The Wall Street Journal - 15 December 2023

***** TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2023 ~ VOL. CCLXXXII NO. 132 WSJ.com HHHH $5.00 DJIA 36204.44 g 41.06 0.11% NASDAQ 14185.49 g 0.8% STOXX 600 465.78 g 0.1% 10-YR. TREAS. g 16/32 , yield 4.286% OIL $73.04 g $1.03 GOLD $2,024.10 g $46.90 EURO $1.0836 YEN 147.21  CVS Health,the nation’s largest drugstore chain, will move away from the complex formulas used to set the prices of the prescription drugs it sells. A1  Spotify is preparing to lay off 17% of its workforce, or about 1,500 employees, as the company accelerates its profitability push. A1  EnergyRe, which builds massive transmission lines to carry renewable electricity to urban areas, said it raised $1.2 billion from a group of European investors to build more projects across the U.S. B1  Stocks, bonds and precious metals retreated. The Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow industrials lost 0.8%, 0.5% and 0.1%, respectively. B11  The succession race is on at Johnson & Johnson, after the abrupt departure of a top executive widely believed to have been in line for the company’s top job. B1  A U.S. appeals court has sided with Intel, vacating a roughly $2.2 billion patentinfringement verdict won by VLSI Technology. B3  Meta and IBM launched a coalition of more than 50 artificial intelligence companies and research institutions that are pushing a socalled open model of AI. B4  A group representing more than 80 media outlets in Spain filed a lawsuit against Meta, saying the Facebook owner hadn’t complied with European dataprotection laws. B4  TuSimple, the self-driving trucking company, is winding down its U.S. business and seeking a buyer for its remaining U.S. assets. B6 What’s News Business & Finance World-Wide BY JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA Ex-U.S. Envoy Is Held as Longtime Cuba Spy Former ambassador worked covertly for Havana since 1980s, complaint alleges BY CHAO DENG, MENNA FAROUK AND OMAR ABDEL-BAQUI Spotify Technology is preparing to lay off 17% of its workforce, or about 1,500 employees, as the company accelerates its profitability push. Chief Executive Daniel Ek announced the job cuts—the Stockholm-based company’s third round of layoffs this year—to staff Monday. Despite efforts to reduce costs, Ek said Spotify is still spending too much money. The audio-streaming company has been squeezed by slower economic growth as well as interest-rate increases that have made it more expensive to borrow, he said. “The Spotify of tomorrow must be defined by being relentlessly resourceful in the ways we operate, innovate, and tackle problems,” he said in a 1,000-word letter to staff. “Being lean is not just an option but a necessity.” Spotify shares rose more than 7% to $194.17 Monday. The stock is up nearly 150% in 2023 but remains down about 46% from its record close in February 2021. The company expects to take up to €145 million in charges—equivalent to about $157 million—during the final quarter of the year as a result of the layoffs. It expects to report an operating loss of €93 million to €108 million during the fourth quarter, revising down its prior forecast of a €37 million operating profit. Please turn to pageA8 CVS Health, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, will move away from the complex formulas used to set the prices of the prescription drugs it sells, shifting to a simpler model that could upend how American pharmacies are paid. Under the plan, CVS’s roughly 9,500 retail pharmacies will get reimbursed by pharmacy-benefit managers and other payers based on the amount that CVS paid for the drugs, in addition to a limited markup and a flat fee to cover the services involved in handling and dispensing the prescriptions. A similar payment model, sometimes known as “cost plus,” has been promoted by entrepreneur Mark Cuban’s eponymous pharmacy company, among others, which have said it brings greater clarity and accountability to drug pricing. Today, pharmacies are generally paid using complex measures that aren’t directly based on what they spent to purchase specific drugs. CVS’s move, which will be phased in starting in the first half of 2024, will take the approach to a far greater scale, embedding it in a company that stands at the core of the American drug-supply chain. “It’s a fundamental change in how pharmacy services are priced,” said Adam Fein, chief executive of the Drug Channels Institute, which provides research on the drug-supply chain. It is also, he said, “a legitimate step toward transparency.” For consumers, employers and health insurers paying for prescriptions, the change will have mixed effects. Some drugs Please turn to pageA4 BY ANNA WILDE MATHEWS The first call came at 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 8. The recorded voice instructed doctor Hussam Abuouda, his wife and five children to get out. Leave Beit Hanoun, the city at the Israeli border in northern Gaza, Abuouda recalls the unidentified man saying in Arabic. He had received a call like this before, in the 2014 Israel-Gaza war. That time, he moved out for 45 days, then returned to repair his damaged home. This night felt more urgent. A bomb had obliterated a building  Israel, Hamas locked in fierce fighting..... A9 hundreds of yards from his home, killing people inside. “I feared the same would happen to me and my family,” says Abuouda. At dawn, with explosions all around, the family piled into their green Fiat, the children crying as they raced along empty roads to Gaza City, as directed, 6 miles south. It was the first of five moves the Abuoudas would make in less than a month as they followed Israeli instructions to get out of the way of airstrikes its military says are aimed at eliminating Hamas, the militant rulers of Please turn to pageA10 CVS Revamps the Way It Sets Drug Prices BUSINESS & FINANCE Food makers see an opportunity to capitalize on the Ozempic effect. B1 CHARLOTTE DE LA FUENTE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Struggling Ukraine Touts Sniper as Record-Setter LONG-DISTANCE: Vyacheslav Kovalskiy, right, a 58-year-old Ukrainian shown with his spotter, said his sniper hit on a Russian soldier nearly 21 /2 miles away set a record, giving Ukraine a morale boost as its offensive struggles to make headway. A6 JOSEPH SYWENKYJ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL A former senior U.S. diplomat who served in embassies across Latin America was accused of spying for Cuba’s intelligence service for decades in one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting security breaches of the federal government, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Monday. Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday. The unsealed complaint said that the 73-year-old Rocha had worked for Cuba’s Communist government as a covert agent since at least the early 1980s until now. “Rocha secretly supported the Republic of Cuba and its clandestine intelligence-gathering mission against the United States by serving as a covert agent of Cuba’s intelligence services,” the complaint said. In doing so, Rocha provided false information to the U.S. and traveled outside the country to meet with Cuban undercover agents, according to the complaint. His lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment. During the U.S. investigation, Rocha met with an undercover FBI officer who was pretending to be a Cuban agent three times in the past two years, according to the complaint. All three meetings, during which Rocha used undercover Cuban spycraft, were audiotaped and videotaped. Please turn to pageA4 WASHINGTON—The U.S. wouldn’t be able to continue providing more weapons and equipment to Ukraine if Congress doesn’t approve additional funding by the end of the year, the White House said on Monday, trying to prod lawmakers to quickly make progress in complicated negotiations on Capitol Hill. “Cutting off the flow of U.S. weapons and equipment will kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield,” Shalanda Young, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.). “There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money—and nearly out of time,” Young wrote. The letter was released as negotiators are trying to reach a deal on tightening U.S. border security, which House and Senate Republicans have demanded as a condition for passing tens of billions of dollars in new aid for Ukraine. Over the weekend, bipartisan Senate talks to strike an immigration compromise broke down, with Democrats complaining Republicans were insisting on sweeping changes to the asylum system they knew Democrats wouldn’t support. The letter marks one of the White House’s most forceful pleas for congressional action to date. Without additional money, the U.S. won’t have the necessary resources to procure additional weapons and equipment for Ukraine or to provide resources from existing U.S. military stockpiles, Young said. Officials in the U.S. and Europe are increasingly worried as the war in Ukraine nears the end of its second year, fearing Russian President Vladimir Putin will be able to outlast the political will of Western countries to continue aiding Ukraine. President Biden in October outlined a $106 billion proposed aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The package requested about $60 billion to fund the Ukraine war effort and replenish U.S. weapons stocks. Please turn to pageA6 By Andrew Restuccia, Doug Cameron and Michelle Hackman White House Warns Funding For Kyiv to Run Out in Weeks Palestinians Hunt for Safety As Fighting Intensifies Families in Gaza say ‘there’s nowhere else to go’ BY ANNE STEELE Spotify to Cut Staff By 17% as It Chases Profit Goal INSIDE Plush-Toy CEOs Play Hardball In Cuddle-ability Competition iii Squishy stuffed animals push to the top of holiday wish lists; ‘they make me happy’ This holiday season, business is soft. CEO David Socha couldn’t be happier. The chief executive of Beverly Hills Teddy Bear finds comfort in plush toys— cute, squishable and, this year, one of America’s hottest gifts. Ahead of a holiday season dampened by a weak forecast, toy makers and retailers are trying to stay flush with plush. Autumn Ruhe, the owner of the Mildred & Dildred toy store in Tucson, Ariz., said her stockroom is stuffed with fuzzy pandas, cuddly possums, squishy cats and a squeezable alien named Ross. “We’ve never had a category overshadow all the rest like this before,” Ruhe said. Toy sales are down 8% this year compared with 2022, but plush toys are enjoying a soft landing, up 4% for the year, according to market research firm Circana. Plush-toy sales grew to $1.7 billion in October from $846 million in October 2020. To stand out from the crowd, plush-toy makers seek to best their rivals in softness and cuddleability. “We think about plush the way you think about thread count in sheets,” said Socha of Beverly Hills Teddy Bear, which owns other plushtoy companies, including Please turn to pageA10 BY CHAVIE LIEBER Stocking stuffer s 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved CONTENTS Arts in Review..... A13 Business & Finance B2 Business News....... B3 Crossword................ A13 Heard on Street.. B12 Markets...................... B11 Markets Digest...... B9 Opinion................ A15-17 Personal Journal A11-12 Sports.......................... A14 Technology............ B4,6 U.S. News.............. A2-4 World News.... A6,8-9 >  A former senior U.S. diplomat who served in embassies across Latin America was accused of spying for Cuba’s intelligence service for decades in one of the highest-reaching and longestlasting security breaches of the federal government. A1  The U.S. wouldn’t be able to continue providing more weapons and equipment to Ukraine if Congress doesn’t approve additional funding by the end of the year, the White House said, trying to prod lawmakers to make progress in negotiations. A1  Israeli troops and Hamas fighters are locked in some of their fiercest fighting of the two-month-old war as Israel launched its offensive in the south while trying to finish its operations in and around Gaza City. A9  Israel has assembled a system of large pumps it could use to flood Hamas’s network of tunnels under the Gaza Strip with seawater, a tactic that could threaten Gaza’s water supply. A9  Hunter Biden paid his father, Joe Biden, three installments totaling a little more than $4,000 in 2018 from a business account that held funds from his Chinese business dealings. A4  North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, dropped out of the Republican presidential nomination race. A4  Searchers have found the sunken main fuselage of a U.S. military aircraft that crashed off the coast of southern Japan last week and the remains of five of the seven missing crew. A6 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

A2 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 ***** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. U.S.WATCH VIRGINIA Blast Rocks House After Shots Fired A massive explosion occurred at a house in Arlington, Va., where police were investigating reports of shots fired and attempted to serve a search warrant Monday. Some officers received minor injuries in the explosion, but no one was taken to the hospital, said Arlington County police. No fatalities were confirmed and the status of the suspect, who was in the home when it exploded, is not known, police said. The incident began at about 4:45 p.m. when police responded to reports of shots fired, which they later determined came from a flare gun. Police returned to execute a search warrant, and the suspect fired several rounds inside the home, police said. It was then that the duplex exploded shortly before 8:30 p.m. —Associated Press TEXAS Suspect in Killing Of Four Is Dead A man suspected of killing four people, including a 1-yearold boy, and injuring a 15-yearold girl in a shooting at a Dallas home fatally shot himself during a chase with law enforcement, police said Monday. Byron Carillo, 21, fled the home after the shooting late Sunday afternoon and then stole a vehicle, Dallas police said. As Carillo was being pursued by law-enforcement officers in the Austin area, he crashed the vehicle into a ditch and ran, police said. Police said that when officers got close to Carillo, he shot himself in the head. —Associated Press NEW ENGLAND Snow Cuts Power For Thousands A storm dropped a mix of rain and snow on parts of New England on Monday, leaving more than half a foot in some locations and knocking out power for tens of thousands. In Vermont, evacuations were ordered in two communities, including at a pair of schools, after a propane tanker went off the Vermont Route 14 bridge over the Black River in Irasburg and caught fire, state police said. At the peak, more than 25,000 homes and businesses in Maine and more than 11,000 in Vermont were without electricity as trees and branches laden with heavy, wet snow fell on power lines, officials said. The temperatures were hovering close to freezing across much of northern New England on Monday. —Associated Press NEW YORK Fatal Fire Linked To E-Bike Battery One person was killed and six others were injured when a fire blamed on an electric bicycle battery tore through a New York City apartment, officials said Monday. The fire started at around 7 p.m. Sunday in a 10th-floor apartment in the Bronx, a Fire Department spokesperson said. One person was taken to a hospital and later died. Fire marshals determined that the fire was caused by an e-bike’s lithium ion battery. Three weeks ago a fire linked to a lithium ion battery killed three members of a Brooklyn family. —Associated Press Flames shot into the air after a massive boom was heard Monday night in Arlington, Va. Police earlier said they were investigating after someone fired a flare gun from a house. ASSOCIATED PRESS In some editions Monday, the name of the Sackler family was misspelled as Sackers in William Nelson’s quote in a Page One article about the Purdue Pharma opioid settlement. The Topgolf location in El Segundo, Calif., was pictured with a Page One article on Saturday about off-course golfers. The photo caption incorrectly said Redondo Beach. Florence, Italy, was placed in the wrong position in an inset map with a Business News article on Saturday about Airbnb rentals in the city. Fara Homidi worked with manufacturers in France and Japan to produce the packaging for her lip compact. In some editions Monday, a Personal Journal article about Homidi incorrectly said she worked with manufacturers in France and Spain. The Texas Longhorns won their fourth Big 12 football championship over the weekend, their first since 2009. A Sports article on Monday about college football incorrectly said it was the Longhorns’ first Big 12 title. Readers can alert The Wall Street Journal to any errors in news articles by emailing [email protected] or by calling 888-410-2667. CORRECTIONS  AMPLIFICATIONS Extraordinary corporate profits were a driving force in last year’s surge in inflation, a pressure that is now easing rapidly as customers push back. Across industries and regions, there are signs that the price rises that allowed some businesses to make outsize profits during the Covid-19 pandemic—even when they were selling fewer goods—are coming to an end. “Retailers are talking about costs lessening,” said Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management. “An alternative explanation is consumers are less willing to support profit margin expansion.” Makers of packaged goods were among those increasing prices rapidly last year, until customers began shopping for cheaper alternatives. British retailers reported last week that prices of items other than food fell in November from October, a sign that consumers might finally be saying no. Automakers offer perhaps the clearest evidence that the economic winds are turning. As the industry struggled to satisfy high demand because of pandemic-related supply-chain logjams, it responded by raising prices, which pushed margins higher. Now, however, buyers are walking away. “It does seem things are toughening up,” Natalie Knight, chief financial officer of automaker Stellantis, told analysts in November. Going forward, she added, growth would be driven by volumes rather than pricing. A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that profits pushed inflation higher in most advanced economies during 2022, but that contribution peaked in the final months of last year and has since fallen. On Monday, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde acknowledged the change, saying that, while rising wages continued to put upward pressure on inflation, “the contribution of profits, which accounted for much of the strong domestic price pressures seen recently, is now weakening.” A reduction in consumers’ tolerance for funding higher profit margins would be good news for central bankers. With wages expected to continue to rise at a more rapid rate than in the recent past as workers try to recoup lost spending power, lower profit margins could help sustain the recent deceleration in inflation. The European Union’s statistics agency on Thursday said consumer prices in the eurozone were 2.4% higher than they were a year earlier in November, the slowest increase since July 2021. That slowdown was mostly attributed to falling energy prices, but prices of manufactured goods were also lower on the month, as were prices of services. For now, the softening margins appear to be confined largely to manufacturers. In the services sector, price rises have slowed only slightly over recent months, reflecting consumers’ preference for activities that the pandemic had denied them. Last month, eurozone services-inflation was twice the ECB’s target. And in the U.S., profit margins for businesses in the S&P 500 were higher in the third quarter than a year earlier, following a period of decline. The relative stickiness of services prices is a reason that the OECD thinks that inflation rates will remain above the 2% in both the U.S. and the eurozone throughout 2024. As a result, it expects key interest rates to start to decline no earlier than late next year. There is a broad consensus among economists that the role of profits in fueling inflation is one feature of the recent inflationary episode that made it different from the 1970s. Yet how much of a role profits played is the subject of controversy. The French and British governments have pressured businesses to keep prices down while on Nov. 27 President Biden called on companies to “stop the price gouging.” Some economists aren’t so sure higher profits are a big part of the problem. Researchers at the Bank of England concluded they played a minor role in boosting U.K. prices, and might have had an even smaller part to play if costs such as higher interest payments are taken into account. The Federal Reserve has placed much less emphasis on profits than has the ECB in explaining why inflation took off and estimating how quickly it is likely to come down. That might be because strong demand and a tight job market played a bigger role in boosting inflation in the U.S., while supply shocks were greater in Europe because of the surge in energy and food prices caused by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Many economists think that the second surge, coming on top of the pandemic, led to such confusion among consumers about where prices should be that they briefly became more accepting of above-cost price rises. U.S. NEWS BY PAUL HANNON Consumers Resist Higher Prices, Profits That Helped Fuel Inflation Jan. 2023 Nov. 0 2 4 6 8 10% Eurozone all items Eurozone services Nov: 4% Nov: 2.4% Oct: 5.5% Oct: 3.2% U.S. all items U.S. services Change in prices from a year earlier 2019 ’20 ’21 ’22 ’23 0 4 -2 2 6 pct. pts. Profits Labor costs Contribution to change in the GDP deflator* Sources: OECD (GDP); Eurostat (change in Eurozone prices), Labor Department (change in U.S. prices) *Data is drawn from 33 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Across advanced economies, the part profits play in pushing prices higher is easing. Consumer prices are rising more slowly in the U.S. and the eurozone, although services inflation remains high. 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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | A3 U.S. NEWS WASHINGTON—Supreme Court justices wrestled Monday with the uncomfortable bargain struck between most victims of the opioid crisis and the Sackler family, whose Purdue Pharma promoted the addictive painkiller OxyContin: providing timely compensation for survivors in exchange for granting the wealthy family immunity from future civil lawsuits. That settlement was reached before a bankruptcy judge and approved in May by a federal appeals court in New York. It would see the Sacklers pay $6 billion to individual victims and state governments in exchange for eliminating potential liability for additional claims, such as fraud—even though they, unlike Purdue, haven’t sought bankruptcy protection. The deal was made under a catchall provision of federal law authorizing bankruptcy judges to issue orders and judgments that may be “necessary or appropriate” to resolve cases. Nearly all the victims agreed because the Sacklers said they wouldn’t settle without such protection. But some 2,600 victims—3% of the total—didn’t settle, and at Monday’s arguments, a Justice Department attorney told the court that federal law didn’t permit settlements that forbid power to wipe out related claims to drive chapter 11 settlements in mass-victim litigation where some parties that aren’t themselves in bankruptcy could face liability. The Boy Scouts of America agreed to the largest settlement of sex-abuse claims in U.S. history in exchange for extinguishing claims against its volunteer affiliates and religious partners. Private-equity firms, corporate executives and others linked to a bankruptcy case often get immunity from liability as part of such settlements. But federal appeals courts are divided over whether the bankruptcy code’s “necessary or appropriate” clause permits such broad actions. Purdue sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 when facing thousands of lawsuits alleging misconduct in marketing OxyContin. Many claims filed by state governments, municipalities and victims of opioid addiction also named the closely held company’s family owners, who have denied wrongdoing. The Sacklers assert that they didn’t anticipate those suits when taking $10 billion in distributions from Purdue from 2008 to 2017. About half of that sum went toward taxes or was reinvested in the business, court papers say. —Alexander Saeedy contributed to this article. BY JESS BRAVIN creditors from seeking assets that weren’t protected in bankruptcy proceedings. Justice Brett Kavanaugh summed up the frustration of victims who thought things had been resolved: “You, the federal government, with no stake in this at all, are coming in and telling the families, ‘No, we’re not going to give you prompt payment for what’s happened to your family, and we’re not going to allow this money to go to the states for prevention programs to prevent future overdoses,’” Kavanaugh said, simply because Justice Department lawyers have a “somewhat theoretical idea that they’ll be able to recover money down the road from the Sacklers themselves.” Justice Elena Kagan suggested the prospect of additional recovery was far-fetched. “It’s overwhelming, the support for this deal,” she said, “among people who think the Sacklers are pretty much the worst people on earth. They’ve negotiated a deal which they think is the best that they can get.” Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon suggested the Sacklers could be bluffing. An earlier version of the best deal for victims fixed the Sackler contribution at $4.3 billion, he said, but after a legal setback threatened to undo the settlement, the family upped its payout to $6 billion. Justices bristled when Greg Garre, representing Purdue, cited bankruptcy court findings that without the deal, victims might not see a penny of compensation. “If this settlement doesn’t go forward, then victims would likely, even if they prevailed on their claims, [face] serious issues about being able to collect,” he said. That is “only because the Sacklers have taken the money offshore, right?” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, referring to the overseas trusts where much of the family’s wealth is held. “The Sacklers have taken the money and are not willing to give it back unless they have this condition.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett observed that the Sacklers had begun transferring funds from Purdue to their private accounts as the scope of the opioid crisis began to unfold. In recent decades, bankruptcy courts have used the The settlement provides immunity for the family from future civil suits. Uneven Buildup Of Wealth Seen During Pandemic Women Fashion Designers Celebrated at the Met TO THE NINES: The Costume Institute’s ‘Women Dressing Women’ exhibit was previewed Monday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The works of more than 70 womenswear designers from about 1910 to the present will be featured. TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES Justices Weigh $6 Billion Opioid Settlement The pandemic made Americans richer across every racial, ethnic and income group—though not equally. Home values shot up, and with fewer opportunities to spend money during lockdowns, many people paid down debt and boosted savings. Between 2019 and 2021, the median household’s net worth increased 30% to $166,900, according to a report Monday from Pew Research Center. The wealth of white and Asian households increased the most in total dollars during those years. For many Black and Hispanic families, the boost wasn’t enough to lift them fully out of debt. One in four Black households and one in seven Hispanic households had zero wealth at the end of 2021, though they did manage to make a dent in their debt. Asian households held the most wealth overall. Their net worth grew 43% to $320,900 in 2021. White households posted a 23% increase to $250,400. Hispanic households had a net worth of $48,700 and Black households held $27,100 by the end of 2021. Wealth gaps were widest among lower-income households, who are less likely to own homes and have assets in retirement accounts, the report found. Low-income white households had 21 times the wealth of low-income Black households. The least wealthy Black households cut debt from a median of $10,100 to $4,000 by the end of 2021. The median net worth for low-income Hispanic households rose to zero, from $1,100 in debt. The median net worth of those earning more than $171,600 a year was $1.1 million for Asian households and $923,300 for white households. Upper-income Black and Hispanic households had net worths of $285,000 and $350,000, respectively. BY OYIN ADEDOYIN To reserve your watch and for a dealer near you, please visit: www.meistersinger.us or call 727-896-4278 A 4-Hour watch limited to 70 pieces. More than a watch. Aaron Faber Gallery - NYC, NY 212-586-8411 Little Treasury Jewelers - Gambrills, MD 410-721-7100 Alexanders Jewelers of Atlanta - Lawrenceville, GA 404-634-3197 Danson Jewelers - Allendale, NJ 201-962-3207 Joseph Gann Jewelers - Boston, MA 617-426-4932 The Watch Aficionado - Port St. Lucie, FL 772-343-9400 Joseph Edwards - NYC, NY 212-730-7300 Scan for more details With deposits from $50k and a special introductory offer, there has never been a better time to be a Volato Insider. 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A4 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 P W L C 10 11 12 H T G K R F A M 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 O I X X **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. U.S. NEWS payment model CostVantage. When it starts rolling out next year, the new prices will first become available to consumers paying cash for their prescriptions using an array of drug discount cards. In 2025, the setup will be incorporated into CVS pharmacies’ contracts with pharmacy-benefit managers covering drugs paid for under employer plans. Executives said they plan to implement the new retail pharmacy payment model for government-backed coverage, such as Medicare plans, in the future. CVS said the change isn’t expected to increase its pharmacies’ profits but would ensure more stable and predictable earnings. The company declined to disclose target ranges for its drug markup or the flat fees. Fein said that over time, the new model will likely mean that the retail pharmacies are able to halt the trend toward shrinking profits on prescriptions and retain wider margins than they otherwise would have. He also said that CVSlinked units are sometimes involved in setting the price of drugs sold to the company’s own pharmacies, which may muddy the picture. A CVS spokesman said its pharmacies pass the value of all of their drug savings on to PBMs and other payers. Pharmacies are mostly paid by pharmacy-benefit managers—including CVS Caremark, a sister company to the retail pharmacy unit—often using a complicated setup in which compensation targets are set across groups of drugs, not for particular products. Under that model, pharmacies may get paid at relatively higher rates for certain medications, and use that margin to tients about the complexity and opacity around how drugs are bought and sold. Members of Congress and some employer groups have argued that the current setup is flawed and secretive. “Transparency and clear pass-through pricing based on the actual cost of the drugs is exactly what we have been hoping the market will do,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, chief executive of the Purchaser Business Group on Health. The company’s move appears to be a step in that direction, Mitchell said, though she wants more detail on its plans. “What really matters is, will this make drugs more affordable?” she said. CVS said prices will much more closely reflect what the company’s pharmacies pay to acquire the drugs. The shift will likely eliminate many high-profile discrepancies where patients with insurance found they could get medications for less when they paid cash with a drug discount card instead of using their employers’ drug-benefit coverage. The pharmacies will be paid in “a much simpler and more transparent way,” said CVS Chief Pharmacy Officer Prem Shah. “We want to change the market for the future.” The company will call the subsidize losses on other prescriptions. Using a “cost-plus” structure, this should no longer be typical. Still, CVS’s pharmacy unit will be using an index to approximate its cost for acquiring drugs. CVS will introduce a new option for clients of its PBM, CVS Caremark, that will work in tandem with the new retail pharmacy payment scheme. The new PBM product, called TrueCost, will be based on the net cost of drugs with defined fee structures, the company said. Employers and other clients will have the choice to use it or not. However, employers may be reluctant to take one step that is part of the TrueCost setup, which involves applying rebates the PBM receives from drugmakers to individual prescriptions for those drugs. Currently, patients often pay out-ofpocket amounts based on the higher, pre-rebate price. Employers and insurers sometimes use those rebates to offset other healthcare costs. Other pharmacy-benefit managers have been touting efforts to increase transparency and clarity. Express Scripts, a unit of Cigna Group, recently unveiled a new model called ClearNetwork. —Joseph Walker contributed to this article. the diplomat as being a “great friend of ours since your time in Chile.” Rocha, who holds degrees from Yale, Harvard and Georgetown universities, joined the State Department in 1981, serving as Honduras desk officer when the U.S. was backing the Contra rebels against the may cost less, while others might rise in price, CVS executives said. More should show declines than increases, they said. CVS is making the move as it seeks to stabilize its retail pharmacy business, which has long struggled with stagnating margins on its core function of dispensing prescriptions. The company is also responding to criticism from lawmakers, employers and paContinued from PageOne CVS Plans Revamp of Drug Prices bans,” said John Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama. He said Rocha was his mentor when he entered the foreign service. A spokesman for Cuba’s Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment. Colombia-born Rocha served in top posts in Bolivia, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, and as a Latin American expert at the National Security Council in Washington. From 1995 to 1997, he was deputy principal officer at the U.S. Interest Section in Havana—the de facto embassy when the two countries lacked diplomatic relations—according to the complaint. He had access and security clearance to information there that could have been valuable for the Cuban government, Feeley said. Rocha worked for the U.S. government during a critical period when Cuba and the Soviet Union were Cold War foes of the U.S. Rocha lived in Chile in 1973, during the period that the country’s Socialist President Salvador Allende was overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup. The undercover FBI agent who first contacted Rocha in 2022, posing as a Cuban spy, praised Marxist government in neighboring Nicaragua. Rocha also served as adviser to the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military relations with Latin American countries, from 2006 to 2012. “This action exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said. Rocha’s positions within the government would have provided him with access to nonpublic information and the ability to affect U.S. foreign policy, Garland said. After retiring from the State Department, Rocha had a second career serving in lucrative jobs for firms doing business in Latin America, the complaint said. He was hired in September to work in the U.S. unit of Spanish public relations firm Llorente y Cuenca as a business adviser, all the while cultivating the facade of a conservative and supporter of former President Donald Trump. “I have created the legend of a right-wing person,” he told the FBI agent in a taped conversation, the complaint said. He appeared to also deploy that tactic in 2002, when he was ambassador in Bolivia. Rocha publicly railed against leftist coca farmer leader Evo Morales, threatening that voting for him in that year’s elections could jeopardize U.S. assistance to the country. Voters catapulted Morales into prominence in the election, positioning him to win the presidency three years later. The complaint didn’t specify the information that Rocha could have supplied to Cuba’s government or whether he received some form of payment. The complaint indicated that he was mostly driven by his sympathy for the Cuban regime. A primary interest for Cuba’s spy service has long been understanding U.S. policy toward the island and figuring out ways to influence it; an asset like Rocha could have provided a gold mine for that goal, counterintelligence experts say. The State Department and the intelligence community will assess the damage to national security from Rocha’s spying, the State Department said. At a court hearing in Miami on Monday, a tearful Rocha, dressed in a tan jumpsuit, didn’t enter a plea. —Jack Gillum, Juan Forero and Aruna Viswanatha contributed to this article. During the first meeting in Miami, Rocha said he had been told by Cuba’s intelligence service to lead a “normal life” and that he had publicly espoused right-wing political leanings to maintain his cover, according to the complaint. But throughout the meetings Rocha referred to the U.S. as “the enemy.” He praised Fidel Castro as the “comandante” and referred to his contacts in Cuban intelligence as his “compañeros,” according to the complaint. Former diplomats said this is likely to be the worst breach by Cuban intelligence of the U.S. government, surpassing that of Ana Belén Montes, a senior Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba in 2002. She was released from prison in 2023. “This is 10 times worse. It was a great coup for the CuContinued from PageOne Ex-Envoy Held as Spy For Cuba North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum dropped out of the Republican presidential nomination race Monday, becoming the latest candidate to acknowledge the challenges of trying to overtake former President Donald Trump for the GOP’s nod. The exit by the wealthy former software entrepreneur from a heavily Republican state follows earlier departures by former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. Trump holds a commanding lead in national polls, as well as those in the states that will hold the first nomination balloting in January. Burgum, 67 years old and known for a casual style and noninflammatory rhetoric, was never a significant presence in the race. He participated in the first and second primary debates in the late summer and early fall, but failed to qualify for subsequent debates because he didn’t meet the Republican National Committee’s polling and fundraising participation requirements. In a statement, Burgum criticized the RNC for limiting debate participants. “The RNC’s clubhouse debate requirements are nationalizing the primary process and taking the power of democracy away from the engaged, thoughtful citizens of Iowa and New Hampshire,” Burgum said. BY JOHN MCCORMICK Burgum Drops Out Of Primary Contest president and his family. In those same autumn months five years ago, Hunter Biden bought a firearm in Delaware, a purchase now at the center of his federal prosecution on felony gun charges. Prosecutors have alleged that the younger Biden lied about his drug use on a federal form he was required to complete as part of that purchase. He has publicly said he struggled with addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol around that time. “The truth is Hunter’s father helped him when he was struggling financially due to his addiction and could not secure credit to finance a truck,” Lowell said. “When Hunter was able to, he paid his father back and took over the payments himself.” In June 2018, Joe Biden and Hunter Biden both went to Bayshore Ford Truck Sales near Wilmington, Del., to purchase the vehicle, according to Jim Keen, a now-retired salesman who did the deal when he worked there. The truck was bought by Joe Biden at a purchase price of around $67,000, he said. Although the vehicle was meant for Hunter, his credit “wasn’t worth spit,” Keen said, so he needed his father to sign for the financing. Hunter Biden also traded in two other vehicles as part of the exchange, Keen said. A document about the deal that was on a laptop that Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop also refers to the sale of two vehicles before this truck was purchased. Joe Biden spent more than two hours in the dealership that day, Keen said, chatting with people and posing for photos. They include a shot of Keen shaking hands with Hunter Biden in front of the truck as Joe Biden looks on. After about 18 months, Joe Biden’s team contacted the dealership and asked if they would buy the truck back, according to Keen. “Joe Biden didn’t want it,” he said. The dealership agreed, even though the truck was in bad condition, with considerable mileage and cosmetic damage and it needed extensive repairs. It was later resold, Keen said. Messages on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop also support details about the transaction and the monthly repayments from Hunter Biden to his father. Congressional Republicans have previously published records that show how starting in August 2017 entities tied to a Chinese oil company paid money to Hunter Biden’s Washington law firm, Owasco PC. The payments from CEFC China Energy, over more than a year, were attributed to legal and advisory work and totaled more than $4.7 million, the reports have shown. Now dissolved, CEFC was run by a since-disappeared oil tycoon who befriended Hunter Biden as he sought to make investments in the U.S. including through a joint venture they formed but which never got any funding. The new documents were released as House Republican leaders are moving toward a vote on formalizing an impeachment probe into President Biden. —James T. Areddy contributed to this article. WASHINGTON—Hunter Biden paid his father, Joe Biden, three installments totaling a little more than $4,000 in 2018 from a business account that held funds from his Chinese business dealings, according to documents released by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. House Republicans said the money transfers link President Biden, who wasn’t in office at the time, to his son’s business activity in China. Democrats said they merely showed Hunter Biden reimbursing his father for some payments his father was making on a 2018 Ford F-150 Raptor that Hunter Biden was using. The committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), said the payments “are now part of a pattern revealing Joe Biden knew about, participated in, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), the ranking member of the committee, said they showed no such thing. “As a private citizen, Joe Biden made car payments for his son, who paid him back,” Raskin said. “If Chairman Comer had any actual evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, he would not repeatedly resort to distorting the facts.” The three payments at issue, for $1,380 each, occurred in September, October and November of 2018, after Joe Biden was vice president and before he was president, according to the documents released Monday. Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said Comer was “reheating what is old as new to try to revive his sham of an investigation” into the BY ANNIE LINSKEY AND C. RYAN BARBER Biden-Probe Panel Wrangles Over Payments Hunter Biden paid his father a little over $4,000 from a business account in 2018, documents show. ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS Victor Manuel Rocha, then the ambassador to Bolivia, in 2001. GONZALO ESPINOZA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES CVS said prices will much more closely reflect what its pharmacies pay to acquire the drugs. STEFANIE DAZIO/ASSOCIATED PRESS JOHN-CHRISTIAN.COM 888.646.6466 crystals set in solid gold $390 hand-crafted in sterling silver with brilliant Swarovski Children’s Your Names Order by Christmas! 12/20 for 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

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A6 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. asylum. But in interviews, Republican senators said the change wasn’t enough. Privately, Republicans pushed to include mandatory immigration detention for all asylum seekers and proposed creating more detention spaces by using domestic military bases, two people familiar with the talks said. They also insisted on significantly curtailing an immigration authority known as humanitarian parole, which the Biden administration has been using to quickly let in refugees from the Ukraine war as well as some asylum seekers at the border who apply ahead of time. “So far, the proposals Republicans have put on the table would get no Democratic votes,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.). Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.), No. 2 in GOP leadership, said Republicans were preparing a new proposal late Monday and emphasized that any deal would need to significantly slow the influx of migrants to the U.S. “Right now everything’s in flux and moving,” he said. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) late Monday set up a procedural vote for Wednesday on a Ukraine package. The Senate will hold a closed-door classified briefing on the proposal on Tuesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been invited to speak via secure video, Schumer said. Federal agencies have spent all or nearly all of the supplemental funding approved by Congress to support Ukraine. Other pots of aid are similarly depleted. Pentagon officials said they issued contracts for all of the $10.5 billion in available funds for new weapons for Ukraine and have only a little left to replenish U.S. stocks after spending $16.8 billion on missile-defense systems, artillery shells, tanks and other equipment. “It’s fumes,” Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante said when asked what was left for Ukraine. —Lindsay Wise and Siobhan Hughes contributed to this article. Japanese coast guard members carry debris believed to be from a U.S. Osprey aircraft. KYODO NEWS/ASSOCIATED PRESS KYIV—The Ukrainian sniper had lain still for hours in nearfreezing temperatures when the command came to take the shot at a Russian soldier almost 2½ miles away. “You can,” his spotter said, and Vyacheslav Kovalskiy pulled his trigger. The bullet took around nine seconds to reach its target, who doubled up and fell, according to a video reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Kovalskiy and Ukraine say the shot set a new sniping distance record, breaking the previously acknowledged mark by more than 850 feet. While combat hits such as this aren’t verified by a thirdparty adjudicator, the shot has given Ukraine a morale boost when the country’s forces are struggling to make headway. Sniping has played a prominent role in the war with Russia, where static front lines in a flat landscape suit the discipline, but drones and mines change the way the marksmen operate. The macabre record was also a shot heard around the world of snipers, a group of highly skilled shooters who have long pushed the boundaries of how far a bullet can travel with accuracy. Some are skeptical that Kovalskiy’s shot was a record. To hit targets at ever-longer distances, snipers lean heavily on math, calculating a host of technical factors, from the air’s humidity to wind speed, temperature and the curvature of the earth. They also need a good rifle and a lot of luck. On Nov. 18, Kovalskiy was already packing his rifle by the time the bullet reached its destination and a member of his team shouted that it was a hit. The shot was filmed and on reviewing the footage later, Kovalskiy and other snipers concluded it had been deadly. “I was thinking that Russians would now know that is what Ukrainians are capable of,” said Kovalskiy, who hasn’t previously been named or spoken to the media. “Let them sit at home and be afraid.” Several snipers and ballistics experts contacted by the Journal said that while the shot is possible with the equipment described, it would be hard to execute given the uncontrollable variables, not least the weather, that would have to be taken into account. “For conventional sniping, there are so many variables that are hard to quantify, so the reality is anything over about 1,300 meters (roughly 4,300 feet) can be more luck than skill,” said Steve Walsh, a former U.S. Marines sniper instructor. Kovalskiy’s shot hit around 12,470 feet, about a third longer than the Golden Gate Bridge. That distance would break a record of 11,600 feet set in 2017 by a member of the Canadian Special Forces in Iraq. The 58-year-old former businessman’s journey to martial mythology started just before daybreak on Nov. 18, when he and his spotter, a partner who calculates distance, wind speed and other variables, set up positions across the river from a Russian military base in eastern Ukraine. The men, who are part of a military counterintelligence division of the Security Service of Ukraine, observed groups of Russian soldiers cutting wood. They considered these men’s ranks too low to shoot. Later, five soldiers appeared and Kovalskiy noticed one instructing. He had his officer. The spotter set to work. He used a laser to measure the distance to the soldiers. Using specialist software and meteorological data he concluded that there was a strong wind that would move the bullet about 200 feet from its trajectory. He calculated humidity and temperature, which affects how fast the bullet travels. Even the spin and curvature of the earth has to be factored in. By the time the bullet gets to its set distance, the target has shifted with the earth’s rotation. Kovalskiy tested a shot WORLD NEWS about 1,000 feet to the side of the target. It was a miss, the spotter told him. They had gotten the wind speed wrong. He reset, reloaded and aimed. “You have to [shoot] immediately because the wind changes constantly,” he said. Kovalskiy and his spotter wonder why there is so much skepticism about a shot of this distance when targets have been achieved at these lengths several times in competitions. Kovalskiy and his spotter say they have no regrets about killing Russians. Despite his age, he signed up as a sniper early in the war. “It doesn’t worry me a gram,” he said. — Ievgeniia Sivorka contributed to this article. BY ALISTAIR MACDONALD Ukrainian Sniper Claims Record Hit of Over 2 Miles Vyacheslav Kovalskiy, a 58-year-old former businessman, signed up as a sniper early in the war. Congress is debating how to proceed, with Republicans calling for more border-security measures and changes in immigration policy in exchange for approving the additional money. A possible vote on such a measure could come this week in the Senate, even as talks between Democratic and Republican negotiators were at a standstill. If a Senate deal is reached, the spotlight would then shift to Johnson, who has publicly and repeatedly called Ukraine aid a critical priority for the House in recent weeks, despite voting against additional security assistance for Kyiv this year before he became speaker. Johnson responded to the White House letter on Monday by saying that “any nationalsecurity supplemental package must begin with our own border. We believe both issues can be agreed upon if Senate Democrats and the White House will negotiate reasonably.” Congress has approved more than $100 billion to help Kyiv since Russia invaded. House Republicans have faced growing pressure to reject further aid, as voters in their congressional districts have soured on the effort. Johnson has warned Senate Republicans that the House GOP can’t pass a large aid package that combines funds for the border, Ukraine and Israel, the approach sought by Biden and favored by Senate leaders. He told the senators he wants to vote on Ukraine aid and border policy separately from Israel aid. Last week, Senate negotiators had appeared to reach an initial deal on one major change to the asylum system—tightening the initial screening standard migrants must clear when applying for Continued from PageOne A Ukrainian soldier is seen last month near the front line in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region battling Russian forces. American Aid for Kyiv Nearly Gone JOHANNESBURG—Wealthy nations are sending tens of billions of dollars to poorer ones for clean energy, the linchpin of a global strategy to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in the developing world. But two of the most ambitious efforts yet—in South Africa and Indonesia—are at risk of unraveling, sowing doubts about the rich world’s ability to push developing countries away from coal and other fossil fuels. South Africa and Indonesia, By Alexandra Wexler, Sha Hua and Matthew Dalton among the world’s most coalhungry economies, are backtracking on commitments they made to burn less of the fuel under agreements known as Just Energy Transition Partnerships, or JETPs, which offered them $28.5 billion from the U.S. and other wealthy nations. Officials are working to prevent the agreements from falling apart as governments convene in Dubai for COP28, the annual United Nations climate summit. Resistance from pro-coal politicians in both countries and fears about the economic and technical viability of quickly replacing the fuel are jeopardizing the agreements. South African and Indonesian officials say the money isn’t what they had hoped: Most of it will come in loans, not grants, saddling the countries with more debt. Climate funding “should be more constructive, not in the form of debts that will only increase the burden on undeveloped or developing countries,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in November. South Africa’s state-controlled power company has delayed its plans to retire coal-fired power plants. Indonesia says it likely won’t meet a cap for power-sector emissions negotiated under its program because of thousands of megawatts of coal-fired power plants that weren’t accounted for previously. Their backtracking shows the immense challenge of replacing coal in countries that rely on the fuel not only to generate electricity but also to provide jobs for tens of thousands of miners and facilitate economic development. Coal supports local economies and industries, and politicians have deep ties to mining companies and unions. Developing countries also say they are wary of ditching a reliable fuel source for new technologies that aren’t widely used yet. Wealthy nations aimed to assuage those concerns with billions of dollars in grants and low-interest loans to build clean-energy projects and find new jobs for miners. Such finance is crucial to advancing climate talks under the U.N. “JETP was advertised as this groundbreaking new way to help the Global South decarbonize, but more than 1.5 years later, it is looking increasingly shaky,” said Richard Halsey, policy adviser on the South African energy team at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a think tank. Since last year’s climate conference, Vietnam—another coal-reliant economy—and Senegal have also signed JETPs, valued at $15.5 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively. “Sometimes the national debate shows there are people in the country who are not progressive,” said Mathilde Bord-Laurans, head of the climate division at the French Development Agency, which helps fund the JETP programs. The coalition of wealthy nations that are funding the JETPs say they remain committed to the programs of South Africa and Indonesia. U.S. Funding Hasn’t Weaned Developing World Off Coal released. The crash of the tilt-rotor Osprey on Nov. 29 is one of the deadliest in the aircraft’s history. A crash in Australia in August killed three Marines and two crashes last year killed a further eight Marines. Eyewitnesses said that before the latest crash, the aircraft flipped over and appeared to be on fire. The Japanese coast guard, police and military have been involved in the search-and-rescue operation near the island of Yakushima in southern Japan. Osprey aircraft are used by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps in Japan, and regularly feature in training exercises. The CV-22 Osprey that crashed last week was involved in a routine training mission, the Air Force has said. A day after the crash, Japan asked the U.S. military to suspend flights by its Osprey aircraft and grounded its own fleet of 14. The U.S. military has continued Osprey flights in Japan. Since entering service in 2007, the Osprey has been involved in accidents that have killed dozens of U.S. service members, leading to changes in its design and operating procedures. The aircraft’s safety record also reflects its use in some of the most challenging environments, including deserts, at sea and on special-forces operations. Osprey accidents often receive media scrutiny in Japan, generating worries about potential harm to civilians. TOKYO—Searchers have found the sunken main fuselage of a U.S. military aircraft that crashed off the coast of southern Japan last week and the remains of five of the seven missing crew, the Air Force said Monday. Two of the five have been recovered, and teams from the U.S. and Japan were working on retrieving the others, the Air Force said. Of the eight crew aboard the aircraft, one was found shortly after the crash and confirmed dead. The Air Force has named him as Staff Sgt. Jacob M. Galliher, 24 years old, from Pittsfield, Mass. The identities of the other crew members haven’t been BY ALASTAIR GALE Some Osprey Crew Remains Found Off Japan JOSEPH SYWENKYJ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL  Startup gets clean energy to cities................................... B1 ALINA SMUTKO/REUTERS 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | A7 If you’re in the business of heavy industry or commercial transportation, you already know the complexity of delivering on your loweremissions goals. At ExxonMobil, we’re facing the same challenge. And we’re working to reduce our own carbon emissions. As part of that process, we’ve developed emission-reduction technologies that work on an industrial scale. With solutions like carbon capture, biofuels, and low-carbon hydrogen power, we can work with you to lower carbon emissions in your own business. You’ve made a pledge. Let us help you deliver. Let’s deliver on your carbon-neutral pledge. Scan the QR code to learn more or visit ExxonMobil.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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

