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Data center campuses power artificial intelligence and cloud computing
The campuses could grow so large that finding enough power and suitable land to accommodate them becomes increasingly difficult.
Renewable energy alone won’t be sufficient anytime soon to meet their power needs.
Natural gas will have to play a role, which will slow progress toward meeting carbon dioxide emissions targets.

An Amazon Web Services data center in Ashburn, Virginia, US, on Sunday, July 28, 2024.
Nathan Howard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The power needs of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are growing so large that individual data center campuses could soon use more electricity than some cities, and even entire U.S. states, according to companies developing the facilities.
The electricity consumption of data centers has exploded along with their increasingly critical role in the economy in the past 10 years, housing servers that power the applications businesses and consumers rely on for daily tasks.

Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, data centers are growing so large that finding enough power to drive them and enough suitable land to house them will become increasingly difficult, the developers say. The facilities could increasingly demand a gigawatt or more of power — one billion watts — or about twice the residential electricity consumption of the Pittsburgh area last year.
Technology companies are in a “race of a lifetime to global dominance” in artificial intelligence, said Ali Fenn, president of Lancium, a company that secures land and power for data centers in Texas. “It’s frankly about national security and economic security,” she said. “They’re going to keep spending” because there’s no more profitable place to deploy capital.
Renewable energy alone won’t be sufficient to meet their power needs. Natural gas will have to play a role, developers say, which will slow progress toward meeting carbon dioxide emissions targets.
(See here for which stocks are helping to fix the nation’s power grid.)
Regardless of where the power comes from, data centers are now at a scale where they have started “tapping out against the existing utility infrastructure,” said Nat Sahlstrom, chief energy officer at Tract, a Denver-based company that secures land, infrastructure and power resources for such facilities.

And “the funnel of available of land in this country that’s industrial zone land that can fit the data center use case — it’s becoming more and more constrained,” said Sahlstrom, who previously led Amazon’s energy, water and sustainability teams.
Beyond Virginia
As land and power grow more limited, data centers are expanding into new markets outside the long-established global hub in northern Virginia, Sahlstrom said. The electric grid that serves Virginia is facing looming reliability problems. Power demand is expected to surge, while supply is falling due to the retirement of coal- and some natural gas-powered plants.
Tract, for example, has assembled more than 23,000 acres of land for data center development across the U.S., with large holdings in Maricopa County, Arizona — home to Phoenix — and Storey County, Nevada, near Reno.
Tract recently bought almost 2,100 acres in Buckeye, Arizona with plans to develop the land into one of the largest data center campuses in the country. The privately-held company is working with utilities to secure up to 1.8 gigawatts of power for the site to support as many as 40 individual data centers.
For context, a data center campus with peak demand of one gigawatt is roughly equivalent to the average annual consumption of about 700,000 homes, or a city of around 1.8 million people, according to a CNBC analysis using data from the Department of Energy and Census Bureau.

A data center campus that size would use more power in one year than retail electric sales in Alaska, Rhode Island or Vermont, according to Department of Energy data.
A gigawatt-size data center campus running at even the lower end of peak demand is still roughly comparable to about 330,000 households, or a city of more than 800,000 people — about the population of San Francisco.
The average size of individual data centers operated by the major tech companies is currently around 40 megawatts, but a growing pipeline of campuses of 250 megawatts or more is coming, according to data from the Boston Consulting Group.
The U.S. is expected see a growing number of data center campuses of 500 megawatts or more, equivalent to half a gigawatt, in the 2030s through mid-2040s, according to the BCG data. Facilities of that size are comparable to about 350,000 homes, according to CNBC’s analysis.
“Certainly the average size of the data centers is increasing at a rapid pace from now to 2030,” said Vivian Lee, managing director and partner at BCG.

Community impact

Texas has become an increasingly attractive market due to a less burdensome regulatory environment and abundant energy resources that are more easily tailored to specific sites, Sahlstrom said. “Texas is probably the world’s best experiment lab to deploy your own power solution,” the energy officer said.
Houston-based Lancium set up shop in 2017 with the idea of bringing large electric loads closer to abundant renewable energy resources in west and central Texas, said Fenn, the company’s president. Originally focused on cryptocurrency mining, Lancium later shifted its focus to providing power for artificial intelligence with the advent of ChatGPT in late 2022.

