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Now in
Fashion:
Older
Women
OFF DUTY
What’s
News
Business & Finance
 Treasury yields have
sprung to multiyear highs,
forcing the U.S. government
to pay a lot more in interest
and putting pressure on the
budget. A2
 Paramount Global has held
recent talks with Comcast
about joining forces in stream-
ing through a partnership or
joint venture, said people fa-
miliar with the situation. B10
 Activist investor Carl
Icahn struck a deal for two
JetBlue Airways board seats
just days after he unveiled a
nearly 10% stake in the
struggling airline. B10
 NatWest shares rose 7%
in London trading after the
British lender posted fourth-
quarter earnings that beat
expectations. B11
 Goldman Sachs CEO David
Solomon made $31 million in
2023, a 24% raise from the
year before. B11
 Swiss Re reported a sharply
higher net profit for last year
on an improved performance
in its property-and-casualty re-
insurance segment. B11
 All three major U.S. stock in-
dexes fell with the Nasdaq, S&P
500 and Dow declining 0.8%,
0.5% and 0.4%, respectively. B12
World-Wide
 A Manhattan justice or-
dered Trump and his business
to pay $355 million and barred
him from serving in a top role
of any New York company for
three years, ruling he fraudu-
lently inflated his wealth for
financial gain. A1
 Alexei Navalny, an anticor-
ruption campaigner who gal-
vanized Russia’s political oppo-
sition, died in prison, according
to Russian authorities. A1, A6
 Officials in Missouri charged
two juveniles in the shooting at
a Kansas City Chiefs’ Super
Bowl rally that killed one per-
son and wounded 22 others. A3
 The Great Lakes, normally
covered by a frozen sheath this
time of year, are nearly com-
pletely ice-free this winter. A3
 Sen. Joe Manchin, a cen-
trist Democrat from West
Virginia, said that he won’t
run for president. A5
 Ukrainian forces have with-
drawn from parts of the be-
sieged eastern city of Avdiivka,
as Russia’s military appeared
on the verge of its first major
advance in months. A7
 Biden called on Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu
to agree to a temporary halt
to Israel’s military campaign
in the Gaza Strip. A8
NOTICE TO READERS
WSJ.com and WSJ mobile
apps will publish
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weekend. The print edition
won’t appear on Monday,
Washington’s Birthday (or
Presidents Day).
NOONAN
Democrats are
too resigned
to Biden A13
CONTENTS
Books....................... C7-12
Business& Finance B10,11
Food........................ D11-12
Gear & Gadgets... D4
Heard on Street....B13
Markets...................... B12
s 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WEEKEND
* * * * * * * SATURDAY/SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17 - 18, 2024 ~ VOL. CCLXXXIII NO. 40
Trump Ordered to Pay $355 Million
Former president is
barred from top roles
at any N.Y. company
for three years
A Manhattan justice or-
dered former President Don-
ald Trump and his business to
pay $355 million and barred
him from serving in a top role
of any New York company for
three years, ruling he fraudu-
lently inflated his wealth for
financial gain.
The decision by Justice Ar-
Top Putin Critic Navalny Dies in Prison
on
us ,
l
e
al a
ci on
er s
m er
m rp
MAXIM ZMEYEV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
co Fo
Alexei Navalny addressing a Moscow rally in 2019. The Russian opposition leader died Friday in a penal colony at age 47. As
mourners laid flowers at memorials in Russian cities and abroad, his wife and President Biden blamed Vladimir Putin.
BYD Aims
n-
To Expand
no
In the U.S.
Via Mexico
Chinese automaker BYD has
set its sights on Mexico as its
quest for global expansion
turns toward North America.
By River Davis,
Ryan Felton and
Selina Cheng
The Shenzhen-based car
company, whose rapid growth
has made it one of the world’s
largest electric-vehicle sellers,
is scouting locations in the
country for a factory, from
which it would consider ex-
porting cars to the U.S., ac-
cording to people familiar with
the matter.
The plans show rising en-
thusiasm within China’s car in-
dustry for expansion to North
America despite the political
risks. Building cars in Mexico
for the U.S. would allow the au-
tomakers to avoid hefty import
tariffs that would be applied if
Obituaries................... A9 they were to send them di-
Opinion................. A11-13 rectly from China.
Sports.......................... A14
Style & Fashion D2-3
CEOs at rival automakers
Travel..................... D9-10 have warned about the poten-
U.S. News.............. A2-5 tial threat from China, with
World News........ A6-8 some suggesting the need for
more government action to
> avert such competition in the
U.S. These executives are con-
cerned about what they see as
a big cost advantage enjoyed
by their Chinese competitors
in EVs.
Please turn to page A5
k aia gerber
WSJ. MAGAZINE
WSJ.com HHHH $6.00
thur Engoron threatens to ting the error of their ways.” plete and Total SHAM. There
shake up the leadership of By Jacob Gershman, “Their complete lack of were No Victims, No Damages,
Trump’s family company, the Corinne Ramey and contrition and remorse bor- No Complaints,” Trump said
Trump Organization, now run James Fanelli ders on pathological,” the jus- in a written statement.
by his sons Eric Trump and tice wrote in the 92-page deci- The Trump Organization
Donald Trump Jr. The justice ing records, issuing false doc- sion. “They are accused only called the ruling “a gross mis-
barred Trump’s eldest sons uments and related conspiracy of inflating asset values to carriage of justice.”
from holding a position as an offenses. The case stemmed make more money. The docu- “Every member of the New
officer or director of a New from a lengthy state probe of ments prove this over and York business community, no
York company for two years. low-interest financing deals over again.” matter the industry, should be
Engoron, who previously Trump made with lenders be- Trump, the front-runner for gravely concerned with this
held that Trump had violated fore his political rise. the 2024 GOP presidential Please turn to page A4
a New York fraud statute, also Engoron said Trump and his nomination, denounced the
concluded Friday that Trump, associates “did not rob a bank case as a partisan abuse of the  A Trump return would
his eldest sons and two for- at gunpoint. Donald Trump is justice system and vowed to upend alliances.................. A4
mer top finance executives not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defen- fight on.  Bulls buy into Trump’s
were civilly liable for falsify- dants are incapable of admit- “This ‘decision’ is a Com- Truth Social........................ B12
.
BY THOMAS GROVE
ly
AND MATTHEW LUXMOORE
Alexei Navalny, a fierce an-
ticorruption campaigner who
galvanized Russia’s political
opposition, died in prison, ac-
cording to Russian authorities,
after a life dedicated to fight-
ing the country’s descent into
authoritarianism under Presi-
dent Vladimir Putin.
The cause of his death was
still being established, prison
authorities said. He collapsed
after a walk at his prison col-
ony on Friday, the authorities
said, lost consciousness and
couldn’t be revived.
Navalny’s team, which lives
in exile, didn’t immediately
confirm his death. Kira
Yarmysh, his spokesperson,
didn’t respond to a request for
comment but said on X on Fri-
day that a lawyer was en
route to Navalny’s prison to
confirm the news, which his
team learned from the Russian
prison service. His aide Ivan
Zhdanov said on Navalny’s
YouTube channel on Friday
that hospitals and morgues
near Navalny’s prison colony
weren’t picking up the phone
and alleged that the politician
had most likely been killed.
Please turn to page A6
 Obituary: Activist rallied
political opposition........... A6
Crisis for Realtors Could Be EXCHANGE
Good News for Home Buyers
Trade group faces wave of lawsuits over fees paid to agents
BY LAURA KUSISTO AND NICOLE FRIEDMAN to settle the legal claims nationwide, worried
that more large verdicts could push residen-
The National Association of Realtors ap- tial firms and local real-estate associations
peared to hit rock bottom in October when a into bankruptcy. They complain that NAR
Kansas City jury delivered a $1.8 billion ver- failed to convey the gravity of the threat.
dict, finding that the industry kept home- “There has been consistently an arrogant
sales fees artificially high. But the existential attitude of the senior officers” of the associa-
threat to the powerful trade group was about tion, said Dave Liniger, chairman of broker-
to get worse. age franchiser Re/Max Holdings. “It just
Copycat lawsuits have been filed around seemed to me that it was just like a solid EMPIRE BUILDING
the nation. Dozens of real-estate brokerages wall of, ‘It’s our way, and we’re going to keep
are now defendants. Federal regulators are it that way, and we don’t care.’” Re/Max was
LeBron James
scrutinizing the industry more closely than also a defendant in the Kansas City lawsuit, pioneers a new way for
they have in years. but it settled before the trial. athletes to cash in. B1
Brokerage executives are pressuring NAR Please turn to page A10
The Push to Get ‘Ha Ha You’re Lack a College Degree?
Old!’ Jokes Out of Birthday Cards
i i i Bosses Amend Standards
Some want to nix ‘ageist’ zingers; humor BY LAUREN WEBER of jobs that went to those can-
didates barely budged after
defenders say teasing adds to the charm U.S. companies are hung up the requirement was lifted,
on the college diploma. according to a new analysis.
BY ADAM M. ROSEN some three-dozen lines tem- Facing a long-term labor There are several explana-
porarily on display at Atlanta shortage, employers are look- tions for the plodding prog-
ATLANTA— “A hundred Market, the country’s largest ing to expand the pool of po- ress, from automated screen-
and twenty-three showroom for gift tential workers. One group— ing tools that favor college
million people in products and home people without a college graduates to the difficulty of
this country are decor. Like all of degree—holds particular prom- changing hiring managers’
over 50. And we’re Golden’s fellow card ise. They make up nearly two- long-held beliefs about the
tired of the ‘Damn, exhibitors, she was thirds of the U.S. population value of a bachelor’s degree.
you’re old’ cards,” hoping to catch the over 25, and traditionally have Many employers said they
says Jan Golden, eye of the retailers been ineligible for many mana- know time and demographics
creator of the Age- who sell the esti- gerial and technical positions. aren’t on their side. Baby
Friendly Vibes mated 6.5 billion A push by some companies boomers are aging out of the
greeting card line. Hotter every year greeting cards to eliminate degree require- workforce, U.S. birthrates are
In mid-January, Age- bought annually in the U. S.— ments has opened the door to low, and shifting immigration
Friendly Vibes was one of Please turn to page A10 more candidates. Yet the share Please turn to page A2
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
A2 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
U.S. Government’s Debt Bill Keeps Rising
Interest costs are on
pace to surpass
defense this year;
record bond issuance
BY ERIC WALLERSTEIN
Treasury yields have sprung
to multiyear highs, forcing the
U.S. government to pay a lot
more in interest and putting
pressure on the budget.
The U.S. government is ex-
pected to pay an additional
$1.1 trillion in interest over
the coming decade, the Con-
gressional Budget Office esti-
mates. Interest costs are on
pace to surpass defense as a
budget item this year, and
only Social Security and Medi-
care are forecast to be bigger
burdens in the coming years.
The increase revives Wall
Street worries that the years-
long acceleration in borrowing
under both political parties will
eventually weigh on economic
growth and asset prices. Mar-
kets have shown few signs of
stress, but here’s what inves-
tors are watching.
The pandemic sent rates to
zero and sparked a surge in
borrowing. Treasury Depart-
ment bond issuance was a re-
cord $23 trillion last year. The
cost of paying for that then
climbed as the Federal Re-
serve raised interest rates to
multiyear highs above 5%.
America is expected to
spend $870 billion, or 3.1% of
gross domestic product, on in-
terest payments, nearly dou-
ble the annual average of 1.6%
since 2000. And interest costs
are projected to reach 3.9% of
GDP by 2034.
Rising debt tends to help
expand economies, to an ex-
tent. Borrowers create lend-
ers, who hold loans or bonds
as assets. No one seriously
thinks the U.S. will miss a debt
payment. Treasurys form the
foundation of the global finan-
cial system, and the dollar is
the world’s reserve currency.
Investors now assume the
U.S. government will run a
Old Hiring
Habits Hard
To Break
Continued from Page One
policies make it difficult to
count on reinforcements from
abroad. Meanwhile, college
enrollment is on the decline.
Only 38% of people in the U.S.
over age 25 have at least a
bachelor’s degree.
Over the past few years,
major employers such as
medical device maker
Medtronic, IBM, Delta,
Google, Walmart and General
Motors have eliminated de-
no
gree requirements from hun-
dreds of their job postings.
They are among the early
members of a movement
known as skills-based hiring,
where employers evaluate job
candidates on their skills
rather than their education.
“If you’re putting unneces-
sary requirements on jobs,
you’re automatically removing
62% of the population that
could apply,” said Kelli Jordan,
vice president of growth and
development at IBM, one of
the first employers to adopt
skills-based hiring.
Some non-degreed candi-
dates have broken through.
Benita Robinson completed
a semester of college, then
worked mostly in retail jobs be-
fore finding better prospects as
an assembler at Medtronic’s
components factory near Min-
neapolis. She rose through pro-
duction roles to become a team
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U.S. deficit as a percentage of GDP
15%
Net interest
10
5
0 35
–5
1974 ’80 ’90
Government outlays, select categories
$2.5 trillion
Social Security
2.0
Medicare
Net interest
1.5
Defense
Medicaid
1.0
0.5
0 Hartford Funds and former
1970 ’80
U.S. debt held by the public
$5 trillion
0 0
1962 ’70
permanently larger deficit
Sources: Congressional Budget Office (U.S. deficit percentage of GDP, government outlays, U.S. debt held by public); Tullett Prebon (historical yield), Chatham Financial (market-implied); Sifma (issuance)
than in the past, eventually
putting pressure on the econ-
omy and financial markets. As
Campbell Harvey, director of
research at Research Affiliates
and a professor at Duke Uni-
versity’s Fuqua School of Busi-
ness, put it: “The debt will be-
come a problem, but it’s very
hard to know exactly when.”
The U.S. government raises
money by auctioning Treasury
bonds to global investors. The
m er
bigger the deficit, the more
lead. Becoming a supervisor
was off limits.
m rp
Then the medical-device
maker removed the college-
degree requirement for dozens
of supervisory and other roles.
She applied, got the job and
co Fo
began overseeing several pro-
duction lines, and now earns
40% more than she did before
the promotion. Robinson, 34
years old, recently added an-
other set of responsibilities,
leading a group of coaches to
help standardize Medtronic’s
training methods.
Broadly, the data suggest
there is a large gap between
discarding requirements and
offering jobs to applicants
n-
who not long ago wouldn’t
have gotten a second look.
After companies opened up
roles to noncollege graduates,
the share of those jobs that
went to nongraduates was 3.5
percentage points greater in the
year after the change, according
to a new report from Burning
Glass Institute and Harvard
Business School’s Managing the
Future of Work Project.
The findings illustrate the
difficulty in changing long-en-
trenched behavior, said Joseph
Fuller, a management professor
at Harvard Business School and
co-author of the report.
“All these companies are do-
ing is removing a prohibition,”
Fuller said.
The college enrollment rate
for recent U.S. high-school
graduates is on a steady de-
cline, dropping to 62% in 2022
from a peak of about 70% in
2009, according to the Labor
Department.
Melanie Argol, 35, has been
trying to break into project
management or information
U.S. NEWS
Primary deficit Forecast
Surplus
2000 ’10 ’20 ’30
Forecast
’90 2000 ’10 ’20
’80 on ’90 2000
bonds it must issue to finance
otherwise spending. Investors
us ,
could demand higher yields to
l
buy the deluge of Treasurys,
e
al a
which would hurt bond prices.
Ultimately, higher borrowing
costs on such things as mort-
ci on
gages and corporate loans
would slow the economy as
consumer spending and busi-
ness investment wane.
A robust economy has
er s
helped lift stocks to new re-
cords. Prolonged slow growth
would weigh on companies’
Benita Robinson supervises employees, a role she got after Medtronic removed the college-degree requirement for many jobs.
technology, hoping to parlay a
set of digital marketing and
IT certifications and years of
retail management into a
higher income. She keeps hit-
ting walls.
“The people choosing can-
didates, they’re missing so
much in people like me,” said
Argol, who completed some
college but dropped out when
she could no longer afford it.
Argol makes $200 a week
working in the cafeteria at her
daughters’ Kenosha, Wis.,
school and has started a small
business with her husband do-
ing face-painting and balloon-
twisting for events.
According to Fuller’s re-
search, in most major indus-
tries, employers said it is as
common for noncollege gradu-
ates to outperform degree hold-
ers as the other way around.
Fuller and others cite sev-
CORRECTIONS 
AMPLIFICATIONS
Fulton County District At-
torney Fani Willis testified
that she paid her half of ex-
penses when dining or vaca-
tioning with her deputy, Na-
than Wade. A Page One article
Friday about allegations of im-
propriety tied to Georgia’s
election-interference case in-
correctly said Wade made sure
to pay half of the expenses.
Readers can alert The Wall Street
Journal to any errors in news articles
by emailing wsjcontact@wsj.com or
by calling 888-410-2667.
$45 trillion
40
30
25
20
15
’30
10
Forecast
’10 ’20 ’30
earnings and share prices.
As interest costs rise, the
government must issue more
debt to pay bondholders. That
in turn boosts spending on in-
terest even further and in-
creases issuance. The CBO
projects that federal debt held
by the public, a record $26 tril-
lion in 2023, will grow by 2034
to $48 trillion—more than
eight times the amount out-
standing in 2008. That would
be 116% of gross domestic
product, up from 97% today.
eral reasons for the slow pace
of change. Automated hiring
tools frequently compare can-
didates to previous high per-
formers, which would favor
degree holders. And inside
companies, assessing skill re-
quirements for jobs is time-
consuming.
Most challenging, employ-
ers and workforce experts
said, is changing the behavior
of hiring managers. “There’s a
tremendous amount of inertia
on recruiting paths,” said By-
ron Auguste, the CEO of Op-
portunity@Work, a nonprofit
organization that helps em-
ployers recruit candidates
who acquired skills through
nontraditional paths.
When Wade Larson, who
oversees recruiting and train-
ing for a Spokane, Wash.-
based manufacturer, saw the
roughly 500-person company
was having trouble hiring de-
signers, he asked his engineer-
ing leaders about dropping
the degree expectation for
that role.
“That’s where it starts to
get personal with that group,
because they’re like, ‘We’re
white-collar,’ and we’re like,
‘Well, it’s time to get real be-
cause we can’t find designers,’
” he said.
Many managers who gradu-
ated from college overestimate
the share of the workforce
that has a degree, according
to research from Opportu-
nity@Work. When managers
think there are more grads to
choose from, they are more
likely to list a degree as a pri-
ority, Auguste said.
* ***
10-year Treasury yield,
historical and market-implied
5%
4 newed appetite for debt, the
3
2 yield investors demand to hold
Market-implied
1 based on
10-year Treasury
forward curve.
0 Monthly
2010 ’20 ’30
Treasury issuance, gross
$25 trillion
20
15
10
5 Congress can raise taxes, but
ly
2012 ’15
“All else equal, a bigger
’20
government deficit means
higher short-term and long-
term interest rates,” said Lee
Ferridge, head of macro strat-
egy for North America at State
Street Global Markets. “That
means lower growth, and in
theory, that means lower asset
values as well.”
Stocks and bonds stumbled
last summer when the Trea-
sury Department told Wall
Street it would issue a sur-
prising amount of bonds. But
Percentage of U.S. population over age 25 without
a bachelor's degree
All people
Male
Female
25-34 yrs old
35-54 yrs old
55 and older
White
Black
Asian
Hispanic
(any race)
0% 20
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2022
Delta Air Lines has spent
several years reviewing jobs
and thinking about how to
open them up to more work-
ers. By 2021, 94% of the jobs
that it filled didn’t require a
degree.
In January 2022, the pilot
job became one of the last
roles to open up to non-de-
greed applicants. “The supply
was always larger than the de-
mand, so no one saw the need
to change it,” said Eric Hen-
drick, Delta’s director of pilot
outreach.
Today Delta’s pilot job de-
scriptions say a four-year de-
gree is preferred but not re-
quired. That was welcome
news for Rene Rodriguez, who
wanted to fly for Delta since
his days working as a car-re-
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
markets rebounded after the
Treasury adjusted its borrow-
ing plans to sell more short-
term bonds and fewer longer-
term ones.
In one sign of investors’ re-
yield on the 10-year Treasury
note has recently hovered
around 4.2%, after briefly
touching 5% in late October.
After surging then, market-
based gauges of the extra
riskier long-term debt have re-
ceded to flat or even negative.
Increasing bond issuance
and fiscal spending can boost
economic growth, supporting
risky assets such as stocks. But
analysts are debating when all
the debt becomes a drag. Some
suspect it could weaken the
ability to jump-start the econ-
omy out of a crisis or reces-
sion.
“My entire career there’s
been this ‘sky is falling’ kind
of view on debt and federal
deficits,” said Amar Reganti,
fixed-income strategist at
deputy director at the Trea-
sury’s Office of Debt Manage-
ment. “And typically, it didn’t
impact day-to-day markets.”
For those worried, there are
no painless solutions. Reduc-
tions in government spending
can hit jobs and slow growth.
.
that also raises worries about
hurting the economy.
Neither tends to be politi-
cally expedient, which is one
’23
reason analysts don’t expect
the fiscal situation to change
drastically based on the No-
vember election results.
Even in the event tighter
fiscal policy is enacted, if a re-
cession followed, automatic
stabilizers would kick in and
tax revenues would fall. The
upshot: a bigger deficit.
“When you have substantial
reduction in deficit spend-
ing—whether by raising taxes
substantially or cutting spend-
ing—there’s an excellent
chance you help precipitate a
recession,” said Reganti. “It
becomes a vicious cycle.”
ACKERMAN + GRUBER
40 60 80
pair estimator near the Salt
Lake City airport, one of
Delta’s hubs.
Last May, Delta invited
Rodriguez to take its pilot as-
sessments and then come in
for an interview. He was hired
and, in September, flew his
first Delta flight, from Atlanta
to Boston.
Out of more than 7,500 ap-
plicants, Delta has interviewed
around 150 people without
four-year degrees for pilot
jobs, and 70% of them have
gotten job offers, around the
same offer rate as degree-
holders, Hendrick said.
“There’s no trend that
shows anyone with a college
degree doing better than any-
one without a degree in any of
our assessments,” he said.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Juveniles
Charged in
Connection
With Rally
Shooting
BY SHANNON NAJMABADI
AND ERIN AILWORTH
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Offi-
cials in Jackson County, which
includes most of Kansas City,
charged two juveniles in con-
nection with a shooting at a
Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally
Wednesday that killed one per-
son and wounded 22.
The youths were charged
with gun-related and resisting-
arrest charges, said Valerie
Hartman, a spokeswoman for
Missouri’s 16th judicial circuit
court. Additional charges are
expected as police continue in-
vestigating, she said.
The charges were filed
Thursday and made public Fri-
day. The juveniles were
charged by the Office of the Ju-
venile Officer, a position that
would be considered a prosecu-
tor in the adult judicial system,
Hartman said.
The youths are currently de-
tained. It couldn’t be deter-
mined how old they are.
Officials have said prelimi-
nary findings indicate the
shooting had no link to terror-
ism or homegrown violent ex-
tremism, and instead stemmed
from a personal dispute. Police
said they have recovered sev-
eral firearms but have provided
few other details about the
weapons used.
Twenty-two people between
the ages of 8 and 47 were shot,
police said. A 43-year-old
woman named Elizabeth Gal-
van, also known as Lisa Lopez-
Galvan—a disc jockey who co-
hosted a program called “Taste
of Tejano”—was killed.
About half of those wounded
are under the age of 16, police
said. A spokeswoman for Chil-
dren’s Mercy, a local hospital,
said they treated nine children
who had been shot, and all
were expected to recover.
House
Committee
Subpoenas
Harvard
BY MELISSA KORN
A House committee esca-
lated its battle with Harvard
University, sending subpoenas
for a range of records and ac-
cusing the school of obstructing
an investigation into how it has
responded to antisemitism.
no
The House Committee on Ed-
ucation and the Workforce
opened an investigation into
Harvard after its then-president
testified at a hearing about the
treatment of Jewish students at
colleges after Hamas attacked
Israel in October. Harvard has
been one of the committee’s
main targets, though campuses
across the country have been
rocked by protests in support of
Palestinians and charges of an-
tisemitism.
“I will not tolerate delay and
defiance of our investigation
while Harvard’s Jewish stu-
dents continue to endure the
firestorm of antisemitism that
has engulfed its campus,” Chair
Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) said.
A Harvard spokesman said
the school has provided “ful-
some and good faith responses”
to the committee in response to
the antisemitism investigation,
as well as for another one re-
lated to how the school handled
plagiarism allegations last year
against its then-president.
The committee sent subpoe-
nas Friday to Penny Pritzker,
who heads Harvard’s main
oversight board, as well as to
the interim president, Alan Gar-
ber, and to N.P. Narvekar, chief
executive of Harvard Manage-
ment Co., the university’s in-
vestment operation.
The requests are wide-rang-
ing, including all minutes or
summaries of meetings held
since January 2021 by the uni-
versity’s two governing boards,
the Harvard Corporation and
the Board of Overseers, as well
as minutes or summaries of
meetings for Harvard Manage-
ment Co., dating back to Oct. 7.
* * * *
Swinging for Par Excellence on a Picture Perfect Day
TEE TIME: Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland plays his shot from the 3rd tee during the second round of The Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club on
Friday in Pacific Palisades, Calif. The PGA Tour event, which was first played in 1926 as the Los Angeles Open, is hosted by Tiger Woods.
AI Tutor Proves Weak in Some Basic Math
BY MATT BARNUM
onsquare roots. Khanmigo typi-
Just a few months after
us ,
ChatGPT was launched publicly,
l
educator Sal Khan made a pro-
e
al a
vocative claim during a widely
viewed TED Talk: “We’re at the
cusp of using AI for probably
ci on
the biggest positive transfor-
mation that education has ever
seen.”
That would happen, he said,
“by giving every student on the
er s
planet an artificially intelligent
but amazing personal tutor.”
m er
Khan’s education nonprofit,
Khan Academy, has developed
an AI-powered tutoring bot
known as Khanmigo. But a sig-
nificant barrier could limit
m rp
Khanmigo and similar tools
from being used as a successful
tutor at the moment: AI that is
based on large language models
struggles with math.
co Fo
“Asking ChatGPT to do math
is sort of like asking a goldfish
to ride a bicycle—it’s just not
what ChatGPT is for,” said Tom
McCoy, a professor at Yale Uni-
versity who studies AI. “We
shouldn’t really be surprised
that it often makes mistakes.”
This challenge was apparent
when a Wall Street Journal re-
porter tested Khanmigo, which
is powered by ChatGPT. Khan-
migo frequently made basic
n-
arithmetic errors, miscalculat-
ing subtraction problems such
as 343 minus 17. It also didn’t
consistently know how to
round answers or calculate
A ship passes under the Aerial Lift Bridge in Duluth, Minn., as it sets out on Lake Superior.
The Great Lakes Are Nearly Ice-Free This Winter
BY ERIC NIILER
The Great Lakes, which are
normally covered by a frozen
sheath this time of year, are
nearly completely ice-free this
winter.
Lakes Erie and Ontario are
effectively without ice, while
the amount of ice covering all
the lakes taken together is the
lowest since records began in
1973.
Ice coverage of the basin
measured 2.7% on Feb. 11, far
less than the peak of around
53% typically found in late Feb-
ruary or early March, accord-
ing to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration,
U.S. NEWS
cally didn’t correct mistakes
when asked to double-check so-
lutions.
The technology is still evolv-
ing, and a spokesperson for
Khan Academy said the group
made upgrades this week to
improve Khanmigo’s accuracy.
But some errors are likely to
persist, and as Khanmigo ex-
pands, the organization will
continue to emphasize to stu-
dents and teachers that it is
imperfect. “We’re going to
make that a lot more front and
center,” Sal Khan said in an in-
terview.
A spokesperson for OpenAI,
which developed ChatGPT, de-
clined an interview request and
didn’t respond to a detailed list
of questions.
Khan Academy is known to
many teachers and students for
its educational videos, which
are viewed by millions each
year. Khanmigo is now being
piloted by about 65,000 stu-
dents in 44 school districts.
Khan said he expects “a mil-
lion or two million” students to
be using it by next school year
at a price to schools of $35 a
student. Other companies are
promoting AI as a tutor in
schools, too, and some policy-
makers and tech executives are
enthusiastic about its potential.
This push to expand comes as
school officials are seeking low-
cost ways to address persistent
pandemic-era learning loss.
which reviewed satellite im-
ages to take the measure-
ments.
“We’ve crossed a threshold
in which we are at a historic
low for ice cover for the Great
Lakes as a whole,” said Bryan
Mroczka, a physical scientist
and meteorologist at NOAA’s
Great Lakes Environmental Re-
search Laboratory in Ann Ar-
bor, Mich.
The effects of the El Niño
weather pattern have made
this winter especially warm,
impeding the buildup of ice,
Mroczka said.
Over the long term, climate
change has largely driven a
drop in Great Lakes ice cover
Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | A3
ly
Like ChatGPT, Khanmigo
works by responding to
sponded. Later, it accepted an
incorrect answer to the square
prompts in a chat format. Un- root of 440.
like ChatGPT, it is trained not to In another instance, Khan-
give students the right answer migo constructed its own trian-
but to guide them through gle problem with a hypotenuse
problems. It offers tutoring in of 15 units and a leg of nine. But
third grade and up in math, lan- when a reporter correctly said
guage arts, history and science. that 152 minus 92 equals 144,
It can give feedback on student Khanmigo suggested the re-
essays, engage in simulated dia- sponse was wrong. “I see where
logue as famous literary charac- you’re coming from, but let’s
ters and debate contemporary take another look at the sub-
issues. traction,” it said.
In testing the product, the Khanmigo’s struggles don’t
Journal asked surprise re-
Khanmigo for searchers in AI.
help finding the Math is known
length of the ‘Asking ChatGPT to be a challenge
third side of a to do math is for large lan-
right triangle, a
problem that
students would
sort of like
asking a goldfish
guage models,
which use vast
sums of data
likely encounter
in eighth-grade to ride a bicycle.’
and a complex
statistical model
math. to craft text-
Khanmigo
correctly identi-
fied the Pythagorean theorem,
based responses
to prompts.
Its responses to math prob-
a2 + b2 = c2, as crucial to finding
the answer. When asked for the
solution the bot offered re-
lems are comparable to memo-
rizing answers via flashcards,
not learning the math pro-
sponses such as, “I’m here to cesses, said Paulo Shakarian, a
help you learn, not just give computer scientist at Arizona
answers!” State University. That makes it
But Khanmigo struggled fallible, particularly for novel
with math operations. When problems.
trying to solve a right triangle “It hasn’t learned how to
with a hypotenuse of 27 units solve a math problem like me
and a side of 17, a reporter of- and you,” Shakarian said.
fered the wrong answer (430 Caleb Hicks, the chief execu-
rather than 440) to 272 minus tive and co-founder of
SchoolAI, which recently
172. “Excellent!” Khanmigo re-
Percentage ice concentration in the Great Lakes
100%
2024
80 2010–23
ALEX KORMANN/MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE/ZUMA PRESS
60
40
20
0
Dec. 1 Jan. 1
Note: Years are end of season. Omits Feb. 29 data on leap years.
Source: NOAA
during winters, according to reopen this season until March
researchers, though the 25, according to Eric Peace,
amount of coverage has gone vice president of the Lake Car-
up and down from year to year. riers’ Association trade group.
The annual maximum ice cov- Meanwhile, the shippers ex-
erage has fallen 5% a decade pect they will have to do more
for a total of 25% between 1973 dredging in the spring, Peace
and 2023. said, because there hasn’t been
Shippers would usually wel- ice to stop storms from push-
come the absence of ice ing sediments along the shore-
patches obstructing their lines into the harbors.
routes, but they aren’t happy There have already been re-
with this season’s develop- ports of sediment clogging
ments. harbors in eastern Lake Michi-
They aren’t able to take ad- gan and southern Lake Erie,
vantage of the conditions be- Peace said.
cause a system of locks located The Great Lakes—Erie, Hu-
between Michigan and Ontario, ron, Michigan, Ontario and Su-
known as the Soo Locks, close perior—border eight U.S. states
every winter for ice and won’t and Ontario, Canada. They are
HARRY HOW/GETTY IMAGES
.
signed a contract with a Utah
school district to support AI-
based tutoring and other ef-
forts, said the product some-
times flubs math answers.
“This is an area of work
across the industry,” he said.
Hicks said the technology is still
useful for helping students
learn math concepts and will
get better.
Researchers say it is likely
that AI will improve in math.
But progress might not be lin-
ear, because trying to improve
one dimension can cause chal-
lenges in other areas.
Khan said even as Khanmigo
struggles with math, it offers
broad benefits to teachers and
students. “We don’t want the
perfect to be the enemy of the
good,” he said.
Ina Rosenthal, a high-school
teacher in Palm Beach County,
Fla., one of the pilot districts,
says she has found a variety of
uses for Khanmigo. It helps her
plan math lessons and she uses
its debate feature in a critical-
thinking course.
In Algebra 2 classes, Rosen-
thal has students use Khanmigo
if they are struggling to under-
stand a concept and she isn’t
able to help them one on one.
She said that accuracy issues
haven’t prevented the tool from
being useful, but she does warn
students that Khanmigo some-
times gets things wrong.
“It’s still learning, is what
we’ve been told,” she said.
Feb. 1 March 1 April 1 May 1
the largest freshwater lake sys-
tem on Earth and provide
drinking water for 10% of the
U.S. population, according to
the Great Lakes Commission.
It might be too late for ice
to form over the Great Lakes.
Temperatures have stayed rel-
atively warm across the Great
Lakes and Upper Midwest de-
spite a cold spell during mid-
January, said Karin Gleason,
monitoring section chief at
NOAA’s National Centers for
Environmental Information.
“So ice opportunities climato-
logically speaking are going to
start dwindling over the course
of the next couple of months,”
she said.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
A4 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
Trump’s Return Would Upend Alliances
Tariffs, isolationism
expected if he wins a
new term; Biden,
others warn of chaos
BY ALEX LEARY
AND ANDREW RESTUCCIA
WASHINGTON—A new trade
war with China, weakened alli-
ances in Europe—and more
praise to and from authoritar-
ian leaders.
As Donald Trump closes in
on the Republican presidential
nomination, his foreign-policy
agenda is coming into sharper
relief following the incendiary
suggestion that he would en-
courage Russia to attack NATO
nations that fall short on de-
fense-spending goals. Trump’s
views largely track those of his
first term. But if elected again,
he would face a more unstable
world while trying to further
withdraw the U.S. from long-
standing military and economic
pacts. And he would likely have
a more loyal cadre of national
security officials to carry out
his wishes.
Trump has avoided specifics
on how he would handle cur-
rent conflicts, including the war
in the Middle East, while mak-
ing the audacious claim that he
could settle the war in Ukraine
in 24 hours. He is selling as as-
sets his unpredictable style and
relationships with the world’s
pre-eminent strongmen: Rus-
sian President Vladimir Putin,
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
“I know Putin very well—
very smart, very sharp,” Trump
said during a rally earlier this
month. “They hate when I say
that. They say, ‘Oh, you called
President Xi of China…a very
smart man.’ They ask me, ‘Is he
smart?’ I said, ‘Well, let’s go a
step above that. Let’s say he’s a
brilliant guy.’”
From the campaign trail, the
former president is already
playing a major role in imped-
ing billions in additional aid to
Ukraine by urging GOP allies on
Capitol Hill to oppose it. His
complaints over the North At-
lantic Treaty Organization have
set off alarms in Europe, and
the people of Taiwan are won-
dering whether the U.S. would
stop a Chinese invasion under
his watch.
While critics in both parties
fear new depths of instability—
“It’s shameful, it’s dangerous,
it’s un-American,” President Bi-
den said Tuesday of the NATO
remarks—Trump portrays a na-
tion in decline, one that has
served the global order at its
own expense.
Trump’s conviction that
America has been taken advan-
tage of long predates his elec-
tion in 2016 and he has helped
accelerate an isolationist strain
in the GOP, while suppressing
the appetite in both parties for
multilateral trade accords.
Trade barriers
no
Broadly, Trump has pro-
posed a 10% tariff on all im-
ported goods, a move business
and economic leaders say
would be devastating for the
U.S. economy, and he has
floated much higher rates for
China. He is itching for a tariff
Ex-President
Ordered to
Pay Millions
Continued from Page One
gross overreach and brazen
attempt by the Attorney Gen-
eral to exert limitless power
where no private or public
harm has been established,”
the company said.
An appeals process could
take more than a year, which
could delay any enforcement
of the penalty and sanctions
against Trump in the short
term. Interest on the judg-
ment could increase the for-
mer president’s financial re-
sponsibility considerably. The
New York attorney general’s
office estimates that he al-
ready owes nearly $100 mil-
lion in prejudgment interest
on top of the penalties.
Trump’s net worth has been
estimated at around $3 billion,
much of it in New York real-
estate holdings, hotels, golf re-
sorts, clubs and licensing
deals. In a deposition last year,
he testified as having more
than $400 million in cash.
The GOP’s Donald Trump, right, is promoting his ties to strongmen including
China’s Xi Jinping, above. Below, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu with the
Knesset’s Ofir Akunis and Trump presidential adviser Jared Kushner in 2021.
on
us ,
l
e
al a
ci on
fight with European carmakers
er s
and has promised to once again
withdraw the U.S. from the
m er
Paris climate accord.
He has declared President
Biden’s fledgling economic co-
operation pact with 13 Indo-Pa-
cific countries would be “dead
m rp
on arrival.” On Monday, Trump
spoke with a number of Repub-
lican senators about his idea to
turn foreign aid into a loan.
“His frame of mind is that if
co Fo
you want us to defend you, you
have to spend money. You
want a better trade environ-
ment, well give us a better
trade environment,” said Nadia
Schadlow, a senior fellow at
the Hudson Institute who
served as deputy national se-
curity adviser for strategy in
the Trump administration.
Trump has said he would
push for greater defense spend-
ing to deter adversaries from
n-
challenging the U.S. or starting
other wars. As president, he
proposed withdrawing U.S.
troops from South Korea, Ger-
many and other countries.
“It’s a reaction to the mis-
takes by the globalists and neo-
cons of the past 25 years or
more, and it’s struck a chord
with the American people,” said
Fred Fleitz, who served as chief
of staff to Trump national secu-
The new penalties com-
pound the financial burden on
Trump, who separately faces a
$83.3 million judgment stem-
ming from a defamation lawsuit
filed by writer E. Jean Carroll.
The fraud case centered on
property valuations in finan-
cial statements signed by
Trump and his sons. Trump,
in loan agreements, promised
he would maintain a net
worth of at least $2.5 billion.
Deutsche Bank, his principal
lender, required him to submit
annual statements certifying
his compliance.
The loans, which helped
Trump expand his portfolio of
golf resorts and hotels, came
under scrutiny in 2019 after
his former personal attorney,
Michael Cohen, alleged in con-
gressional testimony that
Trump had improperly in-
flated his wealth.
New York Attorney General
Letitia James, a Democrat,
sued Trump in 2022, alleging
that he and his finance team
systematically exaggerated the
value of his marquee Manhat-
tan skyscrapers, luxury estates
and other assets. Finance ex-
ecutives, she claimed, used du-
bious investment metrics, bur-
ied low appraisals, disregarded
land-use restrictions and mis-
represented cash holdings out
P W L C 10 11
Do you think the U.S. should take the leading
or major role in world affairs?
90%
85
80
75
70
65
60
2001 ’05
Source: Gallup poll of a random sample of adults in the U.S., latest poll of 1,008 adults
conducted Feb. 1–23, 2023; margin of error +/–4 percentage points
rity adviser John Bolton. Polls
have shown Republicans, in
particular, have grown less ea-
ger during the Trump era for
the U.S. to play a leading role in
world affairs.
Bolton, who Trump fired in
2019 in part because he was too
hawkish, has turned on his for-
mer boss. Bolton has warned
that Trump would isolate the
U.S. from its allies and possibly
pull out of NATO altogether,
contending that the then—pres-
ident considered withdrawing
from the alliance in 2018.
of his control. Most flagrantly,
she alleged, executives con-
cocted $200 million by tripling
the square-footage of his
Trump Tower triplex pent-
house in Manhattan.
“Donald Trump is finally
facing accountability for his
lying, cheating and staggering
fraud,” James said.
She originally sought $250
million in penalties but re-
cently ratcheted up her re-
quest to $370 million, which
she alleged constituted all the
ill-gotten financial gains that
filtered down from his finan-
cial deceptions.
Nearly half of the $355 mil-
lion penalty Engoron imposed
was based on an estimate of
the money Trump saved with
cheap financing.
James’s office argued—and
Engoron agreed—that Trump
would have paid interest rates
several times higher had lend-
ers had a more accurate ac-
counting of his wealth. Her of-
fice assumed that Trump
would have lost access to the
low interest rates—as low as
1.83%—that he obtained from
Deutsche Bank’s private
wealth management division
and resorted to borrowing
money from the bank’s com-
mercial real estate division,
which at one point offered
12 H T G K R F A M 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 O
U.S. NEWS
Democrats
Republicans
Independents
’10 ’17 ’19 ’23
The Biden campaign on Fri-
day said it was launching an ad
in battleground states Michi-
gan, Wisconsin and Pennsylva-
nia highlighting Trump’s posi-
tion on NATO and noting the
only time the alliance has had
to act to defend a member was
after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks.
Last year, Congress quietly
included a bipartisan amend-
ment in the annual defense-pol-
icy bill, which Biden signed into
law, that requires a two-thirds
vote in the Senate or an act of
SHANNON STAPLETON/PRESS POOL
Judge Arthur Engoron
Trump financing at rates as
high as 10%.
Engoron also clawed back
$187 million that Trump re-
cently made from the sale of
two properties: $60 million
selling the rights to operate a
New York City-owned golf
course in the Bronx, and $127
million Trump made from the
sale of a luxury Washington,
D.C. hotel at the city’s historic
Old Post Office Building.
The two sons must each
pay $4 million in penalties,
the justice said.
Trump and the Trump Or-
ganization were also banned
for three years from applying
I X X ******* THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
On Iran, Trump would re-
turn to the tougher policies of
his first term, when he termi-
nated the Obama-era accord to
curtail its nuclear program in
exchange for sanctions relief.
Trump allies have said it is
likely he would seek new sanc-
tions, but the candidate hasn’t
been specific about how he
would handle current hostili-
ties.
People close to Trump say he
could look to expand on the
Abraham Accords, a marquee
achievement of his first term
that forged Israeli relations
with several Arab states.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared
Kushner, played a central role
in negotiating the accords.
Kushner—who started a pri-
vate-equity firm that has raised
the money from Saudi, Emirati
and Qatari investors—has said
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JU PENG/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS, WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES, AHMAD GHARABLI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
he wouldn’t rejoin the White
House if Trump wins a second
term, but he is expected to
nonetheless be influential from
the sidelines.
Trump would also have to
deal with an increasingly belli-
cose North Korea, which U.S. of-
ficials say is now supplying
weapons to Russia. Initially
Trump was hostile to Kim,
promising in 2017 that threats
would be “met with fire and
fury like the world has never
seen,” but he then sought a
high-stakes rapprochement that
.
failed to achieve a deal. Trump
was fond of what he said were
ly
“love letters” sent to him by the
North Korean dictator.
China strategy
On China, Trump has prom-
ised an even more aggressive
approach on trade, saying he
wants to revoke normal trad-
ing relations, a legal step that
would automatically raise lev-
ies on everything from toys
and aircraft to industrial ma-
terials. He has talked of tariffs
exceeding 60%.
The prospect of another
Trump presidency is stirring up
Congress before any president some anxiety in Beijing.
could “suspend, terminate, de- Some officials there believe
nounce, or withdraw” from Trump could accelerate Amer-
NATO. The amendment bars ica’s decline if he were to win
any funding from being used the election, and his unwilling-
for a withdrawal. ness to defend Taiwan could
help ease bilateral tensions over
the most sensitive issue to the
More loyalists Chinese leadership.
The Republican Party is di- But others worry his tough
vided over how aggressive the stance on trade could deal a
U.S. should be on the world huge blow to already-strained
stage, with some taking a more economic relations between the
hawkish approach and others two powers—ties Beijing has
making the case that America long viewed as the foundation
should withdraw and refocus of the bilateral relationship.
on domestic affairs. Trump is Eurasia Group President Ian
poised to surround himself with Bremmer said Trump’s unpre-
the latter. dictability could cause some
Some former Trump admin- world leaders to think twice
istration officials have privately about clashing with the U.S.
expressed concerns that in a But the former president’s
potential second term, the gov- approach could also backfire,
ernment would be stocked with according to Bremmer, who
few senior officials who would noted that there were no major
be willing to oppose Trump’s wars taking place during
most radical ideas. Trump fre- Trump’s time in office.
quently complained during his “It’s like Clint Eastwood, do
four years in office that his staff you feel lucky? And how many
wasn’t loyal enough to him and times do you actually want to
he is planning to purge those feel lucky with the number of
who aren’t in lockstep with his conflicts we’re talking about
agenda, according to people here,” Bremmer said, describing
close to him. the uncertainty of a second
Trump’s potential return to Trump term.
the Oval Office comes as Amer- —Lindsay Wise
ica’s adversaries are becoming and Lingling Wei
more formidable. contributed to this article.
for loans from any financial
institution registered or char-
tered with New York state.
trial that he mostly relied on
his accounting team to quan-
tify his worth and occasionally
In one notable shift, the jus-
tice backed away from a previ-
ous directive in which he ap-
asked them to make adjust-
ments on valuations that he
thought were too low or high.
peared to order the wind down
of some Trump businesses.
Trump can post a bond
His lawyers argued that the
valuations had a plausible ba-
sis and that James was target-
through insurance companies ing private business deals in
to avoid paying the judgment which lenders made a profit
right away. That will likely re- and never alleged any breach
quire him to put up collateral of contract.
tying up hundreds of millions Deutsche Bank assumed
of dollars of his assets. from its own analysis of
Engoron issued his ruling af- Trump’s properties that his
ter presiding over a monthslong net worth was billions lower
nonjury trial, which Trump of- than his statements said. No
ten attended and used as a representatives of the bank
platform to vent his grievances. testified that they would have
Trump, who is also con- priced the loans any differ-
tending with charges in four ently, and bank employees
criminal cases, has raised testified that they longed for
money and his standing his business.
among Republicans by paint- Trump’s fight on appeal will
ing himself as a victim of likely focus on whether the
Democratic law-enforcement state established his liability
officials. He has attacked the under a state fraud statute in-
Manhattan civil-fraud case as tended to combat consumer
particularly unjust, hurling scams and corporate malfea-
salvos of insults at James and sance harming the marketplace.
Engoron on social media and
at times to the justice’s face
inside the courtroom. Watch a Video
James, meanwhile, said Scan this code
Trump’s antics were an at- for a video on
tempt to distract from the fact the order that
that he broke the law. Trump pay over
Trump testified during the $350 million.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | A5

U.S. NEWS

Manchin Won’t U.S.WATCH

Make a Run
For President
BY LINDSAY WISE had speculated that he might
pick Sen. Mitt Romney (R.,
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Utah) as his running mate,
Virginia, a 76-year-old centrist should he run as a third-party
Democrat, said he wouldn’t candidate. He also said he
run for president, ending would consider former Sen.
months of speculation about Rob Portman (R., Ohio) for
whether he would mount a vice president.
long-shot bid for the White Manchin’s Senate term
House this year. ends in January 2025. He has
“I will not be seeking a been a pivotal dealmaker in
third-party run, I will not be recent years on bipartisan leg-
involved in a presidential islation for infrastructure and
run…I just don’t think it’s the Democrats’ sweeping climate
right time,” he said Friday. and healthcare bill, the Infla-
Manchin, who isn’t running tion Reduction Act.
for re-election in the Senate, He also pushed to rein in

DAVID RYDER/GETTY IMAGES

has participated in events some of President Biden’s
hosted by No spending pro-
Labels, a group posals. He has
that is laying repeatedly
the groundwork The senator flirted with be-
to potentially has repeatedly coming an in-
run an alterna- dependent, cit-
tive candidate flirted with ing increasing FILLING STATIONS: People received free dental work on Friday at Seattle Center as part of the Seattle/King County Clinic, a
if the 2024 frustration free annual event. The clinic offers dental, vision and medical services to people who struggle to access healthcare.
presidential
becoming an with both par-
race becomes a independent. ties over issues COLORADO has some of the weakest PENNSYLVANIA Authorities say McCoy is
rematch be- including abor- oversight of the funeral indus- now blind in his right eye.
tween Donald tion, energy
Cremated Remains, try in the nation. The state
Judge Accused of Police wrote that McCoy,
Trump and Joe production and Body Are Found has no routine inspections of Attempted Murder 54, had tried “numerous
Biden, as now appears likely budget deficits. Colorado authorities issued funeral homes or qualification A suspended magistrate times” to get McKnight to

.
to be the case. Manchin’s announcement in an arrest warrant Friday for a requirements for operators. judge in Pennsylvania shot move out after he ended
Manchin made the an- November that he wouldn’t

nouncement in a speech at run for another Senate term
West Virginia University in delivered a blow to fellow
Morgantown, W.Va. In the Democrats’ long-shot effort to
speech, he complained that
the democratic institutions in
the country were breaking
down amid extreme partisan-
hold their narrow 51-49 Sen-
ate majority, and renewed
speculation about whether he
might pursue a presidential
on
ship and the parties were no bid.
us ,
former funeral homeowner
they say kept a deceased
woman’s body in a hearse for
two years at a home where
police also found up to 30
cremated remains.
The grisly discovery oc-
curred Feb. 6 during a court-
ordered eviction of a Denver
One married couple is
awaiting trial in Colorado
Springs following their arrest
last year for allegedly aban-
doning almost 200 bodies
over several years inside a
bug-infested facility and giv-
ing fake ashes to family
members of the deceased.
ly
her estranged boyfriend in
the head as he slept last
weekend, police said Thurs-
day in filing attempted mur-
der and aggravated assault
charges against her.
Tests showed Magisterial
District Judge Sonya M.
McKnight, 57, had gunshot
their one-year relationship.
McKnight, an elected judge
in Dauphin County since 2016,
was suspended without pay
in mid-November by the
Court of Judicial Discipline,
which handles misconduct al-
legations against judges. The
Judicial Conduct Board, which

longer able to work together Manchin said at that time house rented by 33-year-old Harford, who police said residue on her hands an hour investigates and charges mis-
l

to solve the country’s prob- that he planned to travel the Miles Harford, who owned isn’t on the run and is coop- after Michael McCoy was conduct cases against Penn-
e
al a

lems. country and look for opportu- Apollo Funeral and Cremation erating, is expected to be shot in the bed of his home sylvania judges, claimed in a
While Manchin was seen as nities to “mobilize the middle Services in the Denver sub- charged with abuse of a in the Harrisburg area early September filing that
having little chance at win- and bring Americans to-
ci on

ning the presidency, Demo- gether.”
crats feared that a run could Manchin and his daughter
potentially draw voters away Heather Manchin last year set
from Biden in key battle- up an organization called
ground states and tip the Americans Together to pro-
er s
urb of Littleton, Denver police
said. It had been closed since
September 2022.
The discovery is the latest
in a string of horrific cases in
recent years involving mishan-
corpse, forgery of the death
certificate and theft of the
money paid for the crema-
tion. Other charges are possi-
ble as the investigation con-
tinues, said Denver District
Saturday, Susquehanna
Township Police wrote in an
arrest affidavit.
McKnight was in the Dau-
phin County Prison on Friday
with bail set at $300,000. No
McKnight had violated judicial
probation from a previous
misconduct case centered on
her actions regarding a 2020
traffic stop involving her son.
She was acquitted of criminal

races into Trump’s column. mote centrist policies and dled bodies by funeral home Attorney Beth McCann. lawyer was listed for her in charges in that matter.
Earlier this week, Manchin candidates. operators in Colorado, which —Associated Press court records. —Associated Press
m er

BYD Eyes
m rp

U.S. Push
Via Mexico
co Fo
ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Continued from Page One

Any such clash could still be
some time away, and people fa-
miliar with BYD’s plans said it
hasn’t made any decisions
about Mexico.
A BYD spokesperson said
the company doesn’t have any
“imminent announcements to EV maker BYD and its Chinese peers have become more
make regarding new markets.” eager to expand in North America despite the political risks.
At least a dozen Chinese
n-

electric-car component suppli- Tesla Chief Executive Elon U.S. The factory’s cars could
ers have announced new facto- Musk has also expressed simi- possibly pay no tariff if they
ries or added to their existing lar concerns, saying the Chi- meet stringent standards for
investments in Mexico in re- nese companies have already local content under the U.S.-
no

cent years, according to stock- had significant success outside Canada-Mexico Agreement ad-
exchange filings. These parts of China and are now the opted in 2020.
makers are responding to a “most competitive” in the Executives at Toyota in
U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal world. “If there are not trade North America estimated in an
that encourages carmakers in barriers established, they will internal memo last fall that
North America to use locally pretty much demolish most Chinese companies had a cost
sourced content. other car companies in the advantage of 25% to 30% over
BYD has been rapidly ex- world,” Musk said during global competitors when manu-
panding both inside and out- Tesla’s earnings call in January. facturing EVs. If the U.S. gov-
side China. In recent years, The European Union is con- ernment pushes EV adoption

HOLD YOUR HORSES

BYD’s low-price EVs have ducting an investigation of Chi- too quickly, it would serve as
gained traction with buyers in nese EV makers that could re- an open invitation for Chinese
places such as Europe and sult in new tariffs if EU EV companies including BYD,
Southeast Asia. In the fourth officials find the Chinese com- Geely and NIO to “storm the ANDRÉ BRASILIER
quarter of last year, it overtook panies are receiving unfair U.S. market,” the memo said.
Tesla for the first time as the subsidies. Stella Li, a top BYD execu- Dreamlike palette. Signature style. Vibrant energy.
world’s largest EV seller. Mexico would be a natural tive, visited Mexico City in Jan-
In recent weeks, executives staging point for Chinese auto- uary to discuss the carmaker’s Marked by dynamic brushwork and vivid
at some Western car compa- makers to enter the U.S. market expansion plans in Mexico with color, the original painting entitled Hiver
nies have become more vocal because of its proximity, rela- local officials, the country’s bleu by famed French painter André Brasilier
about the potential threat tively low labor costs and the economy ministry said. showcases the compelling mysticism and
these Chinese firms pose to chance to take advantage of Although BYD executives individuality of his singular style. The oil
their own EV plans. Through a low or zero tariffs on made-in- have long harbored ambitions on canvas renders two stylized horses and
mix of engineering, govern- Mexico vehicles. People famil- to sell passenger EVs in the
ment subsidies and lower labor iar with BYD’s plans said some U.S., they have moved cau-
their riders racing through a snowy grove
costs, BYD and other China- of the locations it is examining tiously given the potential of frozen trees. Rendered in otherworldly
based EV makers have been are near the U.S. border. backlash from regulators and shades, this dynamic composition is a triumph of expressionism.
able to lure customers with Currently, Chinese-built EVs U.S. rivals. In North America, Accompanied by its certificate of authenticity. Signed “André Brasilier”
stylish and technologically ad- are subject to a 27.5% tariff the company currently sells (lower right). Canvas: 283/4”h x 391/2”w. Frame: 383/8”h x 491/8”w. #31-4666
vanced EVs at attractive prices. when imported into the U.S.— electric buses and trucks made
On Thursday, Carlos Tava- the regular 2.5% tariff that gen- at its site in Lancaster, Calif.
res, chief executive of Stellan- erally applies to imported cars As BYD weighs the possibil- Scan to learn more
tis, said it was imperative the plus an additional 25% tariff ity of selling cars to people in about this painting
global automaker be able to that hits Chinese-made cars the U.S., the coming U.S. presi-
match its Chinese rivals on and was introduced by the dential election is one factor it
cost, or it would risk ceding Trump administration in 2018. is watching closely, people at
ground. He described their ex- The Biden administration is the company said. BYD execu-
pansion as “very powerful” and debating whether to raise tar- tives see other potential uses
likened their potential entry in iffs on Chinese EVs further, for the plant in Mexico, includ-
the U.S. to the arrival of the The Wall Street Journal has ing using it as an export hub
Japanese automakers in the reported, and also has limited for shipping cars to South
1970s and South Korean firms eligibility for a $7,500 con- America or sending batteries
in the 1990s. sumer subsidy for cars built and other car parts to the U.S.
622 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA • 888-767-9190 • ws@rauantiques.com • msrau.com
“You can see it in the Euro- with batteries made by Chi- Japan’s Nikkei newspaper ear- Since 1912, M.S. Rau has specialized in the world’s finest art, antiques and jewelry.
pean markets,” Tavares said nese companies. lier reported that BYD was
Backed by our unprecedented 125% Guarantee, we stand behind each and every piece.
during a conference call with Cars made at a Chinese- looking at a plant in Mexico.
analysts. “We may not want to owned factory in Mexico, by —Santiago Pérez
see—a third time—the same contrast, could enjoy the low and Raffaele Huang
movie.” 2.5% tariff upon entering the contributed to this article.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

A6 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

WORLD NEWS
Activist Galvanized Russian Opposition
A fierce Putin critic, posed sanctions on Russian
officials and entities in con-
Navalny died in a nection with the opposition
penal colony ahead politician’s poisoning.
Navalny was discharged
of March elections from Berlin’s Charité Hospital
on Sept. 23, 2020. He returned
BY ANN M. SIMMONS to Russia in January 2021 and
was detained by Russian secu-
Alexei Navalny was one of rity forces upon arrival.
the few remaining voices in Rus- Russia’s federal prison ser-
sia who gave President Vladimir vice said Navalny, who was on
Putin cause for alarm. One of the agency’s “wanted list”
the Kremlin’s most vocal critics, since Dec. 29, 2020, was de-
he was a media-savvy anticor- tained for repeated violations
ruption activist of his probation. He would
OBITUARY who breathed never leave custody again.
ALEXEI life into Rus- Navalny later said he had
NAVALNY sia’s opposition no regrets over returning to
1976-2024 movement, ex- his home, telling his support-
posing the ers on social media “don’t be
flaws of Putin’s afraid of anything.”

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

decadeslong rule on his popular From prison, Navalny con-
YouTube channel despite never tinued to lampoon govern-
being allowed to challenge him ment policies and condemn
at the ballot box. Moscow’s war in Ukraine, urg-
He died in a Russian penal ing Russians to speak out.
colony, Russian news agencies His allies said authorities at
reported, where he was serv- the prison in the Vladimir re-
ing sentences totaling more gion went out of their way to
than 30 years on various make his life intolerable. By late
charges. He was 47 years old. 2023, Navalny had filed at least
Navalny, who was suffering 89 lawsuits against the penal
from long-term health issues colony, prison management and
after surviving a poisoning in prosecuting authorities since
2020, had complained of poor August 2022, claiming violation
treatment in prison. His asso- Alexei Navalny marched in 2020 with his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, to his left, in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov. of his rights, according to court
ciates said his health recently records. Prison authorities
deteriorated. fragmented opposition. tin loathed Navalny. Russia’s website. He graduated in 1997 into the Kremlin’s propaganda didn’t respond to a request for
Navalny’s death followed Navalny’s first foray into general prosecutor’s office ul- as a lawyer from the Peoples’ machine, which he said de- comment.

.
Putin’s Dec. 8 announcement politics dovetailed with a timately would outlaw the Friendship University Moscow pended on voters to maintain a In August, a Russian court
that he plans to run for re-elec- broader ethnic Russian nation- Anti-Corruption Foundation and in 2001 as an economist veneer of democratic legitimacy. sentenced Navalny, who was

tion in 2024, a widely expected alist movement. But in 2012,
decision that could keep him in he discarded the nationalist
power until at least 2030. Na- rhetoric to become a member
valny had begun working on a
campaign to persuade Russians
to vote at the same time, on
the stroke of noon, in a show of
of a coalition of opposition
groups that sought to lead
protests against Putin’s deci-
sion, unpopular with the mid-
on
dissent. Now his demise casts dle class of Moscow and other
us ,
ly
and regional branches of Na- from the Russian government’s Putin claimed 78% of Rus- already serving an 11½-year
valny’s campaign. Finance Academy. sians supported the constitu- sentence for what he said
Navalny was arrested sev- Navalny was a fellow at tional amendments in the July were trumped-up charges of
eral times and accused of
c r i m i n a l
wrongdoing, in-
cluding for al-
Yale University in 2010 and
later returned
to Russia to
continue his
vote, a victory that members
of the opposition said embold-
ened the Kremlin leader’s al-
lies to exert pressure on po-
fraud and other allegations, to
a further 19 years in prison.
But from his prison in Rus-
sia’s Far North, where his al-
leged embezzle- The opposition political career. tential challenges to his rule. lies believe he was placed to

him as the clearest symbol of big cities, to return to the ment in 2013 movement has In 2016, he In August 2020, Navalny fell make it harder for him to or-
l

how the opposition movement presidency after serving for and 2014 for was injured by ill midflight onboard a flight to ganize meaningful resistance,
e
essentially been
al a

has been besieged after years four years as prime minister. which he re- pro-Kremlin ac- Moscow, forcing the plane to Navalny sought to show that
of raids, indiscriminate deten- The protests faded, but Na- ceived a sus- tivists at an air- make an emergency landing in he remained unbroken. In a
tions and physical attacks. valny’s taste for opposition pended sen-
decapitated port in Russia. the Siberian city of Omsk. His message to supporters the day
ci on

Many government critics politics stayed strong, and in
have fled the country. Others the years that followed he fo-
have been jailed. Without Na- cused his energies on his Anti-
valny, the opposition move- Corruption Foundation, which
ment has essentially been de- carried out investigations into
er s
tence in both without Navalny. Less than a year wife of 23 years, Yulia Naval- after his whereabouts were re-
cases. He de- later, an attacker naya, 47, led the charge to have vealed, he joked about being
nied the doused him with her husband evacuated to Ger- their “new Santa Claus” and
charges. a green antisep- many. A medical plane char- the fact that he now had a
Navalny wanted to chal- tic dye during a campaign stop, tered by a German nongovern- sheepskin coat, a fur hat and

capitated, analysts who follow the pro-Kremlin elite. His lenge Putin in the 2018 presi- leaving his vision impaired. mental group took Navalny, felt winter boots. “Don’t worry
Russian domestic politics said. weekly YouTube videos took dential election but was In the summer of 2020, Na- who was in a coma and on a about me,” he said. “I’m fine.”
m er

Navalny was a compelling aim at a spectrum of Putin-
speaker who roused crowds aligned businessmen and poli-
with ease, but his real weapon ticians, earning him many en-
was his YouTube channel, emies. He published exposés,
which gave him a nationwide purporting to show the lavish
m rp
deemed ineligible because of valny led a campaign against ventilator, out of the country. —Thomas Grove
his prior conviction. constitutional amendments that It was determined that Na- contributed to this article.
Navalny was born on June included a provision to poten- valny was poisoned as a result
4, 1976, in the village of Butyn tially allow Putin to rule until of being exposed to the nerve
in the Moscow region. He came 2036. He called for Russians to agent Novichok. His support- Watch a Video

platform to reach millions. lifestyle of Putin, whom he
The popularity of his videos, once described as a “naked,
usually detailing the corrup- thieving emperor” who had
tion of Russia’s elite, set him turned his people into slaves.
apart from others in Russia’s Kremlin watchers said Pu-
co Fo
from a military family and boycott a referendum on the ers think the Kremlin was in- Scan this code
moved around between mili- amendments, saying the vote volved in poisoning Navalny. for a video on
tary towns with his parents, would be falsified regardless of The Kremlin denied in- the life and
according to information pub- the real outcome. He said it was volvement, but the U.S., U.K. activism of
lished on his 2018 campaign better to stay at home than feed and European Union all im- Alexei Navalny.

Kremlin
Critic Dies
In Prison
EVGENY FELDMAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued from Page One

n-

Navalny, who was 47 and

had been behind bars since
2021, was serving three sen-
tences amounting to more than
no

30 years on charges he and

supporters called fabricated.
He had been detained after re-
turning from Germany, where candles at monuments to the authorities, in prison or in ex-
he was recovering from what victims of political repres- ile, severely weakened and
ASSOCIATED PRESS

German doctors said was poi- sions, videos on Telegram riven by infighting. Other crit-
soning with a Soviet-era nerve showed. Outside of Russia, ics have been killed.
agent, Novichok. Navalny protesters gathered in Latvia, Navalny jumped to the fore
blamed his poisoning on the Georgia and Armenia to ex- in a wave of protests that
Kremlin, which denied involve- press sorrow and anger. brought hundreds of thou-
ment in any attempt at harm. Navalny’s wife, Yulia Naval- sands of Muscovites into the Clockwise from top left,
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry naya, surprised attendees at the streets following accusations Alexei Navalny protesting in
Peskov said Putin had been in- Munich Security Conference af- of voter fraud in the 2011 par- Moscow in 2018, the year he
formed and that prison au- ter news of his death emerged. liamentary elections. Later, he was barred from running for
thorities were working to es- “I want Putin and his entire sought in local, regional and president; showing off his
tablish how Navalny died. circle to know that they’ll bear national elections to under- handcuffs in court in 2017;
Navalny’s death eliminates responsibility for what they mine Putin and the pro-Krem- and honored in Riga, Latvia,
the last real political opposi- did with our country and my lin United Russia party. His after his death Friday.
tion inside Russia following family and my husband,” she strategy of concentrating op-
TOMS KALNINS/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, his said in an emotional speech,
crackdown on freedom of saying that she was waiting
speech and the passage of in- for confirmation of his death.
creasingly draconian laws In his three years behind
aimed at stamping out dissent. bars, Navalny had suffered
The death also solidifies continuously, at times from
Putin’s position following two sleep deprivation when he was
disastrous years of war that awakened every hour at night
have killed hundreds of thou- by guards. He was sent into
sands, isolated Russia from solitary confinement 27 times,
the West and impoverished rights groups said.
the Russian economy. He is Putin, who has gone to
widely expected to win a fifth pains to avoid even pronounc-
term in next month’s presi- ing Navalny’s name, didn’t im-
dential election. mediately respond to the news
President Biden praised Na- while talking to defense-fac-
valny for his bravery and put tory workers in the central
the blame squarely on Putin. Russian city of Chelyabinsk.
Asked specifically whether Na- Putin had previously
valny was assassinated, he said, shrugged off questions about
“We don’t know exactly what Navalny’s criminal sentences,
happened. There’s no doubt saying Russian courts act inde-
that the death of Navalny was pendently of political pressure
the consequence of something and that it was the responsi-
Putin and his thugs did.” bility of the penitentiary sys-
Putin’s spokesman Peskov tem, not of the president, to
said any such accusation was ensure Navalny served his time
“unacceptable.” and left prison alive.
In Moscow and St. Peters- Navalny now leaves a po-
burg, people laid flowers and litical opposition cowed by the
position votes on popular anti- tem that Putin has built.”
Kremlin candidates kept Rus- Chancellor Olaf Scholz of
sia’s political opposition alive Germany said, “We know now,
even as the Kremlin cracked if we didn’t know before, what
down on dissent. kind of regime this is. Those
His reach, both through his who voice criticism, those
YouTube channel and network who take a stand for democ-
of offices, introduced an en- racy must fear for their secu-
tire generation to political ac- rity and for their lives”
tivism. In 2018, the political his supporters, though he knew who fled abroad have been ar- President Volodymyr Zel-
movement he oversaw nur- it would result in his arrest. rested in absentia. ensky of Ukraine said Navalny
tured a nationwide network of “I will not give Putin the In an interview Thursday, “was killed, like many thou-
young politicians who often gift of not returning to Rus- before Navalny’s death, Zhda- sands who have been tortured
won unlikely victories in local sia,” Navalny told a German nov said the politician’s team to death, all because of this
elections and who rallied sup- magazine at the time. His im- had lost almost all access to one person: Putin.”
porters for protests. Navalny mediate detention sparked Navalny since his December It isn’t clear how Western
was barred from the ballot for massive protests and clashes transfer to a remote Arctic governments—which have al-
president that year. with police in central Moscow prison colony, notorious for ready slapped broad sanctions
In recent years, Navalny had and in other large cities. disease and dire conditions. on Russia over Ukraine—will
become a cautionary tale for With continued access to The last time Navalny ap- respond. The U.S. and European
those who challenge the Krem- social media through his law- peared in public, in court on Union imposed sanctions in re-
lin. His Anti-Corruption Foun- yers, Navalny was able to nee- Thursday, he was seen making sponse to Navalny’s poisoning.
dation, the vehicle for his po- dle the Kremlin with acerbic jokes in an exchange with a In a 2022 documentary, Na-
litical activism, was dismantled humor, while also complaining judge over a video link. valny was asked what message
inside Russia, and allies im- that he was repeatedly singled On the sidelines of the Mu- he would leave to the Russian
prisoned or scared into exile. out for unfair treatment. nich conference, U.S. Secretary people if he were killed.
Navalny said that he held Three of those lawyers are of State Antony Blinken said “Don’t give up,” he said.
Putin personally responsible for now in jail in Russia on Putin’s fixation with Navalny “Everything that’s needed for
his poisoning in 2020. His re- charges of participating in an underscored the “the weak- evil to prevail is for good peo-
turn to Russia brought hope to extremist movement. Two ness at the heart of the sys- ple to do nothing. So act.”
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * NY Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | A7

WORLD NEWS

Russia Tightens Grip

On East Ukraine City
Outgunned Ukrainian forces
have withdrawn from parts of
the besieged eastern city of
Avdiivka, as Russia’s military
appeared on the verge of its
By Isabel Coles,
Alistair MacDonald
and Ievgeniia Sivorka
first major advance in months.
The Russian army’s push
into the city came rapidly in re-
cent days, as Ukraine’s lack of
put Russia closer to its strate-
gic aim of seizing all of the
eastern Donetsk and Luhansk
regions. But the slow pace of
the Russian advance and the
heavy cost in lives and ar-
mored vehicles has given
Ukrainian officials confidence
that Russian forces lack the
tactical coordination and qual-
ity personnel needed for a ma-
jor breakthrough.
Still, the Russian gains dem-
onstrate the enormous chal-

artillery ammunition thwarted
efforts to hold the invaders
back. The Biden administration
said the city was at risk of fall-
ing under Russian control and
blamed Congress’s failure to
send further military aid to
Ukraine for the lack of shells.
Russian forces pressed
deeper into Avdiivka on Fri-
CLEMENS BILAN/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
lenge Kyiv would face against
its larger neighbor without
further U.S. support. The Sen-
ate this week passed a new aid
package containing about $60
billion related to Ukraine, over-
coming objections from Repub-
lican lawmakers. But the bill
faces a further hurdle in the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signed a bilateral agreement in Berlin on Friday.
GOP-run House.

