Economy

The average contract rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped 22 basis points to 7.07% in the week ended July 7, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday in their weekly recap of home loan applications activity. That was the highest since November and brings that rate to within 10 basis points of last October’s two-decade high in home loan borrowing costs.”Incoming economic data continue to send mixed signals about the economy, with the overall impact leaving Treasury yields higher last week as markets expect that the Federal Reserve will need to hold rates higher for longer to slow inflation. All mortgage rates in our survey followed suit,” said MBA Deputy Chief Economist Joel Kan.The rate on “jumbo” loans for amounts greater than $726,200 rose to 7.04%, the highest since MBA began tracking that data series in 2011.Rate futures markets expect the Fed to resume interest rate hikes two weeks from now after foregoing an increase last month to take the time to assess the effects of the aggressive actions it has taken since March 2022 to contain the highest inflation in four decades. The Fed has lifted rates by 5 percentage points since then from near zero, and officials have signaled that rates may rise by perhaps another half point by year end. More

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s economy is so far proving resilient to a surge in interest rates over the past year and a half, but it will take time for the full impact to feed through, the Bank of England said on Wednesday.The Bank last month raised rates to 5%, up from 0.1% at the end of 2021, raising concerns about a hit to households, businesses and the broader financial sector that could push the economy into a recession.But in a half-yearly assessment of the health of the financial system, the BoE said there was no reason for alarm.”The UK economy and financial system has so far been resilient to interest rate risk,” BoE Governor Andrew Bailey told a press conference.”We will continue to monitor credit conditions for any signs of tightening which are not explained satisfactorily by changes in the macroeconomic outlook.”The proportion of households with heavy mortgage burdens was rising. But even considering the higher cost of living – with inflation at 8.7% in May – it was likely to remain below the peak seen in 2007.On Tuesday, average interest rates for new two-year fixed-rate mortgages – the most common form of housing finance – rose above their peak following last September’s mini-budget to a 15-year high, according to data provider Moneyfacts.Britain’s finance industry estimates 800,000 households will need to refinance onto more expensive mortgages in the second half of 2023, and a further 1.6 million in 2024.The Bank said the typical mortgage holder refinancing later this year would pay an extra 220 pounds ($285) a month, and that, by the end of 2026, nearly 1 million households would be paying at least 500 pounds a month more.The number of households spending more than 70% of their income on mortgage payments, after tax and other essential spending, is on course to rise to 650,000 by the end of the year, 2.3% of the total and lower than the 3.4% peak in 2007.Consumer credit is a bigger source of trouble, with around 10% of households spending more than 80% of income after taxes, essentials and housing costs on servicing debt, up from 9% a year ago.UK BANKS ‘ROBUST’The BoE said British banks were less exposed than households to the adverse effects of higher interest rates, especially compared with financial institutions in other countries, while the corporate sector remained “broadly resilient”.”Nevertheless, higher financing costs are likely to put pressure on some smaller or highly leveraged firms,” it added.The BoE saw particular risks in global commercial real estate and from corporate borrowing in the private credit and leveraged lending markets.Britain’s eight largest lenders all have enough capital to cope with higher interest rates, and no financial need to keep down rates for savers or treat borrowers harshly, the BoE said following its annual ‘stress test’ of the sector.”Major UK banks’ capital and liquidity positions remain robust and profitability has increased, which enables them both to improve their capital positions and to support their customers.”Bank shares rallied on the prospect of bigger payouts to shareholders.However, recent data has shown the biggest year-on-year fall in house prices since 2011 and mortgage lending has fallen sharply over the past year.”Many (lenders) are cutting margins in an attempt to maintain business levels, and they may have to revisit their criteria if they hope to maintain a healthy level of lending,” said Simon Gammon, managing partner at mortgage broker Knight Frank Finance.The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee left banks’ counter-cyclical capital buffer, a tool used to manage risk and lending over the credit cycle, unchanged at 2%. The Bank added that, following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, it was working with the finance ministry to ensure that there were options to smoothly wind up small banks that were exempt from some requirements applying to larger ones.($1 = 0.7726 pounds) More

