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Everything is bigger in Texas — even the debate over whether the state really is one of the best places to live.Over the years, Business Insider has written about many people who have moved to Texas from other states. Though their backgrounds vary, many were drawn by the same assets: a lower cost of living, relatively affordable housing, and a strong job market.Those perks have helped Texas attract hundreds of thousands of new residents, from everyday people to high-profile arrivals like Elon Musk and Bella Hadid. But as home prices have climbed, property tax bills have grown, and layoffs have…

We may have to thank the baby boomers for the strength of the US economy.The economy is often said to be in the midst of a K-shaped divergence, a dynamic in which the top earners account for most of the growth and spending, while lower-earning Americans face greater economic pressure.But, according to Ed Yardeni, a longtime market vet and the president of Yardeni Research, the driving force behind the US economy more likely lies in the spending habits of older Americans specifically, who are doing well enough to both prop up the economy and extend financial help to their younger…

When Hyaat Chaudhary founded Luxome in 2018 to sell luxury weighted blankets, “returns were an afterthought,” he said. Not every customer wants to keep the products they order, so returns piled up at the warehouse.Other retailers disposed of their returns in landfills. “It just drove me crazy as a human being. It seems wasteful, and I care about the environment,” Chaudhary told Business Insider.At one point, Chaudhary donated 5,000 weighted blankets locally. His approach flooded the market, and Luxome customers started canceling their orders, he said. Instead, they were purchasing “new open box” Luxome blankets on eBay from resellers contracted…

Investor Chris Degnan is pouring cold water on one of the buzziest jobs in tech right now: the “forward-deployed” engineer.Popularized by Palantir, the forward-deployed engineer, or FDE, is embedded within a client company, building technology and helping customers apply it from the inside. The model is especially popular in the AI era, as firms race to make their workforces “AI native.”Degnan spent over 11 years as Snowflake’s chief revenue officer before retiring last year. Now, he works as an investor and startup advisor. On the “20VC” podcast, Degnan highlighted the challenges of staffing FDEs and the realities of the day-to-day…

Abercrombie & Fitch posted mixed first-quarter results on Wednesday and weaker-than-expected guidance after the conflict in the Middle East “directly impacted” sales, the company said. Despite those challenges, shares jumped about 12% in afternoon trading as the company easily topped Wall Street’s earnings estimates.Sales in Abercrombie’s Europe, Middle East and Africa region fell 10% during the quarter, driven by a slowdown in demand at the brand’s Hollister banner that came as the conflict ramped up, finance chief Robert Ball said on a call with analysts. Overall, it reduced first-quarter total company net sales growth by more than 0.5 percentage points relative to…

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said Wednesday that the company has met requirements set by the Federal Aviation Administration to increase its production of 737 Max aircraft to 47 jets per month.The company is currently rolling out aircraft at a rate of 42 per month, Ortberg said at a Bernstein conference. “We’ve passed the capstone review for rate 47, so we are now in the process of running the line at the 47-a-month rate,” Ortberg said. “It’ll probably take us a few months of stabilization there. … My guess is we continue to go up in rate. It may take a…

It’s common advice to ask for more during a salary negotiation — but the conversation shouldn’t stop there, even if the answer is no.Ron Seifert, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry, who also serves as the company’s workforce reward and benefits leader for North America, told Business Insider that new hires or current employees should always follow up with two questions if their salary increase request is denied.Seifert said candidates’ first follow-up question should focus on how the company approaches compensation decisions. The question is: “How does the organization make compensation decisions for this role — including market data, internal equity,…

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday that his bank could spend up to $20 billion on an acquisition in the coming years.A deal that size would be the largest of Dimon’s 20-year tenure atop JPMorgan and test regulators’ appetite for consolidation among the biggest U.S. banks.”I do think there might be opportunities, and so we are on the lookout,” Dimon told analysts at a New York financial conference.”There might be, in the next couple years, a chance to put $10 [billion] or $20 billion to work buying something,” Dimon said.The comments came with caveats. Dimon framed acquisitions almost as…

Jan van Eck has warned that memory stocks look frothy, crypto faces a reckoning, and the spiraling US debt could spark a disaster.The CEO of Van Eck — a global asset manager founded by his father, which now has about $225 billion under management — rang the alarm on the latest episode of “The Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost.”Memory stocks have surged during the AI boom thanks to insatiable demand for computing power. For example, Micron Technology and SK Hynix have more than tripled in value this year, and secured $1 trillion market capitalizations for the first time this…

On New Year’s Eve 1958, when the sun set on Cuba, it was one of the Caribbean’s most glamorous destinations for American travelers, often sold through images of grand hotels, extravagant cabarets, glittering casinos, tropical beaches, and rum-soaked nightlife.By the next morning, that world had begun to unravel: Fulgencio Batista had fled the island, Fidel Castro’s revolution was on its way to power, and Cuba was entering a political era that would reshape its relationship with the US for decades to come.Last week, the US indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro, the younger brother of Fidel Castro and one of…