Today, Lancium has five data center campuses in various stages of development. A 1,000-acre campus in Abilene is expected to open in the first quarter of 2025 with 250 megawatts of power that will ramp up to 1.2 gigawatts in 2026.
The minimum power requirement for Lancium’s data center customers is now a gigawatt, and future plans involve scaling them up to between three and five gigawatts, Fenn said.
For data centers that size, developers have to ensure that electricity costs in neighboring communities don’t rise as a consequence and that grid reliability is maintained, Fenn said. Pairing such facilities with new power generation is crucial, she said.
“The data centers have to partner with utilities, the system operators, the communities, to really establish that these things are assets to the grid and not liabilities to the grid,” Fenn said. “Nobody’s going to keep approving” such developments if they push up residential and commercial electric rates.

Renewables not enough

Data center campuses run by publicly-traded Equinix are rising to several hundred megawatts from 100- to 200 megawatts, said Jon Lin, general manager for data center services at the company. Equinix is one of the largest data center operators in the world with 260 facilities spread across 72 metropolitan areas in the U.S. and abroad.
Developers prefer carbon-free renewable energy, but they also see solar and wind alone as unable to meet current demand due to their reliance on changing weather conditions.
Some of the most critical workloads for the world’s economy, such as financial exchanges, run at data centers operated by Equinix, Lin said. Equinix’s data centers are online more than 99% of the time and outages are out of the question, the executive said.
“The firmness of the power is still incredibly important for these data centers, and so doing that solely off of local renewables is candidly just not an option,” Lin said.
The major technology companies are some of the largest purchasers of renewable power in the U.S., but they are increasingly turning to nuclear in search of more reliable sources of electricity. Microsoft is supporting the restart of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania through a power purchase agreement. Amazon and Alphabet’s Google are investing in small nuclear reactors.

But building new nuclear reactors is expensive and fraught with delays. Two new reactors in Georgia recently came online years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
In the short run, natural gas will fuel much of the power demanded by data centers, Lancium’s Fenn said. Gas is the main, short-term power source providing the reliability these facilities require, Boston Consulting Group’s Lee said.
Investments could be made in new gas generation that adds carbon capture and battery storage technology over time to mitigate the environmental impact, Lee said.
The industry hopes that gas demand will taper off as renewables expand, battery storage costs come down and AI helps data centers operate more efficiently, Fenn said. But in the near term, there’s no question that data center expansion is disrupting technology companies’ emissions targets, she said.
“Hopefully, it’s a short term side step,” Fenn said of stepped-up natural gas usage. “What I’m seeing amongst our data center partners, our hyperscale conversations, is we cannot let this have an adverse effect on the environmental goals.”
Note: CNBC analysis assumes a data center campus is continuously utilizing 85% of its peak demand of a gigawatt throughout the year, for a total consumption of 7.4 billion kilowatt-hours. Analysis uses national averages for household electricity consumption from EIA and household size from Census Bureau. More

The Biden administration’s new student loan repayment plan is tied up in legal battles. The result: millions of borrowers have had their monthly payments put on hold.
“Borrowers are frustrated about the delay toward forgiveness,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. “They feel like they’ve been waiting for Godot.”

Matthias Ritzmann | The Image Bank | Getty Images

With the Biden administration’s new student loan repayment plan is tied up in legal battles, millions of borrowers have had their monthly payments put on hold.
The break from the bills is likely a relief to the many federal student loan borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, known as SAVE. But it may also be causing them anxiety over the fact that they won’t get credit on their timeline to debt forgiveness.

For example, those also enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, who are entitled to loan cancellation after 10 years, have seen their journey toward that relief halted during the forbearance.
“Borrowers are frustrated about the delay toward forgiveness,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. “They feel like they’ve been waiting for Godot.”
Here’s what borrowers enrolled in SAVE should know about the delay to debt cancellation.

