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As Americans head to the polls, several key personal finance issues are weighing on voters’ minds and wallets.
Experts say key issues include Social Security, Medicare, federal tax cuts, minimum wage, unions and a possible ‘millionaire tax.’

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As Americans head to the polls, several key personal finance issues are weighing on voters’ minds and wallets.
This week, the Federal Reserve enacted its fourth consecutive 0.75 percentage point interest rate increase to fight inflation, triggering further stock market losses.

Meanwhile, recession fears are growing, with 84% of Americans worrying how a prolonged economic downturn may affect their finances, according to a MassMutual report released Thursday.  
More from Personal Finance:What the Fed’s 0.75 percentage point interest rate hike means for youDemocrats warn that Social Security, Medicare are at stakeWhat ‘millionaire tax’ plans on the ballot in California and Massachusetts mean for top earners
“The overall economy has been so important, and I think it really is influencing the elections,” said attorney Marc Gerson, member chair of the tax department at law firm Miller & Chevalier in Washington D.C.
Some issues appear on state ballots, but federal policy depends on which party controls Congress. While Republicans are favored to win the House, the Senate hinges on a handful of competitive races.
Here are five of the most pressing issues this election season — and how Tuesday’s results may affect your wallet.

1. Democrats cite threats to Social Security, Medicare

As Election Day approaches, Democrats are telling voters that Social Security and Medicare may be at risk if Republicans take control of Congress.  
“They’re coming after your Social Security and Medicare in a big way,” President Joe Biden said in a speech Tuesday in Hallandale Beach, Florida.
The Inflation Reduction Act enacted Medicare reforms to reduce prescription costs for retirees. However, Republicans could try to halt these changes, Biden said.
He also pointed to possible risks to Social Security, based on plans from certain Republicans, including Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. But both lawmakers have denied intentions to hurt the program.
Scott has called for reauthorizing Social Security and Medicare every five years in Congress, while Johnson suggests revisiting the programs annually.   

2. Republicans push for further tax cuts

Ahead of the midterms, some Republicans are calling to extend key parts of President Donald Trump’s signature 2017 tax overhaul.
These lawmakers are targeting certain provisions set to expire after 2025, including individual tax breaks, a 20% tax deduction for so-called “pass-through businesses,” where company earnings flow to individual tax returns, and more.   
“They would like those provisions, ideally, to be made permanent, but at a minimum, to be extended — and to be extended sooner rather than later to give taxpayers certainty,” said Gerson at Miller & Chevalier.  
Even if Republicans take control of both chambers, they won’t have the necessary 60 votes in the Senate to bypass the filibuster and Biden wouldn’t sign these measures into law, he said. 
However, Republicans will still try to pass these “political messaging bills,” Gerson said. “It’s really setting a major portion of the platform for the 2024 elections.” 

3. Minimum wage hikes on the horizon

Voters will decide this month whether to make certain raises to the minimum wage in Nebraska, Nevada and Washington, D.C.
In Nebraska, the measure would ratchet up the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026, up from its current $9.
Nevada’s current hourly minimum wage, meanwhile, would rise to $12 for all workers by 2024. The current minimum wage is $9.50 an hour or $10.50 an hour, depending on if a worker is offered health insurance.
The ballot measure in D.C., if it gets enough votes, would phase out the tipped wage, which allows businesses to pay their workers less than the minimum wage of $16.10 if their tips make up the difference.
Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Nov. 8 is a win for low-wage workers.
“Minimum wage increases are tremendously popular, and I’m not aware of a ballot proposal being voted on that has failed in the last two decades,” Zipperer said.

4. A possible big win for unions

Coming out of the pandemic, union support is at a record high. More than 70% of Americans approve of labor unions, a Gallup poll recently found.
The outcome of a ballot measure during the midterm election could accelerate that growth: Voters in Illinois will decide whether or not to provide workers with the fundamental right to organize and bargain collectively.
If the provision becomes law, “it will demonstrate strong popular support for labor rights in a big, important state,” said Daniel Galvin, an associate professor at Northwestern University whose research areas include workers’ rights and labor politics. “It would also signal to the rest of the country that the right to bargain collectively ought to be seen as a fundamental right worthy of constitutional protection.”