A8 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. WORLD NEWS ways to cut costs. The company expects the fresh round of layoffs to help it reach its profitability target faster. In Monday’s letter, Ek said substantial cuts were the best option for accomplishing the company’s objectives and thanked laid-off employees for their help growing the company. “To be blunt, many smart, talented and hard-working people will be departing us,” he said. The average employee will receive five months of severance pay. A leaner structure will change the way Spotify employees work and allow the company to invest profits more strategically back into the business, Ek said. “Lean doesn’t mean that we have small ambitions,” Vogel said in an interview. The company will be more thoughtful with its future spending and focus on areas that are driving the most growth, he said. Spotify posted a surprise profit in the third quarter and stronger-than-expected subscriber and user growth. The company raised the price of its subscription in the U.S. and other major markets over the summer, a longawaited increase the company said hasn’t led to higher churn. The restructuring marks Spotify’s third round of significant layoffs this year. In January the company said it would lay off about 600 employees, or 6% of staff. In June it announced plans to trim an additional 200 jobs, or 2% of its workforce. Those cuts also brought changes to the C-suite, including the departure of Chief Content Officer Dawn Ostroff, a key architect of the company’s expansion into podcasting. The company was reorganized under Co-Presidents Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström. 2016 ’18 ’20 ’22 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 Average number of full-time Spotify employees Sources: the company (employees); FactSet (performance) 2021 ’23 ’22 -80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40% S&P 500 Spotify Technology Share-price and index performance over the past three years Chief Financial Officer Paul Vogel said that the company’s projections for profitability in 2024 remain and that the fundamentals of the business are good. “We’re doing this from a position of strength,” Vogel said. Spotify, like other technology companies, grew in size and scope during the pandemic, with its head count nearly doubling over the past three years to more than 8,000 workers, as a result of hiring and acquisitions. As investors have become more focused on profitability than growth, many streaming-focused companies have aggressively cut costs. At Spotify, that meant scaling back a $1 billion bet on podcasting, including through layoffs earlier this year. It continues to back top podcasters Joe Rogan, Alex Cooper and Emma Chamberlain, and it stopped making a number of other shows such as Meghan Markle’s “Archetypes.” Spotify, which reported a €462 million loss in the first nine months of the year, is trying to balance investments in emerging areas such as its growing ad business with the need to become consistently profitable. The company also is focused on its audiobooks offering, which rolled out to subscribers in the U.S. last month. Last year, during its first investor day since going public, Ek said he wants Spotify to be the world’s largest audio company and announced ambitious growth targets, such as generating $100 billion in revenue by 2030. He said the company plans to reach profitability by 2024. As investor pressure to hit that profitability goal increased over the past year, Ek told executives to look for Continued from PageOne FROM PAGE ONE Spotify to Cut 17% Of Staff between the two countries. The detailed allegations, contained in an indictment unsealed last week, give new weight to the bombshell Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dropped in September: that Canada had evidence that agents of the Indian government were involved in killing Nijjar. New Delhi responded with outraged denials and forced Ottawa to withdraw more than 40 Canadian diplomats from India. In contrast, India has acknowledged the seriousness of U.S. concerns about the alleged involvement of a New Delhi-based state official in the Pannun plot, as conveyed by officials up to and including President Biden, who raised the matter with Modi in September. Modi’s government said on Wednesday—as the indictment laying out the plot was set to be made public—that it had set up a special committee to investigate and would act on its findings. Modi’s government had designated Nijjar and Pannun as terrorists and accused them of fomenting subversive activity. Both men used fiery rhetoric against the Indian government, but it was as much where they expressed their cause as how they did so that set India’s teeth on edge. Overseas support for an independent Sikh homeland is a problem for India, given the strong ties between Sikhs at home and in the diaspora, said C. Raja Mohan, a New Delhibased senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “The Sikh groups don’t threaten U.S. and Canadian interests so they can treat it mainly as a freedom-of-speech issue,” he said. “India can’t.” A year before he was murdered, Nijjar was visited by four officials from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada’s national-security division. “There’s a threat against your life,” one of the officers said, according to Nijjar’s son Balraj Nijjar, who was at the meeting. The activities of Pannun, who has a private law practice in New York City, meanwhile, stirred continued anxiety in India. In 2016 he helped Nijjar craft a letter to Trudeau denying he supported violence, after Indian authorities had accused Nijjar of running a terror camp in British Columbia. In July 2020, India designated Nijjar and Pannun terrorists under its Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Sikh groups in the West say India is trying to censor lawful free speech. By then, India’s government had become increasingly concerned by protests at Indian diplomatic missions and nonbinding secession referendums organized by Pannun’s advocacy group, Sikhs for Justice. The first one in the U.S. is set for San Francisco in January. By this year, Pannun and Nijjar had something new in common, U.S. prosecutors said: They were both on a secret hit list. By June, Nikhil Gupta, the India-based drug trafficker named in the indictment that was unsealed this week, was pushing to expedite the project of killing Pannun. “Finish him brother, finish him,” Gupta said on a call to a contact he thought could put him in touch with a hit man, according to the indictment. The contact—really a U.S. government informant—offered up a fake surveillance photo of Pannun on June 4 and said his associates could do the job as soon as they got a $25,000 advance. Days later, the Indian security officer who had engaged Gupta said payment was on its way, and Gupta relayed that this wouldn’t be the only killing. Though the U.S. indictment implicates only a single Indian official, friends of Nijjar in Surrey’s Sikh community said it validates their criticisms of India’s tactics. “We were saying from Day One that the Indian government was behind the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar,” said Bhupinder Hothi, who befriended Nijjar when he first arrived in Canada. “This clearly brings everything out. It gives us a lot of relief.” Hours after two masked men assassinated a Sikh community leader in the parking lot of his temple in Canada, a senior Indian security officer sent a drug trafficker he knew a video of the blood-covered victim slumped over in his truck. An hour later, he followed that up with the New York address of another Sikh activist he wanted killed. The trafficker got right on it, U.S. prosecutors say. He passed the video and other messages to a purported hit man who had accepted a $15,000 advance payment for the contract killing on U.S. soil, and suggested there could be more such work. “We have so many targets,” he told the hired gun, who he didn’t know was really an undercover U.S. law-enforcement officer. Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the 45- year-old killed near Vancouver on June 18, and Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the 56-year-old New York lawyer who prosecutors say was set up for the same fate, were passionately devoted to a cause obscure to many Westerners: carving out of India an independent Sikh state called Khalistan. Allegations of an Indian plot to eliminate them have seeded a diplomatic contretemps that threatens to rattle the blossoming relationship between New Delhi and Washington. In the same month Nijjar was gunned down and Pannun’s would-be killer allegedly hired, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an elaborate state visit to the U.S. It was designed, the White House said, to “affirm the deep and close partnership” By Vipal Monga, Aruna Viswanatha, Tripti Lahiri and Suryatapa Bhattacharya HONG KONG—Prominent pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow said she was exiling herself in Canada after getting her passport back from police in return for taking a patriotic trip to China, an exchange that sheds light on Hong Kong’s efforts to re-educate political opponents. Chow, who is on police bail while under investigation on suspicion of national-security crimes, said she was taken across the border to mainland China in August by five Hong Kong officials. In the neighboring city of Shenzhen, she was taken to an exhibition documenting China’s achievements and to the headquarters of tech giant Tencent. When Chow returned to Hong Kong, she said, she was instructed to write a letter thanking the police for the trip and enabling her to understand the great development of the motherland. She then got her passport back so she could study in Toronto, from where she took to social media on Sunday to say she wouldn’t return to her home city. “I have never denied China’s economic development,” Chow wrote on Instagram. “But how can such a powerful country send people who fight for democracy to prison, restrict their freedom of movement, and even require them to go to mainland China and visit patriotic exhibitions in exchange for their passports? Is this not a kind of fragility.” The Hong Kong government on Monday condemned her plan to jump bail and said fugitives would be pursued for life unless they turned themselves in. BY ELAINE YU Activist Flees Hong Kong After China Trip Bhupinder Hothi, above, said he believes New Delhi was behind the June murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia, where a nonbinding Sikh secession referendum was held in September. Plot to Kill U.S. Sikh Tied to Canada Murder Alleged role of Indian agent in failed bid reflects fear of separatists ALANA PATERSON FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2) Recent job cuts are Spotify’s third round of layoffs this year. PHILIP CHEUNG FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL HAVE A JOLLY HOLIDAY IN 5 CARATS OF SUMPTUOUS DIAMONDS ´Tis the Season to Sparkle Dazzled with 5.00 ct. t.w. round brilliant-cut diamonds, our 16" sterling silver tennis necklace is a timeless style to welcome into your wardrobe or gift to someone special! Available in 18" $2,350 and 20" $2,395 Also in 18kt gold over sterling silver. Item #936553 $ 2,295 Compare at $3,195 FREE EXPRESS SHIPPING — ORDER TODAY! 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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | A9 WORLD NEWS INDONESIA At Least 11 Die in Volcano Eruption Dozens of Indonesian hikers were crowded near the top of Mount Marapi, one of the most celebrated views on Sumatra island. A few hours later the volcano erupted, killing at least 11 of them and injuring many others. Rescuers brought about four dozen people to safety, but 12 remained unaccounted for Monday night, officials said. The eruption sent plumes of volcanic ash 1.9 miles into the air, blanketing the city of Bukittinggi. The ash and falling rocks hit hikers, causing head injuries and severe burns, said Dr. Achmad Mochtar, General Hospital director. Authorities said Sunday’s eruption caught them by surprise because it wasn’t preceded by significant activity. —Jon Emont GUINEA-BISSAU President Moves to Dissolve Parliament Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo issued a decree Monday dissolving the nation’s opposition-controlled parliament, less than six months after it was reconstituted after a similar move by the president in 2022. Embalo cited last week’s shootout between troops loyal to him and forces controlled by the parliament, which he described as a failed coup. “The date for holding the next legislative elections will be set in due time,” the decree said. “This Presidential Decree comes into force immediately.” The leadership of the parliament rejected the move, noting that the constitution states that parliament can’t be dissolved in the first 12 months after an election. —Associated Press VENEZUELA Government Wins Vote on Guyana Venezuelans have approved a referendum called by the government of President Nicolás Maduro to claim sovereignty over an oil- and mineral-rich area of neighboring Guyana it argues was stolen when the border was drawn more than a century ago. It remains unclear how Maduro will enforce the results of the Sunday vote. Guyana considers the referendum a step toward annexation, and the vote has its residents on edge. The National Electoral Council claimed to have counted more than 10.5 million votes even though few people could be seen at polling sites. Voters were asked whether they support establishing a state in the disputed territory, known as Essequibo. —Associated Press WORLD WATCH Authorities warned residents not to go within 2 miles of Mount Marapi’s crater on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, and to wear masks, head protection and goggles before leaving their homes. Plan to Flood Gaza Tunnels With Seawater Considered TEL AVIV—Israel and Hamas are locked in some of their fiercest fighting of the two-month-old war as Israel launched its offensive in the south while trying to finish its operations in and around Gaza City. The Israeli military essentially has cornered Hamas fighters in two of their last strongholds in the northern Gaza Strip —the Shajaiya neighborhood of Gaza City and the city of Jabalia, immediately to the north. Israel has conducted heavy airstrikes in those areas since the fighting resumed over the weekend, including one strike that Israeli officials said killed Hamas’s battalion commander in Shajaiya, and which Palestinian officials said caused hundreds of civilian casualties. Meanwhile, Israel is turning its attention to the southern city of Khan Younis, the home of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and where Israeli analysts believe he and other senior Hamas officials are hiding underground. Israel also believes Khan Younis is probably where hostages are being held. The fight for Khan Younis, the second largest city in Gaza, is seen by analysts in Israel as the last great battle for control of Gaza, and probably the toughest fight Israeli forces will face. The city, already densely packed in its center in normal times, now hosts many of the hundreds of thousands of people who fled from northern Gaza, creating an additional challenge for Israeli forces. Israel’s military for days has been calling on those living in BY BENOIT FAUCON AND DOV LIEBER eastern areas of Khan Younis to evacuate. Many have, indicating a ground incursion is coming. Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israeli troops were moving from building to building, and tunnel to tunnel, careful to avoid booby-trapped sites. He said the battles in northern Gaza involve “close-quarter fighting.” Israeli commanders have said they are working against a political clock to complete their objectives of removing Hamas from power and freeing more than 100 hostages, worrying that U.S. support will dry up if the war drags on and civilian casualties continue to mount. More than 15,000 Palestinians have died during Israel’s offensive, authorities in the Hamas-run enclave said, mostly women and children. The figure doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians. Palestinian militants still hold hostages from the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel in which Israeli officials say more than 1,200 people were killed. On Monday morning Israel said its air force hit roughly 200 Hamas targets across Gaza, with more strikes throughout the day. “The next battles in the north are going to be deadlier than the previous battles,” said Michael Horowitz, the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a security and risk-management consulting firm based in the Middle East. Ne’ama Hazem, a resident in central Gaza City, said bombings late Sunday were the worst since the beginning of the war. “We heard shelling of tanks, warplanes, rockets, armed clashes and sounds of windows breaking all over the neighborhood,” she said. The Israeli military said the Kfir brigade, which usually is based in the West Bank, is operating in the northern Gaza Strip, indicating how the military is redeploying and retraining its forces for the war in Gaza. The military said the brigade was destroying Hamas’s tunnels, a skill it wouldn’t have used in the West Bank, where militants don’t use tunnels. The military also said soldiers from the brigade were engaged in close combat with militants, indicating a new round of fierce battles in the northern Gaza Strip. The expansion of fighting to the south promises to aggravate a dire humanitarian crisis. Renewed fighting has cut the transit of humanitarian aid from the south to Gaza’s central areas, a United Nations agency overseeing the distribution said Monday. Much of northern Gaza’s population moved south to escape fighting in recent weeks. Roughly 70% of the strip’s population of 2.2 million people is now in the south, with poor living conditions threatening disease outbreaks, said the Palestinian Red Crescent. President Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. will continue to press for the safety of civilians. The death toll of the war has risen to 15,899 since the start of the Israeli aggression on the sector, said Ashraf alQudra, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza. On Monday, a senior Israeli official said at least 5,000 militants have been killed in the fighting. Fighting in Gaza resumed over the weekend after talks between Israel and Hamas broke down after the militants refused to free more hostages unless Israel agreed to a pause in fighting. In an attempt to break the deadlock, Vice President Kamala Harris said her national security adviser, Phil Gordon, would travel to Israel and the West Bank this week for more talks. On Monday, Sullivan said intensive discussions were still under way with Israel, Qatar and Egypt for the release of hostages. “Hamas continues to hold women—civilian women—and will not release them, and Israel is not prepared to close the book on those women or to give them up,” Sullivan said. Top diplomats from Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and possibly other countries are expected to meet Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Friday, according to officials. Arab nations and other Muslim-majority countries are pressing Blinken to intervene with Israel to renew a ceasefire. Sullivan said that while the U.S. and Arab leaders agree on many issues, including aiming for regional stability, they disagree about calling for a cease-fire because of the hostages being held and Israel’s right to go after Hamas. —Abeer Ayyoub, Vivian Salama and William Mauldin contributed to this article. ‘Close-Quarter Fighting’ Rages in Strip Combat intensifies in the north, while Israeli forces expand attacks in the south Palestinians on Monday inspected the destruction caused by Israeli airstrikes on their homes in Khan Younis, Gaza. AHMAD HASABALLAH/GETTY IMAGES WASHINGTON—Israel has assembled a system of large pumps it could use to flood Hamas’s vast network of tunnels under the Gaza Strip with seawater, a tactic that could destroy the tunnels and drive the fighters from their underground refuge but also threaten Gaza’s water supply, U.S. officials said. The Israel Defense Forces finished assembling large seawater pumps roughly one mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp around mid-November. Each of at least five pumps can draw water from the Mediterranean Sea and move thousands of cubic meters of water per hour into the tunnels, flooding them within weeks. Israel first informed the U.S. of the option in early November, prompting a discussion weighing its feasibility and effect on the environment against the military value of disabling the tunnels, officials said. U.S. officials said they didn’t know how close the Israeli government was to carrying out the plan. Israel hasn’t made a final decision to move ahead, nor has it ruled the plan out, officials said. Sentiment inside the U.S. was mixed. Some U.S. officials privately expressed concern about the plan, while other officials said the U.S. supports the disabling of the tunnels and said there wasn’t necessarily any U.S. opposition to the plan. The Israelis have identified about 800 tunnels, though they acknowledge the network is bigger than that. The weekslong process of flooding the tunnels would enable Hamas fighters, and potentially hostages, to move out, a person familiar with the plan said. It isn’t clear whether Israel would even consider using the pumps before all the hostages are released from Gaza. The Palestinian militants who attacked Israel on Oct. 7 took more than 200 hostages and brought them back to the Gaza Strip. “We are not sure how successful pumping will be since nobody knows the details of the tunnels and the ground around them,” the person said. “It’s impossible to know if that will be effective because we don’t know how seawater will drain in tunnels no one has been in before.” The deliberation over the plan to flood the tunnels illustrates the balance Israel’s forces must make between pursuing their war aims and the intense international pressure they face to protect civilians. The Israeli military campaign has flattened neighborhoods and the fighting has displaced more than a million Gazans from their homes. An Israel Defense Forces official declined to comment on the flooding plan, but said: “The IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas’s terror capabilities in various ways, using different military and technological tools.” Hamas has used the tunnel system to hide, move undetected between houses in Gaza and hold hostages. Some of the more-sophisticated tunnels were built with reinforced concrete, contain power and communication lines. Most Gazans don’t currently have access to clean water. Among the sources for drinking water in Gaza are purification plants that have been recently disabled. Before Oct. 7, three Israeli pipelines sent water into Gaza. Of those, one has shut and the other two operate at sharply reduced levels. Palestinians now receive no more than three liters a day, according to the United Nations. The U.N. says the minimum should be 15 liters a day. Because it isn’t clear how permeable the tunnels are or how much seawater would seep into the soil and to what effect, it is hard to fully assess the impact of pumping seawater into the tunnels, said Jon Alterman, senior vice president at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Former U.S. officials familiar with the issue confirmed that Israeli and U.S. officials had discussed flooding the tunnels with seawater but said they didn’t know the current status of the plan. The former officials acknowledged such an operation would put the Biden administration in a tough position and perhaps bring global condemnation, but said it was one of the few effective options for permanently disabling the Hamas tunnel system. One of the former officials said Gaza’s water and sanitation systems are badly damaged and heavily polluted, and would need to be reconstructed with international assistance after the war. Typically, militaries charged with clearing tunnels, including Israel’s, use dogs and robots to check for threats or to search for hostages before sending ground troops in, said Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and officer in the Marine Corps and C.I.A. “Dogs are most effective,” he said, but need to be followed by troops to clear the tunnels. “Robots move slow and break. And using humans is risky.” Using water over a long period would force Hamas fighters out, Mulroy said. But “if you salted the water, it could compound the humanitarian crisis,” he said. —Dov Lieber contributed to this article. By Nancy A. Youssef, Warren P. Strobel and Gordon Lubold Israel says Hamas used a tunnel at Al-Shifa Hospital, though it isn’t clear if it is to be flooded. VICTOR R. CAIVANO/ASSOCIATED PRESS ARDHY FERNANDO/ASSOCIATED PRESS 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

A10 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. FROM PAGE ONE Above, residents of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip after a raid on Saturday. At right, top to bottom, Wafaa Eid has had 68 relatives die in the bombing across Gaza, including her sister Hayam Eid, her brother Essam Eid and his daughter Samah Eid. Some family members were killed in the airstrike that blew apart Samah’s home in Nuseirat, in the center of the strip. CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: MOHAMMED TALATENE/DPA/ZUMA PRESS; EID FAMILY (4) shelling nearby. Israel’s military didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether it would do so again. “We are at war with Hamas, not with the civilians of Gaza,” the Israeli military said last month on X, formerly Twitter. According to an Israeli security official, Israel estimates it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters, of more than 30,000 that it said were in the group’s ranks before the conflict. In Al Bureij, near the middle of the Gaza Strip, residents got calls from people who identified themselves as Israeli intelligence as early as Oct. 10. “They said they want to bomb our homes,” psychologist Wafaa Eid recalls her neighbors saying. She grabbed what clothes and tins of food she could and within half an hour fled just over a mile west, to her sister’s home, where no evacuation call came. In all, 24 members of Eid’s family moved that day. “For me, it was like the world had ended,” Eid says. Over the next three weeks, 68 of Eid’s relatives died in the bombing across Gaza. Eid’s brother Essam Eid, a travel agent, and nine members of his family also left Al Bureij on Oct. 10. They sheltered at his daughter Samah’s home in Nuseirat, in the center of the strip, where no evacuation calls came. Five days later, that house was blown apart. Children as young as 2 years old were under the rubble, and rescuers digging with hands couldn’t reach them. Some 16 of Eid’s relatives were killed. She remembers feeling numb. Two days later, she heard news reports of strikes on Al Bureij, the neighborhood where her sister Hayam Eid lived. “Is it true, is it true?” she Palestinians Hunt for Safety World’s Softest Plush. “The average plush might have 300 to 400 threads per inch. But ours is 1,000-plus per inch. It’s buttery, silky, cloud-soft that is cool to the touch.” He called the polyester used by World’s Softest the “Taj Mahal” of materials, costing about $10 a yard, compared with plush materials that cost around $2 a yard. The pricey stuff, he said, can “stimulate Continued from PageOne every nerve in your hand.” MGA Entertainment, the empire behind Bratz and LOL Dolls, recently released Fluffie Stuffiez, a plush toy with a top layer of shaggy fur and a fleece-like material underneath. “The top is tactile, so you want to keep touching it,” said Isaac Larian, MGA chief executive, “and underneath it is very soft and squishy.” Ty, the maker of Beanie Babies, said its plush toys are softer than ever. In May, the company switched Beanie Babies to “the same fabric used by the top fashion brands in the world,” said chief executive and co-founder Ty Warner. “Soft sells,” Warner said. “The more cuddly, the better. The sense of touch and feel makes kids feel safe and secure.” Gund, the plush-toy company owned by Spin Master, markets its toys as huggable. Adam Hyman, a Spin Master vice president, said the trick is crafting proper plush interiors. “If you overstuff a plush, it feels different,” he said. “If you understuff a plush, it feels different.” Plush toys have for more than a century provided soothing companionship to children. Toy makers have gotten a lift from the so-called kidult market—grown-ups who collect children’s playthings including cuddly Squishmallows and velvety Jellycat characters. “I love going for something soft, squishable and comfortable,” said Sylvia Stephens, a 28-year-old medical assistant in Yamhill, Ore. She has more than 100 plush toys, including arcade prizes, which she likes to use as couch pillows. “They make me happy,” she said. Cadence Thompson, a sixthgrader in Bowling Green, Ky., falls asleep at night surrounded by her Squishmallows. “Some pillows you have to fluff them up, but Squishmallows you don’t even have to fluff them up,” said Cadence, 11 years old. Graham Budde, an 11-yearold Pokémon and Minecraft fan in San Diego, has a collection of plush toys he keeps on his bed and in his closet. He pretends they are playing videogames or watching TV with him. “They can also be very soothing, where if you are sad you can talk to them,” he said. “Now it’s all about plush,” said Steve Pasierb, president and CEO of the Toy Association, a U.S. trade group. Hardball competition has yielded new models that are scented or have “oddly curly hair,” he said. “If they have a whole new edge, you’ll want 20 of them.” At the New York City toy store FAO Schwarz, racks of store-branded plush toys are first to greet shoppers at the entrance: Fluffy unicorns. Velvet seals. Rainbow narwhals. Dogs with weirdly realisticlooking fur. Plush toys make up more than 30% of FAO Schwarz’s business, said chief merchandising officer David Niggli. Customers at a new in-store “restaurant” can order and personalize Jellycat food plushies from a pretend diner counter. The gimmick has helped sell “literally tens of thousands” of Jellycat dolls, he said. Jeremy Padawer, the chief brand officer of Squishmallow maker Jazwares, estimates the company will sell 30 million Squishmallows during the fourth quarter of 2023, including a new cast of familiar characters—Harry Potter, Pokémon and Minnie Mouse. Ruhe, the owner of Mildred & Dildred, said she stocked up on Jellycat, Squishables and Palm Pals and expects them to sell out. Ruhe has a waiting list for a fuzzy little legume from Jellycat called the Amuseable Peanut. She is also betting on the tie-dye grim reaper from Squishable. “They are like little works of art,” Ruhe said. the enclave. A truce to free hostages and allow aid into the enclave stopped the bombing for a week late last month. When it expired early Friday, Israel urged Palestinians to make way again. The resumption of bombing will force the Palestinians to again calculate and recalculate an impossible and potentially deadly equation—whether it is safer to stay put, or keep moving in search of a safe place within Gaza, a territory roughly the size of Philadelphia. About two months earlier, Hamas stormed the Israeli frontier, carrying out attacks that left 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. Militants took more than 200 people hostage. Over 15,000 people have died in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the government media office in the Hamas-run enclave. Most were women and children. The figures don’t distinguish between civilians and militants. In recent days, the U.S. has warned Israel that the number of deaths in Gaza must start to trend downward. “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” said U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. “Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering, and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.” Crammed in The death toll has surged as extended families crowd under one roof. Uprooted Gazans camp in relatives’ homes or make do in shelters, and a single strike can take out generations. Of the around 2.2 million people in Gaza, some 1.8 million have been displaced from their homes, according to the United Nations. Abuouda’s family sheltered for two days at his cousin’s home in Gaza City, with 25 people crammed into a house built for four in the Daraj quarter of the city, sleeping wherever there was floor space. Abuouda returned north to his work as a gastroenterologist at Indonesia Hospital. Then the second call came. The voice recording told Abuouda’s family to vacate Daraj, but didn’t say where to go. Israel says it has undertaken extensive efforts—including sending millions of voice messages—to ensure the safety of civilians in the Gaza Strip during the conflict. On Friday, the Israeli military released a map that divides the enclave into hundreds of numbered blocks. Leaflets dropped into the enclave have a QR code that opens the online map indicating where civilians in a specific area should go to avoid being in the crossfire, said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari on Monday. “Residents of Gaza! It is a safe means to preserve your safety, lives and the lives of your families,” says the Israeli military website accompanying the map. Most people in Gaza don’t have reliable access to the internet or enough electricity to charge cellphones, so residents are unlikely to see the messages in time, according to U.N. officials. Israel accuses Hamas of embedding itself in civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, using ordinary Palestinians as human shields, a claim Hamas denies. “Every civilian death is a Continued from PageOne tragedy, a tragedy that the IDF does not want,” said Hagari, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. “While Hamas terrorists hide behind civilians, Israel does its best to distinguish between civilians and terrorists.” For most families, there is no way out of Gaza. Israel sealed its border after the Hamas attacks and later only foreign passport holders and their direct relatives or the very badly injured could attempt to cross into Egypt. The Israeli military began telling everyone in the north of the strip to move south one week into the military campaign through text messages, phone calls and air-dropped fliers. Some messages warned that those who didn’t comply risked association with a terrorist organization. For decades, Israel has used calls and leaflet drops to minimize civilian casualties in conflict but the Israeli military says it has done so on an “unprecedented scale” in this war, with more than 30,000 phone calls, four million leaflets, and millions of text and voice messages. “This outreach aimed to alert civilians about impending airstrikes and guide them to safety,” a spokesman for the military said. Many in Gaza heeded the initial warnings right away, traveling south in a chaotic rush only to find it overcrowded. Food and water were scarce, and bombs still fell from the sky. Rents in the south had more than doubled. Some 807,000 people remained in north Gaza in midNovember, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, unable or unwilling to move. Israel’s ground operation, which also resumed on Friday and is now expanding south, includes block-by-block battles with militants in Gaza City. Before the truce, Israel opened what it called a “humanitarian corridor” for a few hours on some days to enable civilians to go south, though some who used it reported cried out to her sister Om Ahmed as she rushed downstairs. Ahmed’s weeping told Eid enough, and she fainted. In all, 16 in her family were killed in the strike. The youngest was 6 years old, and the oldest—her sister Hayam—was 62. History of flight Eid’s grandparents had come from Al Maghar in the sun-baked hills above the Sea of Galilee and now a city in Israel’s north. In 1948, at the creation of the Israeli state, the family, like hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, was forced to leave. Palestinians refer to that displacement as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Many see the current war through the lens of that 75-year-old event and fear losing their land again. “We have been living in Gaza ever since, but we have never forgotten our homeland,” says Eid. Her family settled in Al Bureij, a small refugee camp. They became merchants, travel agents and government employees, and as the family grew the neighborhood took on their name, which means holiday or festival, Eid says. She is the youngest of eight siblings, with two sisters and five brothers, two of whom died before the war. “We are very connected despite the large number of our family,” Eid says. On Oct. 23, Eid discovered four of her cousins and their families—12 people in all—had died in airstrikes in Zawaida, a neighborhood in Deir al Balah, further south. On Nov. 2, another cousin, Marwan Eid, living in Al Bureij had taken his grandson across town for a shower. On the way back, they were killed in an airstrike, Eid says. “None were Hamas,” she says. “They were just living their lives.” A few days later, three more of her cousins and their families—22 relatives in all—died. “I am a psychologist but I cannot deal with all of this,” she says through tears. “I need 20 psychiatrists to help me recover from this trauma.” Her phone is full of the photos of the dozens of slain relatives. One shows her niece Areej, a 23-year-old dentist, with her Egyptian fiancé. The pair were set to marry in November. Areej Eid died on Oct. 17 in the strike that killed her mother, Wafaa Eid’s sister Hayam. “We are living but dead inside,” Eid says. On the move As Israel readied to send ground troops into northern Gaza, some Palestinian families held out, wary of Israeli claims that the south was safe and also haunted by their losses from Nakba. Abuouda, the doctor, says the idea of another Nakba seemed unimaginable at the outset of the war. “I thought that we would be away from our home for a while and then go back,” he says. On Oct. 10, after the second warning, his wife and children fled to a relative’s home in AlShati, a refugee camp northwest of Gaza City. The next morning, an airstrike at an adjacent building killed several neighbors. Abuouda heard the news at the end of a 48-hour shift, left the hospital and rode an ambulance to meet his family. “I started to look for ways to protect them,” Abuouda says. They went to a packed U.N. shelter slightly further north in Jabalia. At 3 a.m. on Oct. 13, the family’s first night in the refuge, U.N. officials told them Israel wanted everyone to move south. The family’s car still had fuel, but Abuouda had to retrieve it from Gaza City. They headed to Abuouda’s sister-inlaw’s, in Deir al Balah, just south of the evacuation zone. It took them four hours to travel 12 miles. Around 100 family members were at that house. The air was thick with the smell of smoke, the sound of shelling never far away. On the ninth day, a strike hit a house about a quarter of a mile away, killing dozens of people, Abuouda says. On Oct. 23, the Abuoudas climbed into their Fiat again, dodging craters and driving past burned out buildings, along the 12-mile journey south to Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town. They squeezed into another U.N. school shelter as bombs went off nearby. Just over a month after they arrived in Rafah, on Nov. 24, the bombing paused, bringing the first quiet for a long time, Abuouda says. It was also the day he learned his six-story home in Beit Hanoun was destroyed. With the cease-fire over, he can hear explosions but not close, he says, and the instructions offered by the Israelis so far remain vague. Israel has designated a small area of land by the coast known as Al Mawasi as a humanitarian zone, but it has no buildings and isn’t a suitable place to live, Abuouda says. Winter is approaching. “There’s nowhere else to go,” he says. Wafaa Eid, whose home has also been wiped out, left Gaza for Egypt with her brother, who works for Jordan’s Arab Bank, on Nov. 18. They were among the few people in Gaza who could do so without a foreign passport, in an arrangement facilitated by the Jordanian government. In her exhaustion and grief, she thinks about her two siblings, still in Gaza. “All I want now is to get my family out of hell and death,” she says. —Dov Lieber contributed to this article. ISRAEL JORDAN EGYPT SYRIA Area of detail WEST BANK Oct. 8: Hussam Abuouda and his family leave Beit Hanoun for Gaza City Oct. 10: Abuouda’s wife and children go to Al-Shati They shelter for two days in the Daraj quarter Oct. 13: The family heads to the home of Abuouda’s sister-in-law in Deir al Balah, south of Wadi Gaza, where they congregate with 100 relatives. It takes four hours to drive 12 miles. Oct. 12: They all move to Jabalia refugee camp Oct. 23: They drive another 12 miles south to Rafah, where they shelter in a U.N. school. Wadi Gaza evacuation line Mediterranean Sea ISRAEL 1 2 3 4 5 6 Nuseirat Camp Nuseirat Camp Al Bureij Camp l Bureij Camp Al-Shati Camp Al-Shati Camp Deir al Balah eir al Balah Beit Hanoun eit Hanoun Jabalia Refugee Camp Jabalia Refugee Camp Rafah Gaza City aza City 2 miles 2 km N Source: Staff reports Emma Brown/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL The Abuouda family moved five times in less than a month, following Israeli instructions to avoid airstrikes. Plush-Toys Compete for Softness 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

© 2023 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | A11 chemicals in these products,” says Tamarra James-Todd, an associate professor of environmental reproductive epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. None of the research showed that the products caused the cancers, but rather that use of the products was associated with higher risks. It’s unclear exactly what chemicals or combinations of chemicals may be leading to increased risk of those cancers, says Lauren Wise, an epidemiology professor at Boston University School of Public Health. But high doses and frequent exposures of formaldehyde have been linked to leukemia and nasopharyngeal cancer. The Personal Care Products Council, a trade association, noted that hair-straightening products are regulated by the FDA and that companies must ensure their products are safe. It pointed to what it perceived as flaws in recent research and said that finding a link isn’t the same thing as proving a cause. It said it would support the FDA’s proposed ban, which would bar formaldehyde as well as formaldehyde-releasing ingredients in hair straighteners, and that “ensuring product safety, consumer trust and confidence through science-backed measures is our utmost priority.” What you can do Many products such as keratin treatments are marketed as formaldehyde-free but contain methylene glycol, which when heated releases formaldehyde, researchers say. The FDA says to look out for formaldehyde-related ingredients, which include formalin and methylene glycol. The Environmental Working Group, a Washington nonprofit, has a Skin Deep cosmetics database, which rates products for personal safety, and includes a list of other commonly used names for formaldehyde. EWG also has a Healthy Living App where consumers can scan personal care products and see information about them. With salon treatments, it’s harder to know what’s in the products than in store-bought relaxers, says David Andrews, a senior scientist for EWG. He recommends asking your stylist what’s in the products. Regulating hair products The FDA regulates hair straighteners as cosmetics, not drugs; they don’t go through the same level of safety testing and approvals process that medications do. Recent studies have fueled a flurry of lawsuits across the country. More than 7,000 lawsuits have been consolidated in federal court in Illinois, filed against more than a dozen manufacturers of hair straighteners and relaxers. The suit claims companies including L’Oréal and Revlon knowingly marketed and sold products with harmful chemicals, failing to warn customers of their potential cancer risks. Revlon declined to comment on the suit and on the health concerns more broadly. A spokesperson for L’Oréal said the company is confident in the safety of its products and that it believes the suit has no merit.  The FDA is working on a proposal that would ban formaldehyde from hair smoothing and straightening products. PERSONAL JOURNAL. some contain chemicals that can disrupt the endocrine system, such as phthalates, phenols and parabens. Endocrine disrupters may behave like estrogen or other hormones that can lead to an increased risk of cancer, says Dale Sandler, chief of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences epidemiology branch. What the science says Women who told researchers they used hair-straightening products four or more times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer compared with those who didn’t, according to a 2022 study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. A separate October study in the journal Environmental Research found that postmenopausal women who regularly used hair straighteners had a 50% to 70% increased risk of developing uterine cancer. Other research has suggested links with ovarian and breast cancers, though the breast cancer data is more mixed. “What our research has shown is that there are multiple harmful Potential Risks With Hair-Straightening Millions of women are using hair-straightening treatments and products that might be harmful to their health. More research is linking chemicals in these products to an increased risk of uterine, ovarian and breast cancer. Studies also suggest that frequent use of such products can negatively affect puberty and pregnancy. Researchers don’t know exactly what chemicals may be leading to these increased health risks. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspects one culprit may be formaldehyde, which is often used in salon-based keratin straightening treatments and has been linked to certain cancers. The agency is working on a proposal that would ban the chemical from hair smoothing and straightening products. Drugstore-bought hair straighteners and relaxers don’t typically TANIAKITURA/SHUTTERSTOCK contain formaldehyde. However, ‘There are multiple harmful chemicals in these products.’ SUMATHI REDDY YOUR HEALTH Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating because of race, gender and religion, among other factors. But other aspects of personal appearance—height, weight or hairstyle—aren’t necessarily covered by the federal statute, says Steven Pearlman, a labor attorney at Proskauer Rose in Chicago. Plus, it’s often difficult to legally prove whether such biases were the reason for a candidate’s rejection. Brent McCreary, a theater ticketing director in New York, has found certain photo details can swing a hiring manager’s decision. His professional profile picture usually shows him with a favorite celebrity. At one point it was Britney Spears. Now it’s Kelly Clarkson. The choice worked against him when he lost out on a revenue management job at a theme park three years ago. In the rejection note, the interviewer suggested a more professional LinkedIn photo. A month later, though, the executive director of a San Francisco-based streaming platform contacted him. The job he’d applied for was already filled but she noticed his photo. “Your personality and background seem so fun and special,” she wrote in a LinkedIn message. When another project-management job opened soon after, McCreary got it. The job turned out to be a better fit for him, too, he says. “The company I ended up working for was one where I kind of jelled with the organization,” he says. Looking the part is often informed by stories and stereotypes, career coaches say. “You see it in books and movies,” says Catherine Fisher, a LinkedIn career expert who studies data and trends on the professional social media network. Every industry has its own sartorial vibe, from the fleeced vests and sweatshirts of Silicon Valley to the traditionally suited-up finance crowd in New York. “You always think hoodies are related to tech companies, but that doesn’t mean I have to wear one,” Fisher says. These looks are evolving as home and work life become more mixed, Fisher says. More than half of working Americans say that how they present themselves at work has changed since the pandemic, according to a poll of 2,000 people conducted last year by LinkedIn. Two-thirds said they thought that managers and co-workers were more accepting of different ways of dressing and styling than several years ago. Alice Stephenson, a 42-year-old lawyer, says that for much of her early career, she dressed the part and concealed her piercings and tattoos. “I wore a stereotype of what a professional looked like,” she says. “I never felt comfortable or able to express my own individuality or creativity through my appearance.” That changed after she started her own law firm. In her photo on the firm’s website, in her email signature and on LinkedIn, she is wearing a friendly smile, a blue sleeveless dress and a visible sleeve of tattoos. “I want to look friendly and approachable,” says Stephenson, who lives in Amsterdam. “That’s key to my brand.” T hink appearances don’t matter if you’re applying for a job online? New research shows that looking the part is very much part of the equation. Your credentials and referrals may get you on the shortlist. Even if the whole process takes place online, though, it’s rare that a hiring manager won’t check out your LinkedIn profile. Making the final cut can come down to nailing a specific professional look, according to a new study published by the Harvard Business School. Analyzing 63,000 job openings and the more than 160,000 freelancers who applied for them during a six-month period, researchers found that certain accessories or physical features gave candidates an edge in landing the job— even after controlling for race, age and gender. Researchers used computer vision technology and machine learning to help classify which attributes made someone be perceived as a better fit for a job, then examined what role that played in hiring. Different jobs favored certain looks. The analysis showed that men wearing glasses and having a computer visible in the photo were perceived to be a better fit for a software programming assignment CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ILLUSTRATION: DAISY KORPICS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, ISTOCK (3), PIXELSQUID; BRENT MCCREARY; ALICE STEPHENSON than men without glasses, boostBY ANNE MARIE CHAKER ing their chances of getting it. A beard gave them a slight edge, too. With design and mediarelated jobs—one of two broad job categories examined in the study—flashing a smile and using a photo with high image quality was also important. Women sporting reading glasses and an “artistic” look were seen as a better fit for graphic design jobs than other women. The researchers, from Harvard and the University of Southern California, found that certain photo features could tilt the selection process when profiles included equally high ratings from previous clients. The advantage could be roughly the equivalent of a 5% pay differential. On the other hand, the study suggests that looking the part for a job doesn’t rely just on a candidate’s gender, ethnicity and age. Rather, paying attention to the details of a profile photo can go a long way, recruiters say. “We would be fooling ourselves to say it’s not part of the package,” says Jessica Vann, founder of Maven Recruiting Group, a San Francisco job-placement firm. While not as important as job or communication skills, “it’s a piece, for sure.” It’s generally a good idea to have a neutral background and no children pets or celebrities in the photo. Vann, whose firm specializes in placing executive assistants and chiefs of staff at Silicon Valley companies, says she has counseled job seekers to eschew an obviously AI-generated photo or tone down the makeup. In a CivicScience poll of more than 2,000 people conducted online last week, about half of respondents said they had used a professional-looking photo of themselves in some capacity; 82% agree that appearance makes a difference in a job offer. Different Jobs Can Favor a Look A specific professional image could give you an edge in landing a job, new research shows Alice Stephenson, left, concealed her tattoos during her early legal career. Brent McCreary, above, says his professional profile picture usually shows him with a favorite celebrity, in this instance with Kelly Clarkson, right. 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

A12 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. PERSONAL JOURNAL. in your left hip. If you don’t, try moving closer to the wall. If your left glute is rising off the floor, back away from the wall. Hold for five slow breaths. Switch sides. Doorway hamstring stretch  Why: Your hamstring muscles shorten after sitting at your desk or on your bike for long stretches, but also when you participate in quaddominant sports like running and soccer. Tight hammies can limit the range of motion in the hip and knee and lead to lower-back pain.  How: Lie on the floor so your left leg stretches straight on the ground in a doorway. Your inner left thigh will press into the corner of the door frame. Slide your hips forward or back so you can shimmy your right leg up the door frame until you feel a stretch in the back of your right hamstring. Press the back flat into the ground and keep knees straight. The goal is to get the right leg pressing flat into the door frame eventually. Hold for five slow breaths. Switch sides. Child’s pose  Why: This calming yoga pose gently stretches the lower back, thighs, hips and ankles. Holding your breath on the inhale stretches your core muscles from the inside out by expanding the intercostal muscles situated between the ribs.  How: Start on hands and knees, with knees wider than hips. Inhale deeply and sink hips to the heels. Relax forehead to floor and stretch the arms straight out in front, palms face down. Walk hands to the right. Hold until you have a urge to breathe, then walk hands back to center. On an exhale, rise up to sit on heels. Inhale back into child’s pose and walk hands to the left, then back to center when you feel the urge to breathe. On an exhale, return to all fours. Repeat five times per side. JENNY SATHNGAM FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (3)  Samantha Campbell shows how to do a doorway hamstring stretch. F ailing to keep up with tax payments now could lead to an expensive surprise come next spring. As of Oct. 1, the Internal Revenue Service is charging 8% interest on estimated tax underpayments, up from 3% two years ago. The increase is one of the many effects of rising interest rates. These higher penalties, which can run in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars, are particularly relevant for gig workers and consultants who don’t have taxes withheld and figure they can pay their taxes come April. People who get steady paychecks with tax withholding could also be affected if they have additional income and get the math wrong. For most taxpayers, their employer withholds taxes in every paycheck, with the majority due a tax refund for having overpaid. Still, the IRS assessed more than $1.8 billion in penalties for underpaying estimated taxes on nearly 12.2 million individual returns in fiscal year 2022. Beyond underpayment penalties, the higher total tax bills for millions of Americans increase the risk that many won’t be able to pay their full balance in April. Failing to pay all of your tax bills can lead to more penalties and—in the worst case—IRS collection actions including liens and levies. “It’s a cautionary tale for individuals to think about as we get toward year-end. Are you where you should be?” said Joseph Doerrer, a certified public accountant and certified financial planner at Mezzasalma CPAs in Tinton Falls, N.J. The U.S. tax system is pay-asyou-go, meaning you should make payments as you earn income. That can be done through withholding or by making quarterly— or even more frequent—tax payments during the year. To avoid underpayment penalties, most filers must pay 90% of their taxes through withholding during the calendar year, or through estimated payments due quarterly. The payment for the fourth quarter of 2023 comes due Jan. 16, 2024. The IRS won’t charge an underpayment penalty if the balance due is less than $1,000 after taking into account withholding and credits. (Though it is called a penalty, it is essentially interest tied to the federal short-term rate.) Staying on top of estimates is especially important for people with fluctuating or self-employment income. Taxpayers with bonuses and equity compensation, whereby automatic tax withholding is too low, could face underpayment penalties. Anyone with BY ASHLEA EBELING higher-than-usual interest from high-yield savings accounts and mutual-fund dividend or capitalgain distribution payouts could also be affected. One common scenario in which taxpayers get tripped up is when wage earners who are used to having tax withholding by an employer start a business. They might not know that they are subject to quarterly estimated tax payments. The first year Sameet Durg, a marketing executive in Warren, N.J., went to Doerrer to do his taxes, it turned out he owed an underpayment penalty in the thousands of dollars—on top of a big April tax bill—because he hadn’t made estimated payments to cover his consulting income. “Now I pay attention to taxes all year around. I don’t want the giant hit in April,” Durg said, noting he checks in with Doerrer monthly. Here’s how to keep your tax payments on track. Avoid underpayment penalties. A gig worker who owes $10,000 in taxes and didn’t make quarterly estimated payments of $2,500 would face a $512 underpayment penalty, along with his tax bill on April 15, said Chris Oliva, a CPA at UHY Advisors in New York City. The penalty calculation, figured on Form 2210, uses a blended interest rate for tax year 2023. Individual taxpayers can generally insulate themselves from underpayment penalties by paying in (through withholding or estimated taxes) at least 90% of the currentyear tax bill or 100% of the previous year’s tax bill. The 100% figure rises to 110% for filers with adjusted gross income of more than $150,000, or $75,000 for married taxpayers filing separately. It makes sense to toggle between the two methods if your income is uneven, said Doerrer. If you have a high-income year followed by a low-income year, you would want to pay in at 90%. Otherwise, you would be making an unnecessarily large overpayment, Doerrer said. If you have a low-income year followed by a high-income year, it can make sense to pay 100% or 110% of the penalties. Some taxpayers change their withholding to get more money in their paycheck to cover expenses or splurges, but that can backfire when the bill comes due, said Karla Dennis, a La Palma, Calif., enrolled agent. Pay in estimates. If additional withholding isn’t an option, make an estimated tax payment. The sooner you do it, the better, because the underpayment penalty amount involves a daily calculation, said Oliva. For the gig worker with $10,000 in taxes due, if he or she paid on Jan. 16 instead of April 15, the penalty would be $317, down from $512. It is fairly painless to pay electronically through IRS Direct Pay or by setting up an account with the Treasury Department’s Electronic Federal Tax Payment System. Request a penalty waiver. The IRS will waive estimated tax penalties in limited cases, including for taxpayers who recently retired after reaching age 62 or became disabled, and the underpayment arose from reasonable cause. Form 2210 instructions spell this out. prior year’s income tax, keeping estimates lower and anticipating a larger balance due in April. Try the IRS tax-withholding estimator. To use the IRS tax-withholding estimator, taxpayers need to plug in information from their last year’s tax return, pay stubs and all other income, including side gigs, investments and retirement account payouts. If you have a pension but not a job, use Form W-4P to estimate your withholding. IRS Publication 505 has worksheets and examples for taxpayers in special situations. Adjust your tax withholding. Employees who are withholding too little can change their recurring tax withholding, or withhold an additional dollar amount, by filling out a revised Form W-4 with their employer, Oliva said. If you take required minimum distributions from an individual retirement account, you can choose a higher withholding amount for those distributions. The IRS considers the extra withholding to be spread evenly throughout the year, which helps lessen or eliminate underpayment ILLUSTRATION: WSJ, STEFANI REYNOLDS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES The higher penalties can run in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. Underpayment Penalty Jumps The IRS has increased what it charges if you underpay your estimated taxes notice how much farther your calf has to lengthen to get your heel to the ground. Floor T-spine stretch  Why: We live in a screen-driven society where most people slump their shoulders forward, resulting in a flexed thoracic spine. This exercise opens up the chest and shoulders while twisting through the mid-back.  How: Lie on your right side, with your right leg straight and left knee bent at 90 degrees resting on the floor. Place the arms, palms touching, fingertips lined up, straight out from the shoulders to the right side. On an inhale, reach the top, left fingertips past the bottom fingertips, then open up the left arm by drawing an arc up to the ceiling and down to the floor. Keep the gaze facing the moving hand. Make sure to open your entire upper body, not just your arm. Hold for one to two slow breaths. Bring the left hand down to meet the right so the fingertips are on top of each other. Repeat five times and switch sides. Wall figure-4 stretch  Why: If you sit all day, you probably have tight hips. This exercise stretches the outer hips and the piriformis, the muscle that helps with hip mobility.  How: Lie on your back a few feet away from a wall. Place both feet on the wall so your knees form a 90-degree angle. Arms can remain at your sides. Cross the left ankle over the right knee. Your ankle bone, not your foot, should rest just above the knee. Think about reaching your tail toward the floor and keeping a little space under your back. You should feel a stretch  A wall figure-4 stretch can loosen tight hips. When crunched for time, the post-workout cool-down is the first thing many of us skip. We aim to get the heart pumping and blood flowing during exercise. It’s just as important to intentionally bring the body back to baseline. A post-workout cool-down helps bring your heart rate, blood pressure and breathing to a more normal range. It also helps deregulate your nervous system, says Matthew Sacco, a health and sports-performance psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. When we feel stress, our body shifts to fight-or-flight mode and releases adrenaline. Running or crushing a HIIT workout at the gym triggers that response. Taking even five minutes to cool down after a workout helps shift our nervous system back into a parasympathetic, or rest-and-digest mode, which allows us to recover so we can reap the benefits of all of that hard work. “I think of it as the punctuation of a workout,” Sacco says. “It’s time to psychologically prepare yourself for the next thing on your list that day.” Samantha Campbell, owner of Deep Relief// Peak Performance Athletic Training Center on Maui, has her clients warm up with dynamic exercises and stretches that mimic the movements used in sports and saves static stretching for post-workout. That’s when the muscles are warmer and can more easily be lengthened. Campbell and colleague Ben Suek, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, suggest five exercises you can add to your postworkout routine. As with any new workout, consult with your physician if you have existing aches or injuries, and stop if you experience pain. Wall calf stretch  Why: When the calf muscles are tight, they can pull on other joints and ligaments, causing Achilles tendinitis, knee pain, plantar fasciitis and shin splints  How: Place your hands on a wall or table. Keep a bend in the left knee as you step your right foot back. Maintain a straight right knee as you bring your hips forward without letting the right heel come off the ground. Hold for five slow breaths. Switch sides.  Option: Take your shoes off to ANATOMY OF A WORKOUT Five Cool-Down Stretches To Improve Your Flexibility BY JEN MURPHY  Ben Suek demonstrates a wall calf stretch. 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. NY Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | A12A 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

A12B | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Dempsey Rescued on the streets of Sioux Falls, SD. From shelter dog to search dog, help us write the next underdog story. Your donation helps us train dogs like Dempsey to strengthen America’s disaster response system. Donate Now. Call (888) 4K9-HERO or visit SearchDogFoundation.org. UNDERDOGS OVERCOME. Not a real disaster site. UNDER THE DEBRIS OF A COLLAPSED STRUCTURE, HE’S TRAINED TO FIND SOMEONE ALIVE. HARD TO BELIEVE NO ONE WANTED THIS FEARLESS DOG 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | A13 DOING THE BOOKENDS | By Hal Moore Across 1 “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” rockers 5 Crispy cookie 10 Moving pic 13 “___mia” (Italian term of affection) 14 Able to think quickly 15 Nutmeg’s sister spice 16 “Take a breath” 18 Pints at the pub 19 Sites in many medical dramas 20 Zero out 21 Prudent way to think 22 “Divina Commedia” writer 24 Instrument for jazz legend Coleman Hawkins 26 Party partner 29 Clamorous sound 30 Holiday lead-in 31 Milk source for Roquefort cheese 32 Jargon suffix 34 Partial 36 Angler’s need 39 Portrayer of Spade and Marlowe 42 Woozy, say 43 Start of a trip? 46 Dial-up pioneer 47 Org.’s kin 49 Gomez of “Only Murders in the Building” 51 Dr. Seuss title character of 1971 54 Manual readers 56 Done in, as a dragon 57 Conductor’s tool 60 Modeled after 61 Conceal 62 Earnings division, and what each trio of circled letters represents 64 Burn balm 65 Biscotti flavoring 66 Punishment for speeding 67 British granny 68 Shocked sounds 69 Addition column Down 1 Played a part 2 24 Hours of LeMans, e.g. 3 Powdery precipitation 4 Laser chaser 5 “Building Stories” graphic novelist Chris 6 A long time 7 Choice cut 8 On cloud nine 9 “Toy Story” dinosaur 10 Traveling bags 11 Winter shelter 12 Neutered 15 Bryn ___ (Seven Sisters college) 17 Milkshake mix-in 21 “Pagliacci” clown 23 Angle symbol 25 Tiny taste 27 Economy class? 28 Fingerwagger’s utterance 33 Manning whose Giants number was retired 35 Wheel connectors 37 Hot felony 38 Golfer Ernie 39 Wicket defender, in cricket 40 “C’est magnifique!” 41 Joanna who won a Tony for “Into the Woods” 44 Enter through the fire exit, say 45 Love in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 48 Place to put on a suit? 50 Goddess of the moon 52 Have a crush on 53 Horizontal line, of a sort 55 Fills fully 58 Half of a fl. oz. 59 Mineral sources 62 Graffiti signature 63 Corp. money minder 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 The WSJ Daily Crossword | Edited by Mike Shenk ▶ Solve this puzzle online and discuss it atWSJ.com/Puzzles. MA S HA T RO T J I B OUTED RAD I O AN I C R OWD F U N D E R L S D HOPESO GLUE APE AR I D GREYPOUP O N SAT ECO NETS PA I NS GA I NS HASTAPRONTO TASTY F I VES E R R S D EW DO S DUVETCOVER VETO G E E I OWA N O I R O N I DS PREPOS I T I ON NUT SAT I N LADL E GPS LODE SL EET Previous Puzzle’s Solution UBISOFT Film “Poor Things” (Dec. 8): The shapeshifting Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Lobster,” “The Favourite”) works his directorial magic once again with this darkly comedic fantasy based on Alasdair Gray’s novel. Emma Stone, Jerrod Carmichael, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo and Ramy Youssef star in this tale of a woman brought back to life by an eccentric scientist before fleeing to see the world. “The Boy and the Heron” (Dec. 8): The newest film from anime icon Hayao Miyazaki (“My Neighbor Totoro”) and his much lauded Studio Ghibli follows a boy mourning the death of his mother, only to be told by a magical bird that she’s still alive in a different realm. TV “World War II: From the Frontlines” (Netflix, Dec. 7): While certain history programmers have gravitated toward reality schlock and the supernatural to entice viewers, this archive-based series narrated by John Boyega hopes to prove that well researched, firsthand storytelling can still win the day. “Baby Shark’s Big Movie” (Paramount+, Dec. 8): The earworm that plagued so many parents gets an animated, featurelength musical film with a voice cast that includes Ashley Tisdale, Kimiko Glenn, Cardi B and Lance Bass. “Leave the World Behind” (Netflix, Dec. 8): Based on Rumaan Alam’s thriller, this film from Sam Esmail (“Mr. Robot”) follows a family on vacation in a remote part of the Hamptons when a massive power outage leaves them in the dark about what’s happening in the outside world. Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali and Kevin Bacon star. Theater “How to Dance in Ohio” (Belasco Theatre, New York, opens Dec. 10): Based on a true story (and Alexandra Shiva’s documentary of the same title), this Broadway musical—with music by Jacob Yandura and book and lyrics by Rebekah Greer Melocik—follows young adults with autism at a counseling center in Columbus who are preparing for their spring formal dance. Music Nicki Minaj, “Pink Friday 2” (Dec. 8): The hitmaker returns with her fifth studio record—her first in half a decade—that blends pop and rap and includes singles “Super Freaky Girl” and “Last Time I Saw You.” Opera “The Nose” (Chicago Opera Theater, Dec. 8-10): This city’s premiere of the absurdist Shostakovich masterpiece is also a new production, from Francesca Zambello. Based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol, it tells the tale of an important government official who awakens one day to discover that his proboscis has leapt off his face and taken on a life of its own. Art Art Basel Miami Beach and Miami Art Week (Miami and Miami Beach, Various Locations, through Dec. 10): The marquee art fair once again headlines a week of events, exhibitions, other fairs and—of course— parties that sees the art world basking in the Florida sun and high-dollar transactions. Videogames “Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora” (PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox Series X/S, Dec. 7): Players can immerse themselves in James Cameron’s eco-fantasy story with this first-person game in which you control a Na’vi orphan journeying across Pandora to look for family and fight back against those who want to pillage the moon’s resources. Last Call “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego” (Los Angeles Opera, through Dec. 9): Gabriela Lena Frank’s work, with a libretto by Nilo Cruz, is a twist on the Orpheus story, with a lonely Diego Rivera hoping to see his deceased wife, Frida Kahlo, once more during the Día de los Muertos. Our critic Heidi Waleson praised last year’s world premiere for “fusing magic and reality . . . with sensitivity and charm.” For additional Arts Calendar listings visit wsj.com. Write to [email protected]. BY WSJ ARTS IN REVIEW STAFF ARTS CALENDAR HAPPENINGS FOR THE WEEK OF DECEMBER 5  A scene from the game ‘Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’ sound of that decade’s synth-driven pop-rock, after all). A few songs in the second half aren’t as memorable, such as the rather shapeless “Love Can Heal,” and the closing “Live and Let Live” has a nice melodic shape but words that verge on cliché. But “I/O” as a whole is warm and optimistic, a bear-hug of a record from one of art-rock’s most thoughtful practitioners. The dueling mixes, however, are a distraction. The Bright-Side mix by Mr. Stent is sharper and more detailed, while the Dark-Side mix by Mr. Blake has slightly more weight. But the differences between them, while easy enough to hear, aren’t significant enough to warrant the two treatments. Each is like a tint, highlighting a particular instrument or lending more space, but the meaning and structure of a song doesn’t change. The decision to include both necessitates that the listener make a choice in a world already overflowing with them. And it suggests Mr. Gabriel’s intent for a song’s ultimate form, after all this time, remains unclear. I might suggest picking one mix—to my ear, the Bright-Side mix is more subtle and a touch more airy—and getting to know the record that way, and then visiting the other at a future date. It’s a work to enjoy over the long haul, which comports with the timeline of its creation. If you’ve followed Mr. Gabriel this far, these songs are powerful enough that you’ll be living with them for a while. Mr. Richardson is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Follow him on X @MarkRichardson. intact. And he’s returned to his favorite subjects—love, the excitement and danger of encroaching technology, the question of what makes us human—and finds something new in them. While nothing here sounds like a potential hit single, there are a few uptempo numbers that recall the hypnotic power of his radio standards. The Bright-Side mix of “Road to Joy” has hints of the slinkiness of David Bowie’s “Fame” and shows Mr. Gabriel’s love of soul music as he layers his voice into a choir. The same disc’s “Olive Tree” uses ecology as a metaphor for an exploration of empathy, with a punchy horn-driven chorus hook and a sparkling synth riff that comes across as utterly ’80s in a good way (Mr. Gabriel helped invent the particular is open and spacious, driven by a hypnotic syncopated drum and light splashes of synthesizer. The following “Playing for Time,” an elegant piano ballad of surpassing beauty, expresses hope and gratitude on a cosmic scale (“Far, far away / Out amongst the stars / There’s a planet spinning slowly / We call it ours”). Throughout “I/O,” Mr. Gabriel sounds self-assured and his voice has not aged appreciably in 40 years. His melodic acumen is fully The long-awaited record features ‘Dark-Side’ and ‘Light-Side’ mixes of each of its tracks. the course of 2023 he rolled out the album track by track on each new and full moon, alternating songs from the “Bright-Side” mix, by Mark “Spike” Stent, and the “Dark-Side” mix, by Tchad Blake. The rollout concluded last week, and the album in its entirety is out now. The good news for fans of Mr. Gabriel is that the songs mostly live up to the singer’s high standards. The bad news—more on this later—is that the unconventional form of “I/O,” with two versions on two discs, dilutes its overall impact. Though the BrightSide disc opens with springy keyboards and a thwacking drum on “Panopticom,” a meditation on interconnectedness and the nature of truth, much of the music on both versions is relatively quiet and reflective. The second track, “The Court,” looks at the flow of information from a more skeptical perspective—“You got the data, don’t control where it goes,” he sings—and the Bright-Side mix in S ince leaving the band Genesis in 1975 and then launching a solo career, English singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel has tinkered with the album form and expanded his musical interests beyond records. His first four solo LPs were self-titled (though his American label requested that he give a name to the fourth, 1982’s “Security”). He launched the world-music festival Womad and three years after the release of his multiplatinum 1986 LP “So” started the influential Real World label, which brought music from all corners of the globe to English-speaking audiences. He created soundtracks for films including Alan Parker’s “Birdy” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.” And in the ’90s and ’00s, his longstanding interest in technology led him to create music for an interactive CD-ROM and an experimental theatrical performance. Amid all this activity, the intervals between LPs grew longer. In the years shortly after 2002’s “Up,” Mr. Gabriel said his next album would be called “I/O,” and that he was sorting through his musical ideas to see what form it would take. Years passed and “I/O” continued to be mentioned in interviews, but there was no word of when it might come out. This, combined with the fact that the music Mr. Gabriel did release—a collection of covers and another of old songs re-recorded with orchestral arrangements—was uninspiring, suggested that the longawaited album might be a dud. In November 2022, Mr. Gabriel said “I/O” (Real World/EMI/Republic) was finally complete, and once again he has presented his work in his own way. The record includes NADAV KANDER two mixes of every song, and over ‘I/O’ is his first all-original album in 20-plus years MUSIC REVIEW | MARK RICHARDSON Peter Gabriel Doesn’t Wane ARTS IN REVIEW 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

