Financial decisions are influenced by friends’ showy social media feeds

All Millennials Generation Z
Wonder how friends can afford expensive experiences posted on social media 60%      72%      74%
Pay more attention to how their friends spend versus save 57%      53%      61%
Spent more money than they can afford to participate in experiences with friends 35%      48%      41%
Influenced by social media to spend money on experiences 34%      49%      44%

Source: Charles Schwab

TIME (ET) REPORT PERIOD ACTUAL FORECAST PREVIOUS
MONDAY, APRIL 29
8:30 am Personal income March 0.4% 0.2%
8:30 am Consumer spending March 0.8% 0.1% (Jan.)
8:30 am Core inflation March 0.1% 0.1% (Jan.)
TUESDAY, APRIL 30
8:30 am Employment cost index Q1 0.7% 0.7%
9 am Case-Shiller house price index Feb. 4.3%
9:45 am Chicago PMI April 58.7
10 am Consumer confidence index April 126.6 124.1
10 am Pending home sales index March -1.0%
WEDNESDAY,MAY 1
8:15 am ADP employment April 120,000
9:45 am Markit manufacturing PMI April 52.4
10 am ISM manufacturing index April 54.8% 55.3%
10 am Construction spending March -0.2% 1.0%
2 pm FOMC statement 2.25-2.5% 2.25-2.5%
2:30 pm Jerome Powell press conference
Varies Motor vehicle sales April 16.9mln 17.5mln
THURSDAY, MAY 2
8:30 am Weekly jobless claims 4/27 218,000 230,000
8:30 am Productivity Q1 2.8% 1.9%
8:30 am Unit labor costs Q1 0.7% 2.0%
10 am Factory orders March 1.6% -0.5%
FRIDAY, MAY 3
8:30 am Nonfarm payrolls April 190,000 196,000
8:30 am Unemployment rate April 3.8% 3.8%
8:30 am Average hourly earnings April 0.2% 0.1%
8:30 am Advance trade in goods (new date) March $73.0bln N/A
9:45 am Markit services PMI April 52.9
10 am ISM nonmanufacturing index April 57.5% 56.1%

Economic Reports

4/22 Chicago Fed Nat’l Activ. (-0.29 prior)

4/22 Existing home sales (5.51 mil.)

4/23 New home sales (667,000)

4/25 Jobless claims

4/25 Durable goods orders (-1.6%)

4/25 Core capex orders (-0.1%)

4/25 Q1 GDP (forecast 1.5%, prior 2.2%)

4/25 Consumer sentiment (96.9)

 

Earnings (Date, Company, Consensus Estimate)

4/22 Whirlpool $2.87

4/22 Wynn $1.59

 

4/23 Coca-Cola $0.46

4/23 Goodyear $0.06

4/23 JetBlue $0.12

4/23 Lockheed Martin $4.34

4/23 Procter & Gamble $1.03

4/23 Nucor $1.50

4/23 Snap -$0.12

4/23 Twitter $0.15

4/23 Verizon $1.17

 

4/24 American Airlines $0.51

4/24 AT&T $0.86

4/24 Boeing $3.33

4/24 Chipotle $0.05

4/24 Dunkin’ Brands $0.62

4/24 Domino’s $2.09

4/24 Facebook $1.63

4/24 Microsoft $1.00

4/24 Packaging Corp of America $1.96

4/24 PayPal $0.68

4/24 Tesla -$.069

4/24 Visa $1.24

 

4/25 3M $2.57

4/25 Amazon.com $4.72

4/25 Caterpillar $2.86

4/25 Southwest Airlines $0.61

4/25 Bristol-Myers Squibb $1.09

4/25 Intel $0.87

4/25 Ford $0.26

4/25 McClatchy -$1.98

4/25 Tractor Supply $0.55

 

4/26 ADM $0.61

4/26 Chevron $1.36

4/26 Exxon Mobil $0.74

4/26 Weyerhaeuser $0.10

4/26 Colgate-Palmolive $0.66

4/26 Interpublic $0.04

 

Amazon said the number of Alexa “skills,” the voice-powered apps created for Amazon’s virtual assistant, topped 80,000 worldwide in early 2019.

The number of Alexa skills in the United States more than doubled to 56,750 in January 2019 from 25,784 a year earlier, according to Voicebot.ai.  Alexa skill growth in the U.K. rose 233% to 29,910, while Germany’s skill count rose 152% to 7,869.

Number of Alexa Skills by Country, January 2019

US 56750
UK 29910
Canada 22873
Australia 22398
Germany 7869
Japan 2364
France 981

Source: Voicebot.ai

Google Assistant has “actions” as the apps that expand its capabilities beyond search.

Number of Google Assistant Actions in United States

January 2019 4253
January 2018 1719
October 2017 724
August 468
July 378
June 304
May 232
April 165

Source: Voicebot.ai

Google Assistant Apps by Category – January 2019

Category %
Education and reference 15.07
Games and fun 11.07
Kids and family 9.29
News and magazines 7.69
Home Control 6.91
Travel and transportation 5.60
Shopping 5.58
Business and finance 5.41
Arts and lifestyle 4.73
Health and fitness 4.25
Social and communication 4.03
Music and audio 3.83
Food and drink 3.50
Productivity 3.41
Sports 2.92
Music, photos and TV 2.76
Local 2.62
Weather 1.32

Source: Voicebot.ai

Chinese news agency Xinhua’s first female artificial intelligence (AI) news presenter signals a threat to human news readers.

Other reading:

The Fight to Be a Middle-Aged Female News Anchor: “The average age of the anchors who lost their jobs was 46.8, while their replacements averaged 38.1 years. In one case, the difference was more than two decades,” reporter Steve Cavendish writes in the New York Times.

Older women on US television send subliminal message, Gillian Tett writes in the Financial Times.

Fewer Americans rely on TV news; what type they watch varies by who they are, according to Pew Research Center.

% of U.S. adults who get news on each TV segment

2017 2016
Local TV 37% 46%
Network TV 26% 30%
Cable TV 28% 31%

Source: Pew Research Center

% of U.S. adults who get news often on each platform

2018 2016
TV 49% 57%
News website 33% 28%
Radio 26% 25%
Social media 20% 18%
Print newspapers 16% 20%

Source: Pew Research Center

Percentage of Streaming Viewers Who Use Another Subscriber’s Account

Group (Birth Years*) / Service Netflix Amazon Prime Video Hulu
Millennials (1981-1996) 18.1% 17.7% 20.0%
Generation X (1965-1980) 8.9% 12.7% 16.7%
Baby Boomers (1946-1964) 10.9% 19.5% 17.8%
Total 15% 16.5% 19.2%

Source: CordCutters.com survey of 1,127 people using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk; 50.9 percent of survey participants were men, and 49.1 percent were women. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 81 with a mean of 37 and a standard deviation of 11.9. Respondents were disqualified from the survey if they didn’t use a video streaming service.

*Birth years from Pew Research Center.

Where do you get your fashion inspiration from?

Source Total Percentage
Instagram 56%
Pinterest 53%
TV 48%
Facebook 46%
Fashion Magazines 36%
Snapchat 26%
Other 20%

Source: Fashion Path to Purchase Study by Facebook IQ, Qualtrics-fielded survey of 6,090 men and women ages 18-64 in US, UK, DE, FR, IT and ES. The data were adjusted by the number of monthly active users of that particular platform (October 2017).