In a series of tweets last year, Elon Musk commented on the state of San Francisco, where his social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, is based. He began by saying, “Many have offered X (formerly Twitter) generous incentives to move its headquarters out of San Francisco.”

He also said that many expect his company to move out of the city, but even though San Francisco is “in a vicious spiral of one company after another moving out,” X will not be moving its headquarters.

He added: “You only know who your true friends are when the going gets tough. San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, even if others leave you, we will always be your friend.”

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The next day, Musk stressed that the city would not survive unless more people came to work in San Francisco. This seems to have struck a chord with many people, with numerous commentators adding that the city was “a lost cause; it's run by prisoners,” “nobody wants to live there,” and “nobody can afford San Francisco.”

A month later, Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce CRMtweeted that his company was staying and that a third of AI companies are headquartered there. Musk responded: “That's great! It's very important that people come to the office, otherwise the shops, restaurants, etc. cannot stay in business.”

Tendency: Executives and founders of Uber, Facebook and Apple are bullish on this wellness app you can invest in at $1.15 per share.

San Francisco has been on tough times lately, prompting Elon Musk to tweet again. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit San Francisco hard, resulting in the closure of many businesses and fewer tourists.

In addition, many companies now allow their employees to work from home, meaning fewer people commute into the city for work. This hurts local businesses that rely on these day laborers and visitors. Musk is also a vocal opponent of the work-from-home movement, even calling it “morally wrong.”

The city has become expensive in the last five to ten years. Rents and housing prices have skyrocketed and the cost of living has increased significantly.

Another major problem is homelessness. More and more people are living on the streets and the city is struggling to provide adequate assistance. Makeshift shelters and tents are commonplace, raising concerns about safety and cleanliness.

Finally, crime is also a problem. With theft and violent crime on the rise, people and businesses are concerned about their safety and many are considering moving to safer areas. Everyday items in shops are now locked behind glass doors, making the crime problem even more visible to locals and visitors.

A series of so-called flash burglaries has led many people to leave their cars unlocked to prevent their windows from being smashed.

Because of these combined problems, it feels like San Francisco is in a downward spiral.

Continue reading:

The post ‘The Metropolis Is In A Doom Spiral’ Says Elon Musk However Will not Transfer Twitter Out Of San Francisco – Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

“The city is in a downward spiral,” says Elon Musk, but does not want to move Twitter from San Francisco

In a series of tweets last year, Elon Musk commented on the state of San Francisco, where his social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, is based. He began by saying, “Many have offered X (formerly Twitter) generous incentives to move its headquarters out of San Francisco.”

He also said that many expect his company to move out of the city, but even though San Francisco is “in a vicious spiral of one company after another moving out,” X will not be moving its headquarters.

He added: “You only know who your true friends are when the going gets tough. San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, even if others leave you, we will always be your friend.”

Do not miss:

The next day, Musk stressed that the city would not survive unless more people came to work in San Francisco. This seems to have struck a chord with many people, with numerous commentators adding that the city was “a lost cause; it's run by prisoners,” “nobody wants to live there,” and “nobody can afford San Francisco.”

A month later, Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff tweeted that his company was staying put and that a third of all AI companies are headquartered there. Musk responded: “That's great! It's very important that people come to the office or the stores, restaurants, etc. cannot stay in business.”

Tendency: Executives and founders of Uber, Facebook and Apple are bullish on this wellness app you can invest in at $1.15 per share.

San Francisco has been on tough times lately, prompting Elon Musk to tweet again. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit San Francisco hard, resulting in the closure of many businesses and fewer tourists.

In addition, many companies now allow their employees to work from home, meaning fewer people commute into the city for work. This hurts local businesses that rely on these day laborers and visitors. Musk is also a vocal opponent of the work-from-home movement, even calling it “morally wrong.”

The city has become expensive in the last five to ten years. Rents and housing prices have skyrocketed and the cost of living has increased significantly.

Another major problem is homelessness. More and more people are living on the streets and the city is struggling to provide adequate assistance. Makeshift shelters and tents are commonplace, raising concerns about safety and cleanliness.

The story goes on

Finally, crime is also a problem. With theft and violent crime on the rise, people and businesses are concerned about their safety and many are considering moving to safer areas. Everyday items in shops are now locked behind glass doors, making the crime problem even more visible to locals and visitors.

A series of so-called flash burglaries has led many people to leave their cars unlocked to prevent their windows from being smashed.

Because of these combined problems, it feels like San Francisco is in a downward spiral.

Continue reading:

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This article “The city is in a downward spiral,” says Elon Musk, but doesn't want to move Twitter out of San Francisco, originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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The post ‘The Metropolis Is In A Doom Spiral’ Says Elon Musk However Will not Transfer Twitter Out Of San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Business

By Eric Revell , Fox Business

Published
July 31, 2023

Updated
July 31, 2023, 1:23 a.m. ET

Billionaire Elon Musk says Twitter – the social media company he is in the midst of rebranding as “X” – will keep its headquarters in San Francisco despite the “doom loop” the city is facing as big-name businesses head for the exits.

Musk, who led a group of investors in acquiring Twitter that took the company private in a $44 billion deal last year, tweeted Saturday that the company’s headquarters will remain in San Francisco despite receiving offers aimed at enticing the company to relocate.

“Many have offered rich incentives for X (fka Twitter) to move its HQ out of San Francisco. Moreover, the city is in a doom spiral with one company after another left or leaving. Therefore, they expect X will move too. We will not,” Musk explained.

“You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down. San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend,” Musk’s tweet concluded.

Elon Musk says the company’s HQ will remain in San Francisco despite the city facing a “doom spiral.” Getty Images

San Francisco’s economy has suffered from an exodus of businesses and residents in the last few years, creating a “doom loop” in which a local government enters a downward fiscal spiral as its tax base declines.

An urban doom loop involves a decline in workers present in offices in city centers, which results in businesses shrinking their office footprint and rental overhead.

The decline in demand causes real estate prices to fall, which in turn reduces property tax revenue while other sources of tax revenue, like sales tax, also take a hit due to the reduced traffic in downtown areas.

Workers install a large X on the roof of the former Twitter headquarters on July 28, 2023 in San Francisco, California. Getty Images

As the overall tax base declines, it becomes harder for city governments to fund public services like law enforcement as they’re forced to make trade-offs that include things like budget cuts or tax hikes to stabilize their finances – both of which can drive more businesses and residents to depart if those policies have a negative effect on the economic climate or overall quality of life.

The growing popularity of remote work has accelerated that trend, decreasing the number of workers heading to the office on a daily basis as it becomes easier than ever for workers to live in suburban and rural areas without commuting.

The tech-heavy economy of San Francisco and criticisms of the city government’s record on public safety issues have made it a case study in the dynamics that drive urban doom loops.

Twitter is transitioning from its bird logo to a new brand based on the letter X. Getty Images

According to data from the Census Bureau, the population of San Francisco County declined by 7.5% from April 1, 2020, to July 1, 2022.

Commercial real estate firm CBRE released data in early July that showed that San Francisco had an overall office vacancy rate of 31.6% in the second quarter of 2023.

The CBRE report noted that in the last quarter “negative net absorption accelerated due to slow leasing activity, combined with a high volume of lease expirations and several new sublease listings.

This resulted in 1.83 million sq. ft. of occupancy loss, which increased the market-wide vacancy rate from 29.4% to 31.6%.”

Although Twitter isn’t relocating its headquarters, the company has sought to shrink its office footprint in San Francisco and faced a lawsuit from its landlord earlier this year over unpaid rent – although the social media company has faced similar suits at offices in Denver, Oakland and London since Musk acquired Twitter and began a broad cost-cutting push to stabilize its finances.

Amid Twitter’s rebrand to X, city officials filed a complaint and opened an investigation into whether the company had the proper permits to install an illuminated “X” atop its downtown headquarters.

Police had stopped the installation last week but later said there was a “misunderstanding” and that the incident was not a police matter.

City officials say a permit is required to change letters or signs on buildings or to erect a new sign on top of a building.

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The post Musk says X will not go away San Francisco regardless of metropolis dealing with ‘doom spiral’ appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Elon Musk may have a complicated relationship with San Francisco—but he has no intention of moving X, the company formerly known as Twitter, out of the tech hub.

Musk revealed over the weekend that the company he acquired for $44 billion last year has been offered various “rich incentives” to relocate its headquarters.

But despite its recent name change—and Musk’s often less-than-favorable views on San Francisco—X will not be leaving its long-established home, the platform’s billionaire owner said in a tweet.

“The city is in a doom spiral with one company after another [having] left or leaving. Therefore, they expect X will move too,” Musk said. “We will not.”

Musk slams ‘derelict’ and ‘unsafe’ San Francisco

In recent years, San Francisco has faced a crisis of violent crime, drug abuse, and homelessness that has drawn criticism from many prominent members of the city’s tech community.

A number of companies have vacated their stores in San Francisco’s shopping hub, a phenomenon dubbed a “retail exodus,” thanks in part to crime rates.

Earlier this year, Whole Foods abruptly closed its flagship store in San Francisco, citing employee safety, while Nordstrom, Anthropologie, and Saks Off 5th have also fled the city’s Union Square.  

Musk himself has long been a public critic of San Francisco.

Back in May, he labeled downtown San Francisco a “disaster” and likened it to “a derelict zombie apocalypse.”

A month later, Musk claimed that many Twitter employees “feel unsafe coming to work” in the city and had had their car windows smashed while they were parked outside the office.

“They also got such a null response from the police that they rarely even bother reporting crimes anymore, because nothing happens,” Musk claimed.

He has lashed out at San Francisco’s Democratic leadership in the past for allegedly failing to tackle crime, arguing in May that because the party has been in control in San Francisco for so long there is “no feedback loop for correction, because they never lose, no matter how bad it gets.”

Statistics from the San Francisco Police Department show that in the first six months of this year, the overall crime rate was down 3.4% from the same period in 2022.

However, certain crimes surged in frequency, with homicide up by 4%, vehicle thefts up by 9%, and robbery up by 12% year on year.

Earlier this year, in the wake of the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee in San Francisco, Musk tweeted that many people he knew had been “severely assaulted” in the city.

“Violent crime in SF is horrific, and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately,” he alleged.

His comments received backlash from San Francisco district attorney Brooke Jenkins, who slammed Musk’s take on the case as “reckless and irresponsible.”

Under his stewardship, X has also butted heads with city officials and residents.

Earlier this year, Twitter was sued for allegedly failing to pay rent on its offices in London and San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the city is currently investigating the giant glowing “X” that was recently installed at Twitter HQ, with officials looking into whether the required permits were obtained to erect the sign on top of the building.

The company’s neighbors have reportedly been complaining about the powerful light emitted from the new sign, with some labeling it a “danger” and a “clown show.”

Despite his differences with San Francisco and its leadership, however, the Tesla CEO and world’s wealthiest person said Saturday night that X would remain loyal to the city.

“You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down,” Musk tweeted. “San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend.”

The post Elon Musk gained’t relocate Twitter/X HQ regardless of San Francisco’s ‘doom spiral’ appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

By Jamie Chisholm

Critical information for the U.S. trading days

Wall Street is undecided about trying for another rally on Friday, according to early trading in futures. That’s in keeping with the struggle it has been of late, with the S&P 500 SPX down six of the last eight sessions amid August’s bearish tendencies.

Some technical factors are causing concern. The Nasdaq 100 NDX is in danger of decisively falling back below its 50-day moving average support trend. Apple (AAPL) did so a week ago, and now its relative strength index, a gauge of momentum, has swiftly dropped to 30, signaling the stock may soon enter short-term oversold territory.

Over the same short period, the yield on the 10-year Treasury BX:TMUBMUSD10Y has twitched within a range of roughly 4% to 4.2% as investors try to get a handle on varying inflation and economic growth readings.

So, what’s an investor to do amid such uncertainty? Well, buy the companies that help traders to trade it, reckons VGI Partners, the Australia-based fund manager. In it’s semi-annual investor letter, covering performance to the end of June, VGI highlighted the top ten long investments in its Global Investments fund , three of which provide, to varying degrees, what may be termed the plumbing of the financial markets.

With a weighting of 7% is the London Stock Exchange , which VGI is keen to point out has transformed from a traditional exchange into a data and analytics group. After its purchase of data group Refinitiv in 2021, the LSE now generates only 3% of revenues from its legacy cash equities exchange.