A14 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. JASON GAY College Football’s Four-Team Playoff Has a Cruel, Soul-Crushing Farewell An undefeated Florida State team was excluded after an injury to the team’s star quarterback SPORTS position group has seen its franchise-tag value increase by less over the last decade. But McCaffrey has long been viewed as someone gifted enough to buck this trend. The Carolina Panthers selected him out of Stanford with the eighth pick in the 2017 draft. A few years later, they made him the highest-paid running back in NFL history when they signed him to a contract that pays him $16 million a year. Then the 49ers decided that he was worth every penny, trading a number of draft picks to acquire him from Carolina last year. There was no team in the NFL better suited to take advantage of McCaffrey’s skill set. Coach Kyle Shanahan’s offense thrives on players who are able to expand their roles beyond what they would traditionally entail. Wide receiver Deebo Samuel regularly gets handoffs. Fullback Kyle Juszczyk also plays as a slot receiver. When their huddles break, any of their skill position players could line up anywhere on the field and BY EVERY SHRED of modern football thinking, San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey should be a gigantic waste of a team’s budget. He’s the highestpaid player at a position that is no longer highly prized by the league. That’s also what makes him an extraordinarily rare outlier these days. San Francisco has emerged as the Super Bowl favorite in large part because McCaffrey completely defies NFL logic. The Niners’ upside has never been clearer than on Sunday, when they steamrolled the Philadelphia Eagles 42-19 in a rematch of last season’s NFC Championship Game. McCaffrey was at the center of the action: He had 133 yards from scrimmage and a touchdown, which counts as just a regular game for him this year. It was the type of performance that showed why he’s unlike every other running back in the league—and in the perfect offense to exploit his talents. San Francisco is now 9-3, and what’s most impressive is how the Niners have utterly dominated their best competition. They’ve beaten the Eagles and Cowboys, the other top favorites in the conference, by a combined 55 points. It helps that no other contender has a weapon quite like their running back: with his score on Sunday, McCaffrey became one of only three players in NFL history with at least 50 rushing touchdowns and 25 receiving scores. McCaffrey’s value isn’t his agility as much as it is his versatility. BY ANDREW BEATON Farewell, messy old college football playoff frenemy. You were loved, you were hated, you were fun, you were ruthless, you were nonsense, you were fab, you were a waste of everyone’s time, you are not welcome anywhere near Tallahassee, and soon you’ll be gone. Next year, college football expands from a four-team to a 12- team playoff—a hearty thickening it claims to be doing for fans and fairness, but of course is really for TV overlords, and the money, money, money. More schools will get in. All major conference champions will get in. Even the top-rated “Group of 5” team will get in, so no more grousing about getting locked out of the college football cookie jar. All but eliminated will be the annual ritual of schools and alumni having very public freakouts—HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO US?—about being denied a chance to win a national title. FROM TOP: ISAIAH VAZQUEZ/GETTY IMAGES; GARY COSBY JR./USA TODAY SPORTS its starting quarterback, Jordan Travis, to a broken leg—are fraught. Do they want hurt college athletes to grit through the pain? Were they rattled by the doomsdayism of the Southeastern Conference, which warned that a four-team playoff without an SEC school would be a crime against the sport, the South and probably humanity? This isn’t the Mountain College of Pottery Arts denied after an undefeated romp through the Eastern Forestry Conference. This is Florida State! Even worse: They now have to face an amped-up Georgia team which thinks it got a raw deal, too. The pitiless construction of this year’s four, and the expansion next year—to say nothing of conference realignment and the devastation of the Pac-12—underlines an obvious point once more: the sport has sold itself off to the whims of television. TV is the boss of this now. Not the schools. You could hear it in the aftermath of this year’s committee decision, the sober declarations that this final four was the most compelling “product.” Are we all programmers now? It isn’t as if the 12-team format is flawless. It’s undoubtedly going to devalue the regular season, because it will lower the stakes of those mid-autumn Saturdays. Lose in the second week of October, lose again, and you might not be out…you’ll just be a 10th seed. Look at college basketball, where the March Madness playoff is the anchor event, and the regular season barely registers a blip. (Except to me, as the Wisconsin Badgers just sank No. 3 Marquette. Woo-hoo.) Then there’s the issue of repetition. The horror bears repeating: In a 12-team format, Michigan and Ohio State could wind up playing three times, first in the regular season, then the new, division-less Big Ten Championship, and then in the playoff palooza. I would move to Antarctica. You might, too. I think we underestimate how much of college football’s appeal is the arguing—the angry stew of regional pride, the annual contentiousness over what schools are the best, what schools are overrated, and what schools have no business playing football. We love to taunt our friends, family members and co-workers, especially if they went to the schools that have no business playing football. The 12-team format isn’t a perfect answer. It’s a new programming idea, expected to be lucrative. It’s being sold under the rubric of fairness but it’s happening for one reason only: because TV wants it, and TV will pay. Florida State was left out of the playoff, leaving coach Mike Norvell disgusted. Alabama won the SEC. (I guess the 13th team could complain about missing the 12- team playoff, but come on.) In a cruel but apt farewell, this year’s four-team finale proved to be a phone booth wrestling match. (Don’t know what a phone booth is? Ask a reader over 100.) Six teams, maybe seven (Michigan, Washington, Texas, Alabama, Florida State, Georgia…even Ohio State) had a legitimate to iffy case for the top four. Any verdict was doomed to cause regional heartbreak. The verdict: Michigan, Washington, Texas…Alabama. The heartbreak hit hard at FSU, undefeated on the year, 13-0, conference champions, a no-brainer selection in almost any other season, but excluded by the committee because its injury-beset roster didn’t meet the committee’s eye test, which was basically: Uhhhh…can these guys beat Alabama? The Seminoles are disgusted and infuriated. I know this because they said so. “I am disgusted and infuriated,” Florida State’s head coach Mike Norvell seethed in a statement. “What is the point of playing games?” I understand the seething. I agree that Alabama is likely a better team than FSU right now, but the committee’s rationalizing is hard to hear. Red flags about player injuries—Florida State lost CHRIS SZAGOLA/ASSOCIATED PRESS it wouldn’t be surprising. When McCaffrey was added to the mix, he didn’t just increase San Francisco’s offensive flexibility. He supercharged it. While Shanahan’s offense had plenty of success before McCaffrey arrived—the Niners reached the Super Bowl four years ago—he had never had such a dynamic player in the backfield. In McCaffrey, he gained a running back who’s just as feared through the air as he is on the ground. For a young quarterback like Brock Purdy, it’s an enviable security blanket that can be reached for whatever the down and distance. Unfortunately for San Francisco, McCaffrey’s first year with the team ended with the offense relying on him too much. In the NFC Championship Game, Purdy got hurt and so did his backup. The Eagles went on to win a 31-7 blowout when the Niners had little choice but to just hand the ball off to McCaffrey over and over. This season, McCaffrey has been a scoring and yardage machine because of his role in both parts of the offense. He doesn’t just lead the NFL with 1,032 rushing yards through 12 games—his 429 receiving yards are also tops among running backs. “He’s a hell of a check down option,” Shanahan said earlier this year. Only one player in the NFL averages more combined scrimmage yards per game, and that also happens to explain why McCaffrey may be a steal for the 49ers, even as the league’s highest-paid running back. That lone player is Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill, who’s on pace to have the firstever 2,000-yard receiving season in league history. Like McCaffrey, Hill is the highest-paid player at his position. But he earns $30 million a year—or nearly twice what the 49ers give McCaffrey. NFL teams are no longer looking for ball carriers who can plow through 40 handoffs a game, and McCaffrey would be miscast in that role, anyway. It’s because he excels at so many different things—breaking off big plays, converting short yardage situations, and even moonlighting as a wide receiver—that he’s become a running back who actually serves as the fulcrum of a modern offense. “He’s a freak,” quarterback Brock Purdy said after McCaffrey had a four-touchdown game earlier this season. “He does everything for us.” Over the years, NFL decision makers have become increasingly unwilling to shell out big bucks for a running back. The situation came to a head this past offseason, when a number of top players at the position sought lucrative long-term contracts—and mostly failed. The Las Vegas Raiders’ Josh Jacobs and Saquon Barkley, of the New York Giants, were forced to accept one-year pacts. Even when the Indianapolis Colts eventually inked star Jonathan Taylor, his deal didn’t reset the market. The deflation of the high-end running back market has been sharp. In 2013, giving a running back the franchise tag—a one-year deal that’s calculated based off the top contracts at the position—cost 6.7% of the salary cap. In 2023, it’s just 4.5% of the record $224.8 million cap. That means in an age when teams have more money to spend than ever, they’re devoting relatively less to this position. No The Running Back Who Is Defying Modern Thinking The 49ers’ Christian McCaffrey leads the NFL with 1,032 rushing yards. 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | A15 Murder On Campus Secrets, Lies, and Consequences By Bruce Lincoln Oxford, 200 pages, $29.95 BOOKSHELF | By Richard Babcock Biden Tries to Pull Regulation From Thin Air Few things are more frustrating in government than the federal executive branch asserting authority it doesn’t have and foisting mediocrity on the states. Despite definitive losses in court, the Biden administration refuses to pump the brakes on executive overreach and instead has hit the gas on more illegal, costly regulations. Case in point: the Federal Highway Administration’s rule requiring state transportation departments to reduce tailpipe emissions on highways. Congress never granted the FHWA regulatory authority to do so. As ranking Republican on the Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, I was intimately involved in negotiating the 2022 bipartisan infrastructure law. The committee debated whether to grant the FHWA this authority and rejected the idea. Somehow, the administration saw this red light as a green. It now argues that because legislators “did not use the opportunity in BIL to amend existing statutory language,” Congress likely “intended to leave such determinations to Agency expertise to be handled via regulatory authority.” Why does Congress exist if the bureaucracy can assert legal authority solely because it wasn’t explicitly prohibited? If federal agencies can invent power to dictate their preferred policies to circumvent Congress, we no longer have three coequal branches of government. This problem is larger than the FHWA. Bureaucracies routinely assert authority they don’t possess. This directly conflicts with the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), which held that on matters of great political or economic significance, agencies must identify “clear congressional authorization” for their claimed authority. The FHWA’s own rationale admits it has none. Further, the agency’s rule isn’t workable, as highlighted by comments a majority of states submitted that were concerned about or opposed to it. The rule imposes requirements with no recognition of urban and rural differences, assuming mass transit could be a solution. The notion of a bus lane through soybean fields or a subway stop at a cattle ranch is laughable. The rule suggests increased electric-vehicle adoption could help reduce emissions if mass transit isn’t viable. Never mind that EVs lack traits many rural drivers need, such as batteries that work well in extreme cold and have the necessary range for our wide open spaces. Before the rule was finalized, I introduced a bipartisan amendment to the transportation appropriations bill explicitly barring the use of federal money for this rule, but Democrats arbitrarily required a 60- vote threshold for passage, ensuring its defeat. I promised to introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval, which requires only a simple majority to pass, and when it eventually reaches the courts, I will lead a friend-ofthe-court brief against it. Neither federal law nor the states supports this activist boondoggle. I remain committed to doing everything I can to block this unworkable, illegal rule. The Biden administration better buckle up. Mr. Cramer, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from North Dakota. By Kevin Cramer Congress expressly rejected the new rule on tailpipe emissions. OPINION I n a city with a thick portfolio of unsolved cases, the May 21, 1991, murder of the religion professor Ioan Culianu stands out as one of Chicago’s strangest. Leads in the case entwine the victim’s mentor—the celebrated Romanian-born scholar Mircea Eliade—and twist back to a violent fascist and antisemitic movement in 1930s Romania. The fact that the murder took place at the University of Chicago’s divinity school underlines the mystery. Much of the intrigue centers around Eliade, an admired professor who had come to the U.S. after World War II. His scholarship, including dozens of books, explored the history of religions. Suggestions of a youthful dalliance with Romanian fascism surfaced occasionally, but Eliade was known at the university as a generous colleague and teacher. A chair was named for him in the divinity school. After his death in 1986, at the age of 79, Saul Bellow read at the memorial service. Among the many scholars Eliade guided over the years was Culianu. More than four decades Eliade’s junior, Culianu and the master shared many academic and philosophical interests. With Eliade’s help, Culianu joined Chicago’s divinity faculty shortly before Eliade died and was widely considered his mentor’s heir apparent. But evidence continued to surface of Eliade’s questionable activities between the wars. Sources linked him to the Iron Guard, also known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael —a fascistic and xenophobic Romanian organization intent on ridding the country of modern and democratic influences. Culianu vigorously defended his mentor but eventually came into the possession of some early articles by Eliade that indicated his enthusiasm for the legion. In 1991, Culianu asked a colleague to safeguard the papers; three days later, someone shot Culianu in the head with a .25-caliber handgun in a men’s bathroom at the divinity school. This is the territory that Bruce Lincoln explores in his interesting but limited book “Secrets, Lies, and Consequences.” Mr. Lincoln, an emeritus professor at the same divinity school, knew both Eliade and Culianu. Indeed, he, too, was mentored by Eliade. “I cannot say enough good things about the way he treated me,” the author writes. Over the years, Mr. Lincoln avoided the debate about Eliade’s past—particularly suggestions that Eliade once espoused antisemitism. “Rather than getting embroiled in polemics,” Mr. Lincoln writes that he preferred to “remember all that I found most admirable” in the man. In any case, the historical record was murky. Articles written by Eliade in the 1930s were largely unavailable in communist-ruled Romania after the war. When questioned about his past, Eliade claimed he was being tarred by association—his colleagues may have embraced the legion, he said, but he had never joined. Though he acknowledged showing interest in the movement, he maintained that he never supported its turn to antisemitism and violence. After Eliade’s death, his second wife, Christinel, an expatriate Romanian aristocrat, aggressively guarded his reputation, as did an assortment of former legionaries by then living in the U.S. Culianu, too, remained loyal to Eliade, but he did have in his possession those damning articles. Apparently concerned about threats he was receiving, Culianu gave the articles to a colleague for safekeeping; years later, that colleague passed the papers to Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln never paid the articles much attention. As he cleaned out his office upon retiring in 2017, he threw them away. Almost immediately, he regretted it. As he recounts, he set about learning Romanian, relocating the original articles and translating them into English himself. Far from being a whodunit, much of “Secrets, Lies, and Consequences” consists of Mr. Lincoln’s painstaking analysis of the evidence and a meticulous documentation of how Culianu subtly tempered his spirited defense of Eliade. The author makes the case that Eliade was far more than a victim of unsavory associates. Though he largely tiptoed around the ugly antisemitism of the legion, Eliade wrote enthusiastically of the movement. Romanian fascism had a deeply nationalistic, spiritual quality, and Eliade and others wrote of creating a virile, ascetic “new man” who would lead the revolution. I wish Mr. Lincoln had told us more about how this localized brand of fascism related to the movement that was then taking hold elsewhere in Europe—particularly the German version that eventually drew Romania into the Axis. So who murdered Ioan Culianu? The mystery remains. Suspicions have focused on the Securitate, the Romanian secret service that flourished under Nicolae Ceaușescu until he was violently overthrown in December 1989. Culianu had argued in expatriate journals that the service was maneuvering to stay in power. By that theory, former Securitate agents wanted to silence him. Another theory holds that ex-legionaries wanted to avenge Culianu’s purported betrayal of Eliade, who remained in their minds an esteemed friend of the movement. Mr. Lincoln casts doubts on both theories and wonders whether Eliade’s widow ignited the murder, even inadvertently, by complaining about Culianu to her friends in the Romanian community much in the same way Henry II invited the death of Becket by grumbling aloud about “this turbulent priest.” The author doesn’t come close to solving the case, though he settles the other mystery—the degree to which Eliade, as a young man, supported an appalling and dangerous movement. Along the way, Mr. Lincoln highlights, for himself and for Culianu, the “irreconcilable demands of personal loyalty and intellectual integrity.” Of their esteemed mentor, he writes: “Careful research can help one comprehend and regret his stance, but not excuse or forgive it.” Mr. Babcock is a novelist and the former editor of Chicago magazine. A religion professor comes into possession of some damning evidence about his late mentor and is soon found shot to death. House Republicans just took two big steps toward impeaching President Biden. The first came on Saturday, when Speaker Mike Johnson said he has the votes to approve a impeachment inquiry into the president, which would make official then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s declaration of one back in September. The second came Monday, when Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer made public a subpoenaed bank record showing that Joe Biden received in 2018 at least three direct monthly payments of $1,380 from Hunter Biden’s firm, Owasco PC. This comes on the heels of last week’s news that a bank investigator raised red flags in June 2018 about what Oversight says was “money from China that ultimately funded the $40,000 check” to Joe Biden from his sister-in-law. Ever since the public learned of Hunter Biden’s influence peddling abroad, his father’s defenders have insisted there’s no there there. In 2019, when Joe Biden was running for his party’s nomination for president, he put it this way during a campaign stop in South Carolina: “There will be an absolute wall between the personal and private, and the government. There wasn’t any hint of scandal at all when we were there, The Hunter Biden Saga Continues and I will impose the same kind of strict, strict rules. That’s why I never talk with my son or my brother or anyone else in the distant family about their business interests, period.” Mr. Biden was equally categorical during the 2020 debates with Donald Trump. He dismissed Hunter’s laptop as Russian disinformation, citing a statement by 51 intelligence experts ginned up by thencampaign aide and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken. In the two debates, when Mr. Trump brought up Hunter’s sleazy overseas business dealings, Mr. Biden responded that it wasn’t true, or that Mr. Trump’s assertion had been discredited. At one point Mr. Trump brought up payments from China. Mr. Biden said, “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China.” But in federal court in July, Hunter Biden himself refuted his father’s claim. He admitted to Judge Maryellen Noreika that he received $664,000 from CEFC, a Chinese company with connections to the Communist Party. The president and his defenders continue to insist there is no evidence of wrongdoing. But while there may not be absolute proof, there is plenty of evidence—and it’s growing. After Mr. Comer’s news of the monthly payments broke, the Washington Post reported that they were for a Ford Raptor truck owned by Joe Biden and used by Hunter. Asked if this was true, a Comer spokesperson says: “Unclear but doesn’t matter from our perspective. There is now a pattern of members of the Biden family using their bank accounts that have been funded by Chinese and other foreign entities to send money to Joe Biden.” And it raises a question: Why was Hunter paying his father out of his company bank account? A vote for an impeachment inquiry would give the House GOP better tools for getting to the truth. It was a political blunder for then-Speaker McCarthy simply to declare an impeachment inquiry, especially given that he had criticized Nancy Pelosi for doing the same to President Trump four years ago. Ultimately Mrs. Pelosi did hold a floor vote, for the same reason Mr. Johnson says he will do so before Christmas. Absent an official impeachment inquiry, the White House is in a stronger legal position to contest certain congressional demands for information. This isn’t just academic. Although Congress enjoys subpoena power, it must be used for a legislative purpose. A subpoena issued as part of an impeachment inquiry doesn’t have to satisfy that requirement, and the courts are more deferential. An official inquiry will thus make it more difficult for the Biden White House legally to ignore subpoenas, withhold documents, and prevent witnesses from testifying. As recently as 2½ weeks ago, the Washington Post ran a story about how Hunter Biden had cashed in on his dad’s name. It quoted Hunter’s legal team denying the existence of “a single financial transaction between President Biden and his son related to or involving any of Hunter Biden’s business ventures or prior private commercial dealings.” Then again, even if Joe Biden never made a nickel, he did plenty to help his son make the sales. We know that he appeared at meals with Hunter’s overseas business associates, was on speakerphone with them, and included his son on Air Force Two journeys to the same countries where Hunter did business— and we know that other family members were in on the spoils. And yet he wants us to believe that he wasn’t in business with his son and never discussed it. The received Beltway wisdom on Hunter Biden is that yes, he was selling his father’s influence but he was swindling the buyers because Joe did nothing in return for the money Hunter collected—and that Republicans have come up with zero. Except showing that Joe Biden has seldom been truthful. Write to [email protected]. The House will vote on whether to open an impeachment inquiry into the president. MAIN STREET By William McGurn “Now what can the old fox mean by that?” Klemens von Metternich is supposed to have said when the great French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord died in 1838. Like Talleyrand, my friend and teacher Henry Kissinger spent half a century in the world of high politics, survived the political eclipse of his original employer, grew rich over the course of a controversial career, and demonstrated intellectual and political agility that led some to hail him as a genius and others to curse him as a monster. Nothing about the public reaction to Kissinger’s death would have surprised him. He had been the object of intense adulation and passionate loathing for more than 50 years. Although he enjoyed the admiration much more than the hate, he was used to both. More than that, he appreciated both sentiments at something like their real worth. One element of Kissinger’s diplomatic talent was an almost preternatural intuition that let him grasp the worldview of his interlocutors, often understanding them better than they understood themselves. He felt the full intellectual and moral weight of the attacks against him Henry Kissinger on Power and Morality but found the burden less than crushing. This wasn’t because he held morality in contempt. It was because he thought most criticism of his decisions in office reflected a shallow understanding of politics. That understanding, he believed, was often filtered through a partisan reading of history that overlooked the sins of Democratic presidents as it picked obsessively at the faults of Republicans. Kissinger understood something that too many Americans, on the left and right, find difficult to grasp: Power and morality aren’t opposites. Rather, power is the platform that makes moral action possible for a state. And morality isn’t a set of rules and laws that states are expected to obey. Rather, in international relations, morality involves creating an order that prevents the anarchy and slaughter of greatpower warfare. Such an order gains legitimacy not by its perfect adherence to a religious or secular moral code, but by its ability to preserve values and conditions that allow civilizations, and the human beings who inhabit them, to flourish. The disastrous follies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations had left the U.S. in a difficult predicament when Richard Nixon brought Kissinger into the White House in 1969. The overreaching hubris of technocratic intellectuals like McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara, along with the naive liberal determinism of Walt Rostow and others, had led the U.S. into an unwinnable and unsustainable war. Worse, as the Soviets reached strategic nuclear parity with the U.S. and the Bretton Woods economic order buckled when the gold standard lost credibility, the entire post-World War II order was in danger of collapse. There was, Nixon and Kissinger believed, no elegant escape from this predicament. Devils had to be supped with, promises had to be broken, and sometimes blood would be left on the floor. For Kissinger, the construction, tending and repair of a sustainable balance in global affairs was the supreme moral and political challenge of statecraft, especially as nuclear weapons threatened to make great power war unsurvivable. If the restoration of balance required embracing Mao Zedong at the height of his sanguinary career, so be it. If it required more bombs in North Vietnam and Cambodia, then send in the B-52s. Any guilt or shame attached to such moves belonged in his view to those whose follies had left the U.S. with nothing but bad choices. Politically, Kissinger was a victim of his success. Once America’s position in the world had been restored, Americans turned in revulsion from the methods and the men responsible for turning the tide. Liberals such as Jimmy Carter wanted American foreign policy to focus on human rights. Conservatives such as Ronald Reagan wanted to replace Kissingerian détente with a more robustly anti-Soviet approach. Neither camp fully understood that the ability to pursue far-reaching ideological goals was a consequence of Kissinger’s achievement. Statesmen err, sometimes with tragic consequences, as rapid-fire decisions are made in an era of crisis. Kissinger always accepted that. He could be sensitive, but I never saw him get truly angry with someone who argued that a decision he made in office was in error. Although he was angrier when people impugned his morals than when they attacked his decisions, what frustrated Kissinger most was not that some academics and writers held him in moral disdain. It was that he never succeeded in getting a critical mass of Americans to embrace the approach to statecraft that, in his view, offered the greatest chance to secure American interests while preserving our increasingly fragile civilization from the ravages of war. His objective was to build, tend and repair a sustainable balance in global affairs. GLOBAL VIEW By Walter Russell Mead 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

A16 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Barr and Berry Reply on Delaware and ESG Thank you to Lawrence Cunningham and Joseph Petito (Letters, Nov. 29) for responding to our article “Delaware is Trying Hard to Drive Away Corporations,” Cross Country, Nov. 25). We agree with Mr. Cunningham when he says Delaware’s corporate law remains shareholder-centric, the “gold standard.” Our concern is with how the evident interest of Delaware’s leading lights in environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles is likely to affect that gold standard. What’s playing out is a classic motte-and-bailey tactic. Activists and boardroom advisers alike can use Delaware’s Caremark doctrine to push companies into ESG-inspired policies on diversity and sustainability under elastic conceptions of “risk management.” But if you question the compatibility of this regime with politically neutral corporate law, they retreat to the position that companies necessarily must be adopting such policies for the good of “long-term shareholder value.” Leading figures are pointing Delaware down a road that would cloak a socially motivated agenda in the formal garb of shareholder value, replacing that concept’s traditional meaning with political correctness. Mr. Petito reminds readers that it isn’t in Delaware’s economic interest to ruin its lucrative corporate-charter monopoly. We agree. But that didn’t stop New Jersey from losing its corporate crown long ago. Politicians blinkered by ideology are liable to make costly mistakes for their states, as many other blue-state residents well know. Red states are apparently taking notice. WILLIAM P. BARR AND JONATHAN BERRY Washington Mr. Barr served as U.S. attorney general, 1991-93 and 2019-20, and is managing partner of Torridon Law PLLC. Mr. Berry served as head of policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, 2018-20, and is managing partner of Boyden Gray PLLC. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR “One day he went for a swim in our infinity pool and I haven’t seen him since.” THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Letters intended for publication should be emailed to [email protected]. Please include your city, state and telephone number. All letters are subject to editing, and unpublished letters cannot be acknowledged. ObamaCare, Insurance and the Supply Side The GOP should embrace a supplyside alternative to ObamaCare (“Biden, Trump and ObamaCare,” Review & Outlook, Nov. 30). ObamaCare is a demand-side policy, and that merely bids up prices without increasing overall availability. Increase the supply of healthcare, however, and the cost will come down, with or without repealing ObamaCare. Increase the number of doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals of all kinds. That will take time and money, but a lot of the reason we have a doctor shortage is regulatory. Reducing barriers to entry doesn’t require additional funding. More doctors will make it profitable to increase capital investment in the industry, which will increase competition and availability, and bring down costs. DAVID PETERSON Orlando, Fla. I beg to differ that ObamaCare has produced “few tangible benefits for patients.” ObamaCare kept my then-12-year-old daughter alive and me out of the poor house. First, ending the exclusion of those with preexisting conditions saw my daughter insured during her three-year battle with cancer, while my small company employer changed insurers three times in that span. Second, no lifetime limits meant the high cost of her care didn’t financially doom me and my children’s future. If those aren’t real, big-time tangible benefits, I don’t know what would be. The three insurers, big recognizable names to all, are still in business. As former President Barack Obama has said, if you have something better than the Affordable Care Act, bring it on. We could all benefit from it. STEVE SHANNON Florham Park, N.J. In 41 years of dealing with insurance as a practicing dentist, I have seen several facts emerge. Insurance companies will ensure their profit, and patients will seek to minimize or avoid any payment in the unrealistic expectation that insurance means they will have no out-of-pocket expenses. To achieve both goals, the insurance companies drive down the fees of providers, irrespective of the cost of delivering care. That is true across all of medicine and dentistry. When you extricate the capital market from any transaction and impose what are essentially socialist-type solutions, you get happy insurance companies that profit by delivering less care to the patients and less income to the providers. RICHARD J. REINITZ, D.D.S. Houston A Distinction to Remember in the Gaza War In drawing “moral distinctions” between the Hamas and Israeli forces, William McGurn nicely dissects the implications of former President Barack Obama’s call for an “admission of complexity” (“Harvard’s Hamas Confusion,” Main Street, Nov. 28). But Mr. McGurn could have taken his analysis a step further. Just like Israel warned Gaza City residents to leave before its airstrikes, Hamas tried repeatedly to get Israelis to avoid the concert near the border and leave the nearby kibbutzim, right? Wrong, of course, and therein lies a fundamental distinction. Israel would have been glad to see Gazan civilians evacuated to safety to avoid its airstrikes, but Hamas would have been bitterly disappointed if those Israeli civilians hadn’t been around to be slaughtered. Despite the urgings of the former president, that’s one distinction no “admission of complexity” can obscure. SAM KAZMAN Falls Church, Va. Pepper ... And Salt How Hamas Abuses Hostages The accounts by the hostages freed from Hamas terrorists (“Hamas Holds Everyone Hostage,” Review & Outlook, Nov. 27) are shocking by any standards. They were confined to tunnels and deprived of food, light, bathing and medical attention. A Thai foreign worker released from Hamas captivity revealed that the Israeli hostages with whom he was held were subjected to beatings by their captors, including the use of electric cables. Where is the U.N. and Red Cross? Where are the protests, the outrage? LEE E. BUCHWALD New York Rural Guns Are for Defense I chuckled at your editorial’s explanation of elevated gun ownership in rural areas (“Many More Voters With Guns,” Nov. 30). Hunting and bears? All well and good. I suspect, however, that it has at least as much to do with slower 911 response times in many rural areas. When you’re a halfmile from your own mailbox and facing a wait of 15 minutes or more for local law enforcement to respond, you must be able to defend yourself and your loved ones with more than a phone and a prayer. JENNIFER HINDEL Frankfort, Ill. Congress Agrees to Overlook Critical Entitlement Reform Alan Blinder rightly decries the bipartisan addiction to deficit spending (“Congress’s Bipartisan Alfred E. Neuman Caucus,” op-ed, Nov. 28). He could have been much harder on socalled fiscal conservatives, who only seem to take a principled stand on spending when a Democrat is in the White House. Yet Mr. Blinder overlooks the decisive factor: entitlements. The political tug of war over discretionary spending matters little. Mandatory spending, for example on Social Security and Medicare, accounts for twothirds of federal outlays. These programs are the major driver of current and future deficits, and they are fundamentally unsustainable. “Bipartisanship” is too often an excuse to ignore substantive problems. If Republicans and Democrats refuse to do the hard work of entitlement reform, then a pox on both their houses. PROF. ALEXANDER WILLIAM SALTER Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech Lubbock, Texas Congress Takes on the EV Mandate House Republicans have teed up a vote this week on legislation to block President Biden’s back-door electric-vehicle mandate. Democrats are spinning the legislation as an attack on public health, innovation and free markets. The debate is a preview of what we can expect in the 2024 election campaign. The Environmental Protection Agency “is not imposing an EV mandate,” says a memo from Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee opposing the GOP legislation. But the EPA in April proposed tailpipe emissions standards for greenhouse gases that would effectively require that electric vehicles make up two-thirds of car sales in 2032. The only way auto makers could meet the emissions restrictions is by producing more EVs and fewer gas-powered cars. This is a mandate in everything but name, and it’s already causing enormous problems. The House GOP bill would prohibit EPA from finalizing its proposed CO2 emissions standards and bar any regulation that would “mandate the use of any specific technology” or “result in limited availability of new motor vehicles” based on the type of engine. This means EPA couldn’t promulgate a similar new mandate. The Democratic memo accuses Republicans of attacking “EPA’s authority to protect Americans from dangerous air pollution.” But greenhouse gases are ubiquitous and aren’t hazardous to human health, unlike tailpipe pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. Some studies suggest EVs may produce more fine particulate matter—pollutants that lodge deep in the lungs—because their battery weight increases wear and tear from tires. EPA ignores this potential harm. “American demand for EVs is already outpacing supply,” the Democratic memo says, and “auto manufacturers are independently trending toward EVs because of increasing popularity with consumers.” Then why are auto makers scaling back EV production plans? And why are thousands of auto dealers begging the Administration to tap the brakes on the EPA regulation as EVs pile up on their lots? Tesla accounted for nearly two-thirds of EV sales last year. Battery-powered EVs make up less than 3% of most auto makers’ fleets, which means they’d face an extremely steep ramp-up to hit the 2032 mandate. Even with Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, the Energy Information Administration forecasts that EVs will make up only 15% of sales in 2030. That means auto makers will have to raise prices on gas-powered cars to offset losses on EVs they are required to make to meet government quotas. Ford lost $62,016 for every EV it sold in the third quarter. The only alternative is to buy regulatory credits from EV manufacturers. Tesla pocketed about $2,380 in credit sales for each car it sold in the U.S. during the first six months. Democrats say the GOP legislation would “stifle innovation,” but car makers could continue to improve battery technologies. They merely wouldn’t be forced to lose money massproducing EVs for consumers who don’t want them. Why can’t Democrats let producers meet the market demand for consumers? As the facts about Mr. Biden’s EV mandate become better known, and the implications for consumers sink in, it is going to be an issue in 2024. If EVs were as popular as the climate lobby claims, the Administration wouldn’t have to mandate them, and Democrats wouldn’t be dissembling about what they’re doing. Republicans want to get Democrats on record on the costly rules. Government Unions Love Democrats The alliance between Democrats and public unions is a dominant feature of modern politics, and the mutual love is growing. That’s the message of a new report by the Commonwealth Foundation, which dug into how government unions fund politics through direct campaign spending and political action committees. The four largest government unions are the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme). In the 2021-2022 election cycle, they spent more than $708 million combined on politics. Since 2012 union spending on federal elections has nearly tripled. Democrats and their causes receive 95.7% of the cash from unions’ political action committees. In 2021-22 the Big Four gave more than $29 million to the SEIU’s United We Can super PAC and the NEA Advocacy Fund super PAC which support federal candidates for office. Another $16 million went to wealthy climate crusader Tom Steyer’s leftwing For Our Future Pac. Some $3 million went to Fair Share Massachusetts which supports a state wealth tax. Big money also flows at the state level, where public unions all but run many state capitals. In 2021-2022, the four largest government unions spent $27.9 million in Illinois, $24.9 million in California, $13.2 million in Minnesota and $12.1 million in Pennsylvania. Unions accounted for almost 83% of current Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign funds, and teacher’s unions were the lion’s share. They are getting their money’s worth. Mr. Johnson will be renegotiating the Chicago Teachers Union contract in 2024 and unions will be on both sides of the negotiating table. Illinois Speaker of the House Emanuel “Chris” Welch received $1.25 million in union PAC cash in the 2021-22 election cycle, more than any other state legislator in the country. Mr. Welch recently let an Illinois school-choice program for low-income children die because it was opposed by the unions. Nearly 60% of unions’ annual political spending, or some $400 million, came from membership dues and about 40% came from unions’ political action committees for which workers make voluntary contributions for politics. While unions can’t send dues money directly to candidates, workers might be surprised to see their paycheck deductions funneled to outside groups that spend money on politics (including those that deploy the money out of state). As dollar amounts grow, a bigger question may be whether the union’s political machine serves the interests of its dues-paying members. The Commonwealth report notes that in May 2023 Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a law for teacher pay raises only to be hit with a lawsuit from the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest union, because the pay raise bill also ended automatic deduction of union dues from members paychecks. The root problem here is collective bargaining for public unions, which puts politicians in the position of determining the salaries and benefits of the union members who help to elect them. Taxpayers have no one representing their interests. That’s why reforms like Wisconsin’s Act 10 that barred collective bargaining are so important (see nearby). May they spread to other states. Wisconsin’s Act 10 Is in Jeopardy Wisconsin progressives went for a judicial abuse trifecta last week, filing a lawsuit to overturn Act 10, the landmark 2011 law that limited the ability of public unions to bargain collectively. The case is part of the Democratic campaign to use the new liberal majority on the state Supreme Court to redraw the state’s legislative district maps and end school choice. The law, signed by former Gov. Scott Walker, has saved the Badger State from turning into Illinois or New York, where public unions essentially run the state government for their own benefit. According to the MacIver Institute, Act 10 has saved Wisconsin taxpayers $16.8 billion since it was passed in 2011, making public finances more manageable at every level of government. Progressive mayors who publicly rail against the law know that repealing it would wreak havoc on municipal budgets. According to Wisconsin Right Now, Milwaukee’s budget says it has saved about $345.4 million in health insurance since 2012 because of Act 10’s requirement that public employees contribute to their health plans. The lawsuit by teachers and other public unions focuses on a narrow part of the law that exempts public-safety employees. The unions say this creates a “favored” class of workers and imposes “severe burdens on employees in the disfavored group.” Act 10’s “anti-democratic regime,” the unions continue, subjects “general” employees “to a panoply of burdens and deprives them of important rights,” while exempting police officers and firefighters from “all its injurious provisions.” To succeed with this equal protection claim, the unions must prove that the Legislature had no “rational basis” for treating different occupations differently. But the decision to carve out police and firefighters was done in recognition of the higher risks such workers take on the job and the need for retention and recruitment. Wisconsin has long extended enhanced benefits to those with “protective occupation” status whose “principal duties” require “frequent exposure to a high degree of danger or peril and a high degree of physical conditioning.” Wisconsin police and firefighters have been able to retire earlier with full benefits than other government employees and their pension multiplier is bigger. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that Act 10 is constitutional. But unions like their chances this time, since the election of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz flipped the court to a 4-3 liberal majority. Like her infamous statement that Wisconsin’s political maps are “rigged,” Justice Protasiewicz told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she considers Act 10 unconstitutional. The Act 10 lawsuit will take time to make its way to the state Supreme Court. That’s fine with liberals who know the Justices are busy considering other progressive legal challenges such as legislative redistricting. These lawsuits underscore that the left is counting on the result of a single Supreme Court election to overturn huge swathes of public policy passed by the political branches. This would mean that a dozen years of elections for Governor and the Legislature don’t matter. If a mere four Justices do this, it will be one of the largest usurpations of democracy in Wisconsin, and maybe American, history. REVIEW & OUTLOOK OPINION 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | A17 Higher Ed Has Become a Threat to America to justify racial quotas. Campus antisemitism grew out of ideologies like “anticolonialism,” “anticapitalism” and “intersectionality.” Never have college campuses exerted so great or so destructive an influence. Once an indispensable support of our advanced society, academia has become a cancer metastasizing through its vital organs. The radical left is the cause, most obviously through the one-party campuses having graduated an entire generation of young Americans indoctrinated with their ideas. And there are other ways. Academia has a monopoly on training for the most influential professions. The destructive influence of campus schools of education and journalism already noted is matched in the law, medicine, social work, etc. Academia’s suppression of the Constitution causes still more damage. Hostility to the Constitution leads to banana-republic shenanigans: suppression of antigovernment speech, the press’s acting as mouthpiece for government, law enforcement used to harass opponents of the government. Higher education by and for political radicals was foreseen and banned by the American Association of University Professors, which in a celebrated 1915 policy statement warned teachers “against taking unfair advantage of the student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions.” The AAUP already understood that political indoctrination would stamp out opposing views, which means the end of rational analysis and debate, the essential core of higher education. The 1915 statement is still a recognized professional standard— except that almost everywhere it is ignored, at least until the public is looking. Optimists see signs of hope in growing public hostility to campus foolishness, but radical control of the campuses becomes more complete every day as older professors retire and are replaced by more radicals. A bellwether: The membership of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education— which represents the enforcers of radical orthodoxy—has tripled in the past three years. An advanced society can’t tolerate the capture of its educational system by a fringe political sect that despises its Constitution and way of life. We have no choice: We must take back control of higher education from cultural vandals who have learned nothing from the disastrous history of societies that have implemented their ideas. How can this be done? Not by the colleges themselves, which like things as they are. Not by governing boards, which ought to safeguard academia but have never had the backbone to do it. Not by superficial reforms: Even if we defund DEI, protect visiting speakers from shoutdowns and outlaw political litmus tests for professorial appointments, hordes of radical activists will still be in the classrooms, doing as much damage as ever. Personnel is policy. Effective reform means only one thing: getting those political activists out of the classrooms and replacing them with academic thinkers and teachers. (No, that isn’t the same as replacing left with right.) Nothing less will do. Political activists have been converting money intended for higher education to an unauthorized use—advancing their goal of transforming America. That is tantamount to embezzlement. While we let it continue we are financing our own destruction as a society. But how can we stop them? State lawmakers can condition continued funding on the legitimate use of that money and install new campus leadership mandated to replace professors who are violating the terms of their employment. Though only possible in red states, this would bring about competition between corrupt institutions and sound ones. Employers would soon notice the difference between educated and indoctrinated young people. Legislatures in Florida, Texas and North Carolina have begun to take steps to reform their universities, but only at Florida’s New College is a crucial restructuring of the faculty under way. But the only real solution is for more Americans to grasp the depth of the problem and change their behavior accordingly. Most parents and students seem to be on autopilot: Young Jack is 18, so it’s time for college. His family still assumes that students will be taught by professors who are smart, well-informed and with broad sympathies. No longer. Professors are now predominantly closed-minded, ignorant and stupid enough to believe that Marxism works despite overwhelming historical evidence that it doesn’t. If enough parents and students gave serious thought to the question whether this ridiculous version of a college education is still worth four years of a young person’s life and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, corrupt institutions of higher education would collapse, creating the space for better ones to arise. The biggest threat to our future isn’t climate change, China or the national debt. It is the tyrannical grip that a hopelessly corrupt higher education now has on our national life. If we don’t stop it now, it will eventually destroy the most successful society in world history. Mr. Ellis is a professor emeritus of German literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of “The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done.” By John Ellis DAVID GOTHARD A merica faces a formidable range of calamities: crime out of control, borders in chaos by design, children poorly educated while sexualized and politicized against parental opposition, unconstitutional censorship, a press that does government PR rather than oversight, our institutions and corporations debased in the name of “diversity, equity and inclusion”—and more. To these has been added an outbreak of virulent antisemitism. Every one of these degradations can be traced wholly or in large part to a single source: the corruption of higher education by radical political activists. Children’s test scores have plummeted because college education departments train teachers to prioritize “social justice” over education. Censorship started with one-party campuses shutting down conservative voices. The coddling of criminals originated with academia’s devotion to Michel Foucault’s idea that criminals are victims, not victimizers. The drive to separate children from their parents begins in longstanding campus contempt for the suburban home and nuclear family. Radicalized college journalism departments promote far-left advocacy. Open borders reflect pro-globalism and anti-nation state sentiment among radical professors. DEI started as a campus ruse Our corrupt, radical universities feed every scourge from censorship and crime to antisemitism. OPINION Climate Hypocrisy Is a Fair COP for Dubai Conferees I t was a smart move to hold the COP28 summit, the latest gathering of world leaders to ululate unmerited alarm about the climate and make unfulfillable promises on how to deal with it, in Dubai in December. At least in the Gulf emirate it is guaranteed to be hot. The forecast for this week is for sunshine and temperatures in the high 80s, enough heat to provide a suitable backdrop for their insistence that we are all going to fry soon—although it has been hot on the Arabian Peninsula since long before man set about his evil carbon-spewing ways. If they had chosen to hold it in, let’s say, Europe, they would have been in for a distinctly awkward convergence of message and visual. Meteorological winter in the Northern Hemisphere has barely started, and already more of the Continent is under snow cover as of the first week of December than in any year for more than a decade. In the latest illustration that God has a wicked sense of humor, many members of the planetary emergency rescue elite on their way to the summit were stranded in Munich, where a snowstorm dumped 17 inches of the white stuff and canceled most outbound flights. I haven’t checked in with the usual alarmist suspects on their explanation for this deep and crisp and even landscape, but I am sure they have a good story. The climate propaganda is so well-rooted now in the West’s media that we are given to understand that everything is the result of global warming: So doubtless historic snowfall, like drought, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, migration patterns, the scarcity of certain foodstuffs, racial discrimination, seasonal temperatures with partly cloudy skies—all, in the fanatic’s taxonomy, the work of climate change. This isn’t to suggest that a cold winter is enough to prove the mendacity of the climate-change thesis and its proponents. I am well aware that global temperatures have on average risen, and that there’s a plausible case that man’s carbon dioxide emissions are a significant factor. But the awkward persistence of normal weather continues to remind us of how at odds with realities the extremism of the global climate lobby is. They are at it again in Dubai. None more so than that scientist, theologian and philosopher King Charles III, who with his taste for public intervention is already retesting, barely a year after his sainted mother’s death, the wisdom of hereditary monarchy. The Earth faced “existential threats,” he said. “How dangerous are we actually prepared to make our world?” To which the best answer probably is: We’ll elect governments to make those decisions, thank you, not submit to the half-baked scientific claims of a man whose heating bill for his half-dozen castles, palaces and mansions is probably larger than the budgets of several small nation-states. But to his credit, the king also reminded us of another reason why Dubai was a good choice for the summit—it’s as good a place as any to witness the hypocrisies these high priests of hysteria shower on the world. The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a member, is not only one of the most intensive producers of fossil fuel in the world. It is looking to increase its output. The stateowned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. said last year it planned to raise production capacity to five million barrels a day by 2027, a 25% increase from 2020. The host of the summit is the Emirates oil supremo, which is a bit like putting Donald Trump’s sons in charge of the World Wildlife Fund’s annual meeting. The Emiratis are only doing on an industrial scale what all climate alarmists do—preaching one thing while doing another. When they were eventually able to take off from snowbound Europe, the various chief executives, nonprofit officials, green lobbyists, bureaucrats and others flew the several thousand miles in their private jets, churning more carbon into the air in a week than the average American, whom they like to lecture about his evil ways, does in a year. They will thunder on like this for another week. John Kerry, the U.S. climate czar, will repeat the British monarch’s warnings, and talk up some grand new partnership with a China that is starting to resemble one giant coal-fired power station, and they’ll all doubtless commit to some “ambitious” goal that they will tell us still won’t be enough to save the planet. Then they’ll go back to their homes and escalate the rhetoric another notch, demand new spending and taxes from their hard-pressed populations for some new great green public infrastructure project. Meanwhile the real work—developing technology that runs on more sustainable energy, continues to cut the carbon footprint of traditional energy production and mitigates the effects of climate change—will get done by the capitalists whose economic system many in this crowd like to denounce as incompatible with a sustainable environment. Let’s just hope, when they get back home, that their pipes haven’t frozen. Many of them came in carbon-spewing private jets. Some were snowed in at the airport in Munich. FREE EXPRESSION By Gerard Baker The Supreme Court Will Finally Decide What ‘Income’ Means T he Supreme Court hears oral arguments Tuesday in the most important tax case in decades. Moore v. U.S. will answer the question of whether Congress can tax unrealized capital gains as if they were income under the 16th Amendment. The case has attracted a flood of friend-of-the-court briefs, mostly cheering for the tax collectors. Many argue outright that there is no requirement for profit to be realized— which usually means selling an asset at a profit—for a taxpayer to be hit with an income tax as the Constitution means it. The case before the justices is straightforward. In 2006, Charles and Kathleen Moore invested $40,000 in a 11% equity interest in a foreign corporation. Between 2006 and 2017, the company was profitable but reinvested all its earnings in the business. The Moores thus didn’t receive dividends or any other income from the investment. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, however, the Moores became subject to a new federal levy called the “mandatory repatriation tax,” applicable to investors in overseas corporations. The new tax treated their allocable share of the corporation’s undistributed earnings as if they were actually received by the shareholders. The tax was retroactive, covering the entire period beginning with the Moores’ initial investment through 2017. The rate of tax was unusual. Instead of a statutory rate, it was a floating rate that varied according to the balance-sheet liquidity of the corporation. The legal problem is how any of this could qualify as a tax on income. The federal income tax is constitutional, but a constitutional amendment was needed to make it so. The Constitution requires that any direct tax levied by the federal government be apportioned according to each state’s population, so that the per capita tax is the same in all 50 states. Income taxes couldn’t fit that description, so the 16th Amendment was necessary to allow taxing of individual income. In 2018, long before we heard of the Moores, we noted the unconstitutionality of the mandatory repatriation tax in an essay titled “The Worst Statutory Precedent in Over 100 Years.” We argued that it isn’t a tax on income and therefore is an unconstitutional direct tax. We questioned whether Congress could tax the undistributed earnings of a corporation retroactively to 1986, which is what the law did. We noted that the rate was based on liquidity, making it not an income tax but a balance-sheet tax. The result—a noncontrolling shareholder being taxed on undistributed earnings, retroactively for more than a decade, based on the corporation’s liquidity—made the mandatory repatriation tax unconstitutional in the extreme. That the justices agreed to hear the Moores’ appeal is encouraging. Some of the usual reasons for the high court to hear the case were missing: There was no split among the circuit courts, and the amount of the Moores’ tax ($14,729) wasn’t momentous. The decision to grant review likely demonstrates that at least four justices recognize the horrible precedent the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set by upholding this tax. If realization is no longer a requirement for taxable income, then “income tax” has no boundaries in the Constitution, and Congress can directly tax wealth. Among the briefs from those who want to save the law, several switch subjects to other sections of the Internal Revenue Code instead of arguing the fairness and reasonableness of the mandatory repatriation tax. A win for the Moores, they claim, could result in calling other sections of the Internal Revenue Code into question—even such well-established precedents as taxing partnerships or Subchapter S corporations. This is a red herring. Neither partnerships nor Subchapter S corporations pay income taxes. They simply act as pass-through entities for partners or shareholders, who are liable for taxes on their share of earnings. Income that isn’t passed through immediately clearly belongs to the partner or shareholder, and thus creates no issue of realization. Even if the outcome of the case does call some other sections of the tax code into question, the justices are obligated to focus on whether this tax is constitutional. The Supreme Court will likely decide the case by June. A decision that carefully, thoughtfully and clearly defines “income” is at least a century overdue. If in the process we also learn something about when retroactive taxes are unconstitutional, the taxpaying public will be the better for it. Mr. Adler is an associate professor and Ms. Willis is an assistant professor at Chapman University. By Hank Adler And Lacy Willis The justices hear a case asking if Congress can tax unrealized capital gains under the 16th Amendment. Karol Markowicz writing for the New York Post, Dec. 2: A New York Times newsletter from a few days ago cites numbers from the left-wing Council on Criminal Justice, which examined shoplifting in 24 cities, noting, “Overall, shoplifting incidents were 16% higher in the first half of 2023 than the first half of 2019. When New York City is excluded, however, reported shoplifting incidents fell over the same time period.” But why exclude New York City? Is it because the same Council on Criminal Justice study found a whopping 64% spike in shoplifting since 2019? The other cities on the list may bring down the country’s average but they themselves are cherry-picked. Chattanooga, Tenn.—pop. 182,113—is on the list but Syracuse (pop. 146,103), which is experiencing a 55% increase in shoplifting since 2019, doesn’t make it. San Francisco somehow shows a 5% decline in shoplifting yet businesses are fleeing the city. Target is closing three stores in the area, citing “theft and organized retail crime. . . .” Maybe they know something the study does not. Notable & Quotable: Theft EDITORIAL AND CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS: 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y., 10036 Telephone 1-800-DOWJONES DOW JONES MANAGEMENT: Daniel Bernard, Chief Experience Officer; Mae M. Cheng, EVP, General Manager, Leadership; David Cho, Barron’s Editor in Chief; Jason P. 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A18 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