5. ‘Millionaire tax’ in California and Massachusetts

Amid the nationwide flurry of tax cuts, California and Massachusetts are voting on whether to enact a “millionaire tax” on top earners on Tuesday. 
In California, Proposition 30 would add a 1.75% levy on annual income of more than $2 million, in addition to the state’s top income tax rate of 13.3%, beginning Jan. 1. The plan aims to fund zero-emissions vehicle programs and wildfire response and prevention. 
The Fair Share Amendment in Massachusetts would create a 4% levy on yearly income above $1 million, on top of the state’s 5% flat income tax, also starting in 2023, with plans to pay for public education, roads, bridges and public transportation.
However, Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, said he does not believe the proposed millionaire taxes are part of a broader trend at the state level. 
Since 2021, some 21 states have slashed individual income taxes, and only one state, New York, and the District of Columbia have raised levies.

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An estimated 48 million Americans have some form of hearing difficulty, according to the Hearing Loss Association of America. But only about 20% of people who would benefit from a hearing aid use one.
Traditionally, they have been costly. A typical pair of hearing aids in the U.S. goes for between $2,000 and $8,000, including fitting fees and follow-up services. But a recent ruling by the Food and Drug Administration allowing for the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids could improve access for millions.

The new devices, for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss, cost as little as $199 and can be purchased at retailers such as Best Buy, CVS and Walmart.
Starkey, one of the world’s largest hearing aid manufacturers, says it has plans for an over-the-counter offering, too. Its device, called “Start Hearing One,” will be released toward the end of 2022 and cost $899 a pair. 
Stavros Basseas, co-founder and chief technology officer of manufacturer Sound World Solutions, said, “The hope is that in this country the new category will have a tremendous effect in lowering the price, not only for the over-the-counter hearing aids, which will be low, but for also the traditional hearing aids.”
Over-the-counter hearing aids could help demographics beyond America’s aging population. With more people tethered to their smartphones listening to music and watching videos, hearing loss is affecting younger generations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 1 in 6 U.S. teens has measurable hearing loss, likely the result of excessive noise exposure.
So why are hearing aids so costly, and what impact will over-the-counter devices have on people with impaired hearing?
Watch the video to learn more.

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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

It’s that time again! “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he’s giving his answers to callers’ stock questions at rapid speed.

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Hasbro Inc: “I actually don’t even like the toy companies right now. … Let’s wait for now.”

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Viatris Inc: “I don’t like those guys. I do think that [Johnson & Johnson] is going to spin off its consumer product company, and that’s going to be very, very good.”

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IAC Inc: “That stock is so down. … Do I know that that stock has to bounce back? Yes. Do I know from what level? No. But I think you’re okay.”

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Nike Inc: “I don’t think buying Nike here is that bad.”
Disclaimer: Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of Johnson & Johnson.

Jim Cramer’s Guide to Investing

Click here to download Jim Cramer’s Guide to Investing at no cost to help you build long-term wealth and invest smarter.

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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday warned investors not to let their guard down when it comes to their portfolios and be ready to take advantage of good deals.
He also previewed next week’s slate of earnings.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday warned investors not to let their guard down when it comes to their portfolios and be ready to take advantage of good deals.
“Ultimately, you’re just going to feel sorry if you don’t buy anything on the big sell-offs. When the market finally gets oversold enough, though, that’s when you need to pounce,” Cramer said.

Stocks gained on Friday but finished a volatile week lower, with losses spurred by hotter-than-expected economic data, the Federal Reserve’s 75 basis point rate hike and its hawkish rhetoric on inflation.
“We’re in a wildly emotional moment that has a lot to do with how individual companies are faring and a lot to do with what Wall Street expects of them. The bottom line? Until these expectations are wrenched lower, you shouldn’t feel safe in anything,” he said.
Cramer said that he’s watching for the consumer price index release next week, along with slated speeches from Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester that could further shake the market.
He also previewed next week’s schedule of earnings. All earnings and revenue estimates are courtesy of FactSet.
Monday: BioNTech, Take-Two Interactive

