Business

A team of scientists affiliated with Duke University found that ivermectin does not meaningful improve the recovery of people with mild to moderate Covid.
“These findings do not support the use of ivermectin in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19,” they concluded.
A previous study found that ivermectin does not lower the risk of hospitalization from Covid.
The FDA has warned people against taking the tablets for anything other than their approved use.

Ivermectin tablets arranged in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021.
Dimas Ardian | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Ivermectin, a drug once touted by conservatives as a treatment for Covid, does not meaningfully improve the recovery time for people with mild to moderate Covid-19, according a large clinical trial published in a peer-reviewed journal.
People who took ivermectin recovered from Covid in 12 days while people who didn’t take the drug recovered in 13 days, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Friday. Ivermectin has been approved to treat parasitic worms in humans, but it’s primarily used as a dewormer for horses.

“Among outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19, treatment with ivermectin, compared with placebo, did not significantly improve time to recovery,” the team of scientists led by Duke University School of Medicine wrote. “These findings do not support the use of ivermectin in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19,” they concluded.
Early on in the pandemic when there were few treatment options, ivermectin gained national notoriety when a couple groups of conservative doctors, including Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors began touting the drug on social media and elsewhere as a treatment for Covid. But there was little data backing up those claims and a study by Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care physician in Wisconsin and president of the critical care alliance, claiming it was an effective treatment was later retracted for having flawed data.
The latest trial looked at 817 people who took ivermectin tablets for three days and compared them to 774 who received a placebo. The participants who took ivermectin received a daily dose based on their weight. Recovery from Covid was defined as three consecutive days without symptoms.
One person died in the ivermectin group while not one person who received the placebo passed away. The number of people hospitalized in each group was the same at nine participants each.
The study was conducted across 93 sites in the U.S. from June 2021 through May 2022 when the delta variant and then the omicron variant were dominant.

The Food and Drug Administration has not authorized ivermectin for treating or preventing Covid and has repeatedly warned people against taking the drug for anything other than its approved purpose.
Public interest in ivermectin spiked early in the pandemic when a lab study indicated that the drug slowed replication of the virus that causes Covid in a petri dish. But several trials have now found that the ivermectin does not provide any meaningful benefit for patients against Covid.
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine, published in May, found that ivermectin did not lower the risk of hospitalization from Covid.
Ivermectin is approved in the U.S. in a liquid or paste form to treat parasites in animals. There is also a tablet version that is FDA approved to treat parasitic worms, head lice and some skin conditions in people.
“There’s a lot of misinformation around, and you may have heard that it’s okay to take large doses of ivermectin. It is not okay,” the FDA says on its website, warning people that they could overdose.
The drug regulator also sternly warned people against taking ivermectin formulations designed for animals such as horses and cows.
“For one thing, animal drugs are often highly concentrated because they are used for large animals like horses and cows, which weigh a lot more than we do— up to a ton or more. Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans,” the FDA says.

CNBC Health & Science

Read CNBC’s latest global health coverage:

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

If you’ve already maxed out 401(k) plan contributions for 2022 and want to save more, some plans allow after-tax deposits above the deferral limits.
In 2021, roughly 21% of company plans offered after-tax 401(k) contributions, compared to about 20% in 2020, according to the Plan Sponsor Council of America.

BartekSzewczyk | Getty

If you’ve already maxed out 401(k) plan contributions for 2022 and you’re eager to save more for retirement, some plans have an under-the-radar option, experts say.
For 2022, you can defer $20,500 into a 401(k), plus an extra $6,500 for investors 50 and older. But the total plan limit is $61,000 per worker, including matches, profit sharing and other deposits. And some plans let you exceed the $20,500 deferral limit with so-called after-tax contributions. 

