 40 data centers in North America, Europe, and South America. “These data centers are set up to operate 20 years, so what is it going to look like in 2040 here, right?”
CyrusOne is formerly a REIT, but was purchased this year by investment firms KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners. When the company moved into the drought-stricken Phoenix area, it used a different, albeit more expensive method of cooling.
“That was sort of our ‘aha moment.’ where we had to make a decision. We changed our design to go to zero consumption water, so that we didn’t have that sort of risk,” said Myers.
 Realizing the water risk in New Mexico, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, ran a pilot program on its Los Lunas data center to reduce relative humidity from 20% to 13%, lowering water consumption. It has since implemented this in all of its center.

But Meta’s overall water consumption is still rising steadily, with one fifth of that water last year coming from areas deemed to have “water stress,” according to its website. It does actively restore water and set a goal last year to restore more water than it consumes by 2030, starting in the west.
Microsoft has also set a goal to be “water positive” by 2030.
 “The good news is we’ve been investing for years in ongoing innovation in this space so that fundamentally we can recycle almost all of the water we use in our data centers,” said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft. “In places where it rains, like the Pacific Northwest where we’re headquartered in Seattle, we collect rain from the roof. In places where it doesn’t rain like Arizona, we develop condensation techniques.”
While companies with their own data centers can do that, so-called co-location data centers that lease to multiple clients are increasingly being bought by private equity firms in search of high-growth real estate.
There are currently about ,1800 co-location data centers in the U.S., and that number is growing, as data centers are some of the hottest real estate around, offering big returns to investors. But the risk from drought is only getting worse. Just over half (50.46%) of the nation is in drought conditions, and over 60% of the lower 48 states, according to the latest reading from the U.S. Drought Monitor. That is a 9% increase from just one month ago. Much of the west and Midwest in ‘severe’ drought.
“We need to innovate our way out of the climate crisis. The better we innovate the cheaper it becomes, and the faster we’ll move to reaching these climate goals,” added Smith.

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The FDA said nasal spray containing up to 4mg of naloxone and autoinjectors with a 2 mg dose might be safe for people to administer without a prescription.
But the drug regulator stressed that it needed more data to make a definitive conclusion about over-the-counter use.
Opioid overdose deaths surged 65% during the Covid-19 pandemic from 47,000 in 2019 to nearly 78,000 in 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Naloxone, packaged with instructions, is one of the items given out by the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition outreach workers.
Amy Davis | Baltimore Sun | Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday indicated it might approve over-the-counter nasal sprays and autoinjectors that prevent opioid overdoses, part of its efforts to expand access to a life-saving drug called naloxone.
The FDA, in a preliminary assessment, said nasal spray containing up to 4mg of naloxone and autoinjectors that administer up to a 2 mg dose of the drug might be safe and effective for people to self administer without a prescription.

“We believe the prescription requirement for these naloxone products might not be necessary for the protection of the public health,” the agency stated in a federal register notice published Tuesday, but stressed that it needed more data to make a definitive conclusion.
Opioid overdose deaths surged 65% during the Covid-19 pandemic from 47,000 in 2019 to nearly 78,000 in 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 564,000 people have died from opioids in the U.S. since 1999 in three waves — first from prescription opioids, then from heroin and most recently from fentanyl.

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The Trump administration declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in 2017. The Health and Human Services Department has renewed the declaration every 90 days since then. The Biden administration extended the emergency again in September.
FDA Director Robert Califf, in a statement Tuesday, said the regulator is looking for ways to prevent opioid deaths by expanding access to naloxone. The FDA is encouraging manufacturers to submit applications for nonprescription use of naloxone products.
Naloxone is a medicine that rapidly reverses overdoses by binding to opioid receptors. It can quickly restore normal breathing in someone who is either breathing slowly or not at all due to an opioid overdose, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
The FDA first approved a single-use autoinjector containing naloxone in 2014 called Evzio, and a single-dose nasal spray called NARCAN in 2015. They both require prescriptions.