BioNTech

Q3 2022 earnings release at 5 a.m. ET; conference call at 8 a.m. ET
Projected EPS: $3.34
Projected revenue: $2.02 billion

Investors bullish on BioNTech should cross their fingers that the company reports that China ordered “over a billion” Covid-19 vaccines, he said.
Take-Two Interactive

Q2 2023 earnings at 4:05 p.m. ET; conference call at 4:30 p.m. ET
Projected EPS: $1.37
Projected revenue: $1.55 billion

Cramer said that it’s an injustice that the company is known as a pandemic play.
Tuesday: GlobalFoundries, Disney, AMC Entertainment
GlobalFoundries

Q3 2022 earnings release before the bell; conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET
Projected EPS: 62 cents
Projected revenue: $2.05 billion

He said he’s interested in knowing if the chip shortage will get better before the economy takes a turn for the worse.
Disney

Q4 2022 earnings release at 4:05 p.m. ET; conference call at 4:30 p.m. ET
Projected EPS: 55 cents
Projected revenue: $21.28 billion

The Charitable Trust is ready to buy more shares of Disney if it comes down enough, Cramer said.
AMC Entertainment

Q3 2022 earnings release at 4:15 p.m. ET; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
Projected loss: 22 cents per share
Projected revenue: $961 million

He said that while AMC could turn a profit in its latest quarter, he wouldn’t bet on it.
Wednesday: Wynn Resorts

Q3 2022 earnings release at 4 p.m. ET; conference call at 4:30 p.m. ET
Projected loss: $1.14 per share
Projected revenue: $871 million

Cramer said that his Charitable Trust is sticking with the stock.
Thursday: Compass, Matterport, Toast
Compass

Q3 2022 earnings release after the bell; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
Projected loss: 29 cents per share
Projected revenue: $1.45 billion

Matterport

Q3 2022 earnings release after the close; conference call at 4:30 p.m. ET
Projected loss: 13 cents per share
Projected revenue: $36 million

“The era of excess allowed everyone and anything to come public, so they did,” Cramer said of Compass and Matterport.
Toast

Q3 2022 earnings release at 4:05 p.m. ET; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
Projected loss: 8 cents per share
Projected revenue: $720 million

Toast has a good product, but a good product does not necessarily make for a good stock, Cramer said.
Disclaimer: Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of Disney and Wynn Resorts.

Jim Cramer’s Guide to Investing

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DraftKings stock sank 26% after the company reported monthly users for the quarter that fell short of estimates.
The company raised its revenue forecasts for 2022.

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Shares of DraftKings closed down 28% on Friday after the sports betting company reported slower monthly customer growth in the third quarter that fell short of estimates.
The company raised its revenue guidance for the year, however, after revenue for the quarter came in above Wall Street expectations. Its loss for the period wasn’t as steep as expected.

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, DraftKings said its monthly unique paying customers increased to 1.6 million, up about 22% from 1.3 million a year ago. That was short of the 2 million that analysts projected, according to StreetAccount, and slower than in the previous two quarters.
DraftKings said the expansion of its online Sportsbook product, launched in September, will help drive customer acquisition, engagement and retention.
Following the launch of its online Sportsbook in Kansas in September, DraftKings said it is live with mobile sports betting in 18 states, representing about 37% of the U.S. population. It said it plans to launch in Maryland, Puerto Rico, Ohio and Massachusetts pending licensure and regulatory approvals.
“Our team continued to drive top-line growth through highly effective customer engagement and compelling product and technology enhancements while remaining focused on our path to profitability,” said Jason Robins, DraftKings’ co-founder and CEO.
For the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company reported a net loss of about $450 million, or $1 a share, compared with a loss of $545 million for the same period last year. Analysts expected a loss of $1.04 per share.

Revenue for the period rose to $502 million, which was higher than the $437 million Wall Street expected.
The company raised its revenue guidance for 2022 to a range of $2.16 billion to $2.19 billion, up from its previous estimate of between $2.08 billion and $2.18 billion. 

