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More than half of Japan's largest companies have announced plans to raise their dividends in the current fiscal year. The announcement of share buybacks is also at an all-time high, as firms announced $7.7 billion worth of share buybacks in April - a record for the first month of a fiscal year. This is all part of the normalization of both Japan's economy and corporate behavior, and it's a moneymaking trend for investors.

Fintel reports that on May 17, 2024, Oppenheimer initiated coverage of Capricor Therapeutics (NasdaqCM:CAPR) with a Outperform recommendation.

Anyone familiar with Warren Buffett knows the famous investor likes Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). He has called the company a better business than any of Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiaries and better than longtime Berkshire holdings American Express and Coca-Cola.

Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) completely revolutionized the way content is consumed. While the company originally began as a DVD rental service, Netflix quickly pivoted to a streaming model.

Below is Validea's guru fundamental report for FORD MOTOR CO (F). Of the 22 guru strategies we follow, F rates highest using our Shareholder Yield Investor model based on the published strategy of Meb Faber. This strategy looks for companies returning cash to shareholders via di

Many investors don't try to hand-pick market-beating stocks. With index investing, you can benefit from the wealth-building long-term trends of the stock market with a single ticker. Many will settle for the broad S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) index, tracked by the efficient Vang

Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) completely revolutionized the way content is consumed. While the company originally began as a DVD rental service, Netflix quickly pivoted to a streaming model.