© 2023 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved. **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | B1 BY DEBORAH ACOSTA S&P 4569.78 g 0.54% S&P FIN g 0.001% S&P IT g 1.31% DJ TRANS À 0.40% WSJ $ IDX À 0.45% 2–YR. TREAS. yield 4.656% NIKKEI (Midday) 32782.14 g 1.35% See more atWSJ.com/Markets BUSINESS & FINANCE TECHNOLOGY Meta and IBM launch a coalition of more than 50 AI companies and research firms. B4 Florida Home Builders Stick to Wood The material is riskier than concrete in hurricanes but developers persist Builders say less-costly wood-frame homes can be built to withstand the hurricane-force winds Florida sometimes sees. OCTAVIO JONES/REUTERS Developers in Florida are rolling out new homes built with wooden frames, undaunted by the risk that wood can be less reliable than other materials for withstanding hurricane-force winds. Homes with wooden frames are cheaper and faster to build than those framed in concrete, one reason why wood-frame construction is the norm in much of the U.S. But most American homes are never tested by powerful storms as they often are in Florida. South Florida contractors phased out woodframe construction after Hurricane Andrew’s 165-milesper-hour winds flattened communities built from the material in 1992. The state changed its building codes not long after that, and the share of wood-frame construction has declined dramatically in Florida over the past three decades. Yet wood-frame construction is still permitted statewide. It is even enjoying something of a revival in waterfront communities across Florida, including Jacksonville and Tampa. New wood-framed cottages and apartment buildings are also rising in southwest Florida, after Hurricane Ian ripped through hundreds of wood-framed cottages there last year. That storm killed 149 people in the third-costliest hurricane event in the country’s history. At Fort Myers Beach, where wood cottages were ripped from their foundations and more than a dozen people died, developers are scooping up empty land. They are building new wood-framed single-family homes strapped onto concrete columns. Some are selling for more than $1 million. Overall, nearly 1,700 apartment buildings in Florida are made of wood-frame construction, or about 8% of the state’s inventory, according to real-estate data firm CoStar Group. Thirteen buildings with wood frames and more than 3,700 units are under construction in the state. Since 2015, more than two dozen such buildings have been built on or near the coasts, CoStar said. At a time when labor and other costs associated with home construction have been rising, the cost savings offered by wood frames make them attractive. A sharp decrease in lumber prices from a record in 2021, coupled with a much shorter build time, make wood an appealing option as waterfront Please turn to page B2 U.S. cities racing to cut their emissions are facing a roadblock: They can’t access the wind and solar power being developed in remote sites hundreds of miles away. Now a group of investors is betting on a startup that builds massive transmission lines to carry renewable electricity to urban areas. EnergyRe, launched by executives at real-estate company Related Cos., said Monday that it raised $1.2 billion from a group of European investors to build more projects across the U.S. The deal comes as the Biden administration is pushing to modernize the national power grid, which isn’t equipped to handle the growing amounts of renewable energy that the country is hoping to produce to wean itself off of fossil fuels. Already, surging electricity demand has strained the grid and led to more frequent outages in recent years. “If we want to have reliable power, we need to have a new grid,” Miguel Prado, energyRe’s chief executive and an industry veteran, said. The high-voltage transmission lines needed to carry clean energy long distances are difficult to get permitted, in part because of resistance from local residents, and have become a major obstacle for Please turn to page B11 BY AMRITH RAMKUMAR Startup Gets Clean Energy To Cities Food Makers Adapt To Ozempic Effect Ozempic, Wegovy and other popular new drugs help people lose weight by eating less. Some food makers have spotted an opportunity. From startups to industry stalwarts, food companies are pitching their products as natural alternatives to the drugs or developing companion products for patients. Ozempic and similar drugs have surged in popularity in the U.S., sparking concern among some investors that broader adoption could threaten food companies’ sales in years to come. Big food makers are paying attention as demand for the drugs soars, prompting questions about whether and how they will reshape American diets. Many food executives say they aren’t sweating the drugs’ precipitous rise, and that any sizable drop in calorie consumption is years away, plenty of time for companies to adapt their portfolios as they have in response to past consumer trends. Nestlé, the world’s largest food maker, said in October that it is working to create companion products that could help drug patients at risk of losing muscle mass or not getting enough nutrition. Other new products could help patients avoid or limit weight gain after they stop taking the medications, according to the Swiss packaged-foods company, which operates a large health-science business. Nestlé Chief Executive Mark Schneider said the company has been assessing the drugs for some time, and that new products could hit the market as soon as next year. Nestlé already sells products that could complement patients’ diets, Schneider said, such as drinks, bars, shakes and soup mixes. Abbott Laboratories, which makes medical devices as well as Ensure shakes and powders, is designing a proPlease turn to page B2 BY JESSE NEWMAN INSIDE the people close to J&J said. McEvoy, a 27-year J&J veteran who had risen to lead its $27 billion medical-device unit, with an affable style that motivated employees, had been considered one of the leading CEO candidates. A Fortune profile in September quoted McEvoy as saying she Please turn to page B2 The race for who will be next CEO of Johnson & Johnson is on after the abrupt departure of a top executive widely believed to have been in line for the healthcare company’s top job. Jennifer Taubert, a nononsense veteran who runs J&J’s pharmaceuticals business, and the investor-minded Chief Financial Officer Joseph Wolk are leading contenders for the top job after the surprising exit of J&J’s medicaldevice head Ashley McEvoy in October, people familiar with the succession race said. Current Chief Executive Joaquin Duato is less than two years into his tenure as CEO and could stay in the role for several more years. Yet few people expect Duato, 61 years old, to remain in the post for as long as the roughly 10-year stints for each of his two predecessors. J&J’s board may have to tap someone to follow Duato in the next three to five years, BY PETER LOFTUS Johnson & Johnson Succession Race Starts The Internal Revenue Service has put a freeze on employee-retention-credit refunds, but that hasn’t stopped financing firms looking to capitalize on the popular pandemic-era tax break. Credit funds, small business lenders and ERC processing firms are all offering bridge loans and cash advances to small businesses waiting for their refunds. Such financing has gotten a boost after the IRS put a moratorium on the ERC program in September. Juan Carcamo, owner of a construction business in Middleton, Mass., had been waiting since early this year for his ERC refund. After the IRS halt, Carcamo sold the expected $288,000 tax credit to a financing firm at a 15% discount. “I can’t wait any longer,” said Carcamo, who used the money to replenish the cash reserves of his company, NMTI General Contractors. “I am able to retain more of my employees, retain more of my jobs.” He added, “If the IRS would have been fast enough, I would have not paid the 15%.” Congress created the employee retention credit to reward businesses and nonprofits for keeping workers on their payrolls during the pandemic. The tax break has turned into a headache for the IRS and a bonanza for firms offering to help small employers claim the credit. In September, the IRS said it was halting processing of new claims and would give additional scrutiny to more than 600,000 pending requests for the credit, which has cost the government at least $230 billion, roughly triple earlier estimates. The IRS says it is concerned about a high volume of questionable or fraudulent refund requests. Some financing firms have tightened standards since the IRS crackdown, worried about providing funds for claims the agency might ultimately reject, or increased pricing to reflect longer waits. Others are turning longer waits into a marketing opportunity. “If you need money urgently and don’t want to wait for processing to restart, consider an ERC Bridge Loan,” says an offer for financing from Omega Funding Solutions. The Irvine, Calif., company declined to comment. It is unclear how many employers have received ERCbased financing, which is largely coming from outside the traditional banking sector. The offerings, structured as loans or purchases of the tax credit, can be expensive and carry risks for the employer and the company providing financing. Chief among them: The IRS denies the refund request and the borrower is still on the hook to repay the amount financed. “What happens when all these applications get denied?” said Larry Gray, an accountant who reviews ERC claims for other accounting firms. “That only helps that Please turn to page B11 BY RUTH SIMON Lenders Fill Gap Amid Covid Refund Delay Source: CoStar Gulf of Mexico Atlantic Ocean 100 miles 100 km Under construction Constructed since 2015 Construction of wood homes near the coast in Florida from 2015 to present June 2020 ’21 ’22 ’23 0 5 10 15 $20 billion Estimated monthly flow of ERC refunds Source: Piper Sandler Note: November 2023 is preliminary. WASHINGTON—When top Biden administration officials gathered last month at the Justice Department to announce a $4.3 billion legal resolution with Binance, one powerful regulator was absent. Attorney General Merrick Garland was there. So was Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. But Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler wasn’t, even though he has his own legal beef with Binance. The SEC sued the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in June and has been the regulatory scourge of the crypto world. The SEC wasn’t involved in the monthslong settlement talks that led Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, to plead guilty and settle Treasury’s civil charges, according to people familiar with the matter. The SEC’s absence reflects the high cost of settling with a civil-law enforcer that can’t put people in prison but can put American crypto companies out of business. Even before the SEC sued Zhao, Binance and its U.S. affiliate, the parties couldn’t come close to agreeing on settlement terms, people familiar with the matter said. Settling on the SEC’s terms at the time may have required Binance to close most of its U.S. crypto-trading business and accept a claim that its affiliates engaged in manipulative trading, the people said. “We remain confident in our case against the SEC and will continue to defend our platform vigorously,” a Binance spokesman said Friday. Before suing Binance, regulators wanted the company to accept an injunction that would stop Binance.US from offering trading in many of the crypto assets on its platform, people familiar with the matter said. “That would sort of be the end of Binance.US,” said Lee Reiners, a lecturing fellow in Please turn to page B11 BY DAVE MICHAELS Binance Is Still Fighting The SEC 2023 Dec. -20 -10 0 10 20% S&P 500 Johnson & Johnson Share-price and index performance, year to date Source: FactSet  Heard on Street: Pandemic dangers not over............. B12 PHARMACEUTICALS Roche is acquiring obesity-drug maker Carmot Therapeutics. B2 SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/GETTY IMAGE 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

B2 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. INDEX TO BUSINESSES These indexes cite notable references to most parent companies and businesspeople in today’s edition. Articles on regional page inserts aren’t cited in these indexes. A Abbott Laboratories.............B1 Advanced Micro Devices .....................................................B4,B12 Alaska Air....................................B11 Amazon.com..............................B11 AT&T..................................................B3 B Berkshire Hathaway..........B11 Binance............................................B1 Biz2Credit....................................B11 C China Evergrande...................B3 Cigna.................................................A4 Cohere..............................................B4 CVS Health...................................A1 E Elia.....................................................B11 Elliott Investment Management........................B12 EnergyRe........................................B1 eProdigy Financial...............B11 Ericsson..........................................B3 F Fox.......................................................B3 G General Motors.......................B6 Glentra Capital........................B11 Grid United.................................B11 H Hawaiian Airlines.................B11 I Intel..................................B3,B4,B12 International Business Machines...................................B4 J Johnson & Johnson..............B1 L L’Oreal.............................................A11 M Maven Recruiting.................A11 Meta Platforms.......................B4 Microsoft..............................B4,B11 N-O National Grid............................B11 Nestlé................................................B1 News Corp....................................B3 Nokia.................................................B3 Norwegian Cruise Line....B11 Novo Nordisk............................B11 Nvidia............................B4,B11,B12 Omega Funding Solutions ................................................................ B1 OpenAI............................................B4 Oracle...............................................B4 P Phillips 66..................................B12 PKA...................................................B11 Purdue Pharma...............A2,A3 R Raistone........................................B11 Related.............................................B1 Revlon.............................................A11 Roche................................................B2 Royal Caribbean Cruise...B11 S Spotify.....................................A1,B11 Stenson Tamaddon.............B11 T Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing....................B12 TuSimple........................................B6 U-V Uber Technologies...............B11 VLSI Technology.....................B3 INDEX TO PEOPLE BUSINESS & FINANCE 495-unit wood-frame apartment complex with a wood frame on top of a concrete parking podium. In a sign of how hard it can be to finance woodframed developments, MidAmerica is self-funding the project and forgoing pricey hurricane insurance to make it happen. Mohamed Elzeini, a project engineer at CBG Building Company, the contractor building the property, said the complex “is as extreme as you can find in wood construction. It’s like six stories and right on the water. Wind speed is going to be very, very high up there.” But, he added, it is up to code. Mid-America didn’t respond to requests for comment. A similar project across the street has been unable to get the funding needed to move forward, Elzeini said, because no company will insure it. In Mexico Beach on Florida’s panhandle, a Category 5 storm devastated the community in 2018 with winds of more than 160 mph. The code in that part of Florida requires buildings to stand up to winds of only 140 mph and doesn’t have the “high wind velocity zone” designation. Efforts to create a more stringent building code there have failed. “I think it’s a mistake to build stick on the coast,” said Dan Kodsi, a developer who builds wood-frame apartment complexes in Orlando. J&J chief executive is among the most prestigious and closely watched corporate jobs. J&J is one of the biggest and best-known healthcare companies in the world, with more than 130,000 employees, generating more than $80 billion in annual sales. The CEO is regularly invited to the White House and called to testify before Congress. The company’s diversified structure—with industryleading pharmaceutical and medical-devices units—makes its performance a bellwether for healthcare. Duato took the helm of J&J in January 2022, after Alex Gorsky decided to leave the company for family reasons. Under Duato, a practicalminded organizer, J&J split off its consumer unit, which makes Tylenol and Band-Aids, into a stand-alone company, Kenvue. Duato has also tried to boost sales growth for the medtech unit, including last year’s $16.6 billion purchase of heart-device maker Abiomed. He has also made it a priority for J&J to gain market share in its medtech businesses, partly through new product launches. Taubert, 60, followed Duato as head of J&J’s pharmaceuticals business. Under her leadership, the pharmaceutical unit has grown solidly to more than $50 billion in annual sales, helped by launches of new drugs for cancer and autoimmune disorders. would “absolutely” be interested in a CEO job. Her public airing of interest in a CEO role didn’t go over well among J&J’s leaders, including Duato, according to the people. She is a company employee until early 2024 to help with the transition to her successor. McEvoy, 53, said in a post on LinkedIn that she decided to move on from the company to pursue new opportunities. McEvoy, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment further. Tim Schmid, a J&J veteran known for running businesses in several countries and jump-starting J&J’s growth in Asia, was selected to succeed McEvoy. He could become another contender for the top company job if the medicaldevice division performs well in the next few years, the people said. A J&J spokesman said that the company has a bench of talented leaders, and that the three executives didn’t have any comment. Continued from page B1 pay $2.7 billion in cash to buy privately owned Carmot Therapeutics, with additional milestone payments of up to $400 million. The deal will grant Roche access to Carmot’s researchand-development portfolio, including clinical-stage subcutaneous and oral incretins. Incretins—gut hormones secreted after food intake—play a key role in modulating blood glucose by stimulating insulin secretion and suppressing appetite. Roche said Carmot’s portfolio includes an asset with the potential to improve weight loss in patients with and without Type 2 diabetes, and an asset for the treatment of overweight or obese patients with Type 1 diabetes. “The broad Carmot portfolio offers different routes of administration and opportunities to develop combination therapies that treat obesity and potentially other indications,” said Levi Garraway, Roche’s chief medical officer and head of global product development. Roche said Carmot and its roughly 70 employees would join Roche’s pharmaceuticals division upon closing of the transaction, expected in the first quarter of 2024. Roche shares closed up 2.8% in trading in Switzerland. Roche Holding said it would buy California-based biotechnology company Carmot Therapeutics for up to $3.1 billion, tapping assets it says have the potential to treat obesity in patients with and without diabetes. The Swiss pharmaceutical company announced the deal on Monday, saying it would BY DAVID SACHS AND MAURO ORRU Roche to Buy Obesity-Drug Maker Taubert joined J&J in 2005 after spending 17 years at Merck and Allergan. In 2019, she calmly defended J&J’s drug-pricing decisions amid grilling by lawmakers at a high-profile Senate committee hearing. Wolk, 57, has been the CFO since 2018. Easy to talk to, he is well regarded inside the company and on Wall Street, for efforts to ensure J&J’s credit and cash flow can give it firepower for acquisitions. He is the former head of investor relations who now oversees 9,000 employees responsible for managing J&J’s cash flow, borrowing and back-office services. J&J hasn’t historically named a chief financial officer to its top job, however. McEvoy had led the $27 billion medical-device business since 2018. The division’s sales were choppy in some years, and it has hit delays in advancing robotic-assisted surgical systems to market. Yet device sales had generally rebounded this year, fueled by a postpandemic pickup in demand for procedures using J&J products including artificial knees and heart devices. Schmid, 54, has been with J&J for more than 30 years, and has led several medical-device divisions, most recently J&J’s Asia-Pacific device business. Succession Race Is On At J&J Jennifer Taubert and Joseph Wolk are potential successors. JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS communities work to quickly rebuild after suffering the effects of a tropical storm. Developers of wood-framed homes say this construction is considerably sturdier than before. The new building code added provisions that require stronger connections between the wood planks, and homes must have hurricane-proof windows. Wood frames also can be built to withstand hurricaneforce winds, according to architects and structural engineers. But there is little room for error. Most engineers agree that concrete construction offers the strongest assurances of withstanding powerful winds. The slightest flaw in the design or construction of a wood-framed house and the building could collapse under the force of a violent storm, engineers say. “If you connect it properly, it is strong,” said Anne Cope, the chief engineer for the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, of woodframed structures. “If you don’t, it’s simply a house of cards.” Wood-framed structures also are more susceptible to water intrusion and termites than concrete, both of which can weaken the structure. “You might end up with a structure that is weaker because of conditions you did not even know about,” said Felix X. Rodriguez, a construction attorney at Bilzin Sumberg, based in South Florida. Insurance costs, meanwhile, have boosted the price of building with wood. Premiums have skyrocketed across the state, and in particular for wood-frame structures. But because of the low cost of lumber and shorter time frame for construction, wood homes are still usually cheaper to build. One of the biggest woodframed projects under way began construction this year on the water near Tampa Bay. Mid-America Apartment Communities is building a Continued from page B1 Florida Builders Use Wood Hurricane Ian wrecked hundreds of wood-framed cottages in southwest Florida last year. JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES JOHNSON & JOHNSON tein-laden nutrition drink that could boost muscle mass in weight-loss-drug patients, CEO Robert Ford said. General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening said that the maker of Lucky Charms cereal and Bisquick pancake mix is working on products suited to drug patients looking for more protein in their diets. Many patients aim to increase their protein intake to offset lost muscle mass as they shed pounds, according to food-industry analysts. Bernstein research found that many people currently or recently on weight-loss drugs are eating more protein—and foods such as fruit, eggs, yogurt, soup and cottage cheese—while cutting back significantly on junk food and foods with added sugars. In Chicago, Michael Pfeifer said that he has been leaning away from packaged snacks and toward high-protein foods since he began taking weight-loss drugs last year. He has doubled his monthly egg consumption and is eating more chicken, turkey and nuts. Pfeifer has also become an avid drinker of protein shakes, and tested a variety for flavor, protein and sugar content before landing on his favorite: a chocolate shake from Coca‑Cola’s Fairlife. “Some tasted like chemicals, others tasted like sugar,” said Pfeifer. “Or left that protein aftertaste in your mouth.” Food analysts say many companies might take their time deciding whether and how to adapt their offerings, especially because it remains unclear how Continued from page B1 A Alderoty, Stuart......................B11 B Blair, Matthew........................B12 Blau, Jeff......................................B11 C Caso, Chris.................................B12 D Davenport, Darcy Horn.....B2 Donovan, Paul...........................A2 Duato, Joaquin..........................B1 E Ek, Daniel.......................................A1 Erickson, Lisa...........................B11 F Ford, Robert................................B2 G-H Garraway, Levi..........................B2 Gil, Darío........................................B4 Gray, Larry....................................B1 Harmening, Jeff.......................B2 Hartley, Matt............................B11 Howard, Alexia.........................B2 Hyman, Adam.........................A10 K Kan, Dan........................................B6 Knight, Natalie.........................A2 L Larian, Isaac.............................A10 M Mayfield, Ross.........................B11 McEvoy, Ashley.........................B1 Molina, Dalia.............................B11 N Niggli, David.............................A10 Norrod, Forrest.........................B4 Norström, Alex.........................A8 O Ostroff, Dawn............................A8 P Padawer, Jeremy..................A10 Prado, Miguel.............................B1 S Sambar, Chris............................B3 Schmid, Tim................................B2 Schneider, Mark.......................B1 Shah, Prem..................................A4 Socha, David................................A1 Söderström, Gustav.............A8 Stenson, Eric.............................B11 Su, Lisa.........................................B12 T Taubert, Jennifer.....................B1 V Vann, Jessica............................A11 Vogel, Paul...................................A8 Vogt, Kyle......................................B6 W Warner, Ty.................................A10 Wolk, Joseph...............................B1 Y Yan, Hui Ka..................................B3 Z Zhao, Changpeng....................B1 many people will start the drugs, and stay on them long term. Companies could offer smaller portion sizes of existing products, reformulate others by adding protein or fortifying them with vitamins and minerals, or develop new ones altogether, analysts said. “If you’re not feeling particularly hungry, then drinking calories is one solution,” said Bernstein analyst Alexia Howard, adding that some drug patients also express less desire to cook meals than before. BellRing Brands, which sells protein shakes and powders, said in November that its existing products already appeal to weight-loss-drug patients but that it is also considering new formulations with micronutrients people might need as they eat less. BellRing CEO Darcy Horn Davenport said the company could market its products to patient support groups, nurses and dietitians. BellRing’s research shows consumers most likely to take weight-loss drugs are light users of protein shakes today, but would become heavy users once on the medication, Davenport said. BellRing’s shares have doubled in the past 12 months while the S&P 500 Packaged Food & Meat subindex has dropped 14%. The company on Nov. 20 reported a 22% rise in revenue over the past 12 months. Other food companies see an opening for products they say mimic the drugs, but without the pricey prescription. One startup, Supergut, is working to translate fervor over the drugs into sales of its shakes, mixes and bars made from a proprietary prebiotic fiber blend, which the company calls “nature’s Ozempic.” Eating certain types of prebiotic fiber boosts the production of the same gut hormones affected by weight-loss drugs, naturally reducing cravings, the company said. Food Makers Adapt to Ozempic Era Companies introduce protein shakes and other products to assist diets. Scan this code for a video on Anduril Industries, the startup founded by Oculus creator Palmer Luckey that is building AIpowered, autonomous weapons systems that it says will create a more nimble military. ALEXANDER HOTZ Inside Anduril, the Defense Startup That’s Run Like a Tech Company See how we’ve earned the trust of our customers for more than 170 years. Reliability: A Standard Our Customers Expect. 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | B3 said a lawyer representing the group. A collapse of Evergrande would hurt more than just bondholders. The property giant had the equivalent of $335 billion in liabilities as of June, including money owed to suppliers, banks and hundreds of thousands of people who had bought unfinished homes. Evergrande will use the extra time to refine its restructuring proposal and attempt to win more support from creditors, the company’s lawyer said. Chan, the judge, suggested the company ask Chinese authorities for their opinion. 2021 ’22 ’23 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 $140 billion Total market capitalization of China Evergrande and its Hong Kong-listed units Source: FactSet Note: Trading was suspended in the three companies for part of 2022 and 2023. Evergrande Evergrande Property Services Evergrande Auto A top producer for Tucker Carlson who is helping build his new media company has been accused of sexually assaulting a former Fox News staffer when they both worked at the network 15 years ago. In a lawsuit, former Fox News staffer Andrew Delancey said Fox News then-producer Justin Wells invited him to come to his apartment before they were to join other people at a nearby bar. The alleged incident took place in late 2008, shortly after Delancey joined the network’s New York office, the suit said. After serving him a drink, Wells pushed Delancey onto his bed, forcibly kissed him and grabbed his genitals, Delancey alleged in the full lawsuit, which was filed in New York state court Monday. Wells also groped him in his building’s stairwell before Delancey left, the suit said. The complaint said it fell under the Adult Survivors Act, a law that passed in New York’s Democratic-led Legislature and took effect on Thanksgiving last year. That law opened a yearlong window during which people who say they were sexually assaulted as adults could sue their alleged abusers, regardless of when the alleged abuse occurred. The suit names Wells, Fox News and its parent, Fox Corp., as defendants. “Mr. Wells denies the allegations unequivocally, and will contest them vigorously,” Harmeet Dhillon, Wells’s attorney, said. “This meritless legal action was filed 15 years after the alleged incident and mere days before the extended statute of limitations would have run.” Fox News declined to comment. Fox Corp. and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership. Delancey didn’t report the alleged assault to human resources but told two female co-workers, one of whom said she had herself been sexually harassed by Wells, the suit said. Human resources had been made aware of that incident, the suit said. Delancey said his then-supervisor warned him not to go to HR, the suit said. The suit is seeking unspecified damages. BY ISABELLA SIMONETTI AT&T struck a deal with Ericsson to buy up to $14 billion of its hardware and services after the Swedish equipment supplier pledged to open up its software to competing systems. The five-year agreement would move virtually all of AT&T’s new purchases of some cell-tower equipment to Ericsson, replacing existing machinery from Finnish rival Nokia in many markets. The Dallas-based telecom giant said it plans to start the swap next year and aims to have 70% of its wireless network traffic passing through open platforms by late 2026. The move will replace a supplier that makes up about a third of AT&T’s wireless footprint, said Chris Sambar, the carrier’s network chief. AT&T said its shift to Ericsson will fast-track its network overhaul and allow it to buy hardware and software from a broader range of suppliers in future years. The market for wireless radio transmitters that link billions of cellphones to the internet is dominated by Scandinavian suppliers Ericsson and Nokia and China’s Huawei Technologies. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics also sells some network equipment. BY DREW FITZGERALD AT&T, Ericsson in $14 Billion Supply Deal Carlson’s Producer Is Accused Of Assault Fresh from the groves and straight to your door, Gregory’s finest fruit, ready to send for the Holidays. Plus, FREE SHIPPING! Each gift, priced just right at only $3999 8 Mandarin Oranges and 8 Sugar Baby Navels GIFT #N88KN $39.99 16 Sugar Baby Honeybells GIFT #NWS16 $39.99 Tasty Little Treat GIFT #NWS5 $39.99 gregorysgroves.com/santa23 1-800-466-3923 FREE SHIPPING only to the contiguous 48 states. Cannot be combined with any other offer, applied to any previous purchase or to any Club Plan. Some restrictions apply. Offer has no cash value. Expires 12/31/23. TEAR THE PAPER CEILING.ORG #HireSTARs Keith, Data Analyst, Google Career Certificate Graduate, STAR It’s time for “qualified” to mean qualities, not just a bachelor’s degree. Tear the paper ceiling that is keeping you from discovering over 70 million STARs: workers SkilledThrough Alternative Routes that are being held back by degree screens, stereotypes and more. Find out how STARs can meet your talent needs. China Evergrande Group, the giant property developer whose default two years ago fueled a crisis in the country’s real-estate market, got some unexpected good news on Monday. The company, once China’s largest property developer by sales, was given until late January 2024 to reach a debt restructuring deal, after Hong Kong’s High Court postponed a hearing that could have pushed Evergrande into liquidation. The decision means one of China’s highest-profile corporate defaults will drag on a little longer, after the 11th-hour abandonment of a $35 billion debt restructuring earlier this year. Evergrande’s default in late 2021 was a watershed moment for China’s real-estate sector, bringing an end to years of debt-fueled expansion. Dozens of Chinese property companies missed promised debt payments in its wake, and the country’s property market is still moribund, suffering this year from slowing home sales, falling prices and a widespread lack of confidence. Since September of last year, Evergrande’s winding-up hearing has been pushed back six times, as the company and its investors have scrambled to find a way to avoid a liquidation that would be painful to both sides. They got close earlier this year, but Chinese regulators blocked a deal by barring Evergrande from issuing new securities—a key feature of the plan. The latest delay to Evergrande’s winding-up hearing came after lawyers for Top Shine Global, a small creditor A U.S. appeals court has sided with Intel, vacating a roughly $2.2 billion patent-infringement verdict won by VLSI Technology, which argues that some technology in Intel’s microprocessors infringe on VLSI’s patents. BUSINESS NEWS The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a jury’s verdict that Intel infringed on one of VLSI’s patents and reversed the verdict that Intel infringed on another of the company’s patents. The Federal Circuit sent the case back for further proceedings to determine how much Intel owes in damages. Representatives for VLSI Technology didn’t respond to a request for comment. An Intel spokesperson said the company is pleased with the appeals court’s decision. “Intel looks forward to making its case to a jury that the VLSI patent sent back to the trial court is also of little value,” they said. The latest ruling vacates the roughly $2.2 billion awarded to VLSI by a jury in 2021. The jury awarded $1.5 billion in damages for the infringement of one patent, and $675 million for the infringement of another. The Federal Circuit reversed the verdict that Intel infringed on the patent that was behind the $675 million in damages, and vacated the ruling of $1.5 billion in damages due to issues with the analysis that supported the number. BY WILL FEUER Intel Wins Appeal of Patent Case of Evergrande that had initiated the lawsuit, saying it wouldn’t oppose yet another adjournment. Top Shine’s new position was presented to the bondholder group 15 minutes before the hearing, said Neil McDonald, a partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis, an adviser to the investor group. At Evergrande’s last winding-up hearing on Oct. 30, the judge, Linda Chan, told the company and its lawyers that it was Evergrande’s last chance to come up with a concrete proposal. After Top Shine’s change of heart, she didn’t repeat that on Monday. Before its default, Evergrande was a regular borrower in the international bond market, raising billions of dollars that still haven’t been repaid. But most of its assets are in mainland China, complicating matters for international investors hoping to maximize the returns they can get from the company’s bonds. In 2022, a group of Chinese banks seized $2 billion held by one of Evergrande’s subsidiaries. Evergrande’s founder and chairman, Hui Ka Yan, was detained and investigated for possible crimes in September. The Guangdong-based company presented bondholders with an updated proposal ahead of the hearing, The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend. The company will give investors certificates promising to pay them back after asset sales, Evergrande’s lawyer said on Monday. The bondholder group has rejected the proposal, believing it would get more money if Evergrande were liquidated, BY REBECCA FENG China Evergrande Avoids Disaster On Debt—for Now Evergrande’s creditors include hundreds of thousands of owners of its unfinished homes. ANDREA VERDELLI/BLOOMBERG NEWS A collapse of Evergrande would hurt more than just bondholders. NY 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

B4 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. TECHNOLOGY WSJ.com/Tech BY BELLE LIN Meta Platforms and International Business Machines launched a coalition of more than 50 artificial-intelligence companies and research institutions that are pushing a so-called open model of AI, hoping to gain traction in a fast-growing market. The AI Alliance, whose members include Intel, Oracle, Cornell University and the National Science Foundation, said it is pooling resources to stand behind “open innovation and open science” in AI. Its members largely support open source, an approach in which technology is shared free. It draws on a history of collaboration among Big Tech, academics and a fervent movement of independent programmers. IBM said it has worked since August with Meta to bring together organizations that haven’t been in the limelight in the way OpenAI has, said Darío Gil, senior vice president at IBM and director of IBM Research. “Frankly, we’ve been a little bit unsatisfied with the overall debate and the discussions on AI over the last year,” Gil said. “We did not feel that it reflected the diversity of the ecosystem that is making this AI moment possible.” Generative AI has overtaken the technology narrative since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT a year ago. OpenAI and rivals, such as Anthropic and Cohere, have largely led the charge in developing advanced AI models built as closed, or proprietary, systems that are managed by their creators and require companies to pay for their use. Many of the alliance’s members are companies that have their own AI products but are struggling to catch up with the rush of attention that OpenAI and its investment partner, Microsoft, are drawing. For many of them, revenue from enterprise technology are driving much of their growth. Enterprises worldwide will spend nearly $16 billion on generative AI solutions alone this year, according to a forecast from research firm International Data Corp., with spending hitting $143 billion by 2027. Generative AI’s compound annual growth rate will be nearly 13 times that of worldwide IT spending over the same four-year period from 2023 to 2027, IDC said. While IBM’s own history in AI has been marred by the failure of its Watson system, Gil said its new Watsonx system is an entirely new platform. Like IBM, Meta has developed its own AI models, but has fallen behind in recent years. The tech giant has sought to stake its claim in the red-hot AI market as an open-source AI system through its Llama 2 AI model. Since the upheaval at OpenAI in late November, businesses want to have more providers of AI products to diminish the risk of working with a single vendor, and are exploring other AI systems as viable alternatives. The timing of the AI Alliance’s launch underscores that message, IBM’s Gil said. “This other way, it’s a much more distributed approach, but much more resilient, because no given institution can derail the success of the open engine,” he said. The pitch could be a compelling one to businesses, which are seeking more vendors to work with, said Ritu Jyoti, group vice president of worldwide AI at IDC. But “it will all depend on how well they execute it.” For instance, the AI Alliance will need a solution consisting of integrated AI hardware, software and other tools that make it easy to use multiple AI systems, she said. Advanced Micro Devices, the chip maker aiming to take a piece of Nvidia’s dominance in AI chips, said that it will support an open AI ecosystem with its hardware, and that it—along with other alliance members—will build the software that enables businesses to use its chips, said Forrest Norrod, AMD’s executive vice president and general manager of its data center group. The company is set to spotlight AI accelerator chips this week that Norrod said will be a “strong” alternative to Nvidia’s offerings. The alliance is focusing on six areas, including regulation and safety, as near-term initiatives. Gil said it will soon release a benchmarking tool for AI safety and model validation. Meta, IBM Launch Alliance for ‘Open’ AI AI companies and research institutions team up to back shared-tech model Open source draws on a history of collaboration among Big Tech, academics and programmers. POHL/ACTION PRESS/ZUMA PRESS €550 million, equivalent to $598.6 million, from Meta, citing the “massive” and “systematic” use of personal data by the group’s platforms without users’ consent that handed Meta an “unfair” advantage in the advertising market. AMI represents some of Spain’s largest media publications, including El Mundo, El Pais, El Economista and Cinco Dias. The group said Meta’s practices were damaging to the country’s media landscape, putting its sustainability at risk. AMI alleged Meta hadn’t complied with European dataprotection regulations from May 25, 2018, until earlier this year. Meta couldn’t comment as it hasn’t yet received any legal claims or documents from AMI. A July decision from the European Union’s top court ruled Meta would need consent for certain kinds of targeted ads based on users’ online activity, throwing a wrench in Meta’s longstanding legal battle to protect a business model based on its ability to send users targeted advertising. In October, Meta said it would be offering Facebook or Instagram users in the bloc the choice to continue using the platforms free with ads or pay a monthly subscription with no ads. A group representing more than 80 media outlets in Spain filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms, saying the Facebook and Instagram owner hadn’t complied with European data-protection laws that require users’ consent before their data are used for advertising profiling. The Asociacion de Medios de Informacion said Monday that it was seeking more than BY MAURO ORRU Spanish Media Outlets Sue Facebook Over Use of Data for Advertising Profiles Plaintiffs include some or Spain’s largest publications. JOHN G MABANGLO/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK Petrobras celebrates its 70th anniversary, producing energy today to build a better tomorrow. Our Strategic Plan highlights this movement as we commit to new investments in renewable energy sources while maintaining our current energetic security. With feet planted in the present, and eyes set on the future, we aim to go further, innovating, creating more sustainable solutions, and harnessing all of Brazil’s potential, in order to lead a fair energy transition. Learn more at petrobras.com This material has been prepared for informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation or offer to buy or sell securities. For more information about the company, we recommend reading the 2022 Reference Form and the 2022 Form 20-F, and especially the sections on Risk Factors; both forms are available at www.investidorpetrobras.com.br/en/ years 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | B5 Before you use AI. to help get where you’re going you need to trust what it’s doing. AI IBM, the IBM logo, watsonx and watsonx your business are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on ibm.com/trademark. ©International Business Machines Corp. 2023. “You need to see what AI can do.” What is often said with excitement, we say with a sense of responsibility. Because businesses need to see where the data came from. How it’s making decisions. When it’s drifting. Showing bias. And decide when to course-correct. It’s only when AI shows its work that you should put AI to work. Which is why we’re introducing watsonx.governance. Helping you govern any AI as data, models, and policies change. So you can use your trusted AI to transform your business. See how it works at ibm.com/governance 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