Delay could stretch on for months

In October, the U.S. Department of Education said that roughly 8 million federal student loan borrowers will remain in an interest-free forbearance while the courts decide the fate of the SAVE plan.
A federal court issued an injunction earlier this year preventing the Education Department from implementing parts of the SAVE plan, which the Biden administration had described as the most affordable repayment plan in history. Under SAVE’s terms, many people expected to see their monthly bills cut in half. 

The forbearance is supposed to help borrowers who were counting on those lower monthly bills. But unlike the Covid-era pause on federal student loan payments, this forbearance does not bring borrowers closer to debt forgiveness under an income-driven repayment plan or Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
Adding to borrowers’ annoyance is that “those enrolled in the SAVE Plan were not given the choice of forbearance,” said Elaine Rubin, director of corporate communications at Edvisors, which helps students navigate college costs and borrowing. If borrowers want to stay in SAVE, they can’t opt out of this pause.
Borrowers enrolled in PSLF are especially concerned, Kantrowitz said. That program requires borrowers to work in public service while they’re repaying their student loans.
“They have been working in a qualifying job, but aren’t making progress toward forgiveness,” he said. “Some borrowers are working a job they hate, but are sticking with it in the expectation of qualifying for forgiveness. Others are close to retirement and don’t want to have to work past their normal retirement age just to get the forgiveness.”

What borrowers can do

Despite the delay toward forgiveness, there are still a few good reasons for borrowers to stay enrolled in SAVE, experts say. During the forbearance, borrowers are excused from payments and interest on their debt does not accrue.
Keep in mind: Even if you make payments under SAVE during the forbearance, your loan servicer will just apply that money toward future payments owed once the pause ends, the Education Department says.
If you’re eager to be back on your way to debt cancellation, you have options.
You may be able switch into another income-driven repayment plan that is still available. Under that new plan, you may have to start making payments again. Yet if you earn under around $20,000 as a single person, your monthly payment could still be $0, and therefore you might not lose anything by switching, Kantrowitz said.
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Changing plans might be especially appealing to those who are very close to crossing the finish line to debt forgiveness and just want to see their balance wiped away, experts said. (You’ll likely be placed in a processing forbearance for a period while your loan servicer makes that switch. During that time, you will get credit toward forgiveness.)
The Education Department is also offering those who’ve been working in public service for 10 years the chance to “buy back” certain months in their payment history. This allows borrowers to make payments to cover previous months for which they didn’t get credit. But to be eligible for the option, the purchased months need to bring you to the 120 payments required for loan forgiveness.
“The buyback option might be eliminated under the Trump administration,” Kantrowitz said. “So, if you want to use it, you should use it now.” More

Dupes may just be the hottest gift of the season.
This year, 79% of shoppers said they would buy a dupe as a gift for their loved ones for the holidays, according to a recent report.
Here’s how to discern when it’s appropriate to buy someone a dupe and when it makes more sense to invest in a name-brand product instead, according to experts. 

Caiaimage/Paul Bradbury | Caiaimage | Getty Images

‘Tis the season for giving … dupes?
Buying a dupe — short for duplicates — rose to the top of this year’s holiday wish lists. A dupe gift is a gift that is a cheaper alternative to a more expensive, branded item. They were largely kept under the radar until recently because a “fake” was dubbed inferior to the real thing, but a lot has changed.

In some cases these brand imitators are now even preferred to their pricier counterparts.
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This year, 79% of consumers said they would buy a dupe as a gift for their loved ones for the holidays, according to a survey of more than 1,000 shoppers by CouponCabin.
More than half — 51% — of those who the coupon site polled said dupes are better than the original.
Even when consumers can get the real thing, nearly 33% of adults intentionally purchased a dupe of a premium product at some point, a separate report by Morning Consult also found. The business intelligence company polled more than 2,000 adults in early October.

When is a dupe an appropriate gift? 