BENGALURU (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury yields will broadly fall over the coming year on expectations the Federal Reserve will soon end its hiking cycle, according to fixed-income strategists polled by Reuters, who also predicted a steeper yield curve in the year ahead.Since its March 24 low, the yield on the U.S. 2-year Treasury note surged over 150 basis points, reaching a sixteen-year high of 5.12% last week as a tight labour market and still-sticky inflation suggested further rate hikes are needed.But the yield has since fallen around 25 bps as the U.S. economy created the fewest jobs in about two-and-a-half years and markets interpreted recent statements from Fed officials as indicating the hiking cycle was nearing its end.This recent decline in yields will continue over the coming year, according to the July 5-12 Reuters poll of 75 bond strategists.”Economic data right now reflects decent momentum. That is going to dissipate in the next couple of months,” said Thomas Simons, senior money markets economist at Jefferies, who expects yields to broadly fall in coming months.”The market will price in a pretty aggressive path of rate cuts coming up.”Yields on the interest-rate-sensitive U.S. two-year note will drop about 70 basis points by end-year to 4.15%, the poll showed.The benchmark U.S. 10-year note yield, currently at 3.95%, will fall to 3.50% in six months as was predicted in last month’s poll.If realized, this would narrow the spread between the two-year and ten-year Treasury yields to 65 bps by end-2023, down from around 90 bps currently.”The curve is likely to remain deeply inverted as the Fed threatens more hikes later this year. We expect gradual steepening in Q4 and more dramatic steepening in Q1 2024 when we expect the first cut,” noted Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. rates strategy at TD Securities.”Slowing inflation and labour market data should help steepen the curve.”In a continued divergence from the Fed’s view, market expectations based on interest rate futures see only one more rate hike this year, versus two predicted by the Fed. The first rate cut is currently priced in for March 2024.This has led to a decline in yields and a rise in bond market volatility.The MOVE index, the most widely-followed volatility indicator, hit a five-week high last week and is currently about 50% above its long-term average.Meanwhile, the Fed’s inflation projections are considered to be too hawkish by many who expect a steeper decline in price pressures and lower bond yields.”Even if one assumes slower progress on inflation, six-month rolling inflation (180-day moving average) will still break out of its range in the next two months – heralding the end of ‘sticky inflation’ that has consumed markets in the last two years,” noted Guneet Dhingra and Allen Liu, bond strategists at Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). More

OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Bank of Canada (BoC) on Wednesday is expected to hike its key overnight rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a 22-year high of 5.00% as economic growth continues to fuel a tight labor market and sticky underlying inflation, analysts said.Last month, the Canadian central bank raised its overnight rate to 4.75% – also the highest level since 2001 – after a five-month pause, saying monetary policy was not restrictive enough. It then said further moves would depend on the picture painted by the latest economic data.While there have been some signs of cooling, economic growth has been resilient and the housing market has shown signs of picking up despite nine rate increases totaling 450 basis points since March of last year. The economy regained momentum in May, likely growing 0.4% on the month, after stalling in April.The BoC will announce its decision at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT).”Inflation has been running above the Bank of Canada’s (2%) target for 27 consecutive months and there’s no end in sight,” Desjardins Group economists Royce Mendes and Tiago Figueiredo said in a note. “We expect the Bank of Canada to raise its policy rate to 5.00% and leave the door open to more hikes this fall.”Twenty of 24 economists surveyed by Reuters expect the central bank to lift rates by another quarter of a percentage point and then hold them there well into 2024. Money markets see more than a 70% chance of a rate hike on Wednesday, and are fully pricing in such a move by September. Though headline inflation slowed to 3.4% in May, less than half of last year’s 8.1% peak, the three-month annualized rates of the BoC’s core measures just barely crept lower.Canada added far more jobs than expected in June, according to data published on Friday. Doug Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, said a rate hike on Wednesday is likely but not a “foregone conclusion” because the BoC could wait until September to increase borrowing costs.”It just doesn’t seem like the economy has really suffered much from the very steep rate hikes of the past year,” Porter said. “And let’s face it, inflation is still above the Bank of Canada’s 2% target.” More