B6 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Net YTD Fund NAV Chg %Ret AB Funds MuniIncmShares 10.81 -0.02 4.0 AB Funds - ADV LgCpGrAdv 89.89 -0.47 28.6 American Century Inv Ultra 75.07 -0.74 36.1 American Funds Cl A AmcpA 37.15 -0.17 23.8 AMutlA 50.59 ... 5.9 BalA 31.11 -0.12 9.3 BondA 11.18 -0.04 1.6 CapIBA 64.55 -0.17 4.6 CapWGrA 58.36 -0.40 14.7 EupacA 53.80 -0.52 10.0 FdInvA 70.51 -0.42 19.1 GwthA 63.94 -0.40 29.2 HI TrA 9.24 ... 8.4 ICAA 49.80 -0.23 21.9 IncoA 22.82 -0.04 3.2 N PerA 55.90 -0.35 18.2 NEcoA 53.24 -0.42 22.4 NwWrldA 73.51 -0.50 10.6 Net YTD Fund NAV Chg %Ret SmCpA 62.09 -0.12 10.7 TxExA 12.21 -0.01 4.0 WshA 56.28 -0.13 12.3 Artisan Funds IntlVal Inst NA ... 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NA TIAA/CREF Funds BdIdxInst 9.41 -0.03 2.4 EqIdxInst 32.62 -0.13 NA IntlEqIdxInst 21.48 -0.16 NA LrgCpGrIdxInst 50.38 -0.45 35.9 VANGUARD ADMIRAL 500Adml 422.83 -2.30 20.8 BalAdml 43.90 -0.15 12.9 CAITAdml 11.26 -0.01 3.7 CapOpAdml r174.00 -0.69 19.1 DivAppIdxAdm 44.95 -0.03 10.7 EMAdmr 33.63 -0.20 5.2 EqIncAdml 85.67 +0.07 3.4 ExplrAdml 97.26 +0.53 11.9 ExtndAdml 116.90 +0.67 17.1 GNMAAdml 9.05 -0.03 1.6 GrwthAdml 152.77 -1.52 39.9 HlthCareAdml r 87.96 +0.22 1.2 HYCorAdml r 5.29 ... 8.6 InfProAd 22.94 -0.09 1.4 IntlGrAdml 99.25 -0.70 9.8 ITBondAdml 10.07 -0.03 2.8 ITIGradeAdml 8.41 -0.03 4.9 LarCapAd 105.91 -0.58 21.7 LTGradeAdml 7.71 -0.03 3.4 MidCpAdml 274.46 -0.29 9.9 MuHYAdml 10.42 -0.02 5.2 MuIntAdml 13.51 ... 3.8 MuLTAdml 10.72 -0.02 4.6 MuLtdAdml 10.76 -0.01 3.1 MuShtAdml 15.71 ... 3.2 PrmcpAdml r160.00 -0.87 22.3 RealEstatAdml119.48 +0.84 5.4 SmCapAdml 96.45 +0.72 11.0 SmGthAdml 79.61 +0.48 13.4 STBondAdml 9.99 -0.02 3.5 STIGradeAdml 10.10 -0.02 4.5 STIPSIxAdm 23.91 -0.04 3.6 TotBdAdml 9.43 -0.03 2.4 TotIntBdIdxAdm 19.75 -0.01 6.0 TotIntlAdmIdx r 30.07 -0.22 9.9 TotStAdml 110.64 -0.43 20.2 TxMCapAdml237.02 -1.16 21.0 TxMIn r 14.79 -0.11 11.6 USGroAdml 139.39 -1.46 37.6 ValAdml 56.39 ... 4.9 WdsrllAdml 75.78 -0.21 15.5 WellsIAdml 59.71 -0.06 3.4 WelltnAdml 71.94 -0.34 10.3 WndsrAdml 74.75 +0.09 10.4 VANGUARD FDS DivdGro 36.81 -0.03 5.4 IntlVal 39.47 -0.29 10.4 LifeCon 20.34 -0.07 8.4 LifeGro 40.46 -0.19 13.4 LifeMod 30.13 -0.12 10.9 PrmcpCor 31.86 -0.11 17.2 STAR 26.86 -0.11 12.0 TgtRe2020 27.56 -0.10 NA TgtRe2025 18.39 -0.06 10.3 TgtRe2030 34.93 -0.14 11.3 TgtRe2035 21.73 -0.09 12.3 TgtRe2040 38.51 -0.17 13.3 TgtRe2045 26.07 -0.12 NA TgtRe2050 43.38 -0.21 NA TgtRe2060 44.56 -0.22 14.8 TgtRet2055 48.39 -0.24 NA TgtRetInc 12.92 -0.04 NA Welltn 41.66 -0.19 10.2 WndsrII 42.71 -0.12 15.4 VANGUARD INDEX FDS ExtndIstPl 288.47 +1.64 17.1 IdxIntl 17.98 -0.13 9.8 MdCpGrAdml 89.08 -0.23 15.7 MdCpVlAdml 72.27 +0.03 4.8 SmValAdml 73.36 +0.61 9.3 TotBd2 9.32 -0.03 2.4 TotIntlInstIdx r120.26 -0.89 9.9 TotItlInstPlId r120.29 -0.89 9.9 TotSt 110.61 -0.43 20.1 VANGUARD INSTL FDS DevMktsIndInst 14.81 -0.11 11.6 DevMktsInxInst 23.15 -0.18 11.6 ExtndInst 116.89 +0.66 17.1 GrwthInst 152.78 -1.52 39.9 InPrSeIn 9.34 -0.04 1.4 InstIdx 382.55 -2.08 20.8 InstPlus 382.55 -2.08 20.8 InstTStPlus 79.55 -0.30 20.2 MidCpInst 60.63 -0.06 9.9 MidCpIstPl 299.02 -0.32 9.9 SmCapInst 96.44 +0.71 11.0 STIGradeInst 10.10 -0.02 4.6 STIPSIxins 23.92 -0.04 3.6 TotBdInst 9.43 -0.03 2.4 TotBdInst2 9.32 -0.03 2.4 TotBdInstPl 9.43 -0.03 2.4 TotIntBdIdxInst 29.64 -0.01 6.1 TotStInst 110.66 -0.43 20.2 ValueInst 56.39 ... 5.0 WCM Focus Funds WCMFocIntlGrwIns 21.92 -0.14 11.5 Western Asset CoreBondI NA ... NA CorePlusBdI NA ... NA Data provided by Net Stock Sym Close Chg ABC AECOM ACM 90.60 1.06 AES AES 17.98 -0.15 Aflac AFL 82.73 0.12 AGCO AGCO 117.15 -0.22 Ansys ANSS287.54 -7.94 APA APA 35.82 -0.38 ASE Tech ASX 8.63 -0.11 ASML ASML 690.32 -1.88 AT&T T 16.66 -0.10 AbbottLabs ABT 105.19 0.31 AbbVie ABBV 144.15 0.74 AcadiaHealthcare ACHC 74.75 0.89 s Accenture ACN 336.43 -1.63 Adobe ADBE 604.56 -7.91 AdvDrainageSys WMS 125.78 0.31 AdvMicroDevices AMD 118.57 -2.82 Aegon AEG 5.50 -0.01 AerCap AER 69.12 -0.37 s AffirmHldgs AFRM 38.56 0.89 AgilentTechs A 128.88 0.09 AgnicoEagleMines AEM 53.51 -0.88 AirProducts APD 270.15 -2.49 Airbnb ABNB 133.70 -1.32 s AkamaiTech AKAM 115.90 -0.13 Albemarle ALB 119.98 -6.18 Albertsons ACI 21.79 -0.19 Alcon ALC 73.23 -2.62 AlexandriaRlEst ARE 119.89 1.75 Alibaba BABA 73.03 -0.96 AlignTech ALGN 219.60 -0.85 Allegion ALLE 107.05 -1.64 AlliantEnergy LNT 51.40 -0.09 Allstate ALL 138.64 0.96 AllyFinancial ALLY 30.78 -0.08 AlnylamPharm ALNY 172.87 1.46 Alphabet C GOOG 130.63 -2.69 Alphabet A GOOGL 129.27 -2.59 Altria MO 42.50 -0.10 Amazon.com AMZN 144.84 -2.19 Ambev ABEV 2.82 -0.03 Amcor AMCR 9.48 -0.08 Amdocs DOX 85.36 -0.09 Ameren AEE 78.53 -0.44 AmericaMovil AMX 18.35 -0.26 AmerAirlines AAL 13.35 0.33 AEP AEP 80.13 -0.38 AmerExpress AXP 173.25 -0.51 AmericanFin AFG 116.68 0.22 AmHomes4Rent AMH 35.89 -1.09 AIG AIG 66.00 0.03 AmerTowerREIT AMT 208.73 -1.74 AmerWaterWorks AWK 133.14 -0.10 AmericoldRealty COLD 28.90 0.19 Ameriprise AMP 353.74 -2.55 Ametek AME 157.29 0.24 Amgen AMGN 272.54 0.09 AmkorTech AMKR 28.42 0.04 Amphenol APH 91.87 -0.41 AnalogDevices ADI 183.26 0.19 AngloGoldAsh AU 19.01 -1.04 AB InBev BUD 63.15 -0.24 AnnalyCap NLY 18.53 0.03 AnteroResources AR 23.03 -0.85 Aon AON 326.11 -0.66 ApellisPharm APLS 63.87 2.29 APi Group APG 30.40 -0.66 ApolloGlbMgmt APO 89.86 -2.84 AppFolio APPF 193.33 5.50 Apple AAPL 189.43 -1.81 ApplMaterials AMAT 148.27 -3.32 Applovin APP 37.37 -0.88 Aptargroup ATR 128.42 0.32 Aptiv APTV 82.83 -1.18 Aramark ARMK 28.18 -0.11 ArcelorMittal MT 25.44 -0.13 ArchCapital ACGL 81.99 -0.64 ADM ADM 74.63 -0.45 AresMgmt ARES 109.40 -2.41 argenx ARGX 457.74 3.85 AristaNetworks ANET 215.10 -1.54 Arm ARM 61.93 -1.97 AspenTech AZPN 202.29 4.15 s Assurant AIZ 171.43 3.13 AstraZeneca AZN 65.02 0.23 Atlassian TEAM 194.43 -0.68 AtmosEnergy ATO 114.92 1.07 Autodesk ADSK 221.31 -3.62 s Autoliv ALV 105.32 0.28 ADP ADP 232.58 -0.36 AutoZone AZO 2664.11 22.36 Avalonbay AVB 177.74 -0.20 Avangrid AGR 31.86 -0.15 Avantor AVTR 21.44 0.06 s AveryDennison AVY 195.52 0.33 AvisBudget CAR 193.39 -2.32 AxaltaCoating AXTA 32.26 0.07 s AxonEnterprise AXON 236.28 4.77 BCE BCE 40.60 0.29 BHP Group BHP 61.36 -1.58 BILL BILL 68.52 0.41 BJ'sWholesale BJ 64.99 -0.60 BP BP 35.59 -0.39 s BWX Tech BWXT 81.45 2.62 Baidu BIDU 113.70 -3.07 BakerHughes BKR 33.75 -0.04 Ball BALL 56.67 0.33 BancoBilbaoViz BBVA 9.39 0.11 BancoBradesco BBDO 2.81 -0.13 BancodeChile BCH 22.53 -0.33 BancSanBrasil BSBR 6.20 -0.06 BcoSantChile BSAC 19.39 -0.23 BancoSantander SAN 4.14 ... BanColombia CIB 27.98 -0.29 BankofAmerica BAC 30.82 -0.14 BankMontreal BMO 84.35 0.13 BankNY Mellon BK 48.68 -0.03 BankNovaScotia BNS 44.87 -0.34 Barclays BCS 7.08 -0.32 BarrickGold GOLD 17.53 -0.20 Bath&BodyWks BBWI 36.90 3.01 BaxterIntl BAX 36.89 0.34 BectonDicknsn BDX 237.57 -0.68 BeiGene BGNE 181.16 -6.33 s BellRing BRBR 54.53 1.31 BentleySystems BSY 52.70 -0.26 Berkley WRB 73.65 0.39 BerkHathwy B BRK.B 356.66 -0.41 BerkHathwy A BRK.A 542395 -18.93 BerryGlobal BERY 66.39 -0.60 BestBuy BBY 74.69 1.27 Bio-Techne TECH 65.30 0.73 Bio-RadLab A BIO 308.93 1.93 Biogen BIIB 232.85 -1.79 BioMarinPharm BMRN 94.40 1.98 BioNTech BNTX 99.91 0.51 s Birkenstock BIRK 48.68 0.23 BlackRock BLK 756.43 0.08 Blackstone BX 115.54 1.26 Block SQ 65.00 -0.04 BlueOwlCapital OWL 13.34 -0.27 Boeing BA 234.87 1.00 Booking BKNG 3134.48 -25.08 s BoozAllen BAH 131.22 3.06 BorgWarner BWA 34.32 0.37 BostonProps BXP 63.72 0.44 BostonSci BSX 54.77 -1.37 BristolMyers BMY 49.98 -0.12 BritishAmTob BTI 31.93 -0.11 Broadcom AVGO 923.97 -6.03 s BroadridgeFinl BR 195.12 -0.28 BrookfieldAsset BAM 35.46 -0.60 Brookfield BN 36.16 ... BrookfieldInfr BIP 27.32 -0.43 BrookfieldRenew BEPC 27.43 -0.42 Brown&Brown BRO 74.50 0.36 Brown-Forman A BF.A 62.15 0.57 Brown-Forman B BF.B 60.38 0.44 Bruker BRKR 66.37 0.31 BuildersFirst BLDR 136.86 -2.42 BungeGlobal BG 107.74 -1.47 BurlingtonStrs BURL 178.30 4.24 CACI Intl CACI 336.33 11.81 CBRE Group CBRE 82.18 0.77 CCC Intelligent CCCS 11.69 -0.12 CDW CDW 212.60 0.04 CF Industries CF 73.86 -2.45 CGI A GIB 103.36 0.40 CH Robinson CHRW 85.72 2.46 s CME Group CME 219.78 0.24 CMS Energy CMS 58.33 -0.07 CNA Fin CNA 42.69 0.47 CNH Indl CNHI 10.97 -0.21 Net Stock Sym Close Chg Net Stock Sym Close Chg Monday, December 4, 2023 CRH CRH 62.96 -1.53 CSX CSX 33.66 0.26 CVS Health CVS 68.48 ... CadenceDesign CDNS 263.48 -6.87 CaesarsEnt CZR 46.24 -0.51 CamdenProperty CPT 93.04 0.42 Cameco CCJ 45.96 0.56 CampbellSoup CPB 41.01 0.41 CIBC CM 42.05 0.15 CanNtlRlwy CNI 118.68 -0.04 CanadianNatRscs CNQ 66.67 -1.22 CdnPacKC CP 74.60 -0.23 CapitalOne COF 114.94 1.01 CardinalHealth CAH 107.46 0.30 s Carlisle CSL 291.39 5.18 Carlyle CG 35.63 0.45 CarMax KMX 68.28 0.89 Carnival CCL 16.35 0.59 Carnival CUK 14.71 0.58 CarrierGlobal CARR 53.46 0.24 Carvana CVNA 40.07 4.87 CaseysGenStores CASY 276.98 0.67 Catalent CTLT 39.97 -0.18 Caterpillar CAT 254.75 -2.01 s Celanese CE 141.40 0.36 CelsiusHldg CELH 52.36 0.37 Cemex CX 7.04 -0.16 Cencora COR 203.76 -0.33 CenovusEnergy CVE 17.16 -0.55 Centene CNC 74.03 -0.85 CenterPointEner CNP 28.85 0.06 CentraisElBras EBR 8.24 -0.14 CeridianHCM CDAY 69.52 -0.75 CharlesRiverLabs CRL 200.61 -1.07 CharterComms CHTR 399.14 -2.73 CheckPoint CHKP 145.46 -0.37 Chemed CHE 578.76 12.11 CheniereEnergy LNG 174.17 -7.44 CheniereEnerPtrs CQP 60.87 0.49 ChesapeakeEner CHK 78.32 -2.28 Chevron CVX 144.87 0.06 Chewy CHWY 18.71 0.39 s Chipotle CMG 2219.20 -14.63 Chubb CB 228.12 -0.54 ChunghwaTel CHT 38.25 0.18 Church&Dwight CHD 95.10 -0.27 ChurchillDowns CHDN 119.58 1.75 Ciena CIEN 46.95 0.20 Cigna CI 262.91 -6.11 CincinnatiFinl CINF 103.77 1.12 Cintas CTAS 555.05 -3.20 CiscoSystems CSCO 48.05 -0.42 Citigroup C 47.37 0.14 CitizensFin CFG 28.65 0.13 CleanHarbors CLH 170.22 3.36 Cleveland-Cliffs CLF 18.33 0.07 Clorox CLX 143.81 -0.03 s Cloudflare NET 79.82 1.04 Coca-Cola KO 58.57 -0.07 s CocaColaCon COKE 746.14 19.56 Coca-ColaEuro CCEP 62.00 1.67 CognizantTech CTSH 71.16 0.34 s CoinbaseGlbl COIN 141.09 7.33 ColgatePalm CL 78.98 0.28 Comcast A CMCSA 43.08 0.87 ComfortSystems FIX 188.96 -7.65 SABESP SBS 13.72 -0.24 ConagraBrands CAG 28.96 0.60 Confluent CFLT 24.07 1.24 ConocoPhillips COP 114.53 -0.70 ConEd ED 91.99 0.31 ConstBrands A STZ 240.31 -1.64 ConstellationEner CEG 118.92 -0.96 Cooper COO 338.32 -2.76 Copart CPRT 49.09 -1.04 s Core&Main CNM 36.09 0.09 CorebridgeFin CRBG 20.56 0.15 Corning GLW 28.86 0.02 Corteva CTVA 45.22 -0.98 Cosan CSAN 14.32 -0.27 CoStar CSGP 85.23 -0.05 Costco COST 599.08 2.83 CoterraEnergy CTRA 25.79 -0.35 Coty COTY 11.86 0.28 Net Stock Sym Close Chg Coupang CPNG 15.36 -0.44 Credicorp BAP 126.82 -1.53 CrowdStrike CRWD 237.39 2.36 CrownCastle CCI 118.43 -0.14 CrownHoldings CCK 88.48 0.44 CubeSmart CUBE 41.75 0.82 Cummins CMI 231.18 4.87 s Curtiss-Wright CW 217.62 -1.43 s CyberArkSoftware CYBR 204.23 2.84 DEF DTE Energy DTE 108.41 0.24 Danaher DHR 222.13 -1.35 Darden DRI 161.00 1.09 DarlingIngred DAR 45.46 0.19 Datadog DDOG 118.18 -0.44 DaVita DVA 106.59 2.28 s DeckersOutdoor DECK 693.81 8.75 Deere DE 368.93 0.12 DellTechC DELL 69.32 -2.61 DeltaAir DAL 38.16 0.11 DentsplySirona XRAY 32.73 0.18 DescartesSystems DSGX 81.49 -0.85 DeutscheBank DB 12.49 -0.10 DevonEnergy DVN 44.68 -0.49 DexCom DXCM 118.24 1.62 Diageo DEO 141.93 -1.64 DiamondbkEner FANG 153.86 -0.41 Dick's DKS 141.15 2.88 DigitalRealty DLR 137.77 -0.84 DiscoverFinSvcs DFS 94.74 -0.88 Disney DIS 92.01 -0.57 DocuSign DOCU 45.88 -0.11 DolbyLab DLB 87.87 0.87 DollarGeneral DG 134.83 0.14 DollarTree DLTR 128.22 2.07 DominionEner D 46.13 -0.54 Domino's DPZ 399.82 2.64 Donaldson DCI 61.86 0.70 s DoorDash DASH 98.36 1.78 Dover DOV 143.43 0.22 Dow DOW 52.10 -0.20 DrReddy'sLab RDY 69.83 0.25 DraftKings DKNG 37.19 -1.81 Dropbox DBX 28.31 -0.47 DukeEnergy DUK 92.73 0.09 Duolingo DUOL 216.98 3.68 DuPont DD 71.76 -0.65 Dynatrace DT 54.73 -0.09 EMCOR EME 216.79 2.47 ENI E 32.37 -0.60 EOG Rscs EOG 123.00 -0.60 EPAM Systems EPAM 261.46 2.57 EQT EQT 38.97 -1.27 EastWestBncp EWBC 66.95 1.27 EastGroup EGP 178.19 1.39 EastmanChem EMN 84.88 -0.58 Eaton ETN 228.20 -2.26 eBay EBAY 41.62 -0.11 s Ecolab ECL 191.44 -0.96 Ecopetrol EC 12.64 -0.17 EdisonIntl EIX 67.37 -0.11 EdwardsLife EW 69.18 0.82 s Elastic ESTC110.51 0.31 ElbitSystems ESLT 207.73 3.52 ElectronicArts EA 137.82 0.06 ElevanceHealth ELV 483.10 -0.02 EmersonElec EMR 88.91 -1.21 Enbridge ENB 35.15 -0.03 Endeavor EDR 24.43 0.17 EnergyTransfer ET 13.89 ... EnphaseEnergy ENPH 108.87 2.35 Entegris ENTG 106.88 -1.42 Entergy ETR 101.39 -0.64 EnterpriseProd EPD 26.83 -0.08 Equifax EFX 225.14 3.02 Equinix EQIX 822.33 -2.09 Equinor EQNR 30.81 -0.90 Equitable EQH 32.25 0.99 EquityLife ELS 72.23 0.36 EquityResdntl EQR 58.69 0.15 ErieIndemnity ERIE 303.70 5.24 EssentialUtil WTRG 36.26 0.23 EssexProp ESS 222.77 2.11 Net Stock Sym Close Chg EsteeLauder EL 138.95 7.01 Etsy ETSY 82.99 0.95 Everest EG 399.06 -8.57 Evergy EVRG 50.45 -1.31 EversourceEner ES 60.69 -0.09 ExactSciences EXAS 65.66 -1.37 Exelixis EXEL 22.43 0.49 Exelon EXC 38.73 -0.26 s Expedia EXPE 139.82 0.51 ExpeditorsIntl EXPD 121.81 1.72 ExtraSpaceSt EXR 137.07 2.70 ExxonMobil XOM 102.43 -0.56 s F5 FFIV 173.15 0.55 FMC FMC 55.42 -0.33 s FTI Consulting FCN 231.00 9.65 FactSet FDS 454.30 -0.87 s FairIsaac FICO 1122.43 -5.28 Fastenal FAST 60.97 0.15 FederalRealty FRT 99.90 1.99 FedEx FDX 265.60 1.18 Ferguson FERG 168.25 -4.16 Ferrari RACE 353.64 -3.35 FidNatlFinl FNF 45.53 0.57 FidNatlInfo FIS 59.93 0.03 FifthThirdBncp FITB 30.66 0.08 FirstCitizBcshA FCNCA 1477.16 -8.63 FirstHorizon FHN 13.49 0.15 FirstSolar FSLR 159.54 -0.75 FirstEnergy FE 37.17 -0.19 s Fiserv FI 130.35 -0.26 FiveBelow FIVE 201.44 1.64 FleetCorTech FLT 251.60 -0.03 Flex FLEX 25.42 -0.56 Floor&Decor FND 98.92 1.32 FomentoEconMex FMX 126.04 -0.87 FordMotor F 10.70 0.12 Fortinet FTNT 52.25 -0.24 Fortis FTS 40.66 0.02 Fortive FTV 69.53 0.23 FortuneBrands FBIN 72.27 1.00 FoxA FOXA 30.25 0.05 FoxB FOX 28.17 -0.09 t Franco-Nevada FNV 110.12 -3.04 FranklinRscs BEN 25.67 0.04 FreeportMcM FCX 37.61 -1.63 FreseniusMedCare FMS 21.07 0.35 FullTruck YMM 7.06 -0.32 Futu FUTU 52.72 -1.71 GHI GE HealthCare GEHC 69.37 -0.04 GFLEnvironmental GFL 29.06 -0.52 GSK GSK 36.63 0.06 GXO Logistics GXO 58.89 0.74 Gallagher AJG 247.55 -0.45 Gaming&Leisure GLPI 47.79 0.11 s Gap GPS 20.84 -0.18 s Garmin GRMN 124.18 0.54 Gartner IT 439.58 -1.56 GenDigital GEN 22.48 0.14 Generac GNRC 122.87 0.57 GeneralDynamics GD 252.21 2.52 GeneralElec GE 121.53 -0.97 GeneralMills GIS 64.95 0.82 GeneralMotors GM 33.07 0.71 Genmab GMAB 32.27 0.30 Gentex GNTX 30.94 0.07 GenuineParts GPC 137.32 2.62 Gerdau GGB 4.47 -0.08 GileadSciences GILD 78.34 0.69 GitLab GTLB 52.93 0.46 GlobalPayments GPN 119.81 0.02 GlobalFoundries GFS 52.46 -1.17 Globant GLOB 222.65 -3.85 s GlobeLife GL 124.57 1.23 s GoDaddy GDDY 103.20 1.19 GoldFields GFI 14.71 -0.76 GoldmanSachs GS 349.39 0.96 Grab GRAB 3.15 0.08 Graco GGG 82.39 0.43 Grainger GWW 801.40 -2.18 GraphicPkg GPK 23.18 0.09 Grifols GRFS 9.71 ... GpoAeroportuar PAC 149.59 -2.74 Net Stock Sym Close Chg GpoAeroportSur ASR 231.74 -3.82 Guidewire GWRE 100.13 -1.46 HCA Healthcare HCA 257.14 4.78 HDFC Bank HDB 63.26 2.55 HF Sinclair DINO 54.37 0.03 HP HPQ 29.04 -0.46 HSBC HSBC 38.35 -0.31 H World HTHT 36.17 0.07 Haleon HLN 8.47 -0.11 Halliburton HAL 37.37 -0.34 HartfordFinl HIG 78.63 0.81 HealthpeakProp PEAK 18.47 0.27 Heico HEI 178.31 2.41 Heico A HEI.A 143.43 1.71 HenrySchein HSIC 69.31 -0.23 Hershey HSY 190.62 -0.36 Hess HES 141.69 0.62 HessMidstream HESM 32.85 0.11 HewlettPackard HPE 16.54 -0.35 s Hilton HLT 171.57 0.73 Hologic HOLX 70.58 -0.57 HomeDepot HD 324.02 4.40 HondaMotor HMC 30.26 -0.91 Honeywell HON 198.36 0.58 HormelFoods HRL 31.74 0.42 DR Horton DHI 130.49 -0.37 HostHotels HST 18.09 0.37 s HoulihanLokey HLI 115.11 5.18 HowmetAerospace HWM 52.91 0.01 Hubbell HUBB 303.34 -0.14 HubSpot HUBS 506.99 -9.98 Humana HUM 491.98 -3.23 JBHunt JBHT 190.24 0.44 HuntingtonBcshs HBAN 11.78 0.04 s HuntingIngalls HII 242.60 3.86 HyattHotels H 120.04 1.94 ICICI Bank IBN 24.31 1.34 IdexxLab IDXX 516.61 34.01 ING Groep ING 14.09 -0.04 IQVIA IQV 216.27 -0.64 s ITT ITT 111.24 1.01 IcahnEnterprises IEP 16.86 -0.20 Icon ICLR 266.61 -2.74 IDEX IEX 204.20 1.16 IllinoisToolWks ITW 247.57 2.33 Illumina ILMN 114.34 4.55 Immunogen IMGN 29.22 -0.10 ImperialOil IMO 57.05 ... Incyte INCY 54.96 0.94 s Informatica INFA 25.90 0.37 Infosys INFY 17.69 -0.04 IngersollRand IR 72.02 -0.22 Ingredion INGR 105.77 1.20 Insulet PODD 193.99 1.80 Intel INTC 42.35 -1.39 InteractiveBrkrs IBKR 79.24 1.10 ICE ICE 115.03 0.79 s InterContinentl IHG 81.24 -0.07 s IBM IBM 161.10 0.55 IntlFlavors IFF 76.30 -0.48 IntlPaper IP 37.36 0.17 Interpublic IPG 31.50 0.19 Intuit INTU 570.47 -3.85 IntuitiveSurgical ISRG 311.84 -3.36 InvitatHomes INVH 33.79 -0.24 IonisPharm IONS 51.46 -0.17 s IronMountain IRM 66.20 0.71 ItauUnibanco ITUB 6.36 -0.07 JKL JD.com JD 26.59 -0.57 JPMorganChase JPM 157.99 1.15 Jabil JBL 115.35 -1.56 JackHenry JKHY 162.68 1.89 JacobsSolns J 129.31 -0.25 s JamesHardie JHX 32.86 0.05 JazzPharm JAZZ 121.45 2.34 JefferiesFinl JEF 36.83 0.47 J&J JNJ 158.88 0.50 JohnsonControls JCI 54.26 0.37 JonesLang JLL 162.50 1.53 JuniperNetworks JNPR 28.89 0.32 KB Financial KB 39.34 -0.79 KBR KBR 53.11 0.52 Net Stock Sym Close Chg KE Holdings BEKE 15.64 -0.12 s KKR KKR 75.22 0.35 KLA KLAC 539.59 -9.41 KarunaTherap KRTX 197.57 1.04 Kellanova K 53.65 0.77 Kenvue KVUE 20.62 -0.07 KeurigDrPepper KDP 32.23 0.06 KeyCorp KEY 13.44 0.22 KeysightTech KEYS 138.14 0.26 KimberlyClark KMB 124.17 0.13 KimcoRealty KIM 20.55 0.50 KinderMorgan KMI 17.85 0.10 KinrossGold KGC 5.88 -0.06 KinsaleCapital KNSL 348.88 10.40 Klaviyo KVYO 30.64 -0.98 Knight-Swift KNX 57.01 1.01 Philips PHG 20.38 -0.16 KoreaElecPwr KEP 7.29 -0.10 KraftHeinz KHC 35.82 0.30 Kroger KR 44.67 0.07 LKQ LKQ 45.71 0.22 LPL Financial LPLA 222.41 0.42 L3HarrisTech LHX 199.28 4.59 s LabCorp.ofAmerica LH 222.00 3.03 LamResearch LRCX 710.06 -12.02 LamarAdv LAMR 104.74 0.52 LambWeston LW 102.46 1.54 LasVegasSands LVS 45.63 -1.17 LatticeSemi LSCC 61.60 1.34 Lear LEA 138.98 2.59 LegendBiotech LEGN 62.65 2.66 s Leidos LDOS 111.30 2.36 Lennar B LEN.B 119.94 -0.47 Lennar A LEN 131.51 -0.07 s LennoxIntl LII 420.02 1.73 LiAuto LI 35.81 -0.49 LibertyBroadbandC LBRDK 83.16 -1.10 LibertyBroadbandA LBRDA 83.00 -1.11 LibertyFormOne C FWONK 62.82 -0.82 LibertyFormOne A FWONA 56.44 -0.84 LibertySirius C LSXMK 26.39 -0.95 LibertySirius A LSXMA 26.24 -0.98 s Light&Wonder LNW 87.85 -0.54 EliLilly LLY 585.68 1.64 LincolnElectric LECO 204.26 2.49 Linde LIN 406.64 -5.06 LithiaMotors LAD 283.09 5.50 LiveNationEnt LYV 84.13 -0.12 LloydsBanking LYG 2.25 ... LockheedMartin LMT 450.69 1.28 s Loews L 70.72 0.71 LogitechIntl LOGI 87.01 -0.10 Lowe's LOW 207.55 3.63 Lucid LCID 4.36 0.03 lululemon LULU 460.76 -5.85 LyondellBasell LYB 94.09 -1.41 M N M&T Bank MTB 134.39 1.68 MGM Resorts MGM 40.35 -0.49 MinisoGroup MNSO 20.76 -3.48 MPLX MPLX 36.66 0.05 MSA Safety MSA 176.78 0.41 MSCI MSCI 525.49 -2.21 MagnaIntl MGA 56.04 0.36 ManhattanAssoc MANH 227.75 -0.17 ManulifeFinl MFC 19.84 0.12 Maplebear CART 24.41 -0.96 MarathonOil MRO 25.06 -0.38 MarathonPetrol MPC 151.39 -0.03 Markel MKL 1410.17 -14.83 MarketAxess MKTX 238.56 -1.61 s Marriott MAR 209.61 0.33 Marsh&McLen MMC 197.35 -0.05 MartinMarietta MLM 464.23 -3.12 MarvellTech MRVL 52.01 -0.79 Masco MAS 62.44 0.28 Mastercard MA 408.23 -6.13 MatadorRscs MTDR 57.63 -0.49 MatchGroup MTCH 32.85 -0.55 Mattel MAT 19.50 0.02 McCormickVtg MKC.V 66.20 0.82 McCormick MKC 66.79 0.80 McDonald's MCD 286.13 0.17 Net Stock Sym Close Chg McKesson MCK 459.30 -5.35 Medpace MEDP 279.52 4.11 Medtronic MDT 79.76 -0.23 MercadoLibre MELI 1599.63 -52.38 Merck MRK 105.06 1.60 MetaData AIU 1.00 -0.05 MetaPlatforms META 320.02 -4.80 MetLife MET 64.55 0.79 Mettler-Toledo MTD 1102.84 -1.63 MicrochipTech MCHP 84.49 -0.17 MicronTech MU 74.29 -1.64 Microsoft MSFT 369.14 -5.37 s MicroStrategy MSTR 563.22 35.54 MidAmApt MAA 126.83 0.04 Middleby MIDD 133.41 2.99 MitsubishiUFJ MUFG 8.51 -0.13 MizuhoFin MFG 3.39 -0.07 Mobileye MBLY 39.72 0.45 Moderna MRNA 79.87 0.04 MolinaHealthcare MOH 365.56 2.80 MolsonCoorsB TAP 62.28 0.35 monday.com MNDY182.14 5.77 Mondelez MDLZ 71.22 0.40 MongoDB MDB 423.02 -12.21 MonolithicPower MPWR 559.54 -0.07 MonsterBev MNST 55.17 -0.05 s Moody's MCO 373.94 2.89 MorganStanley MS 81.21 0.32 s Morningstar MORN 284.79 0.49 Mosaic MOS 36.11 -0.79 MotorolaSol MSI 323.66 -1.66 MurphyUSA MUSA 367.52 -3.10 NICE NICE 193.79 5.30 NIO NIO 7.32 0.17 NNN REIT NNN 42.18 0.82 NOV NOV 19.03 -0.09 NRG Energy NRG 48.08 -0.29 NVR NVR 6388.05 67.70 NXP Semicon NXPI 206.28 0.60 Nasdaq NDAQ 56.23 0.33 Natera NTRA 59.31 0.85 NationalGrid NGG 66.21 -0.63 NatWest NWG 5.49 0.03 NetApp NTAP 90.31 -0.97 NetEase NTES 104.18 -5.20 Netflix NFLX 453.90 -11.84 Neurocrine NBIX 116.53 -0.59 NewFortressEner NFE 39.24 -0.47 NewOrientalEduc EDU 81.31 -0.32 NY CmntyBcp NYCB 9.83 -0.09 s NYTimes A NYT 47.67 0.30 Newmont NEM 40.54 -0.66 NewsCorp A NWSA 22.06 -0.09 NewsCorp B NWS 23.08 -0.07 NextEraEnergy NEE 58.67 -0.50 Nike NKE 115.15 1.67 NiSource NI 26.44 0.24 Nokia NOK 3.16 -0.33 Nomura NMR 4.10 -0.05 Nordson NDSN 240.34 1.54 NorfolkSouthern NSC 228.03 1.56 NorthernTrust NTRS 80.77 0.49 NorthropGrum NOC 480.33 0.49 NorwegCruise NCLH 17.50 1.08 Novartis NVS 98.99 0.86 NovoNordisk NVO 100.92 0.52 NuHoldings NU 8.18 -0.12 Nucor NUE 167.40 -3.01 Nutanix NTNX 44.49 -0.29 Nutrien NTR 54.27 -1.38 nVentElectric NVT 54.55 0.39 NVIDIA NVDA 455.10 -12.55 OPQ OGE Energy OGE 35.58 0.09 ONEOK OKE 70.21 0.34 ON Semi ON 73.10 -1.08 OReillyAuto ORLY 983.22 2.70 OccidentalPetrol OXY 57.86 -0.97 Okta OKTA 72.50 -1.13 OldDomFreight ODFL 403.90 -1.84 OldRepublic ORI 29.60 0.46 Net Stock Sym Close Chg Biggest 1,000 Stocks | WSJ.com/stocks How to Read the Stock Tables The following explanations apply to NYSE, NYSE Arca, NYSE American and Nasdaq Stock Market listed securities. Prices are composite quotations that include primary market trades as well as trades reported by Nasdaq BX (formerly Boston), Chicago Stock Exchange, Cboe, NYSE National and Nasdaq ISE. The list comprises the 1,000 largest companies based on market capitalization. Underlined quotations are those stocks with large changes in volume compared with the issue’s average trading volume. Boldfaced quotations highlight those issues whose price changed by 5% or more if their previous closing price was $2 or higher. Footnotes: s-New 52-week high. t-New 52-week low. dd-Indicates loss in the most recent four quarters. FD-First day of trading. h-Does not meet continued listing standards lf-Late filing q-Temporary exemption from Nasdaq requirements. t-NYSE bankruptcy v-Trading halted on primary market. vj-In bankruptcy or receivership or being reorganized under the Bankruptcy Code, or securities assumed by such companies. Wall Street Journal stock tables reflect composite regular trading as of 4 p.m. and changes in the closing prices from 4 p.m. the previous day. TECHNOLOGY WSJ.com/Tech General Motors’ Cruise has been ordered to testify before the California Public Utilities Commission over allegedly misleading comments it gave to regulators about an incident in October in which a pedestrian was hit. The CPUC said the self-driving-car firm omitted critical information about the safety of its vehicles regarding the incident. A woman was hit by a human-driven car and thrown into the path of a driverless Cruise vehicle, which collided with the pedestrian and dragged the person about 20 feet. Cruise could face a fine of up to $1.5 million, the latest blow to the company’s operations in recent months after the company lost its driverless permits in California and CEO Kyle Vogt resigned. On Monday, a spokesman for Cruise said the company is committed to rebuilding trust with regulators and nodded to the fact that the company’s board of directors hired a law firm to investigate its response to the incident. The CPUC alleges that when a Cruise representative reached out to share details about the October incident with regulators the day after, he didn’t explain that the vehicle had dragged the woman, who was then transported to the hospital with traumatic injuries. Cruise has maintained that it did show regulators the full video the day after the incident. The CPUC, one of the agencies with a regulatory probe over a large stake held by a Chinese investor with two board seats. Autonomous-driving technology is considered critical to U.S. national security. A 2022 agreement between the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. and TuSimple required that the company avoid sharing the proprietary technology and data housed at its U.S. operation with its China unit. TuSimple earlier said it planned to sell its China unit but then announced further expansion into Asia. In June, it became the first to operate a fully autonomous semitruck on open public roads in China. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Securities and Exchange Commission and Cfius opened investigations into whether TuSimple financed and transferred technology to a Chinese trucking startup, The Wall Street Journal reported. The startup, Hydron, was founded in 2021 by a TuSimple co-founder, Mo Chen. It operates in China and has said it is working to build hydrogenpowered semi trucks to be outfitted with TuSimple autonomous-driving systems. TuSimple didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday. In the past, it has said it is unaware of an FBI investigation and is cooperating with the SEC and Cfius. TuSimple’s co-founder and chief executive at the time, Xiaodi Hou, was ousted by the board over TuSimple’s dealings with Hydron. He came back only to be ousted again this year. He didn’t respond to a request for comment. that regulates driverless cars in the state, said it found out about the dragging 15 days later when the company shared a complete video of what transpired. “By withholding information about the extent of the Cruise AV interaction with the pedestrian, Cruise misled the DMV and, in turn, the Commission into thinking that the original video shown and commented on accurately memorialized the full extent of the incident,” the CPUC said in its filing. The hearing is scheduled for Feb. 6. Cruise will have an opportunity to defend itself and explain why it shouldn’t be fined or penalized further. The company has been asked to answer a series of questions in writing ahead of time. Cruise said it will respond to the CPUC in a timely manner. Penalties for the alleged violation range from $500 to $100,000. Each day can be counted as a separate offense, meaning Cruise could be fined up to $1.5 million if it is determined that the company misled regulators. After Cruise lost its permits in California, the company paused operations nationwide. Vogt, the CEO and co-founder, left the following month. The company’s other co-founder, Dan Kan, who had been serving as chief product officer, also resigned. Before the October incident, Cruise had spent the previous year rolling out its driverless robotaxi business. Hundreds of cars were deployed in San Francisco to ferry paying passengers around the city. The cars ran into issues. Some stopped in the middle of the street, causing traffic jams. Others nearly drove into active crime and fire scenes, interfering with the jobs of firefighters and police and angering local officials. The public mood toward them turned sour. The company—which also previously had cars in Austin, Phoenix and Houston—has said it will focus on only one city when it resumes service. BY MEGHAN BOBROWSKY GM’s Cruise Ordered to Testify After Car Dragged Pedestrian General Motors’ self-driving-car unit could face a fine of up to $1.5 million in California. Self-driving-trucking company TuSimple Holdings said Monday that it is winding down its U.S. business, reducing its workforce to about 30 people as it seeks a buyer for its remaining U.S. assets. The onetime leader in autonomous long-haul trucking has had to grapple in the past year with safety concerns as well as government scrutiny of its dealings with a Chinese trucking startup. San Diegobased TuSimple is now moving its business to China, according to company filings. The company said Monday that it laid off about 150 employees, or 75% of its U.S. staff. Its global workforce now numbers about 700 full-time employees—half the number in summer 2022. Most are in China. TuSimple has repeatedly reduced its U.S. staff since late last year. TuSimple has stopped hauling freight and ended most of its autonomous-driving testing and development efforts, according to company statements. It told investors in a filing that it expects no significant revenue this year. TuSimple said the remaining employees are charged with winding down what is left of the company, including selling its assets. It has been seeking a buyer for months. The company is valued at about $229 million. It went public in the U.S. in 2021 at an $8.5 billion valuation. Its shares jumped 6% Monday to $1. TuSimple has tangled with the U.S. government since before it went public, starting BY HEATHER SOMERVILLE Self-Driving Truck Maker Cuts U.S. Staff DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS Watch a Video Scan this code to watch a video on drivers’ distrust of selfdriving cars. Continued on Page B8 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | B7 IS YOUR ENTERPRISE? Mission Critical Apps | DDoS Protection | Network Detection & Response | 5G Service Assurance THE EDGE IS ONLY SCARY WHEN YOU CAN’T SEE IT That’s why your network needs a new kind of visibility to stay unstoppable Your business is reaching customers at the edge like never before. As your critical applications become more          flffiffl fffi ! " ® platform delivers the actionable insights it takes to eliminate blind spots and detect evolving cyberthreats from the data center !#! fi   !  ffi    fi  $fi      and deliver outstanding user experiences everywhere.  fi    netscout.com/unstoppable 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