Zelensky Seeks Aid From Europe

day, pounding it with guided
aerial bombs after cutting a
key supply road. Ukraine sent
reinforcements including the
powerful 3rd Assault Brigade
this week, but soldiers inside
the city said its capture ap-
peared imminent.
Russian military bloggers
posted an image of the Soviet
victory flag flying from a sign
in Avdiivka where Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky
took a selfie during a visit to
the city in December.
National Security Council
spokesman John Kirby on
Wednesday said a lack of shells
was in large part to blame for
the situation in Avdiivka.
“Russia is sending wave af-
ter wave of conscript forces to
attack Ukrainian positions,
and because Congress has yet
to pass the supplemental bill,
we’ve not been able to provide
Ukraine with the artillery
shells they desperately need
to disrupt these Russian as-
saults,” he said.
France and Germany military support for Ukraine
has become more pressing as
sign security pacts future aid from Washington,
with Kyiv while more the biggest contributor to
Kyiv, has fallen into political
U.S. assistance stalls limbo. This week, the Senate
passed a $95 billion foreign-
BY STACY MEICHTRY aid package that includes
AND BERTRAND BENOIT funding for Ukraine, Israel and
Taiwan, and billions to replen-
been struggling to boost mili-
tary spending and revive
weapons production. Europe
would have to double its mili-
tary support for Kyiv should
the U.S. fail to pass the aid
package currently locked in
Congress, according to Chris-
toph Trebesch, head of the
Ukraine Support Tracker at
lies were prepared to make up
for any shortfalls in U.S. sup-
port, Macron said he would
“adapt to any scenario.”
The security pacts signed
Friday last for 10 years and
govern relations across areas
including military support and
economic and reconstruction
assistance as well as legal sup-

.
Speaking at a news confer- Ukrainian forces pulled out France and Germany lined ish the Pentagon’s weapons the Kiel Institute for the port in bringing those respon-
ence with German Chancellor of a military base in the south up long-term military-aid stocks. But House Speaker World Economy, a German re- sible for Russia’s war of aggres-

Olaf Scholz on Friday, Zel-
ensky said he had instructed
battlefield commanders to
give priority to preserving sol-
diers’ lives: “Our military is
the most important thing we
have, and it is our most im-
portant weapon,” he said.
of Avdiivka this week where
they were at risk of being cut
off by Russian forces. “We
held this position as long as it
allowed us to effectively deter
and destroy the enemy,” said
Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, com-
on
mander of Ukrainian forces
us ,
pacts with Ukraine on Friday,
as the Biden administration
struggles to push its own as-
sistance through Congress and
anxieties mount over Donald
Trump’s skepticism toward
trans-Atlantic security ties.
Ukrainian President Volod-
Mike Johnson (R., La.) has
criticized the Senate bill and
suggested it is unlikely to get
a vote in its current form.
Many Republicans in Con-
gress are drifting toward
Trump’s America-first isola-
tionism while he is consolidat-
ly
search group.
On Friday, German Chancel-
lor Olaf Scholz said Germany
was pledging about €1.1 bil-
lion, equivalent to $1.18 bil-
lion, in fresh military assis-
tance to Ukraine, including 36
tanks and self-propelled artil-
sion to justice. The U.K. signed
a similar pact in January,
pledging £2.5 billion, equivalent
to $3.15 billion, for the year.
Under Germany’s agree-
ment, Berlin pledged to help
Ukraine demine its territory,
secure its energy infrastruc-

If Russia is able to take Av- fighting in the southeast. ymyr Zelensky was shuttling ing his lead as the party’s lery guns, 120,000 artillery ture and rebuild destroyed cit-
l

diivka, it would represent the On the ground in Avdiivka, between Germany and France presidential candidate. Trump shells, two air-defense sys- ies. Scholz said the agreement
e
al a

biggest victory for President Ukrainian soldiers said they Friday to sign the accords, has long said he is ready to cut tems and ammunition for the showed that Berlin would sup-
Vladimir Putin since his forces were suffering from acute which aim to make good on a deal with Russian President Iris-T air-defense system. port Kyiv in its fight against
captured the eastern city of shortages of ammunition. For commitments the Group of Vladimir Putin to end the war. France will provide up to €3 Russia “for as long as it takes.”
ci on

Bakhmut in May last year.
Moscow has retaken the ini-
tiative in the war as Ukraine
is short on personnel and mil-
itary equipment after a failed
every five to seven artillery
shells fired by Russia, Ukraine
can only respond with one, of-
ficials say. Soldiers sometimes
hold fire even when Russian
er s
Seven industrialized nations
made last year to reassure
Ukraine after the North Atlan-
tic Treaty Organization de-
clined to invite Ukraine to join
He fueled fears across Europe
recently by saying he wouldn’t
protect a NATO country that
doesn’t pay enough to support
the alliance.
billion in military aid this year,
French President Emmanuel
Macron said, noting that the
support was in addition to the
$54 billion aid package the EU
Scholz and Zelensky both
appealed to U.S. lawmakers to
urgently pass the stalled mili-
tary-aid package.
“Unfortunately, we have

counteroffensive last year. soldiers are in their sights, to the alliance. That message has alarmed approved earlier this year. seen a drop in support from
Control over the city would preserve ammunition. Europe’s need to shore up European capitals, which have Asked if France and other al- our partners,” Zelensky said.
m er
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 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
A8 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
Biden Presses Netanyahu to Accept Plan
President says he
expects the prime
minister to hold off
on Rafah offensive
BY SABRINA SIDDIQUI
AND DION NISSENBAUM
WASHINGTON—President
Biden called on Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
to agree to a temporary halt to
Israel’s military campaign in
the Gaza Strip to secure the re-
lease of hostages held by Hamas
and postpone an offensive in
the enclave’s southernmost city.
At the White House on Fri-
day, Biden said he expected Ne-
tanyahu to hold off on sending
Israeli troops into Rafah, whose
population has swelled to nearly
1.5 million as Palestinians have
been forced from their homes
during the four-month war.
Biden, who spoke with Ne-
tanyahu on Thursday, said he
urged the prime minister to
agree to a hostage deal. “I’ve
made the case, and I feel very
strongly about it, that there
has to be a temporary cease-
fire to get the prisoners out, to
get the hostages out,” he said.
“I’m hoping that the Israelis
U.S. Is Preparing to Send Bombs, Other Arms to Israel
BY JARED MALSIN
AND NANCY A. YOUSSEF
ISTANBUL—The Biden ad-
ministration is preparing to
send bombs and other weap-
ons to Israel that would add to
its military arsenal even as
the U.S. pushes for a cease-
fire in the war in Gaza, ac-
cording to current and former
U.S. officials.
The proposed arms delivery
includes roughly a thousand
each of MK-82 bombs,
KMU-572 Joint Direct Attack
Munitions that add precision
guidance to bombs, and
FMU-139 bomb fuses, the offi-
no
will not make any massive land
invasion in the meantime,” Bi-
den added. “It is my expectation
that’s not going to happen.”
There has been a deadlock
in diplomatic efforts to secure
release of about 130 hostages
held by Hamas since they car-
ried out their deadly Oct. 7
cross-border attack.
Netanyahu and his right-
wing government have re-
sisted international pressure
to work with world leaders
and bring the fighting in Gaza
to a quick end.
The Israeli government is
floating plans to move civil-
ians from Rafah to central
Gaza, where they propose cre-
ating new tent cities.
United Nations Secretary-
General António Guterres in
Munich on Friday urged Israel
to avert its planned Rafah of-
fensive, saying humanitarian-
aid operations in Gaza were
on “life support.”
Egypt has started building
an 8-square-mile walled enclo-
sure on its border with Gaza
as part of a contingency plan
in case Israel’s military ac-
tions force Palestinians across
the border. Israeli Defense
Minister Yoav Gallant said Fri-
day that Israel had no plans to
cials said. The proposed deliv-
ery is still being reviewed by
the administration, a U.S. offi-
cial said, and the details could
change before it notifies con-
gressional committee leaders
on
whose approval is needed.
us ,
Israel is preparing to
l
launch an assault on the city
e
al a
of Rafah in the southern Gaza
Strip where more than one
million Palestinians are shel-
ci on
tering from the war. Israel has
said it needs to expand its
military offensive in the area
to attack Hamas militants hid-
ing among civilians.
er s
The White House referred
questions to the State Depart-
m er
m rp
co Fo
n-
NY
WORLD NEWS
Palestinians wait for food in Rafah. The U.S. is urging Israel to postpone an operation in the city.
push Palestinians out of Gaza.
As part of the search for cap-
tives, Israeli forces raided the
main hospital in the southern
Gaza city of Khan Younis, after
Israel said it had intelligence in-
dicating that hostages have
been held there, and that the
bodies of some of them could
ment and Defense Depart-
ment, which both declined to
comment. The Israeli Defense
Ministry and Prime Minister’s
Office didn’t respond to re-
quests for comment. The Is-
raeli military referred ques-
tions to the Defense Ministry.
An assessment of the pro-
posed arms transfer drafted
by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusa-
lem, and viewed by The Wall
Street Journal, said the Israeli
government requested “rapid
acquisition of these items for
the defense of Israel against
continued and emerging re-
gional threats.”
The assessment said there
be on the hospital grounds.
Gaza health officials said
Friday that the 350-bed Nasser
Hospital lost power and that
four patients died as a result.
The Israeli military didn’t re-
spond to requests for comment.
The Israeli military said
Friday that it was carrying out
were no potential human-
rights concerns with the sale.
A former U.S. official said the
transfer would be financed by
U.S. military aid to Israel.
Precision-guided munitions
would allow Israel to better
target Hamas leaders and po-
tentially strike in areas where
enemy forces are entrenched
underground. And while
MK-82 bombs don’t have the
same precision, Israel has kits
that can improve their preci-
sion. The U.S. has provided
roughly 21,000 precision-
guided munitions to Israel
since the start of the war, and
Israel has used roughly half.
* *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
said it found inside the hospi-
tal compound. It provided no
information to support its
contention that the facility
was used to hold hostages.
The raid at Nasser Hospital
in Gaza’s Khan Younis came as
the International Court of Jus-
tice on Friday rejected an
emergency request by South
Africa to order Israel to take
more measures to protect Pal-
estinians in Rafah, after the
world court’s provisional or-
ders last month directing Is-
rael to ensure it complied with
its obligations under the 1948
Genocide Convention.
FATIMA SHBAIR/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The January decision, how-
ever, didn’t order any specific
changes in Israeli military op-
erations and declined South
Africa’s request to order Israel
to cease its response to the
Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks.
Also on Friday, a gunman
opened fire near a bus stop in
southern Israel, killing two
a “precise and limited” opera- people and seriously wounding
tion at the hospital that led to four others, said Israeli health
the detention of 20 militants and security officials. Israeli
who took part in the Oct. 7 at- security forces identified the
tack, though it didn’t say how attacker as a 37-year-old resi-
it tied the Palestinians to the dent of East Jerusalem.
October assault. The military —Jess Bravin, Anat Peled
released a photo of several and Saleh al-Batati
mortar rounds and grenades it contributed to this article.
.
ly
The transfer is indicative of The war in Gaza has killed
a broader effort by the Biden more than 28,000 people,
administration to speed the
flow of weapons to Israel after
the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas,
U.S. officials say. The U.S. be-
most of them women and chil-
dren, according to Palestinian
health officials, whose num-
bers don’t distinguish be-
gan to airlift weapons directly tween combatants and civil-
to Israel shortly after the at- ians. The war started after a
tack, and has twice invoked Hamas cross-border assault
emergency rules to bypass that Israel says killed 1,200 Is-
Congress. raelis, most of them civilians.
President Biden has grown The proposed delivery is
frustrated with Israeli Prime small in comparison to the
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scale of Israel’s bombing cam-
over U.S. attempts to rein in paign. Still, security analysts
Israel’s military campaign. But say any additional weapons
the Biden administration has deliveries would be seen by the
so far ruled out placing condi- Israeli government as a signal
tions on arms sales to Israel. of U.S. backing for the war.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Tinkerer Became a Pioneer of Sleep Medicine
BY JAMES R. HAGERTY
Jerry McGinnis’s career as
a maker of medical devices
began in 1971 at his kitchen
stove, where he heated plas-
tic and rubber parts. He
hung them up to dry in his
basement.
“The house always
smelled like new plastic, like
you had 50,000 new cars
parked in the basement,” he
recalled later in a speech to
engineering students. To
avoid disrupting the lives of
his wife and children, he did
much of his tinkering late at
night.
McGinnis, who died Jan.
25 at the age of 89, founded
what became Respironics
and made it a pioneer in
sleep medicine.
In the mid-1980s, Re-
spironics became an early
leader in devices that relieve
the miseries of sleep apnea,
in which breathing is fre-
quently interrupted during
slumber. The Pittsburgh
company outraced rivals to
win regulatory clearance in
December 1984 for a bedside
device supplying “continu-
ous positive airway pres-
sure,” or CPAP, through a
tube attached to a na-
sal mask.
A motor extracted from a
vacuum cleaner powered an
early prototype. McGinnis
wasn’t sure the contraption
would work.
Among the first to try it
was a sleep-deprived high-
school principal. He put on
“this ungodly face mask,”
McGinnis told the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette last year.
Someone switched on the air
blower. It was so noisy that
McGinnis doubted the prin-
cipal would be able to nod
off. Almost immediately,
however, “he closed his eyes
and didn’t wake up for three
hours,” McGinnis said.
Before the CPAP
Sleep apnea afflicts more
than 900 million people
globally, according to a 2019
study funded by ResMed,
another maker of CPAP de-
vices. If untreated, sleep ap-
nea can lead to heart dis-
ease, strokes, diabetes and
other major health problems,
said Timothy I. Morgentha-
ler, a sleep-medicine special-
ist at the Mayo Clinic.
Before the emergence of
CPAP in the 1980s, a com-
mon treatment for sleep ap-
nea involved inserting a tube
into the windpipe—a cure
many people found worse
than the disease.
Respironics rode the CPAP
boom for more than two de-
cades. In 2008, Royal
Philips acquired the com-
no
NICK WASS/THE LOST BASS PROJECT/REUTERS
BACK TO WHERE IT ONCE BELONGED: A distinctive violin-shaped 1961 electric Höfner bass that was stolen a half-century
ago has been returned to Paul McCartney. The instrument was used on the Beatles’ first two records and featured on hits
such as ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘She Loves You.’ McCartney paid about $37 for it in 1961. It is worth an estimated $12.6 million.
SUDAN
Troops Reportedly
Had Severed Heads
Sudan’s armed forces have
ordered an investigation into
a video that purportedly
shows some of its troops car-
rying the severed heads of
members of the rival paramili-
tary faction in the country’s
civil war, the military said Fri-
day.
The military denounced the
“shocking content” of the
video, which has recently gone
* * * *
Jerry McGinnis, seen last
year, started his company
will little money in 1971.
Right, McGinnis’s ID card as
a young researcher at
Westinghouse Electric.
pany for about $5 billion.
McGinnis retired and was
widely honored as an entre-
preneur. He funded a profes-
sorship in sleep medicine at
Harvard Medical School.
on
In recent years, however,
us ,
McGinnis watched sorrow-
l
fully as Respironics deterio-
e
al a
rated. In 2021, defects forced
the company into major re-
calls of its breathing-aid ma-
ci on
chines after finding that an
internal sound-damping
foam could degrade and re-
lease harmful gases or parti-
cles.
er s
An investigation by the
Post-Gazette and ProPublica,
m er
published in 2023, found
that Philips for years had
failed to disclose thousands
of complaints about the de-
vices. Responding to the
m rp
Post-Gazette report last
year, Philips said its first
priority was patient safety
and quality.
“They dragged the name
co Fo
through the mud,” McGinnis
said in his final interview,
with the Post-Gazette, in
November.
A few days after McGinnis
died in late January, Philips
said it was suspending sales
of CPAP and other breathing
devices in the U.S. to ad-
dress lingering regulatory
concerns.
Gerald Edward McGinnis,
known as Jerry, was born
n-
March 17, 1934, in Ottawa, Ill.
WORLD WATCH
viral on social-media plat-
forms in Sudan, and vowed to
hold its troops accountable if
they were proven to be the
perpetrators.
The video shows a group of
men in military uniform carry-
ing two severed heads be-
lieved to be of members of
the Rapid Support Forces
paramilitary group.
The men seemingly rejoice
and chant “God is Great!” and
“You brought it onto your-
selves.”
—Associated Press
OBITUARIES
JERRY MCGINNIS
He was the youngest of seven
children of Joseph McGinnis,
a factory worker and handy-
man, and Dora (Gress)
McGinnis, a homemaker.
When he was around 8,
Jerry McGinnis washed trays
at a bakery to earn money
for a bicycle. He took apart
the family toaster to see
how it worked, and irked his
mother by failing to reas-
semble it properly. He
learned to repair bicycles
and old cars.
After attending a commu-
nity college, he joined the
Army and was sent to South
Korea during the Korean War.
His job involved setting up
weaponry. What he remem-
bered most vividly was the
winter. “I never want to be
that cold again,” he said.
Eventually he bought a winter
home on Marco Island, Fla.
GI Bill benefits helped pay
for studies in mechanical en-
gineering at the University
ST. VINCENT
Top Court Upholds
Ban on Gay Sex
A top court in St. Vincent
and the Grenadines upheld
laws on Friday that criminal-
ize gay sex, a blow to activ-
ists who have long decried
the violence the LGBTQ+
community has faced on the
conservative Caribbean archi-
pelago.
The ruling by St. Vincent’s
High Court stems from a 2019
case filed by two gay men
| 1934—2024
MCGINNIS FAMILY
of Illinois Urbana-Cham-
paign, where he washed
dishes at a sorority house in
exchange for meals, and
graduated in 1958.
He then drove to Pitts-
burgh in an emerald green
Edsel to join Westinghouse
Electric, which hired him for
a research job in Pittsburgh
and paid for studies leading
to a master’s degree in me-
chanical engineering at the
University of Pittsburgh.
Human machinery
Initially, his research at
Westinghouse focused on
home appliances and waste
incinerators, among other
things. When he was reas-
signed to work on medical
products, he began to under-
stand the human body as a
form of machinery, some-
times needing replacement
parts.
“I found that the funda-
from St. Vincent who live
abroad, seeking to strike
down the colonial-era laws.
Cristian González Cabrera,
a senior researcher at Human
Rights Watch, called the rul-
ing “a travesty of justice” and
said it represents “tacit state
endorsement” of the discrimi-
nation against the LGBTQ+
community. While the laws
are rarely invoked, activists
say they help legitimize phys-
ical and verbal abuse against
the gay community.
—Associated Press
Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | A9
complained to Respironics
about the cost. McGinnis
flew to Winnipeg to meet
Kryger and ordered the dis-
tributor to lower the price.
“I give him a lot of credit,”
said Kryger, now a professor
of medicine emeritus at Yale
School of Medicine. “That’s
the sure sign of a mensch.”
Early models were so
noisy that some people put
the blower in a closet or the
basement and used a long
tube to connect with the
face mask.
ARTURO FERNANDEZ/PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Quality control
“The mantra became qui-
eter, smaller and lighter,”
said Gene Scarberry, who
helped develop devices at
Respironics. Respironics
went public in 1988. In the
1990s, amid rapid growth,
the company ran into qual-
ity-control problems. It an-
nounced recalls of a resusci-
tator known as BagEasy and
in 1993 stopped making that
product to allow time for a
redesign. In 1994, the FDA
found problems with the
mental principles of fluid company’s complaint-han-
flow, mechanics and mass dling procedures and ordered
transfer were directly relat- changes.
able to chest medicine,” he In an effort to stay ahead
.
said in a 1996 speech to en- of a growing list of competi-
gineering students. tors, Respironics acquired
ly
He gained more medical one of its main rivals,
experience by heading surgi- Healthdyne Technologies, in
cal research at a hospital in 1998. That purchase proved
Pittsburgh and finally set up
his own company, starting
with “almost no money and
nothing specific in mind ex-
disappointing. While Re-
spironics struggled to blend
the two organizations, an-
other rival, ResMed, gained
cept dumb blind confidence,” market share from Respiron-
as he put it. His wife, Au- ics. When Philips came along
drey Lanz McGinnis, a for- with its takeover offer in
mer Westinghouse secretary, 2007, McGinnis didn’t want
let him risk her $7,000 in- to sell the company but
heritance on the venture. many shareholders wanted
“I was a one-man gang to cash out. “He felt horrible
for about six months,” about that,” said his wife,
McGinnis said in a 2013 Audrey McGinnis.
video interview, “and by By then, Respironics had
then I had everything that I more than 5,300 employees,
owned committed, so I up from one when McGinnis
couldn’t fail.” started in 1971.
The company’s early McGinnis’s survivors in-
products included anesthesia clude his wife, two daugh-
masks and respiratory tubes. ters and five grandchildren.
A bigger opportunity pre- A son, Gerald Edward
sented itself in 1981, when McGinnis Jr., died in 2021.
an Australian physician, Co- After he retired in 2008,
lin Sullivan, published an ar- McGinnis remained a friend
ticle outlining the potential and mentor to many of his
for CPAP devices. A pul- Respironics colleagues. As
monologist in Pittsburgh, many as 30 of them met him
Mark Sanders, encouraged for drinks and conversation
McGinnis to find a way to at twice-yearly events
make one for home use. known as Beers With Jerry.
Respironics introduced By last November, after
the SleepEasy CPAP after years of suffering from Par-
getting clearance from the kinson’s disease, he was too
Food and Drug Administra- frail to go out on the town,
tion in late 1984. Demand so two of those colleagues
was so strong that distribu- showed up at his home with
tors of medical devices could Panera sandwiches and a
jack up prices. Dr. Meir Kry- six-pack of Guinness stout.
ger, who then operated a
sleep-medicine clinic in Win- More stories at
nipeg, Manitoba, said he WSJ.com/obituaries
JOURNALISTS DON’T
‘JUST WRITE STORIES.’
THEY RECORD HISTORY.
Learn more about the impact your
journalism career can have on the world.
Wall Street Journal reporter Erin Ailworth
and others share career advice at
dowjonesnewsfund.org/careers.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
A10 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
Realtors
Are in
Crisis
Continued from Page One
A NAR spokeswoman said
the organization has always
been committed to working
with the industry to improve
its policies and resolve the le-
gal threats.
The Missouri jury found
that the powerful trade organi-
zation and two brokerages had
conspired to keep fees paid to
buyers’ agents high. Long be-
fore that fiasco, some real-es-
tate executives had urged NAR
to change the decades-old
commission structure, but the
organization refused.
The industry now appears
headed for significant changes
in how buyers’ agents are paid,
a system that NAR has fought
for decades to protect. One
possibility is that sellers would
no longer decide upfront how
much buyers’ agents get paid,
giving buyers more power to
negotiate. More buyers might
opt to buy homes without us-
ing agents at all, which could
save them money on commis-
sions but might put less so-
phisticated buyers at a disad-
vantage.
Consumer advocates hope
that changes to NAR’s rules
would lower commissions,
making home purchases a little
more affordable. The typical
commission—5% to 6% of the
purchase price, split between
the buyer’s and seller’s repre-
sentatives—is one of the high-
est in the world.
For the industry, such
changes could prove painful. If
fewer buyers use agents, that
could push many agents out of
the industry, reducing NAR’s
size and lobbying power.
NAR has 1.5 million mem-
bers and has total assets of
more than $1 billion. Yet its fu-
ture has rarely looked more
uncertain.
“NAR is at the forefront of
issues affecting the lives of
millions of people,” said Nykia
Wright, the organization’s in-
terim chief executive, in a
written statement. “We have a
profound obligation when nav-
igating complex litigation that
has the potential to affect not
just our industry but the en-
tire American economy.”
Tight grip
Over its 116-year history,
NAR has repeatedly fended off
lawsuits and Justice Depart-
ment inquiries about industry
practices. Its legal maneuver-
ing and political clout enabled
NAR to maintain a tight grip
over the residential real-estate
business, shaping how Ameri-
cans buy and sell homes and
the costs associated with those
transactions. (News Corp,
owner of The Wall Street Jour-
nal, operates Realtor.com un-
der license from NAR.)
NAR’s members must pay
hundreds of dollars a year in
dues to join their national,
no
state and local Realtor associa-
tions.
NAR is “this massive hulk-
ing institution that lives on
lots of teeny members’ pay-
ments. It’s like a whale that is
sustained on krill, and this
gave it a certain institutional
durability,” said Brian Boero,
chief executive of 1000watt, a
residential real-estate strategy
consulting firm. “It got big, it
New Cards:
RIP Snark,
Hello, Fibs
Continued from Page One
and, while she’s at it, strike a
blow against the ageism she
says is part of the birthday-
card industrial complex.
“Have you gotten one of those
cards that says, ‘You’re one
step closer to the sweet re-
lease of death. Happy birth-
day!’?” Golden says.
“That stuff just picks away
at older adults.”
A web developer and
graphic designer by trade,
Golden launched her “age-pos-
itive” card line in 2020, moti-
vated in part by her experi-
ence offering tech training to
older adults in the Denver
area, where she lives. “Hon-
estly, half the time the tech
just didn’t work. But older
adults were getting blamed
for not being able to learn and
adapt on the job.” Her cards
Single-family homes in Carpinteria, Calif., above. Dave Danforth, below, said some of his agents wanted to leave NAR.
got flabby, it got arrogant and
it got complacent.”
The precursor to the mod-
ern organization was founded
in 1908. Early on, the associa-
tion helped professionalize an
industry in which agents were
afraid to list properties pub-
licly lest other agents steal
their clients by offering lower
rates.
Local associations, with
support from the national or-
ganization, began distributing
mandatory fee schedules. Un-
dercutting those rates was
considered unethical. In 1950,
the Supreme Court said that
practice was illegal, and the
fee schedules became recom-
mended.
By the 1970s, the industry
had largely gotten rid of rec-
on
ommended fees after facing
us ,
lawsuits, Justice Department
l
investigations and even crimi-
e
al a
nal charges against real-estate
firms for conspiring to fix
prices.
ci on
Under NAR’s current com-
mission structure, most sellers
listing properties offer to pay
the buyers’ representatives.
Plaintiffs and government
er s
regulators have argued this
system keeps commissions
m er
high by preventing buyers
from negotiating fees with
their own agents and allowing
buyers’ agents to steer clients
away from homes that offer
m rp
lower commissions. The asso-
ciation says the current com-
mission structure helps first-
time buyers who can’t afford
to pay an agent out of pocket.
co Fo
In 2006, real-estate listing
firm Zillow began posting on-
line information about homes
on the market, attracting more
than a million visitors in the
first few days. Although the
rise of online shopping has led
to lower fees for travel agents
and stockbrokers, real-estate
agent commissions have risen
because home prices have
climbed.
Doug Miller, a Minnesota
n-
lawyer with a one-man firm,
began the work that would
culminate in the crushing Kan-
sas City verdict.
When he was in law school
in the 1980s, Miller worked as
a Realtor in Wisconsin. He said
he concluded that the industry
wasn’t working in the best in-
terest of consumers. “It all in-
volved betrayal,” he said.
About five years ago, Miller
approached a law firm, Cohen
Milstein, with an outline for a
lawsuit that would target
NAR’s rule mandating how
include, “Every year you get
hotter, and not just in flashes”
and “Celebrating you never
gets old.”
For the 62-year-old creator,
what all too often passes for
funny is no laughing matter.
“The cards that insult you for
getting older in this culture
that are so prevalent are actu-
ally literally killing your loved
ones,” she maintains, citing a
2002 study on aging and atti-
tudes led by a Yale School of
Public Health professor to
make her claim. According to
the study, “older individuals
with more positive self-per-
ceptions of aging, measured
up to 23 years earlier, lived 7.5
years longer than those with
less positive” ones.
On the other hand, a sur-
vey of over half a dozen se-
niors at the Lakeview Center
for Active Aging in Black
Mountain, N.C., suggests cards
replete with jokes about well-
worn body parts and ungrate-
ful whippersnappers still have
their fans.
“I don’t mind poking fun at
it, and I’m up there,” says Bill
Sandin, 76, over a Thursday
meatloaf lunch. “You need a
FROM PAGE ONE
buyer agents’ commissions are
paid. Drawing on Miller’s re-
search, the firm helped file the
first major antitrust class ac-
tion, in Chicago.
About a month later, an-
other law firm filed a similar
suit in Kansas City, which
wound up going to trial first.
As the lawsuits were pro-
g r e s s i n g
through the
courts, the Jus-
tice Department The industry
also was look- appears headed
ing into the in-
dustry’s prac- for changes in
tices.
In 2020, un-
how buyers’
der the Trump agents are paid.
administration,
the department
reached a set-
tlement with NAR requiring
agents to be more transparent
about commissions.
In 2021, President Biden is-
sued an executive order direct-
ing federal agencies to in-
crease competition in the real-
estate industry. The Justice
Department has asked a fed-
eral appeals court to allow it
to reopen its investigation.
Just as the Kansas City case
National Association of Realtors membership*
1.5 million
1.0
0.5
0 0
1970 ’75 ’80 ’85 ’90 ’95
*NAR membership data are for December of each year. 2024 membership figure is for January. †Broker commissions are adjusted for inflation.
Sources: National Association of Realtors (membership); Expert report by Einer Elhauge in Chicago lawsuit (broker commissions)
sense of humor when you’re
our age. I think the funnier
the better.”
Dan Newcomer, 75, still re-
members a birthday card he
and his wife Netta, 69, sent to
an especially religious friend
in his 80s. “It said on the
front of it, ‘In the beginning
God said, “Let there be light.’’’
And he opened it up and this
birthday cake popped up with
all the candles” as “Hallelu-
jah” played in the background.
A ‘You’re not old, you’re vintage’ card is ‘age-positive.’
approached trial, the associa-
tion was thrust into a leader-
ship crisis. In August 2023,
Kenny Parcell, a Utah Realtor
who had become the associa-
tion’s president in late 2022,
resigned after allegations of
sexual harassment by several
women. He has denied the al-
legations.
His succes-
sor, Tracy
Kasper, pledged
to promote
what she called
a “welcoming,
safe and re-
spectful work-
place.” Her first
video message
to members as
president,
which came out
a week later, was set to music,
which some industry leaders
said made NAR seem out of
touch.
Parcell and Kasper didn’t
respond to requests for com-
ment. A NAR spokeswoman
said an “overwhelming major-
ity” of members “have com-
municated their trust in what
we are doing to transform the
organization.”
2000 ’05 ’10 ’15
“He really liked that.”
Sandy Pressley, 71, said she
also loved the idea of ones
with more affirming mes-
sages. “I’ve thought about
that before: why [card op-
tions] weren’t more encourag-
ing to older people and saying,
‘Yeah, like a fine wine, you’re
getting better each year’ or
something like that.”
Wendy Papula, co-founder
of Perpetual Kid, an online gift
retailer based in Virginia, sells
* *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
changing the rule earlier
wouldn’t have resolved the liti-
gation, and that other industry
executives opposed any
change.
FROM TOP: ANGELA OWENS/THE WALL STREET JOUURNAL; M. SCOTT BRAUER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Anywhere, which owns sev-
eral brokerage brands includ-
ing Corcoran, Coldwell Banker
and Century 21, settled days
before the trial, as did Re/Max.
The two companies agreed to
pay about $140 million com-
bined.
Things finally came to a
head in a Kansas City court-
room in mid-October. On the
first day, the judge dismissed
10 of the roughly 80 potential
jurors because, as recent home
sellers, they were members of
the plaintiffs’ class—a sign of
how many ordinary people
could be affected by the out-
come.
Even after the plaintiffs set-
tled with two major broker-
ages, they never got close to a
settlement with NAR.
The jury took just over two
hours to decide in favor of the
plaintiffs.
NAR has vowed to appeal
the decision, but the Chicago
Industry leaders said they case could go to trial later this
received little indication from year. The damages in that case
NAR that the lawsuits posed a could total more than $40 bil-
serious threat. The associa- lion, based on calculations of
tion’s chief legal officer, Katie commissions paid in recent
Johnson, had said: “These years. Executives in the indus-
cases are wrong on the facts, try are pressing NAR to settle.
wrong on the law.” In November, NAR’s chief
As the lawsuits gained mo- executive stepped aside a year
mentum, she gave video pre- ahead of his planned retire-
sentations to local Realtor as- ment. Wright, who NAR said is
sociations, often sitting in a turnaround expert but has
front of inspirational slogans little previous experience in
such as “Hope will never be real estate, stepped in as in-
.
silent.” terim CEO.
Two months after that,
ly
Kasper resigned after less than
Industry concern five months as president, al-
Top real-estate executives leging—with little explana-
worried about taking the class-
action lawsuits in Chicago and
Kansas City in front of juries.
The industry executives pri-
tion—that she was being
blackmailed.
Real-estate agents have be-
gun dropping their NAR mem-
vately urged NAR to alter its berships, and the association
commission policy and scrap a is bracing for a financial pinch.
mandate that governed how Membership in January de-
buyers’ agents get paid. Doing clined for the third straight
that, they argued, would month.
weaken the plaintiffs’ cases. In many markets, real-es-
In February 2022, an execu- tate agents can’t leave NAR
tive at Anywhere Real Estate, without losing access to data-
one of the country’s largest bases of real-estate listings.
real-estate brokerages, urged Real-estate brokerage Red-
NAR to make that compro- fin announced in October that
mise. it had resigned from the NAR
In an email to an NAR board and was requiring its
staffer, Caitlin McCrory, head agents to leave the association
of industry relations at the wherever possible. So far,
brokerage, wrote: “Questions agents in only a couple of mar-
about why the mandate exists kets have been able to leave.
are posing unnecessary com- More than 70% of real-es-
plications while providing lit- tate agents surveyed in mid-
tle to no discernible benefit.” October by 1000watt and BAM,
NAR leaders dismissed this a real-estate media company,
advice, expressing confidence said they would leave NAR if
they would win and opposing they could still view the list-
any concessions, real-estate ings databases and be able to
executives recall. give tours of homes for sale.
But just 10 days before the At Coldwell Banker Dan-
Kansas City trial, the associa- forth, a brokerage in the Seat-
tion revised the rule. The lead tle area, some agents last year
plaintiffs’ lawyer called it a reached out to co-owner Dave
“stunning admission of guilt.” Danforth saying they wanted
The NAR spokeswoman said to leave NAR. Danforth sur-
veyed the brokerage’s more
Average buyers’ broker than 300 agents, and of those
commissions in 20 U.S. regions† who responded, about two-
thirds said their membership
$10,000 in the national and local Real-
tor associations provided little
8,000 to no value.
Coldwell Banker Danforth
decided it wouldn’t renew its
6,000
NAR membership in 2024. A
few agents left over the deci-
4,000 sion, but others would have
left if the brokerage had stayed
in NAR, Danforth said. “I truly
2,000 believe NAR needs to earn ev-
ery agent’s membership fees,
one by one, and if they did, it
would be a much better organ-
’20 2013 ’15 ’20
ization,” he said.
—Shannon Najmabadi
contributed to this article.
some 200 birthday cards, all ists “to design cards that
cheeky, and is unrepentant.
“I think my favorite card
countered the usual depress-
ing narrative about getting
we have is ‘Grannies are the older.” The project was con-
best,’ which makes fun of
granny underpants.” She does
sidered such a success it was
reprised in January 2023.
think it matters who’s doing
the teasing. “If a 20-year-old
is giving a 50-year-old ‘Blow
She says the organization
took on birthday cards be-
cause they’re “the one time all
out the candles before you of us think about how old we
blow down the house,’ then are. And it’s often the one
yes, that’s negative.” time we’re really getting mes-
Wherever one falls, what’s sages about it.” She gets why
undisputed is that age-posi- people can’t resist a crack
tive birthday cards are part of about, say, all the zany things
a growing trend of cards de- you can do with a cane, but
signed for niche audiences. thinks many haven’t stopped
Nora Weiser, executive di- to examine why we reach for
rector of the Greeting Card these tropes.
Association, the industry’s “It’s the way it’s always
largest trade group in the U.S., been. But, I mean, there was a
credits much of this growth to time when it was ‘the way it’s
millennials. “They want the always been’ that you made
embellishments,” says Weiser. fun of women drivers. But
ANGELA OWENS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“They want the message that eventually you start asking
is like, ‘My condolences that these questions and go, ‘Oh,
your Chihuahua named Susan you know, is that really what
had a kidney stone.’” we want to make fun of? Is
Sara Breindel is a co-direc- that really accurate?’”
tor of Changing the Narrative, Then again, for seniors
a Denver-based anti-ageism such as Lakeview Center pa-
advocacy organization. In tron Gene Swann, 77, the
2020 she helped organize the whole discussion is moot. “My
Anti-Ageist Birthday Card family just sends me cards
Campaign, which solicited art- about fishing.”
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
GOP Primary Showdown in South Carolina
By Barton Swaim
Y
Summerville, S.C.
ou wouldn’t be going out
on a limb by predicting
that Donald Trump will
win the Republican pres-
idential nomination. Two
events could avert that outcome.
First, a conviction on one of the
many criminal charges against Mr.
Trump. Second, and less likely,
Nikki Haley could win the South
Carolina primary on Feb. 24. The
latest polls here have Ms. Haley,
the state’s governor from 2011 to
2017, hovering around 30% and
Mr. Trump around 65%.
Those numbers may reflect re-
ality, but a few circumstances sug-
REUTERS (2)
gest caution. South Carolina’s pri-
mary is open, meaning residents
can vote in either the Democratic
or the Republican contest (but not
both). Since the Feb. 3 Democratic
primary was uncompetitive, only
131,000 people voted—about a
quarter as many as in 2020. That
leaves a lot of centrists and mod-
erate Democrats eligible to cast a
primary ballot against Mr. Trump.
Whether they’re willing to vote
for a candidate likelier than Mr.
Trump to beat Mr. Biden in No-
vember is another question.
Gov. Henry McMaster, a
staunch Trump supporter, says
he doesn’t think that will hap-
pen. Since the state GOP set up
its first-in-the-South primary in
1980, he says, “I’ve heard fears
and warnings that because we
don’t register by party—you just
walk in and vote—a lot of Demo-
crats would come over and
swing things. But it never has
happened.”
Pressed to summarize
Nikki Haley’s message,
one supporter offered:
‘She’s not Donald Trump?’
Katon Dawson—like Mr. Mc-
Master a former party chairman,
but unlike him a Haley sup-
porter—thinks the polls are
wrong. “They’re weighted toward
people who voted in the last Re-
publican primary,” he says.
“There’s a lot of interest in Nikki
Haley among center-right voters
who haven’t voted in a Republican
primary in years. . . . Throw in
400,000 of those people, and this
race is close. I predict we’ll see
closer to 900,000.”
Another reason not to take
those poll numbers to the bank
just yet: For the first time in the
2024 campaign, a nonnegligible
Republican candidate is inveighing
against Mr. Trump without sub-
tlety or qualification. At campaign
stops Ms. Haley compares Mr.
Trump’s age and infirmity to Mr.
Biden’s. On cable and network
news interviews she calls him “di-
minished” and “unhinged.” Her
constantly airing television ads
portray the former president as a
ranting old man, a spreader of
chaos and a tax hiker—the last
point an allusion to his proposal
of a 10% tariff on all imported
no
goods.
Her chances of winning her
home state’s primary may be slim,
but her donors evidently aren’t
discouraged. Neither, by all ap-
pearances, is she. At Doc’s Barbe-
cue in Columbia earlier this
month, Ms. Haley pronounced it a
A Maine Lobster Town Sees Its Future in Shop Class
St. George, Maine
Vocational and tech-
nical courses are
making a comeback
in American educa-
tion. But when resi-
dents of this coastal
CROSS
COUNTRY community sought
to reintroduce shop
By Sierra
class and career
Dawn
McClain
training to their lo-
cal schools a decade
ago, they discovered
an unexpected problem: The rules of
the regional school district wouldn’t
allow it. So in 2014 St. George resi-
dents voted 1,163 to 226 to break
free and create their own district.
One of the first things they did with
that independence was develop a
trade program.
The town of St. George, which in-
cludes the villages of Port Clyde and
Tenants Harbor, sits on a peninsula
jutting out into the blue-green At-
lantic southwest of the city of Rock-
land. The economy is built around
lobstering and has been for genera-
tions. Parents here are uniquely
driven—desperate, even—to make
the trade program successful. They
view lobster fishing as under threat
from federal environmental regula-
tions and the potential construction
of offshore wind turbines. If the
lobster industry collapses, St.
* * * *
Nikki Haley campaigns in Summerville, Feb. 13; Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Conway, Feb. 10.
great day in South Carolina and
launched into her campaign talk.
As she rattled off her presidential
agenda in characteristic question-
and-answer form—“What are we
going to do about the economy?
The first thing we’re gonna do is
claw back the $100 billion in un-
spent Covid money”—a gaunt
young man wearing a beanie
jumped from his seat in the mid-
dle of the room. Smartphone held
aloft, he started chanting: “Free,
free Palestine! Free, free Pales-
tine!” Two others joined the cry.
One, a woman perhaps in her late
20s, shouted, “You and Joe Biden
are funding the war machine!” as
a police officer escorted her out.
Doc’s clientele responded to the
and “Get a job!”
on
protesters with shouts of “Booo!”
Ms. Haley handled the disorder
with poise. In a perverse way,
though, the brief disruption high-
us ,
lighted the only easily definable
l
part of her political message: She
e
al a
understands the importance of de-
terring America’s enemies and
supports a hawkish stance on Rus-
ci on
sia, China, Iran and its proxies.
Otherwise, as I noted in these
pages last month, her usual cam-
paign talk amounts to a series of
right-leaning but otherwise dis-
er s
connected policy aims.
Some of those aims are sensi-
m er
ble, if minor—making permanent
the small-business tax cuts of
2017. Others are sensible and ob-
vious—increasing funding for bor-
der security. Others, such as term
m rp
limits and cognitive tests for pub-
lic officials over 75, get applause
but stand no chance of happening.
Still others sound simplistic and
naive: We need to “get our kids
co Fo
reading again” by doing “reading
remediation” all over the country.
A few of her lines please crowds
but bear no connection to politi-
cal or constitutional reality. Not-
ing Congress’s now-routine failure
to pass a budget on time, Ms. Ha-
ley asks, “You know what we’re
gonna do about that? We’re gonna
tell them, ‘You don’t give us a
budget on time, you don’t get
paid—period.’ ”
On Tuesday Ms. Haley arrived
n-
nearly two hours late to a rally at
the Summerville Country Club, in
the state’s Lowcountry. Her cam-
paign brought in Little Caesars
pizza to keep the crowd’s spirits
up. I used the time to ask as many
ralliers as I could to tell me what
they believe Ms. Haley’s central
message to be.
Bob and Diane Hirsch paused,
and he replied with a wry grin:
“She’s not Donald Trump?” Mrs.
George parents want their children
to have other career options. And
they want to keep their town alive.
The district is unusual in that it
doesn’t wait until students reach
high school to incorporate career
and technical training into the cur-
riculum. During a two-day visit, I
watched fourth-graders design com-
plex three-dimensional objects on
Tinkercad, a basic engineering soft-
ware system. Middle-schoolers made
insulation for a miniature satellite.
Kindergartners and first-graders
sporting safety goggles and tool
belts enthusiastically hammered at
wooden boxes they’d designed.
Eighth-grader William “B.J.” Hal-
lowell is among those who have ben-
efited from the program. His poor
performance in school made a U-
turn as soon as he was introduced to
the trades. His yard is now cluttered
with tractors and snowmobiles he’s
taking apart, and he dreams of be-
coming an engineer. His family says
he’s happier and calmer and his
grades have improved. “Since he
started doing hands-on learning,
he’s a totally different kid,” his
mom, Veronica, said.
Bryson Mattox, 17, said after St.
George created its trade program he
went from being bored and “coast-
ing” in school to feeling “ener-
gized.” Bryson’s sentiment reflects
OPINION
Hirsch gave it a try: “She’s smart,
she speaks well, she knows how to
talk to people.” All true but not
what I was asking for. Miles and
Laura Huff similarly had trouble
describing Ms. Haley’s appeal
without reference to Mr. Trump.
“He’s gonna let this war spill
over,” Mr. Huff said, “and then
we’re gonna be sending our boys
over there to fight.”
I asked Daryl Gauze, who
moved to the state after retiring
last year, if he could tell me in a
sentence or two what Ms. Haley
stands for. “Fixing the border,
supporting the military,” he said,
peering at me as if I knew the an-
swer already. “All that.”
To be fair to Ms. Haley, her
competitor offers no coherent
message either. Mr. Trump has al-
ways treated campaign events as
stand-up acts, but his perfor-
mances lately have seemed aim-
less and repetitive in a way they
didn’t in 2016 and 2020. At a rally
on the campus of Coastal Carolina
University in Conway, he boasted
of his wins in Iowa and New
Hampshire, disparaged Ms. Haley
at great length for running
against him, recounted the story
of election night 2016, also at
length, and told the audience he
sometimes likes to “have a little
fun” by using Barack Obama’s
middle name, Hussein. On the war
in Ukraine Mr. Trump assured the
audience that “it would’ve never
happened with Putin” (he meant
“with me”). He complained—as he
does now at every rally—that he
once imitated Mr. Biden’s onstage
confusion and the media reported
the mimicry as though it were ev-
idence of Mr. Trump’s decline.
H
is rally routine is to read a
line or two from his tele-
prompter’s script, then riff
for a few minutes, then deliver
another line or two. In Conway
his talk was almost all riff. “You
know,” he said about halfway
through, “I’ve hardly used this
crazy teleprompter today, it’s
terrible!”
As if to reinforce the point that
the presidential contest has little
to do with policy or vision for the
country, Mr. Trump all but cred-
ited his enemies for his anticipated
victory. “I got indicted more than
Alphonse Capone,” he shouted,
eliciting roars of laughter (using
the mobster’s given first name
was, admittedly, a nice touch).
“They indict me, I explain what it’s
about, total bulls—, all cases,
right? And my poll numbers go up!
My poll numbers go up!”
national trends. According to the
Association for Career and Techni-
cal Education, vocational training is
associated with higher levels of stu-
dent engagement and reduced high-
school dropout rates. Though still a
high-school senior, Bryson has his
own laser-cutting business; he
St. George broke away
from the regional district
so its kids could learn
skilled trades in school.
makes signs, mugs, puzzles and
cheese boards. He already has an
offer to work at Lyman-Morse, a
custom boat builder in nearby
Thomaston, after graduation.
Many St. George students build
on their technical training with
electives at Rockland’s Mid-Coast
School of Technology. Bobby
Deetjen, the director, said students
entering from St. George are better
prepared than their peers: “They’re
coming preloaded.” The parents and
teachers I spoke with said hands-on
technical education has been good
even for college-bound students.
They’re not merely filling out a
bubble on a standardized math test;
Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | A11
The one newsmaking item
from Mr. Trump’s Conway rally
was his insinuation that Ms. Ha-
ley’s husband, Michael, is absent
from the campaign for some un-
savory reason. “What happened
to her husband?” Mr. Trump
asked with faux-innocence.
“Where is her husband? He’s
gone. He knew.” The likeliest ex-
planation is that Mr. Trump is
sensitive to taunts on MSNBC
and in other left-wing media that
Melania is mostly absent from his
campaign, and he tried out the
line on Ms. Haley. The problem:
Michael Haley, a reservist in the
South Carolina National Guard, is
deployed overseas. Ms. Haley and
her allies pretended to be of-
fended by the line, although, if I
may play the cynic, I’m confident
they were delighted by the op-
portunity it presented. Straight-
away they launched an ad accus-
ing Mr. Trump of “mocking
military veterans.”
This last contretemps may sig-
nify another reason not to count
Ms. Haley out. She won the 2010
South Carolina gubernatorial pri-
mary against three better-known
opponents in part by parrying sa-
lacious allegations by men who
could fairly be described as
scoundrels. Two former political
associates accused her of sexual
dalliances, and a buffoonish state
senator called her, in an allusion
to her Sikh heritage, a “towel-
head.” Ms. Haley, then a state
representative, responded to
those attacks with a savvy mix-
ture of gravity and you-go-girl
charm that turned suburban vot-
ers, particularly women, deci-
sively in her favor. One of the po-
liticos she bested in that primary
is Mr. McMaster, who recounted
the episode to me with admira-
tion for his predecessor’s politi-
cal skill.
It’s conceivable that Mr.
Trump’s increasingly obnoxious
attacks could similarly work to
her advantage. Last month the
former president suggested on his
social-media platform that Ms.
Haley (a South Carolina native)
was ineligible for the presidency
because her parents hadn’t yet
naturalized when she was born. In
campaign appearances Mr. Trump
calls her “Birdbrain.” “Birdbrain
loves asylum,” he said, with typi-
cal delicacy, at the Conway rally.
Ms. Haley’s spirited responses
to these and other dumb aggres-
sions probably won’t win her the
South Carolina primary. But they
could damage Mr. Trump in the
remaining primaries and in the
they’re using math to build robots.
St. George administrators say
they’ve heard from other school dis-
tricts interested in adopting a simi-
lar model. But a constellation of
factors, not all replicable, make St.
George’s program work.
For one, the district has Superin-
tendent Mike Felton, whom parents
and teachers describe as “a fearless
leader” with “infectious energy.” A
law-school graduate, he has proved
adept at navigating the state educa-
tion bureaucracy and securing
funding. He also talks like a sales-
man, which wins people to his
cause. “If we ain’t dreamin’ big,
we’re doing a disservice to our stu-
dents,” he says.
It also helps that the district is
small and parents are unusually en-
gaged. With only 291 enrolled stu-
dents, the St. George Municipal
School Unit is a manageable size for
experimenting with new programs.
Local businesses have supported
the program by taking on high-
school interns, hosting field trips,
sending representatives to speak in
classes, and volunteering to teach
workshops.
As the program expands, space
has become an issue. Construction
starts next month on a 5,130-
square-foot “Makerspace,” a shop
with workstations for carpentry,
general election. He seems to have
forgotten, if he ever cared, that he
will need some of her admirers to
vote for him in November.
The South Carolina GOP pri-
mary is a messy, unpleasant affair,
and so is the party itself. Some of
its loudest voices trumpet indus-
trial policy, celebrate the welfare
state, and advocate military re-
trenchment and economic isola-
tion—more or less the opposite of
what nearly all American conser-
vatives believed a generation ago.
What Republicans mainly agree
.
on now is what they’re against:
Democrats, Joe Biden, men com-
ly
peting in women’s sports, campus
radicalism, and whatever other
outrage the left is perpetrating
this week.
That may explain why the last
two candidates standing in the
GOP primary are definable mainly
by what they want to defeat. Both
have enormous charisma, and nei-
ther offers a cogent political out-
look or a sense of where a new
administration might take the
country. Mr. Trump offered the
semblance of a vision in 2016 and
to a lesser degree in 2020. In
2024 he stands against “the radi-
cal left” and a court system weap-
onized against him. Many of his
supporters, implicitly acknowl-
edging the antipathetic nature of
his ’24 campaign, say they’re
sticking with Mr. Trump because
to abandon him would reward his
persecutors.
M
s. Haley, for her part, was
right to turn her fire on
Mr. Trump—she could
hardly do otherwise if she wished
to stay in the race. But her cam-
paign now consists mainly of mis-
cellaneous talking points, many of
which wouldn’t excite anyone out-
side a political rally, and a series
of reminders that Mr. Trump is
erratic, churlish and old.
Whether there was ever a for-
mula to deprive a multifariously
indicted Mr. Trump of a third
nomination is anybody’s guess.
Mike Pence’s religiose Reaganism
didn’t do the trick. Vivek Ramas-
wamy’s hyperarticulate Trumpism
went nowhere. Ron DeSantis’s
blend of policy competence, cul-
ture-war pugnacity and flirtations
with isolationism didn’t survive
Iowa. On Feb. 24 South Carolin-
ians will appraise Nikki Haley’s
formula: a combination of star
power, barbs at Mr. Trump’s ex-
pense, and “all that.”
Mr. Swaim is an editorial page
writer for the Journal.
metalworking and other trades.
Some 55% of the construction proj-
ect’s funding is from private dona-
tions. The lobstering families of St.
George are in no way wealthy, but
the region has plenty of well-to-do
residents. Its scenic beauty draws
many “rusticators”—families who
spend long summers on the coast of
Maine—and wealthy retirees. Locals
call those who hail from outside the
town “from away,” a mildly deroga-
tory term. But through the years,
the from-aways and the longtime
residents have come to appreciate
each other.
A final ingredient that makes the
program successful is social trust.
St. George is the sort of town where
people don’t lock their front doors.
Neighbors’ willingness to lay aside
political differences to work to-
gether is what makes the trade pro-
gram work. It may also be what en-
abled the community to create an
independent, locally controlled pub-
lic school district in the first place.
While many credit Mr. Felton, he
says it’s the people of St. George
whose grit and determination make
it all possible: “You don’t get much
more independent than a Yankee
fisherman.”
Ms. McClain is the Journal’s Jo-
seph Rago Memorial Fellow.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

A12 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

OPINION
REVIEW & OUTLOOK LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Trump’s $355 Million Civil Fraud Verdict Media Gets Another Shot at Covering Trump

D
onald Trump and his business were pricing on the loan.” Deutsche loans included Peggy Noonan’s column “Can the Would that hard-nosed journalistic
found liable Friday of inflating asset covenants requiring Mr. Trump “to maintain Media Get Trump Coverage Right?” reporting could make a triumphant
(Declarations, Feb. 10) gives us a return. But in the 2024 election, I
values in paperwork to lenders, but a minimum net worth of $2.5 billion, excluding
glimmer of hope that American jour- fear it won’t make a difference.
given that nobody lost any value related to his nalism is about to make a 180-degree MARC EDELSTEIN
money, this punishment The judge found he brand.” turn and provide readers with unbi- Miami
smacks of political overkill. In inflated his assets, but of Perhaps this explains some ased verifiable news. But her last
a 92-page ruling, New York the obsession by the mo- words are revealing. She writes that Ms. Noonan suggests the media
Judge Arthur Engoron or- this penalty is unreal. gul-turned-President with digging “will make reporters what “dig, find out.” Well, journalists were
dered him to pay $355 mil- puffing up his valuations over they really want to be and should be: given a monster opportunity with spe-
lion, while also banning him the decades. It’s true that Mr. dangerous.” The word I wish she cial counsel Robert Hur’s report, which
from being an officer for any New York corpo- Trump was interacting with sophisticated fi- could have used is “truthful.” explained that President Biden
ration for three years. nancial counterparties. But not for the first Her statement spells out why couldn’t be found culpable due to his
The judge had previously found that Mr. time, Mr. Trump’s casual relationship to the journalists have become political and age and mental frailty. Instead of dig-
antagonistic. ging for the basis for this conclusion,
Trump fudged numbers submitted on State- truth has come back to bite him.
ULF GUSTAFSON many journalists spun that this conclu-
ments of Financial Condition (SFCs), most Yet this remedy is like using a Hellfire mis- Wellington, Fla. sion was “political” and “gratuitous.”
egregiously by claiming that his 11,000- sile to annihilate a shoplifter. Deutsche Bank RALPH F. MULLIN
square-foot triplex in Trump Tower was actu- made money on the loans, and its valuation Beyond any questions of journalis- Prairie Village, Kan.
ally 30,000 square feet. Friday’s ruling, put- teams gave a “haircut” to the numbers pro- tic fairness, former President Donald
ting a price tag on that conduct, includes vided by Mr. Trump. There was no real finan- Trump will face the greatest onslaught Ms. Noonan hit the nail on the
pages of summarized testimony from business cial victim. of coordinated cultural opposition head with her suggestions for clarity,
partners. More troubling is that this case was brought ever seen. Tech companies, Holly- fact-checking and unbiased news cov-
Donald Bender, an accountant at Mazars by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a wood, academia, government censors erage of the candidates, including key
who helped draw up the documents, said he Democrat who campaigned for office promising and even our search engines will bury questions that concern the public.
positive angles, protect Mr. Biden and May I suggest one more? Mr. Hur’s
discovered later, after being interviewed by in- to find Mr. Trump guilty of something. This is
drown the electorate in propaganda observations about our president
vestigators, “that the Trump Organization had choosing a target and then hunting for some- intended to frighten any sane person leads one to ask: Who, then, is run-
withheld records, such as appraisals, that thing to charge him with, which is an abuse of out of voting for Mr. Trump. All this is ning the country?
Mazars had requested,” in the judge’s telling. the law. Mr. Trump isn’t guaranteed a jury trial before broaching the conspiracy fever BRANDON HUSSING
“Bender made clear that Mazars would not here, the judge says, because of the kind of case swamps about election officials. Flagler Beach, Fla.
have issued the SFCs if it had known.” it is. But that’s another reason voters are un-
Nicholas Haigh, formerly a managing direc- likely to hold this judgment against Mr. Trump
tor of Deutsche Bank’s Private Wealth Manage- as he campaigns for the White House.
ment Division, signed off on loans to the Mr. Trump denounced the verdict and says The Democrats Know What to Do About Biden
Trump Organization. “Haigh relied on Donald he’ll appeal. Meantime, this example of tar-
Trump’s 2011 SFC and assumed that the repre- geted civil prosecution ought to worry fair- The insights in “A Tipping Point on of poll-driven confidence that former
Biden’s Decline” (Review & Outlook, President Donald Trump will avenge
sentations of value of the assets and liabilities minded people regardless of political bent.
Feb. 10) perhaps underrate the skills their humiliation at the hands of the
were ‘broadly accurate,’” the judge says. CEOs might wonder about doing business in a of Democrats who grasp the need to unworthy Mr. Biden, Republicans will
Mr. Haigh affirmed that Mr. Trump’s “per- jurisdiction where elected politicians use the

.
offload President Biden before No- lock in their nomination of Mr.
sonal guarantee” was “the reason for favorable law to smash companies this way. vember’s election. Trump. Convening a month later,

ly
Today’s intrigues are the stuff of Democrats will complete the bait-
political fiction: A nation aghast con- and-switch already in motion, by
The Example of Alexei Navalny’s Courage on fronts the determination of both par- swapping out Mr. Biden for a seem-

A
ties to saddle themselves with the ingly likable and competent nominee.
lexei Navalny didn’t have to return to return to Russia, where he was arrested imme- one nominee who might plausibly That is a two-word definition—lik-
Russia in January 2021. That he did is diately upon landing. At the time of his death lose to the other. Following their an- able, competent—of the candidate
a testament to his remarkable courage he was serving sentences totalling more than cient customs, Republicans let events needed to defeat Mr. Trump.
play out, Democrats get together and A sane person might prefer read-
us ,

and also an explanation for 30 years on various trumped-

do something about it, and the latter ing these things in a novel to living
Vladimir Putin thinks up charges.
l

why Vladimir Putin so feared group enjoys maximum advantage, through them.
e
Navalny, the opposition politi- He kept up his political ac-
al a

cian who died in a Siberian

he can kill opponents, tivism
prison Friday at age 47. and knows he must.
ci on
from prison with the
leaving the former flat-footed. DAVID HOOPMAN
At the GOP convention in July, full Monona, Wis.
help of aides based outside Rus-

Navalny first entered poli- sia (several of his lawyers who

tics in the early 2000s, around remained in the country are in
the time Mr. Putin was starting his own long ca- jail pending trial). This probably explains why the
Anthropology and the ‘Dark Side’ of Research
reer as Russia’s leader. By the 2010s Navalny had Kremlin moved him to a remote prison last year. Dominic Green’s review of “Trip- tions, they did not join the scandal-
focused his energies on combatting corruption The world is unlikely to know the true circum- ping on Utopia” by Benjamin Breen ous, secret drug-testing project.
er s

(Books, Feb. 10) goes beyond even the Regarding LSD in particular,
and challenging Mr. Putin’s claim to power. stances of his death any time soon, and it doesn’t
book in his claims about the lives and Bateson warned James Hamilton, in a
The risks of that political activism became matter whether he was murdered or succumbed
m er

work of Margaret Mead and Gregory polite but uncompromising letter,

more pronounced as Mr. Putin consolidated his to ill health as the Kremlin claims. If not for Mr. Bateson. As directors of the Bateson against dosing unknowing persons.
grip. Navalny was arrested in 2011 following a Putin’s political oppression, Navalny would have Idea Group, which serves as Gregory Bateson also rebelled against John C.
parliamentary election the opposition said had been safe and well at home and engaged in a nor- Bateson’s literary estate, we’d like to Lilly’s treatment of dolphins. Bateson
been rigged and spent two weeks in jail. Na- mal legal or political career. set the record straight. left his employment under Lilly as
m rp

valny continued his work and over the course Navalny’s death may be a sign that Mr. Putin While Bateson worked for the OSS soon as he could find another re-
of the decade became Russia’s leading opposi- feels secure and therefore can risk provoking during World War II, there is no evi- search position.
tion politician. protests about Navalny’s fate. Mr. Putin has dence, either in Mr. Breen’s book or Neither Bateson nor Mead were
In August 2020, Navalny fell ill on a domes- seen off a potentially serious rebellion by Yevg- elsewhere, that he or Mead engaged frequent users of LSD or other drugs,
tic flight. He already had been the victim of one eny Prigozhin of the mercenary Wagner Group in the use of drugs (“narcosynthesis” or proselytizers for them. (Bateson
co Fo

or otherwise) for military interroga- took LSD three times, Mead never
chemical attack in 2017 and thoughts immedi- and faces no opponent of Navalny’s stature in
tion, during World War II or after- did.) Mead was eventually to write,
ately turned to poison given the fate of so many “elections” due this year. A divided West at ward. They did research the use of “The ordinary LSD ‘trip’ has no more
of Mr. Putin’s opponents. Navalny was flown odds even over the territorial defense of Euro- hypnosis, during World War II, as necessary relationship to mystical ex-
to Germany for medical care, where doctors de- pean soil in Ukraine is unlikely to object too vig- part of an applied anthropological perience than the drinking of ten
termined he’d been dosed with a nerve agent orously over the murky death of an internal foe. project of understanding war-related cocktails has, after which many peo-
of the sort Russian operatives used to try to Navalny’s death wounds Russia’s opposition for cultural differences. ple experience various alterations of
murder another Putin critic in Salisbury, Brit- the foreseeable future. After the war, Bateson regretted consciousness.”
ain, in 2018. Yet the paradox of dictatorship is that the some of his wartime activities, and As for the Macy Foundation, what-
As Navalny’s health improved, he could have autocrat who believes he can kill a domestic op- both he and Mead did their best to ever partial CIA funding it might
remained in relative safety in the West—as ponent with impunity also knows that he must avoid the “dark side” of research that have received at some point did not
many dissidents under oppressive regimes to keep power. Navalny’s courage during his life Mr. Breen attributes to some of their turn it into a mere CIA “cut-out” or
colleagues. No matter the insinua- “front,” as it remained in the fore-
choose to do, letting them continue their work reminds the world that many Russians still
n-

front of basic research into what con-

though risking irrelevance. He chose instead to want something better for their country. stitutes mental process. The CIA even
When Hubert Humphrey funded artists and writers in that era,

Big Climate Tries to Censor Opponents Spoke at the Naval Academy including many recognized indepen-
no

dent thinkers. This had nothing to do

I
I enjoyed Robert Merry’s review of with spying or secret activities. The
f President Biden’s electric-vehicle mandate it is “wrong to say there is a ‘Biden mandate’ “True Believer: Hubert Humphrey’s goal was to showcase American cul-
is as popular as progressives claim, why are to replace gasoline-powered cars with [electric Quest for a More Just America” by ture, as an intellectual leader in com-
they trying to censor critics who want to vehicles].” PolitiFact is a liberal opinion opera- James Traub (“A Liberal of His Time,” petition with rival nations.
inform the public about the tion. Was it also wrong for Bookshelf, Feb. 14). A little known NORA BATESON, PHILLIP GUDDEMI AND
Progressives move to story about Humphrey is the time, in STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH
mandate’s costs? the New York Times last May
June 1967, when he was the gradua- Stockholm, Sacramento, Calif., and
That’s the story this week, block TV ads opposing to report that EPA’s proposed tion speaker at the Naval Academy. Charlottesville, Va.
after the American Fuel & Pet- rule is “designed to ramp up All of the graduating class at the
rochemical Manufacturers the Biden EV mandate. sales of electric vehicles Naval Academy already had jobs
(AFPM) launched ads in Penn- while ending the use of gaso- awaiting them in the Navy or Marine Better Than the Transcript
sylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, line-powered cars”? Corps, and most would be in Vietnam
Regarding your editorial “Let’s See
Nevada, Arizona, Ohio and Montana to educate “The EPA does not have the authority to de- within a short period of time. But
the Biden-Hur Transcript” (Feb. 14):
Americans about the Administration’s back-door mand such a mandate,” the Climate Power let- Vice President Humphrey’s aides
The transcript would shed light on
EV mandate. Mr. Biden is “rushing to ban new ter says. Correct, which is why the EPA is using must have brought the wrong speech,
who said what, but what’s really
gas-powered cars” and wants “to force you into regulation to impose the de facto mandate. The and he had no option but to read it.
needed is for President Biden to have
an electric vehicle,” one ad says. Obama Administration similarly tried to force In his monotone voice, he spoke to
a formal medical assessment. Neurol-
our graduates about entering the
The Biden team doth protest. “There is no a transition to renewable power by setting un- ogists routinely evaluate and follow
world of business and striving for
EV mandate,” a Biden campaign official de- feasible emissions standards for fossil-fuel success in it. I was a junior (midship-
patients with dementia using vali-
clared. No? The Environmental Protection power plants. dated tests such as the Montreal Cog-
man 2nd class) who fell asleep in the
Agency has proposed greenhouse gas emissions Climate Power warns local broadcasters that nitive Assessment. If Mr. Biden is as
audience.
standards that would effectively require that the Federal Communications Commission could sharp as claimed, the results of an
HAL DANTONE
evaluation would settle the matter.
EVs make up two-thirds of auto maker sales by pull their licenses if they continue broadcasting Kingsville, Texas
CHARLES BUFFINGTON
2032. The standards will “accelerate the transi- the ads. “Failure to prevent the airing of ‘false Pittsburgh
tion to electric vehicles,” EPA said. and misleading advertising’ may be ‘probative
EPA’s proposed emissions rules are so strin- of an underlying abdication of licensee respon- What Kamala Harris Isn’t
gent that auto makers will be able to comply sibility’ that can be cause for the loss of a sta- The letter “Underestimating the
only by producing an increasing number of tion’s license,’” the letter says. Veep” (Feb. 15) compares media treat-
Pepper ...
“zero-emission vehicles” or by buying regula- EDF Action on Tuesday also sent stations a ment of Vice President Kamala Harris And Salt
tory credits from EV manufacturers like Tesla. letter claiming that the AFPM ad “appears to be to that of Harry Truman, who ulti-
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Americans shopping for a new car will have no a deliberate attempt to tarnish the politicians mately turned out to be a great presi-
choice but to buy an EV or pay a fortune for the . . . who may support policies that reduce air pol- dent. An adaptation of Lloyd Bentsen’s
few gas-powered cars still available. lution and save lives.” But President Biden isn’t famous 1988 debate retort comes to
mind: “I served with Harry Truman. I
Yet Mr. Biden and his allies don’t want vot- trying to reduce air pollution or save lives, and
knew Harry Truman. Harry Truman
ers to know that banning gas-powered cars is the EPA rule doesn’t aim to do either. was a friend of mine. Vice President
their end game. That’s why the progressive Opponents of “cleaner alternatives,” the let- Harris, you’re no Harry Truman.”
umbrella group Climate Power on Tuesday ter adds, “do not have the right to mislead vot- DANA R. HERMANSON
shot off a missive to broadcasters demanding ers and spread disinformation on public air- Marietta, Ga.
that they pull the AFPM ads—or else. These waves.” But they do have a First Amendment
“advertisements include obvious lies aimed at right to critique public policies that damage
Letters intended for publication should
deceiving the public and must be pulled from their livelihoods. be emailed to wsj.ltrs@wsj.com. Please
the air immediately,” Climate Power chief op- AFPM is doing a public service. Mr. Biden include your city, state and telephone
erating officer Jill Shesol wrote. But who’s ac- and the climate lobby are misleading the pub- number. All letters are subject to
tually trying to deceive the public? lic. There’s no reason for local broadcasters to editing, and unpublished letters cannot “But a deep sense of grievance and
be acknowledged.
The letter cites a PolitiFact report claiming bow to the climate lobby’s deceptions. indignation is my Happy Place.”
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Democrats Are Too Resigned to Biden
DECLARATIONS
By Peggy Noonan
T
he only time Democrats
get excited now is when
the subject is Donald
Trump. Then they get mar-
velously worked up. An of-
ficial of the administration called to
let off steam. “Trump says NATO
doesn’t pay its bills—has anyone no-
ticed the irony? Donald Trump is the
biggest deadbeat in history. How
many hundreds of contractors did he
stiff through his career, how many
plumbers didn’t get paid for their
work, and he complains about oth-
ers? Talk about projecting!”
But when the subject is Joe Biden,
they’re depressed. They have ac-
cepted that he is the inevitable nomi-
nee and explain the reasons. I can’t
get myself to buy them. The thinking
is too limited, too weary and defen-
sive about life. And so a last stab at
why it doesn’t have to be this way.
If he steps aside, he’ll be
a hero to his party. If he
stays, his legacy may well
be a second Trump term.
Mr. Biden is stuck at 39% approval;
Mr. Trump is leading; a large major-
ity of the country thinks he’s too old
for the job. It’s not that his walk is
slow or stilted, not that he occasion-
ally loses his thought. It’s that the
presidency is a speaking role and he
can’t make a sustained case on
Ukraine, Israel, illegal immigration,
all the great issues. This leaves things
confused, without a central voice,
and makes people nervous: there’s
too much mystery around this White
Black History Month Is More Complicated Than It Seems
By Lance Morrow
H
ow does a person who isn’t
black think about Black His-
tory Month? With respect?
With reverence? With guilt? Curios-
ity? Indifference?
It depends partly on that person’s
own history—on when and how his
family arrived in America. Those
whose predecessors were present
during the wickedness of slavery, and
all that followed, will have a livelier
sense of the black-and-white binaries
of the story than immigrants lately
arrived from, say, Kazakhstan. A
white New Englander whose ances-
tors made a fortune in the slave trade,
or a Southerner whose forbears ex-
ploited black African labor on cotton
or rice plantations, will understand
the burden of that history. Those
whose people came through Ellis Is-
land—potato-famine Irish, Eastern
European Jews, Hungarians, Italians—
won’t have the same haunted sense of
the American past.
I am inclined toward reverence—
for black history, for the literature
and spiritual rhetoric (the Southern
preacherly strain, with its tremen-
dous cadences), and for black music,
which is the most powerful and char-
no
acteristically American music. The
black American story is rich, painful,
dramatic, triumphant—and shaming
to the American conscience.
My great-grandfather Albert P.
Morrow, a Pennsylvanian of Scotch-
Irish stock, was 18 when he enlisted
in the Union Army in spring 1861. He
fought as a cavalry officer in every
major battle, including Gettysburg,
in the eastern theater of the war. He
was wounded three times and cap-
tured three times (and freed in pris-
oner exchanges). He served in Vir-
ginia under the young George Custer.
If my great-grandfather had accepted
Custer’s later invitation to join the
Seventh Cavalry, he might have died
in 1876 at the Little Big Horn, and
with him my line of Morrows.
As it was, Albert ended the war as
a brevet colonel. He signed on with
the Ninth Cavalry, the “Buffalo Sol-
diers”—accomplished black horse-
men recruited from plantations in
the Deep South. Eventually he would
command them during the 1879-80
PUBLISHED SINCE 1889 BY DOW JONES & COMPANY
Lachlan Murdoch
Executive Chairman, News Corp
Rupert Murdoch
Chairman Emeritus, News Corp
Emma Tucker
Editor in Chief
Liz Harris, Managing Editor
Charles Forelle, Deputy Editor in Chief
Elena Cherney, News; David Crow, Executive Editor;
Chip Cummins, Newswires; Andrew Dowell, Asia;
Taneth Evans, Associate Editor; Brent Jones, Culture,
Training & Outreach; Alex Martin, Print & Writing;
Michael W. Miller, Features & Weekend;
Emma Moody, Standards; Prabha Natarajan,
Professional Products; Bruce Orwall, Enterprise;
Philana Patterson, Audio; Michael Siconolfi,
Investigations; Amanda Wills, Video
Paul A. Gigot
Editor of the Editorial Page
Gerard Baker, Editor at Large
* * * *
House. They say he’s fine when he’s
well-rested, but events don’t knock
softly on the door and ask if you’re
ready for them.
This is what Democrats argue:
There is nobody else. But there is.
Here we summon the usual names,
starting with the Gs—Gov. Gavin
Newsom, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer,
Commerce Secretary Gina Rai-
mondo. Add Jared Polis, Josh Sha-
piro, all the candidates of the 2020
primary. There is no Biden move-
ment within the party that would
bolt without him, no Biden cult that
BETTMANN ARCHIVE
must be appeased.
The Democrats will never be able
to agree on anybody. Then they
aren’t a party. A party’s function is to
yield up and secure the election of
candidates who fulfill its mission and
meaning. The Democratic Party is a
mess, but its constituent parts don’t
want it to die, they have too much in-
vested. In the end they’ll make a
choice.
It would be bloody. So what? It
would be vital, not as if the party is
in some somnambulistic shuffle to-
ward a dark, inevitable fate.
It’s too late. Lyndon B. Johnson,
the last president to decline to seek a
second term, dropped out on March
31, 1968. There was still time for con-
tenders to launch and fund races. The
primary rules have changed since
then, and ballots have been printed
up. Mr. Biden can free his delegates,
either from the day he steps aside or
at the convention. Only political ro-
mantics think an open convention is
possible. You can’t know it’s impossi-
ble. Now and then in life you have to
say, “History, hold my beer.”
But the American people would see
chaos. Americans appear to enjoy
chaos. It will only help Trump. His
on
campaign is planning on a Biden re-
match; he’ll be crowded out of the
news cycle for months; it’ll throw a
wrench in his works.
What about the Kamala problem?
us ,
What problem? She can run for the
l
e
al a
ci on
war against the Warm Springs
Apaches led by the guerrilla leader
called Victorio. Albert Morrow might
have been a model for the John
er s
Wayne characters in movies such as
“Fort Apache” and “She Wore a Yel-
m er
low Ribbon.” He retired as a full col-
onel and moved to Florida.
I have wondered what his story
amounted to, morally speaking. A
white man commanded black troop-
m rp
ers in battles against Native Ameri-
cans in South Texas, New Mexico and
Arizona. It was cruel, Cormac McCar-
thy country, the merciless landscape
across which migrants in their thou-
co Fo
sands now pour in their trespass of
America’s southern border. My great-
grandfather’s career was complex
from a racial point of view. Was he a
hero or a villain? He was a dashing,
reckless young man who fought and
bled to end slavery. He had immense
respect for the black men he later
Fani Willis Knows When a Trial Is a ‘Show Trial’
n-
If the worst allega-
tions are true,
credit Fani Willis
at least with un-
derstanding in her
own mind what her
case, and all the
BUSINESS
cases against Don-
WORLD
ald Trump, are re-
By Holman W.
ally about.
Jenkins, Jr.
In the worst in-
terpretation, the
Fulton Country, Ga., district attor-
ney hired her boyfriend, a municipal
court judge, as co-prosecutor
against Mr. Trump despite his lack
of relevant expertise in Georgia
election or RICO law because she
was cutting an ally in on a big-time
case, a lucrative hustle, a chance for
national fame. If so, it’s a useful
light on the Trump prosecutions
generally.
They aren’t about the facts and
law, at least until they reach the ap-
pellate level, and maybe not then.
They are battles of jury nullification
(if I can stretch a point to include
150 million voters in the jury): “It
doesn’t matter what the law says,
Trump is bad” vs. “It doesn’t matter
Robert Thomson
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OPINION
Lyndon B. Johnson announces he won’t seek re-election, March 31, 1968.
nomination like anyone else.
It’s too big a gamble. Backing Mr.
Biden is a gamble. Bookmakers give
him a nearly 70% chance of losing.
The family won’t go for it. They
aren’t the arbiters of American his-
tory; the White House isn’t their
candy store.
He will never change his mind. Ba-
rack Obama dissuaded him from run-
ning for president in 2016. If Mr. Bi-
den steps aside, sacrificing all vanity
and need, he is a hero to his party
forever. If he stays and loses, he’s
Ruth Bader Biden. They’ll never for-
give him. His legacy is the second
Trump term.
Has anyone had The Talk with
him, his family and staff? All the
odds laid out, the arguments made, a
plea spoken? Has anyone been frank,
candid, tough?
If not, why not? Donors love to
talk, so do senators and governors.
We end with the famous political
intervention that took place 50 years
ago this summer, in August 1974. Sen.
Barry Goldwater, Sen. Hugh Scott
and House Minority Leader John
Rhodes went to Richard Nixon to tell
him it was over.
Goldwater, in his blunt and gossipy
commanded, and they for him. But
their task, in chasing down Victorio’s
embattled people, was ignoble police
work, with a taint of meanness and
genocide in it.
The suffering of black people over
Celebrate the story of
survival and liberation, but
beware dwelling too much
on suffering and grievance.
centuries at the hands of slave mas-
ters, lynch mobs, racists and others
has—by an irony almost impossible
to disentangle—endowed America
with a deeper spiritual dimension,
something complicated, ambiguous
and profound that it lacked in its
earlier, Tom Sawyer days: a dimen-
what the law says, Trump’s enemies
are bad.”
Trump opponents cloak them-
selves in sanctimony, whereas Mr.
Trump portrays himself as a game-
ster outsmarting less competent,
more self-deluding gamesters.
That’s why he keeps coming out
ahead in such fights. Careful on-
lookers will often find little to
choose ethically between him and
his enemies.
To me, the most interesting case
is the most legally sound, the docu-
ments-related case, though that’s
not why it’s interesting. It gets to
the unspoken issue.
Remember the lead balloon in a
CNN story in December, soon fol-
lowed by stories in the New York
Times and elsewhere? An “intelli-
gence binder” had gone missing in
the last hours of the Trump admin-
istration. Except it wasn’t informa-
tion Mr. Trump had squirreled away
for private use, it was info he had
declassified to distribute to the
press. His staff ran off multiple cop-
ies of the binder while waiting for
last-minute redactions from the in-
telligence agencies that never came
Notable & Quotable: Age
Jeet Heer writing for the Nation,
Feb. 12:
Since Biden is running again, the
question is how his age liability can
be mitigated. . . . Biden could . . . give
more interviews, press conferences,
and speeches. This is a risky strategy,
since seeing more of Biden will radi-
cally increase the odds of embarrass-
ing gaffes. . . .
Another tactic would be to give a
frank speech acknowledging his aging
but distinguishing it from incapacity.
Such a speech could be modeled on
John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech ad-
dressing worries about his Catholi-
Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | A13
1988 autobiography, remembered tell-
ing a newspaper, in the spring of ’74,
that the Watergate scandal reminded
him of Teapot Dome. He was sum-
moned immediately after for dinner
at the White House. He hadn’t seen
Nixon much and was taken aback. The
president’s conversation was a stream
of “ceaseless, choppy chatter.” He was
“constantly switching subjects,”
“hunching and quickly dropping his
shoulders.” Goldwater drove home
and dictated for his personal files: “I
have reason to suspect that all might
not be well mentally in the White
House.” The next day he phoned fel-
low guest Bryce Harlow, Nixon’s coun-
selor, who offered comfort: Nixon had
merely been drunk.
On Aug. 6, as impeachment
loomed, Goldwater alerted the White
House the president may only have a
dozen Republican senators with him.
The next day he, Scott and Rhodes
saw the president. Goldwater had
been asked by chief of staff Al Haig
not to demand or suggest resigna-
tion—that would leave Nixon defiant.
In the Oval Office, Goldwater wrote,
“Nixon put his feet up on the desk,
leaned back in his swivel chair, and
began reminiscing about the past.”
sion of tragedy. Slavery raised Amer-
ica’s moral stakes and led on to the
Civil War, which was the country’s
enactment of all of Homer and all of
Shakespeare in four short years. The
drama, at great price to the op-
pressed, introduced America to its
need for redemption and thus, it may
be, to a more interesting national
theology.
But traumatic memories may
grow toxic. A white American,
Scotch-Irish by blood, may feel he
has no standing to comment upon
these things. He knows enough, how-
ever, to warn that there is danger in
too much reverence for past suffer-
ing; it may become, as it were,
overcherished.
Great grievances, too often and
too vividly remembered, seal off the
way forward. In the hands of dema-
gogues, past injustices harden into
bitter generalizations, into ideology
before his term expired.
This week, in overly breathless
reporting, independent journalists
Michael Shellenberger, Alex
Gutentag and Matt Taibbi suggest
that the binder, among other things,
showed that the intelligence agen-
cies never really believed the Putin
Credit the Georgia
prosecutor with realizing
no one will be hanging on
fine points of the law.
government craved a Trump victory
but the opposite, preferring the
known quantity of Hillary Clinton.
Duh. In desultory fashion, the
spooks went prospecting anyway for
untoward ties between Trumpies
and Moscow, and elicited overseas
intelligence agencies to do so, which
strikes me as old news and not au-
tomatically nefarious.
The interesting and untold story
begins when the FBI stopped caring
about the truth and began relying
cism and Barack Obama’s 2008
speech rebutting racist anxiety about
his candidacy. . . .
Since Biden has trouble communi-
cating, he could give greater promi-
nence to Vice President Kamala Har-
ris, making her the designated voice.
Making the public aware that Harris
stands by as a ready and able alterna-
tive would strengthen the case for Bi-
den. The president could also make
the 2024 battle more of a partisan
struggle rather than a personal one
by recruiting . . . eloquent Democrats
as spokesmen, everyone from Barack
Obama to Pete Buttigieg to Elizabeth
Warren to Bernie Sanders.
Then Nixon’s voice turned hard. He
challenged his visitors. Goldwater
was direct: “Things are bad.” Nixon
was sarcastic. “Less than a half-dozen
votes?” “Ten at most,” Goldwater
said. He’d taken a nose count that
morning. “You have four firm votes.
The others are really undecided. I’m
one of them.”
Nixon asked if he had any options.
None were offered. Goldwater left
feeling, “He would make the decision
in the best interests of the country. It
was going to be all right.”
But after the meeting, Goldwater
returned to his office and called
Katharine Graham of the Washington
Post. He didn’t much like the Post—
earlier that day he’d stood on the
Senate floor, looked up at the press
gallery and declared “You are a rot-
ten bunch!” But he knew the Post’s
place in the story and its power with
its readers. He had one, Richard
Nixon, in mind.
He decided to trust her. “I told
Mrs. Graham what had happened in
the Oval Office.” Nixon might “go off
in any direction, depending on how
the media, particularly the Post, han-
dled the story. Could they play it cool
for just one day, refrain from saying
Nixon was finally finished?” If they
got Nixon mad, “there was no telling
what he would do. As things stood, I
believed he would resign.”
Kay Graham chose to trust Gold-
water. “The Post was as circumspect
as it could be the following morning.”
Afterward she never mentioned it to
Goldwater when they saw each other.
Goldwater thought he knew why.
.
“Newspapers call their own shots.”
But he felt the Post that morning put
ly
country over self. “I will never forget
their recognition of responsibility as
long as I live.”
Nixon resigned that night.
These old stories are always so
moving, because everyone was always
thinking about America, and thinking
imaginatively, too, as if history’s a
thing you can personally shape.
and theater: Black people are perma-
nent victims and white people are in-
curable monsters.
The memories themselves aren’t
historically false. The fallacy occurs
when grievance gets stuck in perma-
nent rage, a tradition of hate that
forestalls essentials of flourishing
life: goodwill, acknowledgment of the
facts of progress, the grace of for-
giveness and what ought to be the
healing effect of time.
Past wrongs may become an ad-
diction and an art form—or a dis-
abling excuse. They may obscure that
21st-century America is unrecogniz-
ably different from the black-and-
white country to which the rich
canon of Black History Month refers.
Mr. Morrow is a senior fellow at
the Ethics and Public Policy Center
and author of “The Noise of Type-
writers: Remembering Journalism.”
on fabricated evidence, from a mo-
tive only acquired on Election Day,
when Hillary Clinton lost most prob-
ably because of a ham-handed and
improper intervention by the FBI
that supplied Mr. Trump his minus-
cule win in the Electoral College.
Now the FBI and its intelligence
confreres needed to change the
subject quickly. If the judge in the
documents case will allow it, Mr.
Trump intends to make the actions
of our intelligence agencies part of
his defense. In effect, he will invite
a jury and the larger public to nul-
lify the law on intelligence han-
dling because he was fighting for
his political life against a govern-
ment “conspiracy”—I use quotes
only because conspiracy means ille-
gal cooperation and it isn’t clear
much or anything was illegal about
the collusion hoax.
Hoax it was, though, even if the
fact goes politely ignored or played
down because of the news media’s
complicity. The FBI knowingly pre-
sented fabricated evidence to a sur-
veillance court. An FBI official delib-
erately falsified details of Carter
Page’s relationship with the CIA.
The FBI put the chief Steele dossier
fabricator on its own payroll for al-
most four years, becoming his fam-
ily’s major source of income, which
he would jeopardize if he breathed
the truth about his Steele fabrica-
tions to the press.
Mr. Trump, as any American, is
free to believe anything he wants
without evidence, including about
the 2020 election, the focus in Ms.
Willis’s case as well as one of the
federal cases. The great four-ring
circus of jury nullification, including
the Georgia case, the Manhattan
case and two federal cases, won’t
change that.
Where all the convoluted Trump
matters will likely be settled is in an
election, by voters deciding whether
Mr. Trump is more sinning than his
enemies, or vice versa.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
A14 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
Caitlin Clark Has Scored 3,569 Career
Points—and Taken $0 From Boosters
The superstar Iowa guard just broke the NCAA women’s basketball scoring record. But the
most eye-popping number of her career may be that she’s been paid nothing by donors.
BY RACHEL BACHMAN
C
aitlin Clark is now the NCAA
women’s basketball career
scoring leader with 3,569
points in just under four seasons
at Iowa. She broke the record
Thursday night in a win over
Michigan with a signature “logo”
shot from near midcourt—and fin-
ished with a single-game school-
record 49 points.
Fans at Iowa’s Carver-Hawkeye
Arena chanted “One more year!” —
underscoring that the sensational
guard’s milestone has only super-
charged questions about her fu-
ture. Will she return to the Hawk-
eyes for a fifth season, as the
NCAA allows for players who
started school during the pan-
demic fall of 2020? Or will Clark
enter the WNBA draft in April?
BY JARED DIAMOND AND LINDSEY ADLER
WHEN MAJOR LEAGUE BASE-
BALL’S owners were searching for
a new commissioner to replace
Bud Selig ahead of the 2015 sea-
son, their biggest concern
was the brewing labor un-
rest across the industry.
So they hired Rob Man-
fred, a bulldog attorney
who had served as Selig’s
chief negotiator in various
other disputes.
Now, a decade later,
no
the sport is grappling
with another challenge
that threatens its future:
the quest for revenue—
and relevance—in an in-
creasingly turbulent en-
tertainment and media
landscape.
That is the issue that
serves as the backdrop as
MLB’s ownership class be-
gins to ponder an era with
somebody other than
Manfred in charge. With
spring training camps
opening across Florida
and Arizona this week,
the 65-year-old Manfred
said Thursday that he in-
tends to step down when
his current contract ex-
pires in early 2029.
The candidates who
emerge as his potential
successors will reveal a
lot about the state of the game—
and where it is going next.
“You can only have so much
fun in one lifetime,” Manfred said.
Manfred leaving isn’t entirely a
surprise. He had previously al-
luded that he wouldn’t return for
a fourth term, but until Thursday
he had never stated his plans so
explicitly.
The revelation about Manfred’s
potential retirement comes at a
pivotal time. Though the league
and the players’ union are prepar-
ing for the next round of collective
bargaining in 2026, the most
pressing concern facing baseball
right now might not be labor
strife, but rather questions about
where the money will come from
moving forward.
Teams have relied heavily on
local television rights deals to
drive profits—a collapsing busi-
on
There are many factors that
will go into that decision. There’s
also one that won’t: how much she
us ,
will be paid by Iowa’s main name,
l
image and likeness collective.
e
al a
While most top college athletes get
significant funds from these new
multi-million-dollar booster
ci on
groups, Clark isn’t one of them. In
fact, she doesn’t get anything from
them at all.
“She hasn’t taken a dime from
us yet, so I don’t know why she
er s
would next year,” said Brad Hein-
richs, CEO of the Swarm, Iowa’s
m er
main collective. “Could she change
course? Of course. I mean, we’d
love to have her. We’d love to com-
pensate her and do things through
the Swarm for her. But she has her
m rp
own thing, which is totally fine.
That’s her prerogative.”
Collectives grew out of the 2021
co Fo
Is Major League Baseball Ready to
Move On From Rob Manfred?
n-
Rob Manfred announced that he intends to step down when his current contract as commissioner ends in 2029.
ness model that in the past year
has lurched from “rapidly declin-
ing” to “outright implosion.” Last
year, MLB had to step in to pro-
duce broadcasts for the San Diego
Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks
after they lost their broadcast
partners. The Colorado Rockies
are in the same position in 2024
with their regional sports net-
work, with more dominos likely to
fall.
As that happens, more organi-
zations will be searching for a way
to replace the revenues they are
losing, and at this point, it’s un-
clear whether streaming will be
enough to make up the difference.
Meanwhile, as the paradigm of
how people consume sports shifts
radically, MLB must find a way to
ensure that baseball fans can actu-
ally watch baseball without an ex-
SPORTS
NCAA rule change that allowed
athletes, for the first time, to
profit from their name, image or
likeness. Some of the booster-led
groups have since morphed into
tools to lure star players from
other programs, to keep them from
transferring or to coax them to
stay another year in school. (The
NCAA still prohibits paying ath-
letes for playing, so these are
sometimes delicate maneuvers.)
At Michigan, a collective gath-
ered $135,000 from donors after
the football team’s 2022 Big Ten
title run “to raise funds to support
players making the next run in
2023.” Several of those players did
stick around for another year,
helping Michigan win its first foot-
ball national title since 1997.
At Iowa, the Swarm collective
has two parts. One side of the
pensive cable bundle.
“It’s a question of reach,” Man-
fred said Thursday. “You’ve got to
get the games in the household.”
A recent promotion in the
league office suggests that MLB
understands the stakes. Two
weeks ago, Manfred gave execu-
tive Noah Garden a promotion
with a telling title: Deputy Com-
missioner, Business and Media.
Garden’s biography on MLB’s web-
site says that he oversees the
league’s league’s “revenue-gener-
ating departments,” which promi-
nently includes untangling the
messy RSN situation.
Garden is the second deputy
commissioner, joining Dan Halem,
an attorney who is currently
MLB’s lead labor negotiator. Mor-
gan Sword, MLB’s executive vice
president for baseball operations,
* ***
ly
group raises money from boosters
and distributes it to athletes in ex-
change for charity work—reading
to patients at Iowa’s children’s
hospital, for example. Iowa football
players can make up to $40,000
through such work, Heinrichs said.
The other side is the for-profit
Swarm, through which businesses
can partner with athletes to en-
dorse their product. Including both
sides, the Swarm collective brings
in about $4 million-$5 million a
year, most of it going to athletes
on the football and the men’s and
women’s basketball teams, Hein-
richs said.
Clark is operating outside that
system. She has a stable of direct
sponsorships including Nike, Gato-
rade and State Farm—where she’s
a rare college athlete starring in
TV ads alongside NBA players. She
has also seen his influence grow in
recent years, particularly after he
took a prominent role in imple-
menting baseball’s sweeping rule
changes last season.
It is impossible to know for
certain what baseball’s owners
will prioritize five years from now,
when Manfred’s current contract
expires. It’s also impossible to
know whether they would even
want somebody who currently
works in baseball, as opposed to
looking for external candidates
from the world of business or
elsewhere.
Still, the makeup of baseball’s
owners is changing, increasingly
populated with people like David
Rubenstein, the private-equity bil-
lionaire who recently agreed to
buy the Baltimore Orioles, and the
New York Mets’ Steve Cohen, a re-
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
is represented by Excel Sports
Management, which also counts as
clients Peyton and Eli Manning,
Derek Jeter and Tiger Woods.
“Not to be self-deprecating, but
I think the Swarm NIL collective
might be small potatoes for what
she’s doing,” Heinrichs said.
Clark hasn’t just elevated Iowa,
she’s raised women’s college bas-
ketball to new heights. She leads
the nation in scoring and assists.
She can score from anywhere but
is deadliest either streaking to the
basket for a layup or letting fly a
quick-release 3-pointer from near
the midcourt logo.
Behind Clark’s hot shooting, the
Hawkeyes charged to their first
NCAA title game last season, fall-
ing to LSU, 102-85, in front of a re-
cord 9.9 million viewers. This sea-
son, the fan frenzy around Clark
has only grown.
Iowa sold out women’s basket-
ball season tickets for the first
time ever. Hawkeyes road games
have set attendance records, and
their broadcasts are driving up
ratings. Iowa’s game last Sunday
at Nebraska, when Clark was 39
points from breaking the scoring
‘She hasn’t taken a
dime from us yet, so I
don’t know why she
would next year.’
record, drew 1.8 million viewers—
the most-watched women’s college
basketball game ever shown on
.
FOX Sports.
Through the Swarm, Iowa
women’s basketball players each
could make $15,000 through char-
ity works last year, Heinrichs said,
and some players made more in
sponsorship deals through the col-
lective.
Heinrichs said everywhere in
the country he goes in Iowa gear,
people bring up Clark.
“I used to think that not only
should she come back, she should
try to figure out any way she can
stay in college as long as she pos-
sibly can because she’s making so
much money in NIL,” Heinrichs
said.
“But now I’m starting to be-
lieve that she can transcend the
sport and not only will she con-
tinue to make as much money as
she does now, she can make a lot
more as she continues to move
JEFFREY BECKER/REUTERS
forward. And she might make a lot
more for everybody else in the
league as well—just like Tiger
made all this extra money for ev-
erybody on the PGA Tour. Every-
body wants to watch.”
nowned hedge-fund manager.
More and more, baseball fran-
chises are an asset in extraordi-
narily wealthy people’s varied
portfolios rather than a cherished
family heirloom. It makes sense
that someone with a busi-
ness background might
appeal to them.
Ultimately, Manfred’s
stated intention to depart
remains, for now, just an
intention. He received an
extension just last July,
and there is plenty of
precedent for a commis-
sioner walking back his
retirement. During his
tenure, Selig announced
that he would retire after
the 2012 season but
wound up sticking around
for two more years before
finally giving way to
Manfred.
“I have been open with
[the owners] about the
fact that this is going to
be my last term,” Manfred
said. “I said it to them be-
fore the election in July,
and I’m absolutely com-
mitted to that.”
Key moments from
Manfred’s time as com-
missioner so far include
his handling of the Hous-
ton Astros’ sign-stealing
scandal, the shutdown of
the industry in the wake
of the pandemic in 2020 and the
lockout in 2022 that nearly re-
sulted in missed games. He also
oversaw the 2023 rule changes,
which resulted in shorter games
and a surge in attendance.
The rest of his time will likely
revolve around media rights,
though on Thursday he cited two
significant items on his to-do list:
seeing the Oakland Athletics com-
plete their tumultuous relocation
to Las Vegas and attend opening
day at a long-awaited new sta-
dium for the Tampa Bay Rays.
CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/ASSOCIATED PRESS
For years, Manfred has said
once the A’s and Rays were set-
tled, baseball would look to ex-
pand to 32 teams. He said Thurs-
day that while he doubts two new
teams would be playing games
when he leaves, he hopes to “have
the process in place and operat-
ing.”