Our top scoop today is on SoftBank-owned Arm, which is in talks to bring in Nvidia as an anchor investor in its New York public listing.Nvidia is one of several existing Arm partners, including Intel, that the UK-based company is hoping will take a long-term stake at the initial public offering stage, according to several people briefed on the talks.The prospective investors are still negotiating with Arm over its valuation ahead of its listing as early as September. One person familiar with the discussions said Nvidia wanted to invest at a share price that would value Arm at $35bn to $40bn, while Arm wants it to be closer to $80bn.Nvidia, which in May became the first chipmaker to hit a $1tn valuation, was forced last year to abandon a planned $66bn acquisition of Arm after the deal was challenged by regulators.Arm and Nvidia declined to comment. A person close to the situation said the talks had not been concluded and might not lead to an investment.Here’s what I’m keeping tabs on today:US inflation: The consumer price index is expected to have moderated to 3.1 per cent in June, its lowest level in more than two years. But “core” inflation is expected to be higher. Read more on what to expect from the latest US inflation report.Central banks: The Bank of Canada is expected to raise interest rates again after its latest meeting ends today while the Federal Reserve publishes its Beige Book on economic conditions. Nato: On the sidelines of day two of the military alliance’s summit in Vilnius, the G7 will announce long-term security commitments for Ukraine.Five more top stories1. Exclusive: JPMorgan is hiring dozens of bankers globally to capitalise on Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse in March. Recent hires in the UK and the US include three former SVB executives while the bank is also planning to expand its services to start-ups and venture capital-backed companies in Asia. Read more on how JPMorgan is filling the gap left by SVB.2. A US federal court ruling has helped Microsoft move closer to its purchase of Activision Blizzard after a judge dismissed the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to block the $75bn deal. The UK’s competition watchdog, which initially rejected the acquisition, signalled it was open to discussing changes to the deal that would address its concerns.Analysis: The court ruling could force the FTC, which has until tomorrow to appeal, to rethink its recent interventionist stance, say investors and analysts.3. EY China has refused to pay fees owed to its global headquarters for more than a year in a dispute over IT services. The Chinese arm says the services cannot be fully used after Beijing tightened data security rules, according to people familiar with the matter. Read more on the tussle between EY’s global bosses and its semi-independent member firms in China.4. Dozens of academics are reviewing their research on behavioural science conducted alongside Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino. It is alleged that Gino, an expert on dishonesty, manipulated data in studies behind her research papers. Read more on the escalating controversy. 5. Saudi-controlled LIV Golf proposed giving ownership stakes to star players Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy as it sought control of the sport. Newly released documents show how the Saudis tempered their ambitions in talks with the PGA Tour as the two sides moved from bitter litigation to prospective partners. Read more on the trove of emails, documents and instant messages released by a Senate committee yesterday.The Big Read

© FT montage/Lindsay DeDario

Four decades after Ronald Reagan rejected large-scale US government intervention in the economy, Joe Biden is embracing it wholeheartedly with a raft of subsidies for domestic producers in strategic sectors, in the hope of creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Will the president’s policies transform the American economy in a way that is durable and have a tangible impact that resonates with voters?We’re also reading . . . Turkey looks west: Backing Sweden’s Nato bid was a strategic move by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to ease tensions and unblock trade.Recognising the west’s hypocrisy: To tackle the threats to peace, prosperity and the planet the west must engage with China, writes Martin Wolf. But it must also engage with the rest of the world which sees it as deeply hypocritical.Corporate Japan’s hunt for investments: Unlike the 1980s, the current search is about diversifying revenue streams and not accumulating trophy assets. Chart of the day

Investors have been buying up local currency bonds issued by emerging economies in a bet that policymakers there have done a better job of battling inflation than their developed market counterparts, with the gap in government borrowing costs between the two markets falling to its lowest level in 16 years.Take a break from the newsScientists believe they are on the brink of proving the Earth has entered a new era for the first time in 11,700 years. A small lake in an area outside Toronto has been identified as the site to provide the formal reference point for the new Anthropocene epoch.Additional contributions by Tee Zhuo, Emily Goldberg and Benjamin Wilhelm More