B8 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Uber UBER 60.92 2.2 UnionBankshares UNB 30.87 5.9 US Steel X 36.64 0.8 Universal UVV 59.44 3.1 UnivDisplay OLED 180.00 0.4 UraniumEner UEC 6.77 3.2 VaronisSystems VRNS 44.06 2.1 Vaxcyte PCVX 54.98 0.7 Viad VVI 34.42 1.4 VillageSuper A VLGEA 26.66 1.3 VirTra VTSI 8.79 12.1 Visa V 257.39 -0.8 Vistra VST 37.16 2.3 Vontier VNT 34.80 ... VornadoRealty VNO 27.80 3.7 Wabtec WAB 120.53 -0.1 WasteMgt WM 174.47 0.3 WeycoGroup WEYS 30.08 1.5 WhitestoneREIT WSR 11.40 1.8 Williams-Sonoma WSM 199.32 1.3 Wingstop WING 246.50 1.0 WinVestAcqn WINVU 13.20 4.6 Wix.com WIX 106.83 0.2 Woodward WWD 138.56 2.3 WorthingtonEnts WOR 50.56 10.1 XBPEurope XBP 38.38 59.3 Lows AbacusLifeNts2028 ABLLL 24.26 -1.4 AdialPharm ADIL 1.77 7.8 AditEdTech ADEX.U 8.00 -26.7 AditEdTechA ADEX 7.52 -7.8 AdventTechWt ADNWW 0.03 7.7 AevaTechWt AEVA.WS 0.01 6.0 AEye LIDR 0.14 -5.9 Agriforce AGRI 0.63 -14.3 AirNetTech ANTE 0.56 1.7 AllianceEntWt AENTW 0.01 -47.9 Ashford AINC 4.91 -4.7 AslanPharm ASLN 0.50 -17.0 Azitra AZTR 0.98 -5.7 BancCaliforniaPfdF BANCpF 21.00 -0.3 BeamGlobalWt BEEMW 1.72 -13.4 BioraTherap BIOR 1.17 -7.4 BowFlex BFX 0.53 -3.9 BristolMyersRt CELGr 0.02 -35.3 BurningRockBio BNR 0.80 -0.7 ButterflyNtwkWt BFLY.WS 0.03 -19.5 CheerHolding CHR 3.10 0.8 ChickenSoupNts CSSEN 18.00 -1.4 Cingulate CING 5.00 -16.7 CleanEarthAcqns CLINU 7.87 -17.2 CleanEarthA CLIN 6.29 -29.1 CompassDigital CDAQU 9.62 -11.1 ConnexaSports CNXA 0.29 -0.4 DigitalAlly DGLY 1.79 -3.8 DuneAcqnUn DUNEU 5.17 -11.5 DuneAcqnA DUNE 4.40 -25.4 EFHuttonAcqnI EFHT 8.84 -17.9 ElectriqPower ELIQ 0.41 -7.4 ElevaiLabs ELAB 2.35 -15.4 EnphysAcqnWt NFYS.WS 0.02 -12.6 Exicure XCUR 0.39 -14.9 Franco-Nevada FNV 109.56 -2.7 GeoVaxLabs GOVX 0.36 -3.1 GlblTechAcqnIWt GTACW 0.02 105.1 GoalAcqnsWt PUCKW 0.00 -50.0 Graphex GRFX 0.97 -0.9 Hanryu HRYU 0.39 -8.7 iBio IBIO 2.63 -10.0 IndonesiaEnergy INDO 2.80 -3.4 IntelligentLiving ILAG 0.68 -3.7 Intergroup INTG 19.70 -6.1 Lizhi LIZI 2.30 -11.7 LumiraDxWt LMDXW 0.01 -23.3 MaiaBiotech MAIA 0.90 -9.0 MediciNova MNOV 1.70 -2.2 MetaMaterials MMAT 0.07 -36.5 MexcoEnergy MXC 9.62 -2.2 MicroCloudHologram HOLO 0.44 -5.7 micromobility.com MCOM 1.33 -25.3 MomentusWt MNTSW 0.01 -5.0 NextPlatWt NXPLW 0.21 -14.9 NioCorpDevelopWt NIOBW 0.36 -10.9 NuvveHoldingWt NVVEW 0.01 -45.0 OneMedNet ONMD 3.02 -21.0 PatriotNatBncp PNBK 4.25 -3.4 PaxMedica PXMD 0.73 -6.3 PerceptionCapIIIUn PFTAU 9.42 -1.7 PortageBiotech PRTG 1.17 -9.6 PowerREIT PW 0.53 -6.0 PrestigeWealth PWM 1.56 -19.0 ProMISNeurosci PMN 1.07 -0.8 ProtagenicTherap PTIX 0.68 4.6 QuettaAcqn QETA 10.07 ... RegencellBio RGC 10.49 -3.1 Renalytix RNLX 0.40 -10.0 RevolutionMedWt RVMDW 0.03 -14.6 RiskOnIntl ROI 0.22 -4.3 Roadzen RDZN 3.48 -28.7 RoyaltyMgmt RMCO 2.95 -6.3 S&W Seed SANW 0.50 -5.4 SafeguardSci SFE 0.95 -1.0 SanJuanBasin SJT 5.85 -4.9 Sasol SSL 10.71 -4.2 SelinaHosp SLNA 0.18 -8.3 SnowLakeRscs LITM 0.45 -4.3 SolGelTech SLGL 1.14 -10.5 Staffing360 STAF 0.40 -2.2 SyraHealth SYRA 1.05 ... 374Water SCWO 1.08 -0.9 TrinityPlace TPHS 0.16 -8.8 TritiumDCFC Wt DCFCW 0.03 -33.2 TuanChe TC 0.25 -3.3 U Power UCAR 0.63 -55.6 US Energy USEG 1.10 -1.3 US NatGas UNG 5.22 -2.0 US12mthNtlGas UNL 9.19 -1.8 Vaxxinity VAXX 0.72 -7.0 VenusConcept VERO 1.40 0.6 VerdeCleanFuelsA VGAS 2.46 -2.2 Volato SOAR 8.12 -39.3 Volcon VLCN 0.12 -12.0 Weibo WB 9.59 -3.0 WoodsideEnergy WDS 19.82 -3.0 WorthingtonSteel WS 21.00 9.0 ZyVersaTherap ZVSA 0.05 3.2 RithmCapital RITM 10.58 -0.4 RocketPharm RCKT 24.82 5.7 RoperTech ROP 542.04 -0.7 RossStores ROST 133.68 0.6 RoyalCaribbean RCL 114.43 3.1 Ryanair RYAAY 121.78 1.1 RyderSystem R 109.09 0.4 RymanHospitality RHP 102.85 0.1 SFL SFL 11.67 ... SafetyShotWt SHOTW 2.89 26.8 Samsara IOT 35.69 -0.8 ScholarRock SRRK 14.57 7.8 ScienceApplicat SAIC 136.05 13.4 Semrush SEMR 11.47 0.2 SevenHillsRlty SEVN 11.70 1.7 SherwinWilliams SHW 285.55 -0.3 SignetJewelers SIG 87.13 -0.7 SilverSunTechs SSNT 13.37 240.3 SimplyGoodFoods SMPL 40.31 2.3 SimpsonMfg SSD 175.31 1.5 SkechersUSA SKX 59.99 1.1 SkyWest SKYW 49.98 2.8 SmithAO AOS 77.34 0.5 Smith-Midland SMID 33.61 2.4 Snap SNAP 14.38 1.1 SolenoTherap SLNO 30.53 -3.0 Spotify SPOT 201.42 7.5 SproutsFarmers SFM 45.50 3.4 Stellantis STLA 22.09 -0.1 StevenMadden SHOO 39.93 2.3 StewartInfo STC 53.14 9.9 StoneCo STNE 16.64 0.2 Stride LRN 61.87 0.2 T-MobileUS TMUS 153.43 0.4 TPG TPG 35.88 0.1 Talkspace TALK 2.37 -0.4 Tanger SKT 26.90 3.4 10XCapVentureIIUn VCXAU 10.94 0.4 10XCapVentureII A VCXA 11.64 5.1 TileShop TTSH 6.99 4.7 Toll Bros TOL 88.72 -0.6 TopBuild BLD 317.56 2.5 NuSTAREnergy NS 19.32 ... NuSTARLogNts NSS 26.96 0.1 Nuvalent NUVL 68.24 1.5 OFGBancorp OFG 35.28 1.3 OceanTechI OTECU 11.16 4.1 OlympicSteel ZEUS 59.13 2.8 OxfordLanePfd2029 OXLCO 22.05 0.5 OxusAcqn OXUSU 11.60 5.9 PCTEL PCTI 6.92 0.1 PJT Partners PJT 97.34 8.1 PROS PRO 39.90 1.6 PTC PTC 160.28 0.3 PVH PVH 104.80 4.7 Paccar PCAR 94.69 0.6 Palomar PLMR 63.17 7.3 Parsons PSN 64.63 1.8 PatriotTransport PATI 16.01 1.6 Paymentus PAY 18.35 3.7 PepperLimeA PEPL 10.99 ... PerellaWeinberg PWP 12.01 2.2 PerformanceFood PFGC 65.76 0.1 PhillipsEdison PECO 36.52 2.1 Phillips66 PSX 131.37 -1.0 PiperSandler PIPR 162.78 2.3 Popular BPOP 78.09 1.6 PowellIndustries POWL 91.56 7.4 ProspectorCapA PRSR 10.87 0.5 PulseBiosciences PLSE 11.08 12.1 PulteGroup PHM 91.44 ... Q2 QTWO 38.15 1.1 Qualys QLYS 188.65 -0.2 QuanexBldg NX 32.45 1.5 RBC Bearings RBC 267.60 0.8 RBCBearingsPfdA RBCp 123.54 0.8 RCF Acqn RCFA.U 11.30 2.0 RPT Realty RPT 12.41 2.6 RPTRealtyPfdD RPTpD 54.88 1.6 RadNet RDNT 35.63 2.3 Rapid7 RPD 56.73 0.2 RayzeBio RYZB 26.38 7.6 ReinsGrp RGA 164.80 0.3 RepublicBcpKYA RBCAA 49.70 3.3 ResearchSolutions RSSS 2.75 12.5 KontoorBrands KTB 56.04 2.4 Koppers KOP 46.07 1.4 KratosDefense KTOS 20.24 3.5 Kyndryl KD 18.85 1.8 LGL Group LGL 5.63 10.7 La-Z-Boy LZB 36.82 2.0 LabCorp.ofAmerica LH 222.49 1.4 Lantronix LTRX 6.06 -2.3 Leidos LDOS 111.39 2.2 LennoxIntl LII 422.48 0.4 LexeoTherap LXEO 17.72 2.7 LibertyRscsAcqn LIBYU 11.15 0.7 LifeMD LFMD 8.22 5.3 Light&Wonder LNW 89.02 -0.6 Limbach LMB 41.22 1.7 Loews L 70.85 1.0 Macom Tech MTSI 85.95 -0.4 M/I Homes MHO 110.45 1.0 M3-Brigade II A MBAC 10.58 ... Macrogenics MGNX 8.65 0.8 MakeMyTrip MMYT 46.04 5.3 Manitex MNTX 7.54 8.7 Marriott MAR 213.13 0.2 Matson MATX 99.65 1.4 MercantileBank MBWM 37.10 2.3 MerchantsBancorp MBIN 34.75 1.1 MercuryGeneral MCY 39.90 2.4 MicroStrategy MSTR 577.77 6.7 MillerKnoll MLKN 27.46 1.9 ModineMfg MOD 53.45 1.6 MoneyLion ML 43.88 1.4 Moody's MCO 374.38 0.8 Morningstar MORN 286.52 0.2 MrCooper COOP 63.52 0.8 Myomo MYO 4.37 22.2 NatlHealthcare NHC 87.00 11.2 NaturalResPtrs NRP 81.67 1.1 NYTimes A NYT 48.88 0.6 NocturneAcqnA MBTC 11.99 -2.0 NortheastBank NBN 54.25 0.4 NorthViewAcqn NVAC 10.90 0.3 NovaVisionAcqn NOVVU 12.00 1.4 G-IIIApparel GIII 29.93 1.6 Gap GPS 21.13 -0.9 Garmin GRMN 124.53 0.4 GenesisEnergy GEL 12.78 -0.9 Gildan GIL 37.31 0.4 GlobalLightsAcqn GLACU 10.23 0.2 GlobeLife GL 125.02 1.0 GlobusMaritime GLBS 2.64 7.4 GoalAcqns PUCKU 11.62 7.0 GoDaddy GDDY 103.44 1.2 GraniteConstr GVA 47.54 1.2 GreatElmCap GECC 10.29 0.7 Griffon GFF 50.01 3.6 Grindr GRND 7.42 -0.8 HNI HNI 40.25 1.3 HamiltonBeach HBB 16.79 0.6 HamiltonLane HLNE 100.09 1.1 HawaiianHoldings HA 14.25 192.6 Hilton HLT 174.10 0.4 HireRight HRT 13.52 1.7 HoulihanLokey HLI 115.24 4.7 HuntingIngalls HII 242.65 1.6 ICF Intl ICFI 145.40 1.0 IRSA Wt IRS.WS 0.59 3.5 ITT ITT 111.25 0.9 IdahoStratRscs IDR 7.10 2.5 InFinTAcqnA IFIN 11.25 -0.4 Informatica INFA 26.04 1.4 Innoviva INVA 14.44 2.9 InsightEnt NSIT 166.47 4.4 InsteelInds IIIN 36.42 3.8 InterContinentl IHG 81.51 -0.1 InterDigital IDCC 102.82 1.4 IBM IBM 162.79 0.3 IronMountain IRM 66.25 1.1 JamesHardie JHX 32.99 0.2 JupiterAcqn JAQC 10.87 15.0 KKR KKR 76.13 0.5 Kadant KAI 272.11 3.5 KellyServices A KELYA 21.66 1.2 KellyServices B KELYB 21.00 0.5 Kforce KFRC 71.13 2.9 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg Curtiss-Wright CW 221.24 -0.7 CustomersBancorp CUBI 49.78 3.3 CVRx CVRX 23.90 8.5 CyberArkSoftware CYBR 206.06 1.4 CymaBayTherap CBAY 20.70 3.3 Danaos DAC 71.90 -0.1 DeckersOutdoor DECK 698.84 1.3 DieboldNixdorf DBD 27.21 5.8 DimenGlbxUS DFGX 51.63 ... DirectDigital DRCT 13.90 10.5 DonnelleyFin DFIN 59.86 1.4 DoorDash DASH 99.25 1.8 DorianLPG LPG 44.90 1.2 Ecolab ECL 193.72 -0.5 Elastic ESTC 115.50 0.3 Embraer ERJ 18.95 -0.8 EmpireStateRealty ESRT 9.55 1.6 enCoreEnergy EU 4.10 3.6 EnergemUn ENCPU 12.70 2.6 EnergemA ENCP 11.40 0.7 Enstar ESGR 281.57 1.7 EvercoreA EVR 153.31 1.8 Expedia EXPE 141.16 0.4 EyePointPharm EYPT 22.44 177.5 F5 FFIV 173.38 0.3 FTAI Infra FIP 3.77 1.9 FTI Consulting FCN 232.15 4.4 FairIsaac FICO 1151.49 -0.5 FederalSignal FSS 70.66 0.3 FidelityD&D FDBC 54.00 0.7 FirstBanCorp FBP 15.91 1.8 FirstCash FCFS 114.76 1.0 Fiserv FI 131.46 -0.2 Five9 FIVN 92.40 7.4 Fluor FLR 39.45 0.2 FrontierInvt FICVU 14.51 3.5 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg BellRing BRBR 54.64 2.5 Biohaven BHVN 34.21 0.8 Birkenstock BIRK 49.07 0.5 Blackbaud BLKB 80.64 3.9 bleuacaciaUn BLEUU 10.85 2.2 BluegreenVac BVH 75.60 1.2 BlueprintMed BPMC 74.00 0.9 BoozAllen BAH 131.28 2.4 Braze BRZE 56.81 0.7 Brink's BCO 84.06 1.5 BroadridgeFinl BR 196.52 -0.1 BrookfieldReinsA1 BNRE.A 36.34 -0.2 CARGOTherapeutics CRGX 17.29 -4.0 CBIZ CBZ 59.27 1.4 CME Group CME 223.80 0.1 CNO Financial CNO 27.11 0.6 CSI Compressco CCLP 2.06 2.1 CSP CSPI 27.98 -8.8 Cadre CDRE 33.52 1.3 Caleres CAL 31.95 1.6 Carlisle CSL 291.76 1.8 CarrolsRestr TAST 8.18 -0.9 Celanese CE 142.84 0.3 ChimeraInvPfdB CIMpB 23.59 0.4 ChimeraInvPfdD CIMpD 23.26 1.4 Chipotle CMG 2243.89 -0.7 Cimpress CMPR 77.48 2.9 CityHolding CHCO 101.52 1.2 CleanSpark CLSK 9.37 16.1 Cloudflare NET 80.17 1.3 CocaColaCon COKE 747.91 2.7 CoinbaseGlbl COIN 146.30 5.5 Core&Main CNM 36.29 0.3 Coursera COUR 20.50 1.2 Crawford B CRD.B 10.66 2.0 CrineticsPharm CRNX 33.85 2.0 Highs AAR AIR 70.64 1.0 ACNB ACNB 41.75 3.0 AN2 Therap ANTX 19.08 12.9 ASP Isotopes ASPI 2.17 8.8 AZZ AZZ 51.64 2.3 Abercrombie&Fitch ANF 78.83 -0.8 Accenture ACN 338.81 -0.5 AdtalemGlbEduc ATGE 59.39 1.1 AeroVironment AVAV 143.99 0.3 AffirmHldgs AFRM 39.11 2.4 AimeiHlthTechUn AFJKU 10.23 1.5 AkamaiTech AKAM 116.88 -0.1 AlphaProTech APT 5.48 3.4 AlpineImmune ALPN 16.33 2.5 AlterityTherap ATHE 5.41 153.0 AmerEquity AEL 55.75 -0.1 AmericanWoodmark AMWD 84.42 -0.6 AmnealPharm AMRX 4.77 1.1 AngelOakMtgREIT AOMR 10.60 1.2 AppliedIndlTechs AIT 168.60 1.6 AppliedOptoelec AAOI 17.02 1.4 ArcBest ARCB 125.48 ... Archrock AROC 14.93 1.4 ArcosDorados ARCO 12.49 -1.1 ArmstrongWorld AWI 91.90 5.5 Artivion AORT 18.50 -0.1 AspenInsPfd AHLpC 26.19 0.2 Assurant AIZ 171.58 1.9 Autoliv ALV 105.89 0.3 AveryDennison AVY 197.47 0.2 AxonEnterprise AXON 236.38 2.1 BWX Tech BWXT 81.61 3.3 BarrettBus BBSI 112.83 1.5 BayCom BCML 22.15 2.8 52-Wk % Stock Sym Hi/Lo Chg Monday, December 4, 2023 The following explanations apply to the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Arca, NYSE American and Nasdaq Stock Market stocks that hit a new 52-week intraday high or low in the latest session. % CHG-Daily percentage change from the previous trading session. NEW HIGHS AND LOWS WSJ.com/newhighs Net Stock Sym Close Chg OmegaHealthcare OHI 31.53 -0.59 Omnicom OMC 82.39 0.58 OnHolding ONON 29.83 -0.43 OntoInnovation ONTO 141.99 0.94 OpenText OTEX 40.28 -0.45 Oracle ORCL 115.78 -1.38 Orange ORAN 12.01 -0.02 Orix IX 91.55 -0.82 OtisWorldwide OTIS 87.24 0.49 Ovintiv OVV 43.69 -0.51 OwensCorning OC 137.77 -1.26 PDD PDD 142.83 -2.44 PG&E PCG 17.27 -0.18 PNC Finl PNC 140.79 1.79 POSCO PKX 90.64 -2.78 PPG Ind PPG 143.15 -0.48 PPL PPL 26.36 -0.12 s PTC PTC 159.90 0.49 s Paccar PCAR 93.72 0.54 PackagingCpAm PKG 168.35 -1.36 PalantirTech PLTR 18.40 -1.87 PaloAltoNtwks PANW 286.61 -9.55 ParamountA PARAA 19.60 0.22 ParamountB PARA 15.95 0.17 ParkerHannifin PH 438.15 -2.01 Paychex PAYX 124.18 0.26 PaycomSoftware PAYC 186.20 0.45 Paylocity PCTY 157.79 -2.09 PayPal PYPL 59.85 0.20 Pearson PSO 11.80 0.09 PembinaPipeline PBA 33.90 0.06 PenskeAuto PAG 154.49 0.22 Pentair PNR 66.52 0.24 Penumbra PEN 228.54 0.79 PepsiCo PEP 169.14 0.45 s PerformanceFood PFGC 65.36 0.06 PermianRscs PR 13.07 -0.17 PetroleoBrasil PBR 14.76 -0.45 PetroleoBrasilA PBR.A 14.10 -0.43 Pfizer PFE 29.28 0.37 PhilipMorris PM 92.93 -1.12 s Phillips66 PSX 128.44 -1.26 PinnacleWest PNW 75.09 0.01 Pinterest PINS 34.50 -0.29 PioneerNatRscs PXD 230.35 -1.80 PlainsAllAmPipe PAA 15.80 -0.12 PlainsGP PAGP 16.18 -0.16 Pool POOL 353.64 -4.00 Primerica PRI 212.64 2.41 PrincipalFinl PFG 75.10 0.57 ProcoreTech PCOR 61.95 1.57 Procter&Gamble PG 152.06 -0.60 Progressive PGR 163.41 0.95 Prologis PLD 120.33 2.07 PrudentialFinl PRU 98.36 0.62 Prudential PUK 21.92 -0.28 PublicServiceEnt PEG 63.28 -0.14 PublicStorage PSA 269.30 3.30 s PulteGroup PHM 91.02 ... PureStorage PSTG 32.89 -0.26 Qiagen QGEN 41.51 0.06 Qorvo QRVO 97.67 0.25 Qualcomm QCOM 129.95 0.28 s Qualys QLYS 187.71 -0.30 QuantaServices PWR 189.64 -0.91 QuestDiag DGX 137.49 1.32 R S s RBC Bearings RBC 266.43 2.06 RB Global RBA 64.75 -1.75 RELX RELX 38.59 0.03 RPM RPM 104.83 0.54 RTX RTX 83.13 0.81 RalphLauren RL 129.17 -4.46 Rambus RMBS 64.85 -4.08 RangeResources RRC 31.73 -1.00 RaymondJames RJF 106.91 -1.01 RealtyIncome O 55.53 0.93 RegalRexnord RRX 126.80 2.49 RegencyCtrs REG 65.13 1.17 RegenPharm REGN 823.32 8.46 RegionsFinl RF 17.64 0.07 s ReinsGrp RGA 163.97 0.49 RelianceSteel RS 277.53 -1.38 RenaissanceRe RNR 208.76 -4.51 RentokilInit RTO 27.30 -0.13 Repligen RGEN 161.50 -3.44 RepublicSvcs RSG 162.56 -1.36 ResMed RMD 161.53 1.89 RestaurantBrands QSR 73.21 0.61 Revvity RVTY 91.76 0.48 RexfordIndlRealty REXR 52.50 1.29 RioTinto RIO 69.05 -2.11 Rivian RIVN 17.74 -0.29 RobertHalf RHI 84.80 1.43 Robinhood HOOD 9.55 0.23 Roblox RBLX 41.23 0.78 RocketCos. RKT 9.84 -0.03 Rockwell ROK 279.50 -1.97 RogersComm B RCI 44.82 0.16 RoivantSciences ROIV 9.94 0.09 Roku ROKU 104.48 0.94 Rollins ROL 41.13 0.22 s RoperTech ROP 536.75 -3.83 s RossStores ROST 132.65 0.84 RoyalBkCanada RY 91.01 -0.08 s RoyalCaribbean RCL 114.21 3.48 RoyalGold RGLD 121.04 -1.80 RoyaltyPharma RPRX 28.32 0.97 RyanSpecialty RYAN 45.36 0.25 s Ryanair RYAAY121.46 1.29 SAP SAP 159.27 -0.82 S&P Global SPGI 424.19 2.19 SBA Comm SBAC 248.90 -1.67 SEI Investments SEIC 60.12 0.24 SK Telecom SKM 21.84 -0.20 SS&C Tech SSNC 57.10 -0.57 Saia SAIA 425.32 8.65 Salesforce CRM 250.66 -9.34 s Samsara IOT 34.30 -0.29 Sanofi SNY 47.02 0.30 SareptaTherap SRPT 86.12 1.68 t Sasol SSL 10.74 -0.47 Schlumberger SLB 52.03 -0.36 SchwabC SCHW 62.64 -0.52 Sea SE 38.20 0.72 Seagate STX 78.59 -0.59 Seagen SGEN 213.13 0.41 Sempra SRE 72.81 -0.39 ServiceIntl SCI 64.28 2.74 ServiceNow NOW 687.62 -3.17 SharkNinja SN 46.64 -2.37 Shell SHEL 64.89 -0.54 s SherwinWilliams SHW 281.46 -0.87 ShinhanFin SHG 27.95 -0.43 Shopify SHOP 72.52 -1.34 SimonProperty SPG 130.85 2.03 s SimpsonMfg SSD 175.15 2.66 SiriusXM SIRI 4.56 -0.32 s SkechersUSA SKX 59.83 0.68 Skyworks SWKS 98.94 0.75 s SmithAO AOS 77.09 0.35 Smith&Nephew SNN 26.02 -0.36 Smucker SJM 112.43 1.01 s Snap SNAP 14.30 0.16 Snap-On SNA 280.92 1.06 Snowflake SNOW 188.30 2.33 SOQUIMICH SQM 49.68 -4.32 SoFiTech SOFI 7.96 0.13 Sony SONY 85.32 -0.82 Southern SO 71.28 -0.24 SoCopper SCCO 73.69 -3.05 SouthwestAir LUV 27.30 0.61 SouthwesternEner SWN 6.50 -0.14 Splunk SPLK 150.97 -0.36 s Spotify SPOT 194.17 13.48 StanleyBlackDck SWK 94.13 0.35 Stantec STN 74.74 -0.76 Starbucks SBUX 97.60 -1.60 StateStreet STT 74.10 0.18 SteelDynamics STLD 118.77 -0.98 s Stellantis STLA 21.98 -0.03 Steris STE 199.27 -4.24 Stevanato STVN 26.24 -1.17 STMicroelec STM 47.51 -0.33 Stryker SYK 290.95 -6.84 SumitomoMits SMFG 9.76 -0.16 Net Stock Sym Close Chg Net Stock Sym Close Chg SunComms SUI 132.61 -0.06 SunLifeFinancial SLF 51.24 0.25 SuncorEnergy SU 32.58 -0.40 Sunoco SUN 53.22 -0.63 SuperMicroComp SMCI 266.35 -3.28 Suzano SUZ 10.47 -0.12 Symbotic SYM 55.68 -1.05 SynchronyFinl SYF 33.97 0.14 Synopsys SNPS 531.20 -14.76 Sysco SYY 73.00 0.20 TUV TAL Education TAL 11.57 -0.64 TC Energy TRP 38.13 0.29 TD Synnex SNX 98.64 -0.08 TE Connectivity TEL 131.00 -1.00 Telus TU 18.64 0.14 Ternium TX 39.74 -0.60 TFI Intl TFII 121.86 0.14 TIM TIMB 17.53 -0.22 TJX TJX 88.57 -0.47 s T-MobileUS TMUS 152.80 0.55 s TPG TPG 35.48 0.04 T.RowePrice TROW 102.01 -0.44 TaiwanSemi TSM 97.01 -1.54 TakeTwoSoftware TTWO 157.56 -0.28 TakedaPharm TAK 14.10 -0.07 Tapestry TPR 33.02 0.32 TargaResources TRGP 89.31 -0.85 Target TGT 133.71 -1.07 TechnipFMC FTI 20.46 -0.22 TeckResourcesB TECK 37.42 -1.43 TelecomArgentina TEO 8.25 0.04 TeledyneTech TDY 409.58 0.56 Teleflex TFX 229.36 1.69 Ericsson ERIC 5.25 0.23 TelefonicaBras VIV 10.57 -0.16 Telefonica TEF 4.32 -0.01 TelekmIndonesia TLK 24.76 -0.29 TempurSealy TPX 43.93 1.24 Tenaris TS 34.67 -0.20 TencentMusic TME 8.29 -0.14 TenetHealthcare THC 72.31 1.30 Teradyne TER 93.16 -0.70 Tesla TSLA 235.58 -3.25 TetraTech TTEK 165.45 2.94 TevaPharm TEVA 10.03 0.32 TexasInstruments TXN 157.42 2.21 TexasPacLand TPL 1597.16-149.12 TexasRoadhouse TXRH 114.41 -0.08 Textron TXT 77.27 -0.61 ThermoFisher TMO 495.34 -0.79 ThomsonReuters TRI 141.38 0.38 3M MMM 103.44 3.59 Toast TOST 15.12 -0.20 s Toll Bros TOL 87.21 -0.57 s TopBuild BLD 312.49 7.65 Toro TTC 86.34 0.62 Net Stock Sym Close Chg Continued From Page B6 ProShUltPrQQQ TQQQ 42.98 –2.85 148.4 SPDRBbg1-3MTB BIL 91.44 ... –0.0 SPDR DJIA Tr DIA 362.64 –0.11 9.4 SPDR Gold GLD 187.86 –2.16 10.7 SPDRPtfDevxUS SPDW 32.63 –0.85 9.9 SPDRS&P500Value SPYV 44.68 –0.27 14.9 SPDRPtfS&P500 SPLG 53.72 –0.50 19.4 SPDRS&P500Growth SPYG 62.67 –0.71 23.7 SPDR S&P 500 SPY 456.69 –0.52 19.4 SchwabIntEquity SCHF 35.78 –0.86 11.1 SchwabUS BrdMkt SCHB 53.30 –0.41 18.9 SchwabUS Div SCHD 73.44 0.40 –2.8 SchwabUS LC SCHX 54.13 –0.50 19.9 SchwabUS LC Grw SCHG 79.06 –0.96 42.3 SPDR S&PMdCpTr MDY 483.93 0.78 9.3 SPDR S&P Div SDY 121.75 0.45 –2.7 TechSelectSector XLK 183.32 –1.22 47.3 VangdInfoTech VGT 459.92 –1.02 44.0 VangdSC Val VBR 170.77 0.87 7.5 VangdExtMkt VXF 154.00 0.56 15.9 VangdDivApp VIG 165.60 –0.10 9.1 VangdFTSEAWxUS VEU 54.33 –0.84 8.4 VangdFTSEDevMk VEA 46.02 –0.88 9.6 VangdFTSE EM VWO 40.44 –0.88 3.7 VangdFTSE Europe VGK 61.87 –0.55 11.6 VangdGrowth VUG 296.84 –0.93 39.3 VangdHlthCr VHT 240.92 0.32 –2.9 VangdHiDiv VYM 107.94 0.09 –0.2 VangdIntermBd BIV 74.26 –0.39 –0.1 VangdIntrCorpBd VCIT 78.72 –0.34 1.6 VangdIntermTrea VGIT 58.16 –0.33 –0.5 VangdLC VV 209.66 –0.58 20.4 VangdMegaGrwth MGK 248.20 –1.11 44.2 VangdMC VO 221.63 –0.10 8.7 VangdMC Val VOE 139.46 0.01 3.1 VangdMBS VMBS 44.92 –0.49 –1.3 VangdRealEst VNQ 84.35 0.73 2.3 VangdRuss1000Grw VONG 74.51 –0.86 35.2 VangdS&P500ETF VOO 419.74 –0.50 19.5 VangdST Bond BSV 76.13 –0.18 1.1 VangdSTCpBd VCSH 76.36 –0.14 1.6 VangdShortTrea VGSH 57.94 –0.14 0.2 VangdSC VB 201.31 0.78 9.7 VangdTaxExemptBd VTEB 50.11 –0.08 1.3 VangdTotalBd BND 71.52 –0.40 –0.4 VangdTotIntlBd BNDX 49.47 0.06 4.3 VangdTotIntlStk VXUS 55.99 –0.89 8.3 VangdTotalStk VTI 227.35 –0.36 18.9 VangdTotWrldStk VT 98.85 –0.61 14.7 VangdValue VTV 144.55 0.01 3.0 WisdTrFRTrea USFR 50.33 0.02 0.1 Closing Chg YTD ETF Symbol Price (%) (%) CnsmrDiscSelSector XLY 170.44 –0.38 32.0 ConsStaplesSPDR XLP 71.04 0.13 –4.7 DimenUSCoreEq2 DFAC 27.89 –0.07 14.9 EnSelSectorSPDR XLE 84.63 –0.46 –3.2 FinSelSectorSPDR XLF 36.13 –0.11 5.6 HealthCareSelSect XLV 132.08 0.19 –2.8 InvscNasd100 QQQM 158.93 –0.93 45.1 InvscQQQI QQQ 386.32 –0.93 45.1 InvscS&P500EW RSP 150.60 0.05 6.6 iShCoreDivGrowth DGRO 52.18 0.15 4.4 iShCoreMSCIEAFE IEFA 67.71 –0.81 9.8 iShCoreMSCIEM IEMG 49.37 –1.10 5.7 iShCoreMSCITotInt IXUS 62.78 –0.87 8.5 iShCoreS&P500 IVV 458.85 –0.49 19.4 iShCoreS&P MC IJH 264.44 0.84 9.3 iShCoreS&P SC IJR 100.34 1.30 6.0 iShCoreS&PTotUS ITOT 100.78 –0.36 18.8 iShCoreTotalUSDBd IUSB 44.83 –0.29 –0.2 iShCoreUSAggBd AGG 96.46 –0.38 –0.5 iShEdgeMSCIMinUSA USMV 76.84 –0.05 6.6 iShEdgeMSCIUSAQual QUAL 141.19 –0.51 23.9 iShGoldTr IAU 38.37 –2.14 10.9 iShiBoxx$HYCpBd HYG 75.80 –0.25 2.9 iShiBoxx$IGCpBd LQD 106.68 –0.46 1.2 iShMBS MBB 91.08 –0.43 –1.8 iShMSCIACWI ACWI 98.14 –0.62 15.6 iShMSCI EAFE EFA 72.61 –0.78 10.6 iSh MSCI EM EEM 39.28 –1.13 3.6 iShMSCIEAFEValue EFV 50.67 –0.80 10.4 iShNatlMuniBd MUB 106.70 –0.15 1.1 iSh1-5YIGCorpBd IGSB 50.60 –0.19 1.6 iSh1-3YTreaBd SHY 81.52 –0.15 0.4 iShRussMC IWR 73.98 0.16 9.7 iShRuss1000 IWB 251.46 –0.46 19.4 iShRuss1000Grw IWF 289.50 –0.85 35.1 iShRuss1000Val IWD 159.27 0.03 5.0 iShRussell2000 IWM 186.89 1.07 7.2 iShS&P500Grw IVW 72.31 –0.73 23.6 iShS&P500Value IVE 166.49 –0.25 14.8 iShSelectDiv DVY 114.15 0.17 –5.3 iSh7-10YTreaBd IEF 93.65 –0.41 –2.2 iShShortTreaBd SHV 110.15 0.01 0.2 iShTIPSBondETF TIP 105.03 –0.42 –1.3 iSh20+YTreaBd TLT 92.61 –0.40 –7.0 iShUSTreasuryBd GOVT 22.49 –0.27 –1.0 iSh0-3MTreaBd SGOV 100.33 0.01 0.2 JPMEquityPrem JEPI 54.61 0.11 0.2 JPM UltShIncm JPST 50.16 ... 0.1 PacerUSCashCows100 COWZ 50.56 –0.43 9.3 Closing Chg YTD ETF Symbol Price (%) (%) Monday, December 4, 2023 Exchange-Traded Portfolios | WSJ.com/ETFresearch Largest 100 exchange-traded funds, latest session TorontoDomBk TD 60.73 0.03 TotalEnergies TTE 66.22 -1.15 ToyotaMotor TM 187.37 -5.37 TractorSupply TSCO 212.01 1.94 TradeDesk TTD 68.76 -2.84 Tradeweb TW 94.64 -0.15 TraneTech TT 228.48 0.95 TransDigm TDG 967.38 -2.89 TransUnion TRU 60.40 ... Travelers TRV 183.19 1.21 Trex TREX 72.66 0.59 Trimble TRMB 46.81 -0.54 Trip.com TCOM 33.70 -0.44 TruistFinl TFC 33.28 0.01 Twilio TWLO 67.52 0.76 TylerTech TYL 412.94 -0.79 TysonFoods TSN 49.82 1.62 UBS Group UBS 28.42 -0.26 UDR UDR 34.61 0.21 UFP Inds UFPI 113.68 0.74 U-Haul N UHAL/B 56.28 0.13 U-Haul UHAL 58.74 0.30 US Foods USFD 44.21 0.35 UWM UWMC 5.73 -0.01 s Uber UBER 58.63 1.28 Ubiquiti UI 114.41 -2.87 UiPath PATH 25.25 0.21 UltaBeauty ULTA486.76 14.73 Unilever UL 48.10 0.19 UnionPacific UNP 233.90 2.53 UnitedAirlines UAL 40.52 0.28 UnitedMicro UMC 7.85 -0.09 UPS B UPS 155.92 1.01 UnitedRentals URI 490.09 -11.74 US Bancorp USB 39.49 0.11 s US Steel X 36.53 0.29 UnitedTherap UTHR 239.94 -0.79 UnitedHealth UNH 548.28 1.12 UnitySoftware U 32.63 0.11 s UnivDisplay OLED 177.07 0.72 UniversalHealthB UHS 139.76 2.06 UnumGroup UNM 43.30 0.22 VF VFC 18.79 0.70 VICI Prop VICI 30.55 0.05 VailResorts MTN 221.22 -0.39 Vale VALE 14.80 -0.57 ValeroEnergy VLO 126.46 0.08 VeevaSystems VEEV 179.01 0.17 Ventas VTR 47.18 0.42 Veralto VLTO 75.78 -0.73 VeriSign VRSN 218.73 0.96 VeriskAnalytics VRSK 239.30 -3.43 Verizon VZ 38.04 -0.54 VertexPharm VRTX 350.63 -0.53 Vertiv VRT 45.36 0.22 Viatris VTRS 9.68 0.31 VinFastAuto VFS 7.06 -0.78 Vipshop VIPS 15.29 -0.37 s Visa V 254.44 -2.01 s Vistra VST 37.12 0.84 Vodafone VOD 9.04 -0.18 VoyaFinancial VOYA 72.17 0.72 VulcanMatls VMC 214.80 -0.83 WXYZ WEC Energy WEC 85.00 0.03 WEX WEX 181.03 -0.84 W.P.Carey WPC 64.87 1.49 WPP WPP 45.56 0.29 s Wabtec WAB 119.95 -0.17 WalgreensBoots WBA 20.79 ... Walmart WMT 154.30 -0.04 WarnerBrosA WBD 11.39 0.06 WarnerMusic WMG 34.26 -0.33 WasteConnections WCN 139.84 0.21 s WasteMgt WM 174.39 0.59 Waters WAT 288.79 -0.06 Watsco WSO 396.95 0.70 Wayfair W 58.31 -0.22 WebsterFin WBS 47.48 0.68 WellsFargo WFC 45.12 0.10 Welltower WELL 89.82 0.36 WescoIntl WCC 162.65 0.16 WestPharmSvcs WST 350.88 -0.91 WesternDigital WDC 47.47 -0.92 WesternMidstrm WES 29.92 0.05 Westlake WLK 132.38 -0.19 WestRock WRK 41.55 -0.18 Weyerhaeuser WY 31.58 -0.16 WheatonPrecMet WPM 48.90 -0.65 Williams WMB 36.99 -0.29 s Williams-Sonoma WSM 198.30 2.45 WillisTowers WTW 244.00 -1.41 WillScotMobile WSC 41.87 -0.71 s Wingstop WING 245.02 2.33 Wipro WIT 4.82 -0.06 t WoodsideEnergy WDS 19.84 -0.62 s Woodward WWD 138.56 3.07 WooriFinl WF 29.72 -0.69 Workday WDAY 269.22 -3.70 WynnResorts WYNN 83.89 -1.26 XP XP 22.69 -1.23 XPO XPO 88.78 -1.53 XcelEnergy XEL 61.47 0.04 XPeng XPEV 16.02 0.28 Xylem XYL 106.47 0.27 YPF YPF 16.04 -0.11 Yum!Brands YUM 125.65 -1.68 YumChina YUMC 42.07 -1.66 ZTO Express ZTO 21.93 -0.34 ZebraTech ZBRA 239.37 -1.85 Zillow C Z 44.09 0.73 Zillow A ZG 42.33 0.68 ZimmerBiomet ZBH 116.89 -1.08 Zoetis ZTS 182.12 2.99 ZoomVideo ZM 68.16 -2.13 Zscaler ZS 198.26 0.23 Net Stock Sym Close Chg Net Stock Sym Close Chg Biggest 1,000 Stocks | WSJ.com/stocks   Your personal information will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy, located at penguinrandomhouse.com/privacy. 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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | B9 Scan this code Get real-time U.S. stock quotes and track most-active stocks, new highs/lows, mutual funds and ETFs. All are available free at WSJMarkets.com Consumer Rates and Returns to Investor U.S. consumer rates A consumer rate against its benchmark over the past year 3.00 4.25 5.50 6.75 8.00% D J 2023 F M A M J J A S O N D t 30-year fixed-rate mortgage t 10-year Treasury note yield Selected rates 30-year mortgage, Rate Bankrate.com avg†: 7.61% Fidelity Bank Trust 6.25% Dubuque, IA 563-557-2300 Farmers Bank 6.50% Buhl, ID 208-734-1500 Marathon Bank 6.50% Wausau,WI 715-845-7331 Community First Bank 6.63% Boscobel,WI 608-647-4029 Farmers State Bank 6.63% Marion, IA 319-390-2534 Yield/Rate (%) 52-Week Range (%) 3-yr chg Interest rate Last (l)Week ago Low 0 2 4 6 8 High (pct pts) Federal-funds rate target 5.25-5.50 5.25-5.50 3.75 l 5.50 5.25 Prime rate* 8.50 8.50 7.00 l 8.50 5.25 SOFR 5.39 5.32 3.80 l 5.39 5.31 Money market, annual yield 0.48 0.64 0.31 l 0.64 0.28 Five-year CD, annual yield 2.83 2.87 2.62 l 2.87 2.25 30-year mortgage, fixed† 7.61 7.91 6.36 l 8.28 4.69 15-year mortgage, fixed† 6.86 7.16 5.54 l 7.42 4.49 Jumbo mortgages, $726,200-plus† 7.67 7.99 6.35 l 8.33 4.73 Five-year adj mortgage (ARM)† 6.83 6.86 5.33 l 7.16 3.62 New-car loan, 48-month 7.70 7.60 6.44 l 7.70 3.66 Bankrate.com rates based on survey of over 4,800 online banks. *Base rate posted by 70% of the nation's largest banks.† Excludes closing costs. Sources: FactSet; Dow Jones Market Data; Bankrate.com Benchmark Yields and Rates Treasury yield curve Yield to maturity of current bills, notes and bonds 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00% 1 month(s) 3 6 1 years 2 3 5 7 10 20 30 maturity t Tradeweb ICE Monday Close t One year ago Forex Race Yen, euro vs. dollar; dollar vs. major U.S. trading partners –14 –7 0 7 14% 2023 Yens Euros WSJ Dollar Index s Sources: Tradeweb ICE U.S. Treasury Close; Tullett Prebon; Dow Jones Market Data International Stock Indexes Latest YTD Region/Country Index Close Net chg % chg % chg World MSCI ACWI 694.48 –3.03 –0.43 14.7 MSCI ACWI ex-USA 301.40 –0.79 –0.26 7.1 MSCIWorld 3026.59 –14.11 –0.46 16.3 MSCI Emerging Markets 980.24 –1.90 –0.19 2.5 Americas MSCI AC Americas 1734.50 –9.46 –0.54 19.0 Canada S&P/TSX Comp 20410.21 –42.66 –0.21 5.3 Latin Amer. MSCI EM Latin America 2461.56 –32.52 –1.30 15.7 Brazil BOVESPA 126802.79 –1382.12 –1.08 15.6 Chile S&P IPSA 3272.75 –35.61 –1.08 3.2 Mexico S&P/BMV IPC 54053.63 152.20 0.28 11.5 EMEA STOXX Europe 600 465.78 –0.42 –0.09 9.6 Eurozone Euro STOXX 462.74 –0.59 –0.13 12.9 Belgium Bel-20 3593.54 14.63 0.41 –2.9 Denmark OMX Copenhagen 20 2225.67 –8.01 –0.36 21.3 France CAC 40 7332.59 –13.56 –0.18 13.3 Germany DAX 16404.76 7.24 0.04 17.8 Israel Tel Aviv 1789.85 –1.21 –0.07 –0.4 Italy FTSE MIB 29914.09 –14.36 –0.05 26.2 Netherlands AEX 770.61 –0.76 –0.10 11.8 Norway Oslo Bors All-Share 1502.85 –18.51 –1.22 10.3 South Africa FTSE/JSE All-Share 75941.06 235.21 0.31 4.0 Spain IBEX 35 10178.30 37.50 0.37 23.7 Sweden OMX Stockholm 841.05 –0.12 –0.01 7.6 Switzerland Swiss Market 10952.44 65.08 0.60 2.1 Turkey BIST 100 8087.24 60.97 0.76 46.8 U.K. FTSE 100 7512.96 –16.39 –0.22 0.8 U.K. FTSE 250 18361.25 –47.40 –0.26 –2.6 Asia-Pacific MSCI AC Asia Pacific 161.43 –0.34 –0.21 3.7 Australia S&P/ASX 200 7124.70 51.52 0.73 1.2 China Shanghai Composite 3022.91 –8.72 –0.29 –2.1 Hong Kong Hang Seng 16646.05 –184.25 –1.09 –15.9 India S&P BSE Sensex 68865.12 1383.93 2.05 13.2 Japan NIKKEI 225 33231.27 –200.24 –0.60 27.3 Singapore Straits Times 3084.08 –6.23 –0.20 –5.1 South Korea KOSPI 2514.95 9.94 0.40 12.5 Taiwan TAIEX 17421.48 –16.87 –0.10 23.2 Thailand SET 1383.54 3.23 0.23 –17.1 Sources: FactSet; Dow Jones Market Data Major U.S. Stock-Market Indexes Latest 52-Week % chg High Low Close Net chg % chg High Low % chg YTD 3-yr. ann. Dow Jones Industrial Average 36238.18 36029.69 36204.44 -41.06 -0.11 36245.50 31819.14 6.6 9.2 6.2 Transportation Avg 15573.81 15355.58 15525.61 61.85 0.40 16695.32 13298.36 10.5 15.9 6.8 Utility Average 880.29 868.02 874.77 -1.24 -0.14 1002.11 783.08 -9.8 -9.6 0.7 Total Stock Market 45649.69 45378.46 45625.71 -179.46 -0.39 45969.67 37910.34 13.7 18.4 5.9 Barron's 400 1011.97 1003.04 1011.56 2.05 0.20 1036.97 881.58 5.8 9.9 7.1 Nasdaq Stock Market Nasdaq Composite 14197.52 14058.52 14185.49 -119.54 -0.84 14358.02 10213.29 26.2 35.5 4.4 Nasdaq-100 15852.45 15695.58 15839.67 -157.91 -0.99 16027.06 10679.34 34.4 44.8 8.1 S&P 500 Index 4572.37 4546.72 4569.78 -24.85 -0.54 4594.63 3783.22 14.3 19.0 7.3 MidCap 400 2647.97 2613.31 2646.08 20.50 0.78 2728.44 2326.82 5.5 8.9 5.6 SmallCap 600 1220.50 1197.05 1220.24 15.72 1.31 1315.82 1068.80 0.8 5.4 4.0 Other Indexes Russell 2000 1882.09 1854.38 1882.02 19.38 1.04 2003.18 1636.94 2.3 6.9 -0.2 NYSE Composite 16272.93 16163.66 16232.82 -30.93 -0.19 16427.29 14599.05 4.9 6.9 4.0 Value Line 561.74 556.26 561.52 2.39 0.43 606.49 498.09 0.6 4.7 -0.03 NYSE Arca Biotech 4969.89 4904.96 4964.89 41.31 0.84 5644.50 4544.40 -6.8 -6.0 -4.0 NYSE Arca Pharma 892.68 883.98 891.56 5.66 0.64 925.61 791.91 2.8 2.7 9.2 KBW Bank 87.85 86.46 87.68 0.43 0.49 115.10 71.71 -13.8 -13.1 -2.8 PHLX§Gold/Silver 123.77 121.55 122.45 -3.35 -2.66 144.37 103.31 1.9 1.3 -4.2 PHLX§Oil Service 82.68 81.43 82.43 -0.30 -0.37 98.76 69.29 1.4 -1.7 22.1 PHLX§ Semiconductor 3701.69 3638.73 3693.44 -44.83 -1.20 3861.63 2453.49 34.9 45.9 9.8 Cboe Volatility 13.70 12.98 13.08 0.45 3.56 26.52 12.46 -37.0 -39.6 -14.3
Nasdaq PHLX Sources: FactSet; Dow Jones Market Data Late Trading Most-active and biggest movers among NYSE, NYSE Arca, NYSE Amer. and Nasdaq issues from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET as reported by electronic trading services, securities dealers and regional exchanges.Minimum share price of $2 and minimum after-hours volume of 50,000 shares. Most-active issues in late trading Volume After Hours Company Symbol (000) Last Net chg % chg High Low SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY 4,959.9 456.17 -0.52 -0.11 458.35 455.92 Blackstone Sec Lending BXSL 4,353.5 28.19 0.26 0.93 28.19 27.42 Kenvue KVUE 4,334.7 20.62 … unch. 20.79 20.62 VanEck Gold Miners GDX 2,910.6 30.96 -0.06 -0.19 31.05 30.90 iShares Russell 2000 ETF IWM 2,661.0 186.75 -0.15 -0.08 186.91 177.02 Enbridge ENB 2,646.0 35.10 -0.05 -0.14 35.17 34.96 Amazon.com AMZN 2,524.3 144.80 -0.05 -0.03 146.81 144.76 Intel INTC 2,505.6 42.34 -0.02 -0.04 43.29 42.31 Percentage gainers… GitLab Cl A GTLB 1,971.7 61.74 8.81 16.64 62.96 52.85 Ericsson ADR ERIC 669.9 5.49 0.24 4.57 5.72 5.25 CNH Industrial CNHI 139.9 11.33 0.36 3.28 11.33 10.91 Revolve Group RVLV 81.7 14.84 0.44 3.06 14.94 14.17 EyePoint Pharmaceuticals EYPT 300.9 18.90 0.56 3.05 19.98 16.57 ...And losers Turnstone Biologics TSBX 70.6 2.60 -0.39 -13.04 3.00 2.49 Nokia ADR NOK 1,235.8 2.87 -0.30 -9.34 3.19 2.85 iBio IBIO 134.9 2.50 -0.20 -7.41 2.90 2.41 SpringWorks Therapeutics SWTX 73.6 30.05 -1.61 -5.09 31.66 30.00 YETI Holdings YETI 108.5 44.04 -2.12 -4.59 46.73 44.04 Trading Diary Volume, Advancers, Decliners NYSE NYSE Amer. Total volume*1,007,139,041 15,166,498 Adv. volume* 515,284,090 5,273,385 Decl. volume* 482,812,323 9,715,587 Issues traded 2,951 320 Advances 1,414 128 Declines 1,451 178 Unchanged 86 14 New highs 157 7 New lows 15 11 Closing Arms† 1.01 1.04 Block trades* 4,190 130 Nasdaq NYSE Arca Total volume*6,270,020,505 337,602,250 Adv. volume*3,854,289,963 119,054,402 Decl. volume*1,987,346,348 216,938,714 Issues traded 4,500 1,888 Advances 2,359 577 Declines 1,954 1,289 Unchanged 187 22 New highs 165 74 New lows 78 24 Closing Arms† 0.62 0.75 Block trades* 55,736 1,526 * Primary market NYSE, NYSE American NYSE Arca only. †(TRIN) A comparison of the number of advancing and declining issues with the volume of shares rising and falling. An Arms of less than 1 indicates buying demand; above 1 indicates selling pressure. Percentage Gainers... Percentage Losers Volume % chg from Latest Session 52-Week Company Symbol (000) 65-day avg Close % chg High Low Bit Brother Cl A BETS 718,739 2227.5 0.07 78.87 12.00 0.02 Esports Entertainment GMBL 375,831 2784.0 0.02 0.00 23.80 0.02 Nxu NXU 187,061 650.1 0.03 29.38 11.30 0.02 ProSh UltraPro Shrt QQQ SQQQ 124,456 -3.6 16.35 2.86 58.29 15.35 WiSA Technologies WISA 105,422 4778.2 0.19 28.92 22.90 0.11 Palantir Technologies PLTR 104,121 75.1 18.40 -9.23 21.85 5.92 Tesla TSLA 103,850 -14.7 235.58 -1.36 299.29 101.81 Mullen Automotive MULN 97,380 98.1 0.21 26.85 107.44 0.15 ProShares UltraPro QQQ TQQQ 90,126 -14.3 42.98 -2.85 47.14 16.10 Uber Technologies UBER 84,839 321.8 58.63 2.23 60.92 23.90 * Volumes of 100,000 shares or more are rounded to the nearest thousand Volume % chg from Latest Session 52-Week Company Symbol (000) 65-day avg Close % chg High Low RH Tactical Rotation ETF RHRX 566 7015 12.27 -1.48 12.90 11.04 Pearl Hldgs Acqn Cl A PRLH 4,996 5144 10.80 0.09 11.00 10.18 Adaptive Hdg Multi-Asset AMAX 828 4198 7.34 -1.21 8.55 6.90 Acres Commercial Realty ACR 496 4161 7.90 2.46 10.17 6.62 EyePoint Pharmaceuticals EYPT 20,698 3877 18.34 177.46 22.44 2.19 Rigel Resource Acqn Cl A RRAC 1,939 3267 10.96 0.09 11.10 10.20 T. Rowe Price QM US Bd TAGG 148 2683 41.82 -0.28 43.86 39.65 iShares ACWI Low Carbon CRBN 213 2488 159.75 -0.65 161.80 136.23 DHC Acquisition Cl A DHCA 426 2356 10.63 -0.37 11.19 9.99 Simplify US Pls Downside SPD 668 2157 27.70 -0.58 28.25 23.73 * Common stocks priced at $2 a share or more with an average volume over 65 trading days of at least 5,000 shares =Has traded fewer than 65 days Nasdaq Composite Index 14185.49 t 119.54, or 0.84% High, low, open and close for each trading day of the past three months. Last Year ago Trailing P/E ratio *† P/E estimate *† Dividend yield *† All-time high: 28.75 24.98 27.55 23.15 0.82 0.93 16057.44, 11/19/21 12400 12700 13000 13300 13600 13900 14200 Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. 65-day moving average EQUITIES CREDIT MARKETS Commodities Pricing trends on some raw materials, or commodities Monday 52-Week YTD Close Net chg % Chg High Low % Chg % chg DJ Commodity 965.55 -13.56 -1.38 1058.44 930.59 -5.62 -7.93 Refinitiv/CC CRB Index 267.61 -3.16 -1.17 290.29 253.85 -1.01 -3.65 Crude oil, $ per barrel 73.04 -1.03 -1.39 93.68 66.74 -5.06 -9.00 Natural gas, $/MMBtu 2.694 -0.120 -4.26 6.970 1.991 -51.69 -39.80 Gold, $ per troy oz. 2024.10 -46.90 -2.26 2071.00 1767.40 14.52 11.23 Corporate Borrowing Rates and Yields Yield (%) 52-Week Total Return (%) Bond total return index Close Last Week ago High Low 52-wk 3-yr U.S. Treasury, Bloomberg 2114.120 4.470 4.650 5.120 3.610 –0.546 –4.533 U.S. Treasury Long, Bloomberg 3028.680 4.570 4.680 5.280 3.610 –9.083–12.955 Aggregate, Bloomberg 1994.490 4.970 5.160 5.740 4.180 0.426 –4.131 Fixed-Rate MBS, Bloomberg 1963.730 5.160 5.370 6.050 4.140 –0.379 –3.884 High Yield 100, ICE BofA 3436.816 7.809 8.130 9.101 7.022 8.981 1.358 Muni Master, ICE BofA 577.024 3.368 3.613 4.311 2.757 3.012 –0.906 EMBI Global, J.P. Morgan 814.328 7.781 8.023 8.842 7.102 5.047 –4.075 Sources: J.P. Morgan; Bloomberg Fixed Income Indices; ICE Data Services Latest Session 52-Week Company Symbol Close Net chg % chg High Low % chg SilverSun Technologies SSNT 12.49 8.82 240.33 13.37 2.67 247.9 Hawaiian Holdings HA 14.22 9.36 192.59 14.25 3.70 4.0 EyePoint Pharmaceuticals EYPT 18.34 11.73 177.46 22.44 2.19 450.8 enGene Holdings ENGN 12.31 4.81 64.13 47.17 6.70 20.3 XBP Europe Holdings XBP 38.00 14.15 59.33 38.38 9.85 267.5 Turnstone Biologics TSBX 2.99 0.88 41.71 13.20 1.63 ... Arena Group Holdings AREN 3.42 0.94 37.90 16.50 1.76 -75.2 Incannex Healthcare IXHL 7.15 1.92 36.71 12.57 0.80 77.4 Chanson Intl Hldg CHSN 2.90 0.77 36.15 4.28 1.04 ... CEL-SCI CVM 2.80 0.73 35.27 3.33 1.04 -1.1 Beachbody BODY 10.01 2.59 34.90 44.50 6.31 -71.8 Altimmune ALT 4.63 1.06 29.69 17.17 2.09 -58.1 Alpha Teknova TKNO 2.89 0.59 25.65 6.48 1.62 -39.3 Ocular Therapeutix OCUL 3.36 0.68 25.37 7.96 2.00 12.4 Ebang International EBON 8.37 1.68 25.11 12.60 2.52 65.7 Most Active Stocks Latest Session 52-Week Company Symbol Close Net chg % chg High Low % chg Volato Group SOAR 8.80 -5.70 -39.31 35.00 8.12 -12.6 Conduit Pharmaceuticals CDT 3.66 -1.86 -33.67 25.00 0.95 -64.0 NexImmune NEXI 4.07 -1.98 -32.73 20.35 1.25 -60.0 Gyre Therapeutics GYRE 16.06 -7.34 -31.37 27.39 2.83 94.7 Clean Earth Acqns Cl A CLIN 6.88 -2.83 -29.15 11.36 6.29 -31.1 Roadzen RDZN 3.51 -1.41 -28.66 17.00 3.48 -65.7 Garden Stage GSIW 7.28 -2.92 -28.63 11.70 4.20 ... Dune Acquisition Cl A DUNE 5.53 -1.88 -25.37 10.66 4.40 -43.2 OneMedNet ONMD 3.27 -0.87 -21.01 13.51 3.02 -68.7 Vivos Therapeutics VVOS 15.81 -4.09 -20.55 74.05 2.73 39.6 Envoy Medical COCH 1.85 -0.47 -20.26 11.72 0.75 -81.4 PrestigeWealth PWM 1.71 -0.40 -18.96 31.88 1.56 ... Mobile Infrastructure BEEP 4.15 -0.95 -18.63 20.12 3.10 -58.5 EF Hutton Acquisition I EFHT 8.84 -1.93 -17.89 11.37 8.84 ... Virgin Galactic SPCE 1.93 -0.41 -17.52 6.61 1.38 -62.3 Volume Movers Ranked by change from 65-day average* CURRENCIES & COMMODITIES Currencies U.S.-dollar foreign-exchange rates in late New York trading US$ vs, Mon YTD chg Country/currency in US$ per US$ (%) Americas Argentina peso .0028362.5202 105.1 Brazilreal .2023 4.9439 –6.5 Canada dollar .7386 1.3539 –0.1 Chile peso .001153 867.40 2.3 Colombiapeso .000249 4020.00 –17.1 EcuadorUS dollar 1 1 unch Mexico peso .0573 17.4572 –10.4 Uruguay peso .02565 38.9900 –2.5 Asia-Pacific Australiadollar .6621 1.5103 2.9 China yuan .1401 7.1362 3.4 Hong Kong dollar .1279 7.8159 0.1 India rupee .01199 83.428 0.8 Indonesia rupiah .0000646 15482 –0.6 Japan yen .006793 147.21 12.3 Kazakhstan tenge .002170 460.73 –0.5 Macau pataca .1241 8.0560 0.1 Malaysia ringgit .2147 4.6575 5.7 New Zealand dollar .6166 1.6218 3.0 Pakistan rupee .00351 285.225 25.8 Philippines peso .0180 55.470 –0.4 Singapore dollar .7476 1.3377 –0.2 South Korea won .0007630 1310.68 3.9 Sri Lanka rupee .0030454 328.36 –10.7 Taiwan dollar .03179 31.454 2.7 Thailand baht .02838 35.240 1.8 US$ vs, Mon YTD chg Country/currency in US$ per US$ (%) Vietnam dong .00004123 24255 2.6 Europe Czech Rep. koruna .04438 22.533 –0.2 Denmark krone .1453 6.8803 –1.0 Euro area euro 1.0836 .9229 –1.2 Hungary forint .002851 350.76 –6.1 Iceland krona .007181 139.26 –1.6 Norway krone .0922 10.8464 10.6 Poland zloty .2503 3.9950 –8.8 Russia ruble .01093 91.500 24.1 Sweden krona .0958 10.4335 –0.04 Switzerland franc 1.1457 .8728 –5.7 Turkey lira .0346 28.9322 54.8 Ukraine hryvnia .0274 36.5500 –0.8 UKpound 1.2634 .7915 –4.2 Middle East/Africa Bahrain dinar 2.6539 .3768 –0.1 Egypt pound .0323 30.9177 24.9 Israel shekel .2685 3.7244 5.6 Kuwait dinar 3.2369 .3089 1.0 Oman sul rial 2.5974 .3850 unch Qatarrial .2744 3.644 –0.6 Saudi Arabia riyal .2666 3.7513 –0.2 South Africa rand .0532 18.8039 10.4 Close Net Chg % Chg YTD % Chg WSJ Dollar Index 97.97 0.44 0.45 1.47 Sources: Tullett Prebon, Dow Jones Market Data Dow Jones Industrial Average 36204.44 t41.06, or 0.11% High, low, open and close for each trading day of the past three months. Last Year ago Trailing P/E ratio P/E estimate * Dividend yield All-time high 26.20 21.13 19.77 18.83 2.06 2.06 36799.65, 01/04/22 31700 32400 33100 33800 34500 35200 35900 Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Current divisor 0.15172752595384 Bars measure the point change from session's open t t Session high Session low Session open Close Open Close DOWN UP 65-day moving average S&P 500 Index 4569.78 t24.85, or 0.54% High, low, open and close for each trading day of the past three months. Last Year ago Trailing P/E ratio * P/E estimate * Dividend yield * All-time high 21.74 19.65 20.47 18.36 1.57 1.66 4796.56, 01/03/22 4100 4200 4300 4400 4500 4600 4700 Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. 65-day moving average *Weekly P/E data based on as-reported earnings from Birinyi Associates Inc.; †Based on Nasdaq-100 Index MARKETS DIGEST 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