“It’s definitely something higher-income people may want to consider at the end of the year if they’re looking for places to put additional savings,” said certified financial planner Ashton Lawrence, a partner at Goldfinch Wealth Management in Greenville, South Carolina.
More from Personal Finance:Investors can defer up to $22,500 in a 401(k) and $6,500 in IRAs in 202363% of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck as inflation outpaces wagesIRS: Here are the new income tax brackets for 2023

After-tax versus Roth accounts

After-tax contributions are different than Roth 401(k) plans. While both strategies involve saving money after taxes, there are some key differences.
For 2022, if you’re under 50, you can defer up to $20,500 of your salary into your plan’s regular pretax or Roth 401(k) account. The percentage of plans offering a Roth 401(k) saving option has surged over the past decade.

However, some plans offer additional after-tax contributions to your traditional 401(k), which allows you to save more than the $20,500 cap. For example, if you defer $20,500 and your employer kicks in $8,000 for matches and profit-sharing, you may save another $32,500 before hitting the $61,000 plan limit for 2022.

While the number of plans offering after-tax 401(k) contributions has been rising, it’s still less common among smaller companies, according to an annual survey from the Plan Sponsor Council of America.
In 2021, roughly 21% of company plans offered after-tax 401(k) contributions, compared to about 20% of plans in 2020, the survey found. And almost 42% of employers of 5,000 or more provided the option in 2021, up from about 38% in 2020.
Despite the uptick, after-tax 401(k) participation declined in 2021, dropping to about 10% from nearly 13% the previous year, the same survey showed.

Leverage the ‘mega backdoor Roth’ strategy

Once you’ve made after-tax contributions, the plan may allow what’s known as a “mega backdoor Roth” strategy, which includes paying levies on growth and moving the funds for future tax-free growth.
“That’s a nice way to go ahead and start boosting that tax-free money for those future years,” Lawrence said.
Depending on the plan rules, you may transfer the money to a Roth 401(k) within the plan or to a separate Roth individual retirement account, explained Dan Galli, a CFP and owner at Daniel J. Galli & Associates in Norwell, Massachusetts. And with many details to consider, working with an advisor may be worthwhile.
However, “there’s a fair number of professionals — from CPAs, attorneys, wealth managers and financial planners — who don’t understand or are not familiar with in-plan Roth [401(k)] rollovers,” he said.  

There’s a fair number of professionals — from CPAs, attorneys, wealth managers and financial planners — who don’t understand or are not familiar with in-plan Roth [401(k)] rollovers.

Owner at Daniel J. Galli & Associates

While the “knee-jerk reaction” is to roll after-tax 401(k) funds out of the plan into a Roth IRA, investors need to “know the rules” and possible downsides, such as losing access to institutional pricing and funds, Galli said.
“There’s no right or wrong,” he said. “It’s just understanding the advantages, and my impression is most people don’t understand that you can do this all within the 401(k).”

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

The racial wealth gap is estimated to be at least $14 trillion, up from $11 trillion in 2020.
JPMorgan’s Advancing Black Wealth Tour is part of a $30 billion, five-year commitment the bank made in 2020.
“When we look at the Black community historically, there has been a very significant gap in terms of awareness of how to grow wealth,” said Justin Grant, executive director of JPMorgan’s Advancing Black Pathways education and training program.

JPMorgan Chase brought its Advancing Black Wealth Tour to Philadelphia on October 8, 2022.
Photo: Steven CW Taylor & Salim Weldon of Steven Taylor Photography

A new endeavor from JPMorgan Chase is trying to help close the racial wealth gap.
The bank’s Advancing Black Wealth Tour, launched this spring, aims to give attendees the tools they need to manage their finances and build sustainable wealth — even with the threat of a possible recession on the horizon.