For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
‘Hot and Cold’
He turns Elon
Musk’s musings
into reality B3
BUSINESS | FINANCE | TECHNOLOGY
DJIA 38627.99 g 145.13 0.37% NASDAQ 15775.65 g 0.8%
An Expanding Universe of
Products and Productions
SpringHill recently announced plans to
launch a men’s grooming line that will be
sold exclusively at Walmart.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SPRINGHILL; TYLER ROSS/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; KARIM JAAFAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES; SPRINGHILL; GEORGE PIMENTEL/GETTY IMAGES
Guests on the company’s talk show ‘The
Shop,’ set in a barbershop, have included
Drake, above, and Tom Brady.
SpringHill produced a video for Toyota,
starring J.R. Smith, about historically
Black colleges and universities.
SpringHill’s investments have included
Naomi Osaka’s production company.
The INSATIABLE
AMBITION of
LEBRON
JAMES
no
The basketball legend is building
a business that includes movies
and TV, advertising and a
grooming line. It’s all part of a new
model for how athletes can cash in
on their fame. By Jessica Toonkel
SCIENCE OF SUCCESS | BEN COHEN
Are Contests the Solution
To All of Humanity’s Problems?
Prizes improve everything from space ships to New York’s trash cans
Innovation isn’t the
first word that comes
to mind when you
think about a sanita-
tion department.
But a few years
ago, when New York
City officials found themselves in
the market for a better garbage
can, they followed a strategy to
spark creativity that has worked
for centuries, producing break-
throughs from the oceans to the
heavens and everywhere in be-
tween.
They started a contest.
By setting a goal and engaging
EXCHANGE
| MANAGEMENT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
STOXX 600 491.59 À 0.6% 10-YR. TREAS. g 14/32 , yield 4.294%
on
us ,
l
e
al a
ci on
er s
m er
m rp
co Fo
LEBRON JAMES IS PARTICULAR
about his facial hygiene. He favors a
Neutrogena pink-grapefruit wash.
“I love it, I love it, I love it,” the
NBA superstar says.
James, 39 years old, also loves
the business potential. His company,
SpringHill, is launching its own rival
face wash in a men’s grooming
line—part of a major expansion of
his burgeoning business empire in
the twilight of his career.
“I told them I want this face wash
n-
to resemble that,” James said, “be-
cause I love how the crystals make
your face feel super-washed.”
Almost a decade ago, James
helped create a new kind of com-
pany: one built around the personal-
ity of a sports superstar who can
talk directly to millions of fans on
social media. Entertainment was the
primary focus. SpringHill has made
movies like Adam Sandler’s “Hustle”
and “Space Jam: A New Legacy,”
and TV series like NBC’s game show
“The Wall” and the barbershop talk
show “The Shop.”
Now James and his longtime
business partner, Maverick Carter,
the crowd for help with all sorts of cient mystery is undeniably amaz-
tricky problems—driverless cars, ing. It’s also because the success of
missions to space, trash cans—or- this contest should inspire a lot
ganizations can find novel solutions more contests.
in places they never would have Prize contests encourage tal-
looked and from people they never ented people to work across disci-
would have asked. plines and bring unusual perspec-
Last week, I wrote about the Ve- tives beyond their areas of
suvius Challenge, a $1 million com- expertise. They are especially valu-
petition with the goal of using arti- able in areas where progress is
ficial intelligence and machine hard and unlikely to happen with-
learning to read 2,000-year-old pa- out a push, but not so hard that it’s
pyrus scrolls. I’m still thinking unattainable. The most effective
about the way a bunch of students prize contests are built around a
pulled off the seemingly impossi- simple premise: This is what we
ble—and not just because using want to do, and we don’t care how
modern technology to crack an an- Please turn to page B6
* * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | B1
OIL $79.19 À $1.16
LeBron James is using
his ability to reach
millions of fans on
social media to build
his company, SpringHill.
have a dizzying list of expansion
ideas. Beyond the grooming line,
SpringHill is making plans to expand
internationally, with an eye on
Western Europe, the U.K. and possi-
bly Japan and Africa. The company
is planning to bring a version of
“The Shop” to the U.K., hosted and
executive-produced by British actor
Idris Elba. SpringHill is discussing
launching a free, ad-supported
streaming channel, and is hunting
for acquisitions, with a particular
focus on videogames and anima-
tion.
Success isn’t a slam dunk. Build-
ing a consumer-product brand is no-
toriously difficult, and in entertain-
ment, SpringHill is competing with a
crowd of companies that have simi-
lar ambitions, while a new era of
austerity in Hollywood is clouding
the prospects for production deals.
James, sitting in an airport han-
gar one December afternoon and
awaiting a Los Angeles Lakers team
flight, said he’s always wanted to
excel in more than one area—bas-
ketball fans know him as not just a
Please turn to page B4
New York uses public trash cans that won a contest a few years ago. The
winning design in the Better Bin competition came from a group of friends.
Run on Dunkin’
The chain can’t keep
these tracksuits
in stock B10
GOLD $2,011.50 À $9.40 EURO $1.0779 YEN 150.20
Every
Airline Is
A Budget
Airline Now
BY ALISON SIDER
Almost everything has been go-
ing wrong for the deep-discount
airlines that once drove major air-
lines crazy.
The big airlines, such as Delta,
United and American, have become
more adept at deploying their own
bare-bones fares, and they have
been chasing more leisure travelers
to make up for less corporate travel
business since the Covid-19 pan-
demic hit. Costs are going up, in-
cluding higher wages to attract and
keep pilots, flight attendants, me-
chanics and other workers. Fuel
prices soared, too. Customers, sick
of being stuck at home, spoiled
themselves with creature comforts
that notoriously no-frills airlines
couldn’t match.
Some financial analysts have
.
Share performance, past two years
ly
25%
S&P 500
0
–25
Frontier
–50
–75 Spirit
Feb. 2022 ’23 ’24
Source: FactSet
started calling the budget group
LMAs—low margin airlines—in-
stead of ULCCs, or ultra-low-cost
carriers. Spirit shares fell nearly
16% last year, while Frontier tum-
bled 47%.
Now, Spirit Airlines is fighting to
convince investors it can survive on
its own, if needed, after a planned
acquisition by JetBlue Airways was
blocked for being anticompetitive
by a federal judge who said it
would hurt cost-conscious travel-
ers. Frontier Airlines, which also
once hoped to acquire Spirit, is re-
working its strategy and redrawing
its route map.
Low-cost airline executives say
the troubles are temporary rip-
ples—a bad year.
The bigger airlines “didn’t figure
out how to win,” said Barry Biffle,
Frontier’s chief executive in an in-
terview. “They got lucky.”
To others, the airline giants have
cracked the low-fare code and will
soon crush the deep discounters.
Last year didn’t play out how
most airline executives expected.
Emboldened by the postpandemic
travel boom, airlines flooded seats
into domestic-leisure destinations
like Las Vegas and Orlando—budget
carriers’ bread and butter. But they
overdid it, and overwhelmed de-
mand as travelers gave priority to
trips overseas to destinations that
only the big airlines could offer.
Budget airlines slashed fares even
more than usual to fill seats.
For budget airlines, that com-
Please turn to page B5
GROUP PROJECT
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

B2 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

EXCHANGE

THE SCORE | THE BUSINESS WEEK IN SIX STOCKS

Icahn Targets JetBlue,

Lyft Adds a Zero
JETBLUE AIRWAYS
 Billionaire Carl Icahn reported Monday that he had
a nearly 10% stake in JetBlue, saying in a filing he
JBLU believed the shares were undervalued. By Friday,
22% Icahn had struck a deal with the airline for two
board seats. JetBlue has been struggling: Its opera-
tions have faltered in recent years, it hasn’t turned a profit
since 2019, and last month its plan to acquire Spirit Air-
lines was blocked by a federal judge. JetBlue’s incoming
chief executive, Joanna Geraghty, has pledged “aggressive
action” to get the carrier back on track. JetBlue shares
surged 22% Tuesday, but the stock is still down sharply,
having lost more than half its value in the past few years.

Performance of airline stocks KEYWORDS | CHRISTOPHER MIMS

American Airlines
20%
United Airlines

0
JetBlue Airways

It’s the End of

–20

–40
The Web as We Know It
–60
AI is changing how we use the internet, upending the online economy
March 2023 Aug. ’24

.
Source: FactSet The web is in cri- AI technology and new revenue is known as the “hallucination”
sis, and artificial in- models. Already, publishers are in problem, and forcing an AI to draw

ly
telligence is to negotiations with OpenAI to li- only from a prescribed set of in-
blame. cense content for use in its large puts—like scientific papers—can
For decades, language models. Among the pub- help solve it, says Olson.
ROBINHOOD MARKETS NIKE on seeking knowledge lishers is Dow Jones, parent com-

 Robinhood surprised Wall

Street with a fourth-quar-
HOOD ter profit. The online bro-
kerage benefited from an
13% increase in trading reve-
 Nike on Thursday said it
will reduce its workforce
online has meant
googling it and clicking on the
pany of The Wall Street Journal.
Liz Reid, general manager of
Trust issues
Despite these issues, users may
NKE by about 2%, or more than
1,600 employees. Chief Ex-
links the search engine offered
up. Search has so dominated our
search at Google, has said that the
company doesn’t anticipate that
move toward AI-based answer en-
gines for the simple reason that
2.4% ecutive John Donahoe said
us ,

information-seeking behaviors people will suddenly switch over to AI-generated content threatens to
l

nue, and crypto trading the sneaker giant is using that few of us ever think to ques- AI chat-based search all at once. make the web, and existing search,
e
al a

had its strongest revenue quarter its resources to increase investment tion it anymore. Still, it’s clear that Google is taking less and less usable. AI is already
since 2022. Robinhood posted $30 in categories like running, women’s But AI is changing that, and the threat of AI-powered search being used to write fake reviews,
million in net income in the latest apparel and the Jordan brand, ac- fast. A new generation of AI-pow- very seriously. The company has synthesize fake videos of politi-
ci on

quarter, its highest earnings yet as a
public company. The company has
faced a tough stretch since going
public in 2021, including a drop in
trading and monthly active users fol-
cording to a memo reviewed by The
Wall Street Journal. Nike in Decem-
ber lowered its full-year revenue
outlook amid consumer-spending
concerns, and said it would look to
er s
ered “answer engines” could
make finding information easier,
by simply giving us the answers
to our questions rather than forc-
ing us to wade through pages of
gone into overdrive on this front,
reallocating people and resources
to address the threat and opportu-
nity of AI, and is now rolling out
new AI-powered products at a
cians, and write completely made-
up news articles—all in hopes of
snatching dollars, votes and eye-
balls on the cheap.
The stuff that spammers gin up

lowing pandemic-era highs. Robinhood cut up to $2 billion in costs over the links. Meanwhile, the web is fill- rapid clip. with the help of generative AI
shares rose 13% Wednesday, their next three years. Nike shares lost ing up with AI-generated content Those products include Google’s sometimes ranks well in Google
m er

best one-day performance since 2022.
2.4% Friday. of dubious quality. It’s polluting
search results, and making tradi-
tional search less useful.
Seeking information using a
search engine could be almost
m rp
“search generative experience,”
which pairs an AI-created sum-
mary with traditional search re-
sults. “Users are not only looking
for AI summaries or AI answers,
Search, though often the ranking is
temporary, search-engine optimi-
zation expert Lily Ray told me.
The problem isn’t just with
Google’s search results. AI-gener-

completely replaced by this new they really care about the richness ated content has also been spotted
$30 million 1,600 generation of large language
model-powered systems, says
and the diversity that exists on the
web,” Google Chief Executive Sun-
in Google Maps, within Google’s
shopping listings, and in the news
Robinhood’s The number of potential Ethan Mollick, an associate pro- dar Pichai said in a recent inter- items Google features, she adds.
fourth-quarter net income job cuts at Nike fessor at the Wharton School of view. “They want to explore too.” It’s important to note that
co Fo

the University of Pennsylvania Google has for decades battled

who has lately made a name for
himself as an analyst of these
AIs.
This could be good for con-
sumers, but it could also upend
the delicate balance of publishers,
tech giants and advertisers on
which the internet as we know it
has long depended.
AI agents help cut through the
clutter, but research is already
suggesting they also eliminate
n-
Google killer?
For the first time in years,
scrappy startups can credibly
claim that they could challenge
Google in search, where the com-
pany has above a 90% market
share in the U.S.
Eric Olson is CEO of Consensus,
a startup that uses large language
models to offer up detailed sum-
those who would manipulate its
search algorithms, and it continu-
ally updates its systems to sweep
away spammy content, whatever
the source. Its guidelines on AI-
generated content, last updated in
February, reiterate that the com-
pany is fine with using AI to help
generate content—but only if it
serves the people consuming it.

any need for people to click

through to the websites AI relies
on to produce their answers, says
Mollick. Without traffic, the busi-
no

ness model for many publishers—

of providing useful, human-gener-
ated information on the web—
could collapse.
Over the past week, I’ve been
playing with a new, free, AI-pow-
ered search engine-slash-web
browser on the iPhone, called Arc
Search. When I type in a query, it
Lyft accidentally added an extra zero to a profitability metric. first identifies the best half-dozen
websites with information on
LYFT Lyft performance this week that topic, then uses AI to “read”
and summarize them.


A strong earnings report—
and a big typo—gave Lyft
LYFT shares a lift. The ride-hail-
ing company forecast bet-
35% ter-than-expected bookings
and said it expects to be
cash-flow positive in 2024. Lyft’s
earnings release accidentally added
an extra zero to a profitability metric,
sending the stock up more than 60%
in after-hours trading Tuesday. An
executive corrected the error on a
call with analysts later Tuesday, and
Lyft shares leapt 35% Wednesday.
DIAMONDBACK ENERGY
50%
It’s like having an assistant
40 who can instantly and concisely
30
relate the results of a Google
search to you. It’s such a time-
saver that I’m betting that once
20 most people try it, they’ll never
be able to imagine going back to maries of research papers, and to Consensus uses AI to summarize
10 the old way of browsing the web. offer insights about the scientific research papers. A short portion
While Arc Search is conve- consensus on various topics. He of its analysis is shown here.
0
nient, I feel a little guilty using it, believes that AI-powered search
–10 because instead of clicking startups like his can offer an expe-
through to the websites it sum- rience superior to Google’s on spe- A few errant links and listings
Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Fri. marizes, I’m often satisfied with cific topics, in a way that will offered up by Google are hardly
Source: FactSet the answer it offers up. The carve off chunks of Google’s search anything new on an internet that’s
maker of Arc is getting some- business a piece at a time. always been full of human-gener-
thing for free—my attention—and Asking Consensus whether so- ated misinformation. But if AI
I’m getting the information I cial media is bad for teen mental means fake content can be
DOORDASH want. But the people who created health provides an instructive ex- churned out at such a rate that it
that information get nothing. ample: Consensus summarizes the becomes widespread, it could lead

 There’s a new mega-deal

in the oil patch. Texas-
FANG based Diamondback En-
ergy and rival Endeavor
DASH most
9.4% Energy Resources are
 Customers ordered more
on Doordash’s app in the
recent quarter than
they did earlier in the pan-
8.1% demic, and the food-deliv-
In December, the New York
Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI
for alleged copyright infringe-
ment over these exact issues. The
Times alleges that the technology
top 10 papers on the subject, and
then offers a longer breakdown of
the diversity of findings on the is-
sue, in which every paper cited is
individually summarized.
to a broader crisis of trust in all of
the search results offered up by
Google and others.
It’s not clear what lies on the
other side of the transition the
ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL HERTZBERG; CONSENSUS

merging to create a $50 ery company projected companies exploited its content It’s an impressive feat, one that web is going through. Much de-
billion oil-and-gas behemoth. En- continued growth. But investors without permission to create would take a nonexpert human pends on how quickly people
deavor, founded by wildcatter Autry were likely looking for better results their artificial-intelligence prod- many hours of effort to accomplish switch to AI-powered search, how
DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Stephens, has been one of the most
sought-after businesses in the con-
solidating Permian Basin. In striking
the deal, Diamondback fended off
competition from others including
ConocoPhillips, the Journal reported.
Diamondback shares jumped 9.4%
Monday.
to justify this year’s stock-price run-
up, according to analysts at Evercore
ISI. Food-delivery apps like DoorDash
surged in popularity during Covid
lockdowns, and since have battled
rising inflation and consumer belt-
tightening. DoorDash shares fell
8.1% Friday. —Francesca Fontana
ucts. In its complaint, the Times
says these AI tools divert traffic
that would otherwise go to the
Times’s web properties, depriving
the company of advertising, li-
censing and subscription revenue.
OpenAI has said it is commit-
ted to working with content cre-
ators to ensure they benefit from
on their own.
This kind of AI-powered search
is also better than simply asking
the same question of a large lan-
guage model like ChatGPT, which
is famously lax when it comes to
answering such questions, often
making up studies that don’t exist,
or misattributing information. This
much better future language mod-
els are than today’s, and which
company’s AI comes to dominate.
There will be both winners and
losers in this future, as some pub-
lishers and services become obso-
lete, and others become trusted
and necessary sources of informa-
tion—for AIs.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
He Turns Elon Musk’s Musings Into Reality
Tesla design chief, Franz von Holzhausen, innovates with curves and fluid lines—and the Cybertruck
BY REBECCA ELLIOTT
T
esla Chief Executive Elon
Musk told his top designer he
wanted to make an electric
pickup that would have good
driving dynamics and a covered
bed—and “feel like the future.”
It was up to Franz von Holzhausen
to decipher what his boss meant.
“My job is to take the few words
and turn them into many,” said von
Holzhausen, a 15-year veteran at
Tesla, in a recent interview.
The 55-year-old von Holzhausen,
whom Musk poached from Mazda in
2008, is among the longest-serving
executives at Tesla, where he has led
design for nearly all the company’s
models. He’s reported to Musk longer
than just about anyone else at the
carmaker.
Over the years, he has built a rep-
utation for combining minimalist,
tech-forward interiors with modern-
looking exteriors with a touch of pi-
zazz, such as retractable door han-
dles or panoramic glass roofs. He
helped demonstrate electric cars
could be cool and aspirational, not
PHILIP CHEUNG FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
just better for the environment.
Now, von Holzhausen is facing his
next big test: Tesla is getting ready
to release a more affordable EV that
is intended to enhance the company’s
mass-market appeal and target buy-
ers on a tighter budget. Today, Teslas
start around $39,000 in the U.S.
The company’s next generation of
vehicles will debut in a very different
marketplace than the one Tesla first
no
We ask recruit-
ers and head-
H hunters to share
their wildest and
most interesting
stories.
Q: What was an instance where
candidates have resorted to
deception or fraud?
‘He’s not who he says he is’
I placed an engineer with a
large food-manufacturing company
in North Carolina, and this client
always did their own background
check and vetting. We usually do
that, but they liked to keep that
separate.
Two years later, we got the call
asking if we vetted this guy. We
reminded them that they handled
that process, and asked why.
Well, this guy’s wife called the
vice president of the company, and
she said to the VP: “I just want
you to know he’s not who he says
he is. He doesn’t have an engineer-
ing degree. In fact, he never went
to college at all.”
He had been doing that job for
two years! The company asked me
to do some digging, and I come to
find out he never went to that
school, or any school. His refer-
ences were all friends who’d made
up fake names and titles.
What this guy was good at was
ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT NEUBECKER
reading things and BS-ing his way
through it. But the way they
caught him was they put him on
this highly technical job and he
just kept postponing the project.
He was helping in the design of
high-speed equipment—and you
can fake a lot of things in the busi-
ness world but I’m not sure how
* * * *
on
entered more than a decade ago. Ri-
val automakers are catching up and
flooding showrooms with battery-
powered models of their own, putting
us ,
more pressure on Tesla to stand out.
l
Consumers have been displaying less
e
al a
enthusiasm for EVs than many car-
makers expected, and Tesla has cau-
tioned of “notably” slower growth
ci on
this year.
As Tesla design chief, von Holz-
hausen converts Musk’s at times
vague ideas into physical lines, sur-
faces and vehicle silhouettes.
er s
The Cybertruck, a pickup with hard
angles and flat, stainless-steel panels,
m er
has been a polarizing design. It is a
departure for von Holzhausen, whose
earlier creations were defined by
curves and fluid lines.
“Most designers, they find it hard
m rp
to believe that Franz actually de-
signed that car, because it’s not really
his aesthetic makeup,” said longtime
automotive designer J Mays, who
worked with von Holzhausen in the
co Fo
1990s.
The back-and-forth on the Cy-
bertruck was particularly arduous,
dragging on well into 2019, people
who worked on the truck said.
In reviews, Musk’s comments
weren’t necessarily “tangible” and
von Holzhausen had to make certain
interpretive leaps, said Dave Morris,
von Holzhausen’s longtime deputy at
Tesla.
“Elon was hot and cold. One day he
would be really into an idea and
n-
pushing a direction, and then we
would tease it out and he’d come in,
IF THESE RÉSUMÉS COULD TALK | FRANCESCA FONTANA
When Job Applicants Lie...and Get Busted
Headhunters share their stories of workers who tried to fool their employers
you pull that off!
I don’t know if the company
ever would have caught him if
his wife hadn’t called—they
ended up getting divorced.
God knows what else he lied
about.
—Al Polson
The Colonial Group
Losing two jobs at once
I placed a candidate as a
vice president of sales at a
company about 10 years ago.
After he had been on the
job for about six months, the
company’s executive vice
president called me: “We had
a real problem.”
The VP of sales had a pri-
vate office out of an executive
suite here in Dallas, which pro-
vided an answering service. So he
had a receptionist who would take
his calls, and answer the phone:
“John Doe, ABC Company.”
One day, the executive vice
president called the guy, and the
receptionist answered with the
right name but the wrong com-
pany: “John Doe, XYZ Company.”
“Wait a minute, I’m looking for
John Doe with ABC Company.”
“Yes, that’s right. I answer for
that company, too.”
Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | B3
EXCHANGE
he was like, ‘Ugh, it’s not what I was
thinking,’ ” von Holzhausen recalled.
Come midsummer, von Holzhausen
 Franz von Holzhausen took a flier and made one last-ditch
with a Tesla Cybertruck effort. He drew a truck with a trian-
prototype. The pickup’s gular profile that was unlike what his
angular lines differ from team had been showing Musk.
the curves of his other The idea clicked.
Those who’ve worked with von
designs.
Holzhausen described him as deci-
sive, hard to fluster and open to new
ideas, qualities that have helped him
form a close bond with Musk and
thrive at a company known for high
executive churn.
Around lunchtime, he can often be
found leading workouts in a parking
lot behind Tesla’s Los Angeles-area
Franz von design studio—sessions that started
Holzhausen with a CrossFit trainer years ago and
have evolved into what some have
 First car: VW
Rabbit GTI taken to calling FranzFit.
“I don’t like to lose. Maybe it’s a
 Work uniform: good outlet for that,” von Holzhausen
Like many at Tesla, said of the workouts.
he often wears a Musk lured von Holzhausen away
black T-shirt from Mazda on the promise of fulfill-
 Longtime boss: ing Tesla’s mission to accelerate the
He has reported to auto industry’s transition away from
Musk longer than oil and gas. He has reported to Musk
just about anyone from day 1.
else at Tesla He now runs a team of roughly 300
employees, including designers and
 FranzFit: He sculptors responsible for transform-
often leads ing two-dimensional images into
workouts at models made of clay. Most of them
lunchtime in a work out of the Los Angeles-area de-
parking lot behind sign studio, an open-floor office lo-
Tesla’s Los Angeles- cated in a converted airplane hangar
area design studio
next to the headquarters of Musk’s
rocket company, SpaceX.
“Wait, who do you answer for?” CEOs called him and fired him at
“John Doe. He works for both the same time.
ABC Company and XYZ Company.” —Tony Beshara
“He does?” Babich & Associates
“Yeah. I answer for both of
them.” One person, four résumés
“What’s the phone number for Over the years, I’ve had a candi-
the second company he works date who has applied for numer-
for?” ous jobs at a hospitality company,
The executive vice president using the same name and contact
called that second company, and info, but four completely different
once they figured out that this guy résumés.
was working for both of them, the One résumé might say they
For years, Musk visited von Holz-
hausen nearly every Friday to review
the team’s latest ideas. Today, those
visits are less frequent, with Musk
juggling more companies and Tesla’s
headquarters relocated to Texas.
Musk remains “very involved” in
the design process, von Holzhausen
said. Sometimes, the CEO sends von
Holzhausen ideas he saw on X, the
social-media platform Musk bought in
2022. Other times, von Holzhausen,
who prefers to talk through design
ideas in person, catches Musk where
he can.
Von Holzhausen, who grew up out-
side of Hartford, Conn., was drawing
at an early age and sketched his first
car at the age of two, said his father,
Frank von Holzhausen, an industrial
designer.
The younger von Holzhausen
joined Volkswagen’s design group af-
ter graduating in 1992 from ArtCen-
ter College of Design, outside of Los
Angeles.
As a junior designer at VW, he was
tapped to help out on the concept for
what would eventually become a re-
vamped, bubblier version of the com-
pany’s iconic Beetle car.
He later joined General Motors,
where he met his wife, Vicki, a fellow
car designer. The pair worked to-
gether on the curvaceous Pontiac Sol-
stice, with von Holzhausen focused
on the exterior and Vicki on the inte-
rior. The two-seater won Automobile
Magazine’s design of the year award
for 2006.
The couple, who live in the Los An-
geles area, have two boys.
At Mazda, whose California studio
von Holzhausen led after leaving GM,
the designer’s team earned a reputa-
tion for tackling challenging assign-
ments, said Laurens van den Acker,
.
Mazda’s design boss at the time.
“They were the ones who wanted
ly
to jump on new projects, and if it was
difficult, they loved it,” said van den
Acker of von Holzhausen’s team at
Mazda.
Outside of Tesla, von Holzhausen is
perhaps best known for accidentally
smashing the window of a Cybertruck
prototype with a metal ball at the
pickup truck’s 2019 unveiling, a stunt
with Musk intended to show the vehi-
cle’s toughness.
Around the office, he works
through design problems with a pen
and paper in hand, jotting down ideas
on scraps of paper that he leaves ly-
ing around in conference rooms or on
people’s desks for inspiration.
Von Holzhausen also has been
known to bring Musk around to his
way of seeing things. He was among
those who persuaded Musk to revive
plans for a lower-priced electric car
that would extend Tesla’s reach into
the mass market, according to Walter
Isaacson’s biography of Musk.
On a recent walk through the Pe-
tersen Automotive Museum in Los
Angeles, the designer stopped next to
a car he said has inspired him as he
thought about Tesla’s future vehicles.
The coupe—a 1925 Rolls-Royce
Phantom I—had been customized
with large, swooping fenders and sig-
nature round doors that opened to re-
veal a red interior.
Von Holzhausen said, marveling at
the vehicle’s ability to convey a sense
of motion, “it just feels like it’s been
pulled and stretched by the wind.”
He compared Tesla’s forthcoming
affordable car to VW’s Beetle or
Ford’s Model T—“a product for the
masses,” he said, albeit one that
“feels like it’s a continuation of the
idea of the future.”
worked as a general manager at
one hotel during a certain time,
then another will say they worked
for a different hotel during that
time. At one point, I started look-
ing up some of the company
names that I didn’t recognize to
discover they didn’t exist.
We actually talked to them
about it—we have point-blank told
that individual, like, “Hey, I have
multiple résumés on file for you,
I’m not sure where you’re working
right now, and it’s very difficult
for me to trust your skills when I
have this on file.” But the appli-
cations from this person haven’t
stopped and neither have the
changes to the résumés.
—Sunny Larkin-Newman
Hospitality Ventures
Management Group
Dead wrong
I had a candidate for a tech
position who did really well in
the interviews, was close to
getting the job. When they did
the background check and
checked his Social Security
number, it belonged to someone
who had passed away about five
years ago.
He was literally impersonating a
dead person. We reached out to
him about his Social Security num-
ber, and asked if there was some
kind of mistake. He said he would
call right back. We could never get
in touch with him again—and he
disconnected his phone!
—Anthony Fanzo
The Bachrach Group
These interviews have been edited
and condensed for length and
clarity.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
B4 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
LeBron James Envisions
A Sprawling Business Empire
Continued from page B1
dominant scorer, but an elite passer,
rebounder and defender. “I have al-
ways felt like I was a Swiss Army
knife,” says James.
He extends the analogy to the ex-
pansion of SpringHill into new lines
of business. “We couldn’t just be a
wine opener,” he says, “We wanted
also to be a pair of scissors and a fin-
gernail clipper.”
In its production business, Spring-
Hill is trying its hand at a new for-
mat: a reality series following five
National Basketball Association play-
ers, including James, through the sea-
son. The show is destined for Netflix.
SpringHill is looking to expand at a
time when many streamers and ad-
vertisers are pulling back on spend-
ing, posing potential challenges for
the company. The corporate owners
of streaming services like Disney+,
Peacock and Paramount+ are looking
to burnish their balance sheets by
culling their output and being more
selective about which projects to pur-
sue. SpringHill, like any creator in
show business, could feel that pres-
sure as it tries to sell programming in
the coming years
“Many of the potential buyers for
content and acquirers for their com-
pany are themselves in financial dis-
tress,” said John Kosner, a former
ESPN executive who now runs his
own media-consulting company.
Growing competition
SpringHill is competing with a
number of production companies
that are pitching sports content to
the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Ap-
ple. Skydance Media, the company
 The
2010
ESPN
interview
behind such hit movies as “Top Gun:
Maverick,” and several “Mission: Im-
possible” titles, teamed up with the
National Football League in 2022 to
when create sports-related content.
James “When you dig into leagues, athletes
told the and the history of games them-
world he selves, it has been an untapped trea-
was sure trove with stories that haven’t
been told,” said Skydance Chief Ex-
leaving
Cleveland ecutive David Ellison in an interview
to join the last fall.
Miami SpringHill is trying to distinguish
Heat. itself with scripted content but hasn’t
er s
m er
m rp
co Fo
n-
had many breakthroughs. It is in
early development with Brad Pitt’s
no
production company on a new show
about sports agents that will be simi-
lar to Netflix’s popular show “Call My
Agent,” according to people familiar
with the situation.
Some media investors who have
looked at SpringHill question whether
it is worth the $725 million valuation
it was given when it raised money in
late 2021—at the peak of the stream-
ing-video boom.
Investors who did put money into
SpringHill are optimistic, in part be-
cause it is stretching beyond the un-
certain business of producing hits in
Hollywood.
“Hits can be consumer products, a
touring live show, partnerships with
Fortune 100 brands, as well as TV
and film projects,” said Jason Stein,
founder and managing partner of SC
Holdings, an investor in SpringHill
and adviser to the company. “By de-
sign, SpringHill is not focused exclu-
James starred in 2021’s ‘Space Jam: A New Legacy,’ the SpringHill-produced sequel to the 1996
movie in which Michael Jordan acted alongside cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny.
EXCHANGE
sively on hits in the traditional
sense.”
James ignited a movement in the
sports world. Kevin Durant, Megan
Rapinoe and Naomi Osaka are among
the many other athletes that have
launched media companies, hoping to
control their own narrative, make a
cultural impact and build a real busi-
ness.
The list of such outfits keeps grow-
ing. The NBA’s Giannis Antetokoun-
mpo in January announced a new
production company, Improbable Me-
dia, whose first offering is a docu-
mentary about his rise for Amazon’s
Prime Video.
It’s not only superstars: JJ Redick,
a successful NBA role player, has
launched his own firm built around
podcasts like “The Old Man and the
Three.” Pat McAfee parlayed a career
as an NFL punter—not exactly the
most glamorous of positions—into a
successful YouTube show, building a
company that now licenses its pro-
gramming to Disney’s ESPN.
“There are a lot of people saying
‘why am I not doing it if LeBron is,’ ”
said Paul Wachter, CEO of Main
Street Advisors, a SpringHill investor
who has been an adviser to James
since 2005.
Omaha Productions, the entertain-
ment company started by former NFL
star Peyton Manning, has gained sig-
nificant traction—not just because its
series “Quarterback” became a Netflix
hit last year, but because it is intent
on developing a robust pipeline.
“You don’t want to be a one-trick
pony in this business,” said David
Nevins, a former head of Paramount’s
Showtime, who is now CEO of North
on
Road, which has a stake in Omaha.
Having your company attached to a
famous athlete only gets you so far,
he said. “It’s the smart company
builders that will win,” Nevins said,
us ,
adding that Manning is one of those
l
executives.
e
al a
SpringHill is the most mature, and
the most diversified of the bunch—
with lines of business that include ad-
ci on
vising brands on strategy and creat-
ing content for advertisers like Nike.
The majority of SpringHill’s roughly
$200 million in revenue comes from
its studio business and advertisers
hiring the company to create spon-
sored short videos meant to be
shared on social media. For example,
Toyota hired the company to create a
short video about the importance of
historically Black colleges and univer-
sities, starring former NBA player J.R.
Smith.
When visitors enter SpringHill of-
fices in Los Angeles, they are greeted
with a neon sign saying, “I Am More
Than an Athlete.” It’s dawning on
more companies—from media to
sportswear to luxury goods—that ath-
letes can have a much bigger foot-
print in the business world than just
starring in ads and movies, Carter
said.
There’s a long history of athletes
forging lucrative careers in business:
Magic Johnson became a billionaire
not as a former Lakers star, but
through investments in an insurance
company, movie theaters and sports
franchises, among other areas. Now
* ***
social media has allowed athletes to
develop a deeper connection with
consumers, giving them even greater
opportunities, Carter said.
“Talent and creators—and I am
putting athletes in that bucket—mean
more to consumers now because they
have the technology to speak directly
to them,” Carter said.
SpringHill invests in and helps to
grow other athletes’ production com-
panies, including tennis star Osaka’s
Hana Kuma, which recently spun off
from SpringHill, and Miniature Géant
Studio, started by NBA superstar Joel
Embiid.
‘The Decision’
James, the NBA’s all-time leading
scorer and the league’s oldest player,
was in a playful mood last year on
the morning after a Lakers win. As he
waited for his flight in December, he
was icing his knees and joking with
teammates barely half his age about
videogames and their attire. “You
look like you are going to Bermuda,”
he said to Anthony Davis, who was
sporting tropical shorts.
James saw a need for athletes to tell
their own stories before many of his
current teammates were in the NBA.
The turning point came when
James and Carter got panned by the
press and fans for “The Decision,” a
live ESPN broadcast in 2010 in which
James announced he was leaving his
hometown team, the Cleveland Cava-
liers, to join the Miami Heat.
That was one of the reasons that
led to James and Carter to launch
“Uninterrupted,” a website designed
to enable athletes to speak directly to
fans that was one of several compa-
nies that were combined to make up
SpringHill.
Carter, who has known James
since they were kids in Akron, Ohio,
was working in marketing at Nike be-
fore going to work with his longtime
friend in 2005. His office at Spring-
Hill’s headquarters reflects his eclec-
tic interests, with books ranging from
“The Pininfarina Book,” filled with
photography from the Italian design
firm, to “A Time Before Crack,” an-
other photography book about New
York City in the 1980s.
Carter studied Disney’s business
plan when launching SpringHill. His
mentors include Walt Disney CEO Bob
Iger, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg and
former American Express CEO Ken
Chenault.
Many of SpringHIll’s early projects
have origins in James’s upbringing.
For example, he was a big fan of game
shows growing up, and was at the 9
a.m. pitch meeting with NBCUniversal
for “The Wall,” in which contestants
have the opportunity to win millions
of dollars. NBCUniversal just renewed
the show for a sixth season.
“The Shop,” a talk show that takes
place in a barbershop, was inspired
by James’s and Carter’s youth. “I
didn’t grow up reading newspapers. I
wasn’t fortunate enough to be in a li-
brary so you gained a lot of your in-
formation and intel of things in the
world of the barbershop,” James said.
“You can be unfiltered.”
The show, which has featured such
guests as former President Barack
Obama, football legend Tom Brady
and singer Drake, is now on YouTube
after airing for the first five seasons
on HBO.
SpringHill’s upcoming men’s
grooming line is named for his show
“The Shop,” which spawned the idea,
Carter said. James recalls that when
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
.
ly
he used to visit the neighborhood
barbershop as a kid, you could get
everything from incense to beard oil
 At 39
years old,
James is
to hair gel, and envisioned some- the oldest
thing similar with the grooming line. player in
James has been involved in prod- the
uct development—he participated in National
focus groups of male employees at Basketball
SpringHIll discussing their grooming
Association
routines. When it came to face wash, —and the
he wanted his beloved Neutrogena league’s all-
product to be a model. time
The challenges for the grooming leading
line, which is to be sold exclusively scorer.
through Walmart, will include com-
peting against consumer-product gi-
ants with deeper pockets and long-
time connections to large retailers,
and persuading more men to use
such products in the first place.
A new reality series
Every summer for years, James and
Carter have gone on vacation together
with their families on a yacht in the
Mediterranean Sea. A question would
pop up: Why aren’t we doing our own
version of HBO’s “Hard Knocks”? It
was a frequent conversation.
James, a lover of all things foot-
ball, is a huge fan of the HBO show,
which each year follows a different
NFL team’s preseason training camp.
When “Quarterback” became a big
hit for Netflix, James saw an oppor-
tunity to press forward with a simi-
lar basketball show.
Getting the NBA to sign on was
step 1. SpringHill had been cultivat-
ing its ties with the league for years.
It cast a number of NBA players in
“Hustle,” which helped build trust
$725million
SpringHill’s valuation based on financing it
raised in 2021, at the peak of the
streaming-video boom.
between the two sides. After the
FROM TOP: ERIK CARTER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES FOR ESTABROOK GROUP; WARNER BROS./EVERETT COLLECTION
NBA and Netflix signed up for the
idea of an NBA reality series, it was
time to find the players.
James was interested in partici-
pating, but he had one key question:
How would this affect a documen-
tary of his life if he decides to do
that someday? “It’s the only ques-
tion he cares about,” Carter said.
Carter told him not to worry—the
show wouldn’t preclude a documen-
tary spanning his career. The NBA
series, which will also feature Jayson
Tatum, Jimmy Butler, Domantas Sab-
onis and Anthony Edwards, is being
made in partnership with Omaha
Productions and the Obamas’ Higher
Ground Productions.
James has been featured in TV
shows and films including Judd Apa-
tow’s “Trainwreck,” with Amy
Schumer. He surprised many on that
movie’s set with his deadpan deliv-
ery of lyrics from the song “Gold
Digger,” offered as relationship ad-
vice for a pal played by Bill Hader.
James hopes to be more involved
in the creative side of SpringHIll
when he retires. He says he would
love to do a docuseries with his son
Bronny, who plays for University of
Southern California.
He also would like to do more
acting.
“The next movie I want to do is a
rom-com,” he said.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
ETFs that trade op-
tions on single stocks
are promoting them-
selves with some of
the highest yields
I’ve seen in more
than three decades of
writing about investing.
This past week, San Francisco-
based Kurv Investment Manage-
ment highlighted yields of between
11.3% and 30.5% on its six ex-
change-traded funds; YieldMax, a
family of roughly 20 ETFs, held out
yields of 11.3% to 94.9%.
What’s the problem? You might
think these yields predict future re-
turns. They don’t. And while the
way these funds are reporting
them is probably kosher, it is a per-
ilously misleading illusion. You
can’t extrapolate such high yields,
and you can easily end up deep in
the red if the market moves
against you.
These ETFs are a new wrinkle
on what are known as “covered-call
funds.” They offer jumbo current
payouts using options contracts to
wring extra yield from a single
stock. If the underlying stock
drops, these ETFs should go down
somewhat less. That makes them
appealing to tech-stock fans whose
holdings pay paltry dividends or
none at all and often suffer steep
declines in price.
Investors have flocked to some
of these ETFs. The YieldMax fund
that trades options related to Tesla
stock was touting a yield of 56.6%
this week and has attracted $820
million since its launch in Novem-
ber 2022. YieldMax’s option-in-
come fund tied to Coinbase Global,
reporting a 62.9% yield, has grown
to $330 million since it opened last
August.
To get the percentages shown on
their websites, these ETFs take the
money they paid out in the latest
month, multiply it by 12, then di-
vide that by the fund’s net asset
value. That’s called their distribu-
tion rate or distribution yield.
Unfortunately, income generated
by selling options swings wildly as
the underlying stock fluctuates.
The distribution yield is “what you
got this month, but it might not be
what you get next month or going
forward,” says Howard Chan,
founder of Kurv Investment Man-
agement, which runs the Kurv
ETFs.
At YieldMax’s TSLA option ETF,
the payouts have varied between
44 cents and $1.07 per share in re-
cent months. Nothing could be fur-
ther from fixed income—but giant
distribution yields give no indica-
tion of that.
“You hope people understand
that with more yield comes more
risk,” says Jay Pestrichelli, chief
no
Frontier Airlines says it will save millions by making most of its trips out-
and-back, which means planes and crews will return to bases each night.
Budget Airlines Make
Plans to Fight Back
Continued from page B1
pounded headaches from major op-
erational constraints during their
often-rocky emergence from the
pandemic. In 2019, Spirit and Fron-
tier were each able to fly planes
over 12 hours a day on average—
about 17% more than the four larg-
est U.S. carriers, Frontier has said.
Both airlines have lost about an
hour a day of flying time.
“There may be market cycles
where one model outperforms the
other, but over the long term low
cost ultimately wins,” said Bill
Franke, who invested in and pio-
neered the ultra-low-cost airline
model and whose investment firm
Indigo Partners owns roughly 80%
of Frontier.
There are loyalists. Kevin Pelle-
tier is an avid skier who bought
Frontier’s all-you-can-fly fall and
winter pass for $299. There is some
fine print, but holders can book do-
mestic and international Frontier
flights, provided seats are available,
paying only taxes, fees and seat or
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
bag charges. He flies frequently
from the Washington, D.C., area to
Colorado, where he has a home an
hour and a half west of Denver.
“Everybody gets it—the seats
and no Wi-Fi and they nickel and
* * * *
A Fund With a 94.9% Yield?
You Guessed It—There’s a Catch
When you see a sky-high yield, don’t forget what you learned in Investing 101
Year-to-date performance of selected single-stock ETFs
and their underlying stocks
ETF total return Underlying stock total return
–20 –10
on
us ,
l
e
al a
Kurv Yield Premium
Strategy Netflix (Netflix)
ci on
YieldMax META Option Income
Strategy (Meta Platforms)
Note: Yields as reported on Feb. 15, 2024; returns through Feb. 15 (ETF returns on market price)
Sources: YieldMaxETFs.com; KurvInvest.com; FactSet
er s
m er
executive of Zega Financial, which
manages the YieldMax portfolios.
“People should realize that some-
thing at a 70% yield should be risk-
ier than something at 5%. That
m rp
should be Investing 101.”
Once people see a super-sized
co Fo
n-
dime you,” he said. But without the
pass and Frontier’s cheap tickets,
he wouldn’t be able to fly nearly as
much. “At least every other week, if
not every week, I’m traveling round
trip.”
For nearly two decades, the bar-
gain-basement concept worked
well. It was born out of the idea
that there was a massive swath of
people that were simply priced out
of air travel altogether. Americans
bought in.
Before Spirit, buying a seat on
an airline generally included extras
like a checked bag, advance seat as-
signments, and use of overhead bin
space for carry-ons. Spirit and later
Frontier stripped those out, offer-
ing them a la carte for extra fees.
For a while, full-service U.S. air-
lines were content to chase deep-
pocketed business travelers and let
the lowest-cost upstarts pick off
cheapskates. But Spirit and Fron-
tier got harder to ignore as they
quickly added flights in major hubs
like Dallas, Denver and Chicago.
And when oil prices plummeted
in late 2014 and 2015, the big air-
lines could afford to offer cut-rate
fares. Spiraling fare wars broke out
that weighed on revenues but re-
sulted in cheap tickets for fliers as
EXCHANGE
THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR | JASON ZWEIG
0%
YieldMax TSLA Option
Income Strategy (Tesla)
YieldMax COIN Option Income
Strategy (Coinbase Global)
YieldMax PYPL Option Income
Strategy (PayPal Holdings)
0% 10 20 30 40
double-digit yield, however, they’re
primed to flunk Investing 101.
Alongside distribution yield, the
ETFs’ websites also display a mea-
sure required by the Securities and
Exchange Commission called SEC
yield. This includes income from
bigger airlines aggressively de-
fended their turf.
Maury Gallagher, chief executive
of low-cost airline Allegiant Air,
said it makes more sense for dis-
counters to try to avoid head-to-
head competition with major air-
lines. Other ultra-low-cost airlines
have gone after passengers in the
big cities where major airlines have
hubs—like the famous bank robber
Willie Sutton who said he robbed
banks “because that’s where the
money is,” said Gallagher on a con-
ference call last week.
“Historically, they’ve been easy
money, but not anymore,” he said.
“The banks have developed fero-
cious tools to fight off their historic
robbers.”
By 2017, Delta, American and
United had all started selling bare-
bones tickets. Those tickets come
with drawbacks—seats often can’t
be chosen in advance, and there are
restrictions on changes and re-
funds. United’s basic-economy tick-
ets don’t even come with a carry-
on.
“Before the pandemic, mainline
carriers were still experimenting”
with how best to take on the dis-
counters, said Mark Kopczak, a
consultant and former network
planning executive at Spirit. “Net-
work carriers have really perfected
how they’re going to use basic
economy to be competitive in the
marketplace.”
United CEO Scott Kirby is one of
the budget carriers’ most vocal de-
tractors, predicting that they’ll lose
their low-cost edge and ability to
grow. United Airlines said last
month that it has refined how it
sells basic-economy tickets, and it
is winning over customers from
budget airlines. Its basic-economy
revenue from rose 20% in the
fourth quarter from a year earlier.
Increasingly, passengers who
start out shopping for a basic-econ-
omy fare end up buying something
more, American said.
And, when fares are nearly
equivalent, other factors like reli-
ability, flight frequency, and loyalty
programs—where bigger airlines
have an advantage—start to matter
more.
Zach Kaczor last year wanted to
pick one airline to devote most of
his travel to, going “all in” to maxi-
mize his frequent-flier potential.
Spirit was in the mix, but his first
Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | B5
dividends and interest, but not
from selling options.
This past week, SEC yields at
nearly all these single-stock option-
income ETFs were below 5%.
That means these funds com-
pensate you with a lower SEC yield
than you could get in a low-risk
government money-market fund
even though, as their prospectuses
openly warn, the ETFs could lose
some—or all—of your money.
But I doubt many investors even
see the SEC yield once that mas-
sive distribution yield smacks them
in the forehead.
The return of this form of mar-
50 keting bait harks back to the dark-
est days of the fund business.
In the 1980s, mutual-fund com-
panies used distribution yields to
hawk “government-plus” or option-
income bond portfolios. Slurping
up roughly $50 billion from inves-
tors, these funds inflated income
by selling call options on their
bonds. The resulting double-digit
payouts were unsustainable as in-
terest rates went into free fall. The
trip went badly.
He arrived at the Orlando air-
port two hours before his flight
home to Philadelphia to find
Spirit’s check-in counter mobbed.
Kiosks weren’t working. By the
time he was able to check his bag,
it was too late and he missed the
flight home. What had seemed like
a cheap ticket was pricier when
factoring in a hotel and a new
flight on another airline.
So Kaczor signed up for an
American Airlines co-branded
credit card and has flown the car-
rier about four times since. He has
racked up enough miles for a trip
this spring to Hawaii, a destination
Spirit doesn’t serve.
“I don’t think the cost is really
that big of a difference,” he said.
“Looking back on the experience, it
feels like an easy choice.”
It isn’t only ultradiscounters
Spirit and Frontier that have to ad-
just. JetBlue Airways, which is also
battling stubbornly high costs and
operational stumbles, is pulling out
of some routes and focusing on
Pre-tax profit margin
–10% –5
Spirit 2023
Frontier
American
United
Delta
Source: FactSet
more lucrative leisure flying as it
looks for a new path forward after
a federal judge blocked its $3.8 bil-
lion deal to acquire Spirit. Even
Southwest, a budget pioneer that
has become the biggest domestic
airline by passengers, has grappled
with shifting demand patterns and
throttled planned capacity addi-
tions.
Conditions could swing back to
budget airlines’ favor quickly, some
industry observers and executives
say. Many airlines have slowed ca-
funds ended up cannibalizing
themselves and crushing their in-
vestors.
In response, the SEC imposed a
rule in 1988 that required funds to
stop using distribution yield unless
it was accompanied by standard-
ized measures of SEC yield and to-
tal return.
The single-stock option-income
ETFs appear to comply with that
rule, since their websites display
SEC yield equally prominently and
also show total return.
Back in 1988, the SEC noted con-
cerns that “because investors natu-
rally tend to focus on the larger
number, the use of a distribution
rate…[could] defeat the purpose of
the uniformly calculated yield.”
No one imagined back then that
funds might someday promote dis-
tribution yields higher than 90%.
So don’t focus on “the larger
number.” The SEC yield and total
return give a more realistic picture.
Remember that the distribution
yields on these funds are no pro-
When you buy a fund for
its yield alone, you’re
likely to end up a lot
wiser—but not wealthier.
tection against a loss in principal
value. Measuring total return—
both income and changes in price—
the YieldMax TSLA fund is down
nearly 8% since inception, even
though Tesla stock gained more
than 9% over the same stretch.
“Nobody wants to disappoint in-
.
vestors because they don’t under-
stand how a fund works,” says
ly
Zega Financial’s Pestrichelli.
“These funds are not conservative
alternatives.”
Losses like the YieldMax TSLA
fund’s can arise partly because a
covered-call strategy doesn’t shine
when the underlying asset makes
big sudden moves up or down. And
risk is intensified when a covered-
call fund is tied to only a single
stock rather than a basket or a
market index.
“You should know that when the
underlying [stock] goes down, the
fund will go down,” warns Chan,
whose firms runs the Kurv ETFs.
That’s because the income from
options is only a partial buffer
against loss.
When you buy a fund for its
ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX NABAUM
yield alone, you’re likely to end up
a lot wiser—but not wealthier. No
one has ever said it better than the
late market analyst Raymond De-
Voe: “More money has been lost
reaching for yield than at the point
of a gun.”
pacity growth in the U.S. for the
coming months, and executives
have said domestic travel demand
has been stronger than they were
anticipating. The international
travel boom that bolstered big air-
lines last year could level off.
In an effort to turn things
around, Spirit has suspended ser-
vice to some new markets. It has
reduced flights on off-peak days. It
is also assessing ways to refinance
debt coming due. Spirit has had the
added challenge of an engine recall
that will keep dozens of its planes
on the ground this year.
Frontier is rejiggering its flying
so that about 80% of its trips will
be out-and-back, which means
planes and crews will return to
bases each night rather than hop-
scotching around the country.
And it is pulling back from over-
crowded leisure markets to chase
higher fares connecting big cities.
It has announced expansions in
Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Dallas
and elsewhere. Many of those are
already big airline hubs, but Fron-
0 5 10 15%
2019
tier CEO Biffle says they can coex-
ist. He’s skeptical that basic econ-
omy fares are really a game
changer—larger rivals can only sell
so many cheap tickets before eating
into their own profits.
American has shot back, adding
flights or upgrading to bigger
planes on flights from Philadelphia
to Kansas City, Detroit, St. Louis
and Indianapolis.
Biffle is unruffled. “We’re play-
ing chess, not checkers. And it’s my
move.”
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
B6 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
TAX REPORT | LAURA SAUNDERS
I’m a Tax Columnist. Here’s How I Tackle My Own Taxes.
Tax preparation can
help Americans grapple
with key financial
issues. Don’t miss this
valuable opportunity.
Last weekend I
joined millions of
Americans starting
their 2023 tax re-
turns. After all, April
15 is drawing near.
But as I down-
loaded data and sorted records, I
noticed that insights I’ve gathered
from decades of writing about
taxes seem remote from the tax-
prep process. Instead, taxpayers
must deal with instructions like,
“If you check the HOH or QSS box,
enter the child’s name if the quali-
fying person is a child but not
your dependent.”
Thank goodness tax profession-
als and commercial software help
to hack through this linguistic jun-
gle and perform the myriad calcu-
lations tax filing requires. Yet it’s
easy to get lost, or frustrated, by
the details and complexity of fil-
ing.
That’s a shame because I’m con-
vinced you can also use the tax-
prep process to touch base with
important financial issues. Those
who don’t are missing a valuable
opportunity.
Here are issues I think about as
I work my way through my hus-
band’s and my joint return using
popular software. No, I don’t
sharpen a pencil and dig out a cal-
culator—although there are more
of those gluttons for punishment
than you’d think.
What I think about
To begin with, I’m lucky that
our joint return isn’t complicated
as tax returns go. While my hus-
band has retired and receives So-
cial Security payments and a small
pension, I’m still an employee.
This means my company keeps
records for my withholding and
ILLUSTRATION BY KIERSTEN ESSENPREIS
tax-related benefits. So I don’t face
the complexities of being a gig
worker or owning an S Corp. Then
again, taxpayers who earn income
in these ways often qualify for tax
breaks that employees don’t.
Record-keeping also isn’t a big
problem. I tuck charitable-dona-
tion letters and forms reporting
Let’s Make a
Contest for
Everything
Continued from page B1
it gets done or who does it.
But the real key to prize con-
tests—and the reason there should
be more of them—is that they pay
no
only for success. That’s a more effi-
cient model than predicting who is
most likely to succeed and giving
those people money even if they
fail.
They can help with today’s is-
sues and shape the future. And
they have already uncovered se-
crets of the past.
The Vesuvius Challenge happens
to be a perfect example of how
prize contests should work.
The first thing it got right is that
it had a clear, ambitious target:
Read four legible passages of 140
characters in the unopened scrolls
by the end of 2023. Instead of tell-
ing people to do something inter-
esting with AI, people were told to
use AI to do this specific interest-
ing thing.
Netflix was similarly precise
about benchmarks when the com-
pany famously offered $1 million in
2006 to the first algorithm that
could beat its recommendation en-
gine by 10%. The company declared
a winner in 2009 and paid out the
prize, but never used the code.
The Vesuvius Challenge also fo-
cused the attention of an entire
community on a puzzle that had
vexed humanity for centuries. It
manufactured an urgent race
against the clock by setting a hard
deadline. And it gave smart young
developers an incentive to compete
and collaborate, dangling incre-
mental prizes for those who pub-
lished their code and shared their
critical discoveries with others.
Some of them were driven by
money. But many of them just
wanted to win. And most of them
kept working because they were
too obsessed to think about any-
thing else. Silicon Valley has a word
for that: They got nerd-sniped.
Prize contests like the Vesuvius
our income to the IRS into a green
folder I seldom look at before tax
season.
Yet I’m scrupulous with records
that could matter for this year or
in the future. One of the best ways
to win an argument with the IRS
is to have what the agency calls
“contemporaneous records”—i.e.
ones you didn’t reconstruct years
later.
on
This means our receipts for do-
nations of gently used clothing—
always less than $250, so we don’t
need notes from the charities—are
detailed and dated. Records of eli-
us ,
gible home improvements go in
l
another folder. Although there’s an
e
al a
exemption of $500,000 per couple
on gains from the sale of a home,
it isn’t adjusted for inflation so it’s
ci on
eroding. This means our home-im-
provement receipts might be
needed someday to reduce taxes if
we sell.
er s
Focus on the big picture
m er
All told, this tax compliance
takes relatively little time. Instead,
I devote my energy to tax planning
that can make a big-dollar differ-
ence.
m rp
Take saving for retirement. To-
co Fo
Challenge have existed for so long
and resulted in so many unexpect-
edly brilliant ideas that it’s surpris-
ing there aren’t more of them by
now.
Napoleon to NASA
In the 1700s, when Britain was
losing ships to navigation errors,
the world’s most powerful country
offered piles of money to anyone
who could devise a simple way of
n-
measuring longitude while at sea.
That prize led to the invention of
the chronometer.
By the early 1800s, “Napoleon
was a great believer in the use of
cash prizes to stimulate invention
and innovation,” historian Andrew
Roberts told me. In the mid-19th
century, with France suffering
through the national crisis of a but-
ter shortage, the emperor put a
bounty on a substitute for butter.
Et voilà! Margarine was born.
The early 20th century brought
one of the most famous contests of
all time, the Orteig Prize, a $25,000
reward for the first nonstop flight
between New York and Paris, which
went to Spirit of St. Louis pilot
Charles Lindbergh. Explorers have
been following the money into the
skies ever since.
In 2005, the National Aeronau-
tics and Space Administration
launched a series of prizes to en-
gage the public in developing ad-
vanced technology. NASA’s chal-
lenges have covered everything
from lunar landers to lunar loos,
plus astronaut gloves that were
‘Napoleon was a great
believer in the use
of cash prizes to
stimulate invention.’
stitched together with a sewing
machine on a dining-room table.
One of the current NASA compe-
titions is the Deep Space Food
Challenge, a $3 million contest to
feed astronauts on long-duration
missions. Among those experiment-
ing with microgreens and single-
cell proteins are university teams,
startups and one scientist working
out of his garage in Colorado.
“We recognize that we have
some of the best and brightest at
EXCHANGE
day, people often can choose be-
tween traditional or Roth retire-
ment accounts in workplace plans.
This involves a trade off. With tra-
ditional IRAs and 401(k)s, the con-
tributions often are tax-deductible,
though required withdrawals are
taxable. Contributions to Roth ac-
counts, on the other hand, aren’t
deductible, but withdrawals can be
I devote my tax-
planning energy to the
sort of details that can
make a big difference.
tax-free and the original owner
doesn’t have to take payouts.
Younger savers are lucky to
have this choice. Being Boomers,
my husband and I had no access to
individual Roth IRAs—our income
was too high—and there was no
Roth 401(k) for most of our ca-
reers. So we saved almost exclu-
sively in traditional 401(k) plans.
Meanwhile, paying for our chil-
dren’s education drained savings
that would have gone into taxable
accounts.
1
1. NASA has held contests to come up with various advanced
technologies, from lunar toilets to better astronaut gloves. 2. The inventor
of margarine won a 19th-century French prize for creating a butter
substitute. 3. Charles Lindbergh won $25,000 for his pioneering trans-
Atlantic flight in his plane the Spirit of St. Louis.
NASA,” said Angela Herblet, a
NASA program analyst and chal-
lenge manager. “But we don’t have
all of the best and brightest.”
One man’s trash
To understand how federal agen-
cies began giving out hundreds of
millions of dollars through con-
tests, you have to flash back to the
1990s, when a policy wonk named
Tom Kalil read about Britain using
incentive prizes centuries ago and
thought: Why isn’t the U.S. govern-
ment doing this?
It struck him as odd that the
country rarely made financial com-
mitments that were contingent on
success. So he asked the National
Academy of Engineering to study
prizes. He helped the Defense Ad-
vanced Research Projects Agency
get the authority for prize competi-
tions like the series of challenges it
held for self-driving cars. Then he
worked with the Senate in 2010 to
make sure every agency could offer
prizes up to $50 million each.
Now agencies are hosting com-
petitions and funding their own
moonshots through the crowd-
sourcing platform Challenge.gov.
Those prizes allow them to pull in-
novation from the public rather
* ***
Luckily the 401(k)s performed
well. But now we—like many oth-
ers our age—are worried about be-
ing locked into large taxable re-
quired withdrawals starting at age
73. So we’re scrambling to do tax-
efficient Roth conversions that
could provide income flexibility
and lower taxes later on.
In fact, a Roth conversion last
year yielded my biggest tax mis-
take so far. After doing a Roth
conversion in the second quarter, I
forgot to pay estimated taxes.
When I did remember them, I for-
got the conversion amount. That
led to year-end panic over a po-
tential penalty, a change in pay-
check withholding and a large pay-
ment to the IRS I didn’t need to
make. Now we’re set for a humon-
gous refund for 2023, and I’m pre-
tending not to notice the smirks of
certain family members.
Where to hold an
investment
I also keep a close eye on our
investments held in taxable ac-
counts. My work has taught me
that taxes are often the largest el-
ement of rate of return, which is
why private-equity moguls are ob-
sessed with them.
than push it through contracts and
grants.
Of course, prize contests don’t
always work, and they’re probably
not right for tasks that require ex-
pensive hardware, trade secrets or
specialized expertise. Still, even the
ones that fail can be successful in
their own way. The Google Lunar X
Prize, a $30 million race to put a
rover on the moon, ended in 2018
without a winner, but that pot of
money helped push the frontiers of
private space exploration.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, there
was another contest that began
only a few months later.
That’s when New York City’s De-
partment of Sanitation officials de-
cided to give the iconic green wire
litter basket a makeover. What they
did next was unconventional: They
opened the bidding process to any-
body—and everybody. The only re-
quirement was an idea for a garbage
bin that would make life better for
New Yorkers and sanitation workers.
And worse for hungry rats.
“I didn’t think we would ever get
a chance to work on something like
this,” said the leader of the winning
team, Colin P. Kelly, a New York in-
dustrial designer with a passion for
municipal waste and recycling. “We
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
So while our taxable accounts
aren’t large, I’ll always look for
opportunities that reduce taxes
and raise returns. Always, always,
I tell friends and readers, consider
the tax effects before making an
investment. You don’t want to be
like the irate investors I heard
from who learned too late about
the tax hazards of master limited
partnerships.
Strategize sales as well, such as
by checking timing. Would selling
later bring a lower capital-gains
rate? Could postponing part of a
sale from December to January
spread out income and avoid a
higher bracket or the 3.8% surtax
on net investment income?
Asset location also matters. For
example, the interest payments on
bonds are typically taxed at higher
rates than dividends on many
stocks. So we mostly hold our
bonds and bond funds in a tax-de-
ferred retirement account. One ex-
ception is Treasurys, because New
York state can’t tax the interest on
them.
I also pay close attention to
making tax-smart charitable dona-
tions, as all donors should. During
one high-income year, we made a
tax-deductible contribution to a
donor-advised fund (DAF) that has
been a dream to use. With our
DAF, I can make a year’s worth of
donations in under 10 minutes in-
stead of writing checks, looking up
addresses and so forth.
.
I’ll regret our DAF’s demise
when we switch to making dona-
ly
tions with qualified charitable dis-
tributions, or QCDs, when we
reach age 70 ½. These gifts using
funds from traditional IRAs are
the most tax-efficient strategy for
many donors and can even help
lower Medicare premiums, but
they’re more hassle-prone.
Meanwhile I keep other tax-sav-
ing moves in the back of my mind
to pull out if needed. Will we face
hig nursing-home bills one day? At
least they’re tax deductible. If my
daughter wants to put together a
down payment for a home, I can
point out that her Roth IRA con-
tributions (not earnings) can be
withdrawn free of both taxes and
penalties. Or perhaps I’ll run
across someone besides my aunt
in Texas who could qualify for the
0% tax rate on investment in-
come.
And so it goes. As we say at
The Wall Street Journal, every-
thing has a tax angle.
2
3
weren’t a firm that would be asked
to submit in a traditional procure-
ment.”
That’s because they weren’t a
firm of any kind.
“We were literally just a group
of friends,” he said.
But something funny happened
when they began thinking about
garbage: They got nerd-sniped.
They spent time with sanitation
workers to learn how they used the
existing receptacles so they could
build a superior one and make
those jobs easier and the streets
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: ISTOCK; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; KIM SHIFLETT/NASA
cleaner. Their modular, three-part
design makes the more durable
bins lighter and less of a burden to
lift. They’re also better at prevent-
ing overflow and deterring ro-
dents.
Now these designers, engineers
and architects who happened to
live in New York and never would
have had the opportunity to rei-
magine trash cans see their work
every time they step outside, where
the waste and recycling baskets on
thousands of street corners are be-
ing replaced by theirs.
“I think being able to walk
around the city and see them is
pretty cool,” Kelly said. “That’s the
prize.”
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | B7

MARKETS DIGEST
Dow Jones Industrial Average S&P 500 Index Nasdaq Composite Index Track the Markets: Winners and Losers
Last Year ago Last Year ago Last Year ago A look at how selected global stock indexes, bond ETFs, currencies
38627.99 Trailing P/E ratio 25.66 22.56 5005.57 Trailing P/E ratio * 22.78 18.35 15775.65 Trailing P/E ratio *† 32.08 24.98 and commodities performed around the world for the week.
t 145.13 P/E estimate * 18.49 17.91 t 24.16 P/E estimate * 22.79 18.72 t 130.52 P/E estimate *† 30.27 25.12
Index Currency, Commodity, Exchange-
Dividend yield 1.93 2.08 Dividend yield * 1.41 1.68 or 0.82% Dividend yield *† 0.84 0.86 vs. U.S. dollar traded in U.S.* traded fund
or 0.37% or 0.48%
All-time high: Lean hogs 15.68%
All-time high Current divisor All-time high
16057.44, 11/19/21
38797.38, 02/12/24 0.15172752595384 5029.73, 02/15/24 NIKKEI 225 4.31
Comex copper 4.12
38900 5000 15900 Comex silver 4.04
Hang Seng 3.77
15500 Nymex crude 3.06
38000 4900
S&P 500 Materials 2.36
15100 S&P 500 Energy 2.17
37100 4800
FTSE MIB 1.85
FTSE 100 1.84
Session high 36200 4700 14700
CAC-40 1.58
DOWN UP
S&P 500 Financials 1.44
t

Session open Close 65-day moving average 14300

35300 4600 STOXX Europe 600 1.39
Close Open
t

S&P 500 Utilities 1.35

65-day moving average Session low 34400 4500 65-day moving average 13900 S&P SmallCap 600 1.29
Bars measure the point change from session's open S&P/TSX Comp 1.17
33500 4400 13500 S&P BSE Sensex 1.16
Dec. Jan. Feb. Dec. Jan. Feb. Dec. Jan. Feb. Russell 2000 1.13
Weekly P/E data based on as-reported earnings from Birinyi Associates Inc. † Based on Nasdaq-100 Index DAX 1.13
Euro STOXX 1.12
KOSPI Composite 1.09
Major U.S. Stock-Market Indexes Trading Diary S&P 500 Health Care 1.02
Latest 52-Week % chg Volume, Advancers, Decliners S&P 500 Industrials 0.85
High Low Close Net chg % chg High Low % chg YTD 3-yr. ann. NYSE NYSE Amer.
Chinese yuan 0.85
Dow Jones Total volume* 971,467,055 16,840,501 South African rand 0.85
Industrial Average 38825.03 38583.24 38627.99 -145.13 -0.37 38797.38 31819.14 14.2 2.5 7.0 Adv. volume* 353,262,156 9,070,001 S&P MidCap 400 0.71
Transportation Avg 15857.98 15618.64 15629.19 -277.34 -1.74 16695.32 13444.01 3.3 -1.7 5.8 Decl. volume* 603,779,010 6,354,314 Norwegian krone 0.60
Utility Average 847.50 835.97 844.40 -2.63 -0.31 975.39 783.08 -11.5 -4.2 -0.3 Issues traded 2,906 312 Bovespa Index 0.55
Total Stock Market 50301.13 49897.63 49952.81 -271.25 -0.54 50224.06 38697.55 21.1 4.5 6.2 Advances 934 115 Mexican peso 0.19
Barron's 400 1106.01 1096.82 1096.82 -9.01 -0.82 1105.83 881.58 9.6 2.3 5.4 Declines 1,875 171 S&P/ASX 200 0.18
Unchanged 97 26 iShNatlMuniBd 0.17
Nasdaq Stock Market New highs 199 4 S&P 500 Consumer Staples 0.15
Nasdaq Composite 15917.41 15752.02 15775.65 -130.52 -0.82 15990.66 11138.89 33.8 5.1 3.9 New lows 15 7 Australian dollar 0.12
Nasdaq-100 17864.16 17663.40 17685.98 -159.74 -0.90 17962.41 11830.28 43.1 5.1 8.7 Closing Arms† 0.78 0.23 WSJ Dollar Index 0.11
Block trades* 4,806 178 VangdTotIntlBd 0.09
S&P
500 Index 5038.70 4999.52 5005.57 -24.16 -0.48 5029.73 3855.76 22.7 4.9 8.4 Nasdaq NYSE Arca Shanghai Composite unch.
MidCap 400 2857.03 2828.20 2828.30 -26.51 -0.93 2854.81 2326.82 6.1 1.7 3.7 Total volume*5,223,801,051 327,181,144 -0.003 Indian rupee
1318.43 1302.86 -1.15 Adv. volume*2,066,210,858 165,302,507 -0.05 Euro area euro
SmallCap 600 1304.98 -15.16 1339.63 1068.80 1.8 -1.0 0.3

.
Decl. volume*3,085,740,337 161,088,786 -0.08 South Korean won
Other Indexes

ly
Issues traded 4,419 1,911 -0.10 IBEX 35
Russell 2000 2052.98 2032.16 2032.74 -28.73 -1.39 2066.21 1636.94 4.4 0.3 -3.7 -0.11 Dow Jones Industrial Average
Advances 1,631 612
NYSE Composite 17502.54 17378.38 17409.30 -25.63 -0.15 17434.93 14599.05 9.9 3.3 4.1 Declines 2,595 1,265 -0.15 Nymex RBOB gasoline
Value Line 595.35 590.03 590.60 -4.73 -0.79 598.74 498.09 0.03 -0.6 -2.1 Unchanged 193 34 -0.16 iSh TIPS Bond
NYSE Arca Biotech
NYSE Arca Pharma
KBW Bank
5169.24
1019.04
95.91
5095.11
1001.22
94.63
5124.87 -21.58
1013.30
95.44
12.09
-0.28
-0.42

-0.30
on
1.21
5526.35
1013.30
111.86
4544.40
791.91
71.71
-7.3
21.8
-14.7
-5.4
11.3
-0.6
-5.5
12.9
-5.1
New highs
New lows
Closing Arms†
230
64
0.94
342
15
0.46
-0.18 S&P 500 Real Estate
-0.18 iSh 1-3 Treasury
-0.22 U.K. pound
PHLX§ Gold/Silver 108.94 106.89 107.86 0.37 0.34 144.37 103.31 -8.3 -14.2 -8.3 Block trades* 30,651 1,734 -0.24 Canadian dollar
us ,

PHLX§ Oil Service 81.74 80.10 81.01 -0.07 -0.09 98.76 69.29 -7.3 -3.4 15.0 -0.28 Indonesian rupiah
l

* Primary market NYSE, NYSE American NYSE Arca only.

-0.34 S&P/BMV IPC
PHLX§ Semiconductor †(TRIN) A comparison of the number of advancing and declining
e
4624.49 4514.98 4527.68 -30.42 -0.67 4567.30 2892.39 50.6 8.4 11.8
al a

issues with the volume of shares rising and falling. An -0.34 iShJPMUSEmgBd
Cboe Volatility 14.71 13.75 14.24 0.23 1.64 26.52 12.07 -28.9 14.4 -12.8 Arms of less than 1 indicates buying demand; above 1 -0.42 S&P 500

Nasdaq PHLX Sources: FactSet; Dow Jones Market Data indicates selling pressure.
ci on

-0.51 VangdTotalBd
-0.55 Swiss franc
International Stock Indexes Percentage Gainers... -0.58 iShiBoxx$HYCp
Latest YTD Latest Session 52-Week
Region/Country Index Close Net chg % chg % chg Company Symbol Close Net chg % chg High Low % chg -0.58 Comex gold
-0.61 Japanese yen
MicroCloud Hologram HOLO 66.36 35.36 114.06 113.00 1.50 191.1
er s

World MSCI ACWI 750.24 –0.31 –0.04 3.2 -0.63 iShiBoxx$InvGrdCp

Hitek Global HKIT 3.55 1.17 49.16 39.80 0.54 ...
MSCI ACWI ex-USA 317.72 2.51 0.80 0.3 -0.72 Bloomberg Commodity Index
Backblaze BLZE 11.83 3.68 45.15 11.83 3.50 105.7
MSCI World 3285.12 –4.62 –0.14 3.7
m er

Applied Therapeutics APLT 5.38 1.63 43.47 5.83 0.76 427.5 -0.77 S&P 500 Consumer Discr
MSCI Emerging Markets 1016.23 8.53 0.85 –0.7 Equillium EQ 2.76 0.74 36.63 2.79 0.45 148.6 -0.79 iSh 7-10 Treasury
Americas MSCI AC Americas 1895.79 –0.47 4.5 Nano-X Imaging NNOX 12.95 3.45 36.32 22.69 4.89 62.3 -0.95 Soybeans
–8.96
Canada 0.16 Bit Origin BTOG 5.63 1.49 35.99 11.40 1.25 -38.8 -1.16 iSh 20+ Treasury
S&P/TSX Comp 21255.61 32.92 1.4
m rp

0.60
Beamr Imaging BMR 13.57 3.57 35.70 34.94 0.91 ... -1.34 Nasdaq Composite
Latin Amer. MSCI EM Latin America 2553.75 15.32 –4.1
Phathom Pharmaceuticals PHAT 9.29 2.39 34.64 17.02 5.84 -4.3 -1.54 Nasdaq-100
Brazil Bovespa 128725.88 921.75 0.72 –4.1
Prelude Therapeutics PRLD 4.63 1.15 33.05 8.57 1.66 -20.7 -1.61 S&P 500 Communication Svcs
Chile S&P IPSA 3536.55 82.82 2.40 2.0
Turnstone Biologics TSBX 2.57 0.47 22.38 13.20 1.63 ... -2.46 S&P 500 Information Tech
Mexico S&P/BMV IPC 57132.11 –119.78 –0.21 –0.4
Ucommune International UK 2.77 0.47 20.43 15.84 2.04 -80.8 -2.91 Corn
Mullen Automotive MULN 9.13 1.52 19.97 7031.24 6.36 -99.8
co Fo

EMEA STOXX Europe 600 491.59 3.05 0.62 2.6 -3.62 Dow Jones Transportation Average
Eurozone 0.47 3.5
Zedge Cl B ZDGE 4.28 0.71 19.89 5.18 1.68 58.5 -5.32 Nymex ULSD
Euro STOXX 490.67 2.28
Quad/Graphics QUAD 6.50 1.02 18.61 6.59 2.68 52.6
Belgium Bel-20 3690.07 –4.31 –0.12 –0.5 -6.07 Wheat
Denmark OMX Copenhagen 20 2599.95 6.14 0.24 13.9 Percentage Losers -12.89 Nymex natural gas
Latest Session 52-Week *Continuous front-month contracts
France CAC 40 7768.18 24.76 0.32 3.0
Company Symbol Close Net chg % chg High Low % chg
Germany DAX 17117.44 70.75 0.42 2.2 Sources: FactSet (indexes, bond ETFs, commodities), Tullett Prebon (currencies).
Semilux International SELX 2.61 -2.97 -53.23 12.15 2.14 -75.0 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Israel Tel Aviv 1862.12 … Closed –0.2
China Natural Resources CHNR 1.77 -1.70 -48.99 8.85 0.86 -57.1
Italy FTSE MIB 31732.39 37.95 0.12 4.5
Trupanion TRUP 22.88 -12.40 -35.15 62.21 18.45 -60.6 Methodology
Netherlands AEX 858.11 10.52 1.24 9.1 Cooper-Standard Holdings CPS 14.16 -5.04 -26.25 22.74 9.87 -6.5 Performance reflects price change (except DAX, Bovespa, and Tel Aviv 35, which
Norway Oslo Bors All-Share 1463.57 12.29 0.85 –3.7 Telephone & Data Sys TDS 14.04 -4.40 -23.86 21.75 6.44 2.5 reflect total returns). Commodities are represented by the continuous front-month
South Africa FTSE/JSE All-Share 73616.06 0.54 –4.3 futures contract. Bond exchange-traded fund performance may diverge from that of
397.62 Roku Cl A ROKU 72.00 -22.50 -23.81 108.84 51.62 0.6 their underlying index. Bond categories are represented by the following ETFs: U.S.
Spain IBEX 35 9886.40 –40.90 –0.41 –2.1 Dropbox DBX 25.08 -7.46 -22.93 33.43 18.71 18.2 Bonds Total Market: Vanguard Total Bond Market; 1-3 Yr U.S. Treasurys: iShares 1-3
n-

Sweden OMX Stockholm 911.05 7.89 0.87 0.9 AtlasClear Holdings ATCH 4.41 -1.30 -22.70 11.90 4.32 -56.6 Year Treasury; U.S. 7-10 Yr Treasurys: iShares 7-10 Year Treasury; 20+ Yr U.S.
Treasurys: iShares 20+ Year Treasury; Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS):
Switzerland Swiss Market 11310.61 26.43 0.23 1.6 AMN Healthcare AMN 61.69 -15.94 -20.53 112.44 57.80 -33.3 iShares TIPS; Investment Grade Corporate Bonds: iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade
Turkey BIST 100 9250.36 8.21 0.09 23.8 JX Luxventure JXJT 2.26 -0.57 -20.14 12.00 1.09 -67.6 Corporate; High Yield Corporate Bonds: iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate; Municipal
Bonds: iShares National Muni; International Bonds: Vanguard Total International;
U.K. FTSE 100 7711.71 1.50 –0.3 Chromocell Therapeutics CHRO 4.80 -1.20 -20.00 6.00 4.54 ...
no

114.18 Emerging Market Bonds: iShares J.P. Morgan USD Emerging Markets.
U.K. FTSE 250 19191.93 92.31 0.48 –2.5 Super Micro Computer SMCI 803.32 -200.68 -19.99 1077.87 85.61 773.4
Vroom VRM 10.51 -2.49 -19.15 225.60 10.46 -88.1 Scan this code
Asia-Pacific MSCI AC Asia Pacific 170.90 1.75 1.04 0.9 Bloom Energy BE 9.88 -2.09 -17.46 23.52 8.98 -57.9
Australia S&P/ASX 200 7658.30 52.58 0.69 0.9 Cross Country Healthcare CCRN 17.55 -3.70 -17.41 28.75 15.65 -31.4 Get real-time U.S. stock quotes and
Closed
track most-active stocks, new highs/lows
China Shanghai Composite 2865.90 … –3.7
Hong Kong Hang Seng 16339.96 395.33 2.48 –4.1
Most Active Stocks and mutual funds.
Volume % chg from Latest Session 52-Week
India S&P BSE Sensex 72426.64 376.26 0.52 0.3 Company Symbol (000) 65-day avg Close % chg High Low Available free at WSJMarkets.com
Japan NIKKEI 225 38487.24 329.30 0.86 15.0 ProSh UltraPro Shrt QQQ SQQQ 138,523 15.8 11.65 2.82 42.57 10.97
Singapore Straits Times 3221.94 45.25 1.42 –0.6 Direxion Dly Semi 3 Bear SOXS 126,648 34.0 4.39 2.09 24.09 4.09
South Korea KOSPI 2648.76 34.96 1.34 –0.2
SoundHound AI SOUN 118,384 729.8 3.82 1.60 5.11 1.49 Currencies
Tesla TSLA 110,698 -3.2 199.95 -0.25 299.29 152.37
Taiwan TAIEX 18607.25 –37.32 –0.20 3.8 U.S.-dollar foreign-exchange rates in late New York trading
Gaxos.ai GXAI 107,570 27968.6 0.71 177.18 4.55 0.18
Thailand SET 1386.27 –1.00 –0.07 –2.1 * Common stocks priced at $2 a share or more with an average volume over 65 trading days of at least
US$vs, US$vs,
Fri YTDchg Fri YTDchg
Sources: FactSet; Dow Jones Market Data 5,000 shares =Has traded fewer than 65 days Country/currency in US$ per US$ (%) Country/currency in US$ per US$ (%)
Americas Thailand baht .02777 36.010 4.7
Vietnam dong .00004077 24530 1.1
Argentina peso .0012835.0500 3.3
Consumer Rates and Returns to Investor Benchmark
Treasury Yields
yield curve Forex Race Brazil real .2013 4.9670 2.4 Europe

Selected rates
and
Yield toRates
maturity of current bills, Yen, euro vs. dollar; dollar vs. Canada dollar .7414 1.3489 1.8 Czech Rep. koruna .04237 23.604 5.5
U.S. consumer rates notes and bonds major U.S. trading partners Chile peso .001029 971.40 11.0 Denmark krone .1446 6.9169 2.1
Euro area euro 1.0779 .9278 2.4
A consumer rate against its Money Market/Savings Accts Colombiapeso .000256 3911.29 0.9
Hungary forint
Ecuador US dollar 1 1 unch .002769 361.10 4.0
benchmark over the past year 6.00% Iceland krona .007248 137.97 1.4
Bankrate.com avg†: 0.50% Tradeweb ICE 16% Mexico peso .0586 17.0546 0.5
Norway krone .0952 10.5061 3.3
Banesco USA 5.25% Friday Close 5.00 Uruguay peso .02557 39.1150 0.1
Poland zloty .2483 4.0269 2.3
5.00% Coral Gables, FL 888-228-1597 t t 8 WSJ Dollar Index Asia-Pacific
t 4.00 s Sweden krona .0957 10.4444 3.4
CFG Community Bank 5.25% One year ago Australiadollar .6532 1.5309 4.3 Switzerland franc 1.1360 .8803 4.6
Federal-funds 3.75 0 China yuan .1405 7.1194 0.1 Turkey lira .0324 30.8424 4.6
Baltimore, MD 888-205-8388 3.00
target rate s Hong Kong dollar .1278 7.8222 Ukraine hryvnia .0262 38.1500 unch
0.2
2.50 UFB Direct 5.25% 2.00 –8 s Euro India rupee .01205 83.016 –0.2 UK pound 1.2601 .7936 1.0
San Diego, CA 877-472-9200 Yen Indonesia rupiah .0000639 15655 1.7 Middle East/Africa
Money market 1.25 1.00 –16 Japan yen .006658 150.20
TAB Bank 5.27% 6.5 Bahrain dinar 2.6532 .3769 –0.01
t account yields
Ogden, UT 800-355-3063 1 3 6 1 2 3 5 7 10 20 30 2023 2024 Kazakhstan tenge .002222 450.04 –1.2 Egypt pound .0324 30.9039 –0.1
0.00 month(s) years Macau pataca .1240 8.0620 0.1 Israel shekel .2772 3.6069 0.1
MAM J J A S ON D J F BrioDirect 5.35% Malaysia ringgit .2092 4.7800 4.0
maturity Kuwait dinar 3.2475 .3079 0.2
2023 2024 Montebello, NY 877-369-2746 New Zealand dollar .6124 1.6329 3.2 Oman sul rial 2.5974 .3850 ...
Sources: Tradeweb ICE U.S. Treasury Close; Tullett Prebon; Dow Jones Market Data Pakistan rupee .00358 279.375 –0.6 Qatar rial .2743 3.646 0.1
Yield/Rate (%) 52-Week Range (%) 3-yr chg Philippines peso .0179 55.970 1.0 Saudi Arabia riyal .2666 3.7504 0.01
Interest rate Last (l)Week ago Low 0 2 4 6 8 High (pct pts) Corporate Borrowing Rates and Yields Singapore dollar .7424 1.3470 2.1 South Africa rand .0530 18.8808 3.2
South Korea won .0007504 1332.58 2.9
Federal-funds rate target 5.25-5.50 5.25-5.50 4.50 l 5.50 5.25 Yield (%) 52-Week Total Return (%) Sri Lanka rupee Close Net Chg % Chg YTD%Chg
.0031990 312.60 –3.5
Prime rate* 8.50 8.50 7.75 l 8.50 5.25 Bond total return index Close Last Week ago High Low 52-wk 3-yr Taiwan dollar .03188 31.365 2.2 WSJ Dollar Index 98.56 –0.02–0.02 2.84
SOFR 5.31 5.31 4.55 l 5.40 5.26
U.S. Treasury, Bloomberg 2130.790 4.480 4.350 5.120 3.610 1.608 –3.768 Sources: Tullett Prebon, Dow Jones Market Data
Money market, annual yield 0.50 0.50 0.39 l 0.64 0.41
2.83 l 2.36 U.S. Treasury Long, Bloomberg 3063.710 4.550 4.470 5.280 3.630 –4.202–10.731
Five-year CD, annual yield
30-year mortgage, fixed† 7.41
2.82
7.29
2.74
6.75
2.87
l 8.28 4.50 Aggregate, Bloomberg 2018.480 4.920 4.810 5.740 4.200 2.532 –3.442
Commodities Friday 52-Week YTD
15-year mortgage, fixed† 6.62 6.59 6.00 l 7.42 4.22
Pricing trends on someClose
raw materials, or commodities
Net chg % Chg High Low % Chg % chg
Fixed-Rate MBS, Bloomberg 1988.030 5.120 5.010 6.050 4.290 1.380 –3.506
Jumbo mortgages, $766,550-plus† 7.49 7.38 6.79 l 8.33 4.55 DJ Commodity 945.20 6.35 0.68 1035.63 930.59 -6.15 -1.32
High Yield 100, ICE BofA 3529.879 7.358 7.228 9.101 7.030 11.119 1.666
Five-year adj mortgage (ARM)† 6.44 6.40 5.50 l 7.16 3.31 Refinitiv/CC CRB Index 272.59 1.31 0.48 290.29 253.85 1.88 3.32
New-car loan, 48-month 7.86 7.87 6.68 l 7.87 3.84 Muni Master, ICE BofA 585.084 3.225 3.221 4.311 2.801 4.533 –0.831 Crude oil, $ per barrel 79.19 1.16 1.49 93.68 66.74 3.73 10.52
Bankrate.com rates based on survey of over 4,800 online banks. *Base rate posted by 70% of the nation's largest EMBI Global, J.P. Morgan 836.711 7.599 7.566 8.842 7.206 7.905 –3.040 Natural gas, $/MMBtu 1.609 0.028 1.77 3.575 1.581 -29.27 -36.00
banks.† Excludes closing costs.
Sources: FactSet; Dow Jones Market Data; Bankrate.com Sources: J.P. Morgan; Bloomberg Fixed Income Indices; ICE Data Services
Gold, $ per troy oz. 2011.50 9.40 0.47 2081.90 1808.80 9.30 -2.47
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