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The former CEOs of MoviePass and its parent company have been charged with fraud, according to the Justice Department.
The indictment alleges that Theodore Farnsworth and Mitchell Lowe misled investors and were aware that the company’s unlimited movie offer was unsustainable at $9.95 per month.
The former CEOs are charged with one count of securities fraud and three counts of wire fraud. If convicted, they each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

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Former executives at MoviePass and its parent company have been charged with fraud, according to a federal indictment that was unsealed Friday.
Theodore Farnsworth, 60, former CEO of Helios & Matheson, and Mitchell Lowe, 70, former CEO of MoviePass, are charged with misleading investors and making false statements about the movie subscription service to boost the stock price of its parent company, Helios & Matheson Analytics.

The indictment alleges that Farnsworth and Lowe in 2017, while describing the company’s $9.95 “unlimited” movie plan as thoroughly tested, sustainable and profitable, were aware that MoviePass’s offer was a marketing gimmick and that its parent company did not possess the technology or capability to monetize subscriber data.
Nor had the company done the rigorous marketing testing that it claimed to have completed, the Justice Department said.
MoviePass skyrocketed to popularity in 2017 because of its seemingly too-good-to-be-true unlimited movie pass that initially offered customers one movie voucher per day for $30 to $40 a month. The hope was that most subscribers wouldn’t actually use the service regularly, in the same way that gyms are able to offset cheap monthly fees because of no-show subscribers.
However, many MoviePass subscribers began to use the service too frequently and the company started to lose money quickly. In an effort to stay afloat, MoviePass began limiting the number of titles available among other restrictions. The service underwent several iterations of price and offerings before shuttering.
Without the backing of movie theaters, which had balked at MoviePass’ business model and intrusion into the industry, the company was forced to dismantle in September 2019.

Co-founder Stacy Spikes regained ownership of the company in late 2021, but a new version of MoviePass has yet to make its official debut. The company is currently planning beta tests in several cities including Chicago. The expectation is that the new subscription will offer three pricing tiers for $10, $20 and $30, respectively, with each level having a certain number of credits that can be used towards redeeming movie tickets.
Lowe and Farnsworth do not appear to be connected to the new iteration of MoviePass.
According to the DOJ document, the pair also allegedly knew that the price of MoviePass’ unlimited plan would not be enough to offset losses. The plan was to grow new subscribers, inflate Helios & Matheson’s stock and attract new investors, the indictment said.
The news of the indictment comes after the Securities and Exchange Commission in September accused Lowe, Farnsworth and another former MoviePass executive, Khalid Itum, of making false statements and falsifying records.
“The indictment repeats the same allegations made by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Commission’s recent complaint filed on September 27th against Mr. Farnsworth, concerning matters that were publicly disclosed nearly three years ago and widely reported by the news media,” said Chris Bond, a spokesman for Farnsworth in a statement. “As with the SEC filing, Mr. Farnsworth is confident that the facts will demonstrate that he has acted in good faith, and his legal team intends to contest the allegations in the indictment until his vindication is achieved.”
Representatives for Lowe did not immediately respond to request for comment.
On Friday, the Justice Department said Farnsworth and Lowe are alleged to have falsely claimed that the number of tickets MoviePass subscribers were purchasing as part of their subscription was declining over time. Instead, the pair had directed employees to implement tactics to prevent subscribers from using their unlimited service, according to prosecutors.
The former CEOs are charged with one count of securities fraud and three counts of wire fraud. If convicted, they each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

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Visiting Helion Energy’s enormous workspace and lab in Everett, Wash., pulled the idea of fusion out of the completely fantastical and into the potentially real for me.
I happened to visit on a day when the air quality was so bad from nearby wildfires that Helion asked its employees to stay home for their health and safety.
It was a weird juxtaposition of hope and dread. “The cognitive dissonance of sometimes what we see out in the world, and what we get to build here is pretty extreme,” said CEO and co-founder David Kirtley.

Cat Clifford, CNBC climate tech and innovation reporter, at Helion Energy on October 20.
Photo taken by Jessie Barton, communications for Helion Energy, with Cat Clifford’s camera.