The most recent tour stop was in Philadelphia earlier this month. Previous stops also included Los Angeles and New Orleans. More events are planned for 2023.
“When we look at the Black community historically, there has been a very significant gap in terms of awareness of how to grow wealth,” said Justin Grant, executive director of JPMorgan’s Advancing Black Pathways education and training program. The tour is a collaboration between Advancing Black Pathways and local Chase bank leaders.
“We want it to be actionable,” Grant said. “We don’t want to just talk to people, inspire them and then they leave and forget everything. We’re going to provide them with very constructive tools and resources so they can take what they learn and act on it.”
The racial wealth gap describes the disparity in wealth between Black and white households in the United States. It’s significant: During the first quarter of 2022, the average Black family had 24 cents for every dollar of wealth held by white families, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Collectively, the racial wealth gap is estimated to be at least $14 trillion, according to William A. Darity, Jr., director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. The gap has grown from $11 trillion in 2020 due to the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.

Business efforts to close the gap

JPMorgan’s Advancing Black Wealth Tour is part of a $30 billion, five-year commitment the bank made in 2020 to provide economic opportunities to Black and Latino communities. Other elements of its plans include expanding mortgage and banking access for those underserved communities.
From October 2020 through the end of 2021, JPMorgan has deployed or committed more than $18 billion toward that goal.
The bank is one of several large companies that have made similar commitments in recent years focused on closing the racial wealth gap. Here are some of them:

Salesforce sponsors a National Black Business Month Block Party Summit that offers panels and discussions about creating and scaling Black businesses. In 2020, the software giant committed to $410 million in efforts to address racial inequality and in September announced it had reached its goal of doubling Black representation in U.S leadership positions set in 2020.

Microsoft launched its Black Partner Growth Initiative Accelerator in January to support Black tech companies and entrepreneurs, and has committed to spending $500 million with Black suppliers by 2025.

Walmart has committed $100 million to address “systemic disparities” through its Walmart.org Center for Racial Equity. In 2021, it also announced a partnership with C2FO to provide early payments to Black and diverse Walmart suppliers to increase their working capital and help them scale up their businesses.

Darity, who is also the founding director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke, said such business efforts so help the Black community but that fully closing the racial wealth gap requires a multi-faceted approach involving direct federal action.

Prepare for ‘a feast after the famine’

JPMorgan Chase brought its Advancing Black Wealth Tour to Philadelphia on October 8, 2022.
Photo: Steven CW Taylor & Salim Weldon of Steven Taylor Photography

During the recent Advancing Black Wealth Tour stop in Philadelphia, bank executives and financial influencers shared the stage on a Saturday morning, offering insights to a crowd of more than 300 people. Many of the presentations focused on how attendees could preserve and build wealth even in tough economic times.
“Since the beginning of time, whenever there has been a famine, there has been a feast after the famine,” said financial coach Lynn Richardson during one of the day’s first sessions. “We have to be ready for the come up, whether the come up is in stock, whether it is in real estate, whether it is some other investment.”
In another presentation, Milan Harris, founder and CEO of apparel brand Milano Di Rouge, shared her entrepreneurship journey. Her company started in 2012 with a single shirt and has grown into a streetwear brand with a retail location, online store and millions in annual sales, according to the company website.
“If I go to sleep with a goal, I wake up with a purpose,” Harris told the crowd,. “I want you guys to see a young black girl from the ‘hood and know if I can do it, you can do it, too.”

Financial influencer Ian Dunlap, also known as “The Master Investor,” focused on the power of investing and building wealth for future generations. Dunlap encouraged the audience to diversify their finances to protect against a possible economic downturn.
“You want to get to four core investments that you want to be in,” he said during his session, encouraging attendees to create a personalized investment portfolio.
Dunlap told CNBC his goal is to break down the barriers between the Black investor and institutions.
“I want to build a financial supply chain,” Dunlap said. “If we are going to have financial freedom and financial literacy, after we make the money where are we going to take it?
“I want to rebuild the relationship between the customer and the bank or institution,” he said. “I think we’re very fractured. The big win for the long term on the institution side is to have a bigger client base that is more loyal. For the investor, less worrying and concern.”
More from Personal Finance:33% of job seekers wouldn’t even go to a job interview without seeing the salary firstYour ‘personal inflation rate’ varies by where you live, among other factorsEven amid inflation and recession worries, there are opportunities to build wealth, top-ranked advisors say

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Police have arrested two climate activists who threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting in a museum in Germany to protest fossil fuel production.
The protesters on Sunday targeted Monet’s “Les Meules” at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, a city on the border of Berlin.
The German climate group Last Generation took credit for the stunt, which caused no damage to the art.