Google I/O 2024, Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) annual developer conference, was held on Tuesday (May 14) at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.During the event, Google’s development team marked a new era in artificial intelligence (AI) by showcasing advances in Gemini, its AI assistant, along with other AI products and features across its portfolio. Read on to learn about five of the most important takeaways from the event. 1. Gemini advances keep coming I/O's keynote presentation centered on the advanced version of Gemini 1.5 Pro, which has a 1 million token context window. It was launched as an experimental feature in February. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, announced that the new model will become globally available to developers through Gemini Advanced starting in June. With a longer context window, Gemini can analyze more data at once, improving its understanding of complex data. Aside from that, the company revealed it will be offering a private preview of an even larger model of Gemini 1.5 Pro with a context window of 2 million tokens. It also introduced Gemini 1.5 Flash, a smaller, faster AI model.In addition, Pichai introduced new AI features coming to Google services. Enhanced Gemini interactions will enable users to communicate with AI through Google Messages. The upcoming Gemini Live feature, accessible to Gemini Advanced subscribers, offers a natural conversational experience by leveraging advanced speech technology. Users can converse with Gemini, select from various voices and interrupt for clarification. Gemini Live can assist in tasks such as job interview preparation and will integrate camera capabilities later this year for environment-based discussions.Google also launched Gems for Gemini Advanced subscribers, offering a personalized AI experience. Users can create custom Gemini versions and provide role descriptions such as "gym buddies" or "coding partners." Gemini will then process these inputs to generate tailored Gems for users to interact with. In the realm of search, Google announced the launch of AI Overviews in the US later this week; it said this feature will deliver nuanced, paragraph-long answers based on multi-step reasoning. Meanwhile, Ask Photos is a tool that can simplify recalling information from personal photos. “Say you’re paying at the parking station, but you can't recall your license plate number,” Pichai explained during a demonstration. "Before, you could search Photos for keywords and then scroll through years’ worth of photos, looking for license plates. Now, you can simply ‘Ask Photos.’ It knows the cars that appear often, it triangulates which one is yours, and tells you the license plate number.”Furthermore, Google introduced Search with Video, which allows users to ask questions and obtain detailed solutions by “showing” Google a live video feed. During the demonstration, one of Google’s developers asked Google to help her figure out why her record player wasn’t working and to identify a specific part. Google could tell what part of the record player she was asking about (the tonearm) and provided instructions for troubleshooting. 2. Workspace gets new AI features Google has also integrated Gemini 1.5 Pro into several of its Workspace services, introducing new features such as summaries located in side panels. This development lets users pull out key information from lengthy content such as email threads and documents. For example, Gemini can summarize an email thread and generate a response.NotebookLM’s series of AI-driven enhancements greatly improve its usability and intelligence. Greater contextual understanding makes it more effective at suggesting relevant connections, and advanced natural language processing abilities contribute to a more interactive experience with the platform; notably, NotebookLM can be interrupted, a feature it shares with GPT-4o, which was introduced at OpenAI's Spring Update on Monday (May 13). NotebookLM will basically function as a private tutor, generating study guides, quizzes and audio overviews based on input text material and more personalized adherence to learning styles. 3. Deep Mind shares Project Astra updates Google’s Deep Mind team unveiled one of its latest AI endeavors, Project Astra, which essentially replaces Google Assistant. Astra can “recall” past events by capturing video input and caching it in chronological order. Its capabilities echo those of GPT-4o, although Project Astra is not yet available to the public and its capabilities are still being refined.Deep Mind also introduced a suite of AI-enabled creative tools, including Imagen 3, an advanced image-generation model capable of producing images with rich details, precision and fewer distortions than previous models. In collaboration with YouTube, Google has also launched Music AI Sandbox, an innovative platform that offers musicians creative support. Musician Michael Rebillet likened it to having a friend offering creative suggestions. Musicians can now compose new instrumentals from scratch, experiment with sound transfer and enhance their tracks. Finally, there’s Veo, Google’s newest AI-powered video-generation software, which is capable of generating 1080p videos that are over a minute long. 4. Google teases arrival of Gemma 2 Google also teased the upcoming arrival of Gemma 2, the newest addition to its family of lightweight open models built on the same foundation as Gemini. Gemma 2, a 27 billion parameter model, will be optimized to run out of NVIDIA's (NASDAQ:NVDA) GPUs, and will offer enhanced performance and efficiency on a single TPU host in Vertex AI. According to developers, this will make Gemma 2 a more affordable model and will expand its range to a wider audience.They company also introduced a new addition to the Gemma family — PaliGemma is an open vision-language model available on multiple platforms like GitHub, Hugging Face, Kaggle and Vertex AI Model Garden. 5. AI comes to Android Finally, Google is set to transform the Android experience with AI built into the device. For Pixel users, Gemini Nano with multimodality offers richer image descriptions and scam alerts during phone calls. Google is bringing Gemini Nano's multimodal capabilities to TalkBack later this year, where it will enhance image descriptions for users who are blind or have low vision. With TalkBack, Gemini Nano will provide detailed and accurate information about images, even without an Internet connection. With Gemini on Android, users can ask questions about videos and PDFs, isolating specific features within images using Circle to Search. Market reaction Alphabet's share price has seen an overall positive trend this year, despite a temporary decline in valuation following lower-than-expected Q4 earnings. The company has rebounded since a tech stock selloff on March 6, and is up about 25 percent year-to-date. On Monday (March 13), the stock opened low amid rumors of a rival search tool from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and OpenAI, but had recovered by the end of the day.Alphabet traded flat on the day of Google I/O. It closed Wednesday (May 15) at US$173.88. Don’t forget to follow us @INN_Technology for real-time news updates!Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.