B8 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

MARKET DATA
Futures Contracts Open
Contract
High hilo Low Settle Chg
Open
interest Open
Contract
High hilo Low Settle Chg
Open
interest Open
Contract
High hilo Low Settle Chg
Open
interest

Metal & Petroleum Futures July 2.168 2.215 2.157 2.201 .042 98,336 May 583.00 589.50 575.00 586.00 7.50 3,242
Sept 2.242 2.281 2.225 2.270 .042 86,130 Milk (CME)-200,000 lbs., cents per lb. Currency Futures
Contract Open
Open High hi lo Low Settle Chg interest Oct 2.312 2.359 2.307 2.349 .039 106,102 Feb 16.17 16.20 16.17 16.17 –.01 4,694 Japanese Yen (CME)-¥12,500,000; $ per 100¥
March 16.86 17.00 16.76 16.84 .04 5,396 Feb .6665 .6675 .6639 .6655 –.0015 533
Copper-High (CMX)-25,000 lbs.; $ per lb.
Feb 3.8265 3.8415 3.8265 3.8380 0.0815 1,450
Agriculture Futures Cocoa (ICE-US)-10 metric tons; $ per ton. March .6704 .6705 .6666 .6688 –.0012 289,860
March 5,947 5,964 5,689 5,706 –255 15,328 Canadian Dollar (CME)-CAD 100,000; $ per CAD
March 3.7595 3.8440 3.7550 3.8385 0.0805 99,618 Corn (CBT)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu. Feb .7409 .7429 .7404 .7412 –.0012 121
May 5,587 5,600 5,329 5,341 –264 107,775
Gold (CMX)-100 troy oz.; $ per troy oz. March 417.50 t 415.00
421.50 416.50 –1.25 358,997 March .7430 .7432 .7406 .7415 –.0011 149,152
May 429.75 t 427.75
433.00 429.50 –.25 480,632
Coffee (ICE-US)-37,500 lbs.; cents per lb.
Feb 2005.00 2012.50 1996.50 2011.50 9.40 366 British Pound (CME)-£62,500; $ per £
March 191.00 191.75 188.15 190.85 1.55 14,697
March 2006.50 2017.40 1997.40 2014.40 9.10 2,778 Oats (CBT)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu. Feb 1.2589 1.2604 1.2552 1.2580 –.0016 1,958
May 186.00 187.65 183.80 186.70 1.55 114,810
April 2016.10 2027.20 2006.60 2024.10 9.20 326,146 March 380.25 389.50 379.50 383.25 1.00 2,017 March 1.2603 1.2627 1.2552 1.2609 .0011 179,452
May 369.50 376.00 365.25 368.25 –1.50 1,086
Sugar-World (ICE-US)-112,000 lbs.; cents per lb. Swiss Franc (CME)-CHF 125,000; $ per CHF
June 2036.10 2046.80 2026.60 2043.90 9.20 37,565
March 22.85 23.39 22.71 23.08 .26 139,407 March 1.1399 1.1404 1.1348 1.1385 –.0014 57,224
Aug 2054.30 2065.20 2045.20 2062.40 9.40 23,137 Soybeans (CBT)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu.
March 1163.75 1173.75 1162.25 1172.25 10.00 183,945 May 22.26 22.87 22.18 22.59 .35 265,311 June 1.1503 1.1515 1.1461 1.1497 –.0015 611
Oct 2071.00 2082.80 2064.00 2080.00 9.70 5,877 Sugar-Domestic (ICE-US)-112,000 lbs.; cents per lb.
May 1167.50 1177.50 1165.50 1176.25 10.25 300,479 Australian Dollar (CME)-AUD 100,000; $ per AUD
Palladium (NYM) - 50 troy oz.; $ per troy oz. May 41.89 … 2,190 Feb .6520 .6530 .6497 .6522 … 184
Feb 948.70 … 3 Soybean Meal (CBT)-100 tons; $ per ton.
Cotton (ICE-US)-50,000 lbs.; cents per lb. March .6531 .6550 .6502 .6539 .0011 201,256
960.50 968.00 934.50 952.80 … 16,919 March 339.70 347.80 339.30 345.60 6.10 99,632
March March 94.63 95.93 s 92.96 93.87 –.76 12,847 Mexican Peso (CME)-MXN 500,000; $ per MXN
Platinum (NYM)-50 troy oz.; $ per troy oz. May 333.40 339.60 333.20 338.90 5.50 201,490
May 95.33 96.42 s 93.52 94.42 –.89 122,839 Feb .05860 –.00004 113
Feb 907.60 8.50 55
Soybean Oil (CBT)-60,000 lbs.; cents per lb. March .05837 .05846 .05821 .05837 –.00001 261,483
March 46.06 46.35 45.43 45.59 –.41 89,950 Orange Juice (ICE-US)-15,000 lbs.; cents per lb.
April 905.30 917.00 894.20 913.50 8.30 77,047 March 365.60 374.65 361.30 371.40 6.75 3,736
Euro (CME)-€125,000; $ per €
May 46.59 46.88 45.93 46.08 –.46 204,912 Feb 1.0768 1.0780 1.0734 1.0770 … 854
Silver (CMX)-5,000 troy oz.; $ per troy oz. May 364.15 370.25 361.05 368.65 6.05 4,269
Feb 23.439 0.527 241
Rough Rice (CBT)-2,000 cwt.; $ per cwt. March 1.0787 1.0800 1.0745 1.0790 .0008 712,910
March 18.56 18.66 18.25 18.32 –.31 5,375
March 22.980 23.560 22.840 23.475 0.524 68,172 Interest Rate Futures
Crude Oil, Light Sweet (NYM)-1,000 bbls.; $ per bbl. May 18.82 18.91 18.50 18.57 –.32 4,854 Index Futures
Wheat (CBT)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu. Ultra Treasury Bonds (CBT) - $100,000; pts 32nds of 100% Mini DJ Industrial Average (CBT)-$5 x index
March 78.11 79.35 s 77.22 79.19 1.16 54,215
March 566.00 571.75 t 556.75 560.50 –6.50 80,120 March 125-060 125-060 123-250 124-100 –21.0 1,663,266 March 38858 38909 38653 38697 –161 103,711
April 77.63 78.52 76.69 78.46 0.87 354,329
May 567.00 568.75 t 555.00 559.00 –8.25 158,595 June 126-280 127-000 125-180 126-040 –22.0 13,168 June 39244 39311 39074 39105 –161 609
May 77.37 78.02 76.34 77.98 0.76 180,303
Wheat (KC)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu. Treasury Bonds (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100% Mini S&P 500 (CME)-$50 x index
June 76.85 77.52 75.95 77.48 0.67 164,558
March 575.75 576.50 t 563.00 567.25 –8.50 44,527 March 119-020 119-020 117-270 118-070 –21.0 1,410,416 March 5049.50 5059.25 5012.75 5019.75 –26.75 2,281,005
July 76.39 76.97 75.52 76.94 0.60 99,762 570.25 571.00 t 556.75 561.50 –8.50 97,743 119-000 119-020 117-270 118-070 –21.0 17,525
May June June 5108.25 5118.00 5072.25 5078.75 –26.75 62,654
Dec 73.76 74.22 73.03 74.19 0.41 177,532 Cattle-Feeder (CME)-50,000 lbs.; cents per lb. Treasury Notes (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100% Mini S&P Midcap 400 (CME)-$100 x index
NY Harbor ULSD (NYM)-42,000 gal.; $ per gal. March 247.125 251.925 s 247.125 251.025 3.925 12,520 March 110-065 110-075 109-150 109-240 –13.5 4,601,252 March 2868.80 2868.80 s 2831.30 2835.90 –27.00 38,609
March 2.8181 2.8233 2.7520 2.8066 –.0171 66,796 April 250.300 254.000 250.275 253.550 3.325 12,290 June 110-250 110-250 109-315 110-085 –14.5 125,506 June 2856.10 2884.10 2856.10 2858.50 –26.50 1
April 2.7626 2.7659 2.7014 2.7521 –.0129 86,663 Cattle-Live (CME)-40,000 lbs.; cents per lb. 5 Yr. Treasury Notes (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100% Mini Nasdaq 100 (CME)-$20 x index
Gasoline-NY RBOB (NYM)-42,000 gal.; $ per gal. Feb 183.550 185.400 s 183.400 184.775 1.375 5,247 March 106-270 106-275 106-085 106-165 –10.5 5,848,669 March 17952.00 18026.00 17715.00 17744.00 –168.75 285,857
March 2.3183 2.3374 2.2735 2.3360 .0177 50,676 June 107-077 107-082 106-210 106-290 –11.0 96,091 June 18192.00 18261.50 17950.00 17978.50 –170.25 2,260
April 185.425 188.125 s 185.425 187.550 1.950 125,076
April 2.5564 2.5794 2.5234 2.5783 .0131 92,936 Hogs-Lean (CME)-40,000 lbs.; cents per lb. 2 Yr. Treasury Notes (CBT)-$200,000; pts 32nds of 100% Mini Russell 2000 (CME)-$50 x index
March 2064.00 2070.00 2032.10 2039.00 –28.50 503,543
Natural Gas (NYM)-10,000 MMBtu.; $ per MMBtu. April 85.600 85.650 84.525 85.225 .225 93,973 March 102-028 102-032 101-262 101-306 –4.7 3,893,484
June 2086.00 2092.70 2055.00 2061.70 –28.70 2,108
March 1.589 1.637 1.575 1.609 .028 156,158 June 97.875 98.125 97.125 97.750 .050 38,876 June 102-193 102-193 102-093 102-140 –5.6 56,963
30 Day Federal Funds (CBT)-$5,000,000; 100 - daily avg. Mini Russell 1000 (CME)-$50 x index
April 1.654 1.704 1.638 1.680 .033 293,003 Lumber (CME)-27,500 bd. ft., $ per 1,000 bd. ft. March 2763.80 2774.10 2752.80 2755.60 –13.70 6,202
May 1.778 1.830 1.765 1.810 .043 262,909 562.00 569.00 555.00 564.00 8.50 5,040 Feb 94.6725 94.6725 t 94.6700 94.6700 563,311
March U.S. Dollar Index (ICE-US)-$1,000 x index
April 94.6950 94.7000 94.6850 94.6950 457,083 March 104.24 104.58 104.07 104.18 –.02 30,707
Three-Month SOFR (CME)-$1,000,000; 100 - daily avg. June 103.92 104.21 103.72 103.82 –.02 728
Nov 94.6375 3,302
Exchange-Traded Portfolios | WSJ.com/ETFresearch March'24 94.7250 94.7300 t 94.6950 94.7100 –.0150 1,159,607
Source: FactSet
Closing Chg YTD
Largest 100 exchange-traded funds, latest session ETF Symbol Price (%) (%)

Friday, February 16, 2024 Closing Chg YTD SPDR S&P Div SDY 124.24 –0.20 –0.6 Bonds | wsj.com/market-data/bonds/benchmarks
ETF Symbol Price (%) (%) TechSelectSector XLK 202.57 –0.92 5.2
Closing Chg YTD
ETF Symbol Price (%) (%) iSh1-3YTreaBd SHY 81.66 –0.12 –0.5
VangdInfoTech
VangdSC Val
VGT
VBR
509.00
180.30
–1.06
–0.68
5.2
0.2 Global Government Bonds: Mapping Yields
CommSvsSPDR XLC 78.95 –1.56 8.7 iShRussMC IWR 79.27 –0.51 2.0 VangdExtMkt VXF 167.89 –0.91 2.1
CnsmrDiscSel XLY 179.02 –0.59 0.1 iShRuss1000 IWB 275.08 –0.51 4.9 VangdDivApp VIG 175.48 –0.34 3.0
Yields and spreads over or under U.S. Treasurys on benchmark two-year and 10-year government bonds in
DimenUSCoreEq2 DFAC 30.28 –0.49 3.6 iShRuss1000Grw IWF 325.62 –0.63 7.4 56.42 0.18 0.5
EnSelSectorSPDR XLE 85.57 –0.06 2.1 iShRuss1000Val IWD 168.59 –0.28 2.0
VangdFTSEAWxUS VEU selected other countries; arrows indicate whether the yield rose(s) or fell (t) in the latest session
VangdFTSEDevMk VEA 48.06 0.08 0.3
FinSelSectorSPDR XLF 39.63 –0.35 5.4 iShRuss2000 IWM 201.66 –1.36 0.5
VangdFTSE EM VWO 41.09 0.49 –0.0 Country/ Yield (%) Spread Under/Over U.S. Treasurys, in basis points
GrayscaleBitcoin GBTC 46.28 0.22 33.7 iShS&P500Grw IVW 81.02 –0.70 7.9
VangdFTSE Europe VGK 64.34 0.16 –0.2 Coupon (%) Maturity, in years Latest(l)-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 Previous Month ago Year ago Latest Prev Year ago
HealthCrSelSect XLV 145.62 0.32 6.8 iShS&P500Value IVE 177.02 –0.33 1.8
VangdGrowth VUG 333.24 –0.72 7.2
InvscNasd100 QQQM 177.25 –0.91 5.2 iShSelectDiv DVY 115.50 –0.30 –1.5 4.250 U.S. 2 4.654 s l 4.565 4.226 4.617

.
VangdHlthCr VHT 266.66 0.25 6.4
InvscQQQI QQQ 430.57 –0.91 5.1 iSh7-10YTreaBd IEF 93.74 –0.44 –2.7 4.000 10 4.294 s l 4.239 4.064 3.842
VangdHiDiv VYM 113.93 –0.26 2.1
InvscS&P500EW 160.03 –0.45 1.4 iShShortTreaBd SHV 110.35 ... 0.2

ly
RSP VangdIntermBd BIV 74.72 –0.37 –2.2
iShCoreDivGrowth DGRO 55.46 –0.23 3.0 iShTIPSBond TIP 106.16 –0.10 –1.2 0.250 Australia 2 3.875 s l 3.830 3.861 3.512 -78.2 -74.9 -115.4
VangdIntrCorpBd VCIT 79.64 –0.34 –2.0
iShCoreMSCIEAFE IEFA 70.77 0.13 0.6 iSh20+YTreaBd TLT 92.76 –0.58 –6.2
50.44 –0.3 iShUSTreasuryBd GOVT 22.55 –0.31 –2.1
VangdIntermTrea VGIT 58.22 –0.34 –1.9 3.000 10 4.205 s l 4.145 4.167 3.772 -8.9 -8.2 -9.0
iShCoreMSCIEM IEMG 0.42
VangdLC VV 229.62 –0.51 5.3
iSh0-3MTreaBd SGOV 100.53 0.01 0.3
iShCoreMSCITotInt IXUS 65.13 0.20 0.3
VangdMegaGrwth MGK 279.15 –0.71 7.6 2.500 France 2 2.831 s l 2.790 2.719 2.997 -182.6 -178.8 -166.9
iShCoreS&P500 IVV 501.95 –0.48 5.1 JPM EqPrem JEPI 56.23 –0.21 2.3
iShCoreS&P MC
iShCoreS&P SC
iShCoreS&PTotUS
iShCoreTotUSDBd
iShCoreUSAggBd
IJH
IJR
ITOT
IUSB
AGG
282.33
107.38
110.14
45.18
97.10
–0.93
–1.12
–0.53
–0.31
–0.32
1.9
–0.8
4.7
–1.9
–2.2
JPM UltShIncm
PacerUSCashCows
ProShUltPrQQQ
SPDRBbg1-3MTB
SPDR DJIA Tr
JPST
COWZ
TQQQ
BIL
DIA
50.34
52.81
57.41
91.63
386.19
–0.02
–0.71
–2.74
0.02
–0.37
on 0.2
1.6
13.2
0.3
2.5
VangdMC
VangdMBS
VangdRealEst
VangdRuss1000Grw
VangdS&P500ETF
VangdST Bond
VO
VMBS
VNQ
VONG
VOO
BSV
235.64
45.23
84.37
83.81
459.03
76.45
–0.52
–0.40
–1.03
–0.69
–0.51
–0.16
1.3
–2.4
–4.5
7.4
5.1
–0.7
3.500
2.500
2.200
Germany 2
10

10
2.873 s
2.814 s
2.408 s l
l

l
2.837
2.765
2.366
2.743
2.611
2.260
2.943
2.884
2.482
-142.1
-184.2
-188.6
-139.0
-181.3
-186.2
-91.9
-178.2
-138.0
iShEdgeMSCIMinUSA USMV 80.46 –0.24 3.1 SPDR Gold GLD 186.34 0.37 –2.5 3.600 Italy 2 3.376 s l 3.352 3.114 3.334 -128.0 -122.6 -133.1
SPDRPtfDevxUS 34.18 0.12 0.5 VangdSTCpBd VCSH 77.00 –0.18 –0.5
us ,

iShEdgeMSCIUSAQual QUAL 156.96 –0.76 6.7 SPDW

iShGoldTr IAU 38.07 0.37 –2.5 SPDRS&P500Value SPYV 47.52 –0.23 1.9 VangdShortTrea VGSH 58.01 –0.14 –0.5 4.200 10 3.879 s l 3.853 3.815 4.334 -41.5 -37.4 47.2
216.19 –0.92 1.3
l

iShiBoxx$HYCpBd HYG 76.91 –0.30 –0.6 SPDRPtfS&P500 SPLG 58.76 –0.46 5.1 VangdSC VB
iShiBoxx$IGCpBd LQD 107.48 –0.36 –2.9 SPDRS&P500Growth SPYG 70.22 –0.66 7.9 VangdTaxExemptBd VTEB 50.69 –0.10 –0.7 0.100 Japan 2 0.142 s l 0.138 0.024 -0.043 -451.4 -444.0 -470.9
e
al a

iShMBS MBB 91.68 –0.40 –2.6 SPDR S&P 500 SPY 499.51 –0.50 5.1 VangdTotalBd BND 72.00 –0.32 –2.1 0.600 10 0.730 t l 0.730 0.597 0.507 -356.4 -349.7 -335.5
iShMSCIACWI ACWI 105.19 –0.25 3.4 SchwabIntEquity SCHF 37.20 0.11 0.6 VangdTotIntlBd BNDX 48.66 –0.24 –1.4
iShMSCI EAFE EFA 76.07 0.16 1.0 SchwabUS BrdMkt SCHB 58.30 –0.55 4.7 VangdTotIntlStk VXUS 58.08 0.21 0.2 2.800 Spain 2 3.012 s l 2.974 3.117 3.177 -164.4 -160.4 -148.9
iSh MSCI EM EEM 40.08 0.48 –0.3 SchwabUS Div SCHD 76.98 –0.34 1.1 VangdTotalStk VTI 248.46 –0.52 4.7
ci on

iShMSCIEAFEValue EFV 51.43 0.06 –1.3 SchwabUS LC SCHX 59.30 –0.50 5.1 VangdTotWrldStk VT 105.98 –0.24 3.0
3.250 10 3.298 s l 3.256 3.171 3.456 -99.6 -97.2 -40.6
iShNatlMuniBd MUB 107.89 –0.09 –0.5 SchwabUS LC Grw SCHG 89.23 –0.78 7.6 VangdValue VTV 153.62 –0.24 2.8 3.500 U.K. 2 4.620 s l 4.562 4.166 3.773 -1.7 -89.3
-3.7
iSh1-5YIGCpBd IGSB 51.02 –0.21 –0.5 SPDR S&PMdCpTr MDY 516.53 –0.96 1.8 WT FRTrea USFR 50.44 0.04 0.4
4.250 10 4.114 s l 4.047 3.801 3.500 -18.0 -18.0 -36.2
Source: Tullett Prebon, Tradeweb ICE U.S. Treasury Close
Borrowing Benchmarks | wsj.com/market-data/bonds/benchmarks
er s

Corporate Debt
Money Rates February 16, 2024 Prices of firms' bonds reflect factors including investors' economic, sectoral and company-specific
m er

Key annual interest rates paid to borrow or lend money in U.S. and international markets. Rates below are a expectations
guide to general levels but don’t always represent actual transactions. Investment-grade spreads that tightened the most…
Week —52-WEEK— Week —52-WEEK— Spread*, in basis points
Inflation Latest ago High Low Latest ago High Low Issuer Symbol Coupon (%) Yield (%) Maturity Current One-day change Last week
m rp

Jan. Index Chg From (%)

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial SUMIBK 2.472 5.00 Jan. 14, ’29 69 –13 n.a.
level Dec. '23 Jan. '23 Federal funds Other short-term rates
Effective rate 5.3300 5.3300 5.3500 4.5800 KeyCorp KEY 3.400 6.33 May 20, ’26 165 –11 187
U.S. consumer price index Week 52-Week
High 5.6500 5.6500 5.6500 4.9000 Latest high low Procter & Gamble PG 4.350 4.45 Jan. 29, ’29 14 –11 31
All items 308.417 0.54 3.1 ago
Low 5.3100 5.3100 5.3300 4.5500
Core 313.623 0.55 3.9 Toyota Motor Credit TOYOTA 5.550 4.93 Nov. 20, ’30 61 –10 76
Bid 5.3100 5.3100 5.3300 4.5700 Call money
International rates Offer 5.3300 5.3300 5.3700 4.5800 7.25 7.25 7.25 6.50 American Express AXP 4.050 5.17 Dec. 3, ’42 59 –9 n.a.
co Fo

Week 52-Week Treasury bill auction Commercial paper (AA financial) Banque Federative du Credit Mutuel BFCM 5.088 5.08 Jan. 23, ’27 65 –8 74
Latest ago High Low 5.280 5.280 5.840 3.190 n.a. n.a. 5.54 4.70
4 weeks 90 days Ally Financial ALLY 8.000 6.48 Nov. 1, ’31 217 –7 226
13 weeks 5.230 5.235 5.345 4.675
Prime rates Secured Overnight Financing Rate Citigroup C 4.450 5.36 Sept. 29, ’27 91 –7 93
26 weeks 5.065 5.045 5.350 4.620
U.S. 8.50 8.50 8.50 7.75 5.31 5.31 5.40 4.55
Canada 7.20 7.20 7.20 6.70 Secondary market Value 52-Week
…And spreads that widened the most
Japan 1.475 1.475 1.475 1.475 Latest Traded High Low
Fannie Mae KeyCorp KEY 4.900 7.10 Aug. 8, ’32 280 12 292
Policy Rates 30-year mortgage yields DTCC GCF Repo Index Banque Federative du Credit Mutuel BFCM 5.896 5.26 July 13, ’26 59 6 n.a.
Euro zone 4.50 4.50 4.50 3.00
30 days 6.468 6.230 7.495 5.496 Treasury 5.318 24.110 5.504 4.546 4
Switzerland 2.25 2.25 2.25 1.50 Morgan Stanley MS 4.375 5.46 Jan. 22, ’47 88 86
60 days 6.487 6.234 7.554 5.500 MBS 5.335 35.620 5.689 4.564
Britain 5.25 5.25 5.25 4.00
Royal Bank of Canada RY 6.000 5.06 Nov. 1, ’27 63 4 n.a.
Australia 4.35 4.35 4.35 3.35
Notes on data:
Cisco Systems CSCO 5.900 5.27 Feb. 15, ’39 97 3 96
Overnight repurchase U.S. prime rate is the base rate on corporate loans posted by at least 70% of the 10 largest U.S. banks,
and is effective July 27, 2023. Other prime rates aren’t directly comparable; lending practices vary 3
5.33 5.35 5.48 4.55 Goldman Sachs 5.150 5.61 May 22, ’45 103 104
n-

U.S. widely by location; Discount rate is effective July 27, 2023. Secured Overnight Financing Rate is as
GS

U.S. government rates of February 15, 2024. DTCC GCF Repo Index is Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s weighted average Mercedes–Benz Finance North America MBGGR 5.100 5.03 Aug. 3, ’28 74 3 n.a.
for overnight trades in applicable CUSIPs. Value traded is in billions of U.S. dollars. Federal-funds rates
are Tullett Prebon rates as of 5:30 p.m. ET. United Airlines UAL 5.800 5.67 July 15, ’37 137 3 148
Discount
Sources: Federal Reserve; Bureau of Labor Statistics; DTCC; FactSet;
5.50 5.50 5.50 4.75 Tullett Prebon Information, Ltd.
High-yield issues with the biggest price increases…
no

Bond Price as % of face value

Issuer Symbol Coupon (%) Yield (%) Maturity Current One-day change Last week

Dividend Changes Liberty Interactive LINTA 8.250 22.37 Feb. 1, ’30 54.750 0.75 53.282
Amount Payable / Amount Payable / Nordstrom JWN 6.950 6.38 March 15, ’28 102.003 0.61 n.a.
Company Symbol Yld % New/Old Frq Record Company Symbol Yld % New/Old Frq Record
Bath & Body Works BBWI 6.875 6.79 Nov. 1, ’35 100.700 0.26 100.875
Increased JBG SMITH Properties JBGS 4.3 .175 /.225 Q Mar15 /Mar01
Morgan Stanley Pfd. A MSpA 6.0 .3924 /.40604 Q Apr15 /Mar28 Occidental Petroleum OXY 7.500 5.66 May 1, ’31 110.733 0.15 n.a.
Brunswick BC 1.9 .42 /.40 Q Mar15 /Feb26
Morgan Stanley Pfd. E MSpE 7.2 .4453 /.45521 Q Apr15 /Mar28
Cisco Systems CSCO 3.3 .40 /.39 Q Apr24 /Apr04 Rakuten RAKUTN 11.250 9.60 Feb. 15, ’27 104.180 0.09 103.000
Clearway Energy Cl A CWEN.A 5.7 .4033 /.3964 Q Mar15 /Mar01 Initial
Clearway Energy Cl C CWEN 6.3 .4033 /.3964 Q Mar15 /Mar01 Mach Natural Resources MNR 0.2 .95 Mar14 /Feb29 OneMain Finance OMF 6.875 6.01 March 15, ’25 100.875 0.06 100.750
Coca-Cola KO 3.3 .485 /.46 Q Apr01 /Mar15 MidCap Finl Nts 2028 MFICL 8.0 .50959 Mar15 /Mar01 0.02
Ball BALL 5.250 5.26 July 1, ’25 99.980 100.000
Crane NXT CXT 1.1 .16 /.14 Q Mar13 /Feb29
CSX CSX 1.3 .12 /.11 Q Mar15 /Feb29 Stocks
Enpro NPO 0.7 .30 /.29 Q Mar20 /Mar06 Aurora Cannabis ACB 1:10 /Feb20 …And with the biggest price decreases
Genuine Parts GPC 2.8 1.00 /.95 Q Apr01 /Mar01 Trinity Biotech ADR TRIB 1:5 /Feb23
Vaccinex VCNX 1:14 /Feb20 Transocean RIG 6.800 9.70 March 15, ’38 78.000 –1.06 79.375
HF Sinclair DINO 3.3 .50 /.45 Q Mar05 /Feb26
Merchants Bancorp MBIN 0.9 .09 /.08 Q Apr01 /Mar15 Foreign Hat Holdings I … 3.750 7.18 Sept. 15, ’30 82.303 –0.88 82.770
Morgan Stanley Dep Pfd F MSpF 6.8 .4345 /.42969 Q Apr15 /Mar28 Ardmore Shipping ASC 5.6 .21 Q Mar15 /Feb29 Goldman Sachs Capital I … 6.345 5.94 Feb. 15, ’34 103.051 –0.76 103.970
Murphy USA MUSA 0.4 .42 /.41 Q Mar07 /Feb26 Cenovus Energy CVE 1.8 .1033 Q Mar28 /Mar15
NorthWestern Energy Group NWE 5.3 .65 /.64 Q Mar29 /Mar15 Kinross Gold KGC 2.4 .03 Q Mar21 /Mar06 Telecom Italia Capital TITIM 6.000 6.84 Sept. 30, ’34 93.728 –0.52 93.919
PC Connection CNXN 0.5 .10 /.08 Q Mar15 /Feb27 Patria Investments PAX 6.9 .399 Q Mar08 /Feb22
Reliance Steel RS 1.3 1.10 /1.00 Q Mar22 /Mar08 West Fraser Timber WFG 1.5 .30 Q Apr04 /Mar15 Teva Pharmaceutical Finance Netherlands … 4.100 6.88 Oct. 1, ’46 68.350 –0.40 68.625
Saratoga Investment SAR 12.2 .73 /.72 Q Mar28 /Mar13 –0.15
Special Intesa Sanpaolo ISPIM 5.710 6.34 Jan. 15, ’26 98.880 99.231
Service Corp Intl SCI 1.7 .30 /.29 Q Mar28 /Mar15
Walker & Dunlop WD 2.7 .65 /.63 Q Mar15 /Mar01 Hecla Mining HL 0.4 .0025 Mar25 /Mar12 United States Cellular USM 6.700 6.59 Dec. 15, ’33 100.784 –0.14 101.805
Sources: FactSet; Dow Jones Market Data
Reduced *Estimated spread over 2-year, 3-year, 5-year, 10-year or 30-year hot-run Treasury; 100 basis points=one percentage pt.; change in spread shown is for Z-spread.
Annaly Cap Pfd. G NLYpG 9.8 .6182 /.6208 Q Mar28 /Mar01 KEY: A: annual; M: monthly; Q: quarterly; r: revised; SA: semiannual; Note: Data are for the most active issue of bonds with maturities of two years or more
Annaly Capital Pfd. F NLYpF 10.4 .6627 /.66529 Q Mar28 /Mar01 S2:1: stock split and ratio; SO: spin-off. Source: MarketAxess

New Highs and Lows Stock

52-Wk %
Sym Hi/Lo Chg Stock
52-Wk %
Sym Hi/Lo Chg Stock
52-Wk %
Sym Hi/Lo Chg Stock
52-Wk %
Sym Hi/Lo Chg Stock
52-Wk %
Sym Hi/Lo Chg Stock
52-Wk %
Sym Hi/Lo Chg
CellebriteDI CLBT 11.45 6.1 DraftKings DKNG 45.62 0.2 FusionFuelGreen HTOO 4.65 90.0 InflectionPtIIA IPXX 10.49 0.1 MakeMyTrip MMYT 61.68 2.0 PB Bankshares PBBK 15.00 -1.5
The following explanations apply to the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Arca, NYSE American CentessaPharm CNTA 11.86 8.5 EMCOR EME 255.71 0.2 GEO Group GEO 12.48 3.7 IngersollRand IR 92.32 1.9 ManulifeFinl MFC 24.89 -0.4 PJT Partners PJT 105.04 -0.3
and Nasdaq Stock Market stocks that hit a new 52-week intraday high or low in the latest CervoMed CRVO 18.50 3.7 ESAB ESAB 94.85 -0.5 GMS GMS 89.96 -1.3 Innospec IOSP 126.47 -1.0 MartinMarietta MLM 550.79 0.8 ProceptBio PRCT 51.90 1.1
session. % CHG-Daily percentage change from the previous trading session. Chubb CB 252.70 -0.1 EsgenAcqn ESACU 11.42 3.9 GSK GSK 42.23 0.4 InteractiveBrkrs IBKR 106.43 -0.1 Mastercard MA 474.17 -0.7 PVH PVH 132.09 2.8
Cigna CI 342.74 0.6 EagleMaterials EXP 252.31 -1.0 GasLogPtrsPfdC GLOPpC 25.00 0.8 ICE ICE 138.34 0.2 Materion MTRN 145.08 0.2 Paccar PCAR 108.67 -0.3
Friday, February 16, 2024 CleanHarbors CLH 187.84 0.3 Eaton ETN 278.94 0.6 GeneralElec GE 150.36 0.5 IntercorpFinSvcs IFS 28.12 3.5 Merck MRK 128.09 1.0 PacGE pfC PCGpC 19.56 0.6
52-Wk % 52-Wk % 52-Wk % ClimbGlbl CLMB 64.25 -0.3 Electromed ELMD 14.60 2.0 GigaCloudTech GCT 36.19 6.2 InterDigital IDCC 119.86 0.9 MercuryGeneral MCY 51.11 9.7 Palomar PLMR 76.10 0.7
Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg CodereOnline CDRO 5.11 6.0 ElementSolns ESI 24.14 0.1 GlobalPtrs GLP 48.50 -1.2 Intra-Cellular ITCI 76.11 1.0 Merus MRUS 46.30 5.9 ParkerHannifin PH 527.43 -0.3
CoinbaseGlbl COIN 193.64 8.8 ElevanceHealth ELV 514.35 0.7 GolubCapital GBDC 15.89 0.5 IovanceBiotherap IOVA 10.44 -7.3 Metlife pfA METpA 24.43 0.2 Parsons PSN 75.91 0.7
AppliedOptoelec AAOI 24.75 -4.8 Bitfarms BITF 3.68 3.7 ColliersIntl CIGI 131.05 0.1 EmersonElec EMR 107.08 0.4 Graco GGG 89.35 -0.6 IronHorseAcqns IROHU 10.23 0.3 MicroCloudWt HOLOW 0.64 233.3 Pentair PNR 75.94 -0.7
Highs AppliedTherap APLT 5.83 43.5 BlendLabs BLND 3.37 9.2 ColumbusMcKinn CMCO 44.08 -0.8 EmployersHldgs EIG 46.78 3.9 Graham GHM 24.98 -0.3 JacobsSolns J 149.17 0.2 MidCapFin MFIC 14.27 0.2 PerellaWeinberg PWP 13.48 1.0
AppLovin APP 60.65 2.3 BlueprintMed BPMC 94.47 3.1 ConcordAcqnIIIWt CNDB.WS 0.24 24.9 EnerpacTool EPAC 33.34 2.3 Groupon GRPN 18.35 1.3 JanusIntl JBI 15.86 0.5 MineralsTechs MTX 73.73 -0.4 PerformanceFood PFGC 75.10 1.9
ACCO Brands ACCO 6.62 -1.4
Archrock AROC 17.49 1.8 BostonSci BSX 66.86 -0.4 Core&Main CNM 45.00 ... EnsignGroup ENSG 123.00 1.3 Guess GES 25.14 3.9 KLA KLAC 677.47 1.4 MistrasGroup MG 8.88 -0.2 PetroleoBrasil PBR 17.80 1.7
ADC Therap ADCT 5.46 6.4
ArmstrongWorld AWI 106.77 -0.8 BrightHorizons BFAM 111.92 1.4 CorebridgeFin CRBG 25.55 1.3 Entegris ENTG 140.10 0.9 HaoxiHlthTech HAO 8.69 6.8 KT KT 14.66 1.3 ModineMfg MOD 81.97 -0.6 PetroleoBrasilA PBR.A 17.24 1.5
AIBAcqnRt AIBBR 0.36 15.7
Arq ARQ 3.80 5.7 BrookdaleSrLiving BKD 6.31 -1.9 Costco COST 729.06 -0.1 Equillium EQ 2.79 36.6 HartfordFinl HIG 93.69 ... KaratPkg KRT 28.91 -0.3 MolinaHealthcare MOH 404.86 0.9 PowellIndustries POWL 157.92 -1.6
AZZ AZZ 73.18 -0.1
ArrowrootAcqnA ARRW 12.50 4.9 BrookfieldAsset BAM 41.23 -0.8 Couchbase BASE 28.50 -0.5 ErieIndemnity ERIE 362.93 1.2 HealthEquity HQY 83.86 -0.4 KellyServices A KELYA 23.28 -0.1 Moog A MOG.A 152.17 -0.7 PrestigeCnsHlth PBH 69.58 0.5
AbbVie ABBV 178.92 0.5
Abercrombie&Fitch ANF 122.25 0.9 Artivion AORT 19.61 4.3 Brown&Brown BRO 83.31 ... Credicorp BAP 173.39 0.7 EuroDry EDRY 21.97 0.7 HealthStream HSTM 27.85 -0.2 KerosTherap KROS 61.09 1.1 MuellerWater MWA 16.93 -0.7 Primerica PRI 248.04 0.6
AdvDrainageSys WMS 165.86 -0.6 Arvinas ARVN 53.08 0.7 CACI Intl CACI 369.06 1.0 Crexendo CXDO 7.59 -1.2 EvercoreA EVR 186.92 -0.6 Heico A HEI.A 158.22 0.5 KinsaleCapital KNSL 528.04 15.4 NN NNBR 5.40 2.4 PrimorisSvcs PRIM 39.20 -0.2
Alkermes ALKS 32.88 -1.2 AscendisPharma ASND 156.44 6.2 CBIZ CBZ 73.98 1.7 Cummins CMI 269.70 0.3 FateTherap FATE 7.74 6.8 HerculesCapital HTGC 18.65 4.8 KymeraTherap KYMR 38.86 3.2 Nayax NYAX 30.99 -1.6 ProcoreTech PCOR 78.72 1.8
Allegion ALLE 134.89 -0.7 AthiraPharma ATHA 3.85 -2.2 CGI A GIB 116.08 -0.7 Danaher DHR 252.33 0.4 FederalSignal FSS 81.47 -0.7 HeronTherap HRTX 2.99 -0.3 LPL Financial LPLA 264.24 0.1 Netflix NFLX 597.00 -1.6 Progressive PGR 191.92 -0.1
AlpineImmune ALPN 32.13 4.6 AtlanticusNts29 ATLCZ 25.00 ... CG Oncology CGON 50.23 1.0 Dave&Buster's PLAY 61.65 2.3 Ferguson FERG 200.55 0.3 HimalayaShipping HSHP 7.67 2.6 LamResearch LRCX 955.99 1.3 NewOrientalEduc EDU 93.29 -1.2 QuadGraphics QUAD 6.59 18.6
AmbowEduc AMBO 0.63 117.4 Autoliv ALV 113.18 -1.0 CRH CRH 77.96 1.9 Dave DAVE 27.12 14.7 FirstInternetBncp INBK 34.27 0.2 HireRight HRT 14.15 9.8 Leidos LDOS 124.93 1.3 NewMarket NEU 608.45 ... RELX RELX 43.09 1.7
AmerSports AS 16.35 3.0 AveryDennison AVY 211.71 0.1 CSP CSPI 36.48 2.8 DiamondbkEner FANG 181.54 0.5 FirstWatchRest FWRG 24.70 1.1 HoulihanLokey HLI 132.64 0.5 LifetimeBrands LCUT 10.58 1.2 Nordson NDSN 267.46 -0.4 RalphLauren RL 183.04 -0.2
AmerCoastalIns ACIC 13.26 3.5 Axogen AXGN 10.65 1.0 CSW Industrials CSWI 233.28 1.4 Dick's DKS 170.67 -0.6 Fiserv FI 148.65 ... HowmetAerospace HWM 63.92 -0.7 Light&Wonder LNW 90.57 0.7 NovoNordisk NVO 124.64 1.9 RaymondJames RJF 119.23 ...
AmerExpress AXP 214.29 ... BWX Tech BWXT 88.16 0.6 Caleres CAL 39.01 -0.1 DigitalBrdgPfdH DBRGpH 23.96 0.1 Flowserve FLS 43.64 -0.2 HudsonTech HDSN 15.08 1.0 EliLilly LLY 794.47 3.2 NuSTAREnergy NS 23.57 0.6 RayzeBio RYZB 62.46 ...
Ametek AME 175.00 0.1 Backblaze BLZE 11.83 45.2 Camtek CAMT 89.65 3.6 DigitalBrdgPfdI DBRGpI 24.13 0.4 Fluor FLR 43.24 -1.6 HuntingIngalls HII 287.33 ... LincolnElectric LECO 252.98 ... Nutanix NTNX 59.87 -1.4 RealBrokerage REAX 3.23 3.7
Amphenol APH 106.51 -0.1 Balchem BCPC 151.54 1.9 CanNtlRlwy CNI 130.53 ... DigitalBrdgPfdJ DBRGpJ 23.95 0.4 FlutterEnt FLUT 217.23 -0.4 ICF Intl ICFI 154.95 -0.6 Linde LIN 434.77 0.7 Nuvalent NUVL 87.47 2.0 RelianceSteel RS 333.33 -1.8
Anterix ATEX 40.01 2.4 Ball BALL 62.68 -0.2 CdnPacKC CP 86.26 -0.4 DirectDigital DRCT 18.52 12.6 Fonar FONR 23.18 3.9 IDT IDT 36.30 -0.8 MFA FinPfdC MFApC 22.16 -0.2 Nyxoah NYXH 13.27 2.3 Repligen RGEN 211.13 1.2
ApolloGlbPfdA APOpA 65.36 ... BellevueLifeSci BLACU 11.29 5.2 Celcuity CELC 16.21 -4.0 DoubleDown DDI 13.59 9.3 Fortive FTV 85.34 -0.3 IES Holdings IESC 102.75 0.7 MKS Instrum MKSI 127.72 0.7 OntoInnovation ONTO 186.38 3.3 RepublicSvcs RSG 181.34 0.3
AppliedIndlTechs AIT 190.62 0.1 BerkHathwy A BRK.A 612394 0.5 Celestica CLS 40.22 -0.9 Dover DOV 164.09 -0.7 FosterLB FSTR 24.59 0.3 Ichor ICHR 46.43 -1.1 M-tronInds MPTI 44.53 3.1 OrionGroup ORN 6.30 ... ResideoTech REZI 22.48 0.3
ApplMaterials AMAT 206.77 6.3 BerkHathwy B BRK.B 406.74 0.6 CellebriteDIWt CLBTW 2.49 10.1 DrReddy'sLab RDY 75.99 0.6 Frontline FRO 24.54 1.0 Immunome IMNM 26.84 14.7 Macerich MAC 17.69 -1.4 OtisWorldwide OTIS 92.79 -1.1 Continued on Page B11
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | B9

BIGGEST 1,000 STOCKS

YTD 52-Week Yld Net YTD 52-Week Yld Net YTD 52-Week Yld Net
How to Read the Stock Tables % Chg Hi Lo Stock Sym % PE Last Chg % Chg Hi Lo Stock Sym % PE Last Chg % Chg Hi Lo Stock Sym % PE Last Chg
The following explanations apply to NYSE, NYSE Arca, NYSE American and Nasdaq Stock Market listed securities. 0.90 15.42 9.63 FordMotor F 4.9 11 12.30 -0.22 -3.68 94.97 59.12 McCormickVtg MKC.V 2.6 26 65.50 0.48 s 5.00 72.82 52.89 ServiceIntl SCI 1.7 20 71.87 0.49
Prices are composite quotations that include primary market trades as well as trades reported by Nasdaq BX 17.00 81.24 44.12 Fortinet FTNT ... 47 68.48 -1.78 -3.32 94.39 59.13 McCormick MKC 2.5 26 66.15 0.60 8.28 815.32 405.37 ServiceNow NOW ... 91 765.00 -15.00
(formerly Boston), Chicago Stock Exchange, Cboe, NYSE National and Nasdaq ISE. -4.52 46.28 36.30 Fortis FTS 4.4 17 39.27 0.14 -1.51 302.39 245.73 McDonald's MCD 2.3 25 292.02 0.16 -3.39 68.74 52.47 Shell SHEL 4.1 11 63.57 -0.01
The list comprises the 1,000 largest companies based on market capitalization. Underlined quotations are those s 14.52 85.34 62.70 Fortive FTV 0.4 35 84.32 -0.29 10.38 519.75 331.75 McKesson MCK 0.5 23 511.06 5.38 -0.90 314.38 205.43 SherwinWilliams SHW 0.9 33 309.08 -3.43
stocks with large changes in volume compared with the issue’s average trading volume. Boldfaced quotations 4.16 81.48 54.10 FortuneBrands FBIN 1.2 25 79.31 -0.59 27.77 399.41 167.00 Medpace MEDP ... 44 391.64 -2.70 8.02 33.98 24.99 ShinhanFin SHG 3.7 6 33.25 0.56
2.60 37.26 28.52 FoxA FOXA 1.7 18 30.44 -0.12 2.48 92.02 68.84 Medtronic MDT 3.3 27 84.42 -0.30 37.84 315.95 157.00 ShockwaveMed SWAV ... 68 262.66 26.34
highlight those issues whose price changed by 5% or more if their previous closing price was $2 or higher. 1.08 34.38 26.20 FoxB FOX 1.9 17 27.95 -0.19 12.55 1800.09 1063.02 MercadoLibre MELI ... 91 1768.78 -3.05 4.35 91.57 39.02 Shopify SHOP ...903 81.29 -2.71
-1.56 161.25 102.29 Franco-Nevada FNV 1.3 31 109.08 -1.26 s 17.22 128.09 99.14 Merck MRK 2.4967 127.79 1.25 s 5.13 150.66 100.17 SimonProperty SPG 5.2 22 149.96 1.96
Footnotes: h-Does not meet continued listing v-Trading halted on primary market. -8.46 31.34 21.88 FranklinRscs BEN 4.5 14 27.27 -0.10 33.72 488.62 167.66 MetaPlatforms META 0.4 32 473.32 -10.71 -2.12 202.14 100.84 SimpsonMfg SSD 0.6 23 193.79 -2.21
s-New 52-week high. standards vj-In bankruptcy or receivership or -8.79 44.70 32.83 FreeportMcM FCX 1.5 31 38.83 0.58 3.99 73.10 48.95 MetLife MET 3.0 38 68.77 -0.77 -12.25 7.95 3.32 SiriusXM SIRI 2.2 15 4.80 ...
t-New 52-week low. lf-Late filing being reorganized under the 1.34 27.71 16.37 FreseniusMedCare FMS 2.0 20 21.11 0.07 -2.10 1615.97 928.50 Mettler-Toledo MTD ... 33 1187.44 -5.26 1.86 176.16 116.81 SiteOneLandscape SITE ... 44 165.53 -2.65
dd-Indicates loss in the most recent q-Temporary exemption from Nasdaq Bankruptcy Code, or securities -9.50 94.30 68.75 MicrochipTech MCHP 2.2 19 81.61 -0.90 -4.30 65.17 41.56 SkechersUSA SKX ... 17 59.66 -0.67
four quarters. requirements. assumed by such companies. GHI -6.84 90.04 52.76 MicronTech MU 0.6 dd 79.50 -2.13 -7.71 118.58 85.06 Skyworks SWKS 2.6 18 103.75 -1.14
7.45 420.82 245.61 Microsoft MSFT 0.7 37 404.06 -2.50 -2.85 82.77 63.40 SmithAO AOS 1.6 22 80.09 -0.91
FD-First day of trading. t-NYSE bankruptcy 11.25 87.83 62.35 GE HealthCare GEHC 0.1 28 86.02 0.39 10.76 806.78 188.30 MicroStrategy MSTR ... 25 699.56 -18.44 2.86 33.09 21.52 Smith&Nephew SNN 2.6 55 28.06 0.04
7.13 39.05 26.87 GFLEnvironmental GFL 0.1 dd 36.97 0.57 -3.93 168.62 115.56 MidAmApt MAA 4.6 27 129.17 -0.34 -1.81 159.92 107.33 Smucker SJM 3.4 dd 124.09 -0.32
Stock tables reflect composite regular trading as of 4 p.m. and changes in the closing prices from 4 p.m. the previous day. s 13.17 42.23 33.20 GSK GSK 3.3 14 41.94 0.17 -1.79 158.88 109.59 Middleby MIDD ... 17 144.54 -0.13 -34.02 17.90 7.86 Snap SNAP ... dd 11.17 -0.43
6.38 254.00 174.44 Gallagher AJG 1.0 54 239.22 -1.33 11.73 9.79 5.99 MitsubishiUFJ MUFG 2.1 8 9.62 0.22 -7.48 297.25 226.68 Snap-On SNA 2.8 14 267.24 -1.76
Friday, February 16, 2024 YTD 52-Week Yld Net -8.43 55.13 43.54 Gaming&Leisure GLPI 6.5 17 45.19 -0.22 6.10 3.81 2.70 MizuhoFin MFG 2.6 10 3.65 0.04 15.73 237.72 128.56 Snowflake SNOW ... dd 230.31 -2.09
% Chg Hi Lo Stock Sym % PE Last Chg -5.50 22.08 7.22 Gap GPS 3.0194 19.76 -0.28 t -40.84 47.41 25.20 Mobileye MBLY ... dd 25.63 -0.47 -27.98 94.42 38.50 SOQUIMICH SQM 7.5 4 43.37 2.05
YTD 52-Week Yld Net -4.93 129.32 93.22 Garmin GRMN 2.4 23 122.20 -1.76 -11.14 166.86 62.55 Moderna MRNA ... dd 88.37 -2.77 -15.98 11.70 4.45 SoFiTech SOFI ... dd 8.36 -0.17
% Chg Hi Lo Stock Sym % PE Last Chg -19.69 17.95 7.65 Carnival CUK 0.0 dd 13.54 -0.38 -0.55 471.76 292.60 Gartner IT ... 41 448.61 -5.20 11.52 118.36 76.02 MohawkInds MHK ... dd 115.42 -1.03 -6.18 100.94 79.62 Sony SONY 0.5 17 88.84 -3.15
-6.01 60.04 40.28 CarrierGlobal CARR 1.4 34 54.00 -2.05 -6.40 24.37 15.45 GenDigital GEN 2.3 10 21.36 -0.03 s 11.18 404.86 256.19 MolinaHealthcare MOH ... 21 401.72 3.58 -5.19 75.80 61.56 Southern SO 4.2 18 66.48 0.35
ABC -0.87 62.59 6.45 Carvana CVNA
4.70 291.51 202.13 CaseysGenStores CASY
... dd 52.48
0.6 22 287.66
-5.14
1.53
-9.25 156.95 79.86 Generac GNRC ... 36 117.28
3.76 271.37 202.35 GeneralDynamics GD 2.0 22 269.44
-3.40
-0.56
1.54 70.90 49.32 MolsonCoorsB TAP 2.8 14 62.15 0.08 -2.77 88.40 64.66 SoCopper SCCO 4.5 27 83.69 0.72
19.96 239.22 108.34 monday.com MNDY ... dd 225.30 3.14 17.49 39.53 21.91 SouthwestAir LUV 2.1 46 33.93 -0.28
-3.51 94.01 74.40 AECOM ACM 0.9200 89.19 -1.51 29.40 74.49 31.45 Catalent CTLT ... dd 58.14 0.70 s 16.87 150.36 81.65 GeneralElec GE 0.2 18 149.16 0.79 -0.62 78.59 60.75 Mondelez MDLZ 2.4 20 71.98 0.37 1.83 7.69 4.57 SouthwesternEner SWN ... 1 6.67 0.07
-12.88 26.41 11.43 AES AES 4.1 dd 16.77 -0.01 8.87 334.87 204.04 Caterpillar CAT 1.6 16 321.91 -1.16 -1.60 90.89 60.33 GeneralMills GIS 3.7 16 64.10 0.81 13.75 509.62 189.59 MongoDB MDB ... dd 465.06 -9.15 1.98 155.47 82.19 Splunk SPLK ...350 155.37 -0.04
-3.78 86.20 60.20 Aflac AFL 2.5 10 79.38 -0.79 -2.77 159.06 97.12 Celanese CE 1.9 8 151.06 -0.34 7.74 43.17 26.30 GeneralMotors GM 1.0 5 38.70 -0.29 15.81 761.50 383.19 MonolithicPower MPWR 0.7 83 730.50 -3.82 31.05 248.67 114.64 Spotify SPOT ... dd 246.25 0.74
t -9.96 145.53 109.00 AGCO AGCO 1.1 7 109.32 -1.26 18.14 68.95 26.75 CelsiusHldg CELH ...131 64.41 1.02 -9.83 42.99 26.32 Genmab GMAB ... 30 28.71 0.48 -4.50 60.47 47.13 MonsterBev MNST ... 37 55.02 -1.15 -9.94 104.21 73.12 StanleyBlackDck SWK 3.7 dd 88.35 -1.28
-9.10 364.31 258.01 Ansys ANSS ... 60 329.85 -1.13 1.03 8.81 4.72 Cemex CX ... 59 7.83 0.15 7.53 35.44 25.77 Gentex GNTX 1.4 19 35.12 0.04 -5.07 407.62 278.23 Moody's MCO 0.9 42 370.76 -2.48 s 4.02 83.83 52.25 Stantec STN 0.7 38 83.41 0.34
-12.01 46.15 29.47 APA APA 3.2 6 31.57 0.32 12.83 239.38 147.48 Cencora COR 0.9 25 231.72 -1.36 3.20 181.37 126.35 GenuineParts GPC 2.8 15 142.93 -0.78 -7.24 100.02 69.42 MorganStanley MS 3.9 17 86.50 0.83 -2.91 115.48 89.21 Starbucks SBUX 2.4 25 93.22 ...
2.13 9.78 6.70 ASE Tech ASX 4.4 21 9.61 -0.02 4.56 21.37 14.69 CenovusEnergy CVE 1.8 11 17.41 -0.05 t -11.64 87.86 71.37 GileadSciences GILD 4.3 16 71.58 -1.79 -4.31 289.17 163.28 Morningstar MORN 0.6166 273.91 -4.47 -6.42 93.15 62.78 StateStreet STT 3.8 13 72.49 -0.54
22.73 954.32 564.00 ASML ASML 0.6 43 928.94 -0.90 6.10 79.83 60.83 Centene CNC ... 16 78.74 0.44 16.53 78.53 26.24 GitLab GTLB ... dd 73.37 -0.73 -14.50 57.46 29.25 Mosaic MOS 2.7 8 30.55 0.41 4.44 136.46 90.55 SteelDynamics STLD 1.4 8 123.34 -0.77
1.13 19.99 13.43 AT&T T 6.5 9 16.97 -0.12 -2.42 31.43 25.42 CenterPointEner CNP 2.9 22 27.88 0.01 5.66 141.78 94.05 GlobalPayments GPN 0.7 36 134.19 -3.63 2.36 333.00 255.85 MotorolaSol MSI 1.2 32 320.49 -3.41 10.16 26.10 15.07 Stellantis STLA 5.7 4 25.69 -0.30
3.58 115.83 89.67 AbbottLabs ABT 1.9 35 114.01 0.37 -0.58 8.99 5.67 CentraisElBras EBR 0.5 30 8.57 -0.03 -11.91 72.37 48.12 GlobalFoundries GFS ... 29 53.38 -0.95 11.61 404.94 231.65 MurphyUSA MUSA 0.4 16 397.96 5.30 5.18 254.00 173.21 Steris STE 0.9 41 231.23 -1.82
s 14.53 178.92 130.96 AbbVie ABBV 3.5 65 177.49 0.90 0.40 43.59 19.59 CerevelTherap CERE ... dd 42.57 -0.36 -5.86 251.50 135.41 Globant GLOB ... 62 224.04 -15.07 12.58 231.54 149.54 NICE NICE ... 46 224.60 0.07 16.05 36.30 19.85 Stevanato STVN 0.2 53 31.67 -0.42
6.60 87.39 66.49 AcadiaHealthcare ACHC ... dd 82.89 -0.31 3.62 252.20 161.65 CharlesRiverLabs CRL ... 27 244.96 -0.44 3.13 127.36 102.23 GlobeLife GL 0.7 12 125.53 -0.28 -32.30 16.18 5.30 NIO NIO ... dd 6.14 0.05 11.05 77.55 53.48 StifelFinancial SF 2.2 18 76.79 0.15
5.29 375.73 242.80 Accenture ACN 1.4 34 369.48 -2.03 -24.62 458.30 279.64 CharterComms CHTR ... 10 293.00 -1.14 0.99 62.88 43.38 GlobusMedical GMED ... 35 53.82 0.27 -5.34 46.92 34.38 NNN REIT NNN 5.5 19 40.80 0.15 -9.87 55.85 37.21 STMicroelec STM 0.5 10 45.18 -0.13
17.25 244.16 149.30 AcuityBrands AYI 0.2 21 240.17 -1.82 6.53 166.71 117.18 CheckPoint CHKP ... 23 162.77 -1.47 3.60 113.70 67.44 GoDaddy GDDY ... 11 109.98 -1.37 0.39 55.36 30.25 NRG Energy NRG 3.1 dd 51.90 -0.12 s 16.64 352.88 249.98 Stryker SYK 0.9 42 349.30 0.51
-8.37 638.25 318.60 Adobe ADBE ... 46 546.66 -43.78 -0.23 610.35 492.84 Chemed CHE 0.3 36 583.43 -1.14 -6.15 17.78 8.89 GoldFields GFI 2.4 18 13.57 0.11 5.57 7617.24 5000.90 NVR NVR ... 16 7390.65 -144.07 s 10.23 10.69 7.53 SumitomoMits SMFG 2.8 12 10.67 0.28
s 15.91 165.86 75.02 AdvDrainageSys WMS 0.3 26 163.01 -0.95 -6.06 183.46 135.30 CheniereEnergy LNG 1.1 3 160.37 1.41 -0.34 396.35 289.36 GoldmanSachs GS 2.9 17 384.44 -0.98 1.08 241.26 155.31 NXP Semicon NXPI 1.7 22 232.16 -2.33 -2.73 158.73 102.74 SunComms SUI 2.9 71 130.00 1.68
17.95 184.92 75.92 AdvMicroDevices AMD ...332 173.87 -2.89 4.46 62.34 42.96 CheniereEnerPtrs CQP 6.0 5 52.01 0.50 4.75 3.92 2.65 Grab GRAB ... dd 3.53 0.01 -4.68 60.72 46.88 Nasdaq NDAQ 1.6 26 55.42 -0.07 s 4.05 54.11 43.53 SunLifeFinancial SLF 4.3 14 53.96 0.49
-1.04 6.12 4.02 Aegon AEG 4.2 dd 5.70 -0.09 2.33 91.00 69.68 ChesapeakeEner CHK 2.9 2 78.73 0.64 s 1.60 89.35 66.17 Graco GGG 1.2 30 88.15 -0.49 11.77 71.29 36.90 Natera NTRA ... dd 70.01 0.31 3.21 35.51 27.59 SuncorEnergy SU 4.9 7 33.07 -0.03
4.47 79.01 49.58 AerCap AER ... 7 77.64 -1.07 3.67 172.88 139.62 Chevron CVX 4.2 14 154.63 0.17 12.93 978.95 625.97 Grainger GWW 0.8 26 935.80 -7.89 -4.27 74.48 56.41 NationalGrid NGG 5.4 5 65.09 0.29 s 182.60 1077.87 85.61 SuperMicroComp SMCI ... 63 803.32 -200.68
-22.39 52.48 8.80 AffirmHldgs AFRM ... dd 38.14 -3.42 -28.90 47.37 16.53 Chewy CHWY ...634 16.80 -0.66 0.08 27.56 20.07 GraphicPkg GPK 1.6 11 24.67 -0.20 5.33 7.20 4.29 NatWest NWG 6.4 5 5.93 0.43 -5.81 11.60 7.46 Suzano SUZ 1.7 4 10.70 0.16
-3.01 148.94 96.80 AgilentTechs A 0.7 32 134.84 0.09 13.62 2725.83 1470.05 Chipotle CMG ... 59 2598.43 -19.57 -10.98 200.85 107.25 GpoAeroportuar PAC 4.9 16 155.98 -0.71 -2.78 91.78 59.73 NetApp NTAP 2.3 27 85.71 -1.56 3.59 40.02 26.59 SynchronyFinl SYF 2.5 8 39.56 -0.29
-12.85 61.15 43.22 AgnicoEagleMines AEM 3.3 12 47.80 1.16 s 11.02 252.70 183.40 Chubb CB 1.4 11 250.90 -0.16 3.25 317.94 165.00 GpoAeroportSur ASR 1.7 16 303.82 3.36 15.67 118.89 76.85 NetEase NTES 1.6 18 107.76 -0.03 7.38 582.85 347.97 Synopsys SNPS ... 70 552.91 -4.92
-17.15 307.71 212.24 AirProducts APD 3.1 22 226.85 -0.10 -0.90 41.58 35.45 ChunghwaTel CHT 3.0 25 38.72 -0.12 9.27 120.71 68.45 Guidewire GWRE ... dd 119.15 -1.52 s 19.94 597.00 285.33 Netflix NFLX ... 49 583.95 -9.51 8.71 82.89 62.23 Sysco SYY 2.5 19 79.50 0.12
12.02 158.27 103.55 Airbnb ABNB ... 18 152.51 -5.18 3.41 103.21 82.23 Church&Dwight CHD 1.2 32 97.78 0.39 13.99 314.82 215.96 HCA Healthcare HCA 0.9 16 308.55 0.89 0.42 143.35 89.04 Neurocrine NBIX ... 54 132.31 -1.69
-7.74 129.17 70.65 AkamaiTech
-15.15 279.04 108.39 Albemarle
AKAM ... 31 109.19 -2.38
ALB 1.3 9 122.59 5.09
-11.82 150.45 106.45 ChurchillDowns CHDN
24.22 57.73 39.94 Ciena CIEN
0.3 25 118.98
... 33 55.91
-0.98
-1.14
-19.83 71.39 52.16 HDFC Bank
8.17 62.20 37.12 HF Sinclair
HDB 1.1 17 53.80
DINO 3.3 5 60.11
-0.39
-0.81
s 22.71 93.29 33.98 NewOrientalEduc EDU ... 49 89.92 -1.08 TUV
-10.53 49.87 35.06 NYTimes A NYT 1.2 31 43.83 -0.66
-6.17 23.88 19.14 Albertsons ACI 2.2 9 21.58 0.28 s 13.91 342.74 240.50 Cigna CI 1.6 20 341.09 1.89 -5.02 33.90 25.22 HP HPQ 3.9 9 28.58 -0.45 -19.23 52.76 31.61 Newmont NEM 4.8 dd 33.43 0.35 12.19 15.52 5.08 TAL Education TAL ... dd 14.17 -0.47
-0.74 86.20 63.78 Alcon ALC 0.3 86 77.54 -0.34 8.12 127.47 95.01 CincinnatiFinl CINF 2.9 10 111.86 -0.55 -0.54 42.47 32.41 HSBC HSBC 6.5 6 40.32 0.45 6.57 28.92 15.73 NewsCorp B NWS 0.7 69 27.41 -0.26 1.10 42.76 32.52 TC Energy TRP 7.0 dd 39.52 0.92
-5.91 162.04 90.73 AlexandriaRlEst ARE 4.3220 119.28 -0.10 1.99 626.18 425.00 Cintas CTAS 0.9 45 614.66 -6.36 10.47 52.53 30.20 H World HTHT 1.6 27 36.94 0.77 6.88 28.00 15.57 NewsCorp A NWSA 0.8 66 26.24 -0.26 -6.15 108.92 86.30 TD Synnex SNX 1.6 15 100.99 -0.65
-4.64 105.05 66.63 Alibaba BABA 1.3 13 73.91 0.09 -4.12 58.19 45.55 CiscoSystems CSCO 3.3 15 48.44 -0.62 -0.12 9.05 7.49 Haleon HLN 1.3 29 8.22 0.03 -6.11 79.78 47.15 NextEraEnergy NEE 3.3 16 57.03 -0.24 1.35 146.84 115.00 TE Connectivity TEL 1.7 14 142.40 -0.77
12.69 413.20 176.34 AlignTech ALGN ... 53 308.77 -1.00 6.63 57.95 38.17 Citigroup C 3.9 14 54.85 -0.36 -2.32 43.85 27.84 Halliburton HAL 1.9 12 35.31 -0.03 28.73 61.45 28.24 Nextracker NXT ... 36 60.31 -0.24 -0.22 21.34 15.47 Telus TU 6.1 42 17.75 0.15
s 4.52 134.89 95.94 Allegion ALLE 1.4 21 132.42 -0.89 -4.77 43.47 22.77 CitizensFin CFG 5.3 10 31.56 -0.18 s 15.78 93.69 64.25 HartfordFinl HIG 2.0 12 93.06 -0.02 -4.66 128.68 88.66 Nike NKE 1.4 30 103.51 -2.54 -11.30 45.81 35.22 Ternium TX 7.7 25 37.67 0.20
-5.75 56.26 45.15 AlliantEnergy LNT 4.0 17 48.35 -0.05 s 6.73 187.84 125.57 CleanHarbors CLH ... 28 186.25 0.53 -13.33 26.23 15.24 HealthpeakProp PEAK 7.0 31 17.16 -0.30 -2.45 28.95 22.86 NiSource NI 4.1 17 25.90 -0.07 s 7.30 147.95 100.96 TFI Intl TFII 1.1 25 145.90 0.36
15.57 168.05 100.57 Allstate ALL 2.2 dd 161.78 -0.11 -2.69 22.83 13.61 Cleveland-Cliffs CLF 0.0 26 19.87 -0.11 8.46 195.67 153.63 Heico HEI 0.1 67 194.01 -0.04 3.80 4.97 2.94 Nokia NOK 2.4 28 3.55 0.04 -4.44 18.94 11.46 TIM TIMB 4.3 15 17.65 -0.62
3.04 38.03 21.59 AllyFinancial ALLY 3.3 12 35.98 -0.83 5.93 178.21 114.69 Clorox CLX 3.2237 151.05 -1.76 s 10.36 158.22 121.43 Heico A HEI.A 0.1 54 157.19 0.83 22.62 5.91 3.38 Nomura NMR 2.2 21 5.53 0.08 4.51 99.45 72.92 TJX TJX 1.4 28 98.04 0.10
-23.20 225.22 143.52 AlnylamPharm ALNY ... dd 147.00 -0.43 18.33 116.00 39.90 Cloudflare NET ... dd 98.52 -2.70 -0.08 85.75 60.01 HenrySchein HSIC ... 23 75.65 0.15 s -0.03 267.45 202.57 Nordson NDSN 1.0 31 264.07 -0.97 0.05 165.94 124.92 T-MobileUS TMUS 1.6 23 160.41 -1.16
0.59 155.20 88.86 Alphabet C GOOG ... 24 141.76 -2.18 0.78 64.99 51.55 Coca-Cola KO 3.3 24 59.39 -0.01 2.53 276.88 178.82 Hershey HSY 2.9 21 191.16 -0.05 6.62 257.00 183.09 NorfolkSouthern NSC 2.1 31 252.04 -2.30 0.05 45.74 24.74 TPG TPG 3.1 dd 43.19 -0.10
0.59 153.78 88.58 Alphabet A GOOGL ... 24 140.52 -2.25 -8.87 961.91 495.11 CocaColaCon COKE 0.2 18 846.07 -18.52 2.96 167.75 113.82 Hess HES 1.2 33 148.43 0.44 -5.25 96.71 62.44 NorthernTrust NTRS 3.8 16 79.95 -0.85 1.09 132.76 87.43 T.RowePrice TROW 4.6 14 108.86 0.60
7.51 92.92 53.92 AltairEngg ALTR ... dd 90.47 -1.21 1.29 70.01 53.53 Coca-ColaEuro CCEP 2.9 17 67.60 0.38 5.22 34.75 25.63 HessMidstream HESM 7.6 16 33.28 0.06 -3.67 496.89 414.56 NorthropGrum NOC 1.7 33 450.96 0.96 21.82 135.17 81.21 TaiwanSemi TSM 1.3 24 126.69 -2.34
-0.40 48.11 39.06 Altria MO 9.8 9 40.18 0.01 1.95 78.93 56.45 CognizantTech CTSH 1.6 18 77.00 -0.72 -12.07 18.14 13.65 HewlettPackard HPE 3.5 10 14.93 -0.33 -0.77 108.78 75.68 Novartis NVS 3.2 14 100.19 0.56 -4.70 171.59 107.92 TakeTwoSoftware TTWO ... dd 153.38 -3.58
11.56 175.39 88.12 Amazon.com AMZN ... 59 169.51 -0.29 37.19 63.63 26.29 Coherent COHR ... dd 59.72 -0.79 8.50 198.15 129.86 Hilton HLT 0.3 46 197.57 1.41 s 19.87 124.64 67.66 NovoNordisk NVO 0.8 46 124.01 2.26 2.45 17.15 13.19 TakedaPharm TAK 3.7 37 14.62 0.20
-8.93 3.23 2.42 Ambev ABEV 5.0 14 2.55 -0.01 s 3.67 193.64 46.43 CoinbaseGlbl COIN ...669 180.31 14.64 3.28 87.88 64.02 Hologic HOLX ... 35 73.79 -0.01 24.37 10.49 4.13 NuHoldings NU ...139 10.36 -0.10 s 24.72 46.11 25.99 Tapestry TPR 3.0 12 45.91 0.45
-6.22 11.51 8.45 Amcor AMCR 5.5 21 9.04 0.05 4.73 86.14 67.62 ColgatePalm CL 2.3 30 83.48 -0.09 4.56 368.72 274.26 HomeDepot HD 2.3 23 362.35 1.27 6.63 190.96 129.79 Nucor NUE 1.2 10 185.58 -0.78 s 11.59 96.97 64.85 TargaResources TRGP 2.1 26 96.94 3.67
3.78 99.75 78.38 Amdocs DOX 2.1 20 91.21 0.08 -5.95 47.45 34.63 Comcast A CMCSA 3.0 11 41.24 -0.56 12.39 36.82 24.60 HondaMotor HMC 2.4 9 34.74 -0.08 s 22.33 59.87 23.34 Nutanix NTNX ... dd 58.34 -0.80 5.05 173.51 102.93 Target TGT 2.9 19 149.61 3.28
s ... 16.35 13.10 AmerSports AS ... ... 15.97 0.47 20.82 253.09 122.81 ComfortSystems FIX 0.4 31 248.50 -4.30 -5.98 210.87 174.88 Honeywell HON 2.2 23 197.17 -0.78 -9.25 83.29 47.90 Nutrien NTR 4.1 12 51.12 0.72 -2.09 22.78 12.04 TechnipFMC FTI 1.0 dd 19.72 0.03
-3.91 91.18 67.03 Ameren AEE 3.9 16 69.51 -0.03 7.55 16.68 8.45 SABESP SBS 1.4 19 16.38 0.22 -9.72 46.04 28.51 HormelFoods HRL 3.9 20 28.99 -0.12 7.58 66.09 40.00 nVentElectric NVT 1.2 19 63.57 0.32 -8.45 49.34 32.48 TeckResourcesB TECK 1.0 12 38.70 0.45
-1.51 23.07 15.99 AmericaMovil AMX 1.9 14 18.24 0.37 -5.06 38.94 25.16 ConagraBrands CAG 5.1 13 27.21 0.04 -7.05 157.93 89.05 DR Horton DHI 0.8 10 141.27 -4.11 46.63 746.11 204.21 NVIDIA NVDA 0.0 96 726.13 -0.45 -3.14 448.71 364.98 TeledyneTech TDY ... 23 432.26 0.78
6.55 19.08 10.86 AmerAirlines AAL 0.0 13 14.64 -0.26 45.13 41.22 14.69 Confluent CFLT ... dd 33.96 0.26 1.28 20.39 14.51 HostHotels HST 4.1 19 19.72 -0.18 0.69 276.43 177.63 Teleflex TFX 0.5 29 251.07 -3.98
0.16 96.05 69.38 AEP
s 13.46 214.29 140.91 AmerExpress
AEP 4.3 19 81.35 -0.01
AXP 1.1 19 212.56 0.03
-4.74 127.35 91.53 ConocoPhillips COP
-4.01 100.92 80.46 ConEd ED
2.1 12 110.57
3.8 12 87.32
-0.43
-0.90
s 9.82 132.63 83.92 HoulihanLokey HLI 1.7 33 131.68
s 16.08 63.91 38.17 HowmetAerospace HWM 0.3 34 62.82
0.61
-0.45
OPQ -15.56 6.36 4.33 Ericsson ERIC 3.1 dd 5.32
-3.02 11.15 7.16 TelefonicaBras VIV 5.2 20 10.61
-0.03
-0.22
3.83 136.61 105.22 AmericanFin AFG 2.3 12 123.44 -0.08 0.86 273.65 210.15 ConstBrands A STZ 1.5 29 243.84 -1.06 9.11 364.76 219.77 Hubbell HUBB 1.4 26 358.88 0.19 2.52 72.52 55.91 ONEOK OKE 5.5 13 71.99 0.93 -1.03 4.53 3.71 Telefonica TEF 6.2 12 3.86 -0.07
-4.25 37.97 28.79 AmHomes4Rent AMH 2.6 33 34.43 -0.21 12.21 133.97 71.16 ConstellationEner CEG 0.9 25 131.16 -0.34 5.68 660.00 356.07 HubSpot HUBS ... dd 613.50 4.54 -5.85 111.35 61.47 ON Semi ON ... 16 78.64 -1.98 3.30 29.58 21.66 TelekmIndonesia TLK 3.2 17 26.61 0.56
3.38 73.28 45.66 AIG AIG 2.1 14 70.04 -0.26 -1.70 399.62 303.74 Cooper COO 0.0 63 372.01 -2.56 -19.85 541.21 342.69 Humana HUM 1.0 19 366.92 2.94 10.63 1074.04 795.75 OReillyAuto ORLY ... 27 1051.05 3.15 -0.53 53.60 34.98 TempurSealy TPX 1.0 24 50.70 0.11
-13.32 219.10 154.58 AmerTowerREIT AMT 3.4123 187.13 -2.33 -0.08 51.53 33.62 Copart CPRT ... 36 48.96 -0.77 5.99 219.50 163.66 JBHunt JBHT 0.8 30 211.70 -7.08 1.36 67.67 55.12 OccidentalPetrol OXY 1.5 16 60.52 0.41 -6.82 35.98 24.69 Tenaris TS 0.0 5 32.39 -0.18
-6.95 153.43 114.25 AmerWaterWorks AWK 2.3 25 122.82 -1.44 s 10.29 45.00 20.30 Core&Main CNM ... 21 44.57 -0.02 1.18 15.54 9.13 HuntingtonBcshs HBAN 4.8 10 12.87 0.03 -1.84 92.38 65.04 Okta OKTA ... dd 88.86 -0.58 s 12.32 10.70 5.70 TencentMusic TME ... 24 10.12 -0.19
-10.21 33.90 24.31 AmericoldRealty COLD 3.2 dd 27.18 -0.45 s 17.04 25.55 14.01 CorebridgeFin CRBG 3.6 15 25.35 0.32 s 9.80 287.33 188.51 HuntingIngalls HII 1.8 17 285.09 0.10 4.47 448.45 295.80 OldDomFreight ODFL 0.5 38 423.45 -8.88 20.33 91.85 49.76 TenetHealthcare THC ... 16 90.93 1.03
4.73 402.64 275.09 Ameriprise AMP 1.4 17 397.80 -0.03 4.79 36.02 25.26 Corning GLW 3.5 47 31.91 -0.12 1.86 134.94 96.77 HyattHotels H 0.5 30 132.83 -1.50 -3.44 30.61 23.31 OldRepublic ORI 3.5 14 28.39 -0.67 -5.79 119.20 81.08 Teradyne TER 0.5 37 102.24 -0.32
s 5.46 175.00 131.52 Ametek AME 0.6 31 173.89 0.15 14.36 64.04 43.22 Corteva CTVA 1.2 54 54.80 0.12 3.78 25.12 19.34 ICICI Bank IBN 0.5 17 24.74 0.01 0.95 34.77 25.61 OmegaHealthcare OHI 8.7 31 30.95 0.18 -19.53 299.29 152.37 Tesla TSLA ... 46 199.95 -0.50
-1.50 329.72 211.71 Amgen AMGN 3.2 23 283.70 -5.37 -6.85 92.36 65.12 CoStar CSGP ... 82 81.40 -1.56 0.09 579.68 372.50 IdexxLab IDXX ... 55 555.54 -13.29 1.16 99.23 72.20 Omnicom OMC 3.2 13 87.51 0.48 7.47 181.40 131.19 TetraTech TTEK 0.6 42 179.40 -1.25
-9.80 34.44 17.58 AmkorTech AMKR 1.0 21 30.01 -0.53 s 9.68 729.06 465.33 Costco COST 0.6 49 723.99 -0.52 -11.32 15.22 11.00 ING Groep ING 5.7 ... 13.32 -0.09 17.69 37.08 19.89 OnHolding ONON ...114 31.74 -0.57 24.71 13.35 7.08 TevaPharm TEVA ... dd 13.02 -0.18
s 6.45 106.51 72.00 Amphenol APH 0.8 34 105.52 -0.15 -3.29 29.89 22.25 CoterraEnergy CTRA 3.2 9 24.68 0.02 3.12 243.82 167.42 IQVIA IQV ... 33 238.60 -2.87 s 19.18 186.38 76.01 OntoInnovation ONTO ... 74 182.23 5.77 -5.91 188.12 139.48 TexasInstruments TXN 3.2 23 160.38 -0.33

.
-5.20 202.77 154.99 AnalogDevices ADI 1.8 29 188.24 0.70 -4.19 13.46 9.02 Coty COTY 0.0 34 11.90 -0.06 3.69 127.13 75.82 ITT ITT 1.0 25 123.72 -1.20 -4.85 45.47 32.04 OpenText OTEX 2.5 85 39.98 -0.57 -3.86 2000.00 1266.21 TexasPacLand TPL 0.9 30 1511.81 24.25
-7.28 30.27 14.91 AngloGoldAsh AU 1.2187 17.33 0.30 -3.03 19.99 12.66 Coupang CPNG ... 66 15.70 -0.06 23.44 54.48 15.00 IcahnEnterprises IEP 28.3 dd 21.22 0.23 5.58 127.54 82.04 Oracle ORCL 1.4 31 111.31 -1.47 s 20.84 152.55 91.06 TexasRoadhouse TXRH 1.5 33 147.70 13.81
s 13.53 173.39 116.42 Credicorp

ly
-3.68 67.09 51.66 AB InBev BUD 1.0 20 62.24 -0.58 BAP 3.9 10 170.21 1.20 2.11 296.68 181.92 Icon ICLR ... 47 289.03 -1.11 1.49 13.08 10.97 Orange ORAN 5.0 18 11.60 -0.05 6.55 88.41 61.27 Textron TXT 0.1 19 85.69 -0.52
-3.67 21.73 14.52 AnnalyCap NLY 13.9 dd 18.66 -0.22 27.37 151.32 74.00 Crocs CROX ... 9 118.98 -2.65 4.77 231.61 183.76 IDEX IEX 1.1 29 227.47 -0.21 8.06 102.15 79.64 Orix IX 2.5 12 100.92 0.40 3.21 593.17 415.60 ThermoFisher TMO 0.3 35 547.84 -0.73
6.95 347.37 280.89 Aon AON 0.8 25 311.24 -3.13 28.95 338.45 110.46 CrowdStrike CRWD ... dd 329.24 -2.14 -3.06 267.12 217.06 IllinoisToolWks ITW 2.2 26 253.92 -2.91 0.22 115.63 72.09 Oshkosh OSK 1.7 12 108.65 -3.01 s 9.62 161.57 117.46 ThomsonReuters TRI 1.3 28 160.29 1.22
14.90 94.75 19.83 ApellisPharm APLS ... dd 68.78 1.20 -6.05 141.04 84.72 CrownCastle CCI 5.8 31 108.22 0.23 2.99 238.55 89.00 Illumina ILMN ... dd 143.41 -2.66 s 1.98 92.79 73.32 OtisWorldwide OTIS 1.5 27 91.24 -0.98 -16.53 113.14 85.34 3M MMM 6.6 dd 91.25 -1.13
0.92 35.58 20.05 APi Group APG ... 89 34.92 -0.63 -21.53 96.35 69.61 Crown Holdings CCK 1.3 19 72.26 0.32 4.74 63.07 44.22 ImperialOil IMO 3.0 9 59.90 -0.51 2.07 51.60 32.07 Ovintiv OVV 2.7 4 44.83 0.70 22.78 27.00 13.77 Toast TOST ... dd 22.42 3.22
34.76 242.00 113.58 AppFolio APPF ...7834 233.46 -7.36 -6.28 48.93 33.17 CubeSmart CUBE 4.7 26 43.44 -0.52 -7.69 79.58 50.27 Incyte INCY ... 22 57.96 -1.01 -5.59 160.18 88.86 OwensCorning OC 1.7 11 139.95 -2.28 -0.59 105.91 55.44 Toll Bros TOL 0.8 8 102.18 -2.00
-5.31 199.62 143.90 Apple AAPL 0.5 28 182.31 -1.55 s 11.23 269.70 203.18 Cummins CMI 2.5 52 266.48 0.68 20.08 36.00 13.29 Informatica INFA ... dd 34.09 0.12 -7.55 152.99 59.67 PDD PDD ... 30 135.26 -0.06 3.37 403.34 184.50 TopBuild BLD ... 20 386.86 -8.69
s 9.47 190.62 122.23 AppliedIndlTechs AIT 0.8 20 189.04 0.20
s 23.14 206.77 109.00 ApplMaterials AMAT 0.6 23 199.57 11.91
s 50.24 60.65 11.69 AppLovin
11.23 140.47 109.95 Aptargroup
-11.99 120.65 71.01 Aptiv
9.86 31.94 23.55 Aramark
-3.49 32.48 21.30 ArcelorMittal
15.94 90.65 62.10 ArchCapital
APP ... 60 59.87 1.37
ATR 1.2 32 137.50 2.46
APTV 0.0 8 78.96 -0.45
ARMK 1.2 13 30.87 0.04
MT 1.4 25 27.40 0.19
ACGL ... 7 86.11 -1.29 s
-7.91 110.25 25.98 Cytokinetics

DEF
-2.23 116.73 90.14 DTE Energy
8.07 252.33 182.09 Danaher
on
4.90 238.73 157.72 Curtiss-Wright CW
18.89 283.00 120.11 CyberArkSoftware CYBR
CYTK
0.3 25 233.71
... dd 260.43
... dd 76.89

DTE 3.8 16 107.80

DHR 0.4 39 250.00
-2.66
-3.84
-1.67

0.03
1.04
11.37 20.74 14.71 Infosys
s 15.68 92.32 51.84 IngersollRand IR
5.20 114.93 89.54 Ingredion
-11.97 335.91 125.82 Insulet
-13.41 51.28 24.73 Intel
s 6.77 138.34 94.16 ICE
INFY 1.2 29 20.47
0.1 47 89.47
INGR 2.7 12 114.17
PODD ...114 191.01
INTC 1.1113 43.51
s 26.09 106.43 70.83 InteractiveBrkrs IBKR 0.4 18 104.53
ICE 1.3 33 137.12
0.16
1.68
-0.74
0.48
-0.54
-0.06
0.23
-8.87 18.32 14.71 PG&E
-3.87 161.15 109.40 PNC Finl
-12.72 133.09 58.65 POSCO
-5.11 152.89 120.33 PPG Ind
-1.70 29.14 22.20 PPL
1.85 185.07 115.44 PTC
s 7.81 132.09 69.27 PVH
s 10.36 108.67 67.48 Paccar
PCG 0.2 19 16.43
PNC 4.2 12 148.85
PKX 1.8 18 83.01
PPG 1.8 27 141.91
PPL 3.6 25 26.64
PTC ... 90 178.19
PVH 0.1 16 131.66
PCAR 1.0 12 107.77
-0.10
-0.78
-0.30
-0.51
0.18
-3.80
3.58
-0.29
-2.32 117.17 78.35 Toro TTC 1.5 30 93.76
-7.24 69.07 54.69 TorontoDomBk TD 4.8 14 59.94
-4.35 69.63 54.94 TotalEnergies TTE ... 7 64.45
23.98 232.56 132.35 ToyotaMotor TM 1.8 10 227.36
9.98 251.17 185.00 TractorSupply TSCO 1.9 23 236.49
s 23.58 94.00 50.33 TradeDesk
11.70 104.10 64.83 Tradeweb
11.59 278.81 162.04 TraneTech
TTD ...249 88.93
TW 0.4 59 101.51
TT 1.2 31 272.17
-3.13
0.18
-0.55
-1.18
-1.17
13.22
-0.48
-0.79
-1.12 173.06 133.36 Darden DRI 3.2 20 162.46 0.08 7.22 98.40 63.12 InterContinentl IHG 1.5 27 97.76 0.19
-25.71 87.30 50.72 ADM ADM 3.7 7 53.65 -0.66 14.73 196.90 120.55 IBM 3.11 176.97 122.20 PackagingCpAm PKG 3.0 20 167.98 1.08 s 13.32 1165.00 686.46 TransDigm TDG 0.0 49 1146.39 -11.40
us ,

6.89 138.61 62.60 Datadog DDOG ...1001 129.74 -2.10 IBM 3.5 23 187.64 0.77
13.50 139.48 71.36 AresMgmt ARES 2.8 56 134.97 -0.21 0.27 97.49 62.11 IntlFlavors IFF 4.0451 81.19 0.15 42.34 25.52 7.19 PalantirTech PLTR ...271 24.44 -0.97 9.26 82.75 42.09 TransUnion TRU 0.6 dd 75.07 -1.72
3.10 550.76 327.73 argenx ARGX ... dd 392.23 -1.24 16.67 128.28 71.51 DaVita DVA ... 16 122.22 2.35 24.26 380.84 165.36 PaloAltoNtwks PANW ...208 366.41 -0.47 14.19 219.62 157.33 Travelers TRV 1.8 17 217.53 -1.49
-0.97 38.71 29.00 IntlPaper IP 5.2 42 35.80 0.73
l

11.14 292.66 131.68 AristaNetworks ANET ... 40 261.75 -4.75 9.15 76.17 55.62 Dayforce DAY ...211 73.26 -0.43 -18.86 24.09 10.51 ParamountB PARA 1.7 dd 12.00 -0.59 9.75 93.17 44.90 Trex TREX ... 51 90.86 0.23
29.11 903.70 395.90 DeckersOutdoor DECK ... 31 862.98 -7.79 -0.58 40.95 27.20 Interpublic IPG 4.1 11 32.45 0.05
70.79 164.00 46.50 Arm ARM ... ... 128.34 -5.34 s 5.63 76.11 42.01 Intra-Cellular ITCI ... dd 75.65 0.76 10.53 27.25 13.40 ParamountA PARAA 0.9 dd 21.73 -0.27 s 13.33 60.89 39.57 Trimble TRMB ... 48 60.29 0.14
e
-9.80 450.00 345.55 Deere DE 1.6 11 360.68 -3.98
al a

s 24.17 156.44 64.33 AscendisPharma ASND ... dd 156.39 9.19 4.91 664.83 384.05 Intuit INTU 0.5 72 655.74 -8.54 s 12.88 527.43 300.86 ParkerHannifin PH 1.1 26 520.06 -1.81 14.55 43.59 30.70 Trip.com TCOM ... 18 41.25 0.31
-16.99 247.96 161.32 AspenTech AZPN ... dd 182.75 2.00 10.08 86.90 35.96 DellTechC DELL ... 23 84.21 1.49 s 19.44 75.91 40.61 Parsons PSN ... 53 74.90 0.53 -2.22 48.52 25.56 TruistFinl TFC 5.8 dd 36.10 -0.23
-0.27 49.81 30.60 DeltaAir DAL 1.0 6 40.12 -0.88 12.23 392.00 222.65 IntuitiveSurgical ISRG ... 75 378.63 -1.54
3.10 179.41 104.49 Assurant AIZ 1.7 15 173.72 1.21 -4.13 36.53 28.49 InvitatHomes INVH 3.4 60 32.70 -0.16 3.58 129.70 104.09 Paychex PAYX 2.9 27 123.38 0.59 -22.78 78.16 45.02 Twilio TWLO ... dd 58.59 -2.56
-4.57 76.56 60.47 AstraZeneca AZN 2.2 34 64.27 1.43 3.09 92.86 69.59 DescartesSystems DSGX ... 66 86.66 -0.84 -7.69 374.04 146.15 PaycomSoftware PAYC 0.8 32 190.82 -3.56 5.47 454.74 305.06 TylerTech TYL ...114 440.98 -0.13
-5.02 14.02 8.85 DeutscheBank DB 2.5 5 12.87 -0.11 -2.86 70.66 48.94 IronMountain IRM 3.8 72 67.98 -1.16
-12.62 258.69 128.02 Atlassian TEAM ... dd 207.84 -5.28 ... 7.05 4.24 ItauUnibanco ITUB 1.9 10 6.95 0.02 7.61 230.52 139.40 Paylocity PCTY ... 60 177.39 2.44 -1.17 63.49 44.94 TysonFoods TSN 3.7 dd 53.12 0.55
ci on

-1.68 125.28 101.00 AtmosEnergy ATO 2.8 18 113.95 -0.32 -4.06 57.13 40.47 DevonEnergy DVN 6.6 7 43.46 0.27 -3.70 79.27 50.25 PayPal PYPL ... 15 59.14 -0.56 -10.49 31.39 17.99 UBS Group UBS 2.5 3 27.66 -0.21
6.09 269.53 188.38 Autodesk
s 1.17 113.18 79.66 Autoliv
ADSK ... 61 258.30 -2.95
ALV 2.4 23 111.48 -1.15
-5.67 139.55 74.75 DexCom
0.85 190.02 135.63 Diageo
DXCM ... 89 117.05
DEO 2.7 21 146.90
-0.64
-0.92 JKL -0.90 12.51 9.29 Pearson PSO 2.2 24 12.18
-1.13 34.98 28.15 PembinaPipeline PBA 6.0 21 34.03
-0.02
0.11
-5.77 45.21 30.95 UDR
-5.51 128.65 75.01 UFP Inds
UDR 4.7 27 36.08
UFPI 1.1 14 118.63
0.03
-1.13
8.58 256.84 201.46 ADP ADP 2.2 29 252.97 0.92 s 15.70 181.54 119.01 DiamondbkEner FANG 1.9 10 179.42 0.90 -16.16 53.70 20.82 JD.com JD 2.5 11 24.22 0.66 -7.05 180.84 128.37 PenskeAuto PAG 2.0 9 149.19 -2.30 -7.23 71.52 43.62 U-Haul N UHAL/B 0.3 20 65.35 -1.02
5.50 2855.21 2277.88 AutoZone AZO ... 20 2727.83 2.95 s 15.11 170.67 100.98 Dick's DKS 2.4 15 169.15 -1.03 5.25 180.21 123.11 JPMorganChase JPM 2.3 11 179.03 -0.84 s 3.04 75.94 50.15 Pentair PNR 1.2 20 74.92 -0.51 -7.03 73.03 48.07 U-Haul UHAL 0.0 21 66.75 -1.11
-5.39 198.66 153.07 Avalonbay AVB 3.8 27 177.12 -0.68 1.22 149.07 86.33 DigitalRealty DLR 3.6 46 136.22 -12.39 8.71 142.99 74.16 Jabil JBL 0.2 24 138.50 -2.54 7.56 348.67 180.93 Penumbra PEN ...261 270.56 -2.59 s 9.18 49.87 33.96 US Foods USFD ... 25 49.58 1.01
-2.41 41.68 27.46 Avangrid AGR 5.6 23 31.63 0.47 -1.70 122.50 79.04 DiscoverFinSvcs DFS 2.5 10 110.49 -0.23 5.55 178.37 136.57 JackHenry JKHY 1.3 34 172.48 -1.60 -2.07 196.88 155.83 PepsiCo PEP 3.0 25 166.32 -1.54 -4.06 7.43 4.08 UWM UWMC 5.8 dd 6.86 -0.16
4.07 25.25 16.63 Avantor AVTR ... 50 23.76 -0.29 23.60 112.92 78.73 Disney DIS 0.7 69 111.60 -0.85 s 13.67 149.17 109.00 JacobsSolns J 0.8 26 147.54 0.24 s 7.90 75.10 52.32 PerformanceFood PFGC ... 27 74.61 1.39 27.35 81.86 29.22 Uber UBER ... 89 78.41 -2.98
s 3.30 211.71 158.93 AveryDennison AVY 1.6 34 208.83 0.16 -15.53 66.98 38.11 DocuSign DOCU ...201 50.22 -1.29 -2.61 39.45 19.72 JamesHardie JHX 0.0 31 37.66 0.16 6.99 15.49 8.94 PermianRscs PR 1.4 16 14.55 0.05 -9.14 284.77 103.00 Ubiquiti UI 1.9 21 126.81 -0.76
4.44 274.78 175.37 AxonEnterprise AXON ...138 269.80 -2.99 -9.42 91.02 75.87 DolbyLab DLB 1.5 40 78.06 -0.94 3.07 148.18 111.25 JazzPharm JAZZ ...210 126.78 -0.04 s 10.83 17.80 9.56 PetroleoBrasil PBR 16.0 4 17.70 0.30 0.48 27.87 12.38 UiPath PATH ... dd 24.96 -0.71
er s

-4.32 48.38 36.15 BCE BCE 7.5 22 37.68 0.40 4.08 228.63 101.09 DollarGeneral DG 1.7 16 141.50 6.46 1.76 41.96 28.34 JefferiesFinl JEF 2.9 37 41.12 -0.07 s 12.43 17.24 8.52 PetroleoBrasilA PBR.A 16.5 4 17.18 0.26 8.59 556.60 368.02 UltaBeauty ULTA ... 22 532.09 2.21
-11.67 69.11 54.28 BHP Group BHP 5.6 12 60.34 0.73 0.93 161.10 102.77 DollarTree DLTR ... 27 143.37 1.22 -0.12 175.97 144.95 J&J JNJ 3.0 28 156.55 -0.18 -4.06 43.37 25.76 Pfizer PFE 6.1 79 27.62 0.11 4.58 55.99 46.16 Unilever UL 3.6 18 50.70 0.61
3.11 78.88 60.33 BJ'sWholesale BJ ... 18 68.73 -0.06 -2.43 58.93 39.18 DominionEner D 5.8 23 45.86 0.37 -1.35 70.43 47.90 JohnsonControls JCI 2.6 19 56.86 -0.54 -4.71 102.00 87.23 PhilipMorris PM 5.8 18 89.65 0.67 0.39 251.65 183.69 UnionPacific UNP 2.1 24 246.59 -3.96
0.14 40.84 33.52 BP BP 4.9 7 35.45 -0.16 2.33 439.16 285.84 Domino's DPZ 1.1 29 421.85 -2.87 0.04 193.52 119.46 JonesLang JLL 0.0 40 188.94 -3.79 8.01 149.52 89.74 Phillips66 PSX 2.9 9 143.81 -1.51 1.77 58.23 33.68 UnitedAirlines UAL ... 5 41.99 -0.84
s 14.31 88.16 59.06 BWX Tech BWXT 1.0 36 87.71 0.52 1.41 68.11 57.05 Donaldson DCI 1.5 22 66.27 -0.61 25.24 38.04 24.87 JuniperNetworks JNPR 2.4 39 36.92 -0.09 -5.46 86.03 65.20 PinnacleWest PNW 5.2 16 67.92 -8.98 8.97 6.71 UnitedMicro UMC 5.8 9 7.70 -0.10
m er

0.02
-10.05 160.53 97.51 Baidu BIDU ... 12 107.12 0.28 17.31 126.65 51.50 DoorDash DASH ... dd 116.01 -10.26 22.19 51.88 35.20 KB Financial KB 3.6 6 50.55 1.21 -4.75 41.60 20.60 Pinterest PINS ... dd 35.28 -1.30 -5.61 197.80 133.68 UPS B UPS 4.4 19 148.41 3.06
-14.72 37.58 26.12 BakerHughes BKR 2.9 15 29.15 -0.05 s 4.97 164.09 127.25 Dover DOV 1.3 21 161.46 -1.18 -0.22 65.87 49.37 KBR KBR 1.0 dd 55.29 0.12 2.97 257.76 177.26 PioneerNatRscs PXD 6.0 11 231.57 0.02 13.41 673.68 325.15 UnitedRentals URI 0.9 18 650.31 -10.65
s 7.95 62.68 42.81 Ball BALL 1.3 28 62.09 -0.15 1.17 58.75 47.26 Dow DOW 5.0 68 55.48 0.31 -12.95 20.64 12.88 KE Holdings BEKE 0.0 21 14.11 0.29 6.47 16.36 11.28 PlainsAllAmPipe PAA 7.9 12 16.13 0.27 -4.14 48.66 27.27 US Bancorp USB 4.7 13 41.49 -0.06
6.15 10.01 6.24 BBVA BBVA 4.3 7 9.67 -0.04 s 8.45 75.99 52.24 DrReddy'sLab RDY 0.5 20 75.46 0.45 15.46 98.63 47.46 KKR KKR 0.7 31 95.66 -0.56 5.83 17.05 11.79 PlainsGP PAGP 7.5 15 16.88 0.21 -5.45 50.20 20.40 US Steel X 0.4 13 46.00 0.22
-21.70 3.21 2.12 BancoBradesco BBDO 6.2 9 2.49 0.03 s 26.44 45.62 17.02 DraftKings DKNG ... dd 44.57 0.11 s 13.77 677.47 355.88 KLA KLAC 0.9 34 661.35 8.97 -2.86 405.01 307.76 Pool POOL 1.1 28 387.30 -1.83 -2.35 261.54 204.44 UnitedTherap UTHR ... 12 214.73 0.19
2.25 23.80 17.96 BancodeChile BCH 4.6 8 23.60 0.44 -14.93 33.43 18.71 Dropbox DBX ... 19 25.08 -7.46 0.55 321.45 158.38 KarunaTherap KRTX ... dd 318.25 -1.14 s 19.79 248.04 155.68 Primerica PRI 1.2 16 246.47 1.58 -0.93 554.70 445.68 UnitedHealth UNH 1.4 22 521.55 0.67
-10.99 6.66 4.76 BancSanBrasil BSBR 4.2 ... 5.83 0.13 -5.32 100.39 83.06 DukeEnergy DUK 4.5 26 91.88 -0.48 3.30 99.60 71.25 Kaspi.kz KSPI 6.7 11 95.55 1.21 1.74 91.57 65.17 PrincipalFinl PFG 3.4 32 80.04 -0.90 -17.09 50.08 22.20 UnitySoftware U ... dd 33.90 -1.12
3.54 21.81 16.24 BcoSantChile BSAC 4.7 20 20.18 0.43 -18.49 245.87 86.36 Duolingo DUOL ... dd 184.90 -3.53 -0.79 67.84 47.62 Kellanova K 4.0 20 55.47 0.08 s 9.68 78.72 48.11 ProcoreTech
m rp

PCOR ... dd 75.92 1.33 -4.97 194.84 125.38 UnivDisplay OLED 0.8 42 181.76 -4.18
-5.31 4.29 3.20 BancoSantander SAN 2.7 5 3.92 -0.02 -11.02 78.74 61.14 DuPont DD 2.2 74 68.45 ... -11.52 27.80 17.82 Kenvue KVUE 4.2 24 19.05 ... 7.49 159.83 136.10 Procter&Gamble PG 2.4 26 157.51 0.50 6.38 164.96 113.69 UniversalHealthB UHS 0.5 17 162.16 -0.56
3.18 34.43 21.55 BanColombia CIB 3.5 10 31.75 0.19 -6.58 61.41 37.21 Dynatrace DT ... 77 51.09 -1.00 -7.05 36.23 27.66 KeurigDrPepper KDP 2.8 23 30.97 -0.12 s 18.72 191.92 111.41 Progressive PGR 0.2 29 189.09 -0.15 7.76 52.15 36.27 UnumGroup UNM 3.0 8 48.73 0.03
1.25 35.39 24.96 BankofAmerica BAC 2.8 11 34.09 0.02 20.53 179.58 67.59 elfBeauty ELF ... 77 173.98 -1.28 -2.29 19.23 8.54 KeyCorp KEY 5.8 16 14.07 -0.13 0.07 137.52 96.64 Prologis PLD 2.6 42 133.39 0.29 -7.37 34.34 26.62 VICI Prop VICI 5.6 12 29.53 0.04
-4.80 100.54 73.98 BankMontreal BMO 3.6 23 94.19 -0.38 s 17.40 255.71 145.77 EMCOR EME 0.3 22 252.92 0.58 -2.43 187.49 118.57 KeysightTech KEYS ... 26 155.22 0.56 3.44 110.12 75.37 PrudentialFinl PRU 4.8 16 107.28 -0.71 5.63 258.13 204.88 VailResorts MTN 3.7 42 225.48 -2.59
5.96 56.42 39.65 BankNY Mellon BK 3.0 14 55.15 -0.14 -10.50 34.30 25.10 ENI E 4.5 9 30.44 -1.14 -8.99 43.37 25.99 KilroyRealty KRC 6.0 20 36.26 0.30 -5.30 31.57 19.68 Prudential PUK 1.8 15 21.26 0.50 -14.06 17.55 12.22 Vale VALE 8.6 6 13.63 0.40
-2.73 54.46 39.80 BankNovaScotia BNS 6.7 11 47.36 0.11 -6.11 136.79 98.52 EOG Rscs EOG 3.2 8 113.56 -0.69 -2.65 147.87 116.32 KimberlyClark KMB 4.1 23 118.29 -0.50 -2.22 65.46 53.71 PublicServiceEnt PEG 4.0 11 59.79 0.19 7.34 152.20 104.18 ValeroEnergy VLO 3.1 6 139.54 -2.45
-5.20 8.63 6.23 Barclays BCS 5.0 ... 7.47 0.10 4.92 341.81 197.99 EPAM Systems EPAM ... 44 311.98 10.78 -7.88 22.84 16.34 KimcoRealty KIM 4.9 19 19.63 -0.14 -7.70 316.48 233.18 PublicStorage PSA 4.3 26 281.52 -4.74 19.84 76.72 34.11 Vaxcyte PCVX ... dd 75.26 0.25
-19.02 20.75 13.76 BarrickGold GOLD 2.7 20 14.65 0.05 -10.24 45.23 28.11 EQT EQT 1.8 8 34.70 0.37 -3.00 18.30 15.89 KinderMorgan KMI 6.6 16 17.11 0.14 -1.71 110.75 52.24 PulteGroup PHM 0.8 9 101.45 -3.03 13.94 225.49 160.21 VeevaSystems VEEV ... 63 219.35 -4.21
5.19 46.00 27.30 Bath&BodyWks BBWI 1.8 14 45.40 -0.10 s 21.53 252.31 129.76 EagleMaterials EXP 0.4 17 246.51 -2.53 s 50.80 528.04 277.90 KinsaleCapital KNSL 0.1 38 505.03 67.46 20.44 45.34 22.14 PureStorage PSTG ...227 42.95 -0.46 -12.20 50.98 39.33 Ventas VTR 4.1 dd 43.76 -0.45
6.62 50.21 31.01 BaxterIntl BAX 2.8 dd 41.22 0.28 -0.08 78.37 33.86 EastWestBncp EWBC 3.1 9 71.89 -1.28 7.63 39.47 23.93 Klaviyo KVYO ... ... 29.90 0.19 -3.83 49.49 35.81 Qiagen QGEN 0.0 28 43.06 0.34 4.66 89.00 65.51 Veralto VLTO 0.4 25 86.09 -0.50
co Fo

-1.26 287.32 228.62 BectonDicknsn BDX 1.6 57 240.76 0.80 -0.45 188.85 152.45 EastGroup EGP 2.8 41 182.71 -2.20 -1.44 60.99 45.73 Knight-Swift KNX 1.1 42 56.82 -1.37 -0.39 114.97 80.62 Qorvo QRVO ... dd 112.17 -1.71 -5.69 229.72 188.44 VeriSign VRSN ... 25 194.24 -3.58
-17.81 272.49 132.95 BeiGene BGNE ... dd 148.23 2.16 -5.15 91.38 68.89 EastmanChem EMN 3.8 11 85.19 -0.06 -12.94 24.27 14.96 Philips PHG 0.0 dd 20.31 -0.10 5.57 157.98 101.47 Qualcomm QCOM 2.1 22 152.69 -3.29 2.44 251.98 169.74 VeriskAnalytics VRSK 0.6 72 244.70 -1.95
1.64 60.26 29.13 BellRing BRBR ... 46 56.34 -1.67 s 15.24 278.94 155.38 Eaton ETN 1.2 35 277.52 1.73 8.83 8.10 5.92 KoreaElecPwr KEP 0.0 dd 7.89 0.09 -2.02 219.17 147.33 QuantaServices PWR 0.2 45 211.44 -2.62 7.40 43.21 30.14 Verizon VZ 6.6 15 40.49 -0.10
1.88 55.37 37.21 BentleySystems BSY 0.4 99 53.16 0.84 -0.39 49.48 37.17 eBay EBAY 2.3 9 43.45 0.83 -5.87 41.47 30.68 KraftHeinz KHC 4.6 15 34.81 -0.16 -10.07 148.91 119.59 QuestDiag DGX 2.4 17 124.00 -1.73 3.76 448.40 283.60 VertexPharm VRTX ... 30 422.20 -4.09
16.81 85.01 55.50 Berkley WRB 0.5 16 82.61 0.34 8.59 221.55 153.87 Ecolab ECL 1.1 45 215.38 -1.09 4.22 50.36 42.09 Kroger KR 2.4 19 47.64 0.77 31.11 65.56 11.95 Vertiv VRT 0.0 97 62.97 0.13
s 13.83 406.74 292.42 BerkHathwy B BRK.B ... 12 405.99 2.54
s 12.43 612394 442363 BerkHathwy A BRK.A ... 12 610086 3086.10
-0.50 13.14 8.59 Ecopetrol
-7.25 74.92 58.82 EdisonIntl
EC 19.5 5 11.86
EIX 4.7 21 66.31
0.03
-0.15
4.71 59.38 41.49 LKQ
s 13.20 264.24 179.00 LPL Financial
LKQ
LPLA
2.4 14 50.04
0.5 19 257.66
0.87
0.20
RS s 20.59 13.10 8.74 Viatris VTRS 3.7 9 13.06 0.24
-34.77 93.00 4.59 VinFastAuto VFS ... dd 5.46 0.03
-5.79 88.22 62.30 BestBuy BBY 5.0 13 73.75 -0.90 12.92 94.87 60.57 EdwardsLife EW ... 37 86.10 0.06 0.65 216.49 160.25 L3HarrisTech LHX 2.2 33 211.98 0.70 -4.88 288.16 195.18 RBC Bearings RBC ... 45 270.98 -4.41 -4.95 19.13 13.13 Vipshop VIPS ... 9 16.88 -0.32
-7.19 89.91 51.79 Bio-Techne TECH 0.4 52 71.61 0.35 9.06 16.55 7.88 ElancoAnimal ELAN ... dd 16.25 -0.16 -4.69 234.09 179.58 LabCorp.ofAmerica LH 1.3 46 216.64 -5.49 3.03 69.60 51.07 RB Global RBA 1.6 82 68.92 -0.25 6.99 281.12 208.76 Visa V 0.7 33 278.56 -2.42
10.06 467.95 271.00 Bio-RadLab B BIO.B ... dd 352.91 24.46 15.59 133.59 50.21 Elastic ESTC ... dd 130.27 -2.25 s 18.23 955.99 467.02 LamResearch LRCX 0.9 36 926.03 12.25 s 7.84 43.09 29.63 RELX RELX 1.6 37 42.77 0.71 s 18.33 46.31 21.18 Vistra VST 1.9 13 45.58 0.19
5.46 509.62 261.59 Bio-RadLab A BIO ... dd 340.52 11.79 -3.84 225.22 162.13 ElbitSystems ESLT 1.0 34 205.07 0.02 0.91 112.34 77.20 LamarAdv LAMR 4.7 27 107.25 -0.72 -2.86 113.37 78.52 RPM RPM 1.7 27 108.44 -0.68 -2.64 12.42 8.02 Vodafone VOD 11.2 2 8.47 -0.03
t -15.34 319.76 217.53 Biogen BIIB ... 27 219.08 -4.27 4.00 144.53 108.53 ElectronicArts EA 0.5 36 142.28 -1.77 -6.35 117.38 81.25 LambWeston LW 1.4 13 101.23 -2.29 8.16 104.91 68.56 RTX RTX 2.6 41 91.01 -0.78 s 12.40 260.81 159.76 VulcanMatls VMC 0.7 37 255.15 12.69
-7.93 108.44 76.02 BioMarinPharm BMRN ...116 88.77 0.47 s 8.71 514.35 412.00 ElevanceHealth ELV 1.3 20 512.63 3.80 12.27 65.58 43.77 LasVegasSands LVS 1.4 35 55.25 0.28 s 25.42 183.04 103.17 RalphLauren RL 1.7 21 180.85 -0.31
-13.14 141.93 88.00 BioNTech
1.07 52.12 35.83 Birkenstock
BNTX 0.0 8 91.67 -1.24
BIRK ...113 49.25 -0.53
s 9.06 107.08 76.94 EmersonElec
-4.44 40.30 31.03 Enbridge
EMR 2.0147 106.15
ENB 7.9 16 34.42
0.44
0.41
6.16 98.30 51.95 LatticeSemi
-3.48 157.91 117.79 Lear
LSCC
LEA
... 39 73.24
2.3 14 136.30
-1.24
-1.43
1.02 37.88 22.61 RangeResources RRC
s 6.27 119.23 82.00 RaymondJames RJF
1.0 6 30.75
1.5 15 118.49
0.62
0.05
WXYZ
-2.19 819.00 596.18 BlackRock BLK 2.6 22 794.00 -4.05 10.24 76.84 51.15 EncompassHealth EHC 0.8 21 73.55 -0.23 -3.42 77.32 42.91 LegendBiotech LEGN ... dd 58.11 1.06 -8.86 67.05 45.03 RealtyIncome O 5.9 40 52.33 0.31 -7.25 99.26 75.13 WEC Energy WEC 4.3 19 78.07 0.07
-2.31 133.53 76.19 Blackstone BX 2.6 70 127.89 -2.36 1.85 26.26 17.65 Endeavor EDR 1.0 dd 24.17 -0.36 s 14.40 124.93 76.58 Leidos LDOS 1.2 87 123.83 1.64 9.03 166.00 97.18 RegalRexnord RRX 0.9 dd 161.39 3.78 s 13.74 224.61 161.95 WEX WEX ... 36 221.28 -2.86
-15.14 83.08 38.85 Block SQ ... dd 65.64 -3.84 5.43 14.65 11.45 EnergyTransfer ET 8.7 13 14.55 0.13 4.57 147.90 79.25 Lennar B LEN.B 1.4 10 140.18 -3.67 -9.24 68.47 54.72 RegencyCtrs REG 4.4 30 60.81 -0.43 -11.43 82.89 50.28 W.P.Carey WPC 6.0 17 57.40 0.10
19.33 18.33 9.70 BlueOwlCapital OWL 3.1217 17.78 -0.24 -0.20 231.42 73.49 EnphaseEnergy ENPH ... 43 131.87 -4.52 0.79 158.36 94.11 Lennar A LEN 1.3 11 150.22 -3.98 7.94 973.99 684.80 RegenPharm REGN ... 27 948.05 -6.68 3.26 64.07 41.13 WPP WPP 5.0 17 49.12 0.42
-21.78 267.54 176.25 Boeing BA 0.0 dd 203.89 -1.44 s 14.18 140.10 69.37 Entegris ENTG 0.3115 136.81 1.16 0.20 458.12 232.00 LennoxIntl LII 1.0 27 448.41 -2.89 -4.64 23.89 13.71 RegionsFinl RF 5.2 9 18.48 -0.07 5.82 137.81 91.89 Wabtec WAB 0.6 30 134.28 0.32
4.78 3844.76 2382.55 Booking BKNG ... 26 3716.84 -33.82 -1.03 111.90 87.10 Entergy ETR 4.5 14 100.15 0.15 -15.47 47.33 20.80 LiAuto LI ... 38 31.64 0.96 4.43 175.34 120.99 ReinsGrp RGA 2.0 13 168.95 -1.77 -15.82 36.78 19.68 WalgreensBoots WBA 4.5 33 21.98 -0.06
13.82 148.07 87.99 BoozAllen BAH 1.4 47 145.59 0.22 3.42 27.95 24.66 EnterpriseProd EPD 7.6 11 27.25 0.26 -25.09 95.68 59.34 LibertyBroadbandC LBRDK ... 13 60.37 -0.06 s 16.72 333.33 229.12 RelianceSteel RS 1.3 14 326.43 -5.91 s 8.06 171.93 136.09 Walmart WMT 1.3 28 170.36 1.07
t -14.62 47.05 30.52 BorgWarner BWA 1.4 11 30.61 -0.88 4.36 260.91 159.95 Equifax EFX 0.6 59 258.08 -2.44 -25.02 95.61 59.47 LibertyBroadbandA LBRDA 0.0 13 60.46 -0.02 15.69 235.14 174.22 RenaissanceRe RNR 0.7 4 226.76 -1.85 -13.62 16.34 9.27 WarnerBrosA WBD ... dd 9.83 -0.31
-4.00 73.97 46.18 BostonProps BXP 5.8 56 67.36 0.65 6.31 881.80 661.66 Equinix EQIX 2.0 83 856.23 -18.74 1.86 21.53 15.01 LibertyGlobalA LBTYA ... dd 18.10 -1.18 -4.75 41.55 23.39 RentokilInit RTO 1.6 37 27.25 0.51 -0.70 38.05 23.62 WarnerMusic WMG 1.9 40 35.54 -0.39
s 13.86 66.86 45.92 BostonSci BSX ... 61 65.82 -0.27 -19.53 34.73 24.44 Equinor EQNR 3.8 7 25.46 0.29 s 15.92 211.13 110.45 Repligen RGEN ...103 208.42 2.39 s 12.46 168.33 126.12 WasteConnections WCN 0.7 57 167.87 2.42
n-

1.66 22.24 16.27 LibertyGlobalC LBTYK ... dd 18.95 -1.47

-2.83 71.98 47.58 BristolMyers BMY 4.8 13 49.86 0.42 2.73 34.82 21.89 Equitable EQH 2.6 10 34.21 -0.40 4.77 21.77 15.47 LibertyGlobalB LBTYB ... dd 18.66 -0.71 s 9.41 181.34 126.58 RepublicSvcs RSG 1.2 35 180.43 0.57 s 12.53 202.69 148.31 WasteMgt WM 1.4 36 201.54 2.43
4.13 38.90 28.35 BritishAmTob BTI 9.6 dd 30.50 -0.06 -6.18 74.04 60.47 EquityLife ELS 2.9 39 66.18 -0.28 7.95 69.48 55.08 LibertyFormOne A FWONA ... 33 62.59 0.71 4.91 243.52 132.24 ResMed RMD 1.1 30 180.46 -2.15 -1.22 335.40 231.90 Waters WAT ... 30 325.21 2.34
11.58 1295.97 572.10 Broadcom AVGO 1.7 38 1245.48 -19.59 -1.85 69.45 52.57 EquityResdntl EQR 4.4 28 60.03 -0.32 9.58 78.58 60.95 LibertyFormOne C FWONK ... 36 69.18 0.68 -1.20 79.94 59.99 RestaurantBrands QSR 3.0 21 77.19 1.17 -10.97 433.19 284.05 Watsco WSO 2.6 28 381.46 -15.91
-3.81 210.24 133.97 BroadridgeFinl BR 1.6 34 197.92 -0.38 s 7.43 362.93 199.49 ErieIndemnity ERIE 1.4 47 359.81 4.33 4.27 31.66 22.24 LibertySirius C LSXMK ... 16 30.01 -0.01 -6.27 139.04 79.50 Revvity RVTY 0.3 19 102.46 -1.61 s 3.86 102.88 51.46 WeatherfordIntl WFRD ... 18 101.61 -0.60
s 1.64 41.23 28.35 BrookfieldAsset BAM 3.3 11 40.83 -0.34 -3.11 46.37 32.07 EssentialUtil WTRG 3.4 20 36.19 -0.01 5.11 31.69 22.01 LibertySirius A LSXMA ... 16 30.21 0.04 -5.40 61.82 41.56 RexfordIndlRealty REXR 3.1 47 53.07 -0.12 -6.86 55.30 31.03 WebsterFin WBS 3.4 10 47.28 -0.86
0.57 41.59 28.25 Brookfield BN 0.8 66 40.35 -0.18 -5.07 252.85 195.03 EssexProp ESS 3.9 37 235.37 0.75 s 9.26 90.57 53.77 Light&Wonder LNW ... 65 89.71 0.58 -7.17 76.54 58.27 RioTinto RIO 5.8 13 69.12 1.58 5.47 52.45 35.25 WellsFargo WFC 2.7 11 51.91 -0.13
0.92 37.32 21.03 BrookfieldInfr BIP 5.1214 31.78 -0.06 0.08 260.46 102.22 EsteeLauder EL 1.8113 146.37 1.05 s 34.16 794.47 309.20 EliLilly LLY 0.7135 782.06 24.28 -30.52 28.06 11.68 Rivian RIVN ... dd 16.30 -0.05 3.28 94.63 65.18 Welltower WELL 2.6178 93.13 -0.61
no

-11.98 36.16 21.77 BrookfieldRenew BEPC 5.6 dd 25.34 -0.39 -5.53 133.49 58.20 Etsy ETSY ... 32 76.57 -1.19 s 14.92 252.97 152.36 LincolnElectric LECO 1.1 27 249.90 0.10 -8.05 88.39 64.65 RobertHalf RHI 2.6 21 80.84 -1.41 -16.22 195.43 121.91 WescoIntl WCC 1.0 11 145.68 -1.76
s 16.28 83.31 52.82 Brown&Brown BRO 0.6 27 82.69 -0.04 4.04 417.92 331.08 Everest EG 1.9 6 367.87 -6.51 s 5.09 434.77 319.23 Linde LIN 1.2 34 431.63 2.94 s 9.89 14.36 7.91 Robinhood HOOD ... dd 14.00 0.58 2.82 415.73 303.79 WestPharmSvcs WST 0.2 46 362.05 11.35
-0.94 72.65 53.52 Brown-Forman A BF.A 1.5 36 59.03 -0.28 -4.16 63.93 46.92 Evergy EVRG 5.1 17 50.03 0.09 -11.38 331.96 203.65 LithiaMotors LAD 0.7 8 291.81 -12.47 -6.15 47.65 24.88 Roblox RBLX ... dd 42.91 -1.53 3.11 60.55 31.97 WesternDigital WDC 0.0 dd 54.00 -2.01
1.35 71.27 52.59 Brown-Forman B BF.B 1.5 36 57.87 -0.14 -4.62 81.36 52.03 EversourceEner ES 4.9 dd 58.87 0.25 -0.37 101.74 64.25 LiveNationEnt LYV ... 64 93.25 -0.58 -21.48 15.19 7.17 RocketCos. RKT 0.0 dd 11.37 -0.33 -0.38 30.20 23.79 WesternMidstrm WES 7.9 11 29.15 0.41
11.35 84.84 53.79 Bruker BRKR 0.2 28 81.82 1.72 -17.59 100.77 58.37 ExactSciences EXAS ... dd 60.97 -0.12 -10.46 2.56 1.88 LloydsBanking LYG 5.7 ... 2.14 0.07 -9.91 348.52 252.11 Rockwell ROK 1.8 27 279.72 -0.41 s 2.99 145.98 102.64 Westlake WLK 1.4 15 144.15 -0.10
10.09 189.40 76.69 BuildersFirst BLDR ... 16 183.79 -3.13 -2.76 43.71 33.34 Exelon EXC 4.1 16 34.91 0.05 -6.44 508.10 393.77 LockheedMartin LMT 3.0 15 424.07 0.95 -2.48 50.00 36.55 RogersComm B RCI 3.2 38 45.65 0.14 s 5.27 43.86 26.84 WestRock WRK 2.8 dd 43.71 0.40
-9.18 116.59 86.10 BungeGlobal BG 2.9 7 91.68 1.02 -10.90 160.05 87.94 Expedia EXPE 0.0 25 135.25 -3.28 6.83 75.38 52.85 Loews L 0.3 12 74.34 -0.88 3.21 13.24 6.58 RoivantSciences ROIV ... 2 11.59 0.14 -5.12 35.14 27.65 Weyerhaeuser WY 2.4 29 32.99 -0.43
0.35 228.94 115.66 BurlingtonStrs BURL ... 43 195.17 -2.04 -2.39 131.17 102.89 ExpeditorsIntl EXPD 1.1 23 124.16 -1.76 -9.64 96.66 50.26 LogitechIntl LOGI 1.4 28 85.90 -1.51 -21.45 108.84 51.62 Roku ROKU ... dd 72.00 -22.50 -9.99 52.76 38.37 WheatonPrecMet WPM 1.4 38 44.41 0.08
s 13.08 369.06 275.79 CACI Intl CACI ... 22 366.21 3.65 -11.70 170.30 101.19 ExtraSpaceSt EXR 4.6 26 141.57 -0.20 1.93 237.21 181.85 Lowe's LOW 1.9 17 226.85 -1.48 -6.00 45.04 32.19 Rollins ROL 1.5 46 41.05 -0.67 -1.49 37.45 27.80 Williams WMB 5.5 13 34.31 0.12
0.04 96.00 64.63 CBRE Group CBRE ... 29 93.13 -1.17 3.75 120.70 95.77 ExxonMobil XOM 3.7 12 103.73 ... -11.88 10.95 2.54 Lucid LCID ... dd 3.71 0.08 0.07 562.69 416.77 RoperTech ROP 0.5 43 545.57 -2.41 12.05 231.16 109.44 Williams-Sonoma WSM 1.6 16 226.10 3.18
6.18 247.63 160.66 CDW CDW 1.0 30 241.37 -1.38 1.88 199.49 127.05 F5 FFIV ... 24 182.35 -1.19 -12.07 516.39 286.57 lululemon LULU ... 57 449.60 -9.38 4.11 146.42 99.00 RossStores ROST 0.9 29 144.08 -0.31 s 14.97 278.70 195.29 WillisTowers WTW 1.2 28 277.31 -0.13
-2.26 87.90 60.08 CF Industries CF 2.6 10 77.70 0.90 3.35 229.02 90.19 Fabrinet FN ... 28 196.70 -5.45 19.48 19.43 7.85 Lyft LYFT ... dd 17.91 -1.12 -3.26 103.45 77.90 RoyalBkCanada RY 4.2 13 97.83 -0.14 12.67 53.46 34.40 WillScotMobile WSC ... 35 50.14 0.03
s 7.12 116.08 88.74 CGI A GIB ... 22 114.84 -0.83 -3.91 487.79 377.89 FactSet FDS 0.9 37 458.42 -5.60 2.76 102.05 81.24 LyondellBasell LYB 5.1 15 97.70 0.23 -10.35 133.77 59.37 RoyalCaribbean RCL 0.0 19 116.09 -1.72 s 24.43 324.87 150.08 Wingstop WING 0.3139 319.26 4.11
-16.37 106.36 71.57 CH Robinson CHRW 3.4 27 72.25 -1.45 10.14 1336.38 650.00 FairIsaac FICO ... 72 1282.06 -20.64 -10.18 147.82 101.82 RoyalGold RGLD 1.5 30 108.65 -0.62 s 15.44 6.45 4.32 Wipro WIT 0.3 25 6.43 0.25
0.79 223.80 174.01 CME Group
-1.38 63.76 49.87 CMS Energy
CME 2.2 24 212.26 1.24
CMS 3.6 19 57.27 0.05
8.45 70.95 50.30 Fastenal FAST 2.2 35 70.24
-2.55 109.86 85.27 FederalRealty FRT 4.3 36 100.42
0.09
-1.79
MN 6.51 38.19 25.92 RoyaltyPharma RPRX
6.79 50.64 35.10 RyanSpecialty RYAN
2.8 12 29.92
... 97 45.94
-0.11
0.47
3.45 134.21 73.39 Wix.com WIX ... dd 127.26
-5.07 25.96 19.02 WoodsideEnergy WDS 11.0 6 20.02
-1.16
-0.19
5.06 47.37 36.17 CNA Fin CNA 4.0 10 44.45 -0.29 -6.08 285.53 190.83 FedEx FDX 2.1 16 237.59 1.07 0.90 160.72 108.53 M&T Bank MTB 3.8 9 138.31 0.60 4.47 142.75 86.36 Ryanair RYAAY 1.0 14 139.32 -1.33 1.15 150.00 88.30 Woodward WWD 0.7 29 137.70 -0.36
-0.25 17.05 9.77 CNH Indl CNHI 3.2 7 12.15 -0.20 s 3.07 200.55 123.17 Ferguson FERG 1.6 23 198.99 0.60 -4.79 51.35 34.12 MGM Resorts MGM 0.0 13 42.54 -0.56 14.44 181.94 112.57 SAP SAP 0.9 60 176.91 -0.69 9.93 33.74 24.46 WooriFinl WF 5.5 4 33.22 0.85
s 12.19 77.96 46.06 CRH CRH 1.7 20 77.59 1.44 15.01 393.59 252.17 Ferrari RACE 0.5 52 389.23 0.13 s 21.26 127.72 63.44 MKS Instrum MKSI 0.7 dd 124.74 0.89 -3.85 461.16 321.14 S&P Global SPGI 0.9 51 423.57 -0.92 9.64 308.95 174.06 Workday WDAY ...1280 302.67 -2.42
5.91 37.39 27.60 CSX CSX 1.3 20 36.72 -0.28 2.69 52.93 31.84 FidNatlFinl FNF 3.7 22 52.39 -0.23 6.29 39.22 33.03 MPLX MPLX 8.7 10 39.03 0.15 -18.48 283.21 185.23 SBA Comm SBAC 1.6 46 206.80 -5.17 15.39 117.86 81.65 WynnResorts WYNN 1.0 18 105.13 -0.35
-2.36 88.75 64.41 CVS Health CVS 3.5 12 77.10 0.50 5.96 69.65 46.91 FidNatlInfo FIS 3.3 dd 63.65 ... 0.55 617.39 451.55 MSCI MSCI 1.1 40 568.75 -6.97 3.65 67.56 52.20 SEI Investments SEIC 1.4 19 65.87 -0.28 -4.60 27.71 10.30 XP XP 10.6 19 24.87 -0.22
6.58 315.70 189.30 CadenceDesign CDNS ... 76 290.30 -5.37 -1.62 37.05 22.11 FifthThirdBncp FITB 4.1 11 33.93 0.03 -7.01 65.27 46.71 MagnaIntl MGA 3.5 13 54.94 -0.68 1.36 22.61 18.26 SK Telecom SKM 5.1 10 21.69 -0.03 37.49 122.10 29.02 XPO XPO ... 76 120.43 -0.61
-9.32 60.27 38.33 CaesarsEnt CZR ... 13 42.51 -0.65 6.77 1552.00 505.84 FirstCitizBcshA FCNCA 0.4 2 1514.99 -18.92 13.23 258.91 133.81 ManhattanAssoc MANH ... 86 243.81 -3.59 -0.48 218.74 137.53 SPS Commerce SPSC ...109 192.91 -3.76 -4.59 71.96 53.73 XcelEnergy XEL 3.5 18 59.07 0.06
-3.15 120.65 82.81 CamdenProperty CPT 4.3 26 96.16 -1.21 -1.98 24.90 8.99 FirstHorizon FHN 4.3 9 13.88 -0.19 s 11.72 24.89 17.07 ManulifeFinl MFC 3.6 12 24.69 -0.10 s 3.85 64.20 46.61 SS&C Tech SSNC 1.5 27 63.46 -0.49 -34.75 23.62 7.50 XPeng XPEV ... dd 9.52 0.36
-2.13 51.33 23.69 Cameco CCJ 0.2 69 42.18 -0.14 3.93 55.23 40.44 FirstIndRlty FR 2.7 26 54.74 0.41 14.06 42.95 22.13 Maplebear CART ... dd 26.77 0.54 -0.41 39.61 31.01 STAG Indl STAG 3.8 37 39.10 -0.02 8.25 125.00 87.59 Xylem XYL 1.2 46 123.79 -0.63
-4.12 56.04 37.94 CampbellSoup CPB 3.6 16 41.45 0.17 -8.88 232.00 129.22 FirstSolar FSLR ... 36 156.97 -2.81 -3.23 29.56 20.57 MarathonOil MRO 1.8 9 23.38 0.14 23.39 571.64 244.69 Saia SAIA ... 41 540.73 -11.80 -1.98 18.82 8.73 YPF YPF 0.0 7 16.85 -0.15
-4.69 48.91 34.35 CIBC CM 5.5 12 45.88 0.17 1.99 41.99 32.18 FirstEnergy FE 4.4 19 37.39 0.09 14.59 173.32 104.32 MarathonPetrol MPC 1.9 7 170.01 -1.30 10.10 295.24 159.66 Salesforce CRM ...110 289.72 -2.22 2.98 143.25 115.53 Yum!Brands YUM 2.0 24 134.55 -0.85
s 3.36 130.53 103.96 CanNtlRlwy CNI 1.9 21 129.85 -0.06 1.96 171.94 131.75 FirstService FSV 0.6 74 165.27 -2.25 2.93 1560.00 1186.56 Markel MKL ... 10 1461.50 -8.16 3.18 36.91 15.32 Samsara IOT ... dd 34.44 -0.54 -2.57 64.70 33.55 YumChina YUMC 1.5 21 41.34 0.49
-3.66 68.74 48.81 CanadianNatRscs CNQ 4.6 13 63.12 0.20 s 11.44 148.65 103.99 Fiserv FI ... 30 148.04 0.03 -25.20 399.78 200.01 MarketAxess MKTX 1.4 32 219.04 -1.46 -7.14 57.82 42.63 Sanofi SNY 3.0 13 46.18 -0.21 -13.16 30.05 15.89 ZTO Express ZTO 0.0 12 18.48 0.35
s 7.99 86.26 68.92 CdnPacKC CP 0.7 27 85.38 -0.35 -10.86 220.19 144.57 FiveBelow FIVE ... 39 190.01 0.45 7.15 250.75 153.56 Marriott MAR 0.9 24 241.63 1.14 39.59 159.89 55.25 SareptaTherap SRPT ... dd 134.61 9.72 0.78 329.60 194.59 ZebraTech ZBRA ... 48 275.46 -8.29
4.66 140.86 83.93 CapitalOne COF 1.7 11 137.23 0.87 -3.89 298.48 185.03 FleetCorTech FLT ... 21 271.62 -3.76 5.72 202.81 151.86 Marsh&McLen MMC 1.4 27 200.30 -0.69 -6.67 62.12 42.73 Schlumberger SLB 2.3 17 48.57 -0.01 -5.29 61.13 33.80 Zillow C Z ... dd 54.80 -3.12
3.62 111.40 68.53 CardinalHealth CAH 1.9 41 104.45 -0.49 27.37 29.02 14.14 Flex FLEX ... 17 28.22 -0.35 s 8.21 550.79 317.94 MartinMarietta MLM 0.5 29 539.87 4.23 -6.40 81.32 45.00 SchwabC SCHW 1.6 25 64.40 -0.23 -7.00 59.23 33.23 Zillow A ZG ... dd 52.75 -3.08
9.44 350.99 203.66 Carlisle CSL 1.0 22 341.92 -3.36 -0.56 116.70 76.30 Floor&Decor FND ... 43 110.94 0.85 9.92 73.53 36.64 MarvellTech MRVL 0.4 dd 66.29 -1.15 11.09 88.84 34.35 Sea SE ... 40 44.99 1.00 2.47 149.25 102.00 ZimmerBiomet ZBH 0.8 26 124.71 0.31
9.56 46.00 25.20 Carlyle CG 3.1 78 44.58 -0.29 s 7.45 43.24 25.69 Fluor FLR 0.0 68 42.09 -0.69 9.23 76.43 46.69 Masco MAS 1.6 18 73.16 -0.32 2.52 92.04 54.32 Seagate STX 3.2 dd 87.52 -0.64 -4.55 201.92 151.03 Zoetis ZTS 0.9 37 188.39 -1.26
-6.33 87.50 55.77 CarMax KMX ... 23 71.88 -2.45 s 19.21 217.23 148.00 FlutterEnt FLUT ... dd 213.39 -0.91 s 9.76 474.17 340.21 Mastercard MA 0.6 40 468.13 -3.15 -5.67 80.16 63.75 Sempra SRE 3.4 16 70.49 -0.01 -13.61 77.10 58.87 ZoomVideo ZM ... 83 62.12 -1.92
-20.17 19.74 8.37 Carnival CCL 0.0 dd 14.80 -0.42 2.34 143.43 85.66 FomentoEconMex FMX 1.1 13 133.40 -8.69 2.99 49.24 27.85 MatchGroup MTCH ... 17 37.59 -0.06 7.58 30.76 12.43 SentinelOne S ... dd 29.52 -0.48 14.08 259.61 84.93 Zscaler ZS ... dd 252.75 -0.41

Mutual Funds Data provided by

Fund
Net YTD
NAV Chg %Ret Fund
Net YTD
NAV Chg %Ret Fund
Net YTD
NAV Chg %Ret Fund
Net YTD
NAV Chg %Ret Fund
Net YTD
NAV Chg %Ret Fund
Net YTD
NAV Chg %Ret Fund
Net YTD
NAV Chg %Ret
Federated Hermes Int Balanc 27.79 -0.12 3.2 Growth A 130.35 -0.70 6.3 Northern Funds LrgCpGrIdxInst 55.70 -0.35 7.4 TotBdAdml 9.48 -0.03 -1.9 IdxIntl 18.64 +0.05 0.1
Top 250 mutual-funds listings for Nasdaq-published share classes by net assets. TtlRtnBdI 9.36 -0.03 -1.8 BluCh 189.45 -1.52 9.3 RisDv A 90.81 -0.13 2.7 StkIdx 51.50 -0.24 5.1 VANGUARD ADMIRAL TotIntBdIdxAdm 19.46 -0.02
-1.2 MdCpGrAdml 96.66 -0.57 2.3
e-Ex-distribution. f-Previous day’s quotation. g-Footnotes x and s apply. j-Footnotes e Fidelity BluChpGr K6 29.23 -0.25 8.9 Guggenheim Funds Tru Old Westbury Fds 500Adml 462.61 -2.16 5.1 TotIntlAdmIdx r 31.18 +0.09
0.1 MdCpVlAdml 75.42 -0.39 0.5
and s apply. k-Recalculated by Lipper, using updated data. p-Distribution costs apply, 500IdxInstPrem174.01 -0.81 5.1 Contra 18.03 -0.12 12.1 TotRtnBdFdClInst 23.33 -0.08 -1.5 LrgCpStr NA ... NA BalAdml 45.53 -0.19 2.1 TotStAdml 120.95 -0.63 4.7 SmValAdml 77.45 -0.56 0.1
12b-1. r-Redemption charge may apply. s-Stock split or dividend. t-Footnotes p and r Contrafund K6 25.73 -0.17 11.7 ContraK 18.09 -0.13 12.2 Harbor Funds Parnassus Fds CAITAdml 11.40 -0.01 -0.3 TxMCapAdml259.22 -1.28 4.9 TotBd2 9.36 -0.03 -2.0
apply. v-Footnotes x and e apply. x-Ex-dividend. z-Footnote x, e and s apply. NA-Not ExtMktIdxInstPre 79.74 -0.73 2.2 CpInc 9.73 -0.02 1.5 CapApInst 106.96 -0.63 10.9 ParnEqFd 57.21 -0.16 3.8 CapOpAdml r186.85 -0.55 4.3 TxMIn r 15.43 +0.02
0.2 TotIntlInstIdx r124.67 +0.34 0.1
available due to incomplete price, performance or cost data. NE-Not released by Lipper; Harding Loevner PGIM Funds Cl Z DivAppIdxAdm 47.63 -0.15 3.0 TotItlInstPlId r124.70 +0.34 0.1
FidSerToMarket 16.43 -0.09 4.7 GroCo 34.79 -0.21 9.0 USGroAdml 159.34 -1.25 8.6
data under review. NN-Fund not tracked. NS-Fund didn’t exist at start of period. IntlEq 25.72 +0.06 NA TotalReturnBond 11.80 -0.04
GrowthCompanyK6 24.65 -0.15 9.8 InvGrBd 9.87 -0.04 -1.8 NA EMAdmr 34.14 +0.18 -0.1 ValAdml 59.93 -0.14
2.8 TotSt 120.92 -0.62 4.7
Invesco Funds A PIMCO Fds Instl EqIncAdml 84.97 -0.13 0.8 VANGUARD INSTL FDS
IntlIdxInstPrem 47.82 +0.15 1.0 LowP 44.63 -0.03 1.3 WdsrllAdml 78.48 -0.32 3.2
Friday, February 16, 2024 EqIncA 10.25 -0.03 1.7 AllAsset 10.95 -0.01 NA ExplrAdml 106.25 -0.66 2.9 BalInst 45.53 -0.20 2.1
LgCpGwId InstPre 31.70 -0.19 7.5 Magin 13.49 -0.06 9.6 WellsIAdml 59.68 -0.11 -1.3
Invesco Funds Y
Net YTD Net YTD Net YTD MidCpInxInstPrem 30.53 -0.17 1.9 NASDAQ 200.00 -1.65 5.2 TotRt 8.48 -0.03 -1.5 ExtndAdml 127.37 -1.17 2.2 WelltnAdml 72.77 -0.25 1.9 DevMktsIndInst 15.46 +0.03 0.2
Fund NAV Chg %Ret Fund NAV Chg %Ret Fund NAV Chg %Ret DevMktY 38.07 +0.05 -1.4 PIMCO Funds A GNMAAdml 9.11 -0.04 -2.1 DevMktsInxInst 24.16 +0.05 0.2
SAIUSLgCpIndxFd 20.74 -0.10 5.1 OTC 19.63 -0.14 7.3 JHF III DispVal WndsrAdml 72.17 -0.14 -0.4
AB Funds SmCpA 66.72 -0.31 0.7 EmgMktVa 29.51 +0.25 0.3 SeriesBondFd 8.86 -0.03 -1.9 Puritn 24.37 -0.11 4.6 IncomeFd 10.50 -0.03 -0.4 GroIncAdml 96.09 -0.53 6.5
VANGUARD FDS
ExtndInst 127.37 -1.16 2.2
DispValMCI 27.89 -0.11 1.9 GrwthAdml 171.57 -1.14 7.2 GrwthInst 171.58 -1.14 7.2
MuniIncmShares 11.05 -0.01 -0.1 TxExA 12.38 -0.01 -0.4 EmMktCorEq 22.41 +0.15 ... SeriesOverseas 13.41 +0.05 3.4 SAIUSQtyIdx 20.82 -0.13 7.5 PIMCO Funds I2 DivdGro 38.43 -0.08 3.3
John Hancock
AB Funds - ADV WshA 59.35 -0.11 3.8 IntlCoreEq 15.24 +0.02 -0.5 SerLTTreBdIdx 5.53 -0.03 -5.2 SrsEmrgMkt 17.39 +0.04 0.3 Income 10.50 -0.03 -0.4 HlthCareAdml r 91.72 +0.58 4.0
IntlVal 40.44 +0.12 0.2
InPrSeIn 9.26 -0.01 -1.3
BondR6 13.33 -0.05 -1.6 HYCorAdml r 5.36 -0.01 -0.3 InstIdx 413.72 -1.93 5.1
LgCpGrAdv 100.59 -0.88 8.4 Artisan Funds IntSmCo 18.96 +0.03 -1.8 SmCpIdxInstPrem 25.15 -0.35 0.4 SrsGlobal 13.92 +0.05 0.5 PIMCO Funds Instl LifeCon 20.39 -0.05 0.1
JPMorgan I Class
American Century Inv IntlVal Inst 46.46 -0.01 1.1 IntSmVa 20.87 +0.06 -1.7 TMktIdxInstPrem137.98 -0.73 4.7 SrsGroCoRetail 21.27 -0.13 9.2 IncomeFd 10.50 -0.03 -0.3 InfProAd 22.74 -0.02 -1.3
LifeGro 42.26 -0.09 2.0
InstPlus 413.71 -1.94 5.1
CoreBond 10.10 -0.03 -1.7 IntlGrAdml 104.35 +0.02 2.5 InstTStPlus 86.24 -0.45 4.7
Ultra 79.56 -0.40 6.8 Baird Funds LgCo 33.24 -0.16 5.1 TotalMarketIndex 17.41 -0.09 4.8 SrsIntlGrw 17.85 +0.06 4.2 EqInc 23.31 -0.01 1.6
Price Funds LifeMod 30.76 -0.07 1.0
ITBondAdml 10.11 -0.04 -2.0 MidCpInst 64.46 -0.35 1.3
American Funds Cl A AggBdInst 9.66 -0.03 -1.8 US CoreEq1 37.64 -0.22 4.4 TtlIntIdxInstPr 13.18 +0.05 0.2 SrsIntlVal 11.73 +0.02 0.5 LgCpGwth 66.83 -0.49 11.1 BlChip 163.55 -1.02 9.5 PrmcpCor 33.14 -0.02 4.4
AmcpA 40.37 -0.26 5.9 CorBdInst 9.98 -0.03 -1.6 US CoreEq2 33.72 -0.20 3.8 USBdIdxInstPrem 10.19 -0.03 -1.9 TotalBond 9.39 -0.03 -1.6 JPMorgan R Class DivGro 73.27 +0.01 3.5 ITIGradeAdml 8.49 -0.03 -1.6
STAR 27.18 -0.09 1.2
MidCpIstPl 317.90 -1.75 1.3
AMutlA 52.16 -0.08 2.3 BlackRock Funds US Small 44.39 -0.44 0.1 Fidelity Advisor I Fidelity SAI CoreBond 10.12 -0.03 -1.5 Growth 93.81 -0.60 8.3 LarCapAd 116.00 -0.54 5.2
TgtRe2020 26.95 -0.06 0.3
SmCapInst 103.58 -0.93 1.4
BalA 32.67 -0.11 2.1 HiYldBd Inst 7.00 -0.01 0.3 US SmCpVal 44.56 -0.50 -0.8 Total Bd 9.38 -0.03 -1.6 TotalBd 8.89 -0.03 -1.5 CorePlusBd 7.13 -0.02 -1.4 LgCapGow I 71.63 -0.46 8.9 LTGradeAdml 7.76 -0.04 -4.0
TgtRe2025 18.52 -0.04 0.8
SmCapIstPl 298.96 -2.71 1.4

BondA 11.20 -0.05 -2.0 BlackRock Funds III US TgdVal 31.54 -0.34 -1.1 Lord Abbett I MidCap 103.86 -0.09 3.8 MidCpAdml 291.79 -1.60 1.3 STIGradeInst 10.16 -0.02 -0.2
Fidelity Freedom U.S.TreBdIdx 8.63 -0.02 -1.9 TgtRe2030 35.88 -0.09 1.1
4.6 MuHYAdml STIPSIxins 23.83 -0.01
10.65 -0.01 -0.1 ...
CapIBA 66.04 -0.07 -0.3 iShS&P500IdxK587.59 -2.74 5.1 USLgVa 45.69 -0.15 2.6 FF2030 16.77 -0.03 1.2 Fidelity Selects ShtDurInc p 3.84 ... 0.4 NHoriz 58.83 +0.03
TgtRe2035 22.46 -0.05 1.5
R2025 15.92 -0.02 1.3
MuIntAdml 13.66 ... -0.3 TotBdInst 9.48 -0.03 -1.9
CapWGrA 62.02 -0.01 3.2 BlackRock Funds Inst Dodge & Cox FF2040 10.77 -0.02 2.7 Semiconductors r 27.78 -0.25 14.6 Metropolitan West
MuLTAdml 10.91 ... -0.4 TgtRe2040 40.03 -0.09 1.9 TotBdInst2 9.36 -0.03 -2.0
EupacA 56.27 +0.10 2.9 EqtyDivd 19.60 -0.03 2.2 Balanced 101.29 -0.22 0.1 Freedom2030 K 16.75 -0.04 1.2 Softwr 29.05 -0.37 5.0 TotRetBdI 8.94 -0.04 NA R2030 24.34 -0.04 1.7
TgtRe2045 27.25 -0.06 2.2
MuLtdAdml 10.82 ... ... TotBdInstPl 9.48 -0.03 -1.9
FdInvA 75.08 -0.25 5.0 StratIncOpptyIns 9.34 -0.02 -0.4 GblStock 14.79 ... -0.9 TRBdPlan 8.38 -0.04 NA R2040 28.36 -0.04 2.6
Freedom2035 K 14.78 -0.03 1.9 Tech 30.79 -0.32 8.0 MuShtAdml 15.74 -0.01 0.1 TgtRe2050 45.52 -0.10 2.4 TotIntBdIdxInst 29.20 -0.04 -1.2
GwthA 67.45 -0.53 6.8 TotRet 9.81 -0.03 -1.4 Income 12.41 -0.04 -1.7 MFS Funds Schwab Funds
Freedom2040 K 10.77 -0.02 2.7 First Eagle Funds PrmcpAdml r161.76 -0.42 3.5 TgtRe2060 46.80 -0.09 2.4 TotStInst 120.97 -0.63 4.7
HI TrA 9.45 -0.02 0.3 Calamos Funds Intl Stk 47.85 +0.23 -2.7 IIE 33.26 +0.08 1.0 1000 Inv r 107.50 -0.54 5.0
Idx2030InsPre 19.08 -0.04 0.9 GlbA 63.91 -0.13 1.3 RealEstatAdml119.63 -1.18 -4.4 TgtRet2055 50.79 -0.11 2.4 ValueInst 59.93 -0.13 2.8
ICAA 52.67 -0.27 4.5 MktNeutI 14.33 +0.01 1.1 Stock 247.14 -0.94 1.5 MFS Funds Class I S&P Sel 76.86 -0.36 5.1
Idx2035InsPre 21.81 -0.05 1.4 Franklin A1 SmCapAdml 103.58 -0.94 1.4 TgtRetInc 13.01 -0.02 -0.1 WCM Focus Funds
IncoA 23.37 -0.03 -0.3 Columbia Class I DoubleLine Funds GrowthI 190.07 -1.01 10.5 TSM Sel r 84.80 -0.45 4.7
Idx2040InsPre 22.67 -0.05 2.1 IncomeA1 2.29 ... -0.8
ValueI 48.83 -0.07 2.6 TIAA/CREF Funds
SmGthAdml 87.49 -0.98 3.0 Welltn 42.14 -0.15 1.9 WCMFocIntlGrwIns 24.58 +0.13 8.0
N PerA 58.26 -0.14 4.2 DivIncom I 31.39 -0.03 3.2 TotRetBdI 8.66 -0.03 -1.7 Idx2045InsPre 23.71 -0.05 2.4 FrankTemp/Frank Adv STBondAdml 10.01 -0.02 -0.5 WndsrII 44.24 -0.18 3.2 Western Asset
Natixis Funds EqIdxInst 35.26 -0.19 4.7
NEcoA 57.11 -0.37 5.8 Dimensional Fds Edgewood Growth Instituti Idx2050InsPre 23.75 -0.05 2.4 IncomeAdv 2.27 ... -0.8 STIGradeAdml 10.16 -0.02 -0.2 VANGUARD INDEX FDS CoreBondI 10.50 -0.04 NA
LSGrowthY 25.03 -0.23 7.7 IntlEqIdxInst 22.07 +0.04 1.0
NwWrldA 76.48 +0.13 1.9 5GlbFxdInc 10.03 ... 0.7 EdgewoodGrInst 47.98 -0.58 NA
Fidelity Invest FrankTemp/Franklin A STIPSIxAdm 23.81 -0.02 ... ExtndIstPl 314.32 -2.87 2.2 CorePlusBdI 9.27 -0.03 NA
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

B10 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Streaming Giants Weigh Teaming Up Icahn and
JetBlue
Paramount has held
talks with Comcast
from spending on program-
ming to marketing—and create
a more in-depth offering for
Streaming-service prices
With ads
Monthly price
Without ads
the group of investors he is
leading, and merge the Para-
mount movie and TV studio
or 3% of its workforce.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire
Hathaway, which was the big-
Reach Deal
about partnership or
venture in the space
consumers, especially with re-
gard to live sports. A commer-
cial partnership or joint ven-
$0 5 10 15 20

JESSICA TOONKEL
AND AMOL SHARMA
ture are among
arrangements the companies
could pursue.
the
Entertainment companies
Paramount Global has held across the industry are explor-
recent talks with Comcast ing new streaming bundles and
about joining forces in stream- ventures to gain scale, attract
ing through a partnership or more customers and help alle-
joint venture, among several viate the costs of running their
potential strategic options the direct-to-consumer services
entertainment company is pur- amid declines in pay TV sub-
suing, said people familiar with scribers. Last week, Walt Dis-
the situation. ney’s ESPN, Fox Corp. and
Paramount’s flagship ser- Warner Bros. Discovery an-
vice, Paramount+, is home to nounced they were combining
“Star Trek” programming, orig- forces to create a sports
inals such as “1883” and simul- streaming joint venture.
casts of CBS football games, Paramount and its parent
while Comcast’s Peacock is company, National Amuse-
known for live soccer and foot- ments, have been exploring a
ball, originals like “Poker Face,” range of potential strategic op-
and a deep library with shows tions in recent months as the
such as “The Office.” entertainment company, owner
Bringing the two streaming of the Paramount movie studio
apps under one roof could pro- and cable channels such as
duce significant cost savings— Nickelodeon and MTV, faces
Hulu
into Skydance. While Para-
mount and Skydance have
started diligence, the transac-
Max
tion would be complicated and
it is unclear whether they
would reach a deal.
Meanwhile, Paramount CEO
Netflix Bob Bakish has had conversa-
tions with Warner Bros. Dis-
Disney+ covery CEO David Zaslav about
a merger, the Journal previ-
Paramount+ ously reported.
Some companies would have
Peacock interest in acquiring certain
pieces of Paramount, should it
Note: Monthly prices for each individual service
in the U.S. Ad-free prices are for the most
be broken up. Comcast has no
popular versions. plans to make major acquisi-
Source: the companies tions now, the company’s CEO
Brian Roberts told investors
continued headwinds in a me- late last month.
dia industry dominated by big- A weaker-than-expected ad
ger players. market and continued declines
Shari Redstone, boss of Na- in pay-TV subscribers have
tional Amusements, has had pushed Paramount to aggres-
talks with Skydance Media sively cut costs to meet its
Chief Executive David Ellison to promise to investors that it will
sell National Amusements, deliver positive earnings
which would include her con- growth in 2024. This week, the
trolling stake in Paramount, to company cut around 800 jobs,
gest owner of nonvoting shares
of Paramount as of Dec. 31,
sold about one-third of its
stake in the entertainment gi-
ant last quarter, a late Wednes-
day filing showed. Paramount
shares fell 4.7% Friday and the
stock is down almost 50% over
the past year, trading at $12 a
share.
Streamers are contending
with customers getting choos-
ier about how many streaming
services they pay for as the
costs of monthly subscriptions
rise. Many households have be-
come savvier at managing their
streaming bills, canceling sub-
scriptions when they are done
bingeing a popular show.
This isn’t the first time that
Comcast and Paramount have
discussed teaming up on
streaming offerings: The two
discussed partnerships a few
years ago, launching a joint
streaming service called Sky-
Showtime in several markets in
Europe in 2021.
For Seats
On Board
BY CARA LOMBARDO
Activist investor Carl Icahn
struck a deal for two JetBlue
Airways board seats just days
after he unveiled a nearly 10%
stake in the struggling airline.
The billionaire, who turns 88
years old Friday, and the airline
reached a settlement agreement
in which two of Icahn’s lieuten-
ants, Jesse Lynn and Steven
Miller, will join its board.
It is the second victory Icahn
has notched in the span of a
week—after American Electric
Power on Monday said it struck
an agreement to give him two
board seats—and a sign of his
continued sway in corporate
America, despite a short-seller
attack last year that curtailed
his ability to make big bets.
Icahn revealed his JetBlue

Dunkin’s Orange Super Bowl Apparel Is a Hit

stake Monday, saying in a filing
he believed the shares were un-
dervalued. That sent JetBlue’s
shares up 21% Tuesday, giving
the company a market value of
BY SURYATAPA BHATTACHARYA around $2.4 billion. The shares

.
AND VICTORIA ALBERT are still down sharply, having
lost more than half their value

ly
America may run on in the past few years.
Dunkin’, but only sprinters got JetBlue has been losing
the coffee chain’s sold-out cus- money and is plotting a new
tom tracksuits.
The neon-orange and pink
DunKings apparel worn by
Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and
on course after its plan to acquire
Spirit Airlines was blocked by a
federal judge. The companies
are appealing the ruling, though
Tom Brady in a now-viral Su- overturning it could be a long
us ,

per Bowl commercial went on shot and JetBlue has warned

l

sale Monday and disappeared Spirit it might have grounds to

e
al a

in minutes, the company said. terminate the deal anyway.

Dunkin’ then quadrupled its JetBlue’s incoming chief ex-
inventory, only to sell out ecutive, Joanna Geraghty, who
ci on

again. A fuzzy pink bucket hat took the helm the same day
and DunKings tumbler, which Icahn revealed his position, has
retailed for $40 apiece, sold pledged “aggressive action” to
out, too. get the carrier back on track.
The jacket and pants— Icahn encountered his own
er s

which featured crown-topped turbulence last year when Hin-

BRIGETTE BUCKNER/DUNKIN’/AP

doughnuts, gold flames and denburg Research argued his

m er

the Dunkin’ logo—retailed for publicly traded firm, Icahn En-

$60 each. On eBay, bidding terprises, was overvalued and
wars for the tracksuit topped held assets at inflated prices.
$300 on Thursday. The attack shaved billions off
Josh Rubinstein, a 32-year- the company’s value and Icahn’s
m rp

old account manager in At- net worth. For months, some on

lanta, was fast enough to snap The tracksuits modeled after the ones actor Ben Affleck and others wore in the Super Bowl ad sold out fast. Wall Street wondered if the oc-
up the set from Dunkin’. He togenarian would ever launch
plans to wear it on Halloween. in the smallest size. Hours Jonah Berger, an associate based talent platform, couldn’t Dunkin’ has released several an activist campaign again.
“I hate to admit, but I later, the page was gone. professor of marketing at the get his hands on a DunKings additional videos, including Throughout the saga, Icahn
co Fo

bought both,” he said, adding A spokesperson for Dunkin’
that the jacket and pants were said the company isn’t plan-
gone minutes after he made ning to restock the items.
his purchase. Dunkin’ is the latest food
He said the price tag felt brand to turn to fashion to
right for what he viewed as generate buzz and sales. Kraft
novelty pieces. “If it stays as a Real Mayo partnered with
limited drop, I think it was the Juicy Couture in 2022 for a
perfect price,” Rubinstein said. $150 limited-edition blue ve-
“If it becomes something that lour tracksuit meant as a nod
they sell all the time, every- to the early aughts. The New
where, then I think it’s expen- York-based fashion label Telfar
sive.” had a $120 shirt collaboration
n-
Wharton School of the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, said
these types of marketing cam-
paigns appeal to both brands
and consumers.
“[Brands] realized that peo-
ple love to show that they’re
smart, special, in-the-know to
others,” Berger said. “You
don’t have to be Louis Vuitton
to have limited-edition prod-
ucts. You can just be a more
accessible brand like
tracksuit.
If the 47-year-old had got-
ten one, he said, he would
have worn it to a friend’s wed-
ding rehearsal dinner in
March. “Hey, does this count
as cocktail attire?” Messinger
texted his soon-to-be married
friend.
The DunKings apparel was
part of a broad marketing
campaign tied to the coffee
chain’s Super Bowl spot. In the
behind-the-scenes footage, a
four-minute-plus extended cut
of the ad and a video with the
lyrics for Affleck’s song, “Don’t
Dunk Away at My Heart.”
Berger, the Wharton profes-
sor, said the tone of the adver-
tisements is key to winning
people over. “Do the people
that are buying the Dunkin’
tracksuit think that Dunkin’ is
selling the tracksuit for no
reason? No, they know Dunkin’
continued to agitate at gene-se-
quencing company Illumina,
which he had criticized for pur-
chasing Grail, the blood-test
maker it is now in the process
of divesting.
Unlike most people his age,
Icahn still works most days
from his Miami-area home of-
fice, and has said he has no
plans to stop. “The height of a
deal for me, there’s nothing like
it,” he told The Wall Street

Dunkin’ didn’t detail how with the burger chain White McDonald’s or a Dunkin’ Do- commercial, Affleck and his is a company that wants to Journal in 2019, the same year
many items it sold, but said its Castle in 2017. Canada’s Tim nuts and sell something at a boy band the DunKings—in- make money,” he said. “They he spent his birthday weekend
initial run disappeared in 19 Hortons, a Dunkin’ rival, cele- price point that’s much lower, cluding Brady and a reluctant know that Dunkin’ may be try- urging Caesars Entertainment
minutes. By Thursday after- brated National Coffee Day but appeals to your audience.” Damon—pitch a song to Af- ing to capitalize on a buzz, but to put itself up for sale.
no

noon, its additional inventory last year with a limited-edition Dave Messinger, chief tech- fleck’s wife, actress and singer they’re excited about it be- —Alison Sider
was down to only track pants apparel collection. nology officer at Torc, an AI- Jennifer Lopez. cause this feels authentic.” contributed to this article.