Police have arrested two climate activists who threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting in a museum in Germany to protest fossil fuel production, a stunt which caused no damage to the art.
The protesters on Sunday targeted Monet’s “Les Meules” at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, a city on the border of Berlin. The impressionist painting, which was enclosed behind protective glass, sold for $110.7 million at a 2019 auction.

The German climate group Last Generation took credit for the stunt. The group posted video footage on Twitter showing a man and a woman tossing mashed potatoes at the painting, kneeling in front of it and gluing their hands to the wall.

Climate protesters of Last Generation after throwing mashed potatoes at the Claude Monet painting “Les Meules” at Potsdam’s Barberini Museum on Sunday Oct. 24, 2022, to protest fossil fuel extraction.
Last Generation | AP

The incident was the latest attack on famous artwork carried out by protesters calling for action on climate change. Earlier this month, activists from the campaign group Just Stop Oil were arrested after throwing tomato soup on Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting in the National Gallery in London.
“We are in a climate catastrophe. And all you are afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes on a painting,” the woman shouted in German while kneeling in front of Monet’s painting. “This painting is not going to be worth anything if we have to fight over food.”
These climate protests have received widespread attention online and varying reactions, with some people criticizing activists for conducting what they see as misguided attacks of admired art in order to gain attention.
The Last Generation wrote in a statement on Twitter: “We make this #Monet the stage and the public the audience. If it takes a painting — with #MashedPotatoes or #TomatoSoup thrown at it — to make society remember that the fossil fuel course is killing us all: Then we’ll give you #MashedPotatoes on a painting!”
The Monet painting will be on display again by Wednesday, the museum said in a statement.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Hollywood talent agency CAA dropped Ye, previously known as Kanye West, as a client.
Companies are distancing themselves from Ye after recent antisemetic remarks he’s made.
Adidas has been evaluating its relationship with Ye since Oct. 6.

Kanye West attends the Givenchy Womenswear Spring/Summer 2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on October 02, 2022 in Paris, France.
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis | Corbis Entertainment | Getty Images

Major Hollywood talent agency CAA on Monday dropped Ye, also known as Kanye West, as the rapper and business mogul faces intensifying criticism over his recent antisemitic remarks.
“I can confirm that Kanye is not a client,” a CAA representative told CNBC.

The film studio MRC also said it was dropping a documentary about the artist. MRC was behind films such as “Knives Out” and television series such as “Ozark.”
CNBC has reached out to Ye’s legal team for comment.
The moves come as athletic apparel maker Adidas faces growing calls to end its relationship with Ye.
At least three legal organizations have written letters to the German company to cut ties with Ye due to his recent antisemitic comments. Adidas remains one of the few remaining partnerships after he was let go by luxury goods brand Balenciaga last week. His relationship with JPMorgan Chase also ended. Ye himself had previously ditched his relationship with Gap.
“We call on you to end your silence, condemn Kanye’s obscene antisemitism and terminate your partnership with him,” said the latest letter from the International Legal Forum, an organization representing more than 4,000 attorneys and activists.