B10 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 * THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Metal & Petroleum Futures Contract Open Open High hi lo Low Settle Chg interest Copper-High (CMX)-25,000 lbs.; $ per lb. Dec 3.8960 3.8965 3.8120 3.8205 –0.0885 3,730 March'24 3.9215 3.9265 3.8260 3.8355 –0.0960 121,764 Gold (CMX)-100 troy oz.; $ per troy oz. Dec 2075.30 2130.20 s 2021.00 2024.10 –46.90 2,339 Jan'24 2083.40 2140.70 s 2030.00 2032.90 –47.50 3,546 Feb 2094.40 2152.30 s 2038.40 2042.20 –47.50 421,149 April 2114.10 2171.50 s 2058.30 2061.60 –47.60 38,940 June 2135.00 2191.20 s 2078.00 2081.30 –47.70 22,111 Aug 2152.80 2208.60 s 2096.30 2099.00 –47.60 11,901 Palladium(NYM)- 50 troy oz.; $ per troy oz. Dec 975.00 982.00 973.50 968.30 –31.70 127 March'24 1010.50 1021.00 965.50 980.70 –29.70 19,887 Platinum(NYM)-50 troy oz.; $ per troy oz. Dec 921.10 –10.90 16 Jan'24 943.00 949.60 916.00 925.10 –11.00 57,444 Silver(CMX)-5,000 troy oz.; $ per troy oz. Dec 25.590 25.935 24.450 24.555 –0.944 2,018 March'24 25.945 26.340 24.785 24.907 –0.950 126,340 Crude Oil, Light Sweet(NYM)-1,000 bbls.; $ per bbl. Jan 74.58 75.03 72.63 73.04 –1.03 333,756 Feb 74.76 75.20 72.87 73.32 –0.93 159,936 March 74.81 75.21 73.04 73.53 –0.78 146,409 April 74.86 75.15 73.14 73.68 –0.60 73,932 June 74.36 75.04 73.13 73.76 –0.28 150,734 Dec 72.63 73.31 71.50 72.31 0.15 157,605 NY Harbor ULSD(NYM)-42,000 gal.; $ per gal. Jan 2.6684 2.7053 2.6337 2.6597 –.0018 90,050 Feb 2.6416 2.6713 2.6035 2.6256 –.0042 42,970 Gasoline-NY RBOB(NYM)-42,000 gal.; $ per gal. Jan 2.1256 2.1596 2.0923 2.1342 .0131 121,684 Feb 2.1304 2.1605 2.0976 2.1343 .0087 48,404 Natural Gas (NYM)-10,000 MMBtu.; $ per MMBtu. Jan 2.728 2.752 t 2.649 2.694 –.120 329,958 Feb 2.685 2.704 t 2.608 2.651 –.122 106,240 March 2.574 2.581 t 2.488 2.527 –.114 208,484 April 2.537 2.544 t 2.464 2.499 –.100 111,431 May 2.601 2.607 t 2.531 2.573 –.089 75,677 Oct 3.032 3.033 t 2.954 2.990 –.083 58,031 Agriculture Futures Corn (CBT)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu. Dec 461.25 463.75 457.00 460.25 –4.25 2,573 March'24 483.75 488.50 481.25 485.50 .75 668,131 Oats (CBT)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu. Dec 400.00 402.50 400.00 405.50 10.75 126 March'24 387.25 395.00 381.00 395.00 10.25 2,898 Soybeans (CBT)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu. Jan 1322.50 1329.25 1303.50 1306.25 –18.75 244,293 March 1343.00 1349.00 1324.50 1326.50 –19.00 182,734 Soybean Meal(CBT)-100 tons; $ per ton. Dec 423.50 432.30 419.00 422.30 –3.00 2,031 Jan'24 412.50 417.90 406.30 408.30 –4.40 182,449 Soybean Oil(CBT)-60,000 lbs.; cents per lb. Dec 51.30 51.99 51.08 51.19 –.19 1,371 Jan'24 51.45 52.07 51.06 51.24 –.21 137,102 Rough Rice (CBT)-2,000 cwt.; $ per cwt. Jan 17.15 17.20 16.88 16.90 –.29 9,812 March 17.41 17.43 17.15 17.17 –.28 1,827 Wheat(CBT)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu. Dec 583.00 595.00 583.00 595.75 18.75 414 March'24 602.00 626.50 600.25 620.50 17.75 254,531 Wheat(KC)-5,000 bu.; cents per bu. Dec 644.75 657.00 644.75 656.25 11.25 255 March'24 645.00 660.50 642.00 657.75 11.00 127,765 Cattle-Feeder(CME)-50,000 lbs.; cents per lb. Jan 214.000 214.525 t 209.150 210.525 –3.900 22,281 Futures Contracts Contract Open Open High hilo Low Settle Chg interest Contract Open Open High hilo Low Settle Chg interest Contract Open Open High hilo Low Settle Chg interest March 216.900 217.725 t 211.975 213.575 –3.650 11,079 Cattle-Live (CME)-40,000 lbs.; cents per lb. Dec 168.575 169.500 166.575 167.250 –2.025 18,087 Feb'24 168.300 170.000 166.625 167.075 –2.050 107,195 Hogs-Lean (CME)-40,000 lbs.; cents per lb. Dec 68.600 69.000 67.825 68.050 –.550 22,217 Feb'24 70.100 71.925 69.500 70.800 .700 80,987 Lumber(CME)-27,500 bd. ft., $ per 1,000 bd. ft. Jan 527.50 528.00 523.50 524.50 –1.00 4,161 Milk (CME)-200,000 lbs., cents per lb. Dec 16.15 16.27 16.12 16.16 .04 5,026 Jan'24 16.31 16.57 16.30 16.36 .05 6,580 Cocoa (ICE-US)-10 metric tons; $ per ton. Dec 4,253 4,253 4,253 4,271 –127 118 March'24 4,186 4,252 4,136 4,171 –30 144,407 Coffee (ICE-US)-37,500 lbs.; cents per lb. Dec 189.55 189.55 186.85 188.90 –5.00 241 March'24 182.65 182.80 176.00 179.40 –4.95 113,005 Sugar-World (ICE-US)-112,000 lbs.; cents per lb. March 25.06 25.98 24.58 25.81 .72 417,954 May 24.26 24.92 23.89 24.74 .48 158,905 Sugar-Domestic (ICE-US)-112,000 lbs.; cents per lb. Jan 42.00 42.00 42.00 42.01 –.98 1,424 May 42.75 42.90 42.75 42.90 .01 2,349 Cotton (ICE-US)-50,000 lbs.; cents per lb. Dec 78.42 78.42 78.25 77.68 –.74 36 March'24 79.42 80.20 78.59 78.68 –.74 105,528 Orange Juice (ICE-US)-15,000 lbs.; cents per lb. Jan 396.05 404.20 384.20 384.20 –10.00 6,931 March 379.65 390.00 371.10 371.10 –10.00 2,094 Interest Rate Futures Ultra Treasury Bonds (CBT)- $100,000; pts 32nds of 100% Dec 124-110 124-240 123-180 123-300 –14.0 13,537 March'24 125-170 125-170 124-020 124-160 –15.0 1,593,874 Treasury Bonds (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100% Dec 118-050 118-120 117-100 117-180 –19.0 11,071 March'24 118-150 118-160 117-090 117-180 –19.0 1,279,894 Treasury Notes (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100% Dec 110-135 110-145 109-260 109-285 –14.5 12,457 March'24 110-270 110-270 110-035 110-060 –15.5 4,535,819 5 Yr. Treasury Notes (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100% Dec 106-290 107-010 106-182 106-200 –11.0 11,329 March'24 107-185 107-187 107-017 107-035 –11.7 5,798,714 2 Yr. Treasury Notes (CBT)-$200,000; pts 32nds of 100% Dec 102-016 102-031 101-291 101-302 –4.1 6,704 March'24 102-183 102-183 102-102 102-110 –5.9 4,117,075 30 Day Federal Funds (CBT)-$5,000,000; 100 - daily avg. Dec 94.6675 94.6700 94.6650 94.6700 162,337 Jan'24 94.6650 94.6700 94.6650 94.6700 420,915 Three-Month SOFR(CME)-$1,000,000; 100 - daily avg. Sept 94.6500 94.6500 94.6425 94.6425 –.0050 1,000,697 Dec 94.6425 94.6425 94.6175 94.6200 –.0200 1,486,274 Currency Futures Japanese Yen (CME)-¥12,500,000; $ per 100¥ Dec .6832 .6854 .6797 .6804 –.0022 256,040 March'24 .6931 .6956 .6898 .6905 –.0022 9,719 Canadian Dollar(CME)-CAD 100,000; $ per CAD Dec .7412 .7420 .7375 .7386 –.0026 190,806 March'24 .7422 .7430 .7385 .7396 –.0026 7,008 British Pound (CME)-£62,500; $ per £ Dec 1.2711 1.2726 1.2605 1.2624 –.0077 209,740 March'24 1.2719 1.2733 1.2614 1.2632 –.0077 3,788 Swiss Franc (CME)-CHF 125,000; $ per CHF Dec 1.1522 1.1555 1.1439 1.1469 –.0053 57,858 March'24 1.1638 1.1670 1.1555 1.1583 –.0053 1,054 Australian Dollar(CME)-AUD 100,000; $ per AUD Dec .6675 .6694 .6608 .6621 –.0054 190,078 March'24 .6699 .6711 .6626 .6638 –.0054 4,719 Mexican Peso (CME)-MXN 500,000; $ per MXN Dec .05809 .05809 .05689 .05703 –.00096 251,465 March'24 .05717 .05719 .05608 .05620 –.00094 3,551 Euro (CME)-€125,000; $ per € Dec 1.0891 1.0901 1.0810 1.0834 –.0045 707,686 March'24 1.0934 1.0945 1.0855 1.0878 –.0045 20,834 Index Futures Mini DJ Industrial Average (CBT)-$5 x index Dec 36318 36332 36093 36268 –35 97,712 March'24 36620 36659 36432 36610 –33 2,253 Mini S&P 500(CME)-$50 x index Dec 4603.25 4604.50 4553.50 4576.50 –24.25 2,230,022 March'24 4653.50 4654.75 4603.50 4626.50 –24.50 72,196 Mini S&P Midcap 400(CME)-$100 x index Dec 2629.80 2651.50 2617.40 2649.20 21.20 39,169 March'24 2670.00 2675.40 2644.50 2675.20 22.90 20 Mini Nasdaq 100(CME)-$20 x index Dec 16022.00 16026.00 15721.25 15869.00 –154.75 276,667 March'24 16220.25 16224.00 15920.25 16069.50 –155.75 7,062 Mini Russell 2000(CME)-$50 x index Dec 1867.90 1886.10 1856.10 1884.90 19.20 549,295 March'24 1887.30 1905.70 1876.20 1904.70 19.70 4,101 June 1907.80 1918.80 1898.60 1922.80 19.00 19 Mini Russell 1000(CME)-$50 x index Dec 2511.60 2517.70 2499.60 2512.20 –11.80 7,713 U.S. Dollar Index (ICE-US)-$1,000 x index Dec 103.12 103.80 102.98 103.65 .45 40,452 March'24 102.70 103.42 102.63 103.28 .46 1,436 Source: FactSet Monday Copper,Comex spot 3.8205 Iron Ore, 62% Fe CFR China-s *133.3 Steel, HRC USA, FOB Midwest Mill-s *1000.0 Battery/EV metals BMI Lithium Carbonate, EXW China, =99.2%-v,w 18400 BMI Lithium Hydroxide, EXW China, =56.5% -v,w 17350 BMI Cobalt sulphate, EXW China, >20.5% -v,m 4690 BMI Nickel Sulphate, EXW China, >22%-v,m 3885 BMI Flake Graphite, FOB China, -100 Mesh, 94-95% -v,m 560 Fibers and Textiles Burlap,10-oz,40-inch NY yd-n,w 0.7300 Cotton,1 1/16 std lw-mdMphs-u 0.7568 Cotlook 'A' Index-t *90.30 Hides,hvy native steers piece fob-u n.a. Wool,64s,staple,Terr del-u,w n.a. Grains and Feeds Bran,wheat middlings, KC-u,w 140 Corn,No. 2 yellow,Cent IL-bp,u 4.4500 Corn gluten feed,Midwest-u,w 170.6 Corn gluten meal,Midwest-u,w 574.7 Cottonseed meal-u,w 355 Hominy feed,Cent IL-u,w 145 Meat-bonemeal,50% pro Mnpls-u,w 318 Oats,No.2 milling,Mnpls-u 4.2000 Rice, Long Grain Milled, No. 2 AR-u,w 35.88 Sorghum,(Milo) No.2 Gulf-u n.a. SoybeanMeal,Cent IL,rail,ton48%-u,w 447.50 Soybeans,No.1 yllw IL-bp,u 12.6300 Wheat,Spring14%-pro Mnpls-u 9.4625 Monday Wheat,No.2 soft red,St.Louis-u 6.1300 Wheat - Hard - KC (USDA) $ per bu-u 6.9275 Wheat,No.1soft white,Portld,OR-u 6.9250 Food Beef,carcass equiv. index choice 1-3,600-900 lbs.-u 273.35 select 1-3,600-900 lbs.-u 243.42 Broilers, National comp wtd. avg.-u,w 1.2130 Butter,AA Chicago-d 2.6825 Cheddar cheese,bbl,Chicago-d 153.50 Cheddar cheese,blk,Chicago-d 154.75 Milk,Nonfat dry,Chicago lb.-d 117.00 Coffee,Brazilian,Comp-y 1.8133 Coffee,Colombian, NY-y 2.0659 Eggs,large white,Chicago-u 1.9750 Flour,hard winter KC-p 18.10 Hams,17-20 lbs,Mid-US fob-u 0.88 Hogs,Iowa-So. Minnesota-u 72.20 Pork bellies,12-14 lb MidUS-u n.a. Pork loins,13-19 lb MidUS-u 1.0316 Steers,Tex.-Okla. Choice-u n.a. Steers,feeder,Okla. City-u,w 272.00 Fats and Oils Degummed corn oil, crude wtd. avg.-u,w n.a. Grease,choice white,Chicago-h 0.4300 Lard,Chicago-u 0.8000 Soybean oil,crude;Centl IL-u,w 0.5392 Tallow,bleach;Chicago-h 0.5100 Tallow,edible,Chicago-u n.a. KEY TO CODES: A=ask; B=bid; BP=country elevator bids to producers; C=corrected; D=CME; E=Manfra,Tordella & Brookes; H=American Commodities Brokerage Co; K=bi-weekly; M=monthly; N=nominal; n.a.=not quoted or not available; P=Sosland Publishing; R=SNL Energy; S=Platts-TSI; T=Cotlook Limited; U=USDA; V=Benchmark Mineral Intelligence; W=weekly; Y=International Coffee Organization; Z=not quoted. *Data as of 12/1 Source: Dow Jones Market Data Cash Prices Monday, December 04, 2023 These prices reflect buying and selling of a variety of actual or “physical” commodities in the marketplace— separate from the futures price on an exchange, which reflects what the commodity might be worth in future months. Monday Energy Coal,C.Aplc.,12500Btu,1.2SO2-r,w 74.000 Coal,PwdrRvrBsn,8800Btu,0.8SO2-r,w 14.000 Metals Gold, per troy oz Engelhard industrial 2052.00 Handy & Harman base 2049.05 Handy & Harman fabricated 2274.45 LBMA Gold Price AM *2044.55 LBMA Gold Price PM *2045.40 Krugerrand,wholesale-e 2103.82 Maple Leaf-e 2124.05 American Eagle-e 2124.05 Mexican peso-e 2447.01 Austria crown-e 1985.85 Austria phil-e 2124.05 Silver, troy oz. Engelhard industrial 25.2000 Handy & Harman base 24.5460 Handy & Harman fabricated 30.6830 LBMA spot price *£19.8900 (U.S.$ equivalent) *25.1600 Coins,wholesale $1,000 face-a 20719 Other metals LBMA Platinum Price PM *929.0 Platinum,Engelhard industrial 935.0 Palladium,Engelhard industrial 975.0 Aluminum, LME, $ per metric ton *2147.5 | wsj.com/market-data/commodities Borrowing Benchmarks | wsj.com/market-data/bonds/benchmarks Money Rates December 4, 2023 Key annual interest rates paid to borrow or lend money in U.S. and international markets. Rates below are a guide to general levels but don’t always represent actual transactions. Inflation Oct. index Chg From (%) level Sept. '23 Oct. '22 U.S. consumer price index All items 307.671 –0.04 3.2 Core 311.380 0.18 4.0 International rates Week 52-Week Latest ago High Low Prime rates U.S. 8.50 8.50 8.50 7.00 Canada 7.20 7.20 7.20 5.95 Week —52-WEEK— Latest ago High Low Federal funds Effective rate 5.3300 5.3400 5.3500 3.8300 High 5.6500 5.6500 5.6500 4.0500 Low 5.3000 5.3100 5.3300 3.8000 Bid 5.3300 5.3300 5.3300 3.8200 Offer 5.3600 5.3500 5.3700 3.8400 Treasury bill auction 4 weeks 5.290 5.300 5.840 3.190 13 weeks 5.250 5.280 5.345 4.270 26 weeks 5.190 5.240 5.350 4.550 Secondary market Fannie Mae 30-year mortgage yields 30 days 6.356 6.698 7.495 5.244 60 days 6.359 6.709 7.554 5.250 Other short-term rates Week 52-Week Latest ago high low Call money 7.25 7.25 7.25 5.75 Commercial paper (AA financial) 90 days 5.37 n.a. 5.54 4.29 Secured Overnight Financing Rate 5.39 5.32 5.39 3.80 Value 52-Week Latest Traded High Low DTCC GCF Repo Index Treasury 5.417 30.566 5.435 3.804 MBS 5.439 48.190 5.449 3.854 Notes on data: 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 widely by location; Discount rate is effective July 27, 2023. Secured Overnight Financing Rate is as of December 1, 2023. DTCC GCF Repo Index is Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s weighted average 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. Sources: Federal Reserve; Bureau of Labor Statistics; DTCC; FactSet; Tullett Prebon Information, Ltd. Japan 1.475 1.475 1.475 1.475 Policy Rates Euro zone 4.50 4.50 4.50 2.00 Switzerland 2.25 2.25 2.25 1.00 Britain 5.25 5.25 5.25 3.00 Australia 4.35 4.35 4.35 2.85 Overnight repurchase U.S. 5.38 5.40 5.42 3.81 U.S. government rates Discount 5.50 5.50 5.50 4.00 Week —52-WEEK— Latest ago High Low Global Government Bonds: Mapping Yields Yields and spreads over or under U.S. Treasurys on benchmark two-year and 10-year government bonds in selected other countries; arrows indicate whether the yield rose(s) or fell (t) in the latest session Country/ Yield (%) Spread Under/Over U.S. Treasurys, in basis points Coupon (%) Maturity, in years Latest(l)-1 012345 Previous Month ago Year ago Latest Prev Year ago 4.875 U.S. 2 4.656 s l 4.565 4.828 4.278 4.500 10 4.286 s l 4.225 4.557 3.502 0.250 Australia 2 4.131 t l 4.173 4.364 3.009 -52.3 -37.4 -128.3 3.000 10 4.462 t l 4.506 4.736 3.399 17.6 30.5 -9.5 0.000 France 2 3.126 s l 3.092 3.370 2.117 -152.8 -145.5 -217.6 3.500 10 2.922 t l 2.925 3.235 2.306 -136.4 -127.5 -118.8 3.100 Germany 2 2.680 t l 2.684 2.961 2.103 -197.4 -186.2 -219.0 2.600 10 2.359 t l 2.360 2.648 1.854 -192.8 -184.0 -164.0 3.600 Italy 2 3.252 s l 3.245 3.702 2.592 -140.2 -130.1 -170.0 4.200 10 4.121 s l 4.098 4.446 3.772 -16.6 -10.2 27.8 0.005 Japan 2 0.025 t l 0.038 0.133 -0.029 -462.9 -450.9 -432.1 0.800 10 0.691 t l 0.700 0.916 0.252 -359.6 -350.0 -324.3 0.000 Spain 2 3.179 t l 3.188 3.388 2.329 -147.5 -135.9 -196.3 3.550 10 3.357 t l 3.387 3.689 2.876 -93.0 -81.3 -61.8 3.500 U.K. 2 4.615 s l 4.522 4.671 3.309 -4.0 -2.4 -98.4 4.250 10 4.203 s l 4.140 4.293 3.153 -8.4 -6.1 -34.2 Source: Tullett Prebon, Tradeweb ICE U.S. Treasury Close Corporate Debt Prices of firms' bonds reflect factors including investors' economic, sectoral and company-specific expectations Investment-grade spreads that tightened the most… Spread*, in basis points Issuer Symbol Coupon (%) Yield (%) Maturity Current One-day change Last week United Utilities UU 6.875 5.30 Aug. 15, ’28 110 –26 n.a. National Australia Bank NAB 4.966 4.90 Jan. 12, ’26 51 –17 64 Barclays BACR 4.375 5.80 Jan. 12, ’26 140 –12 155 Valero Energy VLO 6.625 6.01 June 15, ’37 176 –9 177 Wells Fargo WFC 4.300 5.41 July 22, ’27 119 –8 126 Coca–Cola KO 1.650 4.54 June 1, ’30 28 –7 39 Mizuho Financial MIZUHO 3.170 5.33 Sept. 11, ’27 110 –7 n.a. International Business Machines IBM 3.450 5.07 Feb. 19, ’26 65 –5 72 …And spreads that widened the most Cooperatieve Rabobank RABOBK 5.500 5.05 Oct. 5, ’26 63 14 75 Toronto–Dominion Bank TD 5.103 5.20 Jan. 9, ’26 80 14 75 Altria MO 5.375 5.70 Jan. 31, ’44 109 13 n.a. Bank of America BAC 6.110 5.76 Jan. 29, ’37 150 7 157 Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce CM 5.926 5.29 Oct. 2, ’26 89 7 n.a. John Deere Capital … 4.800 4.90 Jan. 9, ’26 49 7 n.a. Oracle ORCL 6.125 5.83 July 8, ’39 124 7 n.a. Procter & Gamble PG 3.000 4.55 March 25, ’30 26 7 n.a. High-yield issues with the biggest price increases… Bond Price as % of face value Issuer Symbol Coupon (%) Yield (%) Maturity Current One-day change Last week Transocean RIG 6.800 9.83 March 15, ’38 77.000 2.00 73.000 Seagate HDD Cayman … 4.750 5.67 Jan. 1, ’25 99.059 0.56 n.a. CSC Holdings CSCHLD 5.250 14.03 June 1, ’24 96.000 0.50 95.000 Occidental Petroleum OXY 6.450 6.08 Sept. 15, ’36 103.247 0.36 102.095 Telecom Italia TITIM 5.303 6.37 May 30, ’24 99.498 0.31 99.000 Bausch Health BHCCN 11.000 24.09 Sept. 30, ’28 63.750 0.28 61.000 BrightSphere Investment BSIG 4.800 6.90 July 27, ’26 95.000 0.27 93.844 Prime Security Services Borrower PRSESE 5.750 6.22 April 15, ’26 98.978 0.26 98.500 …And with the biggest price decreases Dish DBS … 5.875 21.76 Nov. 15, ’24 87.084 –0.92 88.000 Rakuten RAKUTN 10.250 7.83 Nov. 30, ’24 102.250 –0.81 101.891 Intesa Sanpaolo ISPIM 5.710 6.62 Jan. 15, ’26 98.221 –0.79 97.898 Hat Holdings I … 3.750 7.69 Sept. 15, ’30 79.500 –0.64 78.500 Occidental Petroleum OXY 7.500 5.97 May 1, ’31 109.052 –0.56 n.a. Sealed Air SEE 6.875 6.75 July 15, ’33 100.872 –0.41 98.822 *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. Note: Data are for the most active issue of bonds with maturities of two years or more Source: MarketAxess Broad Market Bloomberg Fixed Income Indices 1994.49 2.2 U.S. Aggregate 4.970 4.180 5.740 U.S. Corporate Indexes Bloomberg Fixed Income Indices 3006.28 4.7 U.S. Corporate 5.530 4.830 6.430 2918.43 4.7 Intermediate 5.460 4.730 6.350 3967.74 4.5 Long term 5.660 5.010 6.600 576.92 3.4 Double-A-rated 4.960 4.320 5.760 805.53 5.5 Triple-B-rated 5.780 5.080 6.700 High Yield Bonds ICE BofA 509.13 9.9 High Yield Constrained 8.393 7.781 9.560 481.03 14.4 Triple-C-rated 14.289 13.413 15.718 3436.82 10.4 High Yield 100 7.809 7.022 9.101 442.86 9.2 Global High Yield Constrained 8.363 7.868 9.440 337.85 9.4 Europe High Yield Constrained 6.923 6.646 8.022 U.S Agency Bloomberg Fixed Income Indices 1750.84 3.5 U.S Agency 4.810 4.130 5.390 1551.60 3.5 10-20 years 4.800 4.120 5.370 3264.88 2.4 20-plus years 5.010 4.300 5.740 2646.43 4.4 Yankee 5.320 4.670 6.110 Bonds | wsj.com/market-data/bonds/benchmarks Tracking Bond Benchmarks Return on investment and spreads over Treasurys and/or yields paid to investors compared with 52-week highs and lows for different types of bonds Total return YTD total Yield (%) close return (%) Index Latest Low High *Constrained indexes limit individual issuer concentrations to 2%; the High Yield 100 are the 100 largest bonds † In local currency § Euro-zone bonds ** EMBI Global Index Sources: ICE Data Services; Bloomberg Fixed Income Indices; J.P.Morgan Total return YTD total Yield (%) close return (%) Index Latest Low High Mortgage-Backed Bloomberg Fixed Income Indices 1963.73 1.4 Mortgage-Backed 5.160 4.140 6.050 1941.08 1.9 Ginnie Mae (GNMA) 5.190 4.170 6.020 1153.79 1.3 Fannie mae (FNMA) 5.150 4.140 6.050 1786.91 2.3 Freddie Mac (FHLMC) 5.120 4.090 6.190 577.02 3.7 Muni Master 3.368 2.757 4.311 410.47 3.1 7-12 year 3.103 2.392 4.097 464.13 4.8 12-22 year 3.762 3.257 4.742 435.00 5.5 22-plus year 4.401 4.020 5.274 Global Government J.P. Morgan† 530.34 1.7 Global Government 3.330 2.680 3.810 785.98 2.9 Canada 3.460 2.880 4.260 347.07 4.2 EMU§ 3.144 2.461 3.790 641.96 3.6 France 3.020 2.290 3.630 456.48 2.9 Germany 2.450 1.730 3.030 277.63 -0.1 Japan 1.080 0.710 1.300 494.47 3.1 Netherlands 2.720 1.970 3.320 767.81 -1.9 U.K. 4.460 3.310 4.880 814.33 6.0 Emerging Markets ** 7.781 7.102 8.842 Key Interest Rates Data are annualized on a 360-day basis. Treasury yields are per annum, on actively traded noninflation and inflation-indexed issues that are adjusted to constant maturities. Data are from weekly Federal Reserve release H.15. Week Ended 52-Week Dec 1 Nov 24 High Low Federal funds (effective) 5.33 5.33 5.33 3.83 Commercial paper Nonfinancial 1-month 5.34 5.33 5.34 4.00 2-month n.a. 5.35 5.37 4.11 3-month n.a. n.a. 5.40 4.23 Financial 1-month 5.33 5.39 5.43 4.02 2-month n.a. 5.40 5.51 4.14 3-month 5.37 5.45 5.53 4.44 Discount window primary credit 5.50 5.50 5.50 4.00 Treasury yields at constant maturities 1-month 5.54 5.54 5.81 3.74 3-month 5.46 5.54 5.62 4.32 Week Ended 52-Week Dec 1 Nov 24 High Low 6-month 5.39 5.43 5.58 4.68 1-year 5.16 5.26 5.46 4.34 2-year 4.70 4.89 5.14 3.88 3-year 4.46 4.63 4.97 3.63 5-year 4.27 4.45 4.86 3.43 7-year 4.33 4.47 4.90 3.40 10-year 4.32 4.43 4.87 3.35 20-year 4.67 4.75 5.20 3.71 Treasury yields (secondary market) 1-month 5.29 5.30 5.62 3.59 3-month 5.26 5.27 5.35 4.22 6-month 5.19 5.23 5.34 4.53 TIPS 5-year 2.13 2.23 2.55 1.10 7-year 2.11 2.19 2.47 1.10 10-year 2.10 2.16 2.45 1.10 20-year 2.14 2.19 2.49 1.19 Long-term avg 2.26 2.30 2.59 1.35 Notes on data: Federal-funds rate is an average for the seven days endedWednesday, weighted according to rates on broker trades; Commercial paper rates are discounted offer rates interpolated from sales by discounted averages of dealer bid rates on nationally traded certificates of deposit;Discount window primary credit rate is charged for discounts made and advances extended under the Federal Reserve's primary credit discount window program;rate is average for seven days endedWednesday; Inflation-indexed long-term TIPS average is indexed and is based on the unweighted average bid yields for all TIPS with remaining terms to maturity of 10 years or more; Sources: Federal Reserve; for additional information on these rate data and their derivation, please see, https://www.federalreserve.gov/datadownload/Build.aspx?rel=H15 Dividend Changes KEY: A: annual; M: monthly; Q: quarterly; r: revised; SA: semiannual; S2:1: stock split and ratio; SO: spin-off. Amount Payable / Company Symbol Yld % New/Old Frq Record Increased Graco GGG 1.2 .255 /.235 Q Feb07 /Jan22 Raymond James RJF 1.7 .45 /.42 Q Jan16 /Jan02 Stocks Aurora Mobile ADR JG 1:20 /Dec06 FLJ Group ADR FLJ 1:40 /Dec07 Genetic Technologies ADR GENE 1:5 /Dec11 ZyVersa Therapeutics ZVSA 1:35 /Dec05 Foreign Aspen Ins 5.625% Pfd. AHLpD 6.8 .3516 Q Jan01 /Dec15 Amount Payable / Company Symbol Yld % New/Old Frq Record Aspen Ins 5.95% Pfd. AHLpC 9.5 .6129 Q Jan01 /Dec15 Aspen Ins Pfd. AHLpE 7.1 .35156 Q Jan01 /Dec15 Athene Hldg Non-Cum. Pfd. ATHpE 7.6 .48438 Q Jan02 /Dec15 Athene Holding Pfd. B ATHpB 6.7 .35156 Q Jan02 /Dec15 Athene Holding Pfd. D ATHpD 7.0 .30469 Q Jan02 /Dec15 Athene Pfd. A ATHpA 6.6 .39687 Q Jan02 /Dec15 Athene Pfd. C ATHpC 6.4 .39844 Q Jan02 /Dec15 Bank of Montreal BMO 4.0 1.1137 Q Feb27 /Jan30 BRP DOOO 0.9 .1328 Q Jan12 /Dec29 Frontline FRO 17.4 .30 Q Dec29 /Dec15 Suzano ADR SUZ 5.0 .34289 A Jan22 /Dec11 Sources: FactSet; Dow Jones Market Data COMMODITIES wsj.com/market-data/commodities 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | B11 BY ERIC WALLERSTEIN U.S. regulators and standard setters are taking a closer look at cash-flow statements, particularly how such corporate disclosures may lag behind other financial statements in terms of usefulness for investors and the quality of the information that companies provide. The cash-flow statement helps investors figure out where a company is getting its money, how it is using it and if it has enough runway to operate and even survive. The Securities and Exchange Commission is reviewing how companies treat errors in these statements. The Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets accounting rules for U.S. companies, is considering whether to require expanded disclosure on the cash-flow statement for financial institutions. An SEC official last week advised companies to be more objective and thorough in determining whether the errors made in cash-flow information are material to investors. The SEC observed that some companies “don’t dedicate the same level of rigor and attention” to the cashflow statement compared with other statements, Anita Doutt, a senior associate chief accountant at the SEC, said at conferences in New York in recent weeks. The issue concerns the two types of restatements companies typically can make to correct errors. A “big R” fix involves a company reissuing financials to reflect the correction of one or more errors that materially affect those statements. In a “little r” revision, a company addresses more minor problems by correcting the error in future financial statements. Companies have been making a lot of “little r” revisions to their cash-flow statements, meaning they are routinely determining that their errors are immaterial and don’t warrant a reissuing of past financials, Doutt said. Among cash flow-related restatements, the number of minor revisions by U.S. public companies exceeded that of major fixes annually for at least the past decade, according to research firm Ideagen Audit Analytics. U.S. public companies made 24 minor restatements tied to cash flows this year through Nov. 28 and 17 major restatements. Both types of cash-flow restatements comprise 11% of the 380 total U.S. restatements this year through Nov. 28, up from 8% in 2022 and 1% in 2021, Ideagen said. A common issue: misclassification. Companies routinely check the wrong box when labeling a type of cash flow as investing, financing or operating activities. Many companies say this isn’t material because it is a classification error only, an argument that the SEC doesn’t find persuasive, Doutt said. That is because classification errors do affect investors’ ability to understand the nature of companies’ cash-generating activities, she said. “The classification itself is the foundation of the statement of cash flows,” Doutt said. What companies deem material for restatements and other aspects of financial reporting is a matter of judgment. Under securities law, information is material if it is relevant to making an investment decision, or if it would affect existing public information about a company. Meanwhile, the FASB recently added cash-flow-related disclosures from banks and other financial firms to its standard-setting agenda, which could result in a new mandatory standard. As part of the project, the FASB is considering requiring financial firms to disclose the amount of cash interest income they received in a particular period, a move to provide more details to investors. The board is looking to require financial firms to expand cash-flow statements to include additional line items about operations and reclassify certain activities to the operating section from financing and investing. BY MARK MAURER Regulators Scrutinize Cash-Flow Statements marking the highest level the cryptocurrency has seen since April 2022, around when the Fed kicked off its policy-tightening campaign. The rise has been aided by the possibility that an exchange-traded fund tied to spot bitcoin will win approval soon. In corporate news, Uber Technologies shares rose 2.2% after S&P Global said the ridehailing company will join the S&P 500 index. Investors are piling in ahead of the move, which typically draws buying from funds that track the benchmark. Spotify Technology shares jumped after the streaming company announced its third round of layoffs this year. Alaska Air shares fell 14% after the carrier agreed to buy Hawaiian Airlines. Hawaiian’s shares surged nearly threefold to $14.22, their highest close in more than a year. Gold—which benefits from falling real rates as well as war Stocks, bonds and precious metals retreated, reversing course after markets last week extended a monthlong stretch of gains. Higher bond yields weighed on shares of large technology companies, pressuring the broader stock market. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite lost 0.8%. The benchmark S&P 500 dropped 0.5%. The Dow industrials slipped 0.1%, or 41 points, snapping a four-day win streak. Shares of Nvidia, the darling of the artificial-intelligence boom, fell 2.7% as chip stocks declined. Microsoft shares slid 1.4%. Amazon.com declined 1.5%. A recent ascent in bond prices halted as yields rose. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.286% from 4.225% Friday. The yield on two-year Treasurys, which is sensitive to federal-funds rate expectations, MONDAY’S MARKETS EnergyRe builds transmission lines to carry wind and solar power to big cities. WAYNE PARRY/ASSOCIATED PRESS nesses. Biz2Credit says it uses the ERC as incremental collateral for loans. Dhaliwal paid a 2% origination fee and 1.5% interest a month for the loan, which was used to purchase pizza ovens. “Traditional banks were taking so much time,” said Dhaliwal, who repaid the loan after three months. Hefty fees can add to the borrowing costs. Venture Debt, a unit of alternative finance provider eProdigy Financial, charges a monthly interest rate of up to 3%, plus a 4% origination fee and about $1,500 for a lockbox to receive the IRS refund checks. Venture Debt says it has issued more than $300 million in ERC bridge loans. The company is looking at ways to restructure loans with a 12- month term for borrowers who may now face longer waits for their refunds. Other firms buy the credit at a discount of up to 20% and then collect payment from the IRS when the refund is issued. “From our perspective, the ERC is a receivable,” said a spokesman for Raistone, a finance company in New York that purchases the credits and sells them to institutional investors. Odyssey Primary Homecare, in Edinburg, Texas, took out an ERC advance last year. The home-care agency paid 10% of the $325,000 credit amount to the fund that provided the advance and an additional $9,700 in consulting and underwriting fees. It used the funds to pay nurses and purchase telemonitoring equipment. “We were losing nurses left and right,” said Dalia Molina, Odyssey’s health administrator. “We needed some kind of incentive.” Loan brokers, tax advisers and other partners can earn hefty fees for ERC referrals. —Richard Rubin contributed to this article. company go out of business.” The IRS cautions taxpayers about taking out upfront loans in anticipation of an ERC refund. Aggressive marketing of the ERC “has harmed wellmeaning businesses,” the IRS said. “Taxpayers should consult with a trusted tax professional rather than a marketing company about this complex tax credit and any related financing arrangement.” Companies providing ERC financing say they are meeting the needs of employers who need cash now and may have limited borrowing options. Even before the IRS pause, it sometimes took the agency nine months or more to process ERC requests. “This came out of a demand from the marketplace,” said Matt Hartley, president of ERC Advance Funding, which operates a $100 million loan fund and provided financing to Carcamo. “There would be no need for this if the IRS processed the ERC claims fast.” The financing company is an affiliate of Stenson Tamaddon, a firm that prepares ERC claims. It has tightened its underwriting criteria in response to heightened IRS scrutiny. “We are risking our own money here,” said Eric Stenson, co-founder of Stenson Tamaddon and ERC Advance. Charan Dhaliwal, who has 28 Pizza Hut franchises in the Midwest, last year used his ERC refund as collateral for a $500,000 loan from Biz2Credit, an online financing platform for small busiContinued from page B1 Lenders Fill Gap On Refunds MARKETS also rose after recording its biggest weekly decline since March. Investors are betting the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by more than a percentage point in 2024. Rapidly falling bond yields fueled the stock market’s best month in more than a year in November. “It’s natural, after so much exuberance, to see a pullback,” said Lisa Erickson, head of public markets at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. Many investors see this week’s monthly jobs data, due Friday, and inflation reports next week as the next tests for the market. Despite Monday’s drawdown, signs of investor optimism remained. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks defied the rest of the market, finishing 1% higher. The Russell 2000 is the “big thing to watch” heading into the end of the year, said Ross Mayfield, an investment strategy analyst at Baird. Higher rates, inflation and a concentration in beleaguered sectors such as regional banks have weighed on the index in recent years. “Small-caps wouldn’t rally if a recession was the market’s base case,” he said. Bitcoin climbed above $42,000 in Monday trading, and economic uncertainty—hit an intraday record of $2,152.30 a troy ounce during overnight trading. It settled at $2,024.10 a troy ounce. Oil extended its recent slide. Benchmark Brent crude fell 1.1% to $78.03 a barrel. Cruise lines have benefited from falling oil prices: Norwegian Cruise Line advanced 6.6% on the day and Royal Caribbean Cruises added 3.1%. Overseas markets mostly weakened. Mining stocks weighed on the Stoxx Europe 600, which slipped 0.1%. At midday Tuesday, Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 1.35%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was down 1.4% and the Shanghai Composite was down 0.65%. S&P 500 futures fell 0.2%. Rising Treasury Yields Hit Stocks Small-cap shares, bitcoin rise on a downbeat day for many markets Dow Jones Industrial Average S&P 500 Nasdaq Composite –1.75 –1.50 –1.25 –1.00 –0.75 –0.50 –0.25 0% Index performance on Monday Source: FactSet Five-minute intervals 10 a.m. 11 noon 1 p.m. 2 3 4 AUCTION RESULTS Here are the results of Monday's Treasury auctions. All bids are awarded at a single price at the marketclearing yield. Rates are determined by the difference between that price and the face value. 13-Week 26-Week Applications $224,832,167,200 $182,321,866,300 Accepted bids $76,380,780,000 $69,251,678,800 " noncomp $2,223,345,200 $2,232,683,300 " foreign noncomp $0 $0 Auction price (rate) 98.672917 97.376167 (5.250%) (5.190%) 5.409% 5.419% Bids at clearing yield accepted 67.22% 0.75% 912797GQ4 912797HT7 Both issues are dated Dec. 7, 2023. The 13-week bills mature on March 7, 2024; the 26-week bills mature on June 6, 2024. debt. The investors include European transmission firm Elia Group, Denmark funds Glentra Capital and PKA and the investment manager of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the controlling shareholder of drugmaker Novo Nordisk. Such overseas investors have been pouring money into U.S. companies to capitalize on the climate law, which included billions of dollars in clean-energy subsidies. Other projects are springing up around the country, too. A 339-mile transmission line to carry hydropower from Quebec to New York City is being backed by Blackstone. Three proposed transmission lines from companies including Grid United, Berkshire Hathaway and National Grid recently got a $1.3 billion commitment from the Energy Department. EnergyRe is applying for similar government funding and said it is giving priority to projects it thinks can avoid permitting snarls. Its New York transmission line spans land controlled by the state. Another 350-mile transmission line to carry power from Iowa to the Chicago area will be built along railroad tracks. Still, energyRe will have to contend with the higher interest rates and costs that have hit other clean-energy businesses this year. The company, which is developing an offshore wind project near New York and New Jersey, said tax credits from the climate law should help absorb expenses. The startup was created in 2020 with initial backing from executives at Related, who saw the need for clean power in cities to comply with local regulations and meet demand from big companies. Founded by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, Related is a developer of splashy properties such as New York’s Hudson Yards as well as condos and affordable housing. The company took advantage of low-income housing tax credits for years before new clean-energy credits and transmission-funding programs were created. “It is such an evident problem and huge opportunity,” said Jeff Blau, Related’s CEO and chairman of energyRe. the country’s climate goals. Last year, wind- and solar-generating projects accounted for roughly 90% of power projects waiting to join electric grids, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The backlog is pushing more companies to launch transmission projects. Among them is a 175-mile underground transmission line to bring power from a cluster of upstate wind and solar projects to New York City. It is part of a roughly $11 billion collaboration that includes energyRe, a Blackstonebacked renewable developer and the state of New York. The funding announced by energyRe on Monday will go toward such projects and is made up of $800 million in equity and $400 million in Continued from page B1 Investors Bet on Clean Energy sury Department had more leverage to get Binance to settle, the people said. The Justice Department said it would indict Binance and Zhao if they didn’t plead guilty. Binance feared an indictment might spur customers to withdraw their assets all at once, destroying the business. The Treasury Department threatened to name Binance as a primary money-laundering concern, which would have effectively cut it off from the U.S. financial system and made it impossible for customers to exchange their crypto assets for dollars. Binance and its affiliates probably felt more confident about fighting the SEC in court, Reiners said. The SEC’s claims all turn on its ability to show that cryptocurrencies are securities. If a court decides they aren’t, the rest of the SEC’s case collapses. “They have more of a chance prevailing in court against the SEC than other agencies,” Reiners said. “They also probably don’t want to settle because the industry is waging a holy battle against the SEC, and they want to do their part.” Binance’s guilty plea and Zhao’s agreement to step down as its chief executive leave the company with a path to continue doing business, even in the U.S. Its guilty plea calls for Binance to implement effective anti-money-laundering and sanctions-compliance programs and requires a court-appointed monitor who will oversee its progress. As long as Binance can satisfy the monitor without losing too many lucrative customers, it might do well enough. “It’s not a resolution that is guaranteed to kill,” said Stuart Alderoty, chief legal officer of Ripple, a digital-asset company that partly prevailed this year in litigation with the securities regulator. As part of the deal it reached last month, Binance did settle with a different market regulator—the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC sued Binance this year alleging that it offered risky crypto derivatives to American users without the proper licensing and protections. economics at Duke University. Another hurdle: The SEC alleged that Binance violated investor-protection laws by selling BNB, its own crypto token, in 2017. Settling that claim would make it nearly impossible to trade BNB in the U.S. and could hurt its value around the world. The SEC’s litigation has taken its own toll. At a court hearing last week, Binance.US attorneys said the venue has withered under the stress and cost of the SEC’s lawsuit. The average monthly value of Binance.US assets is down almost 90%, and Binance.US has lost almost half of its monthly users since the SEC filed its case, Binance.US attorney Matthew Laroche said. Prosecutors and the TreaContinued from page B1 Binance Still Fights The SEC NOTICE OF PUBLIC SALE OF COLLATERAL PLEASE TAKE NOTICE, that due to the default under that certain



Senior Mezzanine Pledge and Security Agreement (“Pledge”) executed by 1812 Mezz Borrower, LLC (“Borrower”) in favor of RBC Real Estate Capital Corp. a Delaware corporation, for itself and in its capacity as administrative agent (“Secured Party”), and that certain Senior Mezzanine Loan and Security Agreement executed by borrower in favor of Secured Party, and in accordance with applicable provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code as enacted in New York, Secured Party will offer for sale at public auction Borrower’s 100% limited liability company membership interests (“Collateral”) in and to 1812 Holdings, LLC (“Pledged Entity”). The principal asset of Pledged Entity is real property and improvements located at 1812 North Moore Street, Arlington, Virginia 22209 (“Property”). The Property is subject to a mortgage loan and other liens, encumbrances and interests. The sale is to be held on Monday, December 18, 2023, at 2:30 p.m. (ET) at the offices of Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, 1633 Broadway, 21st Flr, New York, NY 10019; provided, however, that Secured Party reserves the right to cancel the sale in its entirety or to adjourn the sale to a future date. The sale will be conducted by Matthew D. Mannion, Auctioneer, DCA# 1434494. The Collateral will be sold together in a single block. Interested parties who may wish to bid on the above Collateral must pre-qualify to bid pursuant to requirements that may be obtained from Nick Seidenberg (Email: nseidenberg@eastdilsecured. com | Phone: 202-688-4040) at Eastdil (“Eastdil”), which is acting on behalf of Secured Party. Party makes no representations or warranties as to the Collateral or the Property. Secured Party reserves the right to bid for and purchase the Collateral and to credit the purchase price against the expenses of the sale and its secured claim. Qualification to bid, and the sale, are each subject to terms and conditions, including terms of an intercreditor agreement, which are available upon request from Eastdil. The Collateral shall be sold “AS IS”, “WITH ALL FAULTS” and WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, WARRANTY OE INDEMNITY OF ANY KIND. COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE Escape The City Long-term highly profitable Building and Supply Company located in beautiful COLORADO for sale, includes Real Estate. “Owner Retiring.” NO AGENTS, NO BROKERS Contact Andy at (719) 304-9940 — Serious inquiries only — BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES The Marketplace ADVERTISEMENT To advertise: 800-366-3975 or WSJ.com/classifieds ADVERTISE TODAY THE MARKETPLACE (800) 366-3975 For more information visit: wsj.com/classifieds © 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

B12 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Elliott Push at Phillips 66 Is Familiar Activist investor’s suggestions for the energy company have a proven record Other nonbank financial institutions, excluding insurers Securities institutions Small and medium banks 2015 ’17 Quarterly ’19 ’21 ’23 –100 –50 0 50 100 150 200 trillion yuan Net interbank repo borrowing Source: CEIC Note: 1 trillion yuan = $140.4 billion HEARD ON THESTREET FINANCIAL ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY Plumbing is something most of us take for granted—until there’s a problem, at which point things can get messy fast. Likewise for the “plumbing” of financial systems: the money markets, where banks and other institutions make shortterm loans to each other. So given the strains China’s economy is laboring under—including a property-sector implosion and the “serious” insolvency of Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, a large asset manager—it isn’t a great sign that China’s money markets were recently throwing off blips of distress. There is little sign of an immediate crisis such as the one that erupted in the wake of regulators’ takeover of Baoshang Bank, a midsize lender, in 2019. But unusual rate movements in recent weeks—and, reportedly, actions by authorities to strong-arm lenders—are worrying. For one, they come in the wake of a big rebound in short-term interbank lending, particularly to nonbank borrowers—a category that includes funds, asset managers and “shadow banking” trusts such as the one owned by Zhongzhi that defaulted on its obligations in August. Climbing rates after a period of rapidly rising borrowing is always a potentially combustible situation—especially when the real economy is struggling. China’s money-market rates often spike at month-end, but the last day of October saw overnight rates briefly rise as high as 50%: a high driven by a scramble for cash by some nonbank financial institutions, according to state media. Both benchmark interbank rates and rates for negotiable certificates of deposit, an important funding instrument for small banks, have marched higher since mid-August. Cash injections by the central bank through its midterm lending facility increased—with the outstanding balances rising by 600 billion yuan, equivalent to $84 billion, in November, the most since 2016. And in mid-November, regulators asked some lenders to cap rates on an interbank debt instrument, Reuters reported. The unease appears to be partly the result of massive new debt issuance by the government, which is making life difficult for some other borrowers: Official government-bond debt rose by 3.7 trillion yuan from end-July to end-October, according to figures from data provider CEIC. That was the largest three-month increase since at least early 2016. But jumpy money markets come on top of a rebound in short-term money-market borrowing through bond-repurchase agreements, or repos, since mid-2021—primarily by nonbank financial institutions. On net, such borrowing by nonbank financial institutions, excluding brokerages and insurers, has roughly tripled to around 150 trillion yuan on a quarterly basis since mid-2021, central-bank data show. Moreover, if some of that cash was used for leveraged bets on bonds to juice returns, then the rebound in rates could be squeezing some borrowers. The falling U.S. dollar—and slower capital outflows—could take off some of the pressure. But China finds itself balancing enormous new government obligations, which the bond market needs to finance, against highly leveraged nonbank financial institutions, some of which probably have significant exposure to the nation’s teetering real-estate sector. No wonder money markets are twitchy. —Nathaniel Taplin China’s Financial Plumbing Is Pressed Money markets show signs of distress Nvidia was never going to have the artificial intelligence market all to itself. The past year has certainly made it seem that way, though. Nvidia’s sales have more than doubled—and its market value more than tripled—as major tech companies snapped up the company’s chips to capitalize on the explosive interest in generative AI sparked by the launch of the ChatGPT online chatbot a year ago. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, two of Nvidia’s largest competitors, have seen their data-center sales shrink lately as the tech giants operating those networks have redirected their spending toward Nvidia’s specialized chip platforms. That is a situation that both chip makers need to remedy quickly. Intel and AMD still draw a lot of their business from the slow-growing market of personal computers. That places a greater onus on their data-center segments to drive overall revenue growth. AMD has been highly successful in this pivot over the past few years as technological leaps and a smart partnership with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing allowed it to take share from Intel in the market for central processing chips used in data centers. AMD’s data-center sales jumped 64% last year while Intel’s slid 15%. But even AMD has felt the pinch of wallet share moving to Nvidia; the chip maker’s data-center revenue for the past two quarters is down 6% from a year earlier. Hence, much is riding on a new class of AI accelerator chips that the company is launching this quarter. AMD is holding an event Wednesday to spotlight those and other AI-related products. The company also has taken the unusual step of projecting revenue for a specific product line; Chief Executive Lisa Su told investors that the company expects $2 billion in revenue from the new AI chips next year. Such a boost from a brandnew product would be a major score for AMD. Intel really can’t afford to miss the AI party either. The chip-making pioneer is in the midst of an ambitious and expensive turnaround plan to regain its manufacturing edge while also improving both its PC and data-center businesses. Both have been under pressure because of industry shifts and competition. Intel’s revenue has fallen for the past two years in a row, adjusting for the sale of its memory business in 2021, and is expected to decline again this year. Intel is holding an event on Dec. 14 to showcase some of its latest AI products. Those will include chips designed to enable generative AI to run directly on PCs, a feature expected to figure prominently in new computers and smartphones launching next year. Wall Street analysts expect Intel’s PC and datacenter segments to show doubledigit revenue gains in 2024, according to FactSet estimates. That would still leave Intel trailing Nvidia, which is expected to surpass the historically muchlarger Intel in total revenue this year and close its fiscal year ending in January 2025 with revenue of $91 billion—15% more than Intel’s record. But Nvidia’s dominance still leaves room for competitors. Tech giants snapping up AI processors are loath to rely on a single supplier for such key technology. Chris Caso of Wolfe Research also notes that some tasks such as AI inferencing offer a “more level playing field” for challengers. “Training is where Nvidia has built such a big competitive moat,” he said. Rival chip makers will still have their work cut out for them crossing it. —Dan Gallagher Elliott Investment Management’s push for change at Phillips 66 borrows straight from its successful playbook at Marathon Petroleum. In other words, it would probably be a mistake for Phillips 66 to ignore it. The activist investor said on Wednesday that it had taken a roughly $1 billion stake in U.S. refining giant Phillips 66 and pushed the company to sell noncore assets, focus more on its main refining business and fix its track record of relatively high operating costs. Phillips 66 has the most diverse portfolio among its peers, with large exposure to midstream, marketing and, most notably, a stake in chemicals business CP Chem with Chevron. In theory that means the company could capture more from the full value chain, but the sprawling structure hasn’t done much for its performance in recent years. Its refining segment has been less efficiently run than competitors’ and its share-price performance has lagged behind them. Phillips 66’s refining operating expenses were more than $7 a barrel last year, compared with about $6.46 a barrel for Marathon and $5.11 a barrel for Valero Energy, according to Visible Alpha. The company has the second-lowest gasoline yield among refiners—a benefit lately since margins are much higher on diesel these days than gasoline, according to Matthew Blair, equity analyst at TPH & Co. Furthermore, it has high exposure to the heavy Canadian crude oil that is selling at an attractive discount. Blair notes Phillips 66’s diversified portfolio is probably the main reason the company’s implied refining-only enterprise value, as measured as a multiple of 2024 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, is lower than its two large peers. Many of Phillips 66’s missteps— the lack of focus on refining and the failure to deliver on cost cuts— were under its old chief executive, who left last year. The new boss unveiled some targets along similar lines: The company in late October said it would try to monetize some noncore assets and said it would cut $1.4 billion of costs by year-end 2024. The refiner’s shares appreciated 6.4% in the month after that announcement. Investors liked Elliott’s involvement even more: Shares are up 9.9% in the few days since its letter was published. While Phillips 66 was headed in a similar direction, Elliott’s participation might spur more drastic changes and more accountability. The activist is suggesting the company could sell $15 billion to $20 billion of assets, much more than the company’s own $3 billion-plus target. Elliott is pushing to add two new board members with refining-operations experience. It is familiar territory for Elliott, whose involvement in Marathon Petroleum four years ago led to a sale of the company’s Speedway gas-station chain and a new CEO. Marathon Petroleum delivered about 346% in total shareholder returns since announcing the Speedway sale, vastly outperforming Valero (at 164%) and Phillips 66 (144%). In a research note published last year, BMO Capital said Marathon’s operational execution had improved since the Speedway sale. Phillips 66 has a straightforward, proven path to share-price appreciation. With Elliott at its heels, it might get there faster. —Jinjoo Lee Pandemic Dangers Aren’t Over Amid all the concerns about inflation, interest rates and wars this year, at least investors haven’t needed to worry about pandemics. But maybe they should: The risks haven’t gone away. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, is on shaky ground. This U.S. initiative, created in 2003, claims to have saved the lives of about 25 million people globally. It had previously been renewed by Congress every five years with bipartisan support. This year, though, opposition led by Rep. Chris Smith—who claims PEPFAR has been hijacked to promote abortion—has foiled the effort. This should worry markets. A recent analysis published on research portal KFF estimates that without the initiative, growth in gross domestic product per capita in PEPFAR beneficiary countries between 2004 and 2018 would have been 2.1 percentage points lower. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund believes that loss in economic output caused by Covid-19 will total $14 trillion through 2024. Yet the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board—a joint World Health Organization and World Bank initiative—warned in October that the monitoring mechanisms that failed to warn about the impact of Covid-19 haven’t improved. This is on top of risks from tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis and the rise of noncommunicable diseases. The cornerstone of a fresh prevention strategy is supposed to be the new Pandemic Treaty proposed by WHO members. A draft agreement is due in May. However, widening differences on how to pay for research and medical technologies could mean it amounts to little. Last year, the World Bank approved a new Pandemic Fund, but so far it has raised less than $2 billion, when estimates of how much money is needed range from $10 billion to $130 billion. The response to AIDS has shown the way forward. Because branded drugs are expensive, it is crucial to boost competition among generics manufacturers. Brazil and Thailand, for example, invested in local research and antiretroviral production in the late 1990s and early 2000s, stimulating demand for active ingredients—the main input in drug manufacturing—produced by Indian companies. The resulting economies of scale dramatically reduced the cost of so-called first-line generic HIV therapies—those treatments typically applied first. By contrast, the third-line generic therapies used when others fail remain expensive because they are still sold in smaller and less-competitive markets. Investors should reward developing nations’ attempts to replicate these successes. Of course, it helps emerging markets when pharmaceutical companies are less protective of their patents. The Medicines Patent Pool, a 2010 international initiative based on patent pooling and voluntary licensing, also has cut drug prices. Similarly, since 2001 the World Trade Organization has occasionally waived intellectual-property agreements for health reasons. Developing nations have made ample use of this flexibility. Still, it took the WTO until June 2022 to extend it to Covid-19 vaccines, and it is still debating whether to cover medicines and diagnostics. Eduard J. Beck, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, points out another area that requires investment: data collection. “Many countries know their overall expenditure on health but have little granular information about what they are paying for medical technologies, and what the cost-benefits are,” he said. Slow responses, underinvestment and scant information are red flags, and not just for health officials. Investors with assets in developing markets, or simply concerns about future pandemics, have their own monitoring to do. —Jon Sindreu Nvidia’s Rivals Prepare Their AI Assault Lisa Su’s AMD expects $2 billion in revenue from new AI chips next year. LAUREN JUSTICE/BLOOMBERG NEWS 2019 ’20 ’21 ’22 ’23 –100 –50 0 50 100 150 200% Share-price performance, past five years Source: FactSet Marathon Petroleum Valero Energy Phillips 66 Sub-Saharan Africa Latin America & Caribbean Advanced economies Middle East & Central Asia Emerging Europe Emerging Asia 0% 5 10 15 20 25 30 October 2019 forecast October 2023 forecast Estimated GDP growth between 2019 and 2024* Sources: International Monetary Fund (GDP growth); Institute for Health Metrics Evaluations (University of Washington) *GDP measured in inflation-adjusted U.S. dollars, further adjusted for purchasing power parity. †2019 data. Development assistance for health includes both financial and in-kind contributions. Low-income Lower-middleincome Upper-middleincome High-income 0% 25 50 75 100 Government spending Out-of-pocket spending Prepaid private spending Developmental aid Global health spending by source and income group† 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | S1 A special report by Barron’s magazine, a Dow Jones publication Reprinted from the Nov. 27, 2023, issue of Barron’s Interest rates are higher than they’ve been in years, and the economy is humming along. Make these portfolio adjustments now. ILLUSTRATIONS BY NATHALIE LEES BY ANDREW WELSCH WEA LTH & ASSET MANAGEMENT GROUP GUIDE TO WEALTH DECEMBER 5, 2023 Continued on the following page The end of the year is a time to enjoy holiday parties, make New Year’s resolutions, and ensure that your portfolio is ready for 2024 and beyond. First, you should take care of basic housekeeping: Fund your individual retirement account, pay off any high-interest debt, and look into tax-loss harvesting within your taxable accounts. Also consider increasing your 401(k) contributions. The Internal Revenue Service raised the limit for 401(k) and other retirement plans to $23,000 for 2024, up from $22,500 for 2023. A pro move: Consider converting a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, which means paying taxes today, but your investments will grow taxfree in the Roth account. A Roth conversion makes sense for investors who anticipate being in a higher tax bracket in the future, or who intend to leave a Roth IRA as an inheritance to their children who will be in a higher tax bracket. Potential tax changes are on the horizon, and that may make this an ideal time to do a Roth conversion, says Jonathan Shenkman, president and chief investment officer of ParkBridge Wealth Management. The Trump-era tax cuts, for example, are due to expire in 2025. And Congress will probably have to tackle the ballooning federal budget deficits with tax increases, spending cuts, or a mixture of the two. “If you’re the kind of person who likes to plan ahead, then this is a good opportunity,” says Shenkman. After that, investors should dig into their portfolios with an eye on the long term so that they are poised to take advantage of the return of more conventional market dynamics. The Federal Reserve is just about finished raising interest rates, the economy is projected to grow moderately, bonds are offering income, and stocks are rising and falling based on profits. “We’re back to normal,” says Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. Investors need to “wrap their brain around this idea.” The recent market dynamics mark a significant shift from the period from the 2008-09 financial crisis through 2021, which was characterized by rock-bottom interest rates and paltry yields on bonds. Investors did well with the FAANG stocks (Facebook, now Meta Platforms [ticker: META]; Apple [AAPL]; Amazon.com [AMZN]; Netflix [NFLX]; and Alphabet, formerly Google [GOOGL]), as did those who favored U.S. equities over international stocks. But yesterday’s playbook may not work as well going forward. In some ways, we’ve reverted to historical form. Mortgage rates, for instance, are near 8%. That may sound crazy high to millennial home buyers, but it isn’t unheard of for baby boomers and Gen Xers. Higher interest rates also mean that investors can actually get a respectable yield on the cash portion of their portfolios. “You can earn about 5% in a money-market fund,” says Kara Murphy, chief investment officer of Kestra Investment Management. “We haven’t seen that since 2007.” For investors, year end is an opportune moment to take a close look at their portfolio and financial goals. That means making sure you have the right asset allocation for your goals. Even if you do, you probably still need to rebalance to make sure you aren’t overweight cash, light on bonds, and heavy on stocks (a lot of people are). A 60/40 stock/ bond mix makes sense, but investors should also consider how they deploy cash now—to make sure it is generating some yield—and maybe consider adding alternative investments, like venture capital or private credit. And keep a cautious eye on the pricey Magnificent Seven tech stocks: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), and Tesla (TSLA). They are so 2023. Here’s wisdom from the pros on setting up each part of your portfolio for the new year. Stocks. While rebalancing usually means adjusting your allocations of stocks, bonds, and cash, this year you also may need to rebalance within your stock portfolio. Given that just a handful of stocks have provided much of the market’s overall returns this year, you may be way overweight the Magnificent Seven: Those stocks have outperformed the rest of the S&P 500 significantly. Their return from Jan. 1 to Oct. 31 was 53.2%, compared with 1.2% for the other 493 stocks in the bellwether index, according to asset manager T. Rowe Price. Tim Murray, capital markets strategist in T. Rowe’s multi-asset division, said the Magnificent Seven have almost become their own asset class. “It’s been such a top-heavy market,” Murray said at a Nov. 14 presentation. “That is distorting valuation and allocation.” Top-heavy markets have occurred before, and the stock performance of the Magnificent Seven may be justified. But investors should check across their holdings to see how much exposure they have to these seven stocks in particular, and to growth and tech stocks more broadly. 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

S2 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. GUIDE TO WEALTH Continued from the previous page back lending and others are focusing more on larger borrowers. Of course, alts aren’t for everyone. For starters, some alternative funds lock up your money for extended periods of time or have limits on how fast you can exit. Fees and investment minimums can be high. So, alts are worth a look, but many investors may do just as well with a traditional mix of stocks and bonds. Whatever your long-term goals, the key is to make sure you have asset-allocation targets to help you meet them and then make sure each quarter that your actual investments align with those targets. It can be easier said than done. This year, in particular, investors should avoid making outsize bets based on past market conditions. Instead, align your investments for the more normal market environment that lies ahead. No allocation can be the right one if it doesn’t help you achieve your financial dreams. “A portfolio is much more powerful when it is tied to a financial plan,” says Kestra’s Murphy. B their buying power. “If you want to outpace inflation, you need a meaningful amount of equity exposure,” he says. Alts. For high-net-worth and ultrahighnet-worth investors, it’s also important to consider an allocation to alternative investments—but it isn’t a must-have. More investors have bought into alts, particularly high-yielding funds that invest in private credit and real estate. Alternative-asset manager KKR said in a recent paper that incorporating private credit, private infrastructure, and private real estate can increase the income potential of a portfolio. The firm’s hypothetical portfolio consisted of 40% bonds, 30% stocks, and 30% alts (which consisted of 15% of private credit and 7.5% each of private real estate and private infrastructure). Sequoia Financial’s Orfe says they’ve been suggesting that clients invest in private credit, or portfolios of direct loans to midsize companies. Private credit is growing as an asset class because some banks have scaled And yields on cash could fall if the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. Bonds. For these reasons and more, investors should re-evaluate the fixed-income portion of their portfolios. Some financial advisors have been recommending that clients buy longer-dated Treasuries now to lock in today’s higher yields. “The clock is ticking between here and a Fed pause,” says Bloomberg, the UBS advisor. Yields, which dropped in the past month, will continue to fall if the Fed gets more dovish. “That means there is reinvestment risk. By the time the Fed does pause, there is a risk for it being too late to transition from cash to bonds.” Fixed income has taken a beating since the Fed started hiking rates. Kestra’s Murphy says the Federal Reserve’s rapid rate increases meant the “bond market had to take these hits in a very concentrated way.” But yields on bonds are now attractive in a way they haven’t been in years. Owners of long-term bonds may also benefit should rates continue to fall (as they have this month) and the economy slow down; in that scenario, their bonds could appreciate in value, and investors could then sell them at a profit. Consider this: The $49.2 billion iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond exchange-traded fund (TLT) is up about 9% since mid-October. Some investors may choose to buy longer-dated bonds and simply hold them to maturity, collecting the coupon without having to worry about fluctuations in the underlying price of the bond. Morgan Stanley’s Shalett notes how fixed income compares favorably to stocks, particularly given valuations. “I’d just as soon take 5.5% in investment-grade paper as buy a company stock at these levels,” she says. Retirees or investors nearing retirement in particular may benefit from the higher yield environment because they can generate attractive income from safe investments. That wasn’t possible before the Fed started hiking rates in 2022. And in the previous decade, some investors seeking higher yields might have bought riskier investments such as junk bonds or leveraged loans. As part of rebalancing within the bond portion of their portfolios, investors should make sure they aren’t overallocated to riskier fixed-income investments. “With rates going up, a lot of these weaker companies that took on more risk over the past 10 to 15 years, they could default,” says Shenkman. “That’s another reason to move up in credit quality; you want to limit your exposure to these riskier assets.” Shenkman says retirees shouldn’t forsake stocks for fixed income. That’s because they face longevity risk, or the risk that they will live a very long time and inflation will erode “Revisiting concentrated positions is really valuable right now,” says Evan Bloomberg, a private wealth advisor at UBS. “If a client has more than 10% of their net worth in any asset, we want to check that against their plan and make sure they are protected.” Morgan Stanley’s Shalett recommends positioning portfolios to be slightly underweight equities. “We are not excited about owning the S&P 500 at a market weight,” says Shalett. “It is dominated today by seven stocks that are correlated with each other, and they are all super-expensive as a starting point.” Instead, she sees opportunity in areas that are more interest-rate sensitive and could therefore benefit if rates stabilize or fall. She finds potential value in healthcare, energy, industrials, and small-caps—sectors that have underperformed the broader market and may be poised to catch up in 2024 if the economy continues to run not too hot and not too cold. “As value investors, we’re betting on mean reversion,” Shalett says. “If this Goldilocks story is real, then you’re going to have a catch-up trade. You’re going to see the things that have underperformed, and that are most sensitive to interest rates, come back.” Investors should also review their allocation to international stocks, which have lagged behind U.S. stocks in recent years. That could change. Asset manager Vanguard estimates that 10-year annualized nominal returns will be lower for U.S. stocks than for non-U.S. developed markets equities; Vanguard projects 4.2% to 6.2% for U.S. stocks compared with 7% to 9% for non-U.S. developed markets equities. Other wealth managers are slightly underweight international stocks, citing, for example, weaknesses or risks in Europe. But they aren’t forgoing international equities. Sequoia Sentinel Family Office, a unit of Sequoia Financial Group, currently recommends international equities for 30% of equity exposure. That’s less than the firm’s 35% long-term strategic target, but it’s still a healthy allocation, says Michael Orfe, advisor group lead at Sequoia Sentinel Family Office. “There are periods of time when international can outperform U.S.,” Orfe says. Cash. Investors have increased their cash holdings over the past year—and with good reason. Interest rates are higher than they’ve been in decades, and money-market funds are currently yielding about 5%. Investors would be wise to make sure that the cash part of their portfolio is generating some income in this environment. “If you’re not being proactive on this, then you’re leaving money on the table,” says ParkBridge’s Shenkman. Some investors may also be overweight cash and should move back into longer-term bonds. If longer-term interest rates continue to fall, there are gains to be made. A nyone who bought JPMorgan Tax Aware Equity hoping to pay lower taxes on their investments is in for a surprise. On Dec. 14, the mutual fund will pay an estimated $8.17 a share in taxable capital gains distributions, according to J.P. Morgan. That’s about 21% of its recent $39.58 share price. Those distributions will occur even if an investor’s shares of the fund (ticker: JPDEX) haven’t gained in value. Sadly, it isn’t an isolated example. Hefty taxable mutual fund distributions are occurring as investors sell mutual funds to buy cheaper, more tax-efficient exchangetraded funds. Sales of mutual fund shares force fund managers to sell the underlying portfolios’ appreciated stocks, triggering capital gains distributions. A recent Morningstar report found over 200 funds that have announced gains distributions of more than 4% this year. The report’s author, senior analyst Stephen Welch, lays the blame squarely on the fund redemption trend. But perhaps most surprising are distributions from historically tax-efficient funds like JPMorgan Tax Aware and DWS Equity 500 Index (BTIIX), which is distributing an estimated 20% of its share value. Both funds have had redemptions in excess of 25% of their assets this year. J.P. Morgan and DWS declined to comment. For taxable investors, there’s no need to buy mutual funds anymore because ETFs can avoid taxable distributions due to how they’re structured. Brokerage firms also offer super-tax-efficient and low-cost directindexed accounts. Investment minimums vary from $2,000 for basic accounts at Fidelity to $250,000 for more bespoke versions at Morgan Stanley’s Parametric. They hold stocks directly and harvest losses on the positions to reduce or eliminate taxable distributions. Yet as legacy products, mutual funds still have a $19 trillion footprint. Many long-term mutual fund investors already have significant capital gains built into their holdings. Selling them to buy ETFs or direct-indexed accounts isn’t so easy if tax avoidance is the goal. Some investors in direct-indexed accounts still hold mutual funds, and the most sophisticated direct-index providers are helping those investors reduce tax liabilities from appreciated mutual fund positions. About half of the new assets that Parametric receives from investors come in the form of “in kind” portfolios, says Jeremy Milleson, Parametric’s director of investment strategy. That means instead of investing in the direct-indexed accounts solely with cash, investors are bringing Parametric their entire portfolios—including equities, ETFs, and mutual funds—and Parametric is managing those portfolios along with a direct-indexed component in order to minimize taxes. Parametric sells losing positions in other parts of client portfolios to offset fund distributions. There’s no reason, however, that investors can’t harvest losses themselves, albeit with less sophistication. If you have a loss in a mutual fund, sell the fund before its “record date,” typically in December, in order to avoid tax on the distribution. If you like the fund, you can buy it back after 30 days. The wait avoids violating the “wash sale” tax rule, which voids the write-off from a capital loss if you buy back the same security too soon. During the wash-sale period, Parametric normally will buy a substitute security that maintains the exposure characteristics of the sold security. That can be tricky with individual stocks. But with a fund it isn’t hard, asits diversified portfolio will correlate with that of another fund. For example, JPMorgan Tax Aware Equity is alarge-growth stock fund, so a cheap index ETF like Vanguard Growth (VUG) might make a good substitute. If your shares of a mutual fund have a significant gain, you might prefer holding onto the fund and accepting the distribution. But first, check the nature of the distribution. Capital gains of stocks held in the fund’s underlying portfolio for more than one year are taxed at a maximum rate of 20% when the manager sells those stocks and the gains are distributed. But gains of stocks the manager held less than a year are taxed as income at a rate as high as 37%. Check the fund’s web page to see what kind of distributions it is paying. If the distributed gains will be short term and taxed at 37%, it may be worth selling the fund if your specific shares have a long-term gain. Your tax will be only 20%. (Investors may also owe state capital gains taxes and the 3.8% net investment income tax.) For wealthy investors, it may seem pointless to harvest many losses, as the IRS limits the deduction against income to a net capital loss of $3,000 a year. But capital losses can be rolled over into future tax years indefinitely. One simple solution to the distribution problem is to donate appreciated fund shares to a trust. “Charitable remainder trusts are often used, where [trust grantors] can contribute an asset,” says Brijinder Grewal, a tax specialist at Charles Schwab. “The trust can sell it, and the trust pays [grantors] back an annuity payment over their lifetime.” While the annuity income is taxed, the income in charitable remainder trusts isn’t taxed. When the grantor dies, the trust’s remaining assets go to charity. Given these options, there’s no reason that wealthy investors need to settle for a big mutual fund tax bill. B “We are not excited about owning the S&P 500 at a market weight. It is dominated today by seven stocks that are correlated with each other, and they are all super-expensive as a starting point.” Lisa Shalett, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Shrink the Tax Bill On Your Mutual Fund Tax-loss harvesting can benefit fund investors facing large taxable distributions this year. BY LEWIS BRAHAM Fund Outflows Can Lead to Big Tax Bills Morningstar identifies mutual funds with large 2023 taxable distributions. Delaware Ivy Value / IYVAX Federated Hermes Kaufmann Large Cap / KLCKX Federated Hermes Max-Cap Index / FMXKX Columbia Real Estate Equity / CREEX Diamond Hill Small Cap / DHSCX JPMorgan Tax Aware Equity / JPDEX DWS Equity 500 Index / BTIIX Estimated Distributions Percentage Per Share* -21.8 -9.7 -33.3 -13.0 -25.2 -35.5 2023 Asset Fund / Ticker Flows *Morningstar 2023 distribution estimates are based on fund company announcements and fund share prices as of Sept. 30, 2023. Source: Morningstar 29.0% -50.3% 26.3 25.5 24.8 23.1 21.4 19.7 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | S3 B ARR O N ’S SPECIAL REPORT We asked financial advisors to share their most surprising year-end financial-planning or investing advice. THE BIG QUESTION Photographs, clockwise from top left: courtesy of Abacus Planning Group, courtesy of David Beyda Studio, courtesy of Hollow Brook Wealth Management, courtesy of The Colony Group, courtesy of Godfrey & Spradlin Advisory of Steward Partners Holiday Legacy Planning Cheryl Holland President, Abacus Planning Group n For people who are in their 70s, use your family’s holiday gathering to discuss your end-of-life wishes. Walk the kids through who your healthcare power of attorney is, what your planning desires are. It might be, “We want to age in place, and we’re going to move to a retirement community in 10 years.” It’s an opportunity for everybody to sit down and have a conversation about what your plans are as an aging parent so that your kids have transparency. They can ask questions and make sure that what you want to have happen will happen. You need to have those conversations, but we all live scattered lives, and I don’t think it’s something you want to do by Zoom. And it’s not something you should ignore because your kids might be anxious about it. Also, use your family’s holiday gathering to preserve family stories from all generations. StoryCorps is a great way to capture those memories, and you can keep it private if you want, but you can also make it part of the public archive. To me, that’s part of planning.We all have our financial capital, but we also have our family capital. And our family capital is partly stories and values and culture. On a more practical note, if you’ve had a high medicalexpense year, consider an individual-retirement-account distribution that’s above the required minimum to fully utilize the lower income-tax bracket that deducting all those expenses probably put you in. And if you don’t need the funds, convert them to a Roth IRA for your kids. Harvest Those Bond Losses Patrick Fruzzetti Managing director, Rose Advisors (Hightower) n We’re reminding clients that for the first time in years, you can now use bonds for tax-loss harvesting because of their recent losses. In terms of gifting, for clients who are in the age range for required minimum distributions, making a qualified charitable distribution can be wise. [QCDs allow individuals age 70½ and older to donate up to $100,000 from an IRA directly to a charity, reducing taxable income.] Also, beginning this year, individuals over age 70½ can fund a charitable remainder trust with a one-time $50,000 contribution from an IRA. The biggest benefit is that you’re not paying income tax on the distribution, while you’re still fulfilling the annual distribution requirement. That’s huge, and you’re also satisfying a charitable commitment. We’re also educating clients on things like donoradvised funds and are always reminding them to consider donating appreciated assets, such as appreciated stock, in particular, especially when you have positive years like we’ve had this year. In addition, people sometimes forget annual gifts. Be sure to get them out to children or other family members. [The 2023 gift-tax exclusion of $17,000 per recipient can go to an unlimited number of recipients.] Double Up on 529s Matthew Spradlin Wealth manager, Godfrey & Spradlin Private Wealth Advisory of Steward Partners n By opening two 529 plan accounts for each child, one for each parent, you can often double the amount of state tax deduction. The rules in each state are a little different, and some don’t allow this option. But, for example, I’m in Virginia, where each individual gets up to a $2,000 incometax deduction for contributions to a 529. Using myself as an example, we have a 9-year-old son, so we have a 529 in my name, and we have a 529 in my wife’s name. She’s the owner of hers, and I’m the owner of mine, both with our son as the beneficiary. So we get to double up those deductions to get a $4,000 state tax deduction. And you can front-load a 529 for up to five years’ worth of the annual gift exclusion. In 2023, that’s $17,000, so up to $85,000 for individuals or $170,000 per couple, per child or beneficiary. Another piece of advice I’m giving is to create what’s called a Uni-K plan [also known as an individual 401(k)] for 1099 sole proprietors. You may be able to take advantage of the 2023 contribution limits—$66,000 plus a $7,500 catch-up contribution if you’re over age 50—by contributing as both employee and employer. The contribution limit for 2024 will jump to $69,000 plus the potential catch-up contribution. I have a client who’s earning $750,000 in annual income as a consultant. We’re fully funding the Uni-K, and he’s doing it as a pretax contribution. You can also do after-tax contributions to a Roth-type Uni-K. In either case, you cannot have any employees except for your spouse. And, as always, you should consult both financial and tax advisors. Give With Expectations Indrika Arnold Senior wealth advisor, The Colony Group n When we talk to client families of multigenerational wealth about family gifting, we review the capacity to gift. But the conversation also includes gifting with a purpose and discussing expectations around the gift. We share a book with our clients called The Cycle of the Gift: Family Wealth and Wisdom. It talks about the intent of the giver and also the spirit with which the receiver receives it. Say we have a client who makes an annual gift every year, who’s going to write a $17,000 check to each of their children. It could happen automatically, and the children may just expect the gift to show up. There’s no connection there in terms of what the gift is for. But having a meeting between the giver and receiver can allow the giver to express what the intent of the gift is and what they want to come out of it. The gift isn’t merely a tax write-off [aimed at taking advantage of the annual gift-tax exclusion]. We work with one family that regularly makes significant gifts to their children. We facilitate family meetings where they share information with each other about how they’re using their gifts. The parents have set expectations, and every year they check in and get a lot of joy by seeing what comes out of the gifts they’ve made. We have another client who gives a certain amount every year to support a family member’s education. We asked her if she had thought about getting feedback from the student about how they are doing in school, and she said she hadn’t. We now hear from her about how the student pays regular visits to tell her all about what’s going on in school. That conversation makes the gifts more meaningful to the giver and the receiver. Mind Those Mutual Fund Distributions Mark Mumford Managing director, Hollow Brook Wealth Management n If you own mutual funds or exchange-traded funds, go through and look at what the potential capital gains distributions are going to be. A lot of those funds do have appreciated securities, given that we’ve had a fairly strong bull market over the past 14 or 15 years. Even in down years like last year, a lot of these active strategies are still producing capital gains. Also be mindful if you’re contemplating adding to a mutual fund that’s going to make a sizable capital gains distribution: Doing so over the last couple of months of the year can be tax inefficient. I also suggest reviewing your investment results in the context of your overall objectives and financial plan. While it’s really convenient to review performance on an annual basis, I encourage clients to judge results over long periods to appropriately frame progress toward meaningful, longer-term goals. Finally, using the annual gift-tax exemption and giving appreciated securities can be a powerful way to build a portfolio and do generational or legacy planning. And you don’t need to be an ultrahigh-net-worth individual to do that. Depending on who you’re gifting it to, there could be a tax arbitrage opportunity: Maybe the recipient is in a lower bracket than the one you would be selling the securities at. And you could even use some of next year’s gift exemption to help that child pay for the capital gains. B Here’s Financial Advisors’ Best Year-End Advice —Interviews conducted by Steve Garmhausen 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

S4 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. This section is a reprint of select advisors from Barron’s annual financial advisor rankings. Participation in this section is only open to advisors who have been listed in our editorial rankings. Advisors pay a fee to be included in this reprint. Participation in this section has no bearing on the outcome of our rankings. Assets are tied to the most recent ranking. For more information, visit barrons.com/advisorfinder. ADVERTISEMENT ARIZONA Robert Bancroft Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management Scottsdale, AZ robert.bancroft@ morganstanleypwm.com 480-624-5714 advisor.morganstanley.com/bbsg $2,426m Total Assets $25m Typical Account Size Eddie Dulin Mariner Wealth Advisors Scottsdale, AZ eddie.dulin@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 480-569-6620 marinerwealthadvisors.com/ our-team/eddie-dulin $990m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size David Stahle Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Gilbert, AZ [email protected] 480-752-6435 fa.ml.com/arizona/gilbert/sbgroupaz $2,308m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size Trevor Wilde Wilde Wealth Management Group Scottsdale, AZ [email protected] 480-361-6203 wildewealth.com $2,790m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size CALIFORNIA Matthew Babrick First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase Los Angeles, CA [email protected] 310-788-3739 people.firstrepublic.com/ matthew-babrick $6,347m Total Assets $55m Typical Account Size Hugh Beecher First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase San Francisco, CA [email protected] 415-248-7613 people.firstrepublic.com/hugh-beecher $5,016m Total Assets $20m Typical Account Size Brett Berry First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase Menlo Park, CA [email protected] 650-234-8868 people.firstrepublic.com/brett-w-berry $1,134m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Steven Check Check Capital Management Inc. Costa Mesa, CA [email protected] 714-641-3579 checkcapital.com $1,634m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size Lisa Detanna Raymond James Beverly Hills, CA [email protected] 310-285-4506 raymondjames.com/ globalwealthsolutionsgroup $5,309m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Catherine Evans First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase San Francisco, CA [email protected] 415-296-3779 people.firstrepublic.com/ catherine-evans $2,174m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Tracey Gluck J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Los Angeles, CA [email protected] 310-201-2610 jpmorgan.com/gluckgroup $2,300m Total Assets $12m Typical Account Size Rick Gordon First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase San Francisco, CA [email protected] 415-248-7614 people.firstrepublic.com/rick-gordon $5,016m Total Assets $20m Typical Account Size Seth Haye Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Westlake Village, CA [email protected] 805-494-0215 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-oaks-group $1,583m Total Assets $4m Typical Account Size Elaine Meyers J.P. Morgan Wealth Management San Francisco, CA [email protected] 415-315-7801 wealthpartners.jpmorgan.com/ san-francisco/the-meyers-group $5,112m Total Assets $45m Typical Account Size Greg Onken J.P. Morgan Wealth Management San Francisco, CA [email protected] 415-772-3123 wealthpartners.jpmorgan.com/ san-francisco/the-os-group $2,633m Total Assets $20m Typical Account Size Laila Pence Pence Wealth Management Newport Beach, CA [email protected] 949-660-8777 pencewealthmanagement.com $2,782m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Sam Schoner First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase San Francisco, CA [email protected] 415-262-4118 people.firstrepublic.com/sam-schoner $3,719m Total Assets $8m Typical Account Size Steven Soja First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase San Francisco, CA [email protected] 415-296-3012 people.firstrepublic.com/steven-soja $1,835m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Cheryl L. Young Rockefeller Capital Management Los Gatos, CA [email protected] 669-499-4480 rcm.rockco.com/youngandassociates $3,011m Total Assets $7m Typical Account Size COLORADO Mark Brown Brown & Company Denver, CO [email protected] 303-863-7112 brownandco.com $614m Total Assets $7m Typical Account Size Melissa Corrado-Harrison UBS Private Wealth Management Denver, CO [email protected] 303-820-5770 financialservicesinc.ubs.com/team/ corrado-harrison $1,373m Total Assets $45m Typical Account Size Joseph Janiczek Janiczek Wealth Management Denver, CO [email protected] 303-721-7000 janiczek.com $887m Total Assets $4m Typical Account Size Wally Obermeyer Obermeyer Wood Investment Counsel Aspen, CO [email protected] 970-925-8747 obermeyerwood.com $2,200m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size CONNECTICUT James Betzig TrinityPoint Wealth Milford, CT [email protected] 203-693-8522 trinitypointwealth.com $1,144m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size DELAWARE Kimberlee Orth Ameriprise Financial Wilmington, DE [email protected] 302-475-5105 ameripriseadvisors.com/ kimberlee.m.orth $2.700m Total Assets $8m Typical Account Size WASHINGTON, D.C. Michael Freiman Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Washington, DC [email protected] 202-778-1382 teamfreiman.com $1,872m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size Marvin McIntyre Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management Washington, DC marvin.mcintyre@ morganstanleypwm.com 202-778-1381 advisor.morganstanley.com/cwmg $5,357m Total Assets $9m Typical Account Size FLORIDA Roy Apple J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Palm Beach Gardens, FL [email protected] 561-694-5675 jpmorgan.com/raslgroup $2,492m Total Assets $9m Typical Account Size Louise Armour J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Palm Beach Gardens, FL [email protected] 212-272-6604 jpmorgan.com/armour $1,479m Total Assets $13m Typical Account Size Peter Bermont Raymond James Coral Gables, FL [email protected] 305-446-6600 bermontgoldwealth.com $3,012m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Jose Cabrera Raymond James Coral Gables, FL [email protected] 305-461-6670 raymondjames.com/theamericasgroup $5,023m Total Assets $25m Typical Account Size Adam Carlin Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management Coral Gables, FL [email protected] 305-476-3302 fa.morganstanley.com/adam.e.carlin $4,324m Total Assets $20m Typical Account Size Aimee Cogan Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Sarasota, FL [email protected] 941-363-8513 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-bellwether-group $1,324m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Don d’Adesky Raymond James Boca Raton, FL [email protected] 561-981-3690 raymondjames.com/theamericasgroup $5,023m Total Assets $25m Typical Account Size Mark Donohue J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Palm Beach Gardens, FL [email protected] 561-694-5601 jpmorgan.com/donohuegroup $1,040m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Trevor Fried Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Fort Lauderdale, FL [email protected] 954-713-8436 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-las-olas-group $1,153m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Jeff Hausinger All Seasons Wealth Tampa, FL [email protected] 813-490-6610 allwealth.com $811m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size Trent Leyda Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Vero Beach, FL [email protected] 772-234-1805 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-leyda-group $1,286m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size About this section This section provides readers with expanded details on Barron’sranked advisors. Barron’s publishes four individual advisor rankings each year along with three team- or firm-based rankings. All advisors appearing here are eligible because they have appeared in a Barron’s wealth-management ranking in the past twelve months. Advisors pay a fee to be listed in this special section, but their participation has no bearing on future rankings. How are advisors ranked? Advisors who wish to be ranked fill out a comprehensive application about their practice. We verify that data with the advisors’ firms and with regulatory databases and then we apply our rankings formula to the data to generate a ranking. The formula features three major categories of calculations: assets, revenue and quality of practice. In each of those categories we do multiple subcalculations. We have spent more than 15 years perfecting the balance of these factors to create a consistent and clear benchmark that accounts for the wide range of practice models in the wealth management industry. This benchmark minimizes bias and human error in our process. How do I find an advisor? Barron’s rankings are meant as a starting point for clients looking for an advisor—a first-pass vetting that can help investors narrow a search. Every advisor will have his or her own approach to investing, financial planning and other services. Clients are encouraged to approach the search for an advisor the way they would a search for a doctor—interviewing multiple professionals and getting opinions from multiple third parties. TOP ADVISOR DIRECTORY This section is a reprint of select advisors from our annual financial advisor rankings. For more information, visit barrons.com/advisorfinder. 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | S5 This section is a reprint of select advisors from Barron’s annual financial advisor rankings. Participation in this section is only open to advisors who have been listed in our editorial rankings. Advisors pay a fee to be included in this reprint. Participation in this section has no bearing on the outcome of our rankings. Assets are tied to the most recent ranking. For more information, visit barrons.com/advisorfinder. ADVERTISEMENT Scott Ferguson Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Leawood, KS [email protected] 913-402-5290 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-ferguson-smith-cohen-group $1,453m Total Assets $4m Typical Account Size Jake Kern Mariner Wealth Advisors Overland Park, KS jacob.kern@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 913-647-9768 marinerwealthadvisors.com/ our-team/jake-kern $3,298m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size KENTUCKY Travis Musgrave Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Lexington, KY [email protected] 859-231-5258 fa.ml.com/musgrave $861m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size Pamela Thompson Mariner Wealth Advisors Louisville, KY pamela.thompson@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 502-236-2079 marinerwealthadvisors.com/ our-team/pamela-f-thompson $566m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size LOUISIANA Curtis Eustis Merrill Private Wealth Management New Orleans, LA [email protected] 504-586-7787 pwa.ml.com/eustisgroup $1,600m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Travis Frayard UBS Private Wealth Management Lafayette, LA [email protected] 337-593-3612 advisors.ubs.com/epg $1,570m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size MARYLAND Kent Pearce Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Towson, MD [email protected] 410-321-4340 fa.ml.com/pearce_group $2,379m Total Assets $8m Typical Account Size Richard Wagener Wagener Lee Wealth Advisors Columbia, MD [email protected] 443-276-9595 wagenerlee.com $787m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size MASSACHUSETTS Charles S. Bean III Heritage Financial Services Westwood, MA [email protected] 781-255-0214 heritagefinancial.net $2,407m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Debra Brede D.K. Brede Investment Management Co., GW & Wade, LLC Co. Needham, MA [email protected] 781-444-9367 bredeinvestment.com $1,403m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Kevin Grimes Grimes & Company Westborough, MA [email protected] 508-366-3883 grimesco.com $4,543m Total Assets $4m Typical Account Size Susan Kaplan Kaplan Financial Services Newton, MA [email protected] 617-527-1557 kaplan-financial.com $2,650m Total Assets $4m Typical Account Size Peter Noonan J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Boston, MA [email protected] 617-654-2318 wealthpartners.jpmorgan.com/boston/ peter-c-noonan-group $2,314m Total Assets $15m Typical Account Size Ira Rapaport New England Private Wealth Advisors Wellesley, MA [email protected] 781-416-1700 nepwealth.com $2,145m Total Assets $7m Typical Account Size Raj Sharma Merrill Private Wealth Management Boston, MA [email protected] 617-946-8030 pwa.ml.com/sharma_group $5,658m Total Assets $15m Typical Account Size MICHIGAN Jeffrey Fratarcangeli Fratarcangeli Wealth Management Bloomfield Hills, MI [email protected] 248-385-5050 fratarcangeliwealth.com $3,128m Total Assets $8m Typical Account Size James Kruzan Kaydan Wealth Management Fenton, MI [email protected] 810-593-1624 kaydanwealthmanagement.com $647m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size David Kudla Mainstay Capital Management Grand Blanc, MI [email protected] 866-444-6246 mainstaycapital.com $3,608m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size Melissa Spickler Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Bloomfield Hills, MI [email protected] 248-645-7126 fa.ml.com/spicklergroup $1,500m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size Charles C. Zhang Zhang Financial Portage, MI [email protected] 269-385-5888 zhangfinancial.com $5,456m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size MISSOURI Diane Compardo Moneta Group Clayton, MO [email protected] 314-244-3222 monetagroup.com/cwcj $2,341m Total Assets $15m Typical Account Size NEBRASKA Jim Siemonsma Mariner Wealth Advisors Omaha, NE jim.siemonsma@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 402-829-3650 marinerwealthadvisors.com/ our-team/jim-siemonsma $1,853m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size NEVADA Randy Garcia The Investment Counsel Company Las Vegas, NV [email protected] 702-871-8510 iccnv.com $1,735m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size NEW JERSEY Michael Axelrod Bleakley Financial Group Fairfield, NJ [email protected] 973-244-4223 bleakley.com $670m Total Assets $4m Typical Account Size David Briegs Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Bridgewater, NJ [email protected] 908-685-3203 fa.ml.com/kugelbriegs $2,002m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Yash Dalal Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Paramus, NJ [email protected] 201-967-6356 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-dalal-group $861m Total Assets $6m Typical Account Size Ken Schapiro Condor Capital Wealth Management Martinsville, NJ [email protected] 732-356-7323 condorcapital.com $1,363m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Andy Schwartz Bleakley Financial Group Fairfield, NJ [email protected] 973-244-4202 bleakley.com $1,851m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size Michael Taggart J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Morristown, NJ [email protected] 212-272-2044 wealthpartners.jpmorgan.com/ morristown/the-taggart-group $744m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size NEW YORK Jason Babb First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase New York, NY [email protected] 212-259-5944 people.firstrepublic.com/jason-babb $5,611m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Jay Canell J.P. Morgan Wealth Management New York, NY [email protected] 917-923-0109 jpmorgan.com/canellgroup $4,691m Total Assets $30m Typical Account Size Neil Canell J.P. Morgan Wealth Management New York, NY [email protected] 212-272-0777 jpmorgan.com/canellgroup $4,691m Total Assets $30m Typical Account Size Dennis Cutrone Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management New York, NY dennis.cutrone@ morganstanleypwm.com 212-692-2829 advisor.morganstanley.com/thebluestone-group-family-office-services $3,286m Total Assets $35m Typical Account Size Glenn Degenaars First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase New York, NY [email protected] 212-259-5918 people.firstrepublic.com/ glenn-s-degenaars $5,611m Total Assets $35m Typical Account Size Gerard Klingman Klingman & Associates New York, NY [email protected] 212-867-7647 klingmanria.com $3,748m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Ira Mark Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Jericho, NY [email protected] 516-336-0875 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-preserve-group $2,108m Total Assets $8m Typical Account Size FLORIDA (CONT.) Scott Pinkerton FourThought Private Wealth Venice, FL [email protected] 941-408-8557 fourthought.com $1,338m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size Michael Silver Baron Silver Stevens Financial Advisors Boca Raton, FL [email protected] 561-447-1997 bssfa.com $806m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size Kurt Sylvia J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Palm Beach Gardens, FL [email protected] 561-694-5652 wealthpartners.jpmorgan.com/ palm-beach-gardens/the-sylviawealth-management-group $1,783m Total Assets $15m Typical Account Size Salvatore Tiano First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase Jupiter, FL [email protected] 561-529-8800 people.firstrepublic.com/ salvatore-a-tiano $3,291m Total Assets $15m Typical Account Size Andrew Vahab First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase Boca Raton, FL [email protected] 917-345-4265 people.firstrepublic.com/ andrew-vahab $3,980m Total Assets $13m Typical Account Size GEORGIA Michael Hines Consolidated Planning Corporation Atlanta, GA [email protected] 404-892-1995 cpcadvisors.com $1,406m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size ILLINOIS Daniel Fries Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Chicago, IL [email protected] 312-696-2121 fa.ml.com/officeofdanielfries $1,446m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size Kathleen Roeser Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Chicago, IL [email protected] 312-443-6500 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-roeser-barbanente-group $1,860m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size David Wright Merrill Private Wealth Management Chicago, IL [email protected] 312-325-2620 pwa.ml.com/wrighthudakzabel $2,719m Total Assets $20m Typical Account Size IOWA Matt Fryar Wells Fargo Advisors Clive, IA [email protected] 515-245-3120 fa.wellsfargoadvisors.com/ matthew-fryar $929m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size KANSAS Trey Barnes Mariner Wealth Advisors Overland Park, KS trey.barnes@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 913-387-2734 marinerwealthadvisors.com/why-us/ people/trey-barnes $3,298m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

S6 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. This section is a reprint of select advisors from Barron’s annual financial advisor rankings. Participation in this section is only open to advisors who have been listed in our editorial rankings. Advisors pay a fee to be included in this reprint. Participation in this section has no bearing on the outcome of our rankings. Assets are tied to the most recent ranking. For more information, visit barrons.com/advisorfinder. ADVERTISEMENT PENNSYLVANIA Patti Brennan Key Financial West Chester, PA [email protected] 610-429-9050 keyfinancialinc.com $1,897m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size Jack Hafner J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Philadelphia, PA [email protected] 215-864-5715 wealthpartners.jpmorgan.com/ philadelphia/the-hafner-group/ jack-hafner $1,345m Total Assets $40m Typical Account Size Michael Hirthler Jacobi Capital Management Pittston, PA [email protected] 570-826-1801 jacobicapital.com $1,821m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Barbara Hudock Hudock Capital Group Williamsport, PA [email protected] 570-326-9500 hudockcapital.com $618m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size Peter Sargent Janney Montgomery Scott Yardley, PA [email protected] 267-685-4205 sargentwealthmanagement.com $900m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Samuel Spanos Raymond James Beaver, PA [email protected] 412-389-4874 spanosgrp.com $860m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size Rob Thomas Mariner Wealth Advisors State College, PA rob.thomas@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 814-867-2050 marinerwealthadvisors.com/why-us/ people/rob-thomas $2,491m Total Assets $0m Typical Account Size RHODE ISLAND Malcolm Makin Raymond James Westerly, RI [email protected] 401-596-2800 ppgadvisors.com $1,643m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size Matthew Young Richard C. Young & Co. Newport, RI [email protected] 800-843-7273 younginvestments.com $1,382m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size SOUTH CAROLINA Rick Migliore Merrill Private Wealth Management Columbia, SC [email protected] 803-733-2126 fa.ml.com/ek $7,026m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Robert Vingi Wells Fargo Advisors Charleston, SC [email protected] 843-727-1083 fa.wellsfargoadvisors.com/vingiedwards $1,887m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size TEXAS Tommy McBride Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Dallas, TX [email protected] 214-750-2004 fa.ml.com/mcbride $1,349m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size Scott Tiras Ameriprise Financial Houston, TX [email protected] 713-332-4400 tiraswealth.com $2,296m Total Assets $4m Typical Account Size VIRGINIA Stephan Cassaday Cassaday & Company McLean, VA [email protected] 703-506-8200 cassaday.com $4,858m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size Neil Goetzman Goetzman Nau Financial Partners - Raymond James Alexandria, VA [email protected] 703-537-8145 raymondjames.com/goetzmannaufp $785m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Aashish Matani Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Norfolk, VA [email protected] 757-446-4045 pwa.ml.com/theahmgroup $1,464m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size Joseph Montgomery The Optimal Service Group of Wells Fargo Advisors Williamsburg, VA joe.montgomery@ wellsfargoadvisors.com 757-220-1782 optimalservicegroup.com $28,965m Total Assets $8m Typical Account Size WASHINGTON Michael Hershey J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Bellevue, WA [email protected] 425-462-6810 wealthpartners.jpmorgan.com/ bellevue/the-hhh-group $1,311m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Randall Linde Ameriprise Financial Renton, WA [email protected] 800-563-1636 agpwealthadvisors.com $5,159m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size Michael Matthews UBS Private Wealth Management Bellevue, WA [email protected] 425-451-2350 ubs.com/thematthewsgroup $2,115m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Erin Scannell Ameriprise Financial Mercer Island, WA [email protected] 425-709-2345 heritage-wealth.com $4,766m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size Phil Scott First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase Bellevue, WA [email protected] 425-519-8901 people.firstrepublic.com/phil-scott $2,636m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size WISCONSIN Andrew Burish UBS Wealth Management Madison, WI [email protected] 608-831-4282 advisors.ubs.com/burishgroup $4,357m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size WYOMING Dagny Maidman First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase Jackson, WY [email protected] 307-264-7117 people.firstrepublic.com/ dagny-maidman $4,503m Total Assets $25m Typical Account Size NORTH CAROLINA Mike Absher Absher Wealth Management Chapel Hill, NC [email protected] 919-283-2340 absherwealth.com $659m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size R. Neil Stikeleather Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Charlotte, NC [email protected] 704-705-3233 fa.ml.com/stikeleatherandassociates $505m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size Jack Taylor Truist Investment Services Raleigh, NC [email protected] 919-571-1893 truist.com/finder/wealth/jack-taylorfinancial-advisor-raleigh-nc-27612 $1,195m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size OHIO Kevin Bruegge Merrill Private Wealth Management Cincinnati, OH [email protected] 513-579-3897 pwa.ml.com/evelosingersullivan $6,156m Total Assets $20m Typical Account Size Randy Carver Carver Financial Services Mentor, OH [email protected] 440-974-0808 carverfinancialservices.com $2,306m Total Assets $1m Typical Account Size Valerie Newell Mariner Wealth Advisors Cincinnati, OH valerie.newell@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 513-618-3040 marinerwealthadvisors.com/ our-team/valerie-l-newell $5,140m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size David Singer Merrill Private Wealth Management Cincinnati, OH [email protected] 513-579-3889 pwa.ml.com/evelosingersullivan $6,602m Total Assets $20m Typical Account Size OKLAHOMA Jana Shoulders Mariner Wealth Advisors Tulsa, OK jana.shoulders@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 918-991-6910 marinerwealthadvisors.com/why-us/ people/jana-shoulders $2,420m Total Assets $3m Typical Account Size OREGON Justin Buell Wells Fargo Advisors Portland, OR [email protected] 503-889-1520 fa.wellsfargoadvisors.com/ justinbuellfinancialgroup $960m Total Assets $4m Typical Account Size Rebecca DeCesaro First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase Portland, OR [email protected] 503-471-4906 people.firstrepublic.com/ rebecca-decesaro $1,995m Total Assets $7m Typical Account Size Lucas Newman First Republic now part of JPMorgan Chase Portland, OR [email protected] 503-471-4931 people.firstrepublic.com/lucas-newman $801m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size NEW YORK (CONT.) Frank Marzano GM Advisory Group Melville, NY [email protected] 631-227-3900 gmadvisorygroup.com $6,135m Total Assets $20m Typical Account Size Leo Marzen Bridgewater Advisors New York, NY [email protected] 212-221-5300 bridgewateradv.com/team/leo-marzen $1,650m Total Assets $5m Typical Account Size Jordan Mayer J.P. Morgan Wealth Management New York, NY [email protected] 212-272-2736 jpmorgan.com/maybachpartners $8,150m Total Assets $30m Typical Account Size Justin McCarthy Mariner Wealth Advisors New York, NY justin.mccarthy@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 212-869-5900 marinerwealthadvisors.com/ our-team/justin-mccarthy $2,419m Total Assets $2m Typical Account Size Colleen O’Callaghan J.P. Morgan Wealth Management New York, NY [email protected] 212-272-0280 jpmorgan.com/wealth-management/ wealth-partners/offices/new-york/ ocallaghan-thomas-group $5,313m Total Assets $35m Typical Account Size Daniel O’Connell Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Garden City, NY [email protected] 516-877-8316 fa.ml.com/new-york/garden-city/ the-oconnell-group $2,177m Total Assets $8m Typical Account Size Michael Poppo UBS Wealth Management New York, NY [email protected] 212-626-8721 ubs.com/team/thepoppogroup $1,556m Total Assets $10m Typical Account Size Richard Saperstein Treasury Partners New York, NY [email protected] 917-286-2777 treasurypartners.com $19,943m Total Assets $25m Typical Account Size Robert Stolar Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management New York, NY [email protected] 212-761-8138 advisor.morganstanley.com/ family-wealth-group $4,613m Total Assets $75m Typical Account Size Ron Vinder Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management New York, NY [email protected] 212-503-2365 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-vinder-group $10,592m Total Assets $75m Typical Account Size Elizabeth Weikes J.P. Morgan Wealth Management New York, NY [email protected] 212-272-9214 jpmorgan.com/wealth-management/ wealth-partners/offices/new-york/ weikes-group/liz-weikes $4,814m Total Assets $25m Typical Account Size Christopher Wimpfheimer J.P. Morgan Wealth Management New York, NY christopher.wimpfheimer@ jpmorgan.com 212-272-7737 wealthpartners.jpmorgan.com/ new-york/christopher-wimpfheimer $22,000m Total Assets $250m Typical Account Size 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | S7 This section is a reprint of select advisors from Barron’s annual financial advisor rankings. Participation in this section is only open to advisors who have been listed in our editorial rankings. Advisors pay a fee to be included in this reprint. Participation in this section has no bearing on the outcome of our rankings. Assets are tied to the most recent ranking. For more information, visit barrons.com/advisorfinder. ADVERTISEMENT Homrich Berg Atlanta, GA [email protected] 404-264-1400 homrichberg.com 86 Advisors | 8 Offices $12.5b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum IEQ Capital Foster City, CA [email protected] 650-581-9807 ieqcapital.com 22 Advisors | 4 Offices $18.5b Total Assets $10m Account Minimum MAI Capital Management Cleveland, OH [email protected] 216-920-4800 mai.capital 133 Advisors | 23 Offices $15.8b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum Mariner Wealth Advisors Overland Park, KS info@ marinerwealthadvisors.com 913-647-9700 marinerwealthadvisors.com 625 Advisors | 89 Offices $65.9b Total Assets No Account Minimum NewEdge Capital Group Pittsburgh, PA [email protected] 800-693-7800 newedgecapitalgroup.com 175 Advisors | 35 Offices $19.6b Total Assets $2m Account Minimum Private Advisor Group Morristown, NJ startthedialogue@ privateadvisorgroup.com 973-538-7010 privateadvisorgroup.com 776 Advisors | 397 Offices $25.6b Total Assets No Account Minimum Chevy Chase Trust Bethesda, MD [email protected] 240-497-5000 chevychasetrust.com 39 Advisors | 2 Offices $32.0b Total Assets $3m Account Minimum Churchill Management Group Los Angeles, CA info@ churchillmanagement.com 877-937-7110 churchillmanagement.com 38 Advisors | 53 Offices $7.2b Total Assets $500k Account Minimum CIBC Private Wealth Atlanta, GA [email protected] 866-517-3400 wealth.us.cibc.com 121 Advisors | 21 Offices $51.1b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum Cresset Chicago, IL ericbecker@ cressetcapital.com 312-429-2456 cressetcapital.com 123 Advisors | 21 Offices $24.6b Total Assets $10m Account Minimum 1919 Investment Counsel Baltimore, MD [email protected] 410-454-5719 1919ic.com 45 Advisors | 9 Offices $17.4b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum Beacon Pointe Advisors Newport Beach, CA [email protected] 949-718-1600 beaconpointe.com 168 Advisors | 48 Offices $23.2b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum Bradley, Foster & Sargent, Inc. Hartford, CT [email protected] 860-241-4636 bfsinvest.com 17 Advisors | 5 Offices $5.6b Total Assets $500k Account Minimum Cary Street Partners Richmond, VA [email protected] 804-340-8100 carystreetpartners.com 57 Advisors | 17 Offices $5.5b Total Assets No Account Minimum Exencial Wealth Advisors Oklahoma City, OK [email protected] 469-825-4938 exencialwealth.com 30 Advisors | 13 Offices $3.8b Total Assets $250k Account Minimum Ferguson Wellman Capital Management Portland, OR [email protected] 503-226-1444 fergusonwellman.com 21 Advisors | 2 Offices $7.1b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum Gofen and Glossberg Chicago, IL [email protected] 312-828-1100 gofen.com 14 Advisors | 1 Offices $6.5b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum Hightower Chicago, IL businessdevelopment@ hightoweradvisors.com 312-962-3800 hightoweradvisors.com 344 Advisors | 124 Offices $105.2b Total Assets No Account Minimum Papadoyannis & Associates Ameriprise Financial San Mateo, CA Team: George Papadoyannis, Ryan Lee, Josh Lelchook george.x.papadoyannis@ ampf.com 650-593-9170 ameripriseadvisors.com/ team/papadoyannisassociates $6.5b Total Assets $500k Account Minimum The Polk Wealth Management Group Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management New York, NY Team: Lyon Polk, Deborah Montaperto, Sandeep Belani, Edmund Agresta, Tallie Taylor mercy.sierra.short@ morganstanleypwm.com 212-761-0867 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-polk-wealth-managementgroup $38.8b Total Assets $50m Account Minimum The Ricca Group Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Florham Park, NJ Team: Michael Ricca, Mary Guza, Diana Chaney thericcagroup@ morganstanley.com 973-236-3530 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-ricca-group $5.1b Total Assets $2m Account Minimum The Sharma Group Merrill Private Wealth Management Boston, MA Team: Raj Sharma, Christian Kemp [email protected] 617-946-8030 pwa.ml.com/sharma_group $5.7b Total Assets $10m Account Minimum Wilde Wealth Management Group Wilde Wealth Management Group Paradise Valley, AZ Team: Trevor Wilde, Janenne Lackey, Jackie Yoder [email protected] 480-361-6209 wildewealth.com $2.8b Total Assets $250k Account Minimum Trailhead Retirement Planning Group Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Chicago, IL Team: William Easom, Dan Hoffmann, Sean Lannan, Anthony Severino, Erin Haley, Michael Haynes, William Kramer, Kenneth Robson [email protected] 312-648-3471 advisor.morganstanley.com/ trailhead $3.5b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum CEK & Associates Merrill Private Wealth Management Dallas, TX Team: William Corbellini, Dwight Emanuelson, Raj Kalyandurg, Sami Abboud, Tara Walters [email protected] 214-303-5818 pwa.ml.com/ce_group $4.5b Total Assets $5m Account Minimum Ellison Kibler & Associates Merrill Private Wealth Management Charlotte NC | Columbia SC Team: Rick Migliore, John McCardell, Gordon Whittaker, Ronald Dennis, John DaWalt, Jessica Miles, Andrew Ellison, Thomas Kibler [email protected] 803-733-2164 fa.ml.com/ek $8.0b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum The Evelo | Singer | Sullivan Group Merrill Private Wealth Management Cincinnati, OH Team: David Singer, Linnell Sullivan, Kevin Bruegge, Jamie Morgan, Tom Hurley, Braden Martini [email protected] 513-579-3889 pwa.ml.com/ evelosingersullivan $6.6b Total Assets $5-20m Account Minimum Bermont Carlin Wealth Management Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management Coral Gables, FL Team: Adam Carlin adam.e.carlin@ morganstanleypwm.com 305-476-3302 fa.morganstanley.com/ adam.e.carlin $4.3b Total Assets $15m Account Minimum The Burish Group UBS Wealth Management Madison, WI Team: Andrew Burish, Jason Maas [email protected] [email protected] 608-831-4282 ubs.com/burishgroup $4.6b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum The Cafaro Group Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Newton, MA Team: Carl Cafaro, Jon Greer, Erik Morland [email protected] 617-243-8058 fa.ml.com/cafarogroup $4.6b Total Assets $1m Account Minimum The Capitol Wealth Management Group Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management Washington, DC Team: Marvin McIntyre, A.J. Fechter, David Gray, Donald Metzger, Arnold Koonin, Alyson Scott, Joey McLister, JJ McKoan, Paul Capodanno cwmg@ morganstanleypwm.com 202-778-1381 advisor.morganstanley.com/ the-capitol-wealthmanagement-group $5.4b Total Assets $5m Account Minimum The Fowler Bull Group Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management Denver, CO Team: Shawn Fowler, Maxwell Bull maxwell.bull@ morganstanleypwm.com 303-595-2105 pwm.morganstanley.com/ fowlerbull $12.7b Total Assets $10m Account Minimum Heritage Wealth Advisors Ameriprise Financial Mercer Island, WA Team: Erin Scannell, Colin Sands, Amy Schwab [email protected] 425-709-2345 ameripriseadvisors.com/ team/heritage-wealthadvisors $4.7b Total Assets $0 Account Minimum The Hetherington Group Merrill Private Wealth Management New Canaan, CT Team: Brian Hetherington [email protected] 203-972-2523 pwa.ml.com/ hetheringtongroup $3.9b Total Assets $10m Account Minimum Jones Zafari Group Merrill Private Wealth Management Los Angeles, CA Team: Richard Jones, Reza Zafari, Tom Tournat, Jerry Klein, Dave Niehaus, Eleni Mavromati, Audney DePaulo, Cheryl Smith, Victoria Santoro, Wil Byers [email protected] 310-407-4925 pwa.ml.com/joneszafarigroup $23.8b Total Assets $10m Account Minimum Below is a reprint of select firms from Barron’s Top 100 RIA Firms ranking. For more information, visit barrons.com/advisorfinder. TOP RIA FIRMS Below is a reprint of select teams from Barron’s Top 100 Private Wealth Management Teams ranking. For more information, visit barrons.com/advisorfinder. TOP ADVISORY TEAMS Savant Wealth Management Rockford, IL [email protected] 815-227-0300 savantwealth.com 179 Advisors | 33 Offices $18.7b Total Assets No Account Minimum Signature Estate & Investment Advisors Los Angeles, CA [email protected] 310-712-2323 seia.com 54 Advisors | 15 Offices $15.7b Total Assets $500k Account Minimum Snowden Lane Partners New York, NY [email protected] 646-218-9763 snowdenlane.com 76 Advisors | 13 Offices $4.7b Total Assets No Account Minimum Wetherby Asset Management San Francisco, CA [email protected] 415-399-9159 wetherby.com 28 Advisors | 4 Offices $6.5b Total Assets $10m Account Minimum 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.

S8 | Tuesday, December 5, 2023 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Najeeb Uddin, AARP Sabina A. Ewing, Abbott Laboratories Rajendra Prasad, Aceenture Kate Prouty, Akamai Technologies Sathish Muthukrishnan, Ally Trevor Schulze, Alteryx Ricky Koch, American Cancer Society Shohreh Abedi, Auto Club Group Sumit Johar, Automation Anywhere Tim M. Crawford, AVOA Talvis Love, Baxter International Chris Bowers, BCG Kfir Godrich, BlackRock Inc. Ravi Malick, BOX Alan Davidson, Broadcom Lúcia Soares, Carlyle Investment Management Shamim Mohammad, CarMax Inc. Sandeep Dave, CBRE Fletcher Previn, Cisco Systems Inc. Umesh Subramanian, Citadel Sunil Cutinho, CME Group Perry Metviner, Davidson Kempner Capital Management Irfan Saif, Deloitte Daniel Bernard, Dow Jones Milind G. Wagle, Equinix Jeff Wong, Ernst & Young Dimitris Bountolos, Ferrovial Eric Tan, Flock Safety Bradley S. Christmas, Foley & Lardner Victor P. Fetter, Fortive Samir Shah, Fortune Brands Home & Security Paul Cheesbrough, FOX Feroz D. Merchhiya, City of Glendale AZ Marco Argenti, Goldman Sachs John Arsneault, Goulston & Storrs Vish M. Narendra, Graphic Packaging International Sandeep Sakharkar, GXO Logistics Allen D. Fazio, Houlihan Lokey Ashwin Rangan, ICANN Mike Parisi, Illinois Tool Works Inc. Carissa Rollins, Illumina Inc. Pallavi Gupta, Impossible Foods Vic Verma, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. Rajan Kumar, Intuit Najib Rahal, Investcorp Holdings B.S.C. Mark Malecki, ISTARI Global Sharon Mandell, Juniper Networks Kevin Stoneham, King & Spalding Michael Bradshaw, Kyndryl Thomas Phelps, Laserfiche Rene Mendoza, Latham & Watkins LLP Scott Spradley, Lennar Boris Shulkin, Magna International Ryland Byars, Medical Properties Trust Inc. Kevin Scott, Microsoft Corporation Mike Anderson, Netskope David Kline, News Corp Billy O'Brien, News Corp John Biegel, NI Tetsuji Madarame, Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha Jeff Sippel, Northwestern Mutual Wendy M. Pfeiffer, Nutanix Vijay Kasarabada, Nuveen Aravind Padmanabhan, nVent Michael E. Gioja, Paychex Inc. Brad Smith, Paycom Anil T. Cheriyan, Phase IV Ventures Kathy Kay, Principal Financial Group Ian C. Hyatt, Purdue University James Shira, PwC Gabrielle Wolfson, Quest Diagnostics Inc. Kira Makagon, RingCentral Inc. Paul A. Haisman, Rotary International Ajay R. Sabhlok, Rubrik Elena Kvochko, SAP America Jay Upchurch, SAS Institute Inc. Patrick W. McGrath, Savills Elizabeth Hackenson, Schneider Electric Jason Landrum, Sedgwick Chris Bedi, ServiceNow Vincent A. Marin, Sidley Austin LLP Andrea Malagodi, Sonar Stephen Carvelli, Sonic Automotive Tony Young, Sophos Ann Dozier, Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits Alan Douville, Stryker Julianna Lamb, Stytch Carol Donovan Juel, Synchrony Financial Larry A. Pickett, Syneos Health Brett Craig, Target Abhijit K. Mazumder, Tata Consultancy Services Bryan Hutson, The J.M. Smucker Company Vittorio Cretella, The Procter & Gamble Company Sastry Durvasula, TIAA Dilip Venkatachari, U.S. Bancorp Bill Eismont, Uline Jason Bressler, United Wholesale Mortgage Joel E. Klein, University of Maryland Medical System Gautam Roy, UNUM Nick Daffan, Verisk Vikram Nafde, Webster Bank Gary Sorrentino, Zoom Membership is by invitation: [email protected] © 2023 Dow Jones & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. 6DJ9400 Technology Decision Makers From the World’s Most Influential Companies A network connecting heads of technology to examine their role as business leaders and prepare for what’s next. 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. For personal, non-commercial use only.