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Ticketmaster has extended presales for tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming “Eras” tour after fans flocked to the site, causing site disruptions and slow queues.
Swift’s latest tour, which comes on the heels of her record-breaking new album release “Midnights,” has set 52 dates so far, the singer’s largest tour to date.
Eras Tour tickets are priced from $49 to $450, with VIP packages starting at $199 and reaching $899.

Taylor Swift poses with her awards during the MTV Europe Music Awards 2022 held at PSD Bank Dome on November 13, 2022 in Duesseldorf, Germany.
Kevin Mazur | Wireimage | Getty Images

Never doubt the power of Taylor Swift.
Ticketmaster has extended presales for tickets to Swift’s upcoming “Eras” tour after fans flocked to the site, causing site disruptions and slow queues. The ticket seller took to social media to update fans about the intermittent issues its site was currently facing.

“There has been historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up to buy tickets for the TaylorSwiftTix Presale,” the company said.
Hundreds of thousands of tickets were sold, Ticketmaster said, adding that people who already secured their seats are good to go.
Swift’s latest tour, which comes on the heels of her record-breaking new album release “Midnights,” has set 52 dates so far, the singer’s largest tour to date. The “Eras” tour could break Swift’s own record for gross ticket sales in North America.
Opening acts for the U.S. leg of the tour include Paramore, Haim, Phoebe Bridgers, Beabadoobee, Girl in Red, Muna, Gayle, Gracie Abrams and Owenn.
“Eras” tour tickets are priced from $49 to $450, with VIP packages starting at $199 and reaching $899. This is Swift’s first tour since her “Reputation” stadium tour in 2018. She canceled her “Lover Fest” tour due to the pandemic.

Ticketmaster has rescheduled a number of ticket queues in order to deal with demand, including West Coast venues and Capital One onsale.
Fans took to social media to express their ire after the ticketing website appeared to crash or freeze during purchases. Some users were shown an error page stating, “We’re sorry! Something went wrong on our end and we need to start over. Broken things are a drag — our team is on it so it doesn’t happen again.”
Others complained about the long wait times and confusion over “verified fan” tickets and presale codes. 
Fans were also upset that tickets for the tour were already up for sale in the secondary market at exponential mark-ups.

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The Air Line Pilots Association told its members that Delta has moved closer to a labor agreement.
The largest U.S. airlines haven’t yet struck new labor deals with pilots’ unions.
Delta, United, American and Southwest pilots are demanding higher pay and better schedules.
Delta pilots in late October voted to authorize a potential strike.

Pilots talk after exiting a Delta Airlines flight at the Ronald Reagan National Airport on July 22, 2020 in Arlington, Virginia.
Michael A. McCoy | Getty Images

Delta Air Lines is getting closer to a labor deal with pilots, the pilots union said, marking a big improvement in a relationship that turned icy during yearslong negotiations.
A preliminary deal this year would clear a major hurdle for Delta. Other carriers, including rivals United and American, have also been unable to reach new labor agreements. Contract talks were derailed during the pandemic as travel demand plunged and carriers booked record losses.

Airlines are now profitable again, but negotiations have remained difficult throughout the industry. Delta, American, United, FedEx and Southwest pilots have picketed in recent months to demand better pay and schedules. Passenger airline pilots complained about poor quality of life from frequent flight changes and grueling schedules.
“While it is unclear exactly what the catalyst was for management’s movement toward our asks this past week, it was decisively the most productive week of negotiations” since talks opened more than three years ago, the Air Line Pilots Association said in a memo to Delta aviators Monday.
In late October, Delta pilots voted overwhelmingly to authorize a potential strike if contract talks don’t lead to an agreement.
“The overwhelming approval of the strike authorization ballot sent a resounding message to management that the Delta pilots will go the distance in these negotiations,” Capt. Jason Ambrosi, head of the pilots’ union, said in a statement.
Some major issues are still pending, such as compensation and retirement packages, the union said, but it was upbeat.

The union said it is “entirely possible” that a full agreement in principle may be reached at an upcoming session. But it said that will require management “to continue to show the motivation that resulted in progress this past week.”
Delta declined to comment.
Other labor groups are still in talks. Off-duty United pilots on Tuesday plan to demonstrate at the carrier’s Denver flight training center, while American Airlines’ flight attendants around the U.S. also plan to picket for a new contract.

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