Ye has taunted Adidas, in turn. “I can literally say antisemitic s— [to Adidas] and they can’t stop me,” West said in a video posted on Thursday.
Liora Rez, executive director of Stopantisemitism.org, wrote in response: “so I ask you, the Adidas Exec. Board, can Ye literally say anything, or will you denounce antisemitism & stop profiting off bigotry towards Jews?”
This follows a letter last week from the Anti-Defamation League urging Adidas to sever ties with the artist. The ADL compiled a list of what it deemed harmful recent comments by Ye.
CNBC has reached out to Adidas several times. Each time, the company pointed us to their Oct. 6 statement saying the relationship is “under review.”
It might be a matter of time before Adidas makes a move, however.
“We may be at the point where Adidas can’t tolerate it anymore,” said Morningstar analyst David Swartz, noting: “Adidas did overlook a lot of nonsense over the years for the sake keeping Kanye happy and keeping the relationship going.”
His relationship with Adidas goes back to 2013 and has been financially successful and high-profile, earning the company about $2 billion annually, according to Swartz.
For years, companies have tolerated Ye’s outbursts due to the fact that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but in recent weeks his behavior has become more incendiary.
Twitter and Instagram blocked him for his antisemitic remarks. In response, he agreed to purchase the right-leaning social media network Parler.
–CNBC’s Jim Forkin contributed to this report.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