Financier Sneaker King Readies an Auction of His Prized Collection

BY JACOB GALLAGHER Now Nadal has decided to
cut short his reign as a
Five years ago, during an sneaker-collecting kingpin. On
idle afternoon at his lakeside June 1, he will be auctioning off
vacation home in Ontario, Ca- the bulk of his shoe collection.
nadian financier Miles Nadal Around 750 pairs will be up
purchased 99 of the rarest for grabs at R.M. Sotheby’s
sneakers in the world from So- auction house. They include
theby’s for $850,000. roughly 500 pairs of Air Jor-
His wife was out wakeboard- dans (some from as far back as
ing with the children, he was the mid-1980s) and shoes
sitting at his computer, and signed by O.J. Simpson, Tom
suddenly he had bought nearly Brady, Steph
100 high-value shoes. Nadal re- Curry and Joel
called telling his wife simply, “I Embiid. There
bought some shoes,” as if he will also be two The entire
were describing buying a lone pairs of Nike’s collection is
pair of Nikes from Zappos. rare Air Mag
That sale was Sotheby’s shoes and a pair expected to
first-ever sneaker auction. And of self-lacing
Nadal took home the entire lot. sneakers de-
notch well over
Days later, in a private sale, the signed to look $2 million.
financier, now 65, bought a like the futuris-
Nike prototype sneaker, the tic ones that
waffle-soled “Moon Shoe” from Marty McFly
1972, for $437,500, a then-re- wore in “Back to the Future
cord-shattering sum for a sin- Part II.” The entire collection is
gle pair of sneakers. estimated to notch well over $2
In the span of a week, this million, according to R.M. So-
kooky middle-aged investor theby’s.
had become perhaps the most Additionally, 144 of Nadal’s
unexpected sneaker collector in cars and motorcycles are being
the world. auctioned off, including an
While some analysts have million dollars apiece. He also
expected the high-end sneaker invested in NBA jerseys, racing
auction market to cool after a helmets and art. His sundry
pandemic buying bonanza, re- stockpiles were housed in his
cent sales have continued to “Dare to Dream” museum just
grab headlines. outside Toronto.
In early February, a series of Decades before becoming an
six sneakers that Michael Jor- investor, Nadal had worked
dan wore to win his six NBA through his advertising firm
championships sold at So- for companies like Asics and
theby’s for a record-setting $8 Adidas—the brands that would
million. later line his archive.
The finan- “I knew a fair bit about the
cier’s dream sneaker world, but I didn’t re-
would be for ally know about it as a collec-
someone to pur- tor at all,” said Nadal. Sneak-
chase the entire ers, he thought, “would be a
collection to- fun thing, a great complement
gether, as he did to the rest of our collections.”
with his 100 ini- Much the way art collectors
tial shoes, but hire advisers to shape their col-
Nadal admitted lections, Nadal hired Sean Go, a
that “the proba- popular sneaker YouTuber, to
bility of that is guide his sneaker investing.
not that high.” “Sean helped us take it from
Nadal first made his fortune a random fun activity to being
as the founder and long-time a more deliberate thoughtful
CEO of MDC Partners, owner of collection,” he said. Nadal’s col-
advertising agencies. Nadal lection has since grown to al-
stepped down from MDC in most 1,000 shoes, including a
2015 amid a Securities and Ex- pair of signed Air Jordan 1’s
change Commission investiga- from Jordan’s rookie season,
tion into his expenses and which he purchased in 2020 for
KEGUN MORKIN/RM SOTHEBYS

As Nadal, the founder of electric car from 1913 and vari- other matters. He agreed to $560,000.
Peerage Capital, an invest- ous high-value Ferraris, McLar- pay MDC $8.6 million for reim- According to R.M. Sotheby’s,
ment firm with holdings in the ens and Lamborghinis. That as- bursed expenses at the time. the proceeds from the sale of
real-estate, self-storage and sortment is estimated to sell Nadal got into collecting in the sneakers are “100% com-
wealth-management sec- for in excess of $60 million, 2000, when he purchased his mitted” to the Dare to Dream
tors, later said, “It became the though R.M. Sotheby’s is still first high-end auto. More cars Foundation, a charitable foun-
beginning of a trend that completing the assortment and would follow, with prices even- dation Nadal registered in
sneakers became walkable art.” estimates for the sale. tually creeping up to over a 2022. Michael Jordan autographed these shoes of Miles Nadal’s.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | B11

BUSINESS & FINANCE

NatWest Results Beat Expectations Goldman

Gives Its
British lender plans
to launch a £300
market, with analysts seeing
the view as conservative.
This follows bumper reve-
NatWest’s quarterly net
interest income
£3.0 billion £2.64B
return on tangible equity—a
key measure of profitability—
of around 12% for 2024, after
to shareholders are fine, but
any optimism was tempered
by news medium-term returns
Chief
million share
buyback in 2024
nue of £14.75 billion in 2023
driven by interest income,
which surpassed expectations 2.5
reporting 17.8% for 2023, and
sees this at more than 13% for
2026. The guidance is below
targets have been watered
down,” AJ Bell wrote, point-
ing to the share price reac-
Executive a
BY ELENA VARDON
of £14.6 billion.
Higher rates, lending
growth and a larger contribu-
2.0
its previous midterm 13% to
14% target, likely providing
the market with another
tion.
The appointment of In-
terim Chief Executive Paul
24% Raise
NatWest shares rose after tion from its markets business source of disappointment. Thwaite as permanent boss,
the British lender posted offset lower deposit balances 1.5 “Consensus is largely there, which was outlined alongside BY ANNAMARIA ANDRIOTIS
fourth-quarter earnings that and pressure on margins in so the downgrade has a bit of the results on Friday, removes
beat expectations, but said it the year, NatWest said. 1.0 a ‘kitchen sink’ feel to it,” a key uncertainty for the Goldman Sachs Chief Exec-
expects income to decline this In terms of net interest RBC Capital Markets said in a group as it provides continu- utive David Solomon made $31
year as higher interest rates margin—the difference be- note to clients. ity, according to analysts. million in 2023. That’s a 24%
0.5
start to taper off. tween what lenders earn on NatWest’s common equity The confirmation points to raise from the year before.
The stock rose 7% in Lon- loans and pay out on depos- Tier 1 ratio—a key measure of stable leadership and could His pay package consisted of
don trading to 229.50 pence, its—the group didn’t mention 0 balance-sheet strength—stood open the door to the retail a $2 million base salary and a
after opening in the red. its expectations for the year 2021 ’22 ’23 at 13.4% at Dec. 31, in line share offer that the Treasury cash bonus of $8.7 million. It
The bank said it sees total ahead, which frustrated ana- Note: £1 billion = $1.26 billion with expectations. is exploring to sell down its also included a stock award
income excluding notable lysts who closely watch the Source: S&P Capital IQ The lender—in which the stake in the bank later in the tied to how well the bank per-
items in 2024 coming in be- metric’s trajectory. For 2023, U.K. government has a 35% year. forms in the next few years
tween £13 billion and £13.5 it posted net interest margin analysts. Net interest income stake—added that it would “The government hold- valued at $20.3 million.
billion, or between $16.38 bil- of 3.04% in line with views, slipped compared with the launch an on-market £300 ing…has been an overhang on The board’s compensation
lion and $17.01 billion. with a continuing declining previous quarter to £2.64 bil- million share buyback in the shares for some consider- committee increased his pay to
While revising its expecta- margin at 2.86% for the last lion against consensus’ ex- 2024. It proposed a final divi- able time and its sale would reward Solomon’s “decisive
tions to adapt to an environ- three months of the year. pected £2.59 billion. Pretax dend of 11.5 pence a share, leave the bank free of these leadership in recognizing the
ment of anticipated falling in- For the quarter ended Dec. profit for the quarter was bringing the full-year payout shackles,” Interactive Investor need to clarify and simplify the
terest rates, NatWest’s 31, the group reported total £1.26 billion, beating esti- to 17 pence. said, adding that the results firm’s forward strategy,” Gold-
guidance was initially met income of £3.54 billion, ahead mates of £1.02 billion. “ B e tte r- t h a n - ex p e c te d increase the appeal to individ- man said in a filing. The bank
with disappointment by the of the £3.38 billion forecast by The bank also guided for a profitability and distributions ual investors. last year pulled back sharply
on its consumer-lending busi-
ness. It is now focusing on its

Coca-Cola Executive Talks About Sustainability

core Wall Street businesses and
asset and wealth management.
In 2021, he made $35 million
after Goldman posted a record
annual profit that was largely
BY ROCHELLE TOPLENSKY the beach that smelled awful. discipline of business plan- fueled by a surge in investment
I thought, How can I help en- ning. Embedding it into the banking activity. The bank at
Coca‑Cola sells around 2.2 sure that these beaches are operations, making sure that the time was expanding its

.
billion servings of drinks daily here for my children and my it is through the processes consumer-lending operations.
across more than 200 brands. grandchildren to enjoy? and systems. Make your plan- Goldman’s profit has fallen

ly
In 2022 it had a carbon foot- ning team your best friend, for two consecutive years,
print of 65 million metric WSJ Pro: Aside from flying, help them understand why thanks to a slowdown in deal-
tons, 88% of which was in its what is the most carbon- this is so important. Make making. It fell 24% in 2023,
value chain. The company
aims to reach net-zero emis-
sions by 2050 and has a num-
ber of other sustainability
heavy thing you do?
Perez: I do live in the
south, so while I know it is en-
ergy intensive, I do use air
on sure finance understands the
economic story. Once you’ve
done the work and assured
your data, then go to the mar-
worse than every other big U.S.
bank except Citigroup.
Goldman last year unwound
much of its consumer-lending
goals including ones for pack- conditioning often, but I am keters and talk to them about business. It shuttered its per-
us ,

aging, water use and sustain- conscious about length of use how to tell the story. sonal loan business and sold
l

able agriculture. and temperature. off most of those balances,

e
al a

Bea Perez joined the com- WSJ Pro: Coca-Cola linked ESG agreed to sell specialty lender
pany in 1994 and was ap- WSJ Pro: What are some of goals to the executive annual GreenSky at a steep discount
pointed as its first chief sus- and moved to offload the Gen-
ci on

the most important sustain- and long-term incentive pro-

tainability officer in 2011. At ability developments in recent grams. How did that happen? eral Motors credit-card part-
the start of this year, she was times? Perez: Sustainability was nership.
THE COCA-COLA COMPANY

promoted to executive vice Perez: Disclosure and part of the business plans and
president with global respon- greater transparency is crucial so the compensation commit-
sibility for sustainability, com- to how we all make a meaning- tee said, Why isn’t it in comp?
Swiss Re
er s

munications and strategic ful impact and make sure we’re We figured out what would be
partnerships. focused on the things that mat- required—we already had
m er

Perez spoke to WSJ Pro

about her company’s role in
creating a circular economy,
ter to society. The other piece is
having the discussion around
how these goals are intercon-
Bea Perez says disclosure and considering connections
between goals are basics that will unlock progress.
common definitions
needed a common tool to col-
but

lect the data and report it. So

Posts Rise
how Coca-Cola added sustain-
ability targets to its executive
nected. I’ve learned that I have
to look at water, packaging and Select Coca-Cola packaging metrics
we got a digital tool in place
and moved this into comp. We In Annual
m rp

compensation and the impor- climate all together because I 100% have two different key [sus-
tance of disclosure and trans-
parency to drive meaningful
impact.
don’t want to set a goal that
has an unintended impact.
Those things aren’t the big 80
Recyclable
packaging globally
tainability] metrics: water and
packaging. We’re only into our
second real year of having it
Net Profit
This interview has been ed- shiny toys, but these are some embedded into the compensa-
co Fo

ited for length and clarity. of the basics that will actually tion metrics at that level, and BY ADRIÀ CALATAYUD
unlock the impacts that we’re 60 Bottles/cans so far, it is driving the behav-
WSJ Pro: Where were you in all looking to make. collected & refilled iors and the outcomes that we Swiss Re reported a sharply
December 2015, when the or collected for would want to see happen. higher net profit for last year
Paris accord was agreed? WSJ Pro: What are your big, 40 recycling thanks to an improved perfor-
Perez: I was in Paris, it was thorny sustainability chal- WSJ Pro: Your total carbon mance in its property-and-ca-
one of my first COPs. We were lenges? Recycled material footprint increased between sualty reinsurance segment,
launching our Infineo recycling Perez: One is balancing be- 20 in total packaging 2021 and 2022. Why was that? where large natural-catastro-
facility in France. I remember tween the short term and the Perez: During the pandemic phe claims were below budget.
all the delays, people wonder- long term. Also, we don’t re- Recycled material [recycling] collection was very The Zurich-based reinsurer
in PET* packaging
ing what was going to happen. ally know what lies ahead, so 0 difficult because of the lock- said Friday that it made a net
We had a really lovely dinner to we have to leave some space 2018 ’19 ’20 ’21 ’22 downs, which meant we fell profit of $3.21 billion compared
celebrate that progress had for it. One frustration is when behind on rPET [recycled with $472 million in 2022.
n-

been made—in terms of at least I have to say no to some *Polyethylene terephthalate plastic Source: company polyethylene terephthalate It targeted a profit of more
the commitments. It was a things because we have to fo- plastic]. Now that things are than $3 billion in 2023, while
pretty exciting moment. cus on the things that matter change. Putting the infrastruc- tent—there were a few coun- opening up again, we’re start- analysts polled by FactSet had
most to society and the busi- ture in place where it doesn’t tries that didn’t allow us to ing to see progress made forecast $3.27 billion.
no

WSJ Pro: Did you have a ness—there’s a finite amount exist and investing with our actually go bottle to bottle. there. At the same time, we Swiss Re’s property-and-ca-
green epiphany? of resources. business. At the same time ad- have started to scale our new sualty segment was the larg-
Perez: I’ve been going to vocating for extended pro- WSJ Pro: Are there best prac- HFC-free refrigeration and est profit contributor with
Miami since I was a kid. About WSJ Pro: What part will the ducer responsibility, for de- tices that you would recom- we’re putting energy-manage- $1.86 billion, while its life-
20 years ago, I stood out on company play in building a posit schemes and to work mend? ment systems in place using and-health and corporate-so-
the beach I’ve known my sustainable future? with regulators to help them Perez: Start with the prior- renewable energy. Part of this lutions businesses also posted
whole life, it was so hot, there Perez: The circular econ- understand why these things ity matrix: what’s important too is making sure that the higher profits.
was bacteria in the water and omy is one area we’ve in- are important, such as allow- to your company and to your best practices are shared Large natural-catastrophe
this brown seaweed all over vested in to help drive that ing food-grade recycled con- stakeholder. And then it is the across the suppliers. claims amounted to $1.3 billion
last year, below the budget of
$1.7 billion, the company said.

SEC Asks Court to Rethink Ruling on BDO Audit Net premiums earned and
fee income rose to $45 billion
from $43.12 billion.
Swiss Re said it renewed
BY JONATHAN WEIL that the firm’s audit report was among investors about whether said it agreed that the court The SEC in a 2018 order had treaty contracts valued at $13.1
so general that an investor audit reports serve a useful pur- should reconsider its analysis accused three BDO accountants billion on Jan. 1, representing a
The Securities and Exchange wouldn’t have relied on it. Con- pose. Audit reports operate on a “to reflect that audit certifica- of signing off on their audit 9% volume increase compared
Commission asked a federal ap- sequently, the court said the au- pass-fail model, and their lan- tions convey crucial information work for AmTrust’s 2013 annual with the business that was up
peals court to reconsider its de- dit report wasn’t material— guage is standardized. to the investing public.” It said report without completing all for renewal and achieving a
cision last year in favor of the meaning it didn’t matter—and After the ruling, a trio of for- “audit certifications are not too the required audit procedures price rise of 9%.
accounting firm BDO in a share- upheld the dismissal of fraud mer SEC officials filed a brief general to be material,” and that beforehand. They agreed to be Swiss Re maintained its
holder lawsuit over its audit claims against BDO. with the court asking it to recon- “false audit certifications need suspended from auditing public profit target for 2024 of more
work for the insurance company The ruling, by the Second U.S. sider. The court then asked the not be tied to errors in financial companies, without admitting or than $3.6 billion.
AmTrust Financial Services. Circuit Court of Appeals, SEC to submit a brief expressing statements to be material.” denying the agency’s misconduct Its board proposed a divi-
The court in August ruled in prompted new debate within the its views on the subject. A BDO spokeswoman de- claims. The SEC didn’t allege any dend of $6.80 a share for 2023,
favor of BDO on the grounds accounting profession and In its brief Friday, the SEC clined to comment. violations by BDO. up 6% on the prior year.

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B12 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

MARKETS

Stock Investors Hit Pause on 2024 Rally

All three major U.S. ing the timing and extent of the Index performance Producer-price index for final creased by 0.4% in January, ac- quarterly results, with 75%
interest rate cuts that the cen- this past week demand, change from cording to forecasts from a posting earnings above esti-
indexes finished the tral bank has penciled in for Dow industrials previous month handful of Wall Street econo- mates, according to data com-
week lower after this year. S&P 500 Services PPI Goods mists. piled by FactSet.
“We need to see more robust Nasdaq Composite +0.6% +0.3% –0.2% The implications of a firm Housing data also disap-
inflation readings signs of inflation being under January inflation report are pointed. Housing starts in Jan-
0.5%
control before the Fed cuts 1.5% limited for the Fed because offi- uary fell 14.8% from December
BY RYAN DEZEMBER rates,” said Sumali Sanyal, se- cials have already signaled they to a seasonally adjusted annual
0
AND NICK TIMIRAOS nior portfolio manager, system- 1.0 are likely to hold rates steady at rate of 1.33 million homes, the
atic global equities at their meeting next month. Census Bureau said Friday. It
–0.5
The stock-market rally hit Xponance. 0.5 Dec Mullarkey, managing di- was the largest decline on a
speed bumps this week when On Friday, interest-rate-sen- rector of investment strategy percentage basis since April
–1.0
government data showed that sitive technology and real-es- 0 and asset allocation at SLC 2020. Shares of home builders
prices rose more than expected tate stocks led indexes lower. Management, said the stock and other property companies
–1.5
last month and suggested that The tech-heavy Nasdaq Com- –0.5 market’s sharp moves in reac- fell.
the Federal Re- posite Index lost 0.8%. The S&P tion to bits of inflation data Overseas, stocks mostly rose.
–2.0
FRIDAY’S serve’s fight 500 shed 0.5%. The Dow Jones –1.0 aren’t necessarily reflecting Germany’s DAX climbed 0.4%
MARKET against infla- Industrial Average fell 0.4%, or
–2.5
strong views on the economy. Friday to a record. The Stoxx
tion may not 145 points. Each index ended He said solid quarterly re- Europe 600 ended up 0.6% at a
–1.5
end as easily as some investors the week lower, the first weekly sults from regional banks, a 52-week high. Japan’s Nikkei
–3.0 10-minute intervals 2023 ’24
expected. decline for any of them since boom in corporate bond and 225 index climbed 0.9% to its
All three major U.S. stock in- early January. Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Fri. Note: Seasonally adjusted loan issuance last month and highest close since the start of
dexes fell Friday after whole- Both the Dow and the S&P Source: FactSet Source: Labor Department divergence in the trading of the 1990. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng
sale prices came in hotter than 500 had hit record highs earlier big technology stocks that have Index ended higher for the sec-
expected, confirming the signal in the week. gauge is likely to show price by the personal-consumption- driven the rally based on their ond consecutive week after a
sent Tuesday when consumer This week’s two inflation pressures firmed in January, expenditures price index, which own earnings show the econ- 2.5% gain Friday. Markets in
prices rose beyond economists’ readouts together tell econo- ending a streak of much better will be released later this omy remains on solid footing. mainland China were closed all
expectations. mists and investors that the inflation readings. month by the Commerce De- Almost 80% of companies in week for the Lunar New Year
That has investors rethink- Federal Reserve’s preferred Core inflation as measured partment, is likely to have in- the S&P 500 have reported holidays.

Bulls Buy Into Trump’s Truth Social

Digital World Acquisition stock price
$100

80

BY AMRITH RAMKUMAR tential windfall. companies that merge with pri- tory filings. The platform 60
The latest gain for the stock vate firms to take them public. warned in November that it
Donald Trump meme-stock came Thursday after the Secu- Tuttle said the belief that a might not survive if the SPAC 40
mania is back. rities and Exchange Commis- Trump win would be a boon for deal doesn’t get done.
Shares of the company plan- sion approved the plan for the Truth Social defies logic. The Investors, nevertheless, con- 20

.
ning to merge with Truth So- deal, a major step toward its former president has been al- tinue to pile in. The stock sits
cial, the former president’s so- completion. Shareholders still lowed back on Facebook and X, at roughly $50, up from a start-

ly
0
cial-media platform, are up have to approve the merger. social platforms whose reach ing price of $10 but well below 2022 ’23 ’24
about 180% this year, joining a The company has struggled to dwarfs that of Truth Social. an intraday peak of $175 hit
broad rally in speculative in- mobilize enough of them for Digital World faces a Sep- right after its plan to take Financials for Truth Social’s Net purchases of Digital
vestments. Digital World Ac-
quisition Corp. hopes to com-
bine with Truth Social to take
it public.
past votes. It has extended its
merger deadline twice.
Truth Social also has strug-
gled to gain traction. The plat-
on tember deadline to complete
the merger, after resolving reg-
ulatory and criminal investiga-
tions into insider trading and
Truth Social’s parent public
was first announced.
Traders have been making
long-shot bets tied to the
parent company*
$5 million

0
World by individual investors
$3.0 million
2.5
The renewed fervor around form has logged $5 million in premature deal talks this past shares climbing further. Some
us ,

2.0
–5
the company, which trades un- sales since its launch three summer. of the most actively traded op-
l

der the ticker DWAC, is remi- years ago and burned through The deal to take Truth So- tions recently were calls 1.5
e
–10
al a

niscent of the surge in nearly all of its cash. cial public could give the plat- pegged to the shares jumping 1.0
GameStop and other beaten- DWAC is “the meme-iest of form a badly needed cash infu- to $60, according to Cboe –15 Revenue
0.5 $1,377
down shares during the pan- the meme stocks because sion to grow. Its parent Global Markets. Calls that Loss from
ci on

demic. you’ve got Trump involved,” company had about $1.8 million would pay off if the shares –20 operations
0
The stock now implies a val- said Matthew Tuttle, chief ex- in cash on hand at the end of doubled to $100 have also been
–25 –0.5
uation of more than $4 billion ecutive of Tuttle Capital Man- the third quarter after burning active. Calls give the right to
for Truth Social’s parent com- agement, which oversees a through nearly all of the buy shares at a specific price, 2021 ’22 ’23 Jan. 2024 Feb.
pany. Trump would own at fund that holds special-purpose roughly $40 million it previ- by a stated date.
er s

*2023 data through end of September; 2021 data doesn’t include revenue and began in February.
least 58% of the firm if the deal acquisition companies. SPACs, ously raised in sales of convert- —Gunjan Banerji Sources: FactSet (stock price); Trump Media & Technology Group (financials);
is completed, giving him a po- such as Digital World, are shell ible notes, according to regula- contributed to this article. Vanda Research (net purchases)
m er

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NOTICE OF SALE
NOTICE OF SECURED PARTY PUBLIC AUCTION OF 100%
OF THE CLASS A LIMITED LIABILITY MEMBERSHIP
INTERESTS IN
AY PHASE II DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that, in accordance with applicable
provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code as enacted
in New York, DBD AYB FUNDING, LLC a Delaware
limited liability company, as Administrative Agent
for DBD AYB FUNDING, LLC and AYB FUNDING 100,
LLC, a Delaware limited liability Company, (“Secured
Party”), will sell 100% of the Class A limited liability
membership interests in AY PHASE II DEVELOPMENT
COMPANY, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company,
as more particularly described in that certain Amended
and Restated Pledge and Security Agreement, dated as
of June 17, 2015, by and among Secured Party and AY
PHASE II MEZZANINE. LLC, a Delaware limited liability
company (the “Collateral”) to the highest qualified
bidder at a public sale. The public sale will take place
at 3:30 p.m. on April 30, 2024, both in person and
remotely from the offices of Rosenberg & Estis, P.C.,
733 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10017, with
access afforded in person and remotely via Zoom or
other web-based video conferencing and/or telephonic
conferencing program selected by Secured Party.
Secured Party’s understanding is that the principal asset
of the Class A limited liability membership interests
in AY PHASE II DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC is the
parcels of real property identified as B5, B6, B7 and
B8 located in Brooklyn, New York and more particularly
known as the air rights parcels above Block 1120 and
Block 1121 and the terra firma known as Block 1120,
Lots 19, 28 and 35, in Kings County, New York, as
such Collateral is described in that certain Schedule II
Moss
NOTICE OF SALE Ivory Jacks (since 1975) British gentlemen’s outfitters.
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NOTICE OF SECURED PARTY PUBLIC AUCTION OF 100%
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OF THE CLASS B LIMITED LIABILITY MEMBERSHIP E: dickells74@gmail.com Emerald
INTERESTS IN French bearer fly front
AY PHASE II DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that, in accordance with applicable Waist: 32 34 36 38 40
provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code as enacted LUXURY 42 44 46 48 50 52"
in New York, DBD AYB FUNDING II, LLC a Delaware
limited liability company, as Administrative Agent
for DBD AYB FUNDING II, LLC and AYB FUNDING 200, Leg: 27 29 31 33"
LLC, a Delaware limited liability Company, (“Secured
Party”), will sell 100% of the Class B limited liability
Paddle in
membership interests in AY PHASE II DEVELOPMENT
Colors: Red, Black, Sand,Burgundy, Royal Blue
COMPANY, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, as the Arctic Moss, Emerald, Royal Blue, Toffee,
more particularly described in that certain Pledge and
Security Agreement, dated as of June 17, 2015, by and this Summer? Navy, Corn, Purple, Brown
among Secured Party’s predecessor-in-interest and AY
PHASE III MEZZANINE LLC, a Delaware limited liability
company (the “Collateral”) to the highest qualified
bidder at a public sale. The public sale will take place at “This is our tenth pair from Peter
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II DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC is the parcels of real
property identified as B9 and B10 located in Brooklyn,
New York, and more particularly known as the air rights
parcels above Block 1121 and the terra firm known as
Navy

to the Omnibus First Amendment and Reaffirmation
of Loan Documents, dated as of June 17, 2015, by and
among Secured Party, AY PHASE II MEZZANINE, LLC,
a Delaware limited liability company, FOREST CITY
ENTERPRISES, INC., a corporation organized under the
laws of the State of Ohio, GREENLAND US HOLDING,
INC., a Delaware corporation, and GREENLAND US
COMMERCIAL HOLDING, INC., a Delaware corporation,
as amended. The Collateral will be sold to the highest
qualified bidder; provided, however, that Secured Party
reserves the right to cancel the sale in its entirety, or
to adjourn the sale to a future date by announcement
made at the time and place scheduled for the public
sale. The sale will be conducted by Mannion Auctions,
LLC, by Matthew Mannion, Licensed Auctioneer, NYC
Division of Consumer Affairs Licensed Auctioneer.
License No. 1434494. The Collateral will be sold as a
single lot and will not be divided or sold in any lesser
amounts. Interested parties who would like additional
information concerning such conditions, as well as other
information regarding the Collateral, the requirements
to be a bidder for the Collateral, or the terms of the
Sale should contact the agent for Secured Party, Nick
Scribani of Newmark, at (212) 372-2113 or Nick.
Scribani@nmrk.com to receive the Terms of Public Sale
and bidding instructions. Upon execution of a standard
non-disclosure agreement, additional documentation
and information will be made available. Interested
parties who do not contact Secured Party and qualify
prior to the public sale will not be permitted to enter
a bid or participate at the public sale either in person
or remotely.
This Notice of Secured Party Public Auction of 100% of
the Class A Limited Liability Membership Interests in AY
Phase II Development Company, LLC constitutes notice
that the prior sale of the Collateral, previously scheduled
for February 12, 2024, has been adjourned to April 30,
2024, as set forth above.
ROSENBERG & ESTIS, P.C., Attorneys for Secured
Party, 733 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10017.
Attention: Eric S. Orenstein, Esq., Telephone: (212) 551-
8438, E-mail: eorenstein@rosenbergestis.com
FREE
Lots 42 and 47, Block 1121 in Kings County, New York,
as such asset is described in that certain Schedule II to
the Mezzanine Loan Agreement, dated as of June 17,
2015, by and among Secured Party’s predecessor-in-
THE
interest and AY PHASE III MEZZANINE LLC, a Delaware
limited liability company. The Collateral will be sold to
the highest qualified bidder; provided, however, that
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Governance Doesn’t
Matter, Until It Does
Companies with dominant shareholders perform
well, but the wheels can come off quickly in a crisis
Elon Musk’s Tesla is an extreme
example of an uncomfortable truth
for investors: Companies run by big
shareholders often give smaller
shareholders good returns—while
also flouting rules and norms de-
signed to protect them.
Tesla’s governance, long a target
for the carmaker’s critics, is back
in the spotlight after last month’s
ruling against Musk’s $50 billion-
plus pay package from 2018. The
case was brought in Delaware by a
small shareholder who was con-
cerned about the potentially dilu-
tive effect of stock options amount-
ing to a gargantuan 12% of the
share count at the time they were
granted, even though the perfor-
mance hurdles for them to vest
were set very high.
This revives an old question:
How should investors deal with
powerful shareholders? Almost by
definition, the founders of big pub-
lic companies have strong track re-
cords, and large shareholdings give
them an incentive to keep those re-
Performance of family businesses
compared with independent ones
60%
50 Developed
markets
40
30
20
10
0
–10
Emerging
markets
–20
2005 '10 '15
Source: Carmignac
SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES
Spending on food services and drinking places was up 0.7% from December.
The U.S. Economy
Is Unlikely to Stumble
There were some encouraging signs last month
The U.S. economy took a
breather in January following
brisk growth at the end of last
year, but it remains fundamentally
healthy.
Retail sales fell 0.8% in January
from December, the Commerce De-
partment said Thursday—much
worse than expectations for a 0.3%
decline. Also Thursday, Federal Re-
serve data showed January indus-
trial production edging down 0.1%
compared with expectations for a
0.2% increase.
Technical issues with how the
retail-sales data was seasonally
adjusted might have weighed on
the reading, and cold weather in
January likely had an impact on
both retail sales and industrial
production. But those factors don’t
explain away all the weakness.
Economists at Goldman Sachs,
for instance, said in a note that
cold weather doesn’t explain a de-
cline in e-commerce, as sales by
nonstore retailers fell 0.8%. Ana-
lysts at Bank of America noted
that card spending remained soft
in the week ended Feb. 10, even
though there were no big weather
events during that period.
* * * *
HEARD STREET FINANCIAL ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
cords going. But their dispropor-
tionate voting rights and influence
also put them in a position to dis-
regard the views and interests of
other owners.
In the U.S., this tension is mostly
associated with Silicon Valley tech
companies. While Delaware’s Chan-
cery Court found that Musk con-
trols Tesla with a strong personal-
ity and a weak board, the likes of
Meta Platforms and Alphabet en-
trench the power of founders
through multiple share classes. In
Europe, long-term shareholders an-
chor some of the world’s top con-
sumer companies, such as LVMH,
L’Oréal and BMW, though in many
cases the founders’ families are
now in control.
On average, such companies
have a record of outperforming
their peers despite governance
scores that today are roughly 7%
worse than average, according to
calculations by French asset man-
ager Carmignac. If you invested
100 euros, equivalent to about
$108, in its Carmignac Family 500
database in January 2004, you
would have had €393 at the end of
on
2023, compared with €310 if you
had invested in a nonfamily busi-
ness. The investor includes compa-
nies run by families, founders,
trusts and foundations with more
us ,
than 10% of voting rights in its list.
l
Obe Ejikeme, who runs a Car-
e
al a
mignac fund drawing from this
universe, says he was skeptical of
the effect before running the num-
ci on
bers. Governance isn’t the only rea-
son investors might view such
stocks with suspicion. Their liquid-
ity is lower too: The more shares
that are held long-term, the fewer
er s
are available to trade.
“There are so many risk factors
m er
'20 involved that it’s actually extraor-
dinary that they do outperform,”
he says.
m rp
co Fo
n-
no
Yet there were also some en-
couraging signs in Thursday’s
batch of data that went less no-
ticed. Within the retail sales re-
port, spending on food services
and drinking places was up 0.7%
from December and 6.3% higher
than in January last year—not
something one would expect if the
economy were suddenly in trou-
ble.
Fed surveys of manufacturing
activity in New York state and the
Philadelphia area in February both
came in stronger than expected,
weekly unemployment claims were
lower than expected and there
were indications in the industrial-
production report that the promis-
ing U.S. shift toward high-tech
manufacturing is still going
strong: Output of semiconductors,
for instance, was up 23% from a
year earlier, according to Capital
Economics.
It isn’t all that surprising that
consumers and manufacturers
took something of a pause in Jan-
uary. Economists have long been
expecting the Fed’s rate increases
last year to start dragging on ac-
tivity after a lag. And, while there
ON
THE
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is deeply entwined with the company, and has said he wants even greater control.
The short explanation is that so-
called “skin in the game” counts
for a lot. Long-term shareholders
whose wealth depends heavily on
one company have the kind of in-
centive to keep it in good shape
that CEOs for hire don’t.
It might be tempting to conclude
that governance worries are over-
blown—perhaps by the armies of
lawyers and boardroom consultants
paid to help companies toe the line
since the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act
toughened U.S. rules. A Journal of
Corporate Finance paper from 2022
found that poor governance was
actually associated with stronger
market returns after 2008.
But that might be because poor-
governance stocks performed badly
during the financial crisis, leaving
them at a discount that unwound
over the following bull market, says
Mohammed Zakriya, associate pro-
fessor at France’s IÉSEG School of
Management and one of the study’s
authors. The outperformance of
family businesses in Carmignac’s
database was also measured over
two very strong decades for stocks.
Good governance is probably
best seen as an insurance policy
has been debate
about how much re-
mains of the savings
cushion consumers
built up during the
pandemic, no one ex-
pected these savings
to last forever.
The real surprise is
just how resilient the
economy has been to
the Fed’s tightening.
Keep in mind that not
long ago the consen-
sus expectation was
for an imminent re-
cession. Economists
at Morgan Stanley,
taking into account
January’s retail sales
data, and downward
revisions to Decem-
ber’s sales increase,
said Thursday they
expect first-quarter gross domes-
tic product growth to come in at a
2% annualized pace. They expect
fourth-quarter growth to be re-
vised down to 2.1% from 3.3%.
“The retail sales report this
month supports our view that the
economy is strong but cooling,”
they said in a note, adding that
“there is no reason for the Fed to
rush the next move in rates.”
The upshot? The fluctuation in
stock and bond prices on the back
of the week’s economic data was
much ado about not much. The
S&P 500 on Thursday ended above
its closing level on Monday. A
slower but steady U.S. economy is
nothing to be afraid of.
—Aaron Back
U.S. industrial production,
change from prior month
1.25%
1.00
0.75
0.50
0.25
0 that wave of cash in bonds that
–0.25
–0.50
–0.75
–1.00
2023 ’24
Source: St. Louis Federal Reserve
Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | B13
against things going wrong rather
than as a driver of returns. Beyond
the risk of a deep recession, corpo-
rate crises such as Enron’s col-
lapse—which triggered the Sar-
banes-Oxley rules—or Volkswagen’s
2015 diesel scandal have often oc-
curred when executive power went
unchecked.
ly
In another sign that governance
matters more in its absence, Car-
mignac found no benefit to being
invested in family-run businesses
in emerging markets. Institutions
that make and enforce governance
rules tend to be weaker in poorer
countries, leaving minority share-
holders more exposed to exploita-
tion.
One recent focus of such con-
cerns is Indian conglomerate
Adani, which last year was accused
by American short seller Hinden-
burg of using close political ties to
engage in stock manipulation and
accounting fraud. The group has
rejected the claims, and a year
later, shares of its flagship com-
pany Adani Enterprises are almost
back where they were.
At Tesla, the governance mess is
one explanation for a roughly 20%
Wells Fargo Has Done
Fine Despite Limits
An asset cap imposed by federal regulators actually
helped the bank avoid problems faced by rivals
On Thursday, Wells Fargo an-
nounced that the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency lifted
a consent order related to the
bank’s fake-accounts scandal of
several years ago.
While the sales practices under-
lying that order represent perhaps
the biggest reputational stain that
a major U.S. bank has absorbed in
recent years, it was arguably less
financially consequential than the
Federal Reserve’s 2018 order that
also imposed an unprecedented
cap on the bank’s total asset size.
That cap wasn’t affected by the
OCC’s move—even if the action
may suggest that Wells is a step
closer to satisfying the broader
governance and control issues un-
derlying the Fed’s order. Wells
said in its first-quarter report last
month that it expects the asset
cap to stay in place for 2024.
Yet Wells shares rallied more
than 7% on Thursday, the stock’s
best day since mid-2022. Overall,
among S&P 500 banks, Wells
Fargo’s roughly 8% gain over the
past year trails only JPMorgan
Chase in that time frame, and is
one of only three—along with Citi-
group—that were up for that pe-
riod.
The surprising fact is that since
2020, Wells’s asset cap has argu-
ably been working to the bank’s
advantage. During the early stages
of the pandemic, when other
banks took in a surge of excess de-
posits that swelled their balance
sheets, Wells out of necessity
stayed focused on a narrower slice
of core consumer deposits.
As a result, Wells didn’t lock up
plunged in value when interest
rates started to rise, and it re-
mains in a solid capital position. It
also didn’t see that same flood of
“hot” deposits coming out as rates
rose.
Analysts at Moody’s wrote in a
January report that the cap gave
Wells less of an incentive to chase
noncore corporate and institu-
CFOTO/DDP/ZUMA PRESS
fall in the stock this year, even as
the likes of Microsoft and Nvidia,
fellow members of the Magnificent
Seven, have risen. These companies
are sometimes considered peers
because of their focus on artificial
intelligence, but Musk last month
.
threatened to take his AI interests
elsewhere if he didn’t control 25%
of Tesla, compared with about 13%
today. Over five years, the stock is
still up roughly 10-fold.
Whether Musk would actually
neglect his single most valuable as-
set is doubtful. There may be a way
to square the circle with a new, su-
pervoting Tesla share class—the
same sort Mark Zuckerberg at
Meta and Larry Page and Sergey
Brin at Google parent Alphabet
own. At face value, though, share-
holders have an unappealing choice
between, on one hand, another
hugely dilutive pay deal to replace
the rescinded 2018 one and, on the
other, losing Musk’s attention.
The drama, which will continue
to play out noisily in the coming
months, seems to be confirming an
old truism: Good governance
doesn’t matter until suddenly it
does. —Stephen Wilmot
Share-price and index performance
from a year ago
10%
Wells
Fargo
0
–10
–20
–30 KBW
Nasdaq
Bank
Index
–40
March June Sept. Dec.
Source: FactSet
tional deposits, which left it “more
heavily weighted toward retail de-
posits, which contributes to its fa-
vorable low overall deposit costs.”
Morgan Stanley analysts in early
January described Wells as “rela-
tively better positioned for a
higher-for-longer rate environ-
ment.”
Banks in general right now
aren’t too eager to expand their
balance sheets, since there isn’t
tremendous demand for loans, and
they are already straining to meet
rising capital requirements. Many
big lenders are on “diets.”
Today, Wells still has capacity
under its $1.95 trillion asset cap,
with average assets of about $1.9
trillion as of the fourth quarter.
Seeing the end of the cap would
certainly be a reputational mile-
stone for Wells, and would allow
the bank to pursue further growth
in asset-heavy businesses like Wall
Street trading and capital markets.
But it is also not the be-all,
end-all for the bank’s stock perfor-
mance.
—Telis Demos
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

B14 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

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CULTURE | SCIENCE | POLITICS | HUMOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | C1

The Navalny I Knew

‘Navalny’ director Daniel
Roher and his subject
during filming in Berlin,
January 2021

.
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on
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e
al a
ci on

CNN FILMS

D
er s

aniel Roher, a 30-year-old ward “what he called ‘a great Russia of dia tactician, a playful husband and fa-
The director of the Canadian filmmaker based the future,’” Roher says. “His political ther and a seemingly unshakable gadfly
m er

documentary ‘Navalny’ in Los Angeles, found out

about Alexei Navalny’s
calculus was that to achieve this objec-
tive, he had to go back, that if he stayed
against Putin, his great foe.
The centerpiece of the documentary is
recounts his two death on Friday when his in the West he would be relegated to ob- a cliffhanger moment of triumph in
wife, Caroline, woke him up at 4 a.m., scurity.” which Navalny and his cohorts, huddled
months with the
m rp

having seen the headlines while tending
Russian dissident and to their 3-week-old baby.
Few people outside Russia got to
how they told the know Navalny as closely as Roher and his
crew, who made an Oscar-winning docu-
story of an attempt by
co Fo
He adds, “It’s very easy with our
20-20 hindsight to criticize that decision,
especially in lieu of today’s horrific news.
But that was Navalny’s decision to make.
It was incredibly brave and courageous
in an ad hoc war room, secure evidence
to expose a team of the Russian opera-
tives who nearly succeeded in poisoning
Navalny to death in 2020. The film then
follows Navalny out of exile to Moscow,

mentary film with the Russian dissident
Putin’s agents to kill during what turned out to be Navalny’s
final days of freedom.
him with poison. In an interview after hearing the news,
Roher described the unusual window he
and was motivated by his patriotism.
And I think history will be litigating that
decision for a very long time.”
“Navalny” begins and ends on the
same foreboding note, with the subject
where he is immediately taken into Rus-
sian custody.
Roher was an unlikely person to make
a movie about a firebrand politician in the
global zeitgeist. His previous films in-

By John Jurgensen had into the central conundrum of Na-

valny’s last years: After Russian opera-
tives nearly poisoned him to death with
a nerve agent, why did he return from
exile to his homeland, setting the stage
for his imprisonment? Navalny died in a
Russian penal colony at age 47, according
n-
of the film talking directly to the camera
about the eventuality of his own death.
“That outcome was not far from our
thoughts, that’s evident from the film,”
Roher says. “Maybe it was just the tim-
ing, maybe it was the randomness of it,
but I just felt gutted, shocked and angry
cluded a documentary about the rock
group The Band. Roher had teamed up
with an investigative journalist from Bul-
garia, Christo Grozev, on a project in
Ukraine, but when that fell through, they
turned to Navalny because Grozev had
leads on the culprits behind the Navalny

to Russian news reports. when I heard the news.” poisoning.

“He wanted to continue the fight His film now represents a final snap- On an expedition to spotlight corrup-
against Vladimir Putin” and a quest to- shot of its subject’s life as a shrewd me- Please turn to the next page
no

How to Become a
‘Supercommunicator’
We can all learn the techniques for saying the right thing and
connecting with others. The key is to make sure you’re having the
same sort of conversation as the person you’re trying to reach.
By Charles Duhigg

When Nicholas Epley was in high
school, he was such a bad listener
that it almost ruined his life. A star
football player in a small Iowa town,
he was stopped for drunk driving
one night and handed over to his
parents rather than being arrested.
They lectured him, and Epley ig-
nored them. Then he got pulled over
an entirely different way: She asked
questions. “Why did this happen?”
“What would have happened if you
had been arrested?” “How would
you feel if you had killed someone?”
For reasons Epley didn’t under-
stand at the time, these sessions
seemed to unlock something in him.
“I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know the
conversations with his parents, de-
cided he would stop drinking and get
serious about school. He discovered
psychology courses in college and
eventually became a professor of be-
havioral science. And he joined the
forefront of a growing field of re-
search into what makes someone an
effective communicator: Why are
LUISA JUNG

again. This time his parents sent him answers,” he told me three decades some people better at connecting
to a counselor who spoke to him in later. He started having more useful Please turn to page C4

Inside
TABLE TALK
Get FILM PRESIDENTS

From exotic tamarind to

familiar oatmeal, Smart Hiroyuki Sanada,
star of the new
‘Washington
Crossing the
authentic foods taste so Now that brain cells ‘Shogun’ mini- Delaware’ is a
good they will spoil you can be made with a series, helps more complex
3-D printer, Joe
for more convenient Queenan sees a vast Hollywood get painting than it
substitutes. C5 potential market. C6 Japan right. C14 appears. C6
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
C2 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
Navalny and his wife
Yulia arrive in
Moscow to re-enter
Russia, Jan. 17, 2021
A Real-Life Crime Thriller Showed
Navalny’s Outrage, Humor and Fear
Continued from the prior page
tion, Navalny had been dosed with a
nerve agent used in other hits by
Russia’s Secret Service, but he sur-
vived after his plane made an emer-
gency landing in Siberia. Roher ap-
proached Navalny when he was
recuperating form the assassination
attempt in Germany.
Roher was intimidated by Na-
valny, and Navalny was skeptical of
the filmmaker. “This is a guy who
was very well versed when it came
to YouTube videos and formats like
that, but he didn’t really under-
stand the virtues and the value of
documentary.”
After convincing Navalny of the
mainstream impact a feature docu-
mentary could potentially have, espe-
BY GERALD F. SEIB
O
ne of the nation’s hottest
political fights last year
was for control of Vir-
ginia’s closely divided
legislature. The battle be-
tween the two parties in a key
swing state was expensive and
lengthy—and extremely negative.
Voters were exposed to a deluge
of TV attack ads. In one high-profile
race, the Republican candidate said
in an ad that his Democratic oppo-
nent had let “violent criminals walk
easy” as a prosecutor, while she re-
plied in her own TV spot that he was
“bad for women, bad for kids and
bad for Virginia.” Another candidate
accused her opponent of being a
“domestic abuser” based on a 20-
year-old accusation that was dis-
missed in court. Yet another was ac-
no
cused of consorting with “militias
and hate groups,” in part because,
while a sheriff, his office met with
leaders of a protest march to go over
the rules they would have to follow.
“In Virginia we’ve had a tradition
of not having these negative races,”
said Cayce Myers, a professor of
communications at Virginia Tech
who studies political advertising.
“In the last few election cycles
we’ve really seen an increase in
negativity. Part of the reason is that
negative ads are designed to drive
hyperpartisan voters out to vote.”
As goes Virginia, so will the na-
tion go in 2024. This campaign year
is likely to usher in a new round of
nastiness, raising serious questions
about the effect of billions of dol-
lars in accumulated negative politi-
cal advertising on the nation’s an-
gry and divisive political mood.
Certainly there are many factors
driving cynicism and polarization:
cultural disagreements, economic in-
equality, social media and the gerry-
mandering of legislative districts,
which gathers like-minded voters
into virtual echo chambers. But po-
litical operatives from both parties
have raised concerns about the cu-
mulative effect of years of attack ads
pounding home the message that the
system is dishonest and corrupt.
“People already are skeptical of
politicians, and when they see nega-
tive ads it just reinforces something
they already believed: that these are
crooks, and they are self-interested,
and they are not looking out for the
common good,” says Kristen Soltis
Anderson, a Republican pollster and
political consultant. Adds Demo-
cially in the West, the filmmaker dis-
covered he shared an often mordant
sense of humor with his subject.
When Navalny questioned Roher
about the filmmaker’s habit of con-
stantly drawing and painting in a
sketchbook, Roher explained that it
on
was a way of coping with his atten-
tion-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
“Alexei turned to [his wife] Maria
and said, ‘Oh, it’s so nice that we
us ,
hired a director with special needs.’”
In the film, Navalny decompresses
l
e
by playing the videogame “Call of
al a
Duty” on his phone. He works on his
juggling skills as a way to recover
ci on
from the effects of his poisoning. He
fusses over a miniature pony he en-
counters on walks with his wife in
the German countryside.
er s
m er
m rp
co Fo
n-
What Have Negative
Political Ads Done to Us?
Candidates increasingly rely on personal attacks and fearmongering to
win office, leaving many Americans disillusioned with democracy.
cratic pollster Celinda Lake: “I think
it has increased enormously the
cynicism people have. It’s really
made them believe in nothing.”
Themes of hope and optimism,
once a staple of campaign messag-
ing, are in increasingly short supply.
Former President Donald Trump
has contributed to this trend, of
course, with his angry cam-
paigns for the presidency. Such neg-
ativity creates a kind of downward
spiral. Attack ads energize Republi-
can and Democratic partisans, who
are already aggrieved, while turning
off less-partisan voters in the mid-
dle, making them less likely to vote.
Winning an election thus becomes
even more dependent on getting
outraged partisans to vote, which in
turn requires more negative ads.
Negative ads now make up more
than half of all political ads in the top
media markets and considerably more
than half in some highly competitive
REVIEW
Roher and his small film team
spent around two months following
Navalny and his family. The director
recalls off-camera conversations
about Navalny’s perspective as a for-
mer child of the Cold-War Soviet
Union, once fascinated by Coca-Cola,
McDonald’s, Michael Jackson and
Hollywood movies. Pop culture re-
mained a fixation. “He could effort-
lessly quote ‘The Wire’ or ‘Breaking
Bad,’” Roher says.
Navalny rose to fame on the out-
rage and humor conveyed in his in-
ternet videos. In “Navalny,” he
builds anticipation for the release of
his investigative team’s findings
about the poisoning by making a
TikTok video, mugging for the cam-
era to the 1990s pop tune “How Bi-
races. Beyond attacks, a big share of
TV spots are “contrast” ads, which
combine a negative message about an
opponent with a more positive mes-
sage about the candidate running the
ad. Purely positive ads touting the
virtues of a candidate make up only
about a quarter of the total.
As the share of advertising that is
negative has risen, so has the sheer
volume of political ads, meaning
that voters today are subjected to
many more negative messages. That’s
particularly true in swing states and
highly competitive districts. “Maybe
two decades ago there were 20,000
ads in the Phoenix media market,”
says Travis Ridout, a professor at
Washington State University and co-
director of the Wesleyan Media Proj-
ect, which tracks political advertis-
ing. “Today it would be 100,000 ads.”
Data show that the pace of nega-
tive advertising began rising in the
2000 election cycle and that voters’
* ***
zarre.” When showing
his followers a glimpse
of the team’s wall collage
of maps, photos and
other evidence, he says,
“like in a movie.”
Navalny comes across
like the star of a real-life
crime thriller in the doc-
umentary’s most dra-
matic sequence. Armed
with a list of phone
numbers for his would-
be assassins, Navalny
calls them himself. He
poses as a bureaucrat
compiling a report on
why the poisoning oper-
ation failed. The goal
was to trick his targets
into admitting the plot,
but Navalny also wanted
to create a killer mo-
ment for the documen-
tary film.
“Oh yeah, he knew ex-
actly what he was do-
ing,” Roher recalls of Na-
valny’s cinematic
instincts. Though the di-
rector didn’t understand
Russian, he could tell
something remarkable
was unfolding in front of
his camera.
When one scientist
falls for Navalny’s ruse,
Navalny never breaks
character as he coaxes
specifics out of the suspect and
probes with deeper questions such
as, “What is your assessment of
[Navalny] as a person?”
The interaction “has a sort of
Kafka-esque metatextual quality,”
Roher says. “The man who survived
the assassination attempt, asking the
assassin what he thought of the man
who survived the assassination at-
tempt…I think that that line of ques-
tioning genuinely intrigued Alexei
from a psychological perspective.”
Roher was in Berlin when Navalny
made his final flight back to Moscow
on Jan. 17, 2021. The director says
Navalny’s reflex was to make jokes
when he was nervous. “But he was
scared that day,” Roher says.
“You could see it in his eyes and
exposure to it has increased since
then. In their recent book “Political
Advertising in the United States,”
Ridout and his coauthors conclude,
“Negative and contrast advertising
are now the dominant tone of ad-
vertising in elections.”
The 2024 election year figures to
provide more of the same. The pres-
idential campaign is already intense
and nasty, and party control of both
the House and Senate is up for
grabs, which will generate big ex-
penditures and plenty of attack ads.
AdImpact, an advertising analytics
firm, forecasts that the current elec-
tion cycle will be the most expen-
sive in history, with more than $10
billion spent across all media plat-
forms, up 13% from 2020.
An increasing share of this adver-
tising is bought not by candidates
and their campaigns but by political-
action committees and nonprofit
groups, which can raise unlimited
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
I hope that the film captures that.
He outwardly projects a resolute-
ness and an assuredness, but if you
look into his eyes, it’s clear that he’s
nervous. And that’s very human.”
“Navalny” premiered at the Sun-
dance Film Festival in 2022 and
went on to win a string of awards,
including best documentary feature
at the 2023 Academy Awards.
As “Navalny” drew accolades and
broader attention to its subject’s
crusade, Roher corresponded with
Navalny in letters exchanged via Na-
valny’s daughter, Daria (and cen-
sored by Russian prison officials).
“I’d get to write to him and be
like, ‘Hey, Woody Harrelson loves
your movie!’ And he’d be like, ‘Oh,
yes, ‘No Country for Old Men’ [fea-
turing Harrelson], it’s one of my fa-
vorite movies.”
In a letter after the Oscar win,
nearly a year ago, Navalny congrat-
ulated Roher and said he was ex-
cited about Roher starting a family.
The filmmaker said it became in-
creasingly difficult to keep up the
correspondence.
“It was hard for me to write to
him and to share bits of my life with
him. ‘Everything’s perfect! Every-
thing’s wonderful!’ Meanwhile, he’s
sitting in a f—ing gulag,” Roher says.
“Now, you know, my career obvi-
ously has soared to new heights as
a result of our work together, and
now he’s dead, and I’m left to sort
of reconcile the legacy of this film
and what it’s meant and what he’s
meant to me in my life.”
“But, you know, it is what it is.
.
Time marches on, and if he were
ly
here, he’d say, stop complaining,
have a shot of vodka and get back to
work.”
KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
When it comes to the life’s work
of Navalny, Roher says, “I know
that his foundation, his supporters,
his colleagues, his family will carry
on the fight. And if there’s anything
I want people to take away from
this and to think about, it’s to take
the anger and bitterness and sad-
ness and turn it into action
[against authoritarianism] both in
the context of Russia and in the
context of countries all around the
world.”
amounts of money. These outside
groups are legally barred from coor-
dinating with the candidate they sup-
port, making it harder to consult
with a campaign about what kind of
positive image it wants to shape. The
easiest path is simply to attack the
other candidate. And unlike candi-
dates, who have to personally stand
behind their ads, outside groups can
keep their funding secret, so there’s
nobody to blame for a nasty message.
Ed Goeas, a longtime Republican
campaign consultant, estimates that
a campaign is now “lucky” if it can
control 25% of the messages in its
own race. He recalls campaigns in
which the candidate wanted to run
on a positive message, only to find
that a so-called super PAC—a politi-
cal-action committee that can raise
money from corporations and indi-
viduals—simply decided to go nega-
tive on its own.
Goeas attributes declines in pri-
mary-election turnout in recent
years in part to the growth of attack
ads. “The higher the cynicism goes,
the more voters are susceptible to
demagoguery,” he worries. “And the
more that happens, the more cam-
paigns take that tone.”
Is there an antidote to all the
negativity? Lake, the Democratic
pollster, argues for a change in cam-
paign finance laws to reduce the
role of super PACs and their ability
to take money from anonymous do-
nors. It’s possible that the implosion
of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presi-
dential campaign, which relied to an
unusual degree on super PACs, may
discourage other campaigns from
going down that path.
The strongest antidote might be
more examples of candidates who
stay positive, but there simply
aren’t many. It’s telling that the ex-
ample often cited by political pros
dates back to 2010, when Democrat
John Hickenlooper was elected gov-
ernor of Colorado after a campaign
in which he bragged about his dis-
taste for negative advertising. Presi-
dent Biden was more positive than
ILLUSTRATION BY LOUISA BERTMAN, GETTY IMAGES (2)
Donald Trump in his campaign ads
four years ago, and he also won. But
the ground has shifted: The Biden
campaign’s first ad of 2024 portrays
Trump, without naming him di-
rectly, as a threat to American de-
mocracy.
Gerald F. Seib is a former execu-
tive Washington editor and weekly
Capital Journal columnist for The
Wall Street Journal.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | C3

REVIEW

Your Chatbot Concierge

administer the system. But Genera-
tive AI changes all that. Tracking,
coordinating and servicing millions
of overlapping custom transactions

Will Expect a Tip

is squarely in their wheelhouse.
It won’t be long before municipal
governments start using similar
technology to mitigate the tragedy
of the commons. Imagine a public
traffic control system that inte-
Need to get that shipment faster, score a reservation at the hot new restaurant or find grates Waze-like tracking with car-
pool lanes, traffic lights and parking
a parking space? Chatty AI agents will be ready to help—for a price. spots. You discuss your driving
plans with their friendly custom
chatbot, then negotiate start times
and routes before you start your
car. Willing to wait half an hour?
Someone else’s sweetener becomes
your reward.
Already, in San Francisco, the
cost of metered street parking is
variable and centrally controlled, to
maintain a certain percentage of
open spots. It’s nothing short of
amazing how well this SFpark sys-
tem works. I can now drive up to
the city and park right on a busy
street, often for less than it costs to
pull into some robber baron’s “pub-
lic” garage. It’s nearly inevitable
that we’ll soon be madly bidding
away on public tennis-court reser-
vations, City Hall appointments, pic-
nic spots and food truck licenses.
And all this is before things kick
into high gear. Why should these
electronic agents be captive to gov-
ernments and companies? Armies of
freelance cloud-based chatbots will
ply their trade as electronic jobbers,
hawking their wares and allowances
to scratch out a subsistence living,

.
making just enough profit to cover

ly
their own running costs and pay
some shadowy operator a modest
annuity.
on The amazing part is that these
chatty electronic hustlers will be
haggling not just with us but with
each other. What makes this possi-
us ,

ble is that we’ve cracked the inter-

face compatibility problem. Cisco’s
l
e
ten-billion-dollar business was built
al a

on enabling one digital system to

talk to another, but computer pro-
ci on

grams now can communicate in the

lingua franca of international com-
merce: English. This game-changing
innovation permits virtually any
program with a chatbot plug-in to
er s

BY JERRY KAPLAN became so popular that she effec- around the corner. concierges will seem innocent exchange information and make

I
tively took over the world with her And yes, a computer program re- enough. Amazon, for instance, just deals with anyone or anything else,
m er

n Peacock’s sci-fi comedy se-
ries “Mrs. Davis,” an unseen
benevolent AI manages the
world by nudging people to
relentless public pestering.
Sounds crazy? Couldn’t happen?
Don’t count on it. Soon we’ll be
spending much of our precious lei-
m rp
ally can be swayed by sweeteners rolled out a product-consulting without a specialized interface.
and payoffs. Computers themselves chatbot named Rufus for a limited Welcome to the future, where
may be analytical, objective and me- test with customers. Today, of freelance digital concierges will be
thodical, but the software they slav- course, you can upgrade shipping dangling clickbait everywhere,

do “her” bidding with incen-
tives and privileges. Communicating
primarily through a smartphone
app, she asks people to perform
“quests” by awarding them angel-
sure time—not to mention our ishly execute is just as susceptible for a fixed fee, but if Rufus is even- promising to renew your pet li-
cash—haggling with armies of elec- to influence as are tually going to com- cense, scalp tickets, find that rare
tronic agents offering to smooth our we flawed humans. plete purchase bottle of Scotch for your father’s
transactions, secure scarce reserva- Generative AI sys- Yes, a computer transactions for you birthday or make an excuse for get-
tions, boost our chances, speed up tems aren’t pro- without the usual ting home late by posing as your
program really
co Fo

like virtual “wings” that others can
view with their cameras, conferring
respect and admiration. As she
truthfully insists throughout the se-
ries, no one is forced to do any-
thing—they can freely choose to ac-
cept or decline her challenges.
Society quickly devolves into chaos,
as people incessantly perform ran-
dom tasks presumably in the service
of some mysterious grand plan that
only she understands.
our commutes and move us to the
front of the line. And all they’ll ask
in return is that we grease their
programmatic palms with points,
praise or pelf.
As Mrs. Davis deftly illustrates,
commerce has already turned us all
into bean counters, managing points
and credits for everything from
travel to lattes. Right now, AIs are
mostly confined to answering ques-
tions and drawing pretty pictures.
n-
grammed in the shopping-cart-to- boss.
conventional sense. can be swayed check-out process, Perhaps the feared “singular-
They learn how to by sweeteners can it really be long ity”—when runaway superintelli-
behave by sifting before you simply gent AIs supposedly exterminate
through the moun- and payoffs. offer to slip it a humanity—isn’t as inescapable as
tain of digital de- fiver for delivery it’s cracked up to be: We may stave
bris we leave be- tomorrow instead off our own extinction with kick-
hind. These enormous training sets, of next week? backs and protection money. It’s not
scraped from the Internet and pil- Suppose Rufus knows that an- a pretty picture, but as the saying
fered from whatever online portals other customer down the street goes, it’s better than the alternative.
are unwittingly left ajar, mirror our wants to return the same item un-
musings. They naturally reflect both opened? That five-dollar bonus may Jerry Kaplan teaches about the

The plot, predictably, revolves
around discovering how or what the
godlike Mrs. Davis really is and how
she came to be. Spoiler alert: Mrs.
no
But shortly, they will be front-end-
ing all manner of other systems,
from booking travel to renewing
your driver’s license to hiring some-
the best and the worst of humanity,
and to the chagrin of Silicon Valley,
they have a tendency to lie, gas-
light, bluster and conspire.
be just the incentive your neighbor
needs to drop the item at your
house rather than the local UPS
store. Today, the complexity of man-
social and economic impact of ar-
tificial intelligence at Stanford
University. His latest book, “Gen-
erative Artificial Intelligence:
PAUL GARLAND

Davis turns out to be a generative one to clean your gutters. You can So how is all this likely to play aging offers and actions like this is What Everyone Needs to Know”
AI chatbot originally created to pro- be sure that bribing intelligent sys- out? daunting, particularly if a hoard of will be published by Oxford Uni-
mote a brand of chicken wings. She tems to do our bidding is just The first wave of these chatty customer service reps is required to versity Press on Feb. 19.

An Ancient Romo seems to have lever-

aged those meanings to apply to
In the early 20th century, “le-
verage” entered the business

Tool for any positioning advantage. He

Lifting,
WORD ON
THE STREET Applied to
BEN
ZIMMER Football
THE KANSAS CITY CHIEFS’
overtime victory in the Super
Bowl against the San Francisco
49ers was filled with drama, but
some viewers were less than en-
tertained by a particular man-
nerism of CBS’s color commen-
tator Tony Romo. Throughout
the game, Romo habitually de-
Romo has said it in the last 10
minutes.” (The ancient Greek
mathematician reputedly said,
“Give me a lever long enough
and a fulcrum on which to place
it, and I shall move the world.”)
Ben Yagoda, author of such
At other times, Romo referred
to defenders: “You’re going to
get man-to-man, and you’re go-
ing to get outside leverage.”
Wall Street Journal sports re-
porter Andrew Beaton explained
to me that “outside leverage”
also “may have gotten stuck on
the concept of ‘leverage’ as a
buzzword for ‘being open,’ foot-
ball writer Mike Tanier told me.
“Leverage” has received a
bad rap as a buzzword before,
but previous complaints have
been about its overuse in corpo-
rate-speak. It originally referred
to the action of a lever—some-
thing that pivots on a fulcrum
like a seesaw—or the mechani-
cal power that a lever provides
in lifting a load. “Lever” in turn
comes from the Latin verb “le-
vare” meaning “to raise or
lighten,” from “levis” meaning
“light in weight.” It’s also the
source of “alleviate,” “elevate,”
world for financial kinds of ad-
vantage. One 1924 Wall Street
Journal headline reported that
traders used “weakened techni-
cal position and lack of buying
interest as leverage for forcing
prices down.” Financial types
also started turning “leverage”
into a verb, originally for the
technique of borrowing funds to
buy an investment, with the
“leveraged buyout” becoming a
common method of acquiring
companies in the 1970s.
Nowadays, “leveraging”
something can mean capitaliz-
ing on it for maximum advan-
tage—or simply using it. While
nouns often get converted to
verbs in English, “leverage” has

[Leverage]
scribed players as angling for
“leverage.”
Late in the game, Esquire
writer Charles P. Pierce tweeted
his annoyance while making a
books as “How to Not Write
Bad,” complained, “He didn’t ex-
plain what it means, and I still
don’t know.”
In overtime, Romo used the
word to extol both quarterbacks.
“Watch his spatial awareness,
his ability to use leverage and to
get places and get through pro-
gressions,” he said of the 49ers’
Brock Purdy. Of the Chiefs’ Pat-
means defensive backs align to
push receivers’ routes away
from the sidelines, while “inside
leverage” would push them
away from the center of the
field. The term is also used in
various guides to the game to
describe a tackler getting any
helpful angle on a ball-carrier,
or just getting lower to the
ground. The NFL has a little-
“leaven” and “levity.”
“Leverage” started off as a
mechanical concept when it en-
tered English in the 18th century,
but it was soon used metaphori-
cally for a positional advantage
or the power to act effectively.
William Gladstone, before serv-
ing as British prime minister,
wrote an 1858 treatise on Homer
describing a speech by Ajax in
earned a special level of scorn
as business jargon due to its
overuse. “Fowler’s Concise Dic-
tionary of Modern English Us-
age” notes “hostility to the
word” and flags it as “a term to
be used with extreme caution.”
That may explain some of the
backlash against Romo’s pen-
chant for the term. If “leverage”
has already overtaken the
JAMES YANG

clever historical allusion: “Archi- rick Mahomes, Romo said, “He’s used ‘‘leverage penalty” to dis- the “Iliad” as having “leverage” boardroom, who wants to hear
medes did not say ‘leverage’ as going to look people off to get courage players from climbing that “produces an initial move- it get leveraged on the football
much in his entire life as Tony the leverage where he wants it.” on each other to get to the ball. ment towards concession.” field too?
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
C4 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
Communicating
With More
Than Words
Continued from Page One
with others, hearing what’s unsaid
and speaking so others want to lis-
ten? Can anyone learn to do this?
In recent decades, our under-
standing of how people communicate
has been transformed by advances in
neuroscience and sophisticated psy-
chological experiments. One finding
is that some of us seem to be what
I call “supercommunicators”—peo-
ple capable of saying exactly the
right thing, breaking through to al-
most anyone, figuring out how to
connect in even the most unlikely
circumstances.
We all know these people: The
friends we call after a tough day, the
colleagues we know will make a dis-
cussion easier, the neighbors gifted at
building community. And we know
how elusive those skills can be some-
times. We’ve all felt the sting of fail-
ing to hear what’s important, strug-
gling to speak clearly, missing
opportunities to connect.
But we can all become supercom-
municators. As I’ve studied this sub-
ject over the last three years, I’ve
learned some important lessons. One
is the importance of understanding
the different kinds of conversations
that can emerge—practical, emo-
tional and social. Each one, research-
ers say, uses a different part of our
brains. If we aren’t having the same
kind of conversation as our compan-
ions, we’re unlikely to connect.
I recognized this pattern in my
own marriage. Some days, I would
come home from work upset about
something (“My boss is a jerk!”), and
my wife would respond with practi-
cal advice (“Why don’t you get to
know each other away from the of-
fice?”). But that would only make me
more frustrated—emotional—be-
cause we were having two different
kinds of conversations. Today we’ve
learned the importance of matching
each other’s approach, so that when
I start complaining, my wife will of-
ten ask “Do you want me to help you
solve this problem, or just listen?”
That helps us become aligned—or, in
the words of neuroscientist Uri Has-
son at Princeton University, “neurally
entrained.”
Matching our conversations can
transform how we communicate. In
one experiment conducted by Beau
Sievers of Dartmouth College in 2018,
researchers asked groups of strangers
to answer questions about confusing
movie clips and then studied the
groups’ attempts at finding consen-
sus. They found that some groups be-
came much more synchronized: They
began finishing each other’s sen-
no
tences, and their neural activity be-
came strikingly alike, as if they had
all agreed to think the same way.
The scientists’ first hypothesis
was that these groups contained a
strong leader who made synchroniza-
tion easier, but they found that
groups with such leaders yielded the
least amount of neural synchrony be-
cause one person dominated the con-
versation. Rather, the groups with
the greatest synchrony had one or
two people who tended to mostly ask
questions—up to 10 to 20 times as
many questions as the typical person.
They also encouraged their group
mates to speak more, repeated what
others said and frequently adjusted
how they were speaking to better
match their companions’ moods.
These people were supercommuni-
cators, and they had a profound effect
on their groups. Sievers also found
that they had much
larger social networks
than the average person
and were more likely to
be given positions of au-
thority. Other people
turned to them when
they needed to discuss
something serious or ask
for advice. “That makes
sense,” Sievers told me.
“Because if you’re the
kind of person who’s
easy to talk to, then lots
of people are going to
want to talk to you.”
Numerous experi-
ments have shown that
when we align with
someone through con-
versation, it feels good,
in part because our
brains have evolved to
crave these kinds of con-
nections. The desire to
connect has pushed peo-
ple to form communities,
protect their offspring
and seek new friends
and alliances. “Some-
times, people just ‘click’,”
Thalia Wheatley of Dart-
mouth wrote in the jour-
nal Social and Personal-
ity Psychology Compass
in 2012. “As though
on
tuned to the same internal frequency,
they fall into effortless conversation,
experience the same rise and fall of
emotions.” That can help us under-
us ,
stand each other, even when we come
from different places and have differ-
l
e
ent perspectives.
al a
Research shows that anyone can
get better at aligning their communi-
ci on
cation to be understood, at listening
closely and speaking more clearly,
and at perceiving opportunities for
connection. In particular, there are
four skills that supercommunicators
er s
share that all of us can learn.
m er
Ask Deep Questions
When we meet someone new, it’s nat-
ural to ask about facts of their
life: What kind of medicine do you
m rp
practice? Where’d you go to col-
lege? But those kinds of questions are
often conversational dead-ends.
Rather, ask something that invites
someone to talk about their values,
co Fo
beliefs or experiences—such as,
How did you decide to go into medi-
cine? What did you love about col-
lege? Deep questions are powerful
because they invite us to share
something authentic and potentially
vulnerable. When we match that
vulnerability—You decided on medi-
n-
cine after seeing your dad get sick?
I became a lawyer when my cousin
was unfairly arrested—we trigger
instincts that make us feel more
trusting and more eager to listen
and share. “Vulnerability is one of
our loudest emotions,” Harvard re-
searcher Amit Goldenberg told me.
“We’re hardwired to notice it.”
Though such intimate interaction
might seem awkward, dozens of
studies have found that people who
ask questions that invite vulnerable
responses—and who match that vul-
nerability—are more popular among
their peers, more often seen as lead-
ers and are sought out more often
for advice. In one experiment, re-
searchers instructed participants to
ask strangers and friends questions
such as Have you ever committed a
crime? The researchers found that
“questioners assumed that asking
REVIEW
People who
prove they are
listening are
seen as better
partners.
sensitive questions would make their
conversation partners uncomfortable
and would damage their relation-
ships. But in fact, we consistently
found that askers were wrong on
both fronts.” Asking deep questions
is easier and more rewarding than
we expect.
This explains why Nicholas Epley
was so affected in high school by his
counselor’s questions: They were
deep. “It might seem hard to reframe
questions in a way that’s vulnerable,”
Epley told me. “But it’s actually pretty
easy once you start looking for it. Like
when I’m on a train, talking with peo-
ple commuting to work, I might ask
them, What do you do for a living?
And then I might say, Do you love
that job? or Do you have something
else you dream of doing? And right
there, you’re two questions in, and
you’ve gotten to somebody’s dreams.”
Prove You Are Listening
Many people don’t know how
to show they’re listening. And speak-
ing is such a cognitively intense activ-
ity that, often, speakers don’t notice
how listeners are reacting.
So, to prove we’re listening, we
need to show it after a person fin-
ishes talking. One way is known as
“looping for understanding”: Ask a
question (preferably a deep ques-
tion). Repeat back, in your own
words, what you heard. Then—this is
important—ask if you got it right.
Techniques like looping “at the
beginning of a conversation fore-
stalls conflict escalation at the end,”
found a 2020 study by researchers
from Harvard and the University of
British Columbia. People who prove
they are listening are seen as “better
teammates, advisers” and “more de-
sirable partners for future collabora-
tion.” Another 2018 study found that
when someone proves they’re listen-
ing, it creates “a sense of psychologi-
cal safety.”
In one experiment, researchers
gathered dozens of gun-control ad-
vocates and an equal number of gun-
rights activists and found that teach-
ing the participants techniques like
looping for understanding trans-
formed how they spoke and listened.
One participant, Melanie Jeffcoat,
told a group how, when she was in
high school, a gunman had opened
fire, seriously wounding two stu-
dents and killing a teacher. She had
been terrified of guns since that day.
Another group member, a gun-rights
advocate, asked her a few questions,
and said: “What I hear is that you’ve
seen how badly guns can hurt peo-
ple, can create memories that haunt
us, and you don’t want anyone else
to experience that. Did I hear you
right?”
Jeffcoat told me that hearing
someone prove he was listening
changed her view of him. “Normally,
* ***
this is someone I would have seen as
the enemy,” Jeffcoat said. “But it felt
so incredible to know he wanted to
understand.” Next, the man told a
story about hunting with his father,
and Jeffcoat told him that it seemed
like guns were an important part of
that bond. Neither person changed
the other’s mind. But they con-
nected. “I walked away from it
thinking, if we can do this on a large
scale, we can change the world,” Jef-
fcoat told me.
Determine What
Everyone Wants
We often go into conversations with
an intent: “I want to convince Jim to
support my budget proposal.” But we
often forget to pay attention to what
others want, or fail to announce our
own hopes.
When researchers at Harvard Busi-
ness School reviewed data in 2018
from hundreds of recorded conversa-
tions, they found that participants of-
ten reported that they didn’t enjoy
their talks because the signals they
had sent to change topics went un-
heeded. “Although people filled their
conversational speech with informa-
tion about their topic preferences,”
the researchers wrote, “their human
partners failed to pick up on many of
those cues (or ignored them).”
The easiest way to figure out
what people want from a discussion
is simply to ask. Take the experience
of Behfar Ehdaie, a surgeon at Me-
morial Sloan Kettering Hospital in
New York City. For years, Ehdaie was
puzzled at the reaction of patients
whom he advised to treat newly di-
agnosed prostate cancer without
surgery or radiation. Because the tu-
mors are often slow-growing, Ehdaie
recommended to many patients that
they do nothing except periodic
blood tests and biopsies. “I thought
these would be some of the easiest
discussions of my life,” Ehdaie told
me. “I figured they’d be overjoyed to
hear they could avoid surgery.”
Instead, patients would listen to
his advice—and then demand sur-
gery. (It wasn’t just his own pa-
tients—studies have shown that
prostate-cancer patients often opt
for more aggressive treatment than
needed.) So Ehdaie turned to com-
munication experts at Harvard Busi-
ness School, who told him he had
been talking to his patients all
wrong. They suggested Ehdaie start
each conversation by asking “What
does this cancer diagnosis mean to
you?”
One 62-year-old man surprised
Ehdaie by describing how his father
had died when he was young,
“which was tough on my mom. I
would hate to put my family
through that,” he said. He talked
about how he didn’t want to trau-
matize his kids. Ehdaie matched him
by talking about the importance of
managing his own emotions, as well
as his family’s, and only then
brought up the option of avoiding
surgery in favor of “active surveil-
lance.” The patient agreed within
minutes. Since adopting this tech-
nique, the number of Ehdaie’s pa-
tients opting for surgery has fallen
by 30%.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
.
ly
Pay Attention to
More Than Words
Even before we learn to speak, we un-
derstand how to communicate
through body language, vocal inflec-
tions, grimaces, sighs and laughs.
“People’s emotions are rarely put into
words,” wrote the psychologist Daniel
Goleman. “The key to intuiting an-
other’s feelings is in the ability to
read nonverbal channels: tone of
voice, gesture, facial expressions and
the like.”
As we grow older, however, our ca-
pacity to notice others’ expressions
and body language often atrophies.
We start focusing on people’s words—
It’s nothing. I feel fine—rather than
their crossed arms, downcast eyes or
monotone voice. But people need to
detect each other’s emotions even
when they’re unspoken.
In the 1980s, NASA set out to test
potential astronauts for that talent to
improve communication among
crews spending long periods together
in space. NASA psychiatrist Terence
McGuire came up with a new test.
Rather than simply ask astronaut
candidates questions, McGuire told
me, he started telling them jokes and
sad stories and paid close attention
to how each candidate reacted.
McGuire would spill his papers in
what seemed like an accident, then
laugh loudly, and watch: Did the can-
didate laugh back or just chuckle po-
litely? Later, McGuire would mention
a death in his family and observe
whether the candidate looked and
sounded concerned and made ges-
tures of comfort.
“Words, tones, postures, gestures
and facial expressions,” McGuire
wrote to NASA’s leaders, “can be a
gold mine of information.” By the
time NASA selected the class of 1990,
McGuire had worked out exactly
what he was looking for: Astronauts
who made it clear they wanted to
match his emotions. The candidates
he endorsed took emotional commu-
nication seriously and became some
of the most successful astronauts in
NASA’s history, many flying multiple
missions into space.
“The single biggest problem with
communication,” said the playwright
George Bernard Shaw, “is the illusion
it has taken place.” But scientists
have now unraveled some mysteries
of conversation, and their insights
can transform workplaces and rela-
tionships. Husbands and wives, par-
ents and kids, political enemies or
corporate rivals can learn to connect
even when the gulf seems impossibly
wide. Underlying this science is a big
idea: Communication is a learnable
skill. There are moments when a cu-
rious question, a silent laugh or an
empathetic expression can carve a
new path. We can all learn how to
hear what’s unsaid and speak so that
others want to listen. Because the
right conversation, at the right mo-
ment, can change everything.
This essay is adapted from Charles
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUISA JUNG
Duhigg’s new book, “Supercommu-
nicators: How to Unlock the Secret
Language of Connection,” which
will be published by Random House
on Feb. 20. He is previously the au-
thor of “The Power of Habit.”
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | C5

REVIEW

The Joy of Eating

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING
AMANDA FOREMAN

The Real Thing Here Comes

The Rain
Again
Authentic tamarind, pesto or steel-cut oats may be more expensive and trickier to cook GIVEN THAT MUCH of
than the versions we usually eat, but the delightful flavors make it worth the effort. California was suffering
a severe drought just
two years ago, it might
seem ungrateful to com-
plain about rain. Yet Californians
have already managed two record-
breaking storms this year, and more
are expected. The increase in the
frequency and strength of these
weather events spells trouble for
the state. Some worry it is a sign
that the “Big One”—a massive once-
in-a-millennium storm—is nigh.
Scientists think that these storms
are growing more severe as a result
of climate change, but mythical sto-
ries about destructive floods have
haunted humans for eons, from the
Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh in 2000
B.C. to the biblical story of Noah
and his ark.
Thousands of years of accumu-
lated climate records combined with
modern computing methods have
led to new insights for the role rain
has played in shaping human des-
tiny. For example, excessive rain can
now be added to the list of reasons
behind the collapse of the Roman
Empire. Apparently the final de-

.
cades of the fifth century were un-

ly
usually wet. Harvests failed and gra-
naries rotted, setting off a
cataclysmic chain of famines, wars
on and mass migration that hastened
the empire’s demise.
Abnormal rainfall needn’t spell
human disaster. In the early 13th
us ,

century, 15 consecutive years of un-

precedented rainfall turned the bar-
l
e
ren Mongolian steppe into fertile
al a

grassland. The region could finally

T
feed the massive armies that al-
ci on

amarind, apparently, fruits—you can buy them from ing with it is soon forgotten. And A couple of years ago, I met the lowed Genghis Khan to pursue his
is the flavor of 2024. Asian food shops, like dried dates. a single block of tamarind will Italian producer of Acquerello, an dream of a Mongol empire. But the
So says McCormick And, oh my word, the flavor! It ac- produce enough paste for many incredibly expensive risotto rice, intensely wet spring of 1242 may
& Company, the gi- tually made me gasp to remember meals (it keeps for a couple of who told me that her rice was so have pushed his descendants to
ant spice company, what I had been missing. Real, months in a container in the fridge creamy you hardly needed to add abruptly leave Central Europe. The
er s

in its annual “Flavor of the Year” whole tamarind is a wild and ex- or for six months in the freezer). butter or Parmesan. I was skepti- Mongol cavalry could seemingly de-
forecast for chefs and food manu- citing flavor, so sour and fruity I went through a similar epiph- cal, but she was right, as I discov-
m er

facturers. (Last year’s prediction
was that Vietnamese and Cajun
flavors would dominate.) The Mc-
Cormick website announces that
and intense that you want to eat it
by the spoonful. As Tom Stobart
wrote in his classic 1970 book
“Herbs, Spices and Flavorings,”
m rp
any with steel-cut oats. For years I ered to my amazement when I
avoided them in favor of quicker- took some of her rice home and
cooking rolled oats because I felt I cooked with it. Each grain was
couldn’t spare the time to cook perfectly separate and yet velvety,

tamarind—an exotic brown fruit
with a sour-sweet tang—brings
“craveable tartness” to all man-
ner of foods, “cutting
through richness and
“other souring agents will never
produce quite the same results.”
So often we think a certain food
we are eating is OK until
we try the real or best
co Fo
them, least of all first thing in the
morning. Steel-cut oats are much
chewier and nuttier because they
are nothing but pure oat groats
cut into small pieces, whereas
as if the rice itself had been in-
jected with cream. The sad part is
it costs nearly $20 a pound. Now
my normal workaday risotto
tastes a little less special than it

heat,” while its acidic version, and then the rolled oats have been pre-steamed did before. By the same token, last
NOAH BERGER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

notes apparently help to
add “layer on layer of ex-
citing flavor.”
It’s cheering to see
tamarind, one of the love-
liest of all the sweet-sour
flavors, being champi-
oned. If you are partial to
balsamic vinegar, I wager
WILSON
that you may love tama-
rind even more. Where I
lesser kind never seems
quite as good as we be-
lieved before. This hap-
pened to me with jarred
pesto, which seemed like
TABLE an exciting thing in my
TALK 1980s childhood until I
tried real fresh pesto and
BEE
realized that the two were
like chalk and cheese—or,
rather, like khaki sludge
n-
and flattened. The downside is
that preparing steel-cut oats from
scratch can take up to half an hour.
My compromise is to put them
in the instant pot—a cup of oats to
2½ cups of water—for 5 minutes
at high pressure, then leave them
to release naturally. This makes
enough oats for a few breakfasts: I
just refrigerate them and reheat as
needed, adding milk or cream and
year I ate real mortadella in Bolo-
gna, from Salumeria Simoni, and
realized that these silken pink rib-
bons of meat had nothing in com-
mon with any mortadella I would
ever eat outside of Italy.
Some might say you are better
off never trying the real thing, Waves off Alameda, Calif., Feb. 4.
because when your standards are
raised you can no longer get as feat any foe except the bottomless
much pleasure from the lesser mud of the Hungarian plain.

part ways with McCormick is
about what tamarind actually
means. The company is under-
standably keen to persuade us to
no
versus a mouthful of green spring. maple syrup, cinnamon and fruit. version. I disagree. When we can, A recurring theme in most Great
The catch is that the real version Once I developed the steel-cut oat- it’s worth seeking out these de- Flood myths is how destruction can
is almost always trickier to make, meal habit, I saw that what I had lights, despite the trouble or the be creative, the washing away of the
costlier to buy or inaccessible ex- thought of as oats before was just expense. Life is short, and often past being necessary for a redemp-

get our tamarind hit from its own
dry “Tamarind and Pasilla Chile
Seasoning,” in which tamarind
“extractives” are actually the
smallest ingredient, behind sugar,
salt, citric acid and onion. Me? I’d
rather have the real thing.
I recently had a tamarind
epiphany. For convenience, I had
got in the habit of buying little
ILLUSTRATION BY SOL COTTI
cept in its place of origin.
Take tamarind. Dealing with
the whole fruit is—I can’t deny
it—a slightly annoying process.
You have to soak it in hot water
for half an hour or so before siev-
ing out the big sticky seeds, rub-
bing them against the sieve with a
wooden spoon. It may seem for a
while that nothing is happening,
a pale and gummy imitation.
What is true of tamarind and
oats is true of almost any ingredi-
ent you can think of, from toma-
toes to cheese, from bread to but-
ter. There are versions of them
out there so delicious that they
will spoil you for the regular kind.
I have a friend, an excellent vege-
table gardener, who says she can’t
the brightest spots are those rare
memories of something so deli-
cious that it stopped you in your
tracks. “Tamarind” flavor is all
very well, but real tamarind is
better.
My late mother would often
reminisce about the strawberries
of her youth and how much bet-
ter they tasted than the watery
tive transformation. A real-life ex-
ample can be seen in Europe’s re-
sponse to the crisis of 1816—the so-
called Year Without a Summer. The
1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora in In-
donesia ejected a huge cloud of sul-
fate gases into the atmosphere and
created an unseasonable chill in
much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Endless rain watered already sodden

jars of tamarind concentrate. And
these jars are perfectly fine, in a
pinch. But while making an au-
thentic Indian dal recipe, instead
of taking the shortcut, I bought a
block of whole, real tamarind
and you have to add more boiling
water, bit by bit, to release all the
puréed fruit from the stones. But
the fresh tamarind tastes so won-
derful, in everything from pad thai
to salads, that the tedium of deal-
buy potatoes any more because
they taste so stodgy and dull
compared to the ones she pulls
from the ground herself and boils
fresh before serving with butter
and mint.
EXHIBIT
strawberries she found in modern
British supermarkets. I would ask
her what made these strawber-
ries taste so good, and the closest
she could get was to say “they
tasted real.”
fields. Communities starved; typhus
outbreaks infected millions of peo-
ple; rioting became endemic.
The sheer scale of the human
emergency forced a reconceptualiza-
tion in Britain and elsewhere of the
purpose of government. No longer
could it be concerned only with
taxes, laws and diplomacy. The mod-
ern state must also consider public
health, public administration and
public responsibility.
California’s Great Flood of 1862,

Dream Weavers which remains the state’s worst di-

saster, was another catalyst for
change. The storm began in late
1861 and lasted eight weeks. Califor-
SUSAN HAMILTON/ARIZONA STATE MUSEUM, THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA (2)

THE ARIZONA STATE MUSEUM in Tucson contains almost 4,000 bas- nia’s Central Valley became an in-
kets. In the new book “Woven From the Center” (University of Arizona land sea. At least 4,000 people died
Press), curator Diane D. Dittemore uses them to illustrate an encyclope- and a quarter of the state’s economy
dic survey of Native American basketry in the U.S. Southwest. The earli- was destroyed. The Sacramento gov-
est North American baskets are almost 10,000 years old, and basketry ernment relocated to San Francisco,
often features in Native lore. In one myth, baskets could walk by them- A Tohono which was also partially underwater.
selves until the trickster Coyote foiled them. O’odham basket The robust reconstruction efforts
In real life, the craft was endlessly useful. The O’odham depicting afterward marked a shift in atti-
A Yavapai weave baskets so tightly that they can carry wine with- Tucson’s San tude. Californians erected new flood
basket, out leaking a drop. The Quechan, a tribe along the Colo- Xavier Mission, defenses and instituted better build-
ca. 1905. rado River near Yuma, expected new fathers to make a 1972. ing regulations. Sacramento rose
cradleboard just after their baby’s birth, with basketry to again, literally 10 feet higher than
shield the baby’s head from the sun. before. The infrastructure may be
Newer artists represented in the book experiment with colors and up to 150 years old, but it is still do-
unusual shapes. In 2013, Hopi basketmaker Ruby Chimerica created a ing its job. No matter what the rain
wicker butterfly in dazzling yellows, oranges and greens, with a tightly brings, the answer isn’t an ark. It is
bound center and loose strands evoking flight. — Peter Saenger being prepared.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

C6 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

REVIEW

Emanuel Leutze, ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ (1851).