On Thursday, October 20, I took a reporting trip to Everett, Wash., to visit Helion Energy, a fusion startup that has raised raised nearly $600 million from a slew of relatively well known Silicon Valley investors, including Peter Thiel and Sam Altman. It’s got another $1.7 billion in commitments if it hits certain performance targets.
Because nuclear fusion has the potential to make limitless quantities of clean energy without generating any long-lasting nuclear waste, it’s often called the “holy grail” of clean energy. The holy grail remains elusive, however, because recreating fusion on earth in a way that generates more energy that is required to ignite the reaction and can be sustained for an extended period of time has so far remained unattainable. If we could only manage to commercialize fusion here on earth and at scale, all our energy woes would be solved, fusion proponents say. 

Fusion has also been on the horizon for decades, just out of reach, seemingly firmly entrenched in a techno-utopia that exists only in science fiction fantasy novels.

David Kirtley (left), a co-founder and the CEO at Helion, and Chris Pihl, a co-founder and the chief technology officer at Helion.
Photo courtesy Cat Clifford, CNBC.

But visiting Helion Energy’s enormous workspace and lab pulled the idea of fusion out of the completely fantastical and into the potentially real for me. Of course, “potentially real” doesn’t mean that fusion will be a commercially viable energy source powering your home and my computer next year. But it no longer feels like flying a spaceship to Pluto.
As I walked through the massive Helion Energy buildings in Everett, one fully operational and one still under construction, I was struck by how workaday everything looked. Construction equipment, machinery, power cords, workbenches, and countless spaceship-looking component parts are everywhere. Plans are being executed. Wildly foreign-looking machines are being constructed and tested.

The Helion Energy building under construction to house their next generation fusion machine. The smokey atmosphere is visible.
Photo courtesy Cat Clifford, CNBC.

For the employees of Helion Energy, building a fusion device is their job. Going to the office every day means putting part A into Part B and into part C, fiddling with those parts, testing them, and then putting them with more parts, testing those, taking those parts apart maybe when something doesn’t work right, and then putting it back together again until it does. And then moving to Part D and Part E.
The date of my visit is relevant to this story, too, because it added a second layer of strange-becomes-real to my reporting trip. 

On October 20, the Seattle Everett region was blanketed in dangerous levels of wildfire smoke. The air quality index for Everett was 254, making it the worst air quality in the world at that time, according to IQAir.

Helion Energy’s building under construction to house the seventh generation fusion machine on a day when wildfire smoke was not restricting visibility.
Photo courtesy Helion Energy

“Several wildfires burning in the north Cascades were fueled by warm, dry, and windy weather conditions. Easterly winds flared the fires as well as drove the resulting smoke westwards towards Everett and the Seattle region,” Christi Chester Schroeder, the Air Quality Science Manager at IQAir North America, told me.
Global warming is helping to fuel those fires, Denise L. Mauzerall, a professor of environmental engineering and international affairs at Princeton, told me.
“Climate change has contributed to the high temperatures and dry conditions that have prevailed in the Pacific Northwest this year,” Mauzerall said. “These weather conditions, exacerbated by climate change, have increased the likelihood and severity of the fires which are responsible for the extremely poor air quality.”
It was so bad that Helion had told all of its employees to stay home for the first time ever. Management deemed it too dangerous to ask them to leave their houses.
The circumstances of my visit set up an uncomfortable battle. On the one hand, I had a newfound sense of hope about the possibility of fusion energy. At same time, I was wrestling internally with a deep sense of dread about the state of the world.
I wasn’t alone in feeling the weight of the moment. “It is very unusual,” Chris Pihl, a co-founder and the chief technology officer at Helion, said about the smoke.
Pihl has worked on fusion for nearly two decades now. He’s seen it evolve from the realm of physicist academics to a field followed closely by reporters and collecting billions in investments. People working on fusion have become the cool kids, the underdog heroes. As we collectively blow past any realistic hope of staying within the targeted 1.5 degrees of warming and as global energy demand continues to rise, fusion is the home run that sometimes feels like the only solution.
“It’s less of a academic pursuit, an  altruistic pursuit, and it’s turning into more of a survival game at this point I think, with the way things are going,” Pihl told me, as we sat in the empty Helion offices looking out at a wall of gray smoke. “So it’s necessary. And I am glad it is getting attention.”