Before you buy a dupe, think about who you’re shopping for, experts say. 
For instance, some family members or friends might especially appreciate a dupe for what it is, said Ellyn Briggs, a brands analyst at Morning Consult. 
“It’s kind of a badge of honor for young people to get a dupe,” she said.
On the other hand, you risk disappointing someone if they have been asking for a specific product for a while, said Melanie Lowe, CouponCabin’s savings expert. 
If that is the case, consider the cost of the name-brand item and assess if it is within budget. The key is to know when to splurge or save, Lowe said.
“If you’re talking about a product that you’ll use daily … invest in the original,” Lowe said. “That purchase is usually worth it.”
Alternatively, “if it seems appropriate in the situation — if it is a more light-hearted gift — you can definitely go the dupe route,” she said. 

‘It’s a dupe for a reason’

While some shoppers take pride in buying dupes, roughly 86% of shoppers have been disappointed by their purchase of a dupe, CouponCabin found. 
“It’s a dupe for a reason,” said Lauren Beitelspacher, professor of marketing at Babson College. “We don’t know where it’s made, who is making it or the quality.”

“It’s not that all dupes are bad. But sometimes we are paying a premium because there is a quality difference — and we, as consumers, have to be more conscious of that,” Beitelspacher said.
If you want to shop for dupes, read and watch product reviews online to help determine the dupe’s quality — this is where social media can come in handy.
A majority, or 62%, of U.S. adults who use TikTok say they use the app for reviews or recommendations, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. Others tap Instagram and Facebook for product research. 

Shopping secondhand this season

Consumers should make the same value considerations when buying secondhand, which has also become more popular, even for gifting.
Three in 4 shoppers said that giving secondhand gifts has become more accepted over the past year — notching a 7% increase from the year before, according to the 2024 OfferUp recommerce report. OfferUp, an online marketplace for buying and selling new and used items, polled 1,500 adults in July.
The majority, or 83%, of shoppers are also open to receiving secondhand gifts this holiday season, the report found.

Shoppers have increasingly turned to resale for a number of reasons, including value, sustainability and as a means to secure hard-to-find luxury items. Because secondhand shopping is considered eco-friendly, it’s also become more socially acceptable. OfferUp’s report credited Generation Z for driving a shift in mindset.
“The stigma around secondhand gifting is rapidly diminishing,” said Todd Dunlap, OfferUp’s CEO. 
However, the same buyer-beware mentality applies, cautioned Babson’s Beitelspacher, especially if you are ordering secondhand goods online. “You might not get what you want,” she said.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More

NVIDIA founder, President and CEO Jensen Huang speaks about the future of artificial intelligence and its effect on energy consumption and production at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27, 2024.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

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Here’s what CNBC TV’s producers were watching as the Dow Industrials rose more than 460 points on Thursday, and what’s on the radar for the next session.

Nvidia

It was the stock story of the day, and CNBC TV will keep focusing on the move Friday. More CNBC.com users searched for this stock than any other ticker symbol even beating the ever-popular 10-year Treasury yield on Thursday.
Nvidia hit a new high Thursday morning, almost hitting the $153 mark. The stock ended the day off its high, closing up 0.5%.
CNBC TV “Squawk Box” anchor Becky Quick set the big theme of the session, noting that it seems hard for Nvidia to rally because expectations are so high. She recalled a similar solid earnings report three months ago, followed by a stock drop. Shares rallied 15% over the next three months. During the premarket, Quick interviewed analyst Ray Wang of Constellation Research, who said, “Nvidia is growing exponentially versus the rest of the S&P 500.”
With Thursday’s 0.5% gain, Nvidia is now up 196% in 2024. Shares have climbed 53% in six months and added 10% in November. 
Nvidia is the third top performer in the S&P so far this year. The top five winners in the index for 2024 are at the bottom of this note.
Nvidia is a core holding in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust. He last bought it on Aug. 31, 2022. It’s up 850% since then. 

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Nvidia in 2024

Bitcoin

It went below $97,000 on Thursday morning, then jumped back above that level. Throughout the day, bitcoin topped the $98,000 mark, crossed the $99,000 threshold for a new high and then came off that level. As of 7:34 p.m. ET, it was at around $98,400.
There is surely more to come in the seconds, minutes and hours after this note goes out. 

