What Is Marissa Mayer Up To?
ROMANS: Welcome back to EARLY START. It's "Money Time" this morning. It took 13 years, 13 longs years for the NASDAQ finally crossed 4,000 yesterday. Another milestone in the list that includes 16k on the Dow, 1,800 on the S&P;, now, 4,000 on the NASDAQ. It is still 21 percent below it's all time high. Yes. It's a long way to go before we're back to thosee go, go days before the dot com bubble burst. Want a peek inside this amazing tech run? Take a look at Netflix, up 278 percent this year. Priceline, 80 percent gain, Amazon 51 percent, Facebook 68 percent. When you put it all together, the NASDAQ is up 32 percent for the year. The Dow is up 23 percent. The S&P; 500 up 26 percent. According to RBC Capital Markets, that would be the eighth best year for the S&P; since 1947. It's OK to look at your 401(k). I can't tell you what happens next. I can only tell you what happened already.</s>ROMANS: All right. What is Yahoo! CEO, Marissa Mayer, up to?</s>SAMBOLIN: A lot.</s>ROMANS: I know. In the past few months, she's been approaching (ph) top talent in a major effort to position Yahoo! less as a tech company and more as a media company. Her latest, Katie Couric, will join Yahoo! as a global anchor for Yahoo! News. Over the summer, David Pogue of the "New York Times," he writes this state-of-the-art column and also his Pogue's post blog joining Yahoo! He said he couldn't pass up the creative possibilities. In September, Yahoo! announced that former "New York Times" deputy editor, Megan Lieberