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  • Nice guys finish first: Counterintuitive career advice from Wharton's top-rated prof

    By The Daily Ticker | Balance Sheet – Thu, 11 Apr, 2013 8:29 AM EDT

    Nice guys finish last. It’s an idiom that has been engrained into U.S. culture since baseball manager Leo Durocher first uttered the words in 1939. To get ahead in business you have to be cunning and ruthless, or so you may be led to believe.

    Adam Grant, the youngest tenured professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and author of Give and Take, argues that nice guys (and ladies!) do often get ahead.

    “Givers add value to a much wider range of people and then build a lot of social capital and trust and goodwill through their helping and contributions,” he says.

    Grant applies this idea to his everyday life; he attempts to help his colleagues and even strangers, instead of using them to get ahead. As a result, he’s had an incredibly successful and productive career. According to the New York Times, “Grant, 31, is the youngest-tenured and highest-rated professor at Wharton. He is also one of the most prolific academics in his field. Grant took three years to get his Ph.D.,

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  • The Eurozone Is Not About to Unravel: Zachary Karabell

    By The Daily Ticker | Daily Ticker – Wed, 27 Feb, 2013 10:34 AM EST

    What a difference a day makes.

    On Monday stocks around the globe took a dive following national elections in Italy which ended with no clear winner or pathway to a new coalition government.

    By Tuesday global stock markets had recovered, helped in part by Fed Chairman Bernanke’s testimony before Congress which reinforced the Fed’s continued commitment to low rates and asset purchases.

    The rebound continues but will it last especially if Italy’s political parties fail to form a new government or the anti-austerity vote there spreads to other European countries?

    Related: Why Italy's Election Has Caused Global Markets to Crater

    Here’s the political situation now in Italy, the Eurozone’s third largest economy:

    • The party of the current Prime Minister Mario Monti, hailed as a no-nonsense bureaucratic reformer, came in fourth in national elections held last weekend.
    • The left-leaning Democratic Party, led by Pier Luigi Bersani, won a narrow majority in the lower house but no single party won a
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  • Apple Suffers Biggest Drop in Four Years: A Buying Opportunity for Investors?

    By The Daily Ticker | Daily Ticker – Thu, 6 Dec, 2012 11:48 AM EST

    Shares of Apple (AAPL) dropped more than 6.4% on Wednesday and the company lost $35 billion in market value. Apple opened down 3.2% on Thursday and had fallen below $530 in earlier trading.

    For technical traders, this news indicates that Apple has traversed the death cross meaning Apple's long-term moving average has broken above its short-term support level. The death cross typically indicates that a bear market is approaching.

    Explanations for the abrupt loss are plentiful and varied.

    One explanation is that Google's Android gadgets are continuing to gain ground, especially in China where the iPhone is struggling. International Data Corp estimated that Apple's tablet market share will decrease from 56.3% to 53.8% in 2012 while market share for Android products will increase to 42.7% from 39.8%

    Another reason for the selloff: Apple is not paying a special dividend before capital gains taxes are raised in 2013.

    "There are some people saying 'hey because they haven't done that they are

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  • How a 17-Year-Old Brit Is Revolutionizing Mobile News

    By The Daily Ticker | Daily Ticker – Mon, 26 Nov, 2012 6:15 AM EST

    Nick D'Aloisio did not have a typical 17th birthday: instead of celebrating with friends and family, he was busy launching the second edition of his popular iPhone app, Summly. While most 17-year-olds are worried about SATs and prom, D'Aloisio has kept busy by creating a news summarization app with over $1 million in financial backing.

    Summly uses an algorithm to summarize news stories from the largest news organizations. The summaries are designed to fit a mobile screen perfectly.

    "We worked very hard to create the user interface," D'Aloisio tells The Daily Ticker, "but equally, the technology is very robust…we've hired the best people in the world to create this algorithm that can take any news article, determine whether or not it's summarizable, and then produce a coherent paragraph of text automatically with no human intervention that's very scalable."

    When D'Aloisio says he's hired the best people for the job, he isn't exaggerating. Summly works closely with SRI International to

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  • Bloomberg’s billionaires index: Biggest winners and losers

    By The Daily Ticker | Daily Ticker – Thu, 15 Nov, 2012 9:09 AM EST

    Watch out Forbes: Bloomberg recently released the Bloomberg Billionaires Index which ranks the world's billionaires on a daily, instead of yearly, basis.

    The Daily Ticker sat down with Bloomberg Billionaires Editor Matt Miller to discuss who the big winners and losers were, new additions to the index, and what billionaires can teach us about our own finances.

    WINNERS AND LOSERS

    Money can't buy happiness goes the old adage, but if it could Amancio Ortega would be floating on cloud nine.

    Ortega is a relatively obscure 76-year-old retail magnate and founder of the Spanish company Inditex SA. Inditex owns and operates various clothing brands with over 5,402 stores around the globe; the crown jewel of Inditex is Zara, which has over 1,600 store locations.

    Between January and October of 2012, Ortega earned more than $18 billion -- that's around $66 million a day. During this short period he usurped Warren Buffett to become the third wealthiest person in the world with a net worth valued at

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