Deutsche Börse represents about 8% of the portfolio and is deemed atractive says VGI because it provides trading, clearing, pre/post-trading and data and analytic services in four key operating segments: Trading & Clearing, Fund Services, Security Services and Data & Analytics.

DB is a “well-diversified exchange group whose activities touch on most aspects of European capital markets, offering a blend of transactional and non-transactional revenue exposure,” VGI adds.

But top holding is CME Group (CME), with a 9% weighting. CME operates futures and derivatives exchanges, including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the New York Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, and the Dow Jones Index Services.

VGI particularly likes CME’s “effective monopoly” of trading in interest rate derivatives. “Demand for interest rate derivatives is driven by volatility in interest rate markets, whose effect is compounded by the number of bonds held by those looking to manage interest rate risk and, by extension, market liquidity,” the fund manger notes. And the chart below illustrates this strong relationship.

VGI expects the growth in the size of the U.S. Treasury market, particularly in relation to privately held US treasuries as the Fed undergoes a balance sheet unwind, to provide important support to a CME’s interest rate derivatives business. CME should also benefit — as are other exchanges — from a boost to net interest income from the collateral balances it holds.

“We believe that CME’s assets are critical pieces of market infrastructure and will be recognized as such in the future,” VGI concludes.

Markets

U.S. stock-index futures , , are little changed as benchmark Treasury yields BX:TMUBMUSD10Y dip. The dollar DXY is lower, while oil prices slip and gold gains.

Try your hand at the Barron’s crossword puzzle and sudoku games, now running daily along with a weekly digital jigsaw based on the week’s cover story. To see all puzzles, click here.

The buzz

Economic data on Friday, include the July producer price index report, due at 8:30 a.m., and the August consumer sentiment reading at 10 a.m.. Both times Eastern.

UBS Group (UBS) has terminated a 9 billion Swiss franc ($10.27 billion) loss-protection agreement and a CHF100 billion public-liquidity backstop guaranteed by the Swiss government that were put in place at the time of its takeover of troubled rival Credit Suisse.

The pound rose back above $1.27 after data showed the U.K. economy grew 0.5% in June, more than twice the 0.2% expected.

Country Garden shares fell nearly 6% to below HK$1 for the first time as China’s biggest homebuilder warned of a loss and suffered another ratings downgrade of its debt.

Shares of Cano Health Inc. (CANO) are down more than 50% in Friday’s premarket after the primary-care provider and health-management platform said there was “substantial doubt” about its ability to keep operating.

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The chart

Just a reminder from Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies, of why some investors are getting twitchy about the recent rally in oil pries because of how it may clobber the happy narrative that major central banks can soon stop raising interest rates.

“The correlation between the Brent crude oil price and the five-year forward inflation expectation rate has been 0.88 since 2011,” says Wood. “This is potentially an awkward development in the context of the prevailing narrative that both the Federal Reserve and the ECB are all but done in this tightening cycle even if the official mantra in both cases remains ‘data dependent’.”

Top tickers

Here were the most active stock-market tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern.

Ticker Security name
TSLA Tesla
MULN Mullen Automotive
AMC AMC Entertainment
NIO Nio
WE WeWork
NVDA Nvidia
GME GameStop
TTOO T2 Biosystems
AAPL Apple
NKLA Nikola

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Need to Know starts early and is updated until the opening bell, but sign up here to get it delivered once to your email box. The emailed version will be sent out at about 7:30 a.m. Eastern.

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This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

08-11-23 0654ET

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The post If America’s debt spiral will get worse, this is the inventory which will profit, says fund supervisor appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

• Elon Musk says he has no plans to move Twitter, now X, out of San Francisco.
• He said Twitter’s headquarters will stay put despite a “doom spiral” currently affecting the city.
• San Francisco has lost a string of retailers and major companies in the last year.

Elon Musk says his Twitter rebrand won’t include a change of address.

The billionaire took to Twitter, now X, this weekend to announce that the company’s headquarters is staying put in San Francisco despite what he referred to as a “doom spiral” currently affecting the California city. Musk said he wasn’t planning to uproot the company’s headquarters even though he’s been receiving “rich incentives” to relocate.

He said in the post: “You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down. San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend.”