How Helion’s technology works

CEO and co-founder David Kirtley walked me around the vast lab space where Helion is working on constructing components for its seventh-generation system, Polaris. Each generation has proven out some combination of the physics and engineering that is needed to bring Helion’s specific approach to fusion to fruition. The sixth-generation prototype, Trenta, was completed in 2020 and proved able to reach 100 million degrees Celsius, a key milestone for proving out Helion’s approach.
Polaris is meant to prove, among other things, that it can achieve net electricity — that is, to generate more than it consumes — and it’s already begun designing its eighth generation system, which will be its first commercial grade system. The goal is to demonstrate Helion can make electricity from fusion by 2024 and to have power on the grid by the end of the decade, Kirtley told me.

Cat Clifford, CNBC climate tech and innovation reporter, at Helion Energy on October 20. Polaris, Helion’s seventh prototype, will be housed here.
Photo taken by Jessie Barton, communications for Helion Energy, with Cat Clifford’s camera.

Some of the feasibility of getting fusion energy to the electricity grid in the United States depends on factors Helion can’t control — establishing regulatory processes with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and licensing processes to get required grid interconnect approvals, a process which Kirtley has been told can range from a few years to as much as ten years. Because there are so many regulatory hurdles necessary to get fusion hooked into the grid, Kirtley said he expects their first paying customers are likely to be private customers, like technology companies that have power hungry data centers, for example. Working with utility companies will take longer.
One part of the Polaris system that looks perhaps the most otherworldly for a non fusion expert (like me) the Polaris Injector Test, which is how the fuel for the fusion reactor will get into the device.
Arguably the best-known fusion method involves a tokamak, a donut-shaped device that uses super powerful magnets to hold the plasma where the fusion reaction can occur. An international collaborative fusion project, called ITER (“the way” in Latin), is building a massive tokamak in Southern France to prove the viability of fusion.
Helion is not building a tokamak. It is building a long narrow device called a Field Reversed Configuration, or FRC, and the next version will be about 60 feet long.
The fuel is injected in short tiny bursts at both ends of the device and an electric current flowing in a loop confines the plasma. The magnets fire sequentially in pulses, sending the plasmas at both ends shooting towards each other at a velocity greater than one million miles per hour. The plasmas smash into each other in the central fusion chamber where they merge to become a superhot dense plasma that reaches 100 million degrees Celsius. This is where fusion occurs, generating new energy. The magnetic coils that facilitate the plasma compression also recover the energy that is generated. Some of that energy is recycled and used to recharge the capacitors that originally powered the reaction. The additional extra energy is electricity that can be used.  

This is the Polaris Injector Test, where Helion Energy is building a component piece of the seventh generation fusion machine. There will be one of these on each side of the fusion device and this is where the fuel will get into the machine.
Photo courtesy Cat Clifford, CNBC.

Kirtley compares the pulsing of their fusion machine to a piston.
“You compress your fuel, it burns very hot and very intensely, but only for a little bit. And the amount of heat released in that little pulse is more than a large bonfire that’s on all the time,” he told me. “And because it’s a pulse, because it’s just one little high intensity pulse, you can make those engines much more compact, much smaller,” which is important for keeping costs down.
The idea is actually not new. It was theorized in the 1950s and 60s, Kirtley said. But it was not possible to execute until modern transistors and semiconductors were developed. Both Pihl and Kirtley looked at fusion earlier in their careers and weren’t convinced it was economically viable until they came to this FRC design. 
Another moat to cross: This design does use a fuel that is very rare. The fuel for Helion’s approach is deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen that is fairly easy to find, and helium three, which is a very rare type of helium with one extra neutron.
“We used to have to say that you had to go into outer space to get helium three because it was so rare,” Kritley said. To enable their fusion machine to be scaled up, Helion is also developing a way to make helium three with fusion.