The water consumer watchdog for England and Wales has warned companies’ plans to increase charges by up to 49 per cent by 2030 risk causing a new “crisis”, with one in four households already struggling to pay their bills. The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) said companies raising bills by £100 to pay for much-needed infrastructure upgrades could push an extra 1.1mn households into water poverty. The watchdog defines water poverty as a household spending more than 5 per cent of its income after housing costs on water bills; in 2021 it estimated that about 1.5mn of England and Wales’ roughly 25mn households were affected.Ahead of an October deadline, water companies have set out plans to increase bills to pay for an estimated £70bn of investment by 2030 in draft submissions to water regulator Ofwat. The industry regulator will decide whether to approve the proposals by December 2024. Water companies are required by Ofwat to consult consumers on any proposed price increases and have presented rises based on either this year or last year’s bills. The proposed bill levels do not include the future impact of inflation.Household water bills have already risen by an average of 7.5 per cent this year, meaning they stand at £448 a year. But water companies, under public pressure over sewage outflows and leakage, are asking for big rises in bills for the next five-year regulatory period.

You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.

Based on current levels Southern Water, which serves 4.2mn customers across Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, is proposing that bills rise by £222 — or 49 per cent — between now and 2030, according to its draft proposals.Wessex Water, which provides water to 1.4mn people across the south west of England, has proposed an increase of £204, or 43 per cent, from now to the end of the decade.Meanwhile, South East Water has said it plans to ask for an increase of between £57 and £76, equivalent to 31 per cent, between now and 2030 based on its current bills. The company’s 2.3mn customers across Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Berkshire were left without water for several days in recent months.CCW chief executive Emma Clancy called for more support for households, saying: “Without a stronger safety net for people that cannot afford their bill, there is a potential crisis waiting further downstream.” All water companies in England and Wales have social tariff schemes, which are designed to lower bills for struggling households. Companies have to consult customers to establish how much they are willing to contribute to subsidise less well-off customers.Clancy said the capacity of some companies’ social tariffs was at present “stretched almost to its limit and yet we face the prospect of many more low-income households needing help to afford large bill rises in the future”. Only a small number of companies pay towards the schemes from their own profits and more companies should follow suit, the CCW said, noting that some groups were consulting customers to see if they were willing to increase the level of cross-subsidy. Katy Taylor, chief customer officer at Southern Water, said: “We regularly listen to the views of customers from across our region when we plan future investment in our network, and we discuss the possible impacts on bills.” She added that the company offered “a minimum 45 per cent discount . . . to around 125,000 households” in need of support. Wessex Water said: “Bill projections are based on early assessments of potential increases needed to meet regulatory and legal requirements. We are pressing for changes to allow greater use of more sustainable, lower-cost nature based solutions which would mean much smaller bill increases.”Water UK, which represents the industry, said: “While it is clear bills will need to rise, the exact level is not yet known. These figures will change, because they are part of a consultation process with companies testing proposals with their customers.”South East Water declined to comment. More