Cryptocurrencies have become an appealing opportunity for investors with medium to high risk tolerance. They are largely speculative, but emerging markets and new use cases are helping to realize their full utility.The crypto market is no stranger to intense volatility, making it a risky investment that can work for or against your portfolio. However, you can minimize risk by sticking to the top cryptocurrencies that have earned their place.There are over 9,800 cryptocurrencies, and a good starting point is those with the highest market caps. In fact, research from Statista shows that the top 20 cryptocurrencies make up approximately 90 percent of the sector's total market cap.The list below offers a look at the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap as of May 6, 2024, using data from CoinMarketCap.com. You’ll learn why they’re appealing, the important people associated with them and when they were created. For reference, market cap is a better statistic to focus on than price when it comes to cryptocurrencies because each coin has different mechanics behind it. Bitcoin, for example, has a maximum amount of 21 million coins that will ever exist, while Ethereum has no maximum amount. 1. Bitcoin Market cap: US$1.25 billionBitcoin is the original cryptocurrency that launched the entire asset class. The anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, made the software open source, allowing others to create new cryptocurrencies without reinventing the wheel.The Bitcoin price has gone from near zero at its inception to an all-time high of more than US$73,000 in March.Created: 2008Important people: Satoshi Nakamoto, the unknown and anonymous founder who stepped away from the project in its early years, is the prominent name behind Bitcoin. The Bitcoin Foundation now guides development alongside an open-source community of developers.Why it’s popular: The core innovation behind Bitcoin is the ability to conduct transactions without a trusted third party, such as a bank or central entity. Since then, it’s exploded in popularity as a store of value and a means of transacting in a peer-to-peer nature.Maximum supply: 21 million 2. Ethereum Market cap: US$369.7 billionEthereum was announced in 2013 and became publicly available in 2014. Ethereum introduced the new concept of "smart contracts," which allow programs to be deployed on the blockchain and executed when certain conditions are met. This innovation catalyzed a series of other new cryptocurrencies and use cases.A theorized point called "the flippening" describes when Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin in market cap and become the top crypto coin. This change has yet to happen and is up for debate, but many crypto enthusiasts think it's inevitable. Now that spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have received approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), investors are hopeful that spot Ether ETFs will be next. Eight institutions are awaiting SEC approval for spot Ether ETFs: BlackRock, VanEck, ARK 21Shares, Grayscale, Fidelity, Invesco, Galaxy Digital and Franklin Templeton. Created: 2014Important people: Vitalik Buterin developed Ethereum and remains involved with the project and the crypto community. Five other developers are credited as co-founders. The Ethereum Foundation guides development.Why it’s popular: The introduction of smart contracts launched an entirely new era for cryptocurrencies and paved the way for non-fungible tokens. New use cases continue to emerge as adoption increases.Maximum supply: No maximum 3. Tether Market cap: US$110.9 billionTether, or USDT, is the most prominent stablecoin on the market. A stablecoin is pegged to a specific asset to maintain its value. Tether is pegged to the US dollar and maintains a consistent value of US$1, although it can vary by a few cents as markets fluctuate.Created: 2014, known initially as RealcoinImportant people: Brock Pierce, Reven Collins and Craig Sellars.Why it’s popular: USDT works by allocating US dollars to the organization's reserves whenever a new USDT coin is issued. This system results in a cryptocurrency backed by fiat currency, which many investors appreciate as a foundation for their portfolio. While its value will not change, USDT is ideal for financial transactions in which neither party wants the volatility of other coins. Evidence of USDT's popularity was on display in its record net profits of over US$4.5 billion in Q1 of this year. Maximum supply: No maximum 4. BNB Market cap: US$86.79 billionBNB is a cryptocurrency developed and maintained by Binance, one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. The BNB coin is used throughout the Binance ecosystem, including the exchange itself and other Binance projects, which gives the coin a strong use case and user base.Created: 2017Important people: Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, and He Yi spearheaded the development of BNB and integrated it into the Binance exchange. Zhao was recently sentenced to four months in a US prison for violating the Bank Secrecy Act for failure to establish procedures to prevent illegal trading and money laundering on the platform.Why it’s popular: BNB gained momentum as Binance users could opt to pay fees with BNB in exchange for lower percentages on trade fees. This remains the core use case of the coin, but the introduction of smart contracts and related features have helped it gain additional popularity.Maximum supply: No maximum ​5. Solana Market cap: US$68.5 billionSolana (SOL) uses proof-of-stake and proof-of-history mechanisms to provide smart contract functionality, transaction settlement and token issuance. As with Ethereum, the