A dose of hope

There is no question that Helion has a lot of steps and processes and regulatory hurdles before it can bring unlimited clean energy to the world, as it aims to do. But the way it feels to walk around an enormous wide-open lab facility — with some of the largest ceiling fans I have ever seen — it seems possible in a way that I hadn’t ever felt before. Walking back out into the smoke that day, I was so grateful to have that dose of hope.
But most people were not touring the Helion Energy lab on that day. Most people were sitting stuck inside, or putting themselves at risk outside, unable to see the horizon, unable to see a future where building a fusion machine is a job that is being executed like a mechanic working in a garage. I asked Kirtley about the battling feeling I had of despair at the smoke and hope at the fusion parts being assembled.
“The cognitive dissonance of sometimes what we see out in the world, and what we get to build here is pretty extreme,” Kirtley said.
“Twenty years ago, we were less optimistic about fusion.” But now, his eyes glow as he walks me around the lab. “I get very excited. I get very — you can tell — I get very energized.”
Other young scientists are also excited about fusion too. At the beginning of the week when I visited, Kirtley was at the American Physics Society Department of Plasma Physics conference giving a talk.
“At the end of my talk, I walked out and there were 30 or 40 people that came with me, and in the hallway, we just talked for an hour and a half about the industry,” he said. “The excitement was huge. And a lot of it was with younger engineers and scientists that are either grad students or postdocs, or in the first 10 years of their career, that are really excited about what private industry is doing.”

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Shares of Carvana posted their worst day on record Friday after the company missed Wall Street’s top- and bottom-line expectations for the third quarter.
The stock cratered 39% to end the day at $8.76 a share.
Morgan Stanley on Friday pulled its rating and price target on Carvana.

Source: NYSE

Shares of Carvana posted their worst day on record Friday after the company missed Wall Street’s top- and bottom-line expectations for the third quarter as the outlook for used cars falls from record demand, pricing and profits during the coronavirus pandemic.
The stock cratered 39% to end the day at $8.76 a share — slightly higher than its worst-ever closing price of $8.72 a share from May 2017. Shares of the online used car retailer have plummeted by 96% this year, after hitting an all-time intraday high of $376.83 per share on Aug. 10, 2021

The stock’s all-time low of $8.14 a share occurred less than a week after it started trading publicly on April 28, 2017. Carvana’s previous worst day of trading was a 26.4% decline on March 18, 2020.
Morgan Stanley on Friday pulled its rating and price target on Carvana. Analyst Adam Jonas cited deterioration in the used car market and a volatile funding environment for the change.
“While the company is continuing to pursue cost cutting actions, we believe a deterioration in the used car market combined with a volatile interest rate/funding environment (bonds trading at 20% yield) add material risk to the outlook, contributing to a wide range of outcomes (positive and negative),” he wrote in a note to investors Friday.
Pricing and profits of used vehicles have been significantly elevated as consumers who couldn’t find or afford to purchase a new vehicle opted for a pre-owned car or truck. Inventories of new vehicles have been significantly depleted during the coronavirus pandemic largely due to supply chain problems, including an ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips.
But rising interest rates, inflation and recessionary fears have led to less willingness by consumers to pay the record prices, leading to declines for Carvana and other used vehicle companies such as CarMax.

Large franchised new and used vehicle dealers such as Lithia Motors and AutoNation warned of softening in the used vehicle market when recently reporting their third-quarter results.

Carvana CEO and cofounder Ernie Garcia on a call Thursday described the next year as “a difficult one” for the company, citing a normalization of the used vehicle industry from its inflated levels and increasing interest rates, among other factors.
“Cars are an expensive, discretionary, often-financed purchase that inflated much more than other goods in the economy over the last couple years and it is clearly having an impact on people’s purchasing decisions,” he said.
Garcia described the end of the third quarter as the “most unaffordable point ever” for customers who finance a vehicle purchase.
Nearly all aspects of the Carvana’s operations declined from a year earlier during the third quarter, including a 31% decrease in gross profit to $359 million. Its retail units sold declined 8% compared with the third quarter of 2021 to 102,570 vehicles, while gross profit per unit — a highly watched metric by investors — declined by more than $1,100 to $3,500.
Carvana posted a wider-than-expected loss of $2.67 per share. Revenue also came in below expectations at $3.39 billion, compared with estimates of $3.71 billion, according to Refinitiv.
— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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