By a dusty stretch of the deafening road from Chennai to Bengaluru lie three colossal, anonymous buildings. Inside, away from the din of traffic, is a high-tech facility operated by Foxconn, a Taiwanese manufacturer. A short drive away Pegatron, another Taiwanese tech firm, has erected a vast new factory of its own. Salcomp, a Finnish gadget-maker, has set one up not far away. Farther west is a 500-acre campus run by Tata, an Indian conglomerate. What these closely guarded facilities have in common is their client: a demanding and secretive American firm known locally as “the fruit company”.The mushrooming of factories in southern India marks a new chapter for the world’s biggest technology company. Apple’s extraordinarily successful past two decades—revenue up 70-fold, share price up 600-fold, a market value of $2.4trn—is partly the result of a big bet on China. Apple banked on China-based factories, which now churn out more than 90% of its products, and wooed Chinese consumers, who in some years contributed up to a quarter of Apple’s revenue. Yet economic and geopolitical shifts are forcing the company to begin a hurried decoupling. Its turn away from China marks a big shift for Apple, and is emblematic of an even bigger one for the world economy.Apple’s packaging proclaims “Designed by Apple in California”, but its gadgets are assembled along a supply chain that stretches from Amazonas to Zhejiang. At the centre is China, where 150 of Apple’s biggest suppliers operate production facilities. Tim Cook, who was Apple’s head of operations before he became chief executive in 2011, pioneered the company’s approach to contract manufacturing. A regular visitor to China, Mr Cook has maintained good relations with the Chinese government, obeying its requirements to remove apps and to hold Chinese users’ data locally, where it is available to the authorities.Now a change is under way. Mr Cook, who has not been seen in China since 2019, is wooing new partners. In May he entertained Vietnam’s prime minister, Pham Minh Chinh, at Apple’s futuristic Cupertino headquarters. Next year Apple is expected to open its first physical store in India (whose prime minister, Narendra Modi, is a fan of gold iPhones). The two countries are the main beneficiaries of Apple’s strategic shift. In 2017 Apple listed 18 large suppliers in India and Vietnam; last year it had 37. In September, to much local fanfare, Apple started making its new iPhone 14 in India, where it had previously made only older models. The previous month it was reported that Apple would soon start making its MacBook laptops in Vietnam. Some of Apple’s newer gadgets show the way things are going. Almost half its AirPod earphones are made in Vietnam and by 2025 two-thirds will be, forecasts JPMorgan Chase. The bank reckons that, whereas today less than 5% of Apple’s products are made outside China, by 2025 the figure will be 25% (see chart 1). As Apple’s production system is shifting, its suppliers are diversifying away from China, too. One crude measure of this is the share of long-term assets that Taiwanese tech-hardware and electronics firms have located in China. In 2017 the average figure was 43%. Last year that had fallen to 31%, according to our estimates using company and Bloomberg data. The most pressing reason for the scramble is the need to spread operational risk. Two decades ago the garment industry beefed up its operations outside China following the sars epidemic, which paralysed supply chains. “sars made it very clear to everyone operating in China that you needed a ‘China+1’ strategy,” says Dominic Scriven of Dragon Capital, an investment firm based in Vietnam. Covid taught tech firms the same lesson. Lockdowns in Shanghai in the first half of this year temporarily shut a factory operated by Quanta, a Taiwanese firm, which was believed to be making most of Apple’s MacBooks. Customers had to wait months. Avoiding this kind of chaos is the “primary driving force” for Apple’s supply-chain moves, according to Gokul Hariharan of JPMorgan Chase.Another motive is containing costs. Average wages in China have doubled in the past decade. By 2020 a Chinese manufacturing worker typically earned $530 a month, about twice as much as one in India or Vietnam, according to a survey by JETRO, a Japanese industry body. India’s ropey infrastructure, with bad roads and an unreliable electrical grid, held it back. But it has improved, and the Indian government has sweetened the deal with subsidies. Vietnam offers tax rebates and holidays, too, as well as free-trade deals, including one recently signed with the European Union. Bureaucracy around visas and customs remains a pain. But the work ethic is similar to that in China: “Confucius still gets them out of bed in the morning,” says one foreign executive in Vietnam.Apple also increasingly sees locals as potential customers, particularly in India, the world’s second-largest market for smartphones. Apple’s gadgets are too pricey for most Indians, but that is changing. In July Apple reported that its revenues in India had nearly doubled in the past quarter, year on year, driven by the “engine” of iPhone sales. This is diminishing China’s relative importance as a consumer market. At its high point in 2015, China accounted for 25% of Apple’s annual revenues, more than all of Europe. Since then its share has steadily shrunk, to 19% so far this financial year (see chart 2). By the sounds of it Xi Jinping, China’s president, would like it to fall further. At a Communist Party shindig on October 16th he urged “self-reliance and strength in science and technology”, suggesting that foreign importers may face stiffer competition from Chinese national champions. He repeated the phrase five times.This points to the last, but potentially most significant reason for Apple’s shift: geopolitics. Rising tensions between China and America have made China an increasingly awkward place to do business. Heightened Chinese political sensitivity has added friction on many fronts. This summer, for instance, Apple reportedly had to ask Taiwanese manufacturers to label their products “Made in Chinese Taipei” to appease newly finicky Chinese customs officials (at the risk of angering Taiwanese ones). America, for its part, has become more aggressive in its competition with China’s domestic tech industry. On October 7th America announced a ban on “us persons” working for some Chinese chipmakers. On the same day it added 30 Chinese companies to a list of “unverified” firms its officials had been unable to inspect. Apple had reportedly been about to sign a deal to buy iPhone memory chips from one such company, ymtc, which can offer low prices thanks in part to a Chinese government subsidy. Following America’s export controls that deal was put on ice, according to Nikkei, a Japanese newspaper.The question is whether moving production physically out of China will be enough to avoid future crackdowns. Even as Apple makes more of its gadgets outside China, it is no less reliant on Chinese-owned companies to build them. Chinese manufacturers such as Luxshare, Goertek and Wingtech are taking an increasing share of Apple’s business beyond China’s borders. Luxshare and Goertek are reported to be making AirPods in Vietnam, helped by the fact that some Taiwanese rivals, such as Inventec, have scaled back their work for Apple in recent years. Indian media reported in September that the Indian government might allow some Chinese companies to set up production facilities in India. Chinese companies’ share of iPhone electronics production will rise from 7% this year to 24% by 2025, believes JPMorgan Chase, which predicts that in the next three years Chinese companies will increase their share of production across Apple’s range of products.Could Chinese manufacturers outside China be targeted by American sanctions? For now this is unlikely, believes Nana Li of Impax, an asset manager. “There are no handy alternative [suppliers] available with the same level of experience, efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” so cutting them off would hurt American firms, she points out. In time, that could change. Countries like India and Vietnam are keen to build up their own suppliers. Tata is reportedly in talks with Wistron, a Taiwanese manufacturer, about making iPhones in India. Indian manufacturers report that “the fruit company” is discreetly on the hunt for local suppliers. Given the direction of relations between America and China, it is surely sensible for Apple to place some side-bets, before restrictions go any further. Chinese firms outside China are safe for now, says one Western investor in Asia. But “the noose is tightening”. ■ More