The Deeper Meaning of

.
ly
‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ on
The iconic painting by Emanuel Leutze is often criticized today for being historically inaccurate
us ,
l

and simplistically patriotic, but the truth is far more interesting.

e
al a

BY MEIR SOLOVEICHIK George Washington reflects a “Great and received his freedom at the end boat, for Leutze, is America itself. shown taking place in the early

T
ci on

Man theory of history.” The museum
he most famous image commissioned a modern version, fea-
of the American Revo- turing Native Americans rather than
lution hangs not in the Continental soldiers, in order to re-
Capitol but in the Met- flect on “the biases of American his-
er s
of the war. But as the historian David
Hackett Fischer has noted, all the ev-
idence indicates that Prince Whipple
was not present at the crossing of
the Delaware.
Perhaps the best recent interpre-
tation of “Washington Crossing the
Delaware” comes from Makoto Fuji-
mara, an artist whose life and career
offer a striking parallel to Leutze’s.
morning, rather than in the dead of
night, it is to suggest that the
American experiment could herald
the dawning of democracy else-
where and a new birth of freedom

ropolitan Museum of tory and mythmaking.” Fischer argues that the man’s Born in Massachusetts to Japanese for many in America. The flag held
Art. Emanuel Leutze’s enormous In truth, however, while Leutze’s dress indicates he is meant to be a immigrants in 1960, he spent part of by Monroe calls America to em-
m er

1851 painting “Washington Crossing
the Delaware” depicts the general’s
journey on Dec. 25, 1776, as he
launched a surprise attack on hun-
painting is certainly patriotic, it is
not simplistically so. It is a complex
reflection on both the inspirational
achievements of the revolution and
m rp
member of the Massachusetts 14th his childhood in Japan and part in brace its founding principles.
Regiment, led by John Glover. Hailing the U.S. In a 2014 commencement Putting so many soldiers in a tiny
from Marblehead, the regiment was address at Cairn University in Penn- boat was also a symbolic choice. At
comprised of a group of seamen who sylvania, Fujimara a time when many

dreds of Hessian troops quartered in the ways it failed to live up to its had worked together in civilian life reflected on how in Europe were ex-
Trenton, N.J. Few American paint- ideals. In dramatizing the past, the before serving under George Wash- Leutze sought to Understanding cluded from civic
ings are so recognizable, as count- work expresses aspirations for the ington. According to the New England “capture the very the painting life and many in
less parodies attest. American future. Historical Society, these men com- essence and ideal of America were en-
But as its fame has increased, so Understanding the painting begins prised “the first integrated regiment” democracy itself,” begins with slaved, “Washington
Leutze’s own
co Fo

have criticisms of the work. Some
detractors focus on Leutze’s alleged
errors and inaccuracies. Washing-
ton’s troops crossed in the dead of
night, not during the dawn’s early
light; the boat that carried the gen-
eral would have been much larger
than the one in the painting and
could not have contained so many
soldiers. The stars-and-stripes ban-
ner held in the painting by future
president James Monroe was not ad-
with Leutze’s own story. Born in Ger-
many in 1816, he was still a child
when he came to the U.S. with his
parents, and in his mid-20s he re-
turned to the land of his birth. After
the revolutions that swept Europe in
1848, Leutze sought to bridge the
two continents that formed him by
creating an image from the American
past that would inspire the growth
of democracy in Europe. At the same
time, he wanted to express his hopes
n-
of the American military, and Wash-
ington relied on them during critical
moments in his campaigns.
It was Glover’s men who helped
Washington escape across the East
River to Manhattan after the loss of
the Battle of Brooklyn, and the same
regiment navigated the icy floes of
the Delaware to reach Trenton. What
Washington achieved there was a tes-
tament to his leadership, but without
the rowers, there would have been no
embodying a “di-
verse coalition of
unlikely heroes
story.
gathered together in
a boat cast into the icy waves.”
Fujimara argues that Leutze de-
liberately depicted the Delaware as
if it were the Rhine because he was
asking his fellow Germans to em-
brace the American example. The
painting, on this view, expresses the
same idea that Abraham Lincoln
Crossing the Dela-
ware” urges Europe-
ans to embrace de-
mocracy while
reminding Americans, as Fischer put
it, that they were all in the same
boat.
As we mark the birthdays of
Washington and Lincoln this year,
Leutze’s remarkable painting shows
us how not to idolize or idealize the
past but to celebrate its best as-

opted as the nation’s flag until for the future of the country em- chance for the surprise attack. voiced in a speech in Trenton in pects, in order to inspire us as we
1777. And the river, with its large, braced by his parents and so many Leutze, an avowed abolitionist, 1861: that Washington’s crossing of face the future.
blue blocks of ice, looks more like the other immigrants in the 19th century. featured a member of the integrated the Delaware embodied “something
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

Rhine in Leutze’s native Germany The first clue to the painting’s 14th Regiment as a model for what even more than National Indepen- Meir Soloveichik is director of the
no

than any American waterway.
Other critics are made uncomfort-
able by what they see as the paint-
ing’s simplistic glorification of the
American past. The description of the
painting on the Metropolitan Mu-
seum’s website notes that its focus on
complexity can be found in the image
of a Black man seated near Washing-
ton’s knee. He has long been identi-
fied as Prince Whipple, a man en-
slaved by William Whipple, an officer
in the revolutionary army. Prince
Whipple served alongside William
America could be. The painting de-
liberately depicts a diverse group of
rowers. In addition to the Black
man, there is a man wearing a Scot-
tish hat—apparently an immigrant,
like Leutze—and a Native American
on the other end of the craft. The
dence; that something that held out
a great promise to all the people of
the world to all time to come.”
This idea allows us to under-
stand other alleged errors in the
painting as deliberate artistic
choices. If Washington’s journey is
Straus Center for Torah and
Western Thought at Yeshiva Uni-
versity and rabbi of Congregation
Shearith Israel in New York. He is
the author of “Providence and
Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish
Statesmanship.”

This Is batch of linguine,

would allow neu-
seems like a rel-
atively simple
Representatives the better. The
revolutionary new technology

Your Brain rons to communi-

cate just like
those in a conven-
technological fix.
What I do
know is that if
could also come in handy at
the DMV and Amtrak, and I
can’t help thinking that if Hol-

MOVING On 3-D tional brain.

TARGETS
JOE
Printing
QUEENAN
WHEN I READ a few months
ago that researchers at Oxford
University had figured out a
If a new way to “print” human brain
scientific cells using 3-D printers, I
thought it was some kind of
advance prank.
lets us But then the journal Cell
fabricate Stem Cell—always on my night-
stand—reported that scientists
brain cells, at the University of Wisconsin
who needs had not only perfected a way to
create brain tissue this way but
fancy could create brain cells that
schools? mimicked the behavior of real
ones, and I knew that the break-
through was real. Kudos to the
Badger State scientists for fig-
The implica-
tions are breath-
taking. Printed
brain tissue could
someday be used
in the study and
repair of major
diseases and could help re-
searchers develop powerful
new drugs to combat those ma-
lignancies.
But let’s be honest: The
more exciting possibilities will
come if 3-D cerebral printers
become cheap enough that con-
sumers can print out brain tis-
sue at home.
It is no secret that a lot of
people in this country come up
a bit short in the brains de-
partment and could probably
use an emergency infusion of
artificially generated brain tis-
smart, but even the brightest
of us eventually start to suc-
cumb from the wear-and-tear
caused by almost-daily brain
use until the old noggin goes
on the fritz.
Instead, ordinary people
could eventually start printing
out spanking-new brain cells at
home using their own 3-D
printers, thereby making them-
selves a whole lot smarter. Or
at the very least restoring their
brains to a previous level of in-
tellectual firepower.
I’m not sophisticated enough
you could, for in-
stance, get your
kids to agree to
periodic cerebral
upgrades, you
could save a lot
of money by not
sending them to
snooty, overpriced private
schools or ridiculously expen-
sive after-school enrichment
programs. Just print out some
new brain cells every few
months, inject them into your
kids’ brains, and the little suck-
ers will be getting early admis-
sion to Harvard just like that.
And actually: Who needs Har-
vard if you can add brain cells
at home?
Where else could on-the-
spot printing of 3-D gray mat-
ter make a huge impact? Obvi-
ously, the sooner we get a
lywood had access to a steady
stream of high-quality brain
tissue supplied by the repro-
graphics department, it would
never have greenlighted “Ren-
field,” “The Flash” or “Indiana
Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”
One caveat, though: If they
are anything like regular print-
ers, 3-D brain-tissue printers
might eventually be relatively
cheap, but the cost of the ink
could end up being prohibitively
expensive, especially if consum-
ers wanted to print out their
brain tissue in splashy colors.
And should consumers turn
to off-brand printer ink, the re-
sults could be disastrous, with
Brand X brain cells turning up
everywhere. (The printer com-
panies, of course, cannot be re-
sponsible for the quality if you
choose to use generic ink
PETER ARKLE

uring out that arranging the sue from time to time. Through to explain how you would go couple dozen high-volume 3-D tanks!)
printed brain cells side by side, no fault of their own, some about installing artificially gen- brain-tissue printers up and But that’s a risk most of us
like a row of stick pretzels or a people aren’t born all that erated brain tissue, but this running at the U.S. House of would be willing to take.
 BOOKS
For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

Living on the Air Scene & Heard

The wonders of radio, Undercover among
from the wireless the art-world
to Wi-Fi C9 elite C11

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A Philosophy for the Ambitious

America’s founders sought to frame themselves as classical statesmen—but they were not
The Pursuit of Happiness
By Jeffrey Rosen
Simon & Schuster, 368 pages, $28.99
BY BARTON SWAIM

J
EFFREY ROSEN spent the Covid
lockdowns of 2020 reading various
treatises by Xenophon, Seneca,
Cicero, John Locke and David Hume.
He was led to these and other works
by a list compiled by Thomas Jefferson in 1771
in which the future president advised a friend
on the books with which a good private library
ought to be stocked.
For a year, Mr. Rosen writes in “The Pursuit
of Happiness,” “I got up every morning before
sunrise, read a selection from his list, and
found myself taking notes on the reading in
sonnet form, so that I could easily remember
the daily lesson.” Later, he says, he discovered
that important figures in Founding-era
America, including Benjamin Franklin and
Alexander Hamilton, similarly took notes on
their reading in verse form.
All this reading and metrical note taking,
Mr. Rosen tells us, changed his understanding
of that famous phrase in the Declaration of
Independence, “the pursuit of happiness.”
Today, he says, “we think of happiness as the
pursuit of pleasure. But classical and Enlight-

.
enment thinkers defined happiness as the

ly
pursuit of virtue—as being good, rather than
feeling good.”
Jefferson might have been expected to
follow Locke, whom he had definitely read, in
naming life, liberty and “property” as the chief
things to which man has rights. Instead he
wrote “pursuit of happiness.” Until roughly
on
us ,
JOHN DYKES

the middle of the past century, historians

tended to view the phrase as a bit of
l
e
rhetorical fluff. More recent historians mostly
al a

acknowledge that “happiness” had a deeper

and nobler meaning in 1776 than it would have
ci on

two centuries later.

Garry Wills, in his brilliant study of the
Declaration, “Inventing America” (1978),
traces Jefferson’s words—“pursuit,” “happi-
ness” and many others—to their sources in
The book is structured loosely according mentions Christianity at all, he treats it as a virtue. Cicero describes Socrates as a “model
to a list of virtues Franklin enumerated in his kind of neutral cultural background rather of humility,” Mr. Rosen says, when the
“Autobiography”: temperance, silence, order, than the vast and ancient body of distinctive Roman orator observes that it’s “a fine thing
er s

the writings of British philosophers of the 17th resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, doctrines, traditions and attitudes it was and to keep an unruffled temper, an unchanging
and 18th centuries, including Locke. More justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, remains. Even those, like Adams, Franklin mien, and the same cast of countenance in
m er

recently, University of Missouri law professor
Carli Conklin has concluded that, for Jefferson
and the Founders, the right to pursue
happiness meant something like the freedom
chastity and humility. Jefferson, inspired by
Cicero’s “Tusculan Disputations,” compiled an
almost identical list of virtues, only leaving
off chastity, a virtue both Franklin and
m rp
and Jefferson, who consciously disbelieved in every condition of life.” This is a description
orthodox Christianity thought about the of equanimity or self-control, not humility.
world in Christian terms. They exalted mercy Mr. Rosen not infrequently reads Stoicism
and equality and assumed a single, all-wise, into passages that don’t contain it. He tells us

to align one’s life with the laws of nature.
Mr. Rosen, the president of the National
Constitution Center in Philadelphia, refers
hardly at all to the long and tangled debate
over the meaning of Jefferson’s phrase and
Jefferson found a challenge. Mr. Rosen also
leaves off chastity—either, I assume, because
chastity was not a Stoic virtue or because it’s
not a modern one.
Any author in the 2020s willing to celebrate
co Fo
loving deity. “It is a curious thing, do you
The American Founders read
deeply in classical literature,
that Adams, in a 1764 letter to his future
wife, Abigail, “worried that in trading gossip,
he had violated the Stoic injunction to work
on controlling our own judgments about
others, rather than others’ judgments of

cites primary sources almost exclusively. His
book’s overarching argument holds that, for
the Founders—he concentrates on Jefferson,
John Adams, Franklin and George Mason—
the pursuit of happiness lay in the ancient
creed of Stoicism.
The Stoics, recall—Epictetus, Seneca and
Marcus Aurelius, among others—believed that
the good life consisted in self-mastery and the
cultivation of virtue. The Founders, in Mr.
Rosen’s view, derived their understanding of
“happiness,” and therefore of the purpose of
n-
America’s Founders for their sagacious writing
and honorable conduct deserves a measure of
praise. Mr. Rosen rightly qualifies his
commendations of those, particularly the
Virginians, whose cultivation of virtue
depended on a way of life enabled by slave
labor; but he doesn’t allow that obvious fail-
ing—or indeed other, lesser failings—to eclipse
the Founders’ achievements. The chapter on
justice moves past the 18th century altogether
and examines the nation’s latter-day Founders,
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
but their outlook was basically
Christian rather than pagan.
know,” says a character in James Joyce’s
“Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” “how
your mind is supersaturated with the religion
in which you say you disbelieve.”
Consider the virtues enumerated by
Franklin and Jefferson. Courage, one of the
us.” But the letter, in which Adams
acknowledges his own censoriousness,
makes no allusion to Stoicism or any other
classical idea or author. A likelier source for
Adams’s worry, I would have thought, would
be the line “Judge not, lest ye be judged,”
but maybe Mr. Rosen would tell us that
Jesus was invoking a Stoic injunction.
Stoicism, if my reading of recent books on
politics is any indication, is enjoying some-
thing of a resurgence. I interpret this as a
desire to settle on some set of metaphysical

political liberty, from the Stoics, in some cases
directly, in others via their readings of
Enlightenment philosophers such as Locke and
Hume. “The Founders,” he writes, “believed
no
The book’s central thesis, however, is not four so-called cardinal virtues named by both ideas that might fill the spiritual void left by
persuasive. Mr. Rosen vastly overstates the Plato and Aristotle, goes unmentioned by secularism without offending liberal orthodox-
role of Stoicism in the thought of the nation’s Franklin and Jefferson. Frugality and ies. It doesn’t work. Stoicism, for all its admi-
Founders. Adams, Jefferson, James Madison industry, when referred to by the Founders, rable moral earnestness, is an inward-looking

that the pursuit of happiness regards freedom
not as boundless liberty to do whatever feels
good in the moment but as bounded liberty to
make wise choices that will help us best
develop our capacities and talents over the
course of our lives.”
and the rest were educated men who read
prodigiously and widely, and they internal-
ized much of what they read in the classical
authors. But their worldview, and in many
cases their conscious conviction, was
Christian, not pagan. When Mr. Rosen
were plainly Protestant, not pagan, in
orientation. Humility, which makes both lists,
was a virtue for the Jews and the Christians
but not for the Greeks and the Romans.
To force Stoicism into his chapter on
humility, Mr. Rosen implicitly redefines that
philosophy; which is to say, a self-regarding
one. In its modern iterations, it appeals to
ambitious, well-heeled self-improvers without
offering redemption or any reason to love.
Note Mr. Rosen’s description of the Founders’
Please turn to page C8

when President Theodore Roosevelt

The Crusade and Congress passed important new
laws, such as the Pure Food and Drug

To Moralize Act, and considered whether corpora-

tions should be chartered federally
rather than state by state. “We do not
Corporations wish to destroy corporations,” TR
said in 1902, “but we do wish to make
them subserve the public good.”
Taming the Octopus
By Kyle Edward Williams
Norton, 304 pages, $29.99 Officials and activists
seek to rein in corporate
The Race to Zero
By Paul H. Tice
power—and to harness it
UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Encounter, 328 pages, $32.99 to their favorite causes.

BY DANIEL AKST

M
ANY ARE the en-
gines of human in-
genuity, but none is
more fecund than
the corporation,
which absorbs capital as if it were
sunshine and gives back wealth in ri-
otous abundance.
But to what purpose? Is the corpo-
ration meant to serve only its share-
holding masters? Or is there some
greater obligation to workers, commu-
nity or country? Long before the joint-
stock company was created by British
law in the mid-19th century, Adam
OVERREACH ‘Next!’ by Udo Keppler, depicting Standard Oil, as published in Puck Magazine in 1904.
Smith recognized that if commerce is
to promote human flourishing, it must
be guided not just by unbridled self-in-
terest but by values and a moral imag-
ination.
The question of corporate purpose
is central to Kyle Edward Williams’s
“Taming the Octopus,” a history of ef-
forts by American government offi-
cials and activists to rein in corporate
power and even harness it to their fa-
vorite causes. These efforts are based
on the idea that the limited-liability
corporation, “its tentacles wrapped
around the globe many times over,”
ought to be accountable. But, as the
Reformers ever since have
marched under the same banner,
blind to the idea that corporations
might already be serving the public
good merely by prospering. Efforts to
bring them to heel, on the other hand,
have often backfired.
Consider the Interstate Commerce
author asks: “Accountable to whom or Commission, the granddaddy of many
to what?” later federal agencies. Set up in the
Mr. Williams, a fellow at the Uni- 1880s to rein in the railroads, it
versity of Virginia’s Institute for Ad- would breed stagnation and ineffi-
vanced Studies in Culture, doesn’t of- ciency in freight transportation for
fer any clear answers of his own. His decades to come. The New Deal later
survey of the answers offered by oth- brought a mixed bag of reforms, from
ers begins in the early 20th century, Please turn to page C8
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

C8 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

BOOKS
‘Douglas is a great man—at keeping from answering questions he don’t want to answer.’ —ABRAHAM LINCOLN

FIVE BEST ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S CAMPAIGNS

Harold Holzer
The author, most recently, of ‘Brought Forth on This Continent:
Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration’

A Self-Made Man sented a triumph over radicals within his own

By Sidney Blumenthal (2016) party. Mr. Long shifts that perspective,

1
emphasizing how dangerous a Democratic
The author, a Clinton White House adviser, Party victory might have been to both black
began a multivolume Lincoln biography freedom and democracy itself, with the fate
with this atmospheric, authoritative of emancipation and the Union hanging in
curtain raiser. It reimagines the roiling po- the balance. In arguing that the Demo-
litical culture in which young Abraham Lincoln cratic campaign came close to treason,
waged his earliest and most localized cam- “The Jewel of Liberty” makes skilled
paigns. Mr. Blumenthal posits that the future use of previously ignored scare-tactic
president needed a failure to succeed, and campaign publications that alarmed
having re-enlisted in the Illinois Volunteers white voters about the biracial
rather than campaign for office in 1832, future awaiting them should
Lincoln lost his first bid for State Assem- Lincoln win a second term. Mr.
bly. He would not make the same mis- Long convincingly calls the 1864
take again (until prevailing custom for- campaign the most important
bade his campaigning publicly for the in American history—a
White House). Mr. Blumenthal shows description repeatedly, per-
how skillfully Lincoln expanded his haps promiscuously, applied
hometown New Salem, Ill., base until to several contests since. Per-
he could count on its near-unanimous haps the most astonishing
support, building his appeal through thing about the ’64 race is
humility, likability and adherence to that it took place at all in the
Whig Party promises like infrastruc- midst of civil war, a point that
ture improvements. Mr. Blumenthal’s undergirds this still-definitive
Lincoln emerges not as a predestined account. Mr. Long’s reflective,
icon but as an eager partisan deploying discursive prose may read like
tart humor and hypnotic oratory to an expanded dissertation—
spellbind crowds. In the absence of a which it is—but it remains well
book devoted exclusively to Lincoln’s early worth exploring, especially during

.
political races, Mr. Blumenthal’s is not only another presidential election year.

ly
essential; it may be unsurpassable.

Emancipation, the Union

Lincoln and Douglas
By Allen C. Guelzo (2008)
on Army, and the Reelection of
Abraham Lincoln

2
By Jonathan W. White (2014)

5
Although the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas
us ,

debates were prosaic and repetitive— This provocative study considers for
the published transcripts of the seven the first time how and why federal
l
e
encounters were burnished by politically soldiers voted so overwhelmingly to
al a

motivated stenographers and editors—they re-elect their commander-in-chief. Did

seem locked in historical memory as a high- his defeat. Douglas may things still have gone they rally to save the Union, destroy slavery
ci on

water mark in campaign oratory. The Lincoln
scholar Allen Guelzo argues that the debates
alone, absent the context of that year’s wider
Senate campaign, are like “Shakespeare with-
out a stage.” Mr. Guelzo’s “Lincoln and Doug-
have retained his Senate seat, but wrong for Lincoln in 1860? or both? As Jonathan W. White shows, the
Lincoln opened up a wider future for himself. Unlikely, though the author sustains the drama political playing field was somewhat rigged:
of a bitter, hard-fought campaign waged largely Commanders discouraged Democratic Party
by surrogates, with Lincoln the unseen wire- campaigning in army encampments, sidelined
Year of Meteors puller. Mr. Egerton understands why Lincoln’s anti-Lincoln sentiment, discouraged criticism
er s

las” widens the proscenium to illuminate the By Douglas R. Egerton (2010) election triggered secession, but suggests of the Emancipation Proclamation, and intim-

3
fuller world of midcentury disputation over disunion was a Southern plot that became idated Democratic soldier-voters. Meanwhile,
m er

slavery. He portrays the incumbent Democratic
Sen. Stephen A. Douglas as committed to or-
derly process (including the flawed principle of
“popular sovereignty”) and Abraham Lincoln,
m rp
Thousands of Lincoln books have unavoidable as soon as the antislavery Lincoln Republicans freely distributed pro-Lincoln
appeared in print, yet only a handful unexpectedly won his party’s nomination. The propaganda and worked without restraint to
deal with his first presidential cam- book particularly shines in its character studies spike robust turnout. This overt (but long-ob-
paign. (Exception: The slew of 1860 of the leading players, among them an almost scured) favoritism did not demonstrably

to principle (above all the foundational promise books issued to introduce Lincoln to voters, for too-sympathetic portrayal of Stephen Douglas. change the overall outcome; Lincoln would
that all men are created equal). The debates which see Thomas Horrocks’s “Lincoln’s Cam- have prevailed nationwide even had soldiers
themselves Mr. Guelzo reimagines pictur- paign Biographies,” 2014.) Douglas Egerton, a not voted four-to-one in his favor. Mr. White’s
HERITAGE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

esquely, not only parsing the actual back-and- history professor at Le Moyne College, holds The Jewel of Liberty meticulous scholarship and bold revisionism,
forth but also exhuming neglected sources, claim to the most thorough and riveting of a By David E. Long (1994) however, call into question the rank and file’s

4
co Fo

animating the frenzied public response to each
clash. Mr. Guelzo’s style is occasionally oro-
tund, but his research is exhaustive, and his
analysis commanding. Few books have better
explained how Lincoln handled and parlayed
surprisingly small assortment of newer studies.
“Year of Meteors” is a lucid and pulsating
account of a race that Lincoln’s three opponents
forfeited many months before Election Day by
dividing opposition to the Republicans. Could
true opinion of Lincoln and his greatest act.
Before David E. Long’s book—the first The president earned 78% of the military vote
on the subject in 40 years—the exist- in 1864, but did the landslide demonstrate
ing literature suggested that Lincoln’s overwhelming soldier support for black free-
1864 re-election victory chiefly repre- dom? Mr. White doubts it.

1960s, activists would attack business
Corporations for discrimination, pollution and other
ills, sometimes buying a few shares to
And Their
n-
stakeholders and what contributes to political agenda that includes “diver-
the ongoing viability of the business.”
If “Taming the Octopus” lacks an
sity, union power, gender-pay equal-
ity, executive compensation, and
The Founders
And the

noisily make their case at shareholder
meetings. Corporations responded by
launching training programs for
Critics women and minorities, hiring the pre-
no
argument beyond the general wish for corporate tax responsibility,” all
business to be more moral, Paul Tice’s under the banner of “sustainable
“The Race to Zero” is an extended investing.” And he isn’t taking any of
argument—verging on jeremiad— this lying down. “With its global Ancients

viously excluded, and depositing funds against the risks of moralizing capi- scope, decentralized method of
in especially virtuous banks. talism to death. The author, an attack, and insidious appeal to busi-
Continued from page C7 ness ethics,” he writes, “sustainability Continued from page C7
the Securities and Exchange Commis- represents the most formidable threat Stoic understanding of the pursuit of
sion to government-inspired business to free-market capitalism ever seen.” happiness: a doctrine that “will help
cartels. Many of these initiatives Mr. Tice sees the corporation’s us best develop our capacities and tal-
proved detrimental to competition purpose as earning profits by provid- ents over the course of our lives.”
and consumers. ing for human needs and wants, a Not, I hasten to add, that
The deregulation of the 1970s and project that produces great social ambitious, well-heeled self-improvers
’80s aimed at the legal price fixing benefits all by itself. Yet can that be have no place in a virtuous republic.
that Americans faced in transporta- the whole story? Is there no argu- That description fits a good many of
tion, telecommunications and finan- ment, say, for having firms pay for the nation’s Founders, and thank God
cial services, among other sectors. the costly side effects—of pollution, for them. But Stoicism is a niche inter-
Initiated at first by Democrats on be- addiction, etc.—that they may be est, attractive to the bookish and
half of “the little guy,” and extended imposing on others? successful, and always will be.
Seen broadly as an effort to subor- At the book’s end Mr. Rosen makes
dinate private interests to public the case for reviving the Stoic outlook.
No enterprise operates ones, ESG might someday be invoked “As the silent generation of World War
to make sure that corporations serve II gave way to the ‘me’ generation of
in a moral vacuum,
ARTUR WIDAK/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES

national security. Recent concerns baby boomers,” he writes, “the hedo-

but movements such as
ESG provoke overreach.
by Republicans to promote growth,
deregulation worked well in some
cases (airlines) and dismally in others
(savings and loans).
A certain amount of moral mission
creep was the fault of corporations
themselves. By midcentury, the
immense profits of American
business, operating without signifi-
cant foreign competition in a world
laid waste by war, led some execu-
tives to see themselves as statesmen
piloting enterprises freighted with
social responsibility. As one executive
put it: “Our interest in a competitive
economy is not as an end in itself, but
as a means to an end.”
One critic called it all “bewildering
balderdash,” but maybe the “states-
men” saw trouble coming. In the
GREENING The 2023 World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, Alberta.
While Milton Friedman exalted the
primacy of shareholders, others con-
sidered them just one of many “stake-
holders,” a category that included
workers, customers and communities.
Yet even Mr. Williams, who seems to
believe corporations have an obliga-
tion to do more than seek profits, has
his doubts. “As a theory of ethics,” he
writes, “stakeholder theory is dubious
at best,” because profit-seeking and
ethical conduct can’t easily be harmo-
nized (a notion Adam Smith would
heartily dispute). “In the end, what is
ethical is what ‘creates value’ for
over America’s ability to supply itself
and its allies during war suggest that
capitalism is about to get more na-
tionalistic—helped along by the very
visible hand of government.
No enterprise can operate in a
moral vacuum, but movements such
as ESG, fueled by prosperity and
championed by the swollen clerisy it
sustains, tend toward overreach.
adjunct professor of finance at New Even Mr. Tice acknowledges that
York University, works hard to make “the backlash to ESG has been grow-
the case for the book’s blunt subtitle: ing over the past two years.” Under
“How ESG Investing Will Crater the a headline calling ESG “The Latest
Global Financial System.” Dirty Word in Corporate America,”
The abbreviation ESG stands for a The Wall Street Journal recently
corporate ethos that gives priority to reported that CEOs feeling political,
environmental, social and governance legal and investor heat are avoiding
factors; in the author’s view, it is the the term, and some investment firms
basis for an attempted takeover of are closing once popular ESG funds.
capitalism. “Using climate change as One hopes their stationery can be
its core thesis and moral exoskele- sustainably recycled.
ton,” Mr. Tice says, activists seek to
reorient companies and investors Mr. Akst writes the Journal’s
away from profit seeking in favor of a weekly news quiz.
nism of the 1960s gave way to the
narcissism of the 1970s and the materi-
alism of the 1980s. ‘You do you’ became
the new mantra, and everyone had an
unalienable right to define their own
bliss.” To counteract this atomistic
egotism Mr. Rosen suggests a new
regime of character education defined
by Stoic discipline. The irony doesn’t
occur to him: Invigorated self-focus is
no great remedy for narcissism.
At a superficial level Mr. Rosen’s
book reminds me of Allan Bloom’s
1987 bestseller, “The Closing of the
American Mind,” a book that surveyed
American aimlessness and decadence
and similarly counseled a return to
ancient Greek ideas. One difference is
that Bloom offended the nation’s
cultural arbiters. Mr. Rosen, with his
philosophy for the upwardly mobile,
offends no one.
Mr. Swaim is an editorial page
writer for the Journal.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
‘Half of all marriages end in divorce—and then there are the really unhappy ones.’
Until Scandal Do Us Part
Strong Passions
By Barbara Weisberg
Norton, 336 pages, $28.99
BY CHARLOTTE GRAY
P
ETER STRONG’S mar-
riage to his young wife,
Mary, had not been
particularly happy over
the previous few months.
Now they were dealing with the death
of their 14-month-old daughter. Peter,
a bon vivant living off inherited
wealth, is anxious to rekindle the ro-
mance with Mary. Instead, his wife’s
response shocks him. She pulls away,
sobbing. “Oh, forgive me, forgive me.”
Then she confesses that for the previ-
ous two years she has been having an
affair with his widowed younger
brother, Edward.
In “Strong Passions: A Scandalous
Divorce in Old New York,” Barbara
Weisberg describes a case from the
1860s that has all the elements of a
soap opera—powerful families, a tear-
ful confession, adultery, abortion and
the fate of two innocent little girls.
Peter and Mary would never again
share a bed, but at first there was no
talk of a divorce. “Whatever a couple’s
miseries,” Ms. Weisberg writes, in
mid-19th-century America “legally end-
ing a marriage was viewed as an abhor-
rent act, especially among members of
the Strongs’ social class.” In New York,
divorce was especially difficult because
the courts accepted only one cause—
adultery—and it would have humiliated
both Peter, who had been cuckolded by
his own brother, and Mary, who would
be branded a “fallen woman.” A wife
divorced for adultery would have had to
surrender custody of her children. By all
accounts, Peter and Mary were equally
devoted to their daughters, 7-year-old
Mamie and 21/2-year-old Allie.
Perhaps the Strongs might have
managed a quiet separation, during
which they would jointly raise their
daughters. But then Mary admitted that
she was pregnant, and that the
paternity was uncertain. Peter was en-
raged. At this point, either Mary had a
miscarriage or Peter secured an abor-
tion. Relations between the couple dete-
BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
riorated rapidly, and two years after
Mary’s confession, Peter filed for
divorce. Members of Manhattan’s upper
crust were appalled. Mary retaliated by
bolting, taking Allie with her and disap-
pearing completely. Meanwhile, Peter
was indicted for manslaughter for the
murder of his wife’s unborn child.
Ms. Weisberg, a former television
producer and the author of “Talking to
the Dead” (2004), reconstructs the
events that led up to the Strong
divorce almost entirely from a few
court documents plus the newspaper
articles that covered the subsequent
court cases. There are no personal
papers remaining from any of those
involved, except for a few laconic jour-
nal entries by Peter’s cousin, the diarist
George Templeton Strong. This means
In Some
no
Worlds You
Read This
The Allure of the
Multiverse
By Paul Halpern
Basic, 320 pages, $30
T
HERE may be another
universe just a milli-
meter away from ours,
hovering in an extra,
hidden dimension. At
any moment this second universe
(or “membrane,” in M-theory—a
relative of superstring theory)
could crash into ours, destroying
everything. Cosmological violence
is not necessarily confined to dis-
tant realms or the deep past.
So runs one of the many “multi-
verse” hypotheses suggested by
physicists. As far as multiverse the-
ories go, it is among the least con-
soling. But, as Paul Halpern shows
in “The Allure of the Multiverse:
Extra Dimensions, Other Worlds,
and Parallel Universes,” the posit-
ing of multiple universes often
aims for a different, intellectual
kind of solace—one that finds com-
fort in explaining why our universe
seems so exquisitely balanced for
human life. In other plausible uni-
verses, stars may never have
formed, empty space may go on
forever. Different laws of nature
produce innumerable other uni-
verses, most of which are probably
* * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | C9
BOOKS
—JOAN RIV ER S
In the end, the marriage of Peter
and Mary Strong was quietly dissolved
by the decision of a judge, on the
grounds that the warring couple had
agreed that Mary would keep custody
of Allie while Mamie would stay with
her father. Peter was now a free man,
permitted to remarry at any time.
Mary, as a woman divorced for
adultery, was forbidden to remarry un-
til her former husband died.
Ms. Weisberg has done her best to
link the story of the Strong divorce to
the larger realities of private lives
during these years: lack of access to
contraception or abortion, the
dangers of childbirth, divergent views
on male and female sexuality,
women’s tendency to “uterine disor-
ders” and men’s unruly sexual
impulses. She also includes interest-
ing passages on domestic workers in
the U.S.; compared to Britain, where
servants might stay with a single
family for a lifetime, American do-
mestics were a transient population.
One waspish cousin found
neither feuding spouse
admirable. They deserved
each other; ‘it would be
a pity to divorce them.’
.
When these contextual passages
ly
are linked to the main narrative, they
are successful. Less successful, how-
ever, are the paragraphs into which
on the author crams an overview of
national events. A chapter that covers
evidence given by the Strongs’ former
governess opens with a catalog of
us ,
unrelated events: the looming war
between France and Mexico; Presi-
l
e
dent Andrew Johnson’s assurance
al a
that he will withdraw federal troops
from Mississippi; the arrests made by
ci on
New York City police for reckless
horseback riding; a clearance sale of
corsets and kid gloves at Macy’s.
Similarly, a chapter that recounts the
appearance of Mary’s father, John
er s
Austin Stevens, in the witness box is
prefaced with a quick canter through
m er
preparations for Thanksgiving feasts,
a children’s concert at a school in
Manhattan’s Five Points neighbor-
hood and a church minister’s sermon.
m rp
SEPARATION ANXIETY A detail of ‘Mrs. Wilton Phipps’ (ca. 1884) by John Singer Sargent. There is no attempt to integrate these
events into the main narrative, and
the author had no access to the judge’s daughter, an undertaker, an Despite the dramas described in since they are covered in brief
unfiltered voices of the main actors in abortionist’s spouse, a laundress and court, Peter was acquitted of the crimi- sentences, they read like listicles.
this family saga, and she has struggled Teddy Roosevelt’s uncle.” She writes nal charges for lack of evidence, and Nevertheless, “Strong Passions”
co Fo
to bring them to life. Nonfiction that “the series of dramatic incidents the jury in the civil-law divorce case gives us insights into a snobbish
accounts of long-dead individuals that precipitated the divorce suit were deliberated for 45 hours but remained society in which the burning question
always require a degree of speculation, clouded by a divergence in bitterly deadlocked. There was therefore no for most onlookers was, in Ms. Weis-
but “Strong Passions” has more than contested versions of what had divorce. George Templeton Strong berg’s words, “how could such tawdry
its share of words like “probably,” occurred.” Was Mary a victim or insti- declared that “the public is sick of this secrets have been allowed to emerge?”
“perhaps,” “likely” and “undoubtedly.” gator of her affair? Did she admit guilt horrible case.” He went on to observe It would make a great podcast.
Instead, Ms. Weisberg devotes two- or deny the accusations against her? that some commentators found neither
thirds of her book to the overlapping Was Peter a brutal villain or a gentle Peter nor Mary “particularly admira- Ms. Gray is the author of “Passionate
narratives heard in court from an and put-upon husband? Did he have an ble,” and as such the two seemed “so Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of
extraordinary number and range of affair with the abortionist? How many well matched” it would be “a pity to Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara
witnesses—“a governess, a detective, a of the witnesses were bribed? divorce them.” Delano Roosevelt.”
n-
duds—so we shouldn’t be sur- the RMS Carpathia to hear the
prised to find ourselves here,
SHORT CUTS: SCIENCE
BY STEVEN POOLE Wireless, stricken Titanic’s distress call and
because otherwise we wouldn’t be come to the rescue. The article
here to be surprised.
Not everyone is convinced by Wi-Fi and went on to wax lyrical about how,
throughout the air of the modern
this anthropic reasoning, as Mr. city, there raced “words written by
Halpern explains: Some physicists
hope for a better explanation of
Deep Space electricity.”
Mr. Nahin’s fascinating histori-
our universe’s properties, and cal guide to the science of how
express distaste for theories that The Mathematical Radio words are transformed into elec-
are unfalsifiable or posit count- By Paul J. Nahin tricity and back again contains a
less other realms that we can’t lot of college-level mathematics.
Princeton, 376 pages, $26.95
know anything about. Luckily Mr. Nahin, an emeritus
Another flavor of multiverse professor of electrical engineering
D
thinking is the “many worlds” ESPITE BEING at the University of New Hamp-
interpretation of quantum phys- pronounced mori- shire, is also a warm and infec-
ics, according to which the uni- bund back in 1979 tiously enthusiastic guide in prose.
verse branches every time there when the Buggles Here you will learn the difference
is a microscopic change in the declared that “Video between AM and FM technologies,
physical world. It follows that Killed the Radio Star,” radio is still and how a crucial development
there are trillions of versions of a fundamental cornerstone technol- was inspired during World War I
you, each with a slightly differ- ogy of our civilization. It underpins when Edwin Howard Armstrong, a
ent experience, inhabiting paral- vast swaths of communication to- young U.S. Army signal corpsman,
lel realms. Which might seem day via Wi-Fi and cellphone towers. dreamed of ways to detect ap-
extravagant. Indeed, the radio waves that carried proaching aircraft, long before the
Scientists have long argued our earliest broadcasts at the dawn invention of radar. We also learn
over whether this idea is more or of the 20th century are still racing that the Vatican began operating
less persuasive than the rival out into deep space, and would be its own radio station in 1931.
“Copenhagen interpretation,” the first inkling of our existence Thanks to Mr. Nahin’s lucid
which holds that things can be should they be received by some explanations, the reader will come
two ways at once until observed, distant alien race. These signals to understand why radio-station
as Schrödinger’s unfortunate cat “are on the surface of an electro- antennas have to shift the frequen-
is both alive and dead before its magnetic sphere now 200 light- cies of music and the human voice
box is opened. years in diameter, a sphere expand- upward (because transmitting at
UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
At some level such disagree- ing at the speed of light,” Paul the original frequencies would
ments are philosophical: They are Nahin writes happily in “The Math- require an antenna hundreds of
about what sorts of principles ematical Radio: Inside the Magic of miles tall), and why, though a
should govern a well-crafted AM, FM, and Single-Sideband.” nuclear blast would fry all modern
scientific theory. Mr. Halpern, a In an age of undersea fiber-optic electronics, a vintage tube (or
professor of physics at Saint cables, there is still something valve) radio would still work.
Joseph’s University, handles such romantic about radio, a feeling of Sometimes the old technologies
questions adroitly while also marvel perhaps held over from its really are better.
offering a splendidly lucid earliest appearance more than a
narrative of a century’s develop- century ago. The New York Times Mr. Poole is the author of
ments in relativity, particle CLOSE TO YOU A couple in 1922, reported in 1912 on how the “Rethink: The Surprising
physics and cosmic speculation. dancing to a portable radio. “almost magical wireless” enabled History of New Ideas.”
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

C10 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

BOOKS
‘I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?’ —BYRON

The Regency’s Rakish Rock Star

Byron: A Life in Ten Letters
By Andrew Stauffer
Cambridge, 300 pages, $29.95
BY D.J. TAYLOR

I
T TAKES A biography of George Gordon
Noel, the Sixth Lord Byron (1788-1824)
to remind us of quite how radically the
world of 200 years ago differs from our
own modest arrangements. To read
even a page or two of Andrew Stauffer’s lively
and well-illustrated “Byron: A Life in Ten
Letters,” published to mark the bicentennial of
the poet’s death, is to be plunged into a molten
landscape of ravished doxies, enraged hus-
bands, calamitous drinking bouts, imprudent
liaisons and high-end foreign travel. And this is
to ignore the absolutely stop-at-nothing atti-
tude that distinguishes its subject from almost
every other fire-breathing young man with an
eye for the ladies who has ever thought that it
might be a nice idea to “be a poet.”
The Victorian novelist George Gissing once
observed that Byron’s England was “cruel,
unlovely, but abounding in vital force.” If Mr.
Stauffer’s compendium abounds in vital force
then it is also chock-full of unloveliness, if not
downright depravity: We meet Jane Harley, the
libertine Countess of Oxford, whose six
children from six different sources led her to be
nicknamed “the Harleian Miscellany.” Or one
could turn to worldly-wise Lady Melbourne,
who actively campaigned to break up her
daughter’s marriage. And there is Byron him-
CHRISTIE’S IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

self—rich, passionate, lady-killing, self-

absorbed—and so much at home in the louche,

.
rackety world of Regency England that it might

ly
have been expressly designed with the object
of making him feel at ease.
Women simply threw themselves at him.
Lady Caroline Lamb sent him a note assuring
him that “I will kneel & be torn from your feet
before I will give you up”—she was known for
what Mr. Stauffer calls her “near-mania of
on
LOOK INTO MY EYES ‘Byron as Don Juan, With Haidée’ (1831) by Alexandre Colin.
us ,

attention.” Annabella Milbanke, the future Lady
Byron, was informed upon meeting him for the
first time that he had “not a friend in the
dence shortly before his death in Missolonghi at Among the stream-of-consciousness-style re- nearly always has the effect of getting the
the age of 36. capitulations of place and psychology come fre- reader on his side. When he describes himself
l
e
What kind of person emerges from this quent hints of the sheer precariousness of early as a “Scorpion girt by fire,” with darkness
al a

world.” She secretly swore to devote herself to series of snapshots? Mr. Stauffer, like many 19th-century existence. Friends are always dying above and flames beneath, the performative
“this lone being.” Conventional social usage or modern biographers, is keen on outsiders and or otherwise coming to grief; debts (although element in his work somehow takes second
ci on

indeed legal statutes meant nothing to him and
he was as happy pursuing his half-sister Au-
gusta Leigh as his last great love, the 19-year-
old Countess Teresa Guiccioli. As ever, it seems
to have taken only a solitary smile to charm
particularized social groupings. Happily,
Byron’s individualism is sufficiently distinctive
to detach him from the various communities in
er s
Byron was a wealthy man) are always mounting,
and the creditor’s boots rap on the stair. The
wonder, given the pace at which his life was
lived, is that Byron had any time for writing, but
all the evidence suggests that he was a quick
place to the very real sense of disquiet, deep
uncertainty and inner furnaces steeply banked.
Mr. Stauffer’s glosses on this brief but eye-
catching career are never less than entertaining,
although he does have a weakness for the

the countess out of her marriage vows and All across Europe in the early worker, polishing off the thousand lines of “The fashionable euphemism. The people in his
onto the nearest chaise longue. Bride of Abydos” in a week and rushing through crowded and entertaining chronicle rarely die
19th century, gossip about
m er

It would be difficult to go wrong with this “The Corsair” in a scant 10 days. And to sheer but “pass away.” Byron himself never visited
kind of material; Byron, consequently, has never Byron’s scandalous affairs went facility could be added the glossy sheen of a prostitutes but “transacted with sex workers,”
lacked biographers. Mr. Stauffer’s approach is, as hand in hand with admiration poem like “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” or “Don while overindulgence is filed away under
he concedes, not particularly original—recent Juan,” in which cynicism and lofty sentiment go “sybaritic therapy.” Whatever you may think of
for his prowess as a poet.
m rp

forerunners include Martha Ackman’s “These
Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the
Making of Emily Dickinson” (2020) and Lucasta
Miller’s “Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems”
(2021)—but there is something about Byron’s
which Mr. Stauffer seeks to locate him: These
include the disabled (he was born with a
co Fo
hand in hand, passion is stalked by an aware-
ness of passion’s consequences and idealism is
forever undercut by the doomed Romanticism
that was Byron’s stock in trade.
Meanwhile, the rakehell Byron legend was
Byron and his stream of ruined kitchen maids,
broken marriages and illegitimate children, he
did at least have the virtue of calling a spade a
spade. As for the wider relevance of “A Life in
Ten Letters,” its chief achievement is to hint at

headlong scamper about the world of his day
that lends itself to this miniaturist’s treatment.
And so we see him as an undergraduate at
Trinity College, Cambridge, planning endless
bachelor parties, en route to Greece in 1810 with
Lt. William Ekenhead (with whom he swam the
Hellespont), writing to his deferential publisher
John Murray from Ravenna in 1819, addressing
the Countess from Venice and filling Murray in
on his exploits in the service of Greek indepen-
n-
deformed foot), the sexually fluid and the
bipolar. The letters are practically Messianic in
their intensity, aflame with relish for the
incidental scenery or the women Byron is
pursuing, full of outrageous judgments (“I like
the Greeks, who are plausible rascals, with all
the Turkish vices without their courage”) and
personal quirks. Only Byron, you feel, could
write from Cambridge that he had “got a new
friend, the best in the world, a tame Bear.”
making its presence felt all over Europe—a
legend of which, it has to be said, Byron took
full advantage. He also manifestly helped to
create it: The appearances at fashionable
parties, the seduction techniques and the
knowing small talk betray a fair amount of
stage-management. No one, it could be argued,
could ever take Byron as seriously as he took
himself, and yet there is a self-awareness about
some of the posturing and the histrionics that
the effects that the dissolute culture of early
19th-century England had on the era that
followed it. On this evidence, all the signature
marks of the Victorian age—moral seriousness,
teetotalism, sober-suited gentlemen in side-
whiskers and sticking to the wife of your
bosom—had to happen.
Mr. Taylor is the author, most recently, of
“Orwell: The New Life.”

A Tale of Cash and Character

no

MANY NOVELS are about to the fracking billionaire Herve to a real-estate developer—his dimension. The characters must these concerns by creating a
money, but only in an abstract Gallion: Somebody known as father has gotten rich operating face up to where their money is beguiling alternative history,
sense. Money exists in them as “the groundskeeper” is dead, a trailer park—who has to move coming from to understand the from the fictionalized Agnes of
a vague and even cosmological and if Alistair doesn’t disappear home after whittling his trust costs of accepting it. Dartmoor, who began the rituals
force—a nemesis, a desidera- he’s likely to be next. fund down to the nub. Elijah, an Music is the only meaningful of melodic chanting, to the
tum, an instrument of power. To Flashbacks catch us up. aspiring painter, gets drawn into currency in the British author instances of 16th-century men
delve into the actual nuts and Alistair grew up living hand-to- the decadent world of the Patrick Langley’s intricate work and women possessed by a
bolts of finances is to risk mouth with his single, working emerging alt-right art scene, of magic realism, “The Varia- “song plague” and compelled to
scaring off readers. The author mother in upstate New York. which is bankrolled by Herve’s tions” (NYRB, 472 pages, sing until they fainted.
John Lanchester wrote about Grinding hard work gets him to dissipated brother. Like Alistair, $19.95). The catalyst to events Even richer are the explora-
FICTION the alienating jargon, “designed NYU and an internship at a both Mark and Elijah find them- is the death of Selda Heddle in tions into what Ellen calls “the
SAM SACKS to bamboozle and mystify and large investment bank, but there selves becoming prisoners to Cornwall, England, during a harmonic correspondence
intimidate,” that has arisen his “efforts at self-invention” hit the flauntingly amoral whims of terrible snowstorm. Selda was a between the world of the living
around the terminology of a ceiling. Alistair may be ambi- renowned classical composer and that of the dead.” Bells are
money, and his 2012 novel, tious to move up the economic THIS WEEK who possessed what is known crucial to Agnesian ritual and
“Capital,” is a rare work of fic- ladder but he resents the people among a select few as “the Mr. Langley describes their
tion that tries to make the lan- born on the upper rungs, and Ways and Means gift”—that is, she was able to curious and very real acoustical
guage accessible by building a his condescension costs him a By Daniel Lefferts hear the voices of her dead property: When one is struck it
social drama from tangible eco- job offer. Humiliated and ancestors, from whom she chan- emits a multitude of dissonant
nomic realities. severely in debt, he drifts into The Variations neled her iconoclastic musical frequencies that our ears are
Alistair Mr. Lanchester belongs to a the orbit—and onto the gener- By Patrick Langley scores. Upon her death, the gift attuned to organize into a clear
climbs short list of novelists—it ous payroll—of Herve, who is passes to her grandson, Wolf, pitch. We are, in a sense, hear-
includes Adam Haslett, Caleb fueled by an even deeper hatred who is badly unprepared for its ing a sound that is not there, the
the Crain and Paul Murray, among of America’s establishment elite. enormous wealth. Mark’s first power. Though the gift is a por- result of “frequencies surround-
economic others—who write convincingly “Hopeless people make the best job with the family business is tal to genius, it can also drive ing an absence.” In these mo-
ladder at about money. To that small workers,” Herve confides as he to help his father sell the trailer people into fugue states that ments, the concept of a “ghost-
a big circle we can now add Daniel gradually brings Alistair into a park to a private-equity firm resemble mania or catatonia. note” that travels across planes
Lefferts, whose auspicious plan to mobilize the country’s that intends to squeeze every When “The Variations” begins, of existence seems both extra-
bank, and debut, “Ways and Means” disgruntled underclass, a project penny it can from the residents. Wolf has desperately sought ordinary and oddly credible.
finds (Overlook, 400 pages, $28), Alistair first assumes is philan- “I think in fifty years half of help subduing the paranormal The first section of “The
that the grounds its characters in the un- thropic but soon discovers is Americans will be living in mo- voices from his grandmother’s Variations,” introducing the idea
sexy practicalities of wealth and dangerously criminal. bile homes,” a firm employee childhood friend Ellen Monta- of the gift, is by far the best.
effort to acquisition but spins from them The intrigue is engagingly enthuses, thrilled by the invest- gue, the dean of the music acad- Sadly, the novel becomes more
keep up a wildly entertaining drama of complicated by converging story ment potential. emy called Agnes’s Hospice for mannered as it moves back in
has its ambition and consequence. threads. Two concern Alistair’s Greed, sex, provocation and Acoustically Gifted Children. time to Selda’s funeral and then
The novel takes place mostly friends Mark and Elijah, a revenge are all colorfully A young man with a danger- to a recap of her life and work.
own in 2015-16, with the spectacle of couple who split up after an ill- depicted in “Ways and Means.” ous supernatural talent; a spe- By the end the magic has worn
price. the Trump presidential cam- fated attempt to bring Alistair But as the novel moves toward a cialist school run by a wise, if off and the novel reads more
paign in the background. We into a romantic trio. (“Ways and dramatic standoff with Herve, curmudgeonly, elder: There are like a straightforward artist’s
join the story in the middle of Means” is unusual in that it’s a the unremunerative virtues of moments in “The Variations” biography. But this too is fore-
the action, when Alistair very gay novel that doesn’t decency and love come to the when you worry you’re getting shadowed in Ellen’s teachings:
McCabe has run into serious make gayness its central iden- fore, and Mr. Lefferts’s financial an upmarket version of Harry For one to live with the gift, it
trouble in his job as an assistant tity.) Mark is the prodigal scion realism acquires a cogent ethical Potter. But Mr. Langley dispels has to be tamed.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | C11

BOOKS
‘We define genius as the capacity for productive reaction against one’s training.’ —B ERN ARD B EREN S O N

Don’t Forget to Look Around

Get the Picture
By Bianca Bosker
Viking, 384 pages, $29
BY EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

B
IANCA BOSKER knew what she
was up against when she started
to survey the New York art
scene. “To be fair, everyone
warned me it was a bad idea,”
she declares at the beginning of “Get the
Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the
Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends
Who Taught Me How to See.” She was told
that if she went through with the project,
“you’ll make some powerful enemies.” And it
was made clear why: She was going to
discover that the art world’s high calling is
actually a “big con.” It is so dominated by
gossip and petty jealousies, it resembles “the
world’s biggest high school.” Bullying is
common; insiders have their own code, even
when it comes to dress. But Ms. Bosker, as
readers of her magazine journalism will know,
takes no prisoners: One condescending “cool”
acolyte who wears boxy pink pants and purple
sneakers looks to her like “a toddler dressed
for a moon landing.”
Thus her journey begins. And she is an
advocate of immersion. In her previous book,
“Cork Dork” (2017), she was determined to
understand why fine wines inspire obsessive
devotion. She befriended sommeliers, worked
at a restaurant, studied wine lore and labels,
attended blind tastings and oenophilic gather-
ings, passed her first qualifying exam, and

.
even identified the precise origins and vin-

ly
tages of wines fed to her through a tube while
an fMRI scanner measured her brain activity.
ORJAN F. ELLINGVAG/GETTY IMAGES

Here, the knowledge she seeks is more

amorphous but requires as much training of
her senses. What is the power of art? How is
it made and sold? Ms. Bosker is not primarily
interested in “artists big enough to appear in
on
us ,

crossword puzzles, paintings famous enough

to be mousepads.” She wants to understand
l
e
up-and-coming artists, their works and their
al a

habitat in the small galleries of Lower ON DISPLAY Visitors to the Moore Gallery in the Designer District during the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair.
Manhattan. Seeking apprenticeships, she
ci on

identifies herself as a journalist, which leads
to many nervous refusals and dire warnings.
But she finds a young gallery owner prepared
to risk it all, and then a larger gallery where
she even closes some sales. She becomes a
straight white guys.” Such are the “advanced”
sensibilities required for social acceptance.
And when Ms. Bosker attends Art Basel in
Miami Beach with her gallery, she discovers
that the conversation is mainly gossip.
er s
by her mentors. Much of that context is now a
matter of gender, race and identity. But Ms.
Bosker questions why those themes should be
needed to appreciate a work of art (even if
her own tastes can seem influenced by their
too much, even for the open-minded new me.”
Ms. Allfire has more than 600,000 Instagram
followers for her “works,” which feature
close-up photos of her bikini-clad bottom. In
the event Ms. Bosker attends, the “artist” sits

painter’s studio assistant. She takes up paint- Talking about art at an art fair, she surmises, consideration). Isn’t there something else to on the faces of avid fans; according to Ms.
ing herself. She works as a guard at the be attended to? Ms. Bosker is clearly moved Allfire’s promotional material, this highlights
m er

Guggenheim Museum.
In the first half of the book, her sharp eyes
and sharp tongue shape a withering social
portrait. “I began to pick up on the fact that
by some works she sees and readily dismisses
others. Why? She wonders, too, why “beauty”
Only certain terms are used has become a scorned category. So she
in a gallery. Don’t say a work schools herself (the book’s bibliography is
m rp
various social ills along with the “exaggerated
objectification of the female body.” When Ms.
Allfire calls for new volunteers, Ms. Bosker
surprises even herself by raising her hand.

no self-respecting art connoisseur discussed is sold; say it has been placed. extensive). She is determined to open her After that, her bottom-feeder view of
art without lowering their voice to the mind to new sensations. She doesn’t try to aesthetics inspires her to try to help the
affectless murmur of a funeral director wel- You don’t buy art; you acquire interpret the works she encounters; instead “artist” with her career.
coming the bereaved.” And only certain terms it. The pretense is that nothing she tries to learn to see them. I do not doubt Ms. Bosker’s sincerity. But
are used in a gallery. Don’t say a work is sold; But filtering away context—treating art in her desire to be open to anything in order
commercial is taking place.
co Fo

say it has been placed. You don’t buy art; you
acquire it. The pretense is that nothing com-
mercial is taking place.
In maintaining such reverence, reputation
is all. Ms. Bosker’s first mentor, the gallery
owner Jack Barrett, is reading Kenneth Clark’s
classic book about the nude, but would never
be seen with it on the subway or at a gallery.
“I don’t want to set that bomb off,” Mr.
Barrett explains, referring to the reactions he
would get, since the book is “just an old white
guy talking about nude portraits of women by
n-
no
is like “complimenting the crown moldings at
an orgy. I mean, you can—only it’s not why
everyone’s there.”
Ms. Bosker enjoys her deep-dive role-play,
but she is also determined to understand the
nature of art’s powers, even when confronted
with examples that try her patience and
reason. “Context”—the politics and ideas lying
behind a work—is emphasized over and over
works as if they had no program or politics—
also creates problems, particularly in the
contemporary art scene. It may miss what the
fuss is about. Or why some works get more
attention than they seem to deserve. Or even
why there seems to be so much wariness about
offending the gods of fashion or “advanced”
thinking. Almost in rebellion, Ms. Bosker is in-
tent on training herself to pay attention to the
sensory effects of art rather than to its “ideas.”
She recounts, for example, a performance,
by Mandy Allfire, of a “work that sounded like
to understand the nature of art, she mis-
takes her own attentiveness to her senses—
to “the physical feeling” art inspires—to be
the main point. She celebrates her new
consciousness of color and shape and finds
it transforming her perceptions even when
she walks in the city. “There was beauty
everywhere,” she concludes, “now that I
knew how to look for it.” But then why
bother with art at all?
Mr. Rothstein is the Journal’s critic at large.

Caines, as she is known. But these which emerges only when the novel whose harsh grandeur is brilliantly And every moment of it in the same
A Bad Case two are no innocents. We meet Abe
on his wedding day, “ferret-eyed and
takes its final turn.
As one servant observes of the com-
evoked. “By March month,” Mr.
Crummey writes, “a thronging herd
black torment you are feeling now.”

Of Sibling stinking” from the previous night’s

debauch. Set to inherit control of the
batants, “nothing within their sight
was granted a life independent. Every
of ice overtook the coastline . . . the
pack miles wide and grinding its
As diabolical characters go, these
two are as memorable as any in
coast’s largest trading companies, but fiction. “The Adversary,” however, is
Rivalry only on the condition that he marries,
Abe is about to wed the 14-year-old
far more than a portrait of power-
hungry monsters battling over terri-
daughter of a foreign trader and po- tory already saturated in blood and
The Adversary tential rival. In the frigid church, the gore. It is also, and above all, a sinu-
By Michael Crummey terrified child bride’s hands lie “man- ous narrative in constant, elegant
Doubleday, 336 pages, $29 acled in a fur muff on her lap.” Dread motion. Like the ocean tide, it ebbs
saturates the air. It is a shocking
BY ANNA MUNDOW scene that may recall for some read-
ers the early cataclysm in Thomas In the Newfoundland

I
N HIS 2019 novel, “The Inno-
cents,” the Canadian writer
Michael Crummey set two
children adrift on the merci-
Hardy’s 1886 novel, “The Mayor of
Casterbridge,” in which Michael
town of Mockbeggar, the
Henchard auctions off his wife and in- battle of brother versus
fant daughter at a country fair. sister takes on grimly
PHOTO BY MARIANNA ARMATA/GETTY IMAGES

less tides of fate. The setting
was 19th-century Newfoundland, all
rocks and turbulent weather. The in-
nocents were 11-year-old Evered Best
and his younger sister, Ada. The sib-
lings, having witnessed the death of
their parents and baby sister Martha
from tuberculosis, were left alone on
the family’s remote homestead. It is
the only world they will ever know.
Contact with others occurs twice a
year when a ship arrives to load the
seasonal catch of salted cod. The
ship’s name is Hope, a commodity as
rare as gold in the lives of these
young people. Still, the Best children
endure. We catch glimpses of them in
Mr. Crummey’s novel “The Adver-
sary,” which is a companion of sorts
to “The Innocents,” though riotous by
comparison.
Ingeniously constructed and
wound tight as a mainspring, this
Wagnerian drama of hatred and
revenge also concerns a brother and
sister: Abe Strapp and the Widow
But the characters in Hardy’s novel
are granted mercy, even redemption. In titanic proportions.
“The Adversary,” such benedictions are
in short supply. There is plague stalking
the land and poverty and all manner of and flows between past and present,
violence. Above all, in the Newfound- action and consequence.
land port of Mockbeggar, there is the And as it does so, it carries us into
lifelong power struggle between Abe other, smaller lives. A young woman
and the Widow (we never learn her first named Bride Lambe and her brother,
name), which corrupts or consumes all Solemn, become servants in the
it touches. Abe owns one shipping com- Widow’s house, their father having been
pany, and his sister the other. He is a creature beyond themselves existed monumental weight against the carelessly murdered by Abe and their
dissolute bully, all appetite and bluster. only to serve their designs and appe- shore. The harbor blocked with pans mother deranged by shock. Their fate is
The Widow, on the other hand, is a qui- tites.” Another adds: “They were like rising and falling on the tideswell in turn linked to that of another inno-
etly ruthless schemer. characters from scripture, ubiquitous like a flock of sheep rubbing tight in cent, a new arrival called Lazarus,
With her eccentric attire—some of and intimate and untouchable.” The a paddock.” whose radiance briefly lightens the pre-
it her late husband’s—and her skill at enmity between the Strapp siblings is The denoument, like every revela- vailing gloom. For a moment, it seems
manipulating the innocent, the Widow certainly tinged with Old Testament tion in this flawlessly crafted narrative, that love might conquer all, even
is a frontier version of Dickens’s Miss ferocity. So, too, the quality of myth has been foreshadowed, most obvi- though the bed shared by Lazarus and
Havisham, though far more formidable. suffuses the novel’s larger contest, ously in exchanges such as this one: Bride is nothing more than a “precari-
Her house pets are wild birds that which is between the powers of dark- ous raft of intimacy afloat on the
seem more like familiars, and her talis- ness, embodied in Abe and the Widow, “You wish me dead, don’t you, world’s dark ocean.” Their tenderness,
man a ring stolen from the corpse of a and the Children of the Light, as the Sister.” nonetheless, is a welcome grace note.
recently exhumed body of a Puritan town’s Quakers refer to themselves. “With all my heart.”
settler. Its inscription reads “Death Yet all this is rooted in the grudg- “But I do not feel the same for Ms. Mundow is a writer in
Conquers All,” the significance of ing soil of Newfoundland, a territory you. . . . I hope you live a long life. Massachusetts.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

C12 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

BOOKS
‘The heavy is the root of the light. The unmoved is the source of all movement. / Thus the Master travels all day / without leaving home.’— L AO TZU

The Master and the Mongol

Daoist Master Changchun’s
Journey to the West
Compiled by Li Zhichang
Oxford, 296 pages, $34.95
BY STEPHEN R. PLATT

I
N 1219, the Mongol ruler Genghis
Khan learned of a Daoist master in
Shandong, in China’s Eastern coastal
region, who allegedly knew the secret
of longevity. Pausing for a moment
from his bloody campaign to establish control
over central Asia, the Khan sent a messenger
to Shandong with a summons to bring the
elderly Perfected One to his court.
The Daoist’s name was Qiu Chuji, known to
his followers as Master Changchun (“Eternal
Spring”), and though he was in his 70s he did
not refuse the summons. With a small entou-
rage of disciples, he set off for what would be
a three-year journey out and back through
northern China, across the Mongolian plateau
into Central Asia, and ultimately into what is
now Afghanistan, to find the Khan in his mili-
HERITAGE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

tary camp. Upon Changchun’s arrival,the

Khan laid out some food and drink and then
got right down to business. “Now that you
have come all this way,” he asked, “what se-
cret elixir for long life can you provide me?”
The 13th-century account of the master’s
trip, “Daoist Master Changchun’s Journey to
the West,” is one of the first volumes to be ONE OF THE IMMORTALS Qiu Chuji (1148-1227), or Master Changchun, by Guo Xu, 1503.
published in a new series from Oxford
University Press called the Hsu-Tang Library tradition that spans millennia, relatively little “Daoist Master Changchun’s Journey to the requests to go home. Instead, the ruler kept
of Classical Chinese Literature. The series of which has ever been translated into English. West” is a firsthand account interspersed the Daoist with him until he felt satisfied
aims to do for works of premodern Chinese There is a humanity and irreverence to with the master’s own poetry, compiled by a that he had learned enough of the Way to

.
literature what the Loeb Classical Library did some of these works that readers expecting disciple in his entourage. The book can be prolong his life.

for Greek and Latin ones: render them
accessible to everyday readers in facing-page
translation, with the hope of placing them on
the shelves of the educated public as a
resource for exploring the modern world’s
classical forebears.
This is an ambitious project, especially as
stuffy, prim Confucian moralizing will find
refreshing. Among the volumes available at
the launch of the new series are an 11th-
on
century joke book (“The Misadventures of
Master Mugwort”) and a Qing-dynasty
“rustic song” in prose and verse, “The
Emperor of China in a House of Ill Repute,”
us ,
read as a travelogue, with descriptions of
geography and agriculture and social customs
that depict a world beyond the borders of
Chinese civilization in the 13th century.
(Oxford University Press provides an online
storyboard, which readers can use to trace the
master’s journey through contemporary satel-
ly
The elderly Daoist’s troubles do not go
unrewarded. When he finally allows his
visitor to go back to China, the Khan issues
edicts exempting Changchun’s followers from
taxation and giving him direct authority over
religious practices in Mongol-occupied North
China. Master Changchun’s Quanzhen

classical Chinese does not have the same
foundational position in Anglo-American
culture that the Greek and Roman classics
in which a third-rate Ming emperor disguises lite imagery.) The work can also be read as a (“Complete Perfection”) sect would, indeed,
glimpse of the worldview of a Daoist faithful, enjoy privileges of state patronage under the
l
e
as minor natural miracles follow Master Mongols for half a century, helping to
al a

did when James Loeb started his series in A new series of translations Changchun wherever he goes—here an auspi- establish it as the dominant school of Daoism
1911. And there are particular challenges in cious flight of cranes, there a sudden change in in China for posterity.
aims to do for Chinese works
ci on

translating classical Chinese into literary
English—as the poet Amy Lowell wrote a
century ago, “A Sinologue has no time to
learn how to write poetry; a poet has no time
to learn how to read Chinese.” To meet this
what the Loeb Classical Library
did for Greek and Latin ones:
make them accessible to all.
er s
the weather just as he performs a ritual.
Most interesting are the book’s moral
aspects. Oblique images of Mongol violence
litter the path of Master Changchun’s
journey—in one instance, a city whose entire
That boost to the fortunes of the Quanzhen
sect came at the expense of Changchun’s
religious rivals, above all the Buddhists. Lest
we lapse into accepting the admiring account
presented in “Daoist Master Changchun’s

challenge, the Hsu-Tang Library has recruited population had been massacred is silent but Journey to the West,” the editors of the
some of the leading scholars of premodern for the barking of abandoned dogs—and such Oxford volume include a scathing account
m er

Chinese literature to make the translations,
while pledging to edit them with an eye
toward literary and poetic quality.
The Chinese name for the Hsu-Tang series
himself as a common soldier to go cavorting
in a famous brothel district. The monarch
bumbles his way through the visit,
pretending to be an idiot and drawing the
m rp
allusions underscore that this was a from a later-13th-century Buddhist monk who
missionary work. Master Changchun, follow- denounced Master Changchun and his follow-
ing in the footsteps of the Daoist sage Lao ers as charlatans who forcibly stole land from
Tzu, imagines himself traveling westward to the Buddhists, violated nuns and “took

is not a library but a “garden of literature” ridicule of all concerned. The ending isn’t
(*wenyuan*), a term that the editors selected what a contemporary reader might expect—
because it implies a living quality to the yes, he meets the woman of his dreams (a
works chosen for inclusion. The goal of the courtesan wonderfully named “Buddha’s
series is to give a sense of why these works Lust,” whom he takes home as his concu-
co Fo
spread the Way to the barbarian peoples who
lived in those remote regions (many of which
are part of China today). As he writes in one
poem, “I go to the Emperor’s camp beside the
river, / Seeking to end the wars and restore
plunder and pillage as their sole duty.” From
such a perspective, Changchun’s journey
could be seen as a self-serving endeavor,
cozying up to a conqueror in order to amass
power for his own religious followers.

have endured for so long and inspired so
many generations of Chinese readers. They
aim to introduce the unfamiliar and
unexpected, a world beyond the few classics
more readily available to American readers.
Unlike the ubiquitous Sun Tzu with his “Art
of War,” the works in the Hsu-Tang Library
are unlikely to help you dominate your
enemies, but they will open up a classical
n-
bine), but he also orders two people who of-
fended him flayed alive and chopped into
pieces, respectively, then burns the entire
brothel district to the ground. But it is pre-
cisely the unexpected moral landscapes of
these works (and the strangeness of what
passed for a good joke in 11th-century
China) that mark them as products of a time
and place different from our own.
great peace.” The more violent and benighted
the non-Chinese peoples are, the more they
need the pacifying virtues of the Way.
But Master Changchun was not in charge.
Although he retained his dignity—insisting,
for instance, that a Daoist does not kneel
before an emperor—it is clear that he was
completely at the mercy of Genghis Khan,
who rebuffed his cherished guest’s repeated
Whatever the value of the secrets Chang-
chun shared with the Khan, the two men’s
fates were bound by this encounter, and they
would die within days of each other in 1227.
Mr. Platt, a professor at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, is the author of
“Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the
End of China’s Last Golden Age.”

Counting on Sendak, Managing Inner Ferocity

no

HYEWON YUM’s illustrations mals, a pet poodle named Day (Harper, 32 pages, $19.99). and dynamic, with wonderful at the political necessity of such
bring vibrancy to “Night Song” and an owl named Night. Since This simple counting exercise is wavy lines and jolts of intense straightforwardness “in a time
(Enchanted Lion, 52 pages, Day goes indoors with the illustrated in the artist’s early color in this story for 4- to 8- of alternate facts.”
$18.95), a picture book for Pennyfeathers family when the style—with crosshatches of ink, year-olds of learning to manage Well, sure. But I can’t help
children ages 4-8 written with sun goes down, the chums have daubs of color and the affec- one’s inner ferocity. reading “A Foot Is Not a Fish!”
gentle humor by Mk Smith to do their kibitzing through tionate sensibility seen in his “A Foot Is Not a Fish!” as a corrective for gender ideol-
Despres. Our hero is Bernardo, the kitchen door at night, at pictures for the “Nutshell (Frederator, 24 pages, $15.99) ogy. In book after book these
a frog who loves the sound of top volume. One monochrome Library” books and in “A Hole is a small book, not flashy, not days, small readers are told that
early-morning birdsong and has illustration shows Mr. & Mrs. Is to Dig.” A magician produces exquisite, and not written with their sex is “assigned” rather
a slightly confused idea of its 10 rabbits from a hat, one at a especial imagination. For all than intrinsic; that their pro-
CHILDREN’S role in how each day unfurls: THIS WEEK time, until, overwhelmed, he that, it is a brave book, and nouns may vary (even daily);
BOOKS “With the help of the song- returns them, counting Cornelia Maude Spelman de- that they should think of
MEGHAN birds, the sun did its work,” we Night Song backward until none remains. serves kudos for writing and il- bearded men in spangly dresses
COX GURDON read. “It gently unfolded the By Mk Smith Despres This book originates in a lustrating it. For in this slim as avatars of fun, fabulous femi-
flowers, dried the night-damp Illustrated by Hyewon Yum pamphlet that Sendak made for volume she uses humorous ninity. All of which makes Ms.
stones, and leaned upon the a fundraiser in 1970, so it comparisons to show what ev- Spelman’s lines of common
backs of leaves to dance across Day and Night wasn’t created for a wide audi- eryone knows to be true: “A sense so refreshing: “Something
the forest floor.” By Roger Duvoisin ence of children, but it works foot is not a fish. / And a cat is real is called a fact. / A fact is
Bernardo wishes that he too beautifully for the purpose just not an egg. / Chickens do not what is true. / We can’t just say
could “make the whole woods Ten Little Rabbits the same. bark. / And a hand is not a leg.” that red is green— / or that
A frog happy,” and so, in obedience By Maurice Sendak In the mythological story of Mrs. Spelman’s publisher hints what is old is new.”
who to a storytelling pattern that Narcissus, a youth gazes
wants to is perhaps too common, he Harriet’s Reflections into a pool and falls in
tries to act like something he By Marion Kadi love with the image he
make his is not, in this case pretending sees on its shining sur-
friends to be bird- and sun-like. His A Foot Is Not a Fish! face. In “Harriet’s Reflec-
happy efforts are doomed, of course. By Cornelia Maude Spelman tions” (Eerdmans, 48
Only when Bernardo accepts pages, $18.99) by Marion
tries to that he has value as he is—as Kadi, a girl looks into a
be some- a chorister of froggy “night Pennyfeathers suffering in their puddle and sees looking
thing he song”—does he find content- twin beds, unable to sleep for back at her the face of—a
ment. The conceit may be all the meaningless barking and lion! At first, Harriet mar-
is not. overly familiar, but with its hooting: “Like most people they vels: “How fierce I look
inventive text and appealing did not understand the lan- this morning.” That day
pictures, this is a special book guage of animals and birds.” she has a “terribly good
nonetheless. Luckily their son is wise time” rampaging around
There’s no tranquility after enough to see what’s happening the playground and fear-
dark in “Day and Night” and resourceful enough to find lessly asking questions in
(NYRB Kids, 40 pages, $18.95), a solution in these chatty retro class. But lions are wild,
a 1960 picture book by Roger pages for children ages 3-7. and soon Harriet is wild,
Duvoisin (1900-80), now back Maurice Sendak returns with too, and has almost lost
HYEWON YUM

in print. The nocturnal racket is a posthumous counting book touch with the girl she
the result of a friendship that for children in the same age used to be. Ms. Kadi’s naif
springs up between two ani- range, “Ten Little Rabbits” illustrations are exciting
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | C13

PLAY
NEWS QUIZ DANIEL AKST From this week’s NUMBER PUZZLES SOLUTIONS TO LAST
WEEK'S PUZZLES
Wall Street Journal

1. According to a 5. Delaware is the legal Cell Blocks Cell Blocks

new poll, how home of two-thirds of Divide the grid
many Americans the Fortune 500. Which into square or
believe Taylor states in particular are rectangular blocks,
For previous
Swift is the pushing for a larger each containing
weeks’ puzzles,
mastermind of share? one digit only.
and to discuss
a secret Every block must
strategies with
government plot
A. New York and contain the number
other solvers, go
to reelect New Jersey of cells indicated by
the digit inside it. to WSJ.com/
President Biden?
B. Utah and Arizona puzzles.