MicroStrategy

On Friday, co-founder Michael Saylor will be on “Squawk Box” in the 7 a.m. hour.
The stock was beat up from the feet up on Thursday after Citron Research put out a short report. By the way, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Citron founder Andrew Left earlier this year, alleging that he misled investors on previous reports. 
MicroStrategy dropped 16% on Thursday.
The stock is up nearly 530% in 2024,
MicroStrategy used to be a software company, but it turned into a proxy for bitcoin. The company has bought billions of dollars’ worth of the cryptocurrency in the last several years.

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MicroStrategy in 2024

Fannie and Freddie

The two are up big since Donald Trump won the presidential election.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored mortgage companies.
There is speculation in the investing world that the new administration may try to privatize both entities. This would put them outside of government control.
Fannie Mae is up 130% since the election.
Freddie Mac is up 160% since the election.
Fannie Mae rose nearly 5% Thursday, while Freddie Mac gained 6%.

Amazon and Tesla, Bezos and Musk

Jeff Bezos has moved on from the day to day at the internet shopping giant but he remains executive chair of the board. He and Elon Musk, who seems to be focusing a lot on politics right now, wound up in a short online duel of tech billionaires.
On X, the social media platform, Musk accused Bezos of telling people to sell their Tesla and SpaceX holdings because he had believed Donald Trump was about to lose the election. There was no attribution.
A short time later, Jeff Bezos simply posted: “Nope. 100% not true.”
Musk a few hours later posted, “Well, then, I stand corrected” with one of those emojis where the face is laughing with tears.
Shares of Tesla are up 35% since the election. Amazon is down 0.5% in that period.

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Tesla and Amazon in 2024

Uber and Tesla, Khosrowshahi and Musk

Uber slipped after investor Brad Gerstner told Scott Wapner of CNBC’s “Halftime Report” that he was selling the stock. The stock ultimately closed marginally higher Thursday, up 0.06%.
Gerstner made the case that Tesla would be the big winner in autonomous driving, setting up a good battle in the still-emerging autonomous driving industry.
Uber is now down 6% since the election.
Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been critical of some of the President-elect Trump’s policies in the past.

S&P 500 leaders with about 25 trading days left in 2024

Vistra, the energy company, is at the top of the S&P so far this year, up 332%.
Palantir ranks second, up 257%.
Nvidia is third, up 196% year to date.
Axon Enterprises, manufacturers of the Taser, is up 144% in 2024.
Targa Resources is fifth, up nearly 140% this year.

Buckle before the bell

The retailer will issue quarterly results before the bell. It’s the only notable report we’ll see Friday.
The stock is up 13% over the past three months.
Buckle hit a high last week but is down 4.25% since then.
Buckle has about 450 locations in 42 states. This includes one shop at the East Towne Mall and another in the West Towne Mall — both are in Madison, Wisconsin. More

One factor that drove young men to the polls may have been perceived economic disparities, experts say, which ultimately helped Republicans win on Election Day.
Men were also more likely than women to say they believed the results of the election would impact their financial life in the short term, one recent survey found. Those voters largely favored Trump.

Voters stand in line at a polling station in Washington, D.C., on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024.
Nicolas Economou | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Going into Election Day, Americans were sharply divided. But the gender gap was among the most glaring splits, with more women backing Vice President Kamala Harris and a majority of men supporting President-elect Donald Trump.
Women favored Harris by an 8-point margin, with the vice president securing 53% support compared with Trump’s 45%. Men backed Trump by a 13-point margin, with 55% favoring Trump and 42% backing Harris — resulting in a 21-point gender divide, according to NBC News exit polls.

Trump gained massive support among men on economic issues specifically, including among Hispanic and Black voters, who were feeling particularly pessimistic, according to NBC News exit polls. Inflation was the top concern among voters overall, followed by the current state of the economy, the NBC polls said.
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A factor that drove young men to the polls may have been perceived economic disparities, according to experts, which ultimately helped Trump win. 
“Men feel like there’s no pathway for economic mobility for them,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.

‘That is a huge, huge gap’

There is a growing disillusionment taking hold.

