Jack Ma: I hope to create 100 million jobs-Melody Hahm

Alibaba Group (BABA)’s annual shareholder meeting kicked off at 9 a.m. ET on Thursday. And with the meeting comes executive chairman Jack Ma’s letter to shareholders, which conveys confidence, wisdom and inspiration.

“Alibaba is a company aiming to help solving social problems,” the letter stated. “In 20 years, we hope to serve 2 billion consumers around the world, empower 10 million profitable businesses and create 100 million jobs. This will be an even more difficult journey than the one behind us.”

Ma has always had lofty goals. He launched Alibaba nearly two decades ago while he was an English teacher in China. Now the e-commerce behemoth has a market cap of $246.12 billion.

But Ma has yet to get complacent about his company’s growth and believes there’s still a long runway ahead.

“We’re proud of our accomplishments, but we want to do far more,” he writes in the letter. “We are not merely trying to shift buy/sell transactions from offline to online, nor are we changing conventional digital marketing models to squeeze out a little additional profit. We are working to create the fundamental digital and physical infrastructure for the future of commerce, which includes marketplaces, payments, logistics, cloud computing, big data and a host of other fields.”

His enthusiasm is palpable throughout the letter, as he details how excited he is for the future of the company.

“I can already see this future unfolding, and I am more excited today than I was when I started Alibaba 17 years ago,” he said.

Beyond e-commerce, Alibaba has been doubling down on its cloud computing business, which many analysts believe will be a key growth driver for the company.

Ma has even made a foray into Hollywood. This week, Alibaba Pictures bought a stake in Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners, a movie production and distribution company.

Disclosure: Yahoo Finance parent Yahoo (YHOO) owns shares in Alibaba.

Culled from Yahoo Finance

Crude oil is ripping higher after Putin says 'Russia is ready' to cap its production

Crude oil prices rose to their best levels of this year on Monday after more indications that major oil producers are willing to strike a deal on output.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreed at an informal meeting last month to discuss capping output when it holds its formal meeting in November. Reuters reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin said he hoped OPEC reaches an agreement, while speaking at an energy congress in Istanbul.

"Russia is ready to join the joint measures to cap production and is calling for other oil exporters to join," Putin said, according to Reuters.

Similar talks ended without a deal in April after Russia refused to play ball without the involvement of Iran, its geopolitical rival and OPEC's second-largest producer.

The US and international benchmarks of oil prices crossed the psychologically key $50 per barrel threshold last week. 

Brent crude, the international benchmark of oil prices is near a one-year high and up 3.2% to $53.60 per barrel at 10:03 a.m. ET. West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures, the US benchmark, is up 3.3% to $51.48. 

(Investing.com) 

Culled from Business Insider

US election: Top Republican Ryan 'won't defend Trump'

Media captionTrump v Clinton: Sex, lies and videotape

The most senior elected US Republican official has said he will not defend Donald Trump, after remarks he made about groping women led to outrage.

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan vowed to focus on defending seats in Congress, but did not end his endorsement of the party's nominee.
Mr Trump tweeted that Mr Ryan should not waste his time fighting him.
Earlier Democratic rival Hillary Clinton cast doubt on Mr Trump's apology for the 11-year-old remarks.
On Sunday, Mr Trump described his words as "locker-room talk".
In a bitter televised debate, a month before the US presidential election, Mr Trump denied he had groped anyone.
Mrs Clinton tweeted on Monday that, if he stood by this assertion, he was "clearly not sorry".

A 2005 video released on Friday revealed Mr Trump describing how he had sought to have sex with a married woman and making obscene comments about women.

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Image copyright AFP

Walking a fine line, by Anthony Zurcher, BBC News

Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking Republican officeholder, has officially given the signal. The SS Trump is sinking, and it's time for members of his party to calmly, quietly head to the lifeboats.
Republican control of Congress must be maintained at all costs, the House speaker asserted in his call to congressional rank-and-file on Monday, lest Hillary Clinton have the ability to advance her party's legislative priorities and seat sympathetic Supreme Court justices without opposition.
It's notable that after reports he was mulling a full unendorsement of the Republican nominee, Mr Ryan is apparently trying to a walk a fine line between abandonment and loyalty to his putative standard-bearer. His decision evokes shades of 1996, when Republican nominee Bob Dole's doomed presidential campaign rolled along, oblivious to a party apparatus that was focusing exclusively on local races.
It's worth keeping in mind that while Mr Ryan is sounding the abandon-ship alarm, Donald Trump may not play the stoic captain watching from the bridge. He's shown no loyalty to a Republican establishment that never truly embraced him and may have no qualms with lashing out at erstwhile friend and foe alike in the campaign's final, turbulent days.
Follow @awzurcher on Twitter

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Asked about the video in the debate, Mr Trump turned his fire on Mrs Clinton's husband, ex-President Bill Clinton, whom he described as "abusive to women". She refused to address the comments.
At least 38 senior Republicans - including senators, members of Congress, and state governors - have withdrawn their support since the video surfaced on Friday.
But late on Monday Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said "nothing has changed" in relation to the campaign.
"I think the issue [of the remarks about groping] was taken care of at the debate," he said, quoted by the Politico website, after a conference call with committee members.