C. Nevada and Texas

A. 8%
D. California and Oregon Killer Sudoku

B. 18% Level 4 Suko

C. 28%
6. Democrat Tom Suozzi won a

D. 98%
special election on New York’s
Long Island to replace former
2. By a narrow margin, the Rep. George Santos. Which
House of Representatives Republican did he defeat?
impeached a key public official.
Killer Sudoku Level 1
Which one?
A. Jack Martins As with standard

B. Lee Zeldin Sudoku, fill the

A. President Joe Biden
C. Mazi Pilip grid so that every

B. Homeland Security
D. Ed Mangano column, every row
and every 3x3 box Echo Location
Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
contains the digits A N S E L T A S T E R R O B U S T

C. Defense Secretary Lloyd 7. Over the last five years, N I TW I T I C H A B O D E V I N C E
1 to 9. Each set of
Austin Baylor University has beaten all K N OW S O N T H E N O S E P A R D O N
cells joined by

D. Secretary of State Antony but one Ivy League school—at H O C T O I L E D N I C H E D E R N
dotted lines must K V E L L E D T I N E N T I R E
Blinken what? add up to the I MM E N S E W H E Y O N T H EWA Y
target number in C O A T I T R I O S P R E Y E R A

A. Median SAT stores E R R O N T H E A I R L A I D P A U L
its top-left corner. C A K E H O R N S L I L B O R N E
3. A typo in a press release sent
B. U.S. News rankings Within each set A L E S E L M S S A T G A Y E
the stock of which company
C. The collegiate math of cells joined by P E T R Y E S O N T H E R I S E D R E
soaring? olympics dotted lines, a digit D V D S MA Y B E V Y O R E S
ALL PUZZLES © PUZZLER MEDIA LTD - WWW.PUZZLER.COM

A P L U S H E P T E P E E C Y S T

D. Investment returns on its cannot be repeated. R O E G V O I D S E E O N T H E S E A

A. Lyft endowment A L T S A N G A P A R T A A H E D

B. Apple L AM B O N T H E L AM T O R N A D O

C. Boeing Suko R E A L I A S L Y S T A R D OM

D. Chevron 8. A startup called Lilac will E B A N S P A C E E L E C T S P H I
suck water out of the Great Place the numbers D E T A C H R OW E D O N T H E R O A D
N A E N A E P R I V I E S O L E O L E

.
Salt Lake to extract a valuable 1 to 9 in the spaces so that
FROM TOP: JOHN G MABANGLO/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK; RICK BOWMER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A R MA N D T S E T S E L O S E S
the number in each circle is

ly
4. The backers of Stardust mineral. Which?
Solutions are hoping for a hit. equal to the sum of the four
surrounding spaces, and
Loopholes
What is it?
A. Sodium

B. Lithium each color total is correct. C A T C H C O L L A G E

A. A sequel to the film
“Stardust Memories”

B. A firm using AI to create

C. Cobalt

D. Molybdenum
on S
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performances by long-dead
us ,

celebrities E V I C T E D C A S I O
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C. A satellite network that R E T I R E L E N G T H

e
al a

aims to recover space debris ROWS 1. CA(T)CHe, COLLAGE (“college” with A replacing E) 2. SPA + IN, NOSTRI +
L (“is torn” anag.) 3. TRAC + TOR (rev.), TEEMS (“teams” hom.) 4. L + URES (“user” anag.),
S C A N MA D A B O U T

D. A startup that hopes to
POUNDED (anag.) 5. EVI(CTE)D (rev.), C + A + SI + O (rev.) 6. RETIRE (2 defs.), LENGTH R E I S E R E N A B L E
ci on

cool the earth by dispersing

tiny reflective particles in the
(“than leg” anag. – a) 7. S + CAN, MAD A + BOUT (“Adam” rev.) 8. REISER (“riser” hom.),
ENAB + LE (rev.) 9. UNB + END (“bun” anag.), I + C + ECAP (“pace” rev.) 10. SHARe +
U N B E N D I C E C A P
atmosphere K, ON A LARK (hid.) 11. SALE + M, MOL(E RA)T 12. TEETH (hid.), ARCADES (anag.) S H A R K O N A L A R K
LOOPS • AMENDED (anag.) • SU + NHATS (“U.S.” rev., “hasn’t” anag.) • CO + NI + C + AL S A L E MM O L E R A T
Answers are listed below the • METH + ODS • SE(RBI)AN (“rib” anag.) • AlE + RATED • GO B(A + NANA)S • N + T E E T H A R C A D E S
ICHOLSON (“in school” anag.) • RECEIVERS (anag.) • H(AM) OME + LET • C(A + TAP)ULTS
er s

crossword solutions at right. • ELECT + ROD + E • PETULA CLARK (anag.) • TRICE + RA(TO)PS • LE(GAL + ThE)NDER The hole letters spell CIRCUIT BREAKERS.
m er

Answers to News Quiz: 1.B, 2.B, 3.A, 4.D, 5.C, 6.C, 7.D, 8.B
THE JOURNAL WEEKEND PUZZLES edited by MIKE SHENK
m rp

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 37 “My man!”
19 20 21 22
40 Skin-related 1
42 “Aunt ___ Cope
23 24 25 Book” (Bombeck 2
bestseller)
26 27 28 29 30
3
co Fo

43 Chinos color
31 32 33 34 44 Thrill
35 36 37 38
45 Scout’s job
46 Like Santa after
4
a delivery, maybe
39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46
48 Amer. capital? 5
47 48 49 50 51 52
49 Pistil’s
53 54 55 56 57 58 counterpart 6
51 “A Suitable Boy”
59 60 61 62 63 64
novelist ___ Seth 7
65 66 67 68 69 70 71 54 ___ culpa
72 73 74 75 76
55 Text protocol 8
letters
77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 56 Increased rapidly
58 Hoodwinked
9
n-

86 87 88 89 90
61 Shed a tear
91 92 93 94 95 96 63 Cachet
10
65 Arctic hazards
97 98 99 100 101
66 Off to one side 11
no

102 103 104 105 106 107 67 “Your Body Is a

Wonderland” 12
108 109 110 111 112 113
singer John
114 115 116 117 118 69 Direct 13
70 D.C.-to-Dover
14
119 120 121
heading
122 123 124 125 71 Period, e.g.
73 Source of
dietary
Labyrinth | by Mike Shenk
Great Work! | by Richard D. Allen potassium Answer words go into this grid 6 • Inappropriate look • Immature and inexperienced
Across 47 Pen filler, 91 •Real-time 124 Press targets 76 Profs’ aides in two ways. Across answers • Die • Specialist you might need to
1 Uninspired sometimes online 125 “They can go 78 Spelling face-off are entered, two answers per
48 Put to work personalities right ahead!” 80 “I ___ born 7 • Eventful journey see? (2 wds.)
6 Polishing agent numbered row, in the order of the
50 Chris in the 93 Brief life stories Down yesterday” clues. Winding answers are also • Delight in • Leader overthrown in 1955
11 Sort of, casually
Tennis Hall of 96 Particular places 1 Bygone home 82 Regarding entered in the order of the clues, in and re-elected in 1973
16 Law school Fame 8 • First film to win best
accrediting org. 97 Negating word theater fixtures 83 Capybara or one unbroken string that begins in
kinkajou, e.g. picture at both the • Where “no one can hear you
52 Diet that 98 Where Midori Ito 2 Auto racer the upper left corner, continues to
19 Oreo fill scream,” according to “Alien”
disallows dairy lit the Olympic Luyendyk 84 Costa ___ the right, forms one long path that Independent Spirit Awards
20 Lover boy and grains cauldron posters (2 wds.)
21 Many a 3 Florida home of 85 Hissy winds around the grid between the and the Oscars
53 •Betsy Ross, e.g. 100 Show extreme the Navy’s Blue 87 Legal fee • Isn’t eliminated from the
mysterious tech disrespect heavy lines and ends in the box • Star of a 1998 TV remake
57 Particular Angels 88 Like a much-read
support invoice, philosophy toward beneath the starting box. Use both of “Rear Window” competition (2 wds.)
these days 4 “My hero!” book
58 Principality ruled 102 •The Perfect sets of clues to find your way • Undying
23 Shampooing 5 Regarded as 92 Kenyan port
around.
9 • Some irritated reactions
by the House of Sleeper Sleep 94 British brew since
step 6 Dadaist Max • Takes in or lets out, e.g. • Toyota RAV4, for one
Grimaldi Excellence, for 1777
24 Calls for 59 Wax-coated one 7 Big name in • Conferred upon, as powers
bubbles 95 Gradually impart 10 • Mistaken (2 wds.)
25 Ancient teaching cheese 107 Physicist who (2 wds.)
on pranayama or conducted 8 “Self-Reliance” 96 Minute Maid • Really fancy
60 Laugh at offering • Herman Melville’s first book
asana the first essayist 11 • Hazard in some building
•54-year-old TV 62 “___ so 99 One of four for
26 happens...” self-sustaining 9 Cashes in Across • Keyboard shortcuts
show watched nuclear chain the goddess demolitions
64 Young one 10 Half Dome’s
by many four- reaction valley Lakshmi 1 • Site for a hedge maze, • Faction • Go soft, in a way
year-olds 65 Auburn archrival, 100 Grandparents’ perhaps
108 Grammy-winning 11 Crucially 12 • Charges (2 wds.) • Musical featuring the leader
29 Sheepskin boot familiarly Day mo.
jazz singer Laine important • Area between the cockpit referenced in an earlier clue
brand 68 •Results of some 101 Like some urges • Like clogged dryer vents
109 Brief life story 12 Folder’s words and first class cabin, on
protests and screams • You need to do it before
30 Bring home 110 Artistic triumphs, 13 Really bothered 13 • Transparent sheet material
31 Stave off
71 Turn down
and what the 102 Skye folks many jets sending the invitations
72 Superfund agcy. 14 Manual feature, • Site of some cypresses
32 •Study-abroad starred answers 103 “Silas Marner” 2 • Vain act (2 wds.) (3 wds.)
73 Big swig often
program aboard are created from author 14 • “So long!” in Soho (Hyph.)
74 Record holder 15 Cartoonists Capp 104 Moves, in realty • Zellweger’s co-star in • Underground labyrinths
the MV World 114 Garage job that’s and Jaffee
Odyssey for most career draining? jargon 2005’s “Cinderella Man” • Elizabeth Taylor, seven • Runway model?
no-hitters 16 Stand in for 105 Clock sound times
35 Go down 117 “Spider-Man”
17 Studio rail 3 • Scales up? • Make good as new
37 Part of A.D. 75 Many a choirboy director Sam 106 Forum
18 Whirlpool • Site of the Race Point, Winding
38 Pops 77 Big name in 118 Doughnut choice garments • Experts in futures?
shades subsidiary Wood End and Stage • One might stop the presses
39 Player retired in 119 Settled in, 107 Chips, on this • Far from altruistic
79 She may be perhaps 22 Plum pudding side of the pond Harbor lighthouses (2 wds.)
2022 ingredient
sheared 120 “The Last of Us” 111 Give off (2 wds.) • Medium for an artist’s copy • Favorite to win (2 wds.)
40 2021 Best 27 Before, quaintly
Supporting 81 •Steakhouse girl 112 French 101 (2 wds.) • Brand retired in 2004
patrons 28 Treasury bill 4 • Ingratiatingly polite
Actress nominee 121 “Easy on Me” pronoun
Kirsten 86 Inexperienced singer 33 Places 113 Show signs of • Writer of a ransom note,
Get the solutions to this week’s Journal Weekend Puzzles in next
s

41 •Union whose 87 Check a sum 122 Peter, Paul and 34 Pricey Super being perhaps
logo features 89 Brewski Mary, e.g.: Abbr. Bowl buy 115 None-too-subtle Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. Solve crosswords and acrostics
35 Outfits
5 • Regards with contempt online, get pointers on solving cryptic puzzles and discuss all of the
horse heads and 90 Select, as a 123 Waterlogged performer
a wagon wheel survey choice place 36 Saber’s kin 116 Bible verb suffix • Prune, say puzzles online at WSJ.com/Puzzles.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
C14 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
Hiroyuki Sanada as
a Japanese feudal
lord in ‘Shogun’ and
out of costume in
Los Angeles (below).
Hollywood’s Favorite Samurai
Hiroyuki Sanada is best known for playing Japanese warriors alongside stars like Tom Cruise and
Keanu Reeves. Now he’s making sure the new miniseries ‘Shogun’ gets Japanese culture right.
BY JOHN JURGENSEN
W
hile reigning as one
of Japan’s most fa-
mous and respected
actors, Hiroyuki
Sanada worked an
unofficial job—making sure the Hol-
lywood productions he starred in
also got their depictions of his
country’s culture right.
Preparing for his role in “The
Last Samurai,” Sanada helped in-
struct co-star Tom Cruise in wear-
ing a kimono and wielding a sword.
While playing an android samurai
on HBO’s “Westworld” he weighed
in on the look of robot geishas. Even
on “Mortal Kombat,” based on an
over-the-top video game, he rou-
tinely inspected costumes in a pro-
cess his castmates called “Sanada
time.”
“His standard of excellence is
quiet but profound. You don’t want
to let Hiro down,” says Keanu Reeves,
who worked with Sanada on “47
Ronin” and “John Wick: Chapter 4.”
Now, at age 63, Sanada’s role as
arbiter of authenticity is official.
For “Shogun,” a new TV adaptation
of the 1975 novel by James Clavell,
Sanada helped lead the project as
both a star and a producer. “Finally,
after 20 years in Hollywood movies,
I got a title,” Sanada says at a Japa-
nese garden in Los Angeles, his
home base for the past two decades.
“Shogun,” premiering Feb. 27 on
MASTERPIECE | ‘RHAPSODY ON A THEME OF PAGANINI’ (1934), BY SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
no
Defending Musical Tradition
BY STUART ISACOFF
IN A CENTURY of musical extremes
in which traditions were under at-
tack, dissonance was exalted, and
the art of composition was at times
reduced to a mere coin toss, Sergei
Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) stood out
as a supreme melodist. The Russian
composer’s dazzling “Rhapsody on
a Theme of Paganini” was featured
by the New York Philharmonic this
past week with piano soloist Bruce
Liu, winner of the 2021 Interna-
tional Chopin Piano Competition in
Warsaw. Those interested in hear-
ing the music can find it via You-
Tube, with exemplary performances
by such artists as Yuja Wang and
Stephen Hough.
The piece is a series of two-
dozen variations for piano and or-
chestra based on the last of 24 Ca-
prices by celebrated Romantic
virtuoso Niccolò Paganini
(1782-1840), who mesmerized audi-
ences with his stunning technical
skill and eerie demeanor. Paganini
was a strange sight, with a thin
trunk, a large head that seemed out
of proportion to his delicate limbs,
and many missing teeth. As his
doctor noted, “his left shoulder
[was] an inch higher than the
right”; one critic described Paganini
as a vampire. Mary Shelley, author
of “Frankenstein,” confessed that
he threw her into hysterics. Some
witnesses reported seeing the devil
on
us ,
l
e
al a
ci on
er s
m er
m rp
FX and Hulu, is the most expensive
production ever for Disney-owned
FX. It’s a lavish and risky retelling of
a story that looms large in pop cul-
ture. In Clavell’s novel, an English
co Fo
sailor navigates feudal Japan around
the year 1600, dealing with warlords,
Catholic priests and a romance with
his translator. The 1980 NBC minise-
ries based on the book, starring
Richard Chamberlain, broke ground
by showcasing a Japanese cast on
American TV, including Toshiro Mi-
fune, a legend from Akira Kurosawa’s
films. It was one of the highest-rated
broadcasts of all time, helping to
n-
standing next to him as he per-
formed; and the violinist did noth-
ing to dispel the bizarre rumors.
Little wonder that Franz Liszt, who
could ignite a frenzy with his own
flashy technique, decided to be-
come a piano virtuoso after at-
tending a Paganini recital.
Rachmaninoff wrote the piece
during the summer of 1934 at Se-
nar, his newly acquired villa near
Lucerne, Switzerland, working at a
swift pace. The music received its
premiere in Baltimore on Nov. 7 of
that year with the Philadelphia Or-
chestra conducted by Leopold Sto-
kowski, and Rachmaninoff at the pi-
ano. It was an instant hit.
Paganini’s original melody, folk-like
and in a minor mode, consists of a
four-bar theme, which is repeated,
followed by an eight-bar answer. It
leaves in its simplicity much oppor-
tunity for additional musical elabo-
ration.
The variations here unfold in
rapid-fire alternations. While isolat-
ing various parts of the theme, the
composer found creative ways to
highlight the inherent character of
each fragment, adding ornamenta-
tion and rhythmic variety and plac-
ing the material in different tempi.
The resulting composition ranges
from quick, flitting bursts of color
to slow, mournful ruminations.
After a brief introduction, the
variations begin with a tick-tock of
pendulum swings between the roots
REVIEW
trigger a broader fasci-
nation with Japanese
culture in the U.S.
But there were blind
spots, including the ab-
sence of English subti-
tles for Japanese dia-
logue. That choice
underscored the per-
spective of Chamber-
lain’s character, while
rendering the Japanese
characters alien.
Sanada and his col-
laborators have spent
years creating a new
“Shogun” that would re-
balance the story’s East-
meets-West theme, im-
merse viewers in the
historical setting and do
justice to the complex
narrative of the novel.
On screen, Sanada plays Lord Yoshii
Toranaga, an embattled leader who
uses cunning and misdirection to
fight for the survival of his clan and
the future of Japan. Behind the
scenes, he oversaw wardrobe and
weaponry while keeping an eye on
subtitles for the Japanese dialogue,
which makes up nearly 70% of the
speech in the series.
Sanada describes “Shogun” as
the culmination of an acting career
that spans more ninjas and samurai
than he can count. He chuckles
about the “old parts” of his body
that have weathered countless fight
of the harmonies under-
pinning the theme. The
melody appears again
with ornamentation and
playful piano highlights;
a rapid orchestra section
features a slower coun-
termelody in the piano.
Fast chordal rhythms
emerge in the hands of
the soloist. We hear a
slow, chorale-like presen-
tation by the full orches-
tra; and syncopated fig-
ures rushing by in a
virtual gallop. As the
work unfolds, heroic fan-
fares alternate with light,
skipping figures.
There is depth as well
as surface beauty in the
Sergei Rachmaninoff, whose work carried the banner
rhapsody’s scintillating
for melodic composition at a time of faddish trends.
and energetic filigree, its
jaunty rhythms, its cas-
cades of sound and delicate lyri-
cism. The music is so virtuosic in
its demands that Rachmaninoff,
who had the greatest piano tech-
nique of his time, expressed trepi-
dation about performing the final
variation.
Among Rachmaninoff’s highly
original ideas for the rhapsody was
introducing the dark medieval litur-
gical chant Dies irae (“Day of
Wrath”) in the seventh, 10th and
24th variations; it is treated as if it through a sophisticated, highly
is an actual take-off on Paganini’s
original, although the similarity lies
* ***
scenes, especially his ankles, which
Sanada soothed in his “Shogun”
trailer using an ice-therapy machine
that Reeves sent him.
“I put everything into this show
which I’ve learned before,” he says.
“So hopefully it will be a big foot-
step toward the future.”
Born in Tokyo in 1960, Sanada
started on his show-business path
as a 4-year-old model. Acting les-
sons followed, along with his first
movies as a child actor, co-starring
in yakuza gangster pictures with ac-
tion hero Sonny Chiba. He was for-
mally trained in sword fighting
while working on his acting, singing
and dancing.
Sanada’s fame rose with the
1970s and ‘80s boom in Japanese
martial arts movies: He was in “The
Shogun Assassins,” “Samurai Rein-
carnation” and “Ninja in the
Dragon’s Den,” to name a few. But
he belonged to a postwar genera-
tion of Japanese actors who had
global ambitions. Sanada’s inspira-
tions included Al Pacino and Jack
Nicholson.
He dove into the deep end of per-
forming in English when he played
the Fool in a Royal Shakespeare
Company production of “King Lear”
in London in 1999. Around the same
time, Japanese audiences saw him
in the influential horror movie
“Ringu,” later remade in Hollywood
as “The Ring.”
Sanada’s double duty as a Holly-
merely in the minor mood. (About a fresh. As composer and pianist
third of Rachmaninoff’s catalog
makes use of this foreboding
theme, and much of his other mu-
sic—like his first hit, the seminal
Prelude in C-sharp minor—is mired
in dark hues.)
Also innovative was the way he
arrived at the gorgeous 18th varia-
tion (aware of its commercial ap-
peal, the composer joked that he
had written this one for his agent)
technical procedure that recast Pa-
ganini’s melody in mirror form, so
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
wood adviser began with “The Last
Samurai,” the 2003 epic that intro-
duced him to U.S. audiences. He
played Ujio, who schools Cruise’s
Civil War veteran in combat. Sanada
helped make the fight choreography
more authentic for Japan in the
1800s. The results showed in a stand-
out scene in which Sanada and Cruise
clash in the rain with wooden
swords.
“Sanada was leading the dance in
that moment,” director Ed Zwick re-
calls. “That is one of the most re-
markable displays of control and
stage fighting that I have or any-
body will ever see. One slip on that
wet ground in a torrential rain and
we would have been down one
movie star.”
In “47 Ronin,” a fantastical take
on the samurai genre, Sanada ad-
justed his own sword moves to
make his fighting partner’s look
better, Reeves recalls. “I’d be slow,
so he would create these little ges-
tures and flourishes so it would
take up time and look quick and in-
tentional,” he says.
Despite Sanada’s growing reputa-
tion as a cultural translator on sets,
being an actor who requested cor-
rections from directors and depart-
ment heads made him anxious
about overstepping his role or hurt-
ing people’s pride, he says.
On “Shogun,” co-creators Justin
Marks and Rachel Kondo recall San-
ada’s push to hire an expert dedi-
cated to tying the obi sash for the
robes that actors and extras wear in
the show. The studio initially said
.
no to what seemed like an unneces-
ly
sary expense. “By the third day of
production,” Marks says, “that guy
was on a plane coming out to work
with our crew” to teach them to
costume actors more quickly and
properly.
In the show, Lord Toranaga elic-
its roars of loyalty from his troops.
Sanada had a more subtle but simi-
lar effect on the “Shogun” crew and
cast, says Marks, who oversaw the
production.
“He knows when he shows up
that, especially for the Japanese ac-
tors, their eyes are on him, and not
just when he’s in character,” he
says, adding, “We wanted to bring
that element to the part because
Toranaga is someone who is always
surrounded, even when he’s alone.”
Sanada says he feels a duty to
represent Japan on the world stage
and bridge cultures. In “Shogun,” he
adds, “everything is linking.”
When he arrived at a “Shogun”
FROM TOP: COLIN BENTLEY/FX; KEITH OSHIRO FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE
party hosted by FX at a recent press
event in Pasadena, Calif., Sanada
made a beeline for the handmade
costumes displayed under spotlights
around the room. He eyed one of
his own wardrobe pieces, a ceremo-
nial hitatare robe of gold, copper
and brown, which matched the col-
ors of the pocket square he wore
that night with his suit. Noticing an
imperfection—an obi belt that was
a trifle too exposed—Sanada
reached out and adjusted the cos-
tume himself.
that when the original
rose by a particular in-
terval, the new version
would fall by the same
musical distance, and
vice versa. In the trans-
formation, the music
shifts from minor to
major, giving the im-
pression of clouds part-
ing to allow in streams
of sunshine. The re-
markable result was so
compelling, it was used
in numerous subse-
quent major films and
television productions,
including “Somewhere
in Time” (1980),
“Groundhog Day” (1993)
and “Ronin” (1998).
Paganini’s Caprices
had inspired variations
by other notable art-
ists, yet Rachmaninoff’s
singular approach, in
effect a piano concerto,
made the music seem
Abram Chasins wrote to the com-
poser: “Liszt and Brahms both hav-
ing used it before, it seemed to me
that there was not very much left
to do with this theme, the possibili-
ties had been exhausted, but you
have conclusively proven the con-
trary. The marvelous orchestral
color, the ingenuity of your inven-
tion and complete mastery of form
BETTMANN ARCHIVE
are all overwhelmingly beautiful.”
Mr. Isacoff’s latest book is “Musical
Revolutions” (Knopf).
 OFF DUTY
For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

Bake-Off Case in Point

Referee Why sharp-
She oversees cornered phone
recipe taste protectors are
tests. You reap trending
the benefits. D12 D4
FASHION | FOOD | DESIGN | TRAVEL | GEAR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | D1

Finally,
Fashion
Ages
Up After years of
glamorizing waifish
women too young to

F. MARTIN RAMIN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; HAIR & MAKEUP BY KAROL RODRIGUEZ; STYLING BY NYASIA RUDOLPH FOR THIS REPRESENTS; STYLING ASSIST BY CHRISTINA MIDDLETON; TALENT: JOCELYNE BEAUDOIN FOR MUSE MANAGEMENT
order a beer, fashion
and media are idolizing
older women. Is it lip
service, or are brands
actually serving their
wardrobe needs?

.
ly
on
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n-

O
GLAMOUR OF
BY FARAN KRENTCIL Sharon Stone is InStyle’s February cover girl at 65, and Miuccia A CERTAIN AGE
Prada, 74, is the current one for Vogue. Recent fall 2024 catwalk Model Jocelyne
no

PERA DIVA Denyce Graves, 59, is routinely shows for Proenza Schouler, Helmut Lang and Kallmeyer all fea- Beaudoin, 65, en route
asked, “Where’s the party?” tured older women; designer Batsheva Hay refused to cast any- to a winning look.
When teaching her craft at New York’s one under 40 in hers. Former teen superstar Molly Ringwald, Cami Gown, $595,
Juilliard School, Graves often wears her now 55, opened the show. Ringwald also plays Joanne Carson in NiliLotan.com; Rose-and-
preferred daytime uniform of Oscar de la FX’s new series “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” which glamorizes White Gold Earrings
Renta dresses and Jimmy Choo heels. “My a flock of New York society women and fashion icons that in- With Diamonds,
colleagues say, cludes Babe Paley, C.Z. Guest and Slim Keith. The show is set in $10,900, Tiffany.com;
‘You’re so the 1960s, when the women were in their 40s and 50s. Necklace, $645, Alexis
dressed up. “For so long, we’ve spoken about diversity in fashion,” Bittar, 917-365-5718.
What’s the big said Fern Mallis, 75, a former executive director for the Council 18k-Gold-Plated Ring,
occasion?’” said the mezzo soprano. of Fashion Designers of America $65, BenoniJewelry.com;
“The big occasion is simply my life.” (CFDA), who founded New York Fash- Alice + Olivia Faux-
Like other luxury shoppers over 50, ion Week. “That doesn’t just mean Leather Pants (hanging),
Graves eschews yoga pants for full-on body sizes and skin colors. It has to $330, Revolve.com.
runway looks, and some brands are fi- include older women, too, especially
nally taking notice of these older core since we’re often the ones investing
customers. In ads, Diana Ross, 79, is in luxury pieces.”
the new face of Saint Laurent and But how deep does fashion’s new
Dame Maggie Smith, 89, models focus on older women really go, and
Loewe’s in-demand Puzzle Bag. Please turn to page D2

COVER WOMEN From left: Diana Ross, 79, and

Dame Maggie Smith, 89, in recent campaigns for
Saint Laurent and Loewe, respectively.

Inside

CHEESY LIKE SUNDAY MORNING THE WELL-DRESSED COMMUTER PET-SAFE PLANTS MUSEUM-QUALITY SECRETS
For brunch, lunch or beyond, this riff on With these strategic style tips, you won’t And other ways to ensure four-footed Insider tips on how to max out your visit
fondue comes together unfussily D12 sweat the trip to work D3 friends can coexist with your decor D7 to the Prado, Louvre and more D10
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
D2 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
Is Fashion Waking Up to Older Women?
Continued from page D1
what do women who carry an AARP card
along with an Hermès bag really want from
the fashion world? To start with, an ac-
knowledgment that they’re valued customers.
“I love to buy clothes from designers who
respect and admire my body,” said Carole
Guest, a former Wall Street executive (and a
distant relation by marriage to C.Z.), who
lives between Miami, Manhattan and Aspen—
and has packed closets in each locale. “I espe-
cially pay attention to labels that aren’t chas-
ing trends but rather really enjoy dressing
women as we are…I don’t want to wear
sweatpants, even if they are from Balenciaga.”
Those who doubt fashion’s commitment to
older women, despite the new visibility,
should note that it coincides with their ap-
pearance in boardrooms. “It’s not a coinci-
dence that as women in their 50s and 60s
step into more fashion-CEO and executive-ad-
viser roles, the companies they run want to
acknowledge their power,” said Mallis. Dona-
tella Versace is 68, after all; Dior creative di-
rector Maria Grazia Chiuri is 60. In Holly-
wood, TV’s current crop of hits boasts Boomer
stars like Sheryl Lee Ralph, 67, in “Abbott Ele-
What do stylish women
who carry an AARP card
along with an Hermès bag
really want from the fashion
and beauty worlds?
mentary,” and Jodie Foster, 61, in “True De-
tective.” The “Sex and the City” spinoff, “And
Just Like That,” follows a group of fashion-
plate friends (including Sarah Jessica Parker’s
Carrie) who are mostly in their 50s.
“Style sensibility can be embodied at any
age,” said Meena Anvary, Banana Republic’s
head of marketing. The brand’s current mar-
quee face is Gen X model Tasha Tilberg. In
easy yet put-together staples, Tilberg repre-
sents “something everyone can connect
with,” said Anvary. Chef and TV host Carla
Hall, 59, has noticed a shift when shopping.
In the past, stylists and salespeople would
note her age and try to dress her as if she
were “adorable or artsy.” Now, Hall says,
they acknowledge “I can still be cool.”
In her loose interpretation of “dressing
one’s age,” Hall sticks with long, slinky
dresses from Diane von Furstenberg (77) and
trousers in strong shades from Alice + Olivia.
“I keep the color bold but the shape simple,”
she said. Mallis recommends a steady rota-
tion of tailored pantsuits (hers are vintage
Donna Karan), Michael Kors midcalf dresses
and cashmere wraps from Lafayette 148. “I
also love a suede black Manolo Blahnik boot
with no heel,” she said, noting that, even at
an age “when heels are harder to wear for
long periods of time, a Manolo flat is still a
Manolo.” Manhattan gallery director Deedee
Wigmore, 81, recommended Clarks shoes for
long strolls. “Though, in the office, I still wear
a good pair of heels from Tod’s,” she said.
For the face, makeup artist Jo Strettell, 61,
recommends more skin care and fewer cos-
metics. “Get a vibrating face wand and use it
with a serum to get the blood moving before
you go out,” said the Los Angeles resident,
n-
who creates red-carpet beauty looks for
no
STYLE & FASHION
on
Jacket, $995, Kallmeyer.
NYC; Sweater, $950, Similar
Styles at NiliLotan.com;
Hanro Knit Tank Top, $90,
us ,
BergdorfGoodman.com;
Trousers, $400, Pumps,
l
e
$500, AnineBing.com;
al a
Anderson’s Belt, $138, Net-A-
Porter.com; Diamond
ci on
Necklace in Yellow Gold,
$31,000, Tiffany.com.
er s
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Helen Mirren, 78, and Demi Moore, 61. “As
the face ages, makeup can settle into wrin-
kles very quickly, which makes them seem so
much more prominent. Some of my clients
hit menopause and panic, like, ‘Maybe I need
surgery.’ You don’t. You need more moistur-
izer and a good makeup brush.”
Strettell’s go-to is L’Oréal’s Age Perfect
line, which has denser formula weights for
more mature skin, along with Charlotte
Tilbury lip liner and Victoria Beckham eye-
liner to define the features quickly. Former
Estée Lauder executive Poppy King, 51, added,
* *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
SAGE STYLING Above: Coat, $3,490, Skirt,
$890, Michael Kors, 212-425-4685;
Pullover, $545, Tibi.com; Stockings, $38,
WearCommando.com; Loafers, $925,
US.JimmyChoo.com; 18k-Gold-Plated Ring,
F. MARTIN RAMIN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; HAIR & MAKEUP BY KAROL RODRIGUEZ; STYLING BY NYASIA RUDOLPH FOR THIS REPRESENTS; STYLING ASSIST BY CHRISTINA MIDDLETON; TALENT: JOCELYNE BEAUDOIN FOR MUSE MANAGEMENT; FX (FEUD)
$65, BenoniJewelry.com. Below: Jacket,
$1,395, Vince.com; Sweater, $790, Michael
Kors, 212-452-4685; Alice + Olivia Faux-
Leather Pants, $330, Revolve.com; Shoes,
$975, Saint Laurent, 212-980-2970, 18k-
Gold-Plated Ring, $65, BenoniJewelry.com.
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HE OLDER AND THE
H
EAUTIFUL From left:
BE
Chhloe Sevigny as C.Z.
Guest, Naomi Watts as
Ba abe Paley, Diane Lane
ass Slim Keith, and
exxtras in FX’s ‘Feud:
Ca apote vs. the Swans.’
II’ve stopped doing a graphic cat more likely to buy something I’ve seen on a
eye, but not because of menopause much older woman” than something spotted
or anything like that. I just honestly don’t on social media. “Seeing Collina Strada use
want to look like I did when I was 25. I mean, people’s moms on their catwalk makes it so
thank God I’m older now.” much cooler. I think it’s very cool to see older
Even some Gen-Zers are embracing the women included, and those brands deserve
style secrets of their matriarchs—perhaps more business. [Older women] are knowl-
quite literally. “Young people are just looking edgeable about style and very glamorous.”
for answers,” said Willa Bennett, the 28-year- Added Guest, “I do have people ask me
old editor in chief of Highsnobiety, a youth sometimes, ‘How are you still this fashion-
culture bible for fashion fans. Bennett said able?’ And I remember being 20 and seeing
her readers “worship” the style of older much older women wearing Chanel and
women because “we are all trying to find thinking, ‘Wait, why can’t I have that?’ Well,
Mother,” a TikTok term for a benevolent fe- I worked hard and now I can,” she said.
male guide. As New Orleans college student “And now the girls in their 20s can look at
Lucy Stander, 19, put it, “I actually think I’m us and say, ‘Oh wow.’”
Welcome to the
pinnacle of cookware.
DEVELOPED BY CHEFS.
CRAFTED IN ITALY.
hestanculinary.com
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
BY DANIEL VARGHESE
H
OW DOES the ur-
ban pencil pusher
get to the office?
Probably uncom-
fortably. Those who
drive might be fine (lucky you),
but if you get to work via bike,
bus, train or just your own two
feet, odds are you’ll break a sweat.
With many folks back in offices
postpandemic, commuters are re-
engaging with that evergreen di-
lemma: How to dress so you’re
comfy en route and arrive looking
professional and unruffled?
Come spring, said Zachary Cole-
man, a New York medical secre-
tary who cycles to work, “there’s
no way I’m showing up…without
sweat stains.” To ensure he’s pre-
sentable, Coleman, 33, exchanges
his cycling jersey for a dress shirt
before he sits down. But in-office
costume changes aren’t the only
option. Dress wisely and your garb
can take you from bike path to
pitch meeting.
THE STRETCH QUESTION In the
past decade-plus, brands such as
Ministry of Supply, Rhone and,
most famously, Lululemon, have
served up business-casual with a
side of stretch. They make inoffen-
sive staples—chinos, dress shirts—
‘If you’re wearing a
tailored jacket, don’t use
a shoulder bag.’
in sporty, synthetic fabrics. (Rhone
even dubs their sporty-meets-cor-
porate items “commuter pants”
and “commuter shirts.”) Such
styles appeal to lots of corporate
folks, noted Emilie Hawtin, the
New York-based former editorial
director of J.Crew and founder of
tailoring brand Clementina. She
sees “a lot of guys going into, like,
Goldman Sachs in these kind of
performance, stretchy pants.”
The reality? “Unless you’re get-
ting on a reformer machine for Pi-
lates, that much stretch is com-
pletely unnecessary,” said Hawtin.
Added Chris Echevarria, founder of
New York footwear and lifestyle
brand Blackstock & Weber, “If you
think you need some performance
technology fabrics to get yourself to
work, you don’t.” While a pinch of
elastane can be good for movement,
natural fabrics generally suffice. As
Echevarria pointed out, polyester—
often used in sporty office gar-
ments—can smell when exposed to
sweat, so is best avoided. (Though
some brands treat their sporty fab-
rics with “anti-odor” technology.)
GO NATURAL Pros endorse natural
fabrics over synthetic garb. Hawtin
walks and bikes to work in a heavy-
weight linen suit year-round. Seek
out linen pieces that have more
heft than a summery vacation
shirt, she said. While still breath-
able and fairly breezy, heavier linen
won’t wrinkle nearly as easily as
lighter versions—and will keep you
no
* * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | D3
STYLE & FASHION
In-Flight Mode
Race to
Strategic outfits for three
styles of commute
Work,
Stylishly
Whether you walk, cycle
or catch the train, this
commuter’s guide will help WALKING Roomy, heavy-linen
pants, a light Cordura
you travel in comfort—and backpack and sneakers.
reach your desk looking
sharp. Tips for men.
CYCLING Slim pants, grippy
VADYM SOLOWSKI (ILLUSTRATIONS); RED HOUSE/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK (WALTER MITTY)
lug-sole loafers and a tote
stashed in the bike rack.
.
ly
on
BUSINESS TRIP Ben Stiller as a daydreaming office worker in ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ (2013).
TRAIN Layers to remove, as
needed, in stuffy subways. A
tote that won’t crease jackets.
us ,
l
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twill. He noted that these durable jacket’s shoulder padding or
al a
GREAT HAUL / URBANE ITEMS FOR URBAN COMMUTERS
fabrics (which are usually made of stretch out the internal layer of
wool or cotton) were originally cre- canvas that gives a blazer shape.
ci on
ated for horse riding. These days Hawtin recommends carrying a
they’re considered formal and of- large tote with a comfy handle,
fice-appropriate, but they can han- like the L.L. Bean Boat and Tote
dle a bike ride with ease. bag. For a more all-weather alter-
native, try Mission Workshop’s
er s
LAYER YOUR TOP HALF At a min- handsome, waxed-canvas laptop
imum, ensure your top two layers tote (left). Cyclists should install a
m er
can be unzipped or unbuttoned rear rack to stash their tote.
when things get heated. Think car- If you insist on using a backpack
digans and blazers. and have made peace with the pros-
pect of back sweat, go for a bag in
m rp
CYCLISTS, UP YOUR PANTS GAME Cordura. Echevarria swears by this
Though roomy trousers are breezi- super-light, rip-resistant fabric,
est, slimmer pants work better, which is usually made of nylon.
since flowy styles can get caught in
the bike’s chain or wheel. Those who LUG-SOLE SOLUTION If you’re a
co Fo
prefer trendy wider cuts can re- walker, consider a strategy that
Clockwise from above left: Heavy-Linen Chore Jacket, $895, strain flappy hems by following the has worked for countless women
US.Drakes.com; Waxed-Canvas Laptop Tote, $335, MissionWork- lead of Coleman, the medical secre- for decades: Walk in sneakers and
shop.com; Cotton-Linen Chinos, $105, MrPorter.com; Lug-Sole Loafers, tary. He tucks his pants into comfy, keep a pair of smarter kicks under
$395, BlackstockAndWeber.com; Socks, $24, DarnTough.com thick, midcalf socks by Darn Tough. your desk. Or simplify things by
Or buy $6 straps from Green Guru getting loafers with a Vibram lug
Gear to wrap around each ankle. sole, a thick layer of rubber with
warmer so can be worn in cooler Alternatively, you could go for a deep indentations that grip side-
months. “It performs more like a breathable wool such as merino. Or GET A BIG TOTE “If you are wear- walks effectively. Vibram soles also
really breathable wool,” said Haw- heed the advice of Derek Guy, a San ing a tailored jacket…you should work well for cycling since they
tin. Unstuffy tailoring brand Francisco menswear aficionado who not use any bag that hangs from grip pedals, said Echevarria. Bo-
Drake’s makes a great chore jacket runs the blog “Die, Workwear!”, and the shoulders,” said Guy. The bag’s nus: These chunky bases are firmly
n-
from weighty linen (above). pick pants in whipcord or cavalry strap, he said, will distort the on-trend in menswear.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

D4 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

GEAR & GADGETS

Hip to Be Square
ergonomics design firm. “If you look at
most phones, they’re nice, they’re sleek, but
the edges are rounded,” he explained.
“They’re also smooth, and those factors
make things harder to hold.”
A phone with square edges might enhance
Embraced by social-media influencers and celebs like Taylor Swift, sharp-cornered smartphone grip, says Hedge, and fit more naturally in
cases are the latest Gen Z status symbol. But what about the rest of us? your hand if you carry an average-size model.
And if you’re prone to pratfalls or accidental
drops, using a right angled case with a soft-
shouldered phone creates an extra space be-
tween the edges of the device and the cover,
supplying an extra layer of cushioning protec-
tion, he adds. Propped up against a wall or a
coffee cup, the design also offers a more stable
base for a hands-free selfie.
Are you willing to risk jabbing your cheek?
For “grown-ups” looking for a taste of the
trend, we put a few popular models to the
test. Here, some favorites.

OUCH? / RIGHT-ANGLED PHONE

CASES THAT MAKE A (POINTY)
FASHION STATEMENT

1 | Glam Squad
Many cases by
Brooklyn brand
Flaunt are statement
pieces with luxury
appeal, which might
be why Swift is re-
putedly a repeat cus-
tomer. This textured,
faux crocodile ver-
sion ($49) is engi-
neered for durability
and has cushioned
corners that promise
to offer shock absorp-
tion from falls up to 8 feet. A raised lip

.
along the display also adds screen pro-

ly
tection. MagSafe compatibility means
accessories attach effortlessly to wire-
less power stations; for those who like
on the matchy-matchy look, coordinating
AirPod cases are available.
us ,

2 | Sheer Wonder
l

Case-Mate’s Clear
e
Blox case ($40)
al a

makes a case for styl-

ish simplicity. Want a
ci on

bit more whimsy? For

the same price, the
“rainbow frosting”
FRANCESCO ZORZI (ILLUSTRATION)

variant adds a splash

of color without ob-
er s

scuring your phone.

Other pluses: an anti-
m er

scratch coating and

UV protection to pre-
vent yellowing.
m rp

BY DALVIN BROWN Then there’s the Swiftie effect. One Satur- Aesthetically, nostalgia might also play a

F
IRST THEY CAME for skinny
jeans and side parts. Now young
style-watchers are giving side-
day morning last April, case maker Flaunt
experienced a massive surge in sales, with
tens of thousands of orders unexpectedly
flooding in. “We were like, ‘OMG, what’s go-
co Fo
role. Unlike the sleek styling that’s been the 3 | Quiet Luxury
hallmark of high-end gadgetry since the mil- Cocomii’s Neutral
lennium—think of Apple and Tesla’s modern, Phone Case ($24)
minimalist designs—chunky cell cases recall is the company’s

eye to an unassuming tech acces-
sory—your curvy cellphone case.
That’s right: To some observers, that
rounded sheath you casually snapped on your
iPhone to protect it makes you look like a
fuddy-duddy. When it comes to phone fash-
ions, right angles are suddenly all the rage.
What’s the allure of the straight edge?
Squared-off phone cases have existed for
years, but as with many other Gen Z trends,
boosts from social-media platforms like
TikTok and high-profile celebs (Gigi Hadid,
n-
ing on?’” co-founder and CEO Carlo Argila an earlier age of personal tech, when block- bestseller, avail-
ier shapes prevailed. able in shades of
For Gen Zers already smitten with ’80s off-white, brown
When it comes to phone and ’90s fashion, the square phone is a nat- and black, with a
ural next step, and another way to stand matte finish. At
fashions, right angles are out from the graying crowds. Argila says under $25 for
suddenly all the rage. that after their first purchase, Flaunt’s cus- MagSafe editions,
tomers often come back for more colors it’s a budget-
and swap cases to match their outfits. friendly option
said of the swarm. The Brooklyn startup Not bothered about the image your phone that the company
later traced the frenzy to a TikTok video by is projecting? The benefits of going square says is engineered
Taylor Swift that featured a cameo by one aren’t purely about looks. Blocky cases can with reinforced

Megan Thee Stallion) have turbocharged of its square-angled cases. “We’ve never also offer a host of ergonomic benefits, square corners.
their popularity. seen anything like it,” he said. claims Alan Hedge, founder of Humanuse, an
no

2nd annual

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | D5

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D6 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

DESIGN & DECORATING

sure cost me gray matter.
Beauty is indeed in the eye of the
beholder, says Glenn Pushelberg, an
interior designer in Toronto. “There
is no right or wrong—to be art, it
doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t
have to match the furniture, it
doesn’t have to be ‘serious,’” he
said. “It just has to be something
you connect to emotionally. Get
something you like to look at, bring
it home and then listen to what it’s
telling you to change.”
Years ago he and his partner, de-
signer George Yabu, bought two
paintings by Yoshitomo Nara fea-
turing the Japanese artist’s signa-
ture childlike figures. “We hung the
paintings in our bedroom, and then
we bought two bulbous, youthful-
looking chairs from Ligne Roset to
support the playful feeling of the
paintings,” Pushelberg said.
Did it make his brain feel larger?
SUSANNA HARRISON (ILLUSTRATION); MICHELLE SLATALLA (PAINTING)

“It just felt right,” he said.

Of course it felt right, because
he’s an accomplished designer. But
the rest of us trying to grow bigger
brains through better decor could
probably benefit from some tips.
For starters, you don’t need to
have a big bank account. “You have a
blank space on a wall and a certain
budget,” said Véra Kempf, co-
founder of online art gallery Singu-
lart, where 37% of shoppers are
first-time art buyers. “Starting a
search with narrow criteria can
make you feel more confident about
looking through a huge inventory.”
Second, think about the dimen-
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DECOR / MICHELLE SLATALLA
sions of a space when choosing art.

.
“It has to feel right for a room,”

ly
The Painting That Set Off a
Kempf said. For instance, in a small
area, like an entry with stairs, a sin-
gle big piece of art can overwhelm
on the eye, so you might want to in-

Decorating Domino Effect

stead group together smaller pieces.
Nadia Watts, an interior de-
signer in Denver, suggests clients
us ,

think about colors they like. “Ab-

stract paintings can be a good
l
e
place to start.”
al a

RECENTLY, I FELL IN LOVE with and a brief dry period in a rainy winter, the brain to release chemicals such in differently decorated cages. Some Often you’re drawn to the same
bought a little oil painting online—a he had rushed over to spackle cracks as dopamine and endorphins. That cages were empty; others were en- palette you’ve used throughout
ci on

Swedish seascape in a black frame—
to fit into the decor in my bedroom.
It was somehow luminous but mel-
ancholy. And that set off a domino
effect of decorating.
in the stucco facade of my house.
But redoing an entire room to
suit a 10-inch-high painting?
“It’s a first,” he said. “See
you Thursday.”
er s
opens up neural pathways in the
central nervous system that stimu-
late your brain, Magsamen said,
and improve your health.
“There are so many positive
riched with wooden toys, mazes and
textures the rats could explore with
their little pink noses.
And guess what? Autopsies of the
rodents who had lived in the kitted-
your house, she adds. That’s fine.
Pay attention to scale and how the
art you hang relates proportionally
to everything else in the room.
Watts suggests following a few

When the painting (shown right) OK, maybe my plan did sound in- physical effects [of looking at art], out spaces revealed that the stimu- tried-and-true design rules for dis-
arrived, it was too small to hang sane. It was a relief, then, to confess playing art on a wall. The piece’s
m er

alone. I bought a tiny pen-and-ink
drawing to keep it company. Then of
course I had to get the drawing
framed. Which only heightened the
the details to Susan Magsamen, an center should hang about 5 feet
assistant professor of neurology from the floor. “That’s a comfort-
at Johns Hopkins University
‘A teeny painting able level for the eye,” she said.
School of Medicine in Baltimore. changed your life—and “I tried that with my little
m rp

fact that the bland, bone-white walls
were making the pastiche feel dis-
connected and too austere for even
a Swede. My objectives were start-
ing to shift; mission creep had set in.
“What you did is not a big leap we have evidence that it painting, but it didn’t look right,” I
at all. A teeny painting changed told her. “That’s what started the
your life—and we have evidence it
can also improve your domino effect.”
can also improve your health,” said health,’ said one expert. “Interesting,” Watts said. “Is
Magsamen, who co-wrote “Your there anything below your piece of
co Fo

Heedless, I called my friend
Elmin Reyes, a house painter in
San Rafael, Calif., to explain the
situation and ask if he could zip
over and paint my bedroom.
“Change the color to match a
painting?” Reyes asked, puzzled.
“Yes—to French gray,” I con-
firmed. “It’s a paint emergency.”
He sighed. After all, this was not
my first paint emergency. There was
the time Reyes repaired a peeling
Brain on Art: How the Arts Trans-
form Us” (Random House, 2023).
Thanks to the rapidly emerging
field of neuroscience called neu-
roaesthetics—the science behind
how our brains react to beauty and
to art—researchers are compiling
evidence about how aesthetic ex-
periences (like looking at artworks
we love) can benefit our brains.
Here’s how: When you activate
your optic nerve by looking at,
n-
from becoming better at conflict
resolution to helping with head-
aches,” she said. “Healthcare work-
ers are even prescribing museum
visits. People who have at least one
art activity a month over the course
of their lives live longer.”
The field of neuroaesthetics
traces its roots to the early 1960s,
when University of California,
lation enlarged their rat brains.
Thus was revealed neuroplasticity—
the brain’s ability to change even in
old age. And the rats in the unfur-
nished cages? They might as well
have been living on a wind-whipped
shoreline in Sweden.
I don’t know anything about art,
but I know what I like. Is that
good enough? For my brain I
art—a table or other furniture?”
“No,” I said. “Is that why it
looked lonely?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Try putting
a little table under it.” I felt my
brain tingle.
“Or a side chair,” she continued.
“And then hang the painting a lit-
tle lower—about 6 to 10 inches
above the furniture, so it feels like
it all belongs together.”
“A little table,” I repeated. The

plaster ceiling moments before holi- say, a bleak Swedish shoreline, Berkeley, researcher Marian Dia- mean. I’ve been to homes in which mission creep was expanding, and
day guests arrived. And once, during that sensory stimulation triggers mond experimented on rats she put things hanging on the walls for with it, I’m sure, my brain.
no

HOW TO LIVE WITH A ROOM YOU HATE

Counters Not
Productive?
Lack of work surfaces can drive a
home chef bonkers. Here, how
design pros scare up elbow room.
IF YOU’VE GOT a dearth of kitchen counter Los Angeles architect Catherine Garrison
space, you regularly face the chaos of cords, opted for handy pegboard in a local ADU.
coffee machines and cutting boards—before
you even start cooking. Los Angeles architect relocate soaps and scrubbers, get a kitchen
Catherine Garrison, who often redesigns caddie that suction-cups to the backsplash.
Craftsman and midcentury kitchenettes to
make more room on surfaces, offers a man- Use Walls Wisely | For the design of a Los
tra: “Think over, under and up.” Examine your Angeles studio kitchen, Garrison dispensed
counter detritus mercilessly and reserve with backsplash tile and tacked up a cheerful
space for everyday essentials only, then adopt yellow pegboard, from which cutting boards
these expert strategies to organize tools you and utensils hang on hooks. (Goodbye, tool-
need out of the way but close at hand. storage crock on the counter.) She further de-
cluttered counters with a custom doorless
Be Shelfish | In some tiny cook spaces, open cabinet made of plywood (cost $700), and a
shelving beats cabinets by getting stuff off small birch-ply lip deep enough for spices. For
counters but within easy reach. Designer Anas- a slightly more formal alternative to peg-
tasia Casey, owner of Interior Collective in Aus- board, hang hooks from a backsplash rail. And
tin, Texas, jettisoned the upper cabinets in her ditch the space-hogging knife block by hous-
MADELINE HARPER (CASEY); STACI MARENGO (GARRISON)

sister’s 1917 San Francisco kitchen. She then
floated walnut shelves, keeping canisters, bowls
and everyday spices on the lower ones. Helen
Parker, creative director of DeVOL Kitchens,
likes to source sui generis vintage shelves for
quick-grab items. Retailers from West Elm to
Food 52 sell wood risers, which sit on the coun-
ter and add a shelf with no need to drill holes.
Max Out the Sink Space | To transform your
sink into a work surface, just plop an oversize
chopping block over half of it. A “workstation”
UP BUT NOT AWAY Austin, Texas, designer Anastasia Casey freed up counters with open shelves.
does the same more elegantly. “These are
sinks with multiple accessories like cutting
boards, strainers and drying racks built in,”
said Garrison, who opts for Kohler or Ruvati’s
versions. Though some designers think work-
station sinks cause a traffic jam of people
prepping and washing, cooks with wee kitch-
ens might welcome the double-duty designs.
Wall-mounted taps free up space behind the
sink (where a little fern would be happy). To
ing your sharp objects on a wall-mounted
magnetic strip.
Look Out Below | Can mixers and toaster ovens
be cleared away? Sure. Turn any cabinet into an
appliance garage by adding electrical outlets at
the rear, says Garrison, who often includes ap-
pliance lifts for heavy items. These seamlessly
pull out of a cabinet and elevate to counter
height, bringing your device along on its own lit-
tle shelf. And spirit away paper towels with a
wall-mounted holder below. —Maria Neuman
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Take Back
Your Decor
Dog making a mess of your house? Cat got
your rug? Design pros to the rescue.
BY NINA MOLINA
I
UNDERSTAND the
pet-owner’s decor di-
lemma. When my
roommate and I fos-
tered two kittens, a
toxic cycle began. Though our
new friends knocked framed
posters off the wall at night,
the next morning Betty and
Brontë’s innocent eyes would
disarm me and I’d drop kisses
on their tiny foreheads. But
must “fur babies” condemn a
homeowner to tarp-clad sofas
and plastic vases? No, say
pet-owning interior designers.
Best camouflage?
A sofa that matches
your pet’s coloring.
Carpet Correctly
New York designer Ghislaine
Viñas’s tip: Roll out dark-col-
ored rugs with intricate pat-
terns to hide slobber, mud
and piddle accidents. Jaipur
Living’s Poeme design would
pass Atlanta designer Cate
Dunning’s “meatball test,”
which asks: Would a meatball
dropped on the rug disap-
pear? If so, bring on the paws.
Thick, natural weaves like
wool and seagrass weather
house-training accidents well.
Avoid sisal, says New York de-
signer Bunny Williams.
Though handsome and tex-
PAUL BARBERA (CAT)
tured, it easily absorbs mois-
ture, making spot cleaning a
chore, she says. Performance
materials such as polypropyl-
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ene hold up well, says Keren
Richter, principal designer of
Manhattan firm White Arrow,
but she steers clear of vis-
cose, a delicate semi-synthetic
material prone to shedding.
Up Your Sofa Game
Pets’ claws catch easily in
loose weaves like bouclé, and
cats especially can’t resist
them. Richter tests a textile’s
suitability with a paper clip.
Unfold the metal and run the
jagged end against a fabric.
If it snags, the material
won’t survive a cat’s talons.
Mohair and velvet pass this
test, the designer has found.
Nicole Fuller’s two Maine
Coons, Monty and Punk, be-
sieged her herringbone linen
sofa, “hanging from it by
their claws,” she said. The
New York designer reuphol-
stered the couch in Dedar’s
Klein blue cotton velvet—
tightly woven and durable.
As for leather, cats’ claws
will shred it, but paw marks
and the oil from dogs’ coats
can be passed off as “patina.”
Viñas endorses perfor-
mance fabrics for upholstery
as they “ensure the highest
level of durability.” Sunbrella
offers solution-dyed acrylic
on
us ,
that repels water and stains
and holds up against the oil
l
e
and dirt from dogs’ coats,
al a
says Richter. Fuller, who finds
some performance fabrics too
ci on
rough, relies on luxurious Eu-
ropean outdoor fabric from
Loro Piana and Pierre Frey.
For shedding fur, Richter
suggests the ultimate camou-
er s
flage: a sofa that matches
your pet’s coloring. “Some-
m er
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co Fo
n-
NY
DESIGN & DECORATING
OY VASE Reggie
perches perilously
near a ceramic
amphora, as seen in
‘House Cat,’ (Thames
& Hudson, Jan. 2024).
times, if you can’t beat ’em,
join ’em,” she said.
Alternatively, Williams
tucks throws into armchairs
and wraps sofa cushions in
blankets. After years with her
cat and two terrier mixes,
she’s found that faux fur blan-
kets and cotton block-printed
Indian fabrics endure, wash
easily and appear intentional.
“Make sure that it still looks
like a chair that someone can
sit in and not just the dog’s
chair [or sofa],” Williams said.
Make Little Moves
Fuller collects Murano glass-
ware and loves lit candle-
sticks. Uncompromising, she
presses Stick-Um putty to the
bottoms of both so her cats
can’t topple them. Richter de-
ploys museum gel, a special
adhesive, for wobbly curios.
Plants can be hung out of
reach of digging dogs and
mischievous cats, says Geral-
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dine James, author of “Cool
Dogs, Cool Homes” (CICO,
2023). If you like your plants
earthbound, the website
Plants for Pet Parents sells
plants the ASPCA deems not
toxic to pets.
As for the slew of chew
toys, corral them in a con-
tainer that compliments your
interior—whether that’s a Poeme Rug, $190 for
folksy gingham-lined basket 4 feet round,
or IKEA’s mod dandelion-yel- JaipurLiving.com
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 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

D8 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Tech
News
Briefing

.
ly
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l
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al a
ci on
er s
m er
m rp

If It’s Making
co Fo

News In Tech,
We’ve Got It.
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Keeping your finger on the pulse of today’s fast-moving tech

sector has never been easier.

Dive deep with expert interviews on the tech stories that

matter from WSJ’s Tech News Briefing, then catch the day’s
top tech headlines after closing bell with TNB’s Tech Minute.
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 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
DAVE URBAN
Friends to the End—of This Trip
Can friendship endure the travails of a pals trip? Battle-scarred experts share survival strategies.
BY HANNAH SELIGSON
I
F THE POINT of a vacation
is to get away from it all—
should that include friends,
too? I used to dread the
thought of running into
people I know while traveling and,
obliged to hang with them, having
to derail my plans. But a recent
trip challenged my thinking. On
holiday with my husband and two
kids, six and three, at a small hotel
on Mexico’s Pacific coast, we
bumped into some friends with
their young children. Over a few
days, I started to see the appeal of
traveling with friends: built-in
companionship and social levity for
the adults, playmates for the kids.
The accidental run-in got me
weighing whether I might want to
organize my own “friendcation,” an
increasingly popular portmanteau I
promise to use sparingly here.
When friends from our son’s
school mentioned they were going
to Turks and Caicos in February, I
saw my opportunity and arranged
to join them. Unprepared to go all
in on shared accommodation, I
booked a rental near the Grace Bay
Club resort where they will stay.
As planning began, the sheer num-
ber of variables at play raised my
heart rate: The kids all need to
jibe, partners must like each other.
no
* * * * NY Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | D9
ADVENTURE & TRAVEL
recent trip to Barcelona to see a
Beyoncé concert, Matt Butler, 41,
founder of a New York City-based
college test-prep company, booked
the Soho House for around $650
(600 euros) a night. That price was
out of range for one friend on the
trip, so Butler found him a cheaper
hotel nearby. “It does help if every-
one is willing to spend the same
amount of money, but there is al-
ways a workaround,” Butler said.
Set Expectations
“Friendcations are not for the
faint of heart, and you must be on
the same wavelength: Are you
sightseers or relax-by-the-pool
people?” said Butler. Having
checked Beyoncé off his list, But-
ler recently set his sights on a
Taylor Swift show in Rio de Ja-
neiro. On the trip, Butler dis-
suaded one of his friends from
splitting off for a trip to Iguazu
Falls because he felt it wasn’t in
What if a discussion
about current events
spiraled into a
friendship-ending
argument?
keeping with the spirit of their
weekend together: group bonding.
Janet Rodgers, 83, who has
traveled with different friends for
.
decades, disagrees with Butler’s
ly
approach. She says she would have
encouraged the travel companion
to visit the Falls. “Try to plan a
on
The adults must, at bare minimum, end more relaxing,” said Scalisi, a on vacations with other people
number of daytime activities that
are separate or individual, so when
tolerate how everyone else parents. fan of Airbnb rentals in the Cats- those things go out the window.” you have dinner together, the con-
Would my friends, for example, kills and the Hudson Valley with versation will be lively, fun and
Talk About Money
us ,
abide what I deemed an appropri- easy access to snowboarding, an newsy,” she advised.
ate breakfast: Nutella on a hot dog activity that lets everyone be A few things no one wants: 14 Cayla Hollis-Emery, 25, recently
l
e
bun followed by a doughnut or alone together. credit cards on the table after din- traveled to Canada with a group she
al a
two? What if a discussion about While discussing our itinerary ner, a surprise four-figure bill at met on a study abroad program. “I
current events spiraled into a with Grace Bay’s pre-arrival con- the end of a trip, a fight over who told my friends that my only must-
ci on
friendship-ending argument? I’d cierge, I learned that the resort’s owes what. Lisa Karvellas, 35, do for Montreal was to try a bagel,
have to see this family at school chief operating officer, Nikheel Ad-founder of Cedar Lakes Estate, an while my friend wanted to hike up
drop-off for the next five years at vani, undertakes up to eight trips event space in Port Jervis, N.Y., Mount Royal,” Hollis-Emery, a trip
least. Even without our kids, I re- with friends every year. I told Ad- has been regularly traveling with planner for FTLO Travel, said. They
alized, a trip among friends can vani that I worried I’d be judged a the same four college friends for made sure to parcel out time for
er s
leave the relationship in tatters. derelict parent for my lax ap- the last decade. She credits her both activities. “When traveling
In an attempt to arrive pre- proach to sugar and screens. “Ev- enduring friendship to transpar- with a group, there can be so many
m er
pared, I started sourcing advice eryone needs to take it down a ently establishing a budget with opinions of how the vacation should
from friend-trip veterans. notch,” Advani advised. “I’m a which everyone is comfortable go. What’s most important is that
cleanliness freak normally—my well before planning begins. “It’s everyone gets to enjoy themselves
Chill Out house looks like a hotel—and my not fun to travel with friends who and does at least one of their
m rp
For years, Tanya Scalisi, a 38- kids eat very healthy at home, but want to spend more than you do, ‘must-dos,’” she said.
year-old public relations profes- or who have a As for my own trip, mere weeks
sional, has taken much smaller away, I’m still worried whether
trips with a cou- budget than you,” our friends will like us after a few
ple who have sim- she said. days in proximity. To allay some of
co Fo
ilarly aged kids. Advani has ev- my concerns, I came up with my
She told me the eryone prepay the own rule: a pact, obliging us to say
key is setting the designated lead the silent parts out loud and be
pace to match planner (every transparent about our preferences.
that of the friend trip needs It already seems to be working.
group’s most one) a lump-sum When I suggested we book a boat
laid-back mem- estimate for all trip for one of our days there, my
ber. “I’m defi- the meals and friend texted back: “We will pass.
nitely more activities. Every time we take [our son] on a
type-A than my But even in- boat, it’s a nightmare with the
friend, who compatible bud- weather or he gets sick.” We’ll
has helped STILL SMILING From left: Cayla Hollis-Emery (center) with friends in gets needn’t be a take that particular excursion
n-
keep the week- Lyon, France; Tanya Scalisi and her friends take trips with their children. deal breaker. On a alone and see them at dinner.
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 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

D10 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 * *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

ADVENTURE & TRAVEL

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART (AFROFUTURIST PERIOD ROOM); MUSEO NACIONAL DEL PRADO (MONA LISA); MUSEE DU LOUVRE; DIPUNTOSTUDIO.IT (GIARDINO TORRE)

.
ly
on
AHEAD START An Afrofuturist room at the Met in New York breaks from the tradition of the museum’s ‘period rooms’ by looking forward. Inset below: Assyrian winged bulls at Paris’s Louvre.

Chambers of Secrets
us ,
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al a
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Want to impress your most cultured travel companions? Curators of some of

the world’s best museums share their institutions’ most insider-y discoveries.
er s

BY SOPHIE MANCINI weren’t into cleaning as much as set of 28-ton Assyrian sculptures

I
m er

’VE VISITED the Metropoli-
tan Museum of Art in New
York enough times that it
we are,” Vergara said. “An expen-
sive, fancy court gift was per-
fumed gloves.”
The Prado even worked with a
m rp
from around 713 B.C. depicting hu-
man-headed, winged bovines. “In
the 1990s, they had to close the
entire Rue du Rivoli and open a

feels almost as familiar as
the home I grew up in. So
imagine my surprise when a
friend, lost at the Met, texted me:
“Did you know there’s a Frank
perfumer to recreate the original
scent. You can press a lever in Gal-
lery 56 to release the aroma of the
co Fo
wall to make it possible for them
to enter the museum,” Thomas
said. “We made them fly,” she said
with a laugh, explaining how
cranes had to carry them into the

Lloyd Wright room?” I did not. glass-covered Khorsabad Court.

Even after countless visits, muse- Another of Thomas’s favorite in-
ums can reveal new secrets. Hoping sider tidbits hides within the Iberian
to unearth more, I talked to curators Collection. Most onlookers don’t re-
at some of the world’s most storied alize that a set of extraordinary an-
institutions about their favorite hid- cient stone heads carved more than
den-away corners and pieces of lore. 2,000 years ago—with exaggerated
features and almond-shaped eyes—
Fragrant Fingers are the very pieces that directly in-
While visiting the Prado Museum spired Pablo Picasso’s Cubist period.
in Madrid, I was confused to see
the Mona Lisa, a piece I knew be- A Room Apart
n-

longed to the Louvre, a museum a
country away. This second Mona
Lisa, I learned, was painted around
the same time as the more famous
no
The Met’s “period rooms” are cu-
While visiting the Prado rated to accurately reflect differ-
Museum in Madrid, ent historical eras. However, one
I was confused to see of those rooms strays from the The Mona Lisa, workshop of Leonardo da Vinci, Museo Nacional del Prado

one, by Leonardo da Vinci’s assis- past, says Lisa Sutcliffe, the Met’s
tant (and rumored lover). the Mona Lisa hanging curator of photography. Steps from room that imagines a potential fu- consider the Anahuacalli Museum
Alejandro Vergara, chief curator on a gallery wall. the colonial furniture of the Amer- ture”—specifically the home of a the city’s most intriguing destina-
of Flemish and Northern European ican wing, an Afrofuturist room, 21st-century Seneca Village resi- tion. Samantha Ozer, the artistic
painting at the Prado, points out opened in 2021, depicts a hypo- dent, featuring imagined technol- director of the TONO arts festival,
another intriguing bit of subtext: thetical world in which Seneca Vil- ogy like a 5-screen television, and finds the Anahuacalli’s history as
the “amber gloves” seen in por- gloves seen in the portraits of lage, the vibrant Black community decorations emblazoned with fascinating as its collections of
traits stretching from the 15th to Queen Mary I and the Holy Roman displaced in 1857 to create Central Black icons like Harriet Tubman pre-Hispanic artifacts. The muralist
the 17th century. So-named be- Emperor Maximilian II. Park, was allowed to thrive. and Erykah Badu. Diego Rivera dreamed up the mu-
cause they were perfumed with “The Met is so known for these seum in 1942, modeling it after an
ambergris, a substance produced When Bulls Fly period rooms that represent the A Watery Death Wish Aztec temple. “The whole idea was
by sperm whales, they masked Ariane Thomas, head of Near East- domestic interiors of an affluent Most visitors to Mexico City make that it would house his collections,
body odor with a pleasant scent. ern antiquities at Paris’s Louvre, Western culture,” said Sutcliffe. a beeline for the National Museum but also spaces for dance, for mu-
“The world smelled bad—they likes the story of the flying bulls, a “But this is a very different kind of of Anthropology, but some locals sic, for different things,” Ozer said.
It finally opened seven years after
Rivera’s death in 1964. He wanted
POST-MUSEUM MEALS / CURATORS ON THEIR GO-TO RESTAURANTS to be buried in the museum’s sub-
SHRED ALERT terranean level surrounded by wa-
YOU CAN work up an inflected fare and Coyoacán first, as the Pizza is prepared ter, a wish unfortunately unful-
appetite touring mu- 1940s-style interiors. museum is somewhat at Giardino Torre in filled. “He wasn’t spiritual in the
seums. Here, curators For a traditional bis- remote. Try Los Dan- Capodimonte Park religious sense,” Ozer said. “It was
dish on their favorite tro, she recommends zantes for Oaxacan in Naples. very aesthetic for him. He called it
after-work bites. Le Voltaire, right dishes like slow- a temple for art.”
Alejandro Vergara, across the bridge cooked moles. An op-
a curator at Madrid’s from the museum. tion closer to the mu- Papal Passions
Prado Museum, rec- Lisa Sutcliffe’s spot seum is Marisquería If you take in the vast “Farnese
ommends Murillo near the Met for a El Pulpito Pirata: Collection” at Naples’s Capodi-
Cafe, a modern bistro special occasion is Be- “Think plastic chairs monte Museum—replete with
featuring Venezuelan melmans Bar at the and a smaller menu works by Titian, Bruegel and El
touches. He’d head Carlyle Hotel, a place full of shrimp, fish, Greco—you might not know it all
there, he said, “even if that measures up to and octopus.” started with a scandalous affair. To
it wasn’t next to the museum’s grandi- In Naples, Patrizia understand its provenance, says cu-
work.” For something osity. “It’s a nice place Piscitello, of the Ca- rator Patrizia Piscitello, focus on
more casual, he rec- to have a Martini, lis- podimonte Museum, Raphael’s 16th-century portrait of
ommends La Dolores, ten to some music likes Giardino Torre, a Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. At the
an old-school tavern and talk to a friend.” pizzeria that boasts a time it was painted, she explains,
five minutes from the If you’re visiting historic oven and is Farnese’s sister, known as Giulia
museum: “It’s a clas- Mexico City’s Ana- set in a garden. The the Beautiful, was sleeping with the
sic tapas bar, very fa- huacalli Museum, art restaurant claims the corrupt and philandering Pope Al-
mous and very good.” director Samantha pizza Margherita was exander VI. It’s thought that Giu-
Ariane Thomas of Ozer recommends invented here in 1889. lia’s affair was instrumental in
the Louvre is partial planning ahead and The verdant sur- eventually granting her brother the
to Le Fumoir for its grabbing a bite in the roundings only add to papacy when he became Pope Paul
fresh, Scandinavian- neighborhood of the experience. III—and the wealth to procure such
an impressive art collection.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024 | D11

EATING & DRINKING

nature saline note when I first Many of the Etna whites I pur-
ON WINE / LETTIE TEAGUE tasted it in a New York restaurant. chased were wines I was tasting
Made from old-vine Carricante, for the first time, including the de-

Etna’s White Wines

the Pietra Marina debuted in 1990. cidedly rich 2022 Barone di Villa-
The wine is released very late, four grande Etna Bianco DOC Superiore
or five years following the vintage; ($22), from one of the oldest Etna
aging on its lees imparts a particular estates, and the wonderfully min-

Are On Fire
richness. The Pietra Marina is the
model for a great Etna white; few, if
any, other white wines produced in
the region match it for quality or
fame, at least not yet. (Salvo Foti,
the winemaker credited with creat-
ing Pietra Marina, now produces
wines in Etna under his eponymous
I Vigneri di Salvo Foti label.)
In “Native Wine Grapes of Italy”
(2014), Ian D’Agata writes that the
Carricante grape is “really a one-
zone variety, as it is found only on
the slopes of the Etna volcano.”
D’Agata notes the high quality of the
Carricante grape as well as its high
acidity and low alcohol, which grow-
ers in other parts of Sicily have
never fully appreciated. “I caution
readers that not all Carricante wines
made today share the same degree
of depth and complexity,” he writes,
“possibly as a result of grapevines
planted only recently....“
The best Etna whites are made
from old-vine Carricante, though the
grape is often blended with small
amounts of others, including Catar-
ratto and Minnella. The best Carri-
cantes are reminiscent of other
high-acid, low-alcohol wines, such
as German Riesling and even the
wines of Chablis, with marked saline
and seashell-like notes. Etna offers
two categories of white wines: Etna
erally 2022 Donnafugata Sul Vul-
cano Etna Bianco ($45), from the
famed Sicilian winery based in
Marsala, first produced in 2016.
The terrifically tangy, savory
2022 Tenuta di Fessina Erse Etna Bi-
anco ($25) was one of “less than 15”
Etna Biancos when it was first pro-
duced in 2012, according to Fessina’s
CEO and co-managing partner, Ja-
copo Maniaci. While he noted that
many Etna producers have begun to
realize the potential of white wines,
Maniaci also sounded a cautionary
note: The explosion of interest
means many producers are churning
out less-than-exemplary wines.
The Carricante grape
is ‘really a one-zone
variety, as it is found
only on the slopes of
the Etna volcano.’
Some producers don’t fully un-
derstand the Carricante grape, Ma-
niaci added. It is a unique grape
that requires time and experience
on the part of producers to get
right. There is also the matter of

.
Bianco and Etna Bianco Superiore. getting good grapes. Maniaci esti-

ly
The latter must be comprised of at mated that only 10% of Etna Bi-
least 80% Carricante and produced anco producers work with old-vine
in the Milo commune, while the for- Carricante; the rest buy “random
on mer can be produced anywhere in
Etna and contain a larger percentage
of non-Carricante grapes.
Although my tasting budget
Etna grapes that are sold for a
very high price,” he said.
So often, when a wine becomes
fashionable, some producers make it
TILL LUKAT

us ,

sadly did not allow for the inclu- just to latch on to a trend. A few of
sion of the Pietra Marina (around the bottles I purchased seemed to
l
e
$140 a bottle), I did taste the win- have been made with much less care
al a

MOTHER KNOWS BEST. It might be cused on making red wine when he balance has been shifting in recent ery’s very good “basic” bottling, than others. A couple were marked
a cliché, but one Italian winemaker produced the first vintage of the years. According to Antonio Benanti, the savory, crisp 2022 Benanti Etna by searingly high acidity with little
ci on

happily took these words to heart.
More than a decade ago,
Giuseppe Russo created the Giro-
lamo Russo Nerina Etna Bianco at
the behest of his mother, Nerina.
Nerina, in 2010. His mother, who
preferred to drink white, had asked
him to give white winemaking a try.
She provided the contrada (a parcel
of land recognized for its unique
er s
president and CEO of Benanti Win-
ery, outside Catania, Carricante
acreage has doubled in the past de-
cade, and today white wines repre-
sent about 40% of Etna DOC wines.
Bianco ($35), along with nine other
wines ranging in price from $22 to
$45 a bottle. The fact that I found
10 Etna whites was a welcome sur-
prise, as just a few years ago it was
balancing fruit; one had a decidedly
unattractive bitter note. But these
three wines were happily in the mi-
nority. Of the 10 I purchased, seven
were wines I’d definitely buy again.

Of the many impressive white character) where he planted Carri- When I visited Etna just over difficult to find many at all. In some cases, I already have.
wines from Sicily’s Etna region cante, the principal white grape of eight years ago, the region’s wine- In fact, one of the wines in my Clearly, the white wines pro-
m er

that I tasted recently, it happened
to be one of the best—and left me
wondering why Etna whites have
been so long overlooked in favor
Etna, and other Sicilian natives.
The terrifically energetic and rather
floral 2022 Girolamo Russo Nerina
Etna Bianco demonstrated how well
m rp
makers were focused on reds, and tasting was an Etna Bianco I first duced in Etna today deserve atten-
the wine critics of the world lav- tasted in a Milan restaurant years tion and praise every bit as much as
ished them with extravagant praise. ago and have looked for ever since: the region’s reds. Drinkers who
Though I tasted mostly red wines the juicy and bright 2022 Tornatore choose well will be rewarded with

of the region’s reds.
Russo took the helm of his fam-
ily’s winery upon the death of his
father, Girolamo, in 2005. Like most
Etna producers he was chiefly fo-
the experiment paid off.
Although Etna, a relatively high-
altitude region on the sides of an ac-
tive volcano, has long produced
much less white wine than red, the
co Fo
during my visit, a white wine had
actually inspired me to plan the trip:
The Benanti Pietra Marina Etna Bi-
anco Superiore had impressed me
with its depth, complexity and sig-
Etna Bianco ($23). First produced in
2015, it was first imported to the
U.S. just six years ago. Now im-
ported by Maze Row, a Gallo-owned
company, it’s much easier to find.
some terrifically savory, minerally
whites, whose names, I’m betting,
will soon be well known.
 Email Lettie at wine@wsj.com.

OENOFILE / ETNA WHITES WORTH GETTING TO KNOW

2022 Barone di Villa-
grande Etna Bianco
DOC Superiore $22
This round, and rather
voluptuous, 90% Carri-
cante white from one of
Etna’s oldest estates
(founded in 1727) is
n-
2022 Girolamo Russo 2022 Tenuta di Fessina 2022 Benanti Etna 2022 Tornatore Etna
Nerina Etna Bianco Erse Etna Bianco $25 Bianco $35 This racy, Bianco $23 This bright,
$44 Made at the be- This crisp, almost flinty minerally white marked well-balanced, 100%
hest of winemaker white wine, made pre- by aromas of citrus and Carricante white wine
Guiseppe Russo’s dominantly from Carri- herb is made entirely produced from high-
mother, Nerina, and cante and aged in stain- from Carricante at a elevation vineyards
named for her too, this less steel tanks, was one highly regarded estate on the northern side
wonderfully tangy, crisp of only a few Etna Bian- whose fame—most un- of the volcano is a

both richer and a bit
higher in alcohol (13.5%)
than most of the wines
in this tasting.
no
white is a blend of 70% cos when it was first usual for Etna—rests minerally and decidedly
Carricante and several produced some 12 years primarily with its whites, savory offering from
other white grapes na- ago, said Fessina CEO thanks to its flagship a long-established
tive to Sicily. Jacopo Maniaci. bottling, Pietra Marina. Etna estate.

PARTY TRICK
low heat, combine
cream, sugar and ses-
Love (and This Luscious ame-honey paste, and
bring to a simmer.

Dessert) Is All You Need Continue simmering

gently, stirring occa-
sionally, until sesame-
Panna cotta infused with sesame and honey honey paste infuses
will leave your dinner guests swooning cream, about 20 min-
utes. Don’t let it boil.
5. Add vanilla and gela-
BY ODETTE WILLIAMS sesame-and-honey panna tin to warm cream mix-
GRAYDON + HERRIOTT FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, FOOD STYLING BY REBECCA JURKEVICH, PROP STYLING BY AMY WILSON

cotta is pure pleasure. ture and whisk until

MY FIRST
glimpse of what
romance in the
kitchen looks like
came at a friend’s house. I
was in sixth grade, watching
my pal’s mother make choco-
lates for her boyfriend. She
wore her hair in a loose bun,
sang along to country music
and glided around, giddy with
what was to come. I knew I
wanted this in my future.
We’re past Valentine’s,
but let’s keep the love alive.
Chocolate‘s played out and,
honestly, predictable. Ses-
ame and honey, however—
that’s something else. It’s a
surprising flavor combina-
tion, certainly, for panna
cotta, a dessert whose
creamy consistency alone
would woo anyone. It
doesn’t matter if you’re
cooking for a party, spouse,
lover or friend: This silky
If, like my friend’s mother,
you’re planning on cooking
and canoodling for two, the
recipe can easily be halved.
Don’t worry, you’ll still have
some leftovers waiting for a
late-night fridge rendezvous.
Panna cotta is so simple
to make. In this case, grind
toasted sesame seeds into
honey to make a paste, and
stir that into warmed cream.
Whisk in gelatin, sugar and
a splash of vanilla, strain,
and you’re done. Now the
panna cotta just chills until
it sets but retains that sig-
nature jiggle.
You can set the whole
batch in a big dish or Jell-O
mold, but I prefer interesting
individual glassware or pretty
cups. Either way, I’d serve this
with a shot of espresso or am-
aro and Chris Stapleton’s
“You Should Probably Leave”
purring through the speakers.
completely dissolved.
Strain through a fine-
mesh sieve into a large
measuring cup, then
pour into molds or
small serving vessels.
6. Refrigerate panna
cotta, uncovered, until
cool, then cover with
LOVING SPOONFUL This sesame-and-honey panna cotta is both subtle and unabashedly sensual. plastic wrap and leave
in refrigerator until
Sesame-and-Honey the day before and for- 1/
2 cup untoasted over low heat, gently set, at least 3-4 hours
Panna Cotta get about it until white sesame seeds toast sesame seeds, but ideally overnight
Swoon, sigh. There is you’re ready to serve. 1/
2 cup mild honey stirring often, until fra- (depending on the size
no nicer way to end a For extra credit, let the 3 tablespoons cold grant and lightly of your vessel). If you
meal than with a cool, panna cotta set in water golden, 3-4 minutes. want to invert individ-
creamy, light and jiggly pretty Champagne 21/2 teaspoons (a 2. Transfer sesame ual panna cottas onto
panna cotta; this one coupes or tea cups. Or 1/
4-ounce packet) seeds to a mortar and dessert plates, run a
delivers the subtle garnish with a few unflavored gelatin pestle, add honey, and small knife around rim
combination of sesame toasted sesame seeds 1 quart heavy cream grind to make a of each mold and
and honey. Make sure and a drizzle of honey. 1/
4 cup granulated smooth paste. quickly dip bottom
to allow time for the Active Time 40 sugar 3. In a small bowl, into a bowl of hot wa-
dessert to chill and set. minutes Total Time 3 1 teaspoon pure combine water and ter. Give the mold a
Of course, when you’re hours (includes chilling vanilla extract gelatin and stir to dis- little shimmy to re-
entertaining, this is a and setting) solve. Set aside. lease, then carefully
major boon: Make it Serves 8 1. In a small sauté pan, 4. In a saucepan, over invert onto plate.
 For personal, non-commercial use only. Do not edit, alter or reproduce. For commercial reproduction or distribution, contact Dow Jones Reprints & Licensing at (800) 843-0008 or www.djreprints.com.
D12 | Saturday/Sunday, February 17 - 18, 2024
POSITIVE INFLUENCER
BY CHARLOTTE DRUCKMAN
O
VER A DECADE
ago, Erika Kwee
crowned herself
the Pancake Prin-
cess. At college
in Houston, she would experi-
ment with friends in the third-
floor kitchen of their dorm.
While one friend was big into
bodybuilding and leaning heav-
ily into animal protein, Kwee
was “dabbling in being a pes-
catarian.” She saw the poten-
tial to team up for a blog: He’d
be the Protein Prince and share
recipes for cooking meat; she’d
provide the meatless perspec-
tive (and considerably more
carbs). In the end, the Prince
only eked out one blog post.
Kwee kept at it.
“It was literally horrendous,”
she said of the early days of
ThePancakePrincess.com. “The
recipes I was developing, I
would never, ever give people
now.” She hadn’t yet hit on the
bake-off format that has since
gained her so many enthusias-
tic followers. Then Hurricane
Harvey flooded Houston in
2017, and she was stuck in a
house for a week with a pal
who also loves to bake. They
decided to test all the so-called-
best chocolate-chip-cookie reci-
pes and invite nearby friends to
taste and rank them.
The side-by-side recipe tests
got off to a slow start; in the
first year, they seemed like a
lot of wor
work for little engage
gage-
Almond Paste
Almon a e Scones
A recipe Kwee developed herself,
these are moist and pillowy,
with a cinch of a technique for
making your own almond paste.
Total Time 1 hour
Makes 8 scones
For the scones:
2 cups (280 grams) all-purpose
flour
1 tablespoon (14 grams) baking
powder
3 tablespoons (38 grams) sugar
SLOW FOOD FAST / SATISFYING AND SEASONAL FOOD IN ABOUT 30 MINUTES
The chef
Ed Wilson
His Restaurants
Brawn, in London,
and Sargasso, in
Margate, on the
coast of Kent
What he’s known
for Creating dishes
that feel fresh yet
rooted in tradition.
Understanding
how to amplify
the details that
turn neighborhood
restaurants into
dining destinations.
The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.
* *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
EATING & DRINKING
Baking to Win
It’s a full-time job requiring boggling amounts of
butter. But Erika Kwee will do all it takes to find
the best recipe for any baked good you crave.
ment. But in 2018 King Arthur
The Baking Company reposted her
Numbers brownie bake-off, and people
started to take notice. Within
INSTAGRAM five years, Kwee established the
140K
monthly schedule she still ad-
heres to. She’s continued to im-
followers prove her recap videos of each
bake-off for Instagram and Tik-
TIKTOK Tok, and it’s paid off. (See “The
65Kfollowers
Numbers, at left.)
Today, she lives in Greenwich
Village, New York City, where
she relocated from Texas two
FOR AN AVERAGE years ago. After getting laid off
BAKE-OFF: from her day job in November
2022, she invested in ThePan-
TASTERS cakePrincess.com full-time. In
30
addition to posting the results of
her bake-offs, she writes about
other people’s recipes for baked
goods that appeal to her and
STICKS BUTTER
also develops her own.
ERIKA KWEE
16 When it comes to pancakes,
the recipe from the restaurant
Chez Ma Tante, in Brooklyn, is CRUNCHTIME ‘The Best Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Bake Off’ revealed various standouts,
CUPS FLOUR her current paragon, with one from ‘thin and crispy’ to ‘thick and chewy.’ The overall winner came from KrollsKorner.com.
20
adjustment: She advises adding a
.
bit more flour. Among her own she said. A Cook’s Illustrated recipe is al- Shopping Strategy
ly
original recipes, she proudly most always in the running: “If I don’t, Once she’s winnowed it to nine, she works
points to her layered almond there’s usually someone who’s like, ‘Why off her spreadsheet-in-progress and creates
CUPS SUGAR
scones, and for good reason. didn’t you include Cook’s Illustrated?” a shopping list, then lines up her volunteer
18 on (Find the recipe below.)
Process of Elimination
Recipes from that website, King Arthur’s
and SmittenKitchen.com have triumphed
several times.
tasters. The Thursday before Saturday’s
chocolate crinkle cookie bake-off, Kwee
went to as many grocery stores as neces-
EGGS Planning for a bake-off usually “It does take a while,” she explained. “I sary to gather her ingredients. She uses the
36
us ,
begins a full week in advance. am creating the spreadsheet with all the same brands of butter, flour, sugar, salt,
The December contest began recipes in it, and then I’m organizing them chocolate and cocoa powder throughout to
l
e
with a Google search for “best so that I can see which ones are similar.” establish a controlled variable and for cost-
al a
GROCERY BILL chocolate crinkle cookies.” She eliminates those and picks out nine dis- efficiency, and she lists them in her recap.
$150
Then she put out the call to her tinct recipes. She selects the baked good to For cookie recipes that call for extended
ci on
followers and added their rec- focus on that month based less on popular- chilling of dough, she can start prepping a
ommendations. “That’s usually ity than seasonality; she also takes sugges- day in advance so they can sit overnight
where I find the weird ones,” tions from her social media followers. and then go into the oven to bake the day
of the bake-off.
er s
1/
2 teaspoon (2 grams) kosher salt reserving 1 tablespoon for brush- to make 8 scones. Brush scones In the Kitchen
5 tablespoons (70 grams) cold ing, and stir to form a soft dough. with reserved cream. Sprinkle with It’s all Kwee. She has no assistants, although
m er
unsalted butter, cut into (Try not to overmix.) Gently knead sugar, if using. Transfer scones to would love to be able to hire a team eventu-
1/
4-inch cubes in any stray crumbs. Wrap dough a parchment-lined baking sheet ally. “Usually, a bake-off day will start around
1 cup (227 ml) heavy cream in plastic or cover bowl with a and bake until golden and fragrant, 7 or 8 a.m., and then I’m baking until 2 or 3
For the almond paste: towel. Transfer to refrigerator to 25-28 minutes. p.m., ideally,” she said. “Then I’ll package ev-
m rp
Heaping 3/4 cup (90 grams) rest while you make almond paste. erything up, maybe take videos and photos if
almond flour 2. In a food processor, combine al- RECIPES THE PANCAKE I have time. Usually pickup is half an hour
9 tablespoons (70 grams) mond flour and powdered sugar, PRINCESS REVERES where tasters come, grab their boxes and
powdered sugar and process to combine. Add wa- Lemon Bar and Key Lime Pie take them home. After that, it’s just analyz-
11/2 tablespoons (20 ml) water ter and almond extract, and pro- Cook’s Illustrated; Moist Yellow ing the data, writing up the blog post and do-
co Fo
1/
2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) almond cess to form a paste. Cake and BEST Southern Red ing all the social media stuff.”
extract 3. On a floured surface, roll out Velvet Cake DivasCanCook.com; The tasters don’t always agree, and Kwee
For assembly: dough into a 6-by-12-inch rectan- Milk Bar’s Birthday Cake Milk- doesn’t always agree with them, but she lets
3 teaspoons raspberry jam gle. Roll out almond paste into a BarStore.com; Beatty’s Chocolate the ballot dictate the results. On the blog, she
(optional) long rectangle around the same Cake BarefootContessa.com (if breaks down the feedback and explains what
Granulated or turbinado sugar, width but twice the length of the she’s short on time); Magnolia differentiates one recipe from another. (What
to sprinkle (optional) dough. Cut paste into 4 squares. Kitchen Signature Chocolate happens when you use butter instead of oil,
4. Place a square of almond paste Cake ”Magnolia Kitchen” cook- or more white sugar than brown?) In Decem-
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In on bottom of dough rectangle. book (if she’s got plenty of time); ber’s bake-off, the Earthquake Cookie from
a mixing bowl, whisk together Spread 1 teaspoon jam, if using, Lofthouse-Style Frosted Sugar Maura Kilpatrick of Boston’s Sofra Bakery
flour, baking powder, sugar and over paste. Fold top piece of dough Cookies Stella Parks via SeriousE- (via NewEngland.com) was the winner. Kwee
salt. Use your fingers to rub cold, over bottom and roll out dough to ats.com; Best Sugar Cookie EVER dubbed it “The Quintessential Chocolate Crin-
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cubed butter into dry ingredients 6 by 12 inches. Repeat with almond InKatrinasKitchen.com; Brown kle Cookie with Chewy Edges, Fudgy Centers
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chunks of butter. Pour in cream, 5. Cut dough in half, then quarters, ByNature.com tender had something to recommend it. But
Cook’s Illustrated’s was the clear runner-up.
no
Baked Mont d’Or Cheese With Ham, Potatoes and Rosemary Relish
EMMA FISHMAN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, FOOD STYLING BY PEARL JONES, PROP STYLING BY STEPHANIE DE LUCA; MICHAEL HOEWELER (PORTRAIT)
WHEN IT COMES TO streamlined suppers, chef sweet-and-sour relish that cuts the richness.
Ed Wilson has a saying: “Clever shopping, less Don’t overthink it. If you struggle to find
chopping.” His second Slow Food Fast recipe Mont d’Or, make do splendidly with any soft-
brilliantly illustrates the soundness of that rind cheese packed in spruce bark, like Harbi-
maxim. A lethally delicious meal, it’s simply son, or a lightweight wooden box, such as Cam-
built around a molten round of Mont d’Or embert. Unlike other lavish cold-weather
cheese. Like fondue, but better—no fussy comforts, this charming dish requires an abso-
flames or crusty pot—its components include lute lack of effort. Said Wilson: “In winter, it’s
warm baby potatoes, tender French ham and a just what you want.” —Kitty Greenwald
Serves 4 1. Preheat oven to 375 de- water until soft and plump,
Time 25 minutes grees. Fill a medium pot with about 5 minutes. Finely chop
salted water and bring to a rosemary and cornichons.
1 pound small, waxy boil over high heat. Add pota- Drain raisins and finely chop.
new potatoes toes and simmer until tender, Stir minced raisins, rosemary
1 round Mont d’Or (about about 15 minutes. and cornichons together. Mix
17.6 ounces) or other soft- 2. Remove wooden lid from in vinegar, taste and add a
rind cheese (like Harbison Mont d’Or (or whichever pinch of salt if desired.
or Camembert) packed in cheese you are using) and 4. Trim root ends from en-
spruce bark or a wooden rub top of rind with cut sides dives and separate leaves.
box, room temperature of garlic. Pour white wine Place hot cheese on a large
1 clove garlic, halved over cheese, re-cover with platter. Around it, arrange en-
2 tablespoons dry wooden lid and set box on a dive leaves, a pile of sliced
white wine baking dish. (If your cheese ham and warm potatoes.
2/
3 cup raisins doesn’t have a lid, cover the Spoon relish into a small
1/
4 cup rosemary leaves entire baking dish with alumi- bowl and place on the platter.
2/
3 cup cornichons num foil.) Bake until cheese Slice most of top rind from
1/
2 cup plus 1 tablespoon is puffed on top and the mol- cheese and peel it back to ex-
muscatel vinegar ten center jiggles like a water pose the molten center.
2 heads endive bed, about 20 minutes. 5. Bring platter to table pip-
5-6 ounces French deli 3. While cheese bakes, pre- ing hot and serve family
ham, thinly sliced pare relish. Place raisins in a style, with slices of crusty MELT WITH YOU Anchored by a warm round of baked cheese, this
Crusty bread, for serving bowl and cover with boiling bread. comforting meal is a cross between ‘snack dinner’ and a classic fondue.