San Francisco has lost a string of retailers and major companies in the last year. In April, Whole Foods announced it was closing its locations across the city, citing employee safety, while retail companies Anthropologie and H&M have also packed up and abandoned the city. 

The California city has also seen tech companies drastically reduce their presence in the once-buzzy location. Meta, PayPal, and Snap have all slashed their San Francisco office space in recent years. The city is also facing a commercial real estate crisis and a devastating homelessness problem. 

Musk has spoken out about the issues gripping the city before. In May he called downtown San Francisco, where Twitter’s HQ is located, a “derelict zombie apocalypse.” The billionaire said the “once beautiful and thriving” area had become a “disaster.”

In the past, lawmakers in both Miami and Florida have encouraged Musk to relocate Twitter’s headquarters out of San Francisco in order to bring jobs to their own states. 

Representatives for Twitter did not respond to Insider’s query with a comment that addressed the question.

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The post Twitter Will not Transfer Out of San Francisco Regardless of ‘Doom Spiral’: Musk appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Elon Musk, pictured in 2020, said although San Francisco is “in a doom spiral,” X—formerly Twitter—would keep its HQ in the city. Win McNamee—Getty Images

Elon Musk may have a complicated relationship with San Francisco—but he has no intention of moving X, the company formerly known as Twitter, out of the tech hub.

Musk revealed over the weekend that the company he acquired for $44 billion last year has been offered various “rich incentives” to relocate its headquarters.

But despite its recent name change—and Musk’s often less-than-favorable views on San Francisco—X will not be leaving its long-established home, the platform’s billionaire owner said in a tweet.

“The city is in a doom spiral with one company after another [having] left or leaving. Therefore, they expect X will move too,” Musk said. “We will not.”

Musk slams ‘derelict’ and ‘unsafe’ San Francisco

In recent years, San Francisco has faced a crisis of violent crime, drug abuse, and homelessness that has drawn criticism from many prominent members of the city’s tech community.

A number of companies have vacated their stores in San Francisco’s shopping hub, a phenomenon dubbed a “retail exodus,” thanks in part to crime rates.

Earlier this year, Whole Foods abruptly closed its flagship store in San Francisco, citing employee safety, while Nordstrom, Anthropologie, and Saks Off 5th have also fled the city’s Union Square.  

Musk himself has long been a public critic of San Francisco.

Back in May, he labeled downtown San Francisco a “disaster” and likened it to “a derelict zombie apocalypse.”

A month later, Musk claimed that many Twitter employees “feel unsafe coming to work” in the city and had had their car windows smashed while they were parked outside the office.

“They also got such a null response from the police that they rarely even bother reporting crimes anymore, because nothing happens,” Musk claimed.

He has lashed out at San Francisco’s Democratic leadership in the past for allegedly failing to tackle crime, arguing in May that because the party has been in control in San Francisco for so long there is “no feedback loop for correction, because they never lose, no matter how bad it gets.”

Statistics from the San Francisco Police Department show that in the first six months of this year, the overall crime rate was down 3.4% from the same period in 2022.

However, certain crimes surged in frequency, with homicide up by 4%, vehicle thefts up by 9%, and robbery up by 12% year on year.

Earlier this year, in the wake of the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee in San Francisco, Musk tweeted that many people he knew had been “severely assaulted” in the city.

“Violent crime in SF is horrific, and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately,” he alleged.

His comments received backlash from San Francisco district attorney Brooke Jenkins, who slammed Musk’s take on the case as “reckless and irresponsible.”

Under his stewardship, X has also butted heads with city officials and residents.

Earlier this year, Twitter was sued for allegedly failing to pay rent on its offices in London and San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the city is currently investigating the giant glowing “X” that was recently installed at Twitter HQ, with officials looking into whether the required permits were obtained to erect the sign on top of the building.

The company’s neighbors have reportedly been complaining about the powerful light emitted from the new sign, with some labeling it a “danger” and a “clown show.”

Despite his differences with San Francisco and its leadership, however, the Tesla CEO and world’s wealthiest person said Saturday night that X would remain loyal to the city.

“You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down,” Musk tweeted. “San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend.”

The post Elon Musk gained’t relocate Twitter/X HQ regardless of San Francisco’s ‘doom spiral’ appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.