More than 130 nations have extended a controversial ban on taxes aimed at corporate technology giants by another year to 2025, as they wrestle to introduce landmark measures that update the international tax system for the digital age. After three days of talks at the OECD’s Paris headquarters, most of the countries approved a statement that unveiled fresh details on plans to make the world’s largest 100 companies pay more tax where they do business. They also agreed to put on ice plans to introduce national digital services taxes for another 12 months to make more time to ratify a breakthrough global tax deal that they signed up to in the autumn of 2021 but have yet to pass. The introduction of a range of digital services taxes would be an obstacle to ratifying the deal, as having a patchwork of national measures would defeat the purpose of agreeing a co-ordinated global fix. “We are thrilled that we were able to secure approval of the outcome statement by 138 jurisdictions,” Manal Corwin, director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, told the Financial Times. She added that it showed “significant, broad-based agreement to the statement”.However, five countries, including Canada, refused to approve the extension. That sets up a clash with its neighbour the US, where many of the world’s biggest technology companies are based, and threatens to reignite trade tensions should Canada press ahead with its own plans to tax big tech. Four other countries involved in the talks did not approve the statement — Belarus, Pakistan, Russia and Sri Lanka.The talks have focused on how to implement a key plank of the global tax deal. “Pillar I” would lead to the redistribution of $200bn-worth of profits a year from multinationals to countries where sales are made, and requires a change in global tax law. But countries remain in dispute over the exact wording of the legal language. The OECD tax chief acknowledged the text would no longer be published in July, as planned. Corwin said this was because there were “a few outstanding issues between a small number of countries that have to be resolved”. However, a statement published on Wednesday morning set out new details on the conditions required to make the planned rule changes a legal reality, and the OECD remains confident that a signing ceremony proposed for the end of this year can take place. A ban on the introduction of digital service taxes was due to expire on December 31 2023. Canada has legislated for a new digital services tax to come into force on January 1 2024. People close to the negotiation confirmed Ottawa’s refusal to sign the statement was down to the extension of the ban.If the country’s digital services tax is introduced as planned, then Washington is expected to fight back on behalf of US tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. Last week US trade representative Katherine Tai, urged Canada to refrain from imposing a digital services tax while the OECD process continued.The countries, meanwhile, also agreed steps designed to ensure the deal is passed in most jurisdictions even if it is not ratified in all countries taking part in the negotiations. The US’s polarised politics make it unlikely it will be able to ratify the deal in Congress, where changes to tax treaties require a two-thirds majority in the Senate; the chamber is currently split 51 to 49 in favour of the Democrats.However, under measures agreed this week, the treaty would only need to be signed by 30 jurisdictions, as long as they account for a minimum of 60 per cent of the 100 companies affected by the changes. The countries would need to sign by the end of 2023.“There’s been a lot of discussion and speculation about the prospects of ratification in the US,” Corwin said. “But that is the third milestone [after finalisation of text and signing by countries] and our approach and our view is we need to get to the first two for that last one to be relevant.” More