'No blank cheque'

According to sources familiar with a conference call he held with congress members on Monday, Mr Ryan appeared to have accepted that Mrs Clinton would win the White House and wanted to make sure Republicans in Congress were strong enough to challenge her.
Mr Ryan said he would spend "his entire energy making sure that Hillary Clinton does not get a blank cheque with a Democrat-controlled Congress", the source said.
"You all need to do what's best for you in your district," he was quoted as telling colleagues.
He, however, faced some resistance from colleagues for his approach.
California Representative Dana Rohrabacher, called party leaders "cowards" during the call for distancing themselves from the Republican's official nominee, reports say.

Culled from BBC News

Retirement at Age 80? How This Could Happen to You -Megan Elliott

Retirement piggy bank | Source: iStock

Eighty is the new 65, at least when it comes to retirement. More than a third of middle class Americans surveyed by Wells Fargo said they’d need to work until age 80 or beyond before they could retire comfortably. For young workers, retirement after 70 may be the norm. The average member of the class of 2015 will need to work until age 75, an analysis by financial website Nerdwallet found. Some may end up working until they hit their eighth decade, which could give them just a handful of years in retirement. (The average 23-year-old today can expect to live into their early to mid-80s.)

Many Americans have come to accept the inevitability of a late retirement. Since 1991, the number of people who expect to retire at or before age 65 has fallen from 84% to 46%, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). Twenty-five years ago, 9% of people expected to work past age 70. Today, 26% do.
Anticipating a retirement date in your 70s or 80s isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you love your job. But for many, delayed retirement won’t be a matter of choice. Millennials will have to stay in the workforce longer because high student debt, rising rents, and a hesitancy to invest will make it difficult for them to save enough money to quit their jobs, according to NerdWallet. Many other workers find themselves reaching 60 or 65 with paltry nest eggs and big expenses, like mortgage payments or college for the kids, still hanging over their heads. Those financial pressures leave many no choice but to stick it out at the office for a few more years until they feel retirement is within reach.

Why Americans are delaying retirement

Retirement ahead | Source: iStock

Who’s to blame for our ever-increasing retirement age? A number of factors are at play. Pensions have largely disappeared, leaving workers to figure out how to fund their retirements on their own. Many people don’t have access to retirement plans at work, which makes it harder to save.

Stagnant wages are also a problem for people who want to save. In 2013, middle-income workers were earning just 6% more than they did in 1976, an increase of less than 0.2% per year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For others, the very idea of retirement has changed. Rather than rounds of golf and long RV trips, they might be open to the idea of a phased retirement, or willing to put off retirement in exchange for better work-life balance during their younger years.
Human error is also contributing to rising retirement ages. From not saving enough to raiding retirement accounts too soon, it’s easy to make mistakes that may force you to put off retirement until your 80s. Here are three of the biggest.

1. You start saving too late

Procrastination is the enemy of success. If you wait until your 40s or 50s to start saving for retirement, you’re going to find it much more difficult to save enough money to maintain your current standard of living after you quit working.

“Consistently saving from the start of one’s working life is the key to creating retirement savings,” Joe Ready, head of Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust, said.

Don’t believe us? Just take a look at this chart from J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Consistently saving $10,000 a year from age 25 to 65 yields a nest egg of $1.8 million, assuming a return of 6.5%. If you wait until 35 to start saving the same amount, your portfolio will be worth almost $1 million less at retirement.

Source: J.P. Morgan Asset Management

2. You borrow from your retirement account

Broken piggy bank | Source: Thinkstock

Twenty percent of Americans admit to raiding their retirement account early, a 2014 Gallup poll found. Sixteen percent took out a 401(k) loan, and 9% made an early withdrawal. Doing either does huge damage to your retirement savings, as the chart below shows.

Source: J.P. Morgan Asset Management

With steady contributions of 9% of your annual salary, you’d be on track to have a retirement nest egg of $1.7 million at age 65. But once you take two relatively small loans of $10,000 each, plus an early withdrawal of another $10,000, your portfolio’s value falls to $1.2 million, a drop of 30%. When you tap your 401(k) early, you’ll probably cut back on contributions as you pay back the loan, as well as lose out on any future growth of the investments you sold, which causes you to fall behind in your savings, financial advisor Ric Edelman explained to CNBC.

3. You don’t save enough

Retirement savings | iStock.com

Saving something for retirement is better than saving nothing in retirement. If you’re young and feeling other financial pressures, you may start out by saving just 2% or 3% of your salary. That’s a good start, but it’s a far cry from the 10% to 15% financial planners recommend setting aside, even if your employer matches your contributions. Gradually increasing your savings amount can make it more likely you’ll retire at 65 rather than 80.
How much of a difference does aggressive saving really make? A 25-year-old man making $40,000 a year who saves 3% of his salary annually has a 58% chance of not running out of money in retirement, according to EBRI research. If he increases his savings rate to 6.4%, he has a 75% chance of not going broke in retirement. And if he sets aside 14% of his salary, as many financial experts would suggest, he has a 90% chance of meeting his financial needs in retirement.

Culled from Money & Career Cheat Sheet