Port strikes, AI jobs, and inflation relief: Looking for trends
On today’s episode of Seeking Trends, host Josh Lipton breaks down some of the top news and key themes of the trading week. Tens of thousands of longshoremen could strike next week at cargo ports along the East Coast and Gulf Coast. The strike could have a major impact on the U.S. economy as it increases uncertainty surrounding the 2024 presidential election. Yahoo Finance’s Washington correspondent Ben Welskull breaks down how the Biden administration is handling the impending strike and how it could affect the election. do. Meanwhile, consumers may be wondering if their holiday shopping will be affected by the strike. JLL Americas President of Retail Naveen Jaggi tells Yahoo Finance: The overwhelming majority of holiday sales, including toys, electronics, soft goods and clothing, come from Asia, meaning they are not affected by the East Coast and Gulf Coast longshoreman strikes. means. Mercor CEO Brendan Foody joins the show to discuss how Mercor is using artificial intelligence to make the hiring process more efficient. Foody explains: “Mercor can not only automate all of these (HR) processes much more scalably, but much more effectively, using (Large-Scale Language Models (LLMs)). Mercor has processed over 1,000 candidates, conducted hundreds of thousands of oral interviews asking sensitive questions about people’s backgrounds, and matched thousands of people with jobs. To best understand who performs well and why, we rely primarily on OpenAI’s GPT series and Meta (META) Llama models, based on all the proprietary data we have on candidates. I’m training an LLM,” says Foody. The Federal Reserve has officially begun its rate cutting cycle toward its 2% inflation target. But some economists are skeptical that a soft landing can actually be achieved. Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman analyzes whether the U.S. economy has the right conditions for a soft landing. Yahoo Finance Markets reporter Josh Schafer also breaks down the main takeaways of the trading day, from easing inflation to the small-cap stock (^RUT) rally. This post was written by Melanie Leal