The Biden administration is trying to increase renewable energy investments in distressed regions, but some are skeptical those measures would be enough to make up for job losses.Tiffany Berger spent more than a decade working at a coal-fired power plant in Coshocton County, Ohio, eventually becoming a unit operator making about $100,000 annually.But in 2020, American Electric Power shut down the plant, and Ms. Berger struggled to find a job nearby that offered a comparable salary. She sold her house, moved in with her parents and decided to help run their farm in Newcomerstown, Ohio, about 30 minutes away.They sell some of the corn, beans and beef they harvest, but it is only enough to keep the farm running. Ms. Berger, 39, started working part time at a local fertilizer and seed company last year, making just a third of what she used to earn. She said she had “never dreamed” the plant would close.“I thought I was set to retire from there,” Ms. Berger said. “It’s a power plant. I mean, everybody needs power.”The United States is undergoing a rapid shift away from fossil fuels as new battery factories, wind and solar projects, and other clean energy investments crop up across the country. An expansive climate law that Democrats passed last year could be even more effective than Biden administration officials had estimated at reducing fossil fuel emissions. While the transition is projected to create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs, it could be devastating for many workers and counties that have relied on coal, oil and gas for their economic stability. Estimates of the potential job losses in the coming years vary, but roughly 900,000 workers were directly employed by fossil fuel industries in 2022, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.The Biden administration is trying to mitigate the impact, mostly by providing additional tax advantages for renewable energy projects that are built in areas vulnerable to the energy transition. But some economists, climate researchers and union leaders said they are skeptical the initiatives will be enough. Beyond construction, wind and solar farms typically require few workers to operate, and new clean energy jobs might not necessarily offer comparable wages or align with the skills of laid-off workers.Coal plants have already been shutting down for years, and the nation’s coal production has fallen from its peak in the late 2000s. U.S. coal-fired generation capacity is projected to decline sharply to about 50 percent of current levels by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration. About 41,000 workers remain in the coal mining industry, down from about 177,000 in the mid-1980s.The industry’s demise is a problem not just for its workers but also for the communities that have long relied on coal to power their tax revenue. The loss of revenue from mines, plants and workers can mean less money for schools, roads and law enforcement. A recent paper from the Aspen Institute found that from 1980 to 2019, regions exposed to the decline of coal saw long-run reductions in earnings and employment rates, greater uptake of Medicare and Medicaid benefits and substantial decreases in population, particularly among younger workers. That “leaves behind a population that is disproportionately old, sick and poor,” according to the paper.The Biden administration has promised to help those communities weather the impact, for both economic and political reasons. Failure to adequately help displaced workers could translate into the kind of populist backlash that hurt Democrats in the wake of globalization as companies shifted factories to China. Promises to restore coal jobs also helped Donald J. Trump clinch the 2016 election, securing him crucial votes in states like Pennsylvania.Federal officials have vowed to create jobs in hard-hit communities and ensure that displaced workers “benefit from the new clean energy economy” by offering developers billions in bonus tax credits to put renewable energy projects in regions dependent on fossil fuels.Tiffany Berger, who was laid off when the plant in Coshocton County was shut down, struggled to find work that offered a comparable salary. She moved in with her parents and decided to help run her family’s farm.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIf new investments like solar farms or battery storage facilities are built in those regions, called “energy communities,” developers could get as much as 40 percent of a project’s cost covered. Businesses receiving credits for producing electricity from renewable sources could earn a 10 percent boost.The Inflation Reduction Act also set aside at least $4 billion in tax credits that could be used to build clean energy manufacturing facilities, among other projects, in regions with closed coal mines or plants, and it created a program that could guarantee up to $250 billion in loans to repurpose facilities like a shuttered power plant for clean energy uses.Brian Anderson, the executive director of the Biden administration’s interagency working group on energy communities, pointed to other federal initiatives, including increased funding for projects to reclaim abandoned mine lands and relief funds to revitalize coal communities.Still, he said that the efforts would not be enough, and that officials had limited funding to directly assist more communities.“We’re standing right at the cusp of potentially still leaving them behind again,” Mr. Anderson said.Phil Smith, the chief of staff at the United Mine Workers of America, said that the tax credits for manufacturers could help create more jobs but that $4 billion likely would not be enough to attract facilities to every region. He said he also hoped for more direct assistance for laid-off workers, but Congress did not fund those initiatives. “We think that’s still something that needs to be done,” Mr. Smith said.Gordon Hanson, the author of the Aspen Institute paper and a professor of urban policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said he worried the federal government was relying too heavily on the tax credits, in part because companies would likely be more inclined to invest in growing areas. He urged federal officials to increase unemployment benefits to distressed regions and funding for work force development programs.Even with the bonus credit, clean energy investments might not reach the hardest-hit areas because a broad swath of regions meets the federal definition of an energy community, said Daniel Raimi, a fellow at Resources for the Future.“If the intention of that provision was to specifically provide an advantage to the hardest-hit fossil fuel communities, I don’t think it’s done that,” Mr. Raimi said.Local officials have had mixed reactions to the federal efforts. Steve Henry, the judge-executive of Webster County, Ky., said he believed they could bring renewable energy investments and help attract other industries to the region. The county experienced a significant drop in tax revenue after its last mine shut down in 2019, and it now employs fewer 911 dispatchers and deputy sheriffs because officials cannot offer more competitive wages.“I think we can recover,” he said. “But it’s going to be a long recovery.”Adam O’Nan, the judge-executive of Union County, Ky., which has one coal mine left, said he thought renewable energy would bring few jobs to the area, and he doubted that a manufacturing plant would be built because of the county’s inadequate infrastructure.“It’s kind of difficult to see how it reaches down into Union County at this point,” Mr. O’Nan said. “We’re best suited for coal at the moment.”Federal and state efforts so far have done little to help workers like James Ault, 42, who was employed at an oil refinery in Contra Costa County, Calif., for 14 years before he was laid off in 2020. To keep his family afloat, he depleted his pension and withdrew most of the money from his 401(k) early.In early 2022, he moved to Roseville, Calif., to work at a power plant, but he was laid off again after four months. He worked briefly as a meal delivery driver before landing a job in February at a nearby chemical manufacturer.He now makes $17 an hour less than he did at the refinery and is barely able to cover his mortgage. Still, he said he would not return to the oil industry.“With our push away from gasoline, I feel that I would be going into an industry that is kind of dying,” Mr. Ault said. More