Every weekday the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a “Morning Meeting” livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here’s a recap of Monday’s key moments. Healthcare and staples leading the market Quick mentions: META, DIS, SBUX 1. Health care and consumer staples leading the market Stocks gained on Monday, with health-care and staples stocks leading the charge. Club names Constellation Brands (STZ), Eli Lilly (LLY), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) were all up, with LLY even notching a new 52-week high. Jim Cramer said that STZ and LLY are currently his favorite stocks in the Club portfolio. We like these stocks in a recessionary environment , since they all sell products that people tend to buy even in tougher economic times. We also believe that these companies’ headwinds are shifting into tailwinds, as commodity costs are going down while sales and prices remain strong. 2. Quick mentions: META, DIS, SBUX Meta (META) investor Altimeter Capital urged CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an open letter on Monday to reduce headcount expenses, limit its investment in the metaverse and bring down its annual capital expenditures. While we believe the points Altimeter made in the letter are reasonable, we still have faith in Zuckerberg. Moreover, the investments that Meta is making, for example in artificial intelligence and the metaverse, are long-term bets that will take a while to reap benefits. We remain bullish on the stock and believe the metaverse in particular is going to be a big deal. Wells Fargo and UBS Evidence Lab both wrote positively about Disney (DIS) stock recently, with the former naming it a signature pick and UBS highlighting the company’s theme parks strength and streaming subscriber growth. We like Disney and believe that it is the beginning stage of making a comeback. We also still like Starbucks (SBUX), which is among our stocks that have sizable operations in China. We believe that SBUX could be more insulated from potential business restrictions from the country, since its stores employ people local to the area. We plan to add to our position if the stock goes to $82. Shares of the coffee conglomerate were down 5.7% to $83.54 on Monday. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long STZ, LLY, JNJ, DIS, SBUX, META. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED. More

A new “Star Wars” movie is under development with a pair of buzzy names already attached, according to media reports.
Damon Lindelof, showrunner for “Lost,” “The Leftovers” and “Watchmen,” is co-writing the new Lucasfilm movie, with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy of “Ms. Marvel” signed on to direct.
The upcoming feature marks the first “Star Wars” film set for theaters since 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.”

(L-R) Regina King, Damon Lindelof attend Premiere Of HBO’s “Watchmen” at The Cinerama Dome on October 14, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.
Leon Bennett | Wireimage | Getty Images

A new “Star Wars” movie is under development with a pair of buzzy names already attached, according to media reports.
Damon Lindelof, showrunner for “Lost,” “The Leftovers” and “Watchmen,” is co-writing the new Lucasfilm movie, with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy of “Ms. Marvel” signed on to direct, according to media entertainment site Deadline.

Obaid-Chinoy is best known for directing her Oscar-winning documentary shorts “Saving Face” and “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness.”
There’s no release date for the movie, and its plot is still under wraps. Lindelof’s co-writer is also yet to be reported. But the upcoming feature marks the first “Star Wars” film set for theaters since 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.”
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” was a massive success for the franchise, grossing $1 billion at the global box office. The studio has recently been focusing its efforts on its live-action series for Disney+, including “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”
In September, Disney pulled Patty Jenkins’ “Rogue Squadron” off its release schedule. The film was announced in 2020 and had been slated for a December 2023 release.
Other “Star Wars” film projects from Taika Waititi, Rian Johnson and Kevin Feige have yet to be officially announced by the studio or given release dates.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More