plan is to grow an ecosystem of cryptocurrency-powered products and services. Created: 2020 Important people: Solana Labs founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal. Why it’s popular: SOL is a cheaper option to older blockchains, and transactions can be completed at a faster rate as well. The Solana ecosystem’s many applications and tools provide a lot of utility for coin holders, including the ability to lend tokens to a liquidity pool. It also has a thriving developer community that has given rise to many memecoins.Maximum supply: No maximum 6. USD Coin Market cap: US$33.51 billionUSD Coin, or USDC, is the second most popular stablecoin, and it operates similarly to USDT. The coin is supported by major players in the crypto industry who continually advocate for transparency and compliance.Created: 2018Important people: Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville launched USDC, and it was later adopted by major players Coinbase and Circle.Why it’s popular: USDC is prized over other stablecoins for its transparency. Coinbase and Circle, two organizations heavily involved in the coin, are leaders in compliance and advocate for crypto regulation.Maximum supply: No maximum 7. XRP Market cap: US$29.4 billionXRP is the native token of the Ripple platform. XRP was created as a more energy-efficient and faster alternative to Bitcoin. The company has been locked in a legal battle with the SEC about whether or not it is a security, which has impacted the coin's popularity and future. However, it remains in the top 10.Created: 2012Important people: Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto co-founded the coin in association with their company, Ripple.Why it’s popular: XRP and Ripple gained popularity by being much faster and cheaper than Bitcoin for conducting transactions. However, whether that advantage has remained relevant is arguable as newer coins have emerged that provide similar benefits with additional functionality.Maximum supply: No maximum 8. Dogecoin Market cap: US$22.63 billionDogecoin is interesting in that it is functionally the same as Bitcoin, with the only difference being the removal of a maximum supply. The coin was originally launched as a memecoin, i.e. a joke, leveraging the then-popular meme of a Shiba Inu with grammatically incorrect captions. It was designed to be a low-value, high-supply coin for community uses.The coin remained relatively obscure until Elon Musk began tweeting about it, beginning boom-bust cycles powered primarily by Musk’s tweets and other public statements. Its latest big bump came in early May, with Tesla's (NASDAQ:TSLA) announcement that Dogecoin is now a payment option on its website. Created: 2013Important people: Musk, while having nothing to do with the initial development of the coin, adopted it for unknown reasons and began promoting it. His interest catalyzed a significant increase in value and gave new life to the dying memecoin. The actual founders are Billy Markus and core developer Max Keller, who returned to the project in its recent resurgence.Why it’s popular: Musk, memes and theorized widespread usage.Maximum supply: No maximum ​9. Toncoin Market cap: US$20.57 billionToncoin (TON) was originally created as part of Telegram’s blockchain project known as Telegram Open Network. The goal of TON is to build out a fast, scalable blockchain that allows for smart contracts and decentralized applications. It is used for network operations, transactions, games or collectibles built on the platform.Created: 2018Important people: Telegram founders Pavel Durov and Nikolia Durov. Revived by Anatoly Yakovenko and Kirill Emelyanenko.Why it’s popular: TON is able to leverage Telegram’s more than 900 million monthly active users, as well as its channels that generate more than 1 trillion views each month. In February, Telegram announced that it plans to share advertising revenue with channel partners and reward users with Toncoin.Maximum supply: 5.11 billion 10. Cardano Market cap: US$16.29 billionCardano, or ADA, prioritizes scientifically backed development. Rather than rushing new features and intense marketing campaigns, developers conduct peer-reviewed research before implementing new features.Some believe Cardano is a long-term winner, while others criticize its slow development process. Ultimately, Cardano is the only top coin with a well-documented and strict development process that gives confidence in its long-term success.Created: 2017Important people: Founded by Charles Hoskinson, a mathematician, and maintained by a series of scientifically driven foundations.Why it’s popular: The token has a strong base of "true believers" due to Cardano’s deliberately slow, scientifically backed development methodology. Currently, the proof-of-stake coin is used by agricultural companies to track produce supply chains; it is also used to store education credentials, and it enables retailers to combat counterfeit products. Its solid technical backing could give rise to new use cases.Maximum supply: 45 billion ​Investor takeaway Cryptocurrencies are still relatively new, meaning the risks around investing are heightened. However, looking at the top 10 coins by market cap minimizes risks as these cryptocurrencies have already proved themselves and have a solid user base and existing use cases. Even so, investors should keep in mind that cryptocurrencies overall require caution. Don't forget to follow us @INN_Technology for real-time news updates!Securities Disclosure: I, Melissa Pistilli, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.

Among the companies whose shares are expected to see active trade in Friday’s session are DuPont, Nike, and KB Home.