Men are steadily dropping out of the workforce, especially those between the ages 25 and 54, which are considered their prime working years.
A study by the Pew Research Center found that men who are not college-educated leave the workforce at higher rates than men who are. At the same time, fewer younger men have been enrolling in college over the past decade.
In 1995, young men and women were equally likely to hold a bachelor’s degree, at 25%. Today, 47% of women ages 25 to 34 in the U.S. have a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37% of men their age, also according to Pew.
“That is a huge, huge gap,” Pollak said.
Schools often tout a four-year degree as the ideal scenario. And in many areas, vocational programs and other alternative pathways “aren’t as widespread” as they used to be, Pollak said.
At the same time, some traditional blue-collar jobs that used to employ more non-college-educated men declined due to automation and globalization, leading to job displacement and uncertainty about future employment prospects, experts say.

Altogether, you have a group who feel like they’re “being left behind,” Pollak said.
Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia Business School, agreed: “The great concern is that we are developing a pool of young men that are neither developing the additional skills [nor] education necessary to participate fully in the labor force,” he said — particularly in “former manufacturing industrial powerhouse states.”
These days, young men are more likely to be considered NEETs — not in employment, education, or training — a cohort that has been hardest hit by globalization and the decline of manufacturing in this country, according to Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew.
“When you don’t get rewarded for working, you work less,” Fry recently told CNBC. “That is a basic tenet of labor economics.”

Men were more likely than women to say they believed the results of the election would impact their financial life in the short term, according to a separate survey by the National Endowment for Financial Education. Those voters largely favored Trump.
Those with less than a high school diploma and those with a two-year degree were also most likely to say their financial life will be impacted by the presidential election. NEFE polled 1,000 adults in October about their financial feelings in relation to the 2024 general election.
“It’s reasonable that many Americans were weighing their current financial well-being and prospects for the future while casting their votes this November,” said Billy Hensley, NEFE’s president and CEO. Hensley is also a member of the CNBC Global Financial Wellness Advisory Board.

Young women have ‘made huge gains’ in the workforce

Meanwhile, women have “made huge gains” in their education and careers and are working as much as, if not more than, their male counterparts, according to Ali Bustamante, an economist and director at the Roosevelt Institute.
Today, women are getting married and having children later, if at all, and are prioritizing their careers, Pollak said. They’re looking to the government to make that choice less difficult through universal child care and access to abortion, she said.
“There was a time when people were either mothers and wives, or spinsters who worked,” Pollak said. “Now women often are prioritizing the career person over the wife and mother.”

However, while the issue of reproductive rights became a major factor in the 2024 presidential race, it did not drive more women to vote. It also did not prove to be one of the most important issues facing the country among voters overall, exit polls showed.
“Trump’s message resonated with young men,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund. “The pain that people in this country have been feeling in terms of the economy is real.”
Still, other issues — such as paid leave, affordable housing, child care and equal pay — are also hugely important to families, she said.
“This was one election, but I think it would be a mistake to suggest that women will stop fighting in larger numbers either for reproductive freedom or the things they care about,” Graves said. “We have work to do.”
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A check in monitor is see in the Nvidia office on November 20, 2024 in Austin, Texas. 
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Here’s what CNBC TV’s producers were watching as stocks ended Wednesday mixed, and what’s on the radar for the next session.

Nvidia if you missed it

On Thursday, we’ll keep covering Nvidia’s quarterly report. 
The company posted adjusted earnings and revenue that topped expectations in the third quarter. Nvidia also issued a better-than-expected forecast for this quarter.
Revenue jumped 94% on a year-over-year basis.
Several customers are already getting the company’s next-generation chip, which is called Blackwell.
The results seemingly weren’t strong enough for investors. The stock is down in extended trading.
The stock is up almost 3% in three days. Nvidia is up about 10% in November, and it’s up more than 190% in 2024.

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Nvidia in 2024

Best ideas: Amazon and Apple

JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth issued a note Wednesday morning saying, “We’re expecting solid online holiday season sales growth of +7.5% Y/Y.”  The firm called Amazon “our best idea.”
Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein issued a note on Wednesday, calling Apple a “best idea.” He said, “We view Apple as a quality compounder, with mid-single digit revenue growth, improving margins, disciplined capital return, and double-digit EPS growth.”
Apple is 3.6% from the Oct. 15 high. The stock is up 19% in 2024.
Amazon is 6% from last week’s high, when it hit $215.90 a share. Amazon is up about 9% in November.

Tech dividends

In September, the software giant Microsoft said it would increase its dividend.
The dividend, which will rise eight cents to 83 cents a share, is payable on Dec. 12 to shareholders of record on Nov. 21. The dividend yield is 0.8%.
Cisco Systems has a dividend yield of 2.8%.
IBM currently has a dividend yield of 3.1%.
Apple’s dividend yield is 0.4%.

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Microsoft shares in 2024

Cannabis

NJBiz.com reports that New Jersey’s legalized market for marijuana saw major growth in its latest quarter, with recreational sales coming in at $238.7 million.
Nevertheless, Canopy Growth remains 75% from the April high. The stock is down 18% in November.
Tilray is 56% from the April top. Shares are down 21% in November.
GrowGeneration is 51% from the April high. The stock is down 13% in November.

JPMorgan downgrades

Earlier this month, Baird cut its rating on the banking giant’s stock. This morning, Oppenheimer downgraded JPMorgan to “perform.” Oppenheimer’s analyst wrote, “It is hard for us to imagine the stock outperforming, especially from this level.”
The banking giant is 2.9% from the Nov. 6 high.
JPM is up 8.5% in November. The stock has soared 41.5% in 2024.
The S&P 500 Financials hit a high on Tuesday. The sector is up 31.4% in 2024.
The SPDR S&P Bank ETF (KBE) is 4% from the Nov. 11 high. The fund is up 29% in 2024.

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JPMorgan Chase shares in 2024

Target vs. Walmart

Target missed earnings estimates and cut its full-year guidance Wednesday morning after Walmart’s big report the day before.
If you put the two stocks toe to toe, here’s what you’d find. Walmart is near a high. Target is 33% from the April high.
In November, Walmart is up 6.4% and Target is down about 19%.
In 2024, Walmart is up 65.9%, and Target is down 14.5%.
CNBC’s Lori Ann Larocco is reporting Wednesday night that one of Target’s problems is shipping.  She reports: “Target re-routed and pulled forward shipments, loading up on inventory to make sure they had the merchandise needed for the holiday season.” Larocco also reports that CEO Brian Cornell said Wednesday that there were “costs associated with rushing shipments and preparing for the short-lived port strike in October that hurt the company’s quarterly performance.” More

Thomas Trutschel | Photothek | Getty Images

The board of Acurx Pharmaceuticals on Wednesday approved the purchase of up to $1 million in bitcoin to hold as a treasury reserve asset.
Shares of the company were last lower by more than 6% after spiking about 8% in premarket trading.

“As demand for bitcoin grows, and so does its acceptance as a major and primary asset class, we believe that bitcoin will serve as a strong treasury reserve asset for cash not needed over the next 12 to 18 months,” CEO David P. Luci said in a statement.
“Its limited supply and inflation-resistant characteristics provide a functional store of value,” he added. “This new treasury strategy is a finance strategy and has no impact on our overarching drug development plans.”
The move takes a page out of MicroStrategy’s playbook. In 2020, the enterprise software company famously adopted bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset, acquiring 21,454 bitcoins at roughly $11,653 each, just before the bull run a few months later. MicroStrategy has aggressively bought more bitcoin since then, as recently as this week, bringing its total to 331,200 bitcoins. Its stock is up more than 500% for 2024.
Bitcoin adoption by corporate treasurys is an important but slow-growing catalyst for crypto. The cryptocurrency is trading at all-time highs, and it is widely expected to double by the end of 2025 due to President-elect Donald Trump’s promise of a more crypto-friendly environment for businesses.
With that regulatory overhang expected to lift next year, investors are keeping a watchful eye for the next big company to begin buying bitcoin. Tesla and Block followed MicroStrategy in 2021. Another smaller company, Semler Scientific, did so this year.

On an X spaces event Tuesday evening, MicroStrategy Chairman and bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor said he plans to pitch the board of Microsoft in December on his bitcoin treasury strategy.
The theme has broadened to the government level this year, with Sen. Cynthia Lummis proposing a national strategic bitcoin reserve this summer. Trump similarly made mention of a potential national bitcoin stockpile in the same week.
The price of bitcoin is up 122% this year.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC PRO: More

Changes for 2025, including a cost-of-living adjustment and new Medicare Part B premium rates, will affect the size of Social Security beneficiaries’ checks.
In December, beneficiaries can expect to see benefit notices online and in the mail.

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A new 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment

In 2025, retirement benefits will increase by about $50 per month, on average, according to the Social Security Administration.

That’s due to the 2.5% annual cost-of-living adjustment.
Notably, the benefit boost for 2025 will be the lowest since 2021. As the pace of inflation has subsided, the cost-of-living adjustment has come down with it, since the Social Security Administration uses government inflation data to calculate the annual change.
Beneficiaries saw the highest increases in four decades in 2023, when the COLA was 8.7%, and in 2022, when benefits went up by 5.9%. However, the annual COLA started to come down in 2024, with a 3.2% annual adjustment.
“Although price increases have moderated, it’s not as though inflation is over,” said Joe Elsasser, a certified financial planner and president of Covisum, a Social Security claiming software company.  
If the pace of inflation picks up again, the annual COLA could go up again, he said.

Arrows pointing outwards

Monthly Medicare Part B premiums to go up

Retirees who are enrolled in Medicare Part B — which covers physician services, outpatient hospital services and certain home health services and durable medical equipment — pay monthly premiums.
Medicare Part B premiums are often deducted directly from Social Security checks. Beneficiaries can also request to have Medicare Advantage or Part D premiums deducted from Social Security benefit payments, according to Mary Johnson, an independent Social Security and Medicare analyst.
In 2025, the standard monthly Part B premium will go up to $185 per month — a $10.30 increase from $174.70 this year.
At the same time, Medicare Part B beneficiaries will see their annual deductibles go up to $257 in 2025 — a $17 increase from the $240 annual deductible for 2024.
Medicare Part B premiums are based on a beneficiary’s modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI, from two years prior. In 2025, beneficiaries who had less than or equal to $106,000 in MAGI in 2023 will pay the standard monthly Part B premium, as will married couples with less than or equal to $212,000.
However, beneficiaries with higher incomes will be subject to income-related adjustment amounts, or IRMAA, that increase their monthly premium payments.
About 8% of Medicare Part B beneficiaries are affected by those income-related adjustments, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Income changes may prompt higher taxes

Social Security beneficiaries may request to have withholding for federal taxes deducted from their benefit payments.
Beneficiaries may want to consider whether they want to adjust those withholdings, particularly if they anticipate more of their benefits could be taxed, according to Jim Blair, vice president of Premier Social Security Consulting.
Social Security benefits are taxed on a formula called combined income — the sum of adjusted gross income, nontaxable interest and half of Social Security benefits. Beneficiaries may pay no taxes on their benefits, if their combined income is low enough, or up to 50% or 85% of their benefits may be subject to federal taxes if their combined incomes are above certain thresholds.
“What we’ve seen with clients is kind of a surge in other income that has caused more of their Social Security to be taxed,” said CFP Brian Vosberg, president of Vosberg Wealth Management in Glendora, California.

For example, retirees who have $200,000 in money market accounts or certificates of deposit are seeing higher interest payments on that sum after the Federal Reserve’s string of rate hikes in recent years. That interest income may require beneficiaries to pay a higher federal tax rate on their benefits, Vosberg said.
Proactive tax planning can help alleviate that situation, Vosberg said. Strategies such as buying an annuity that lets that interest grow tax-deferred or reducing income from other areas, such as IRA withdrawals, can help minimize the tax bite, he said.
Retirees should also take note if their incomes have meaningfully changed in the past couple of years, according to Blair. If that’s the case, their monthly Medicare Part B premium rate may no longer be accurate. Beneficiaries can notify the Social Security Administration of life-changing events that affect their incomes and Medicare premiums by filling out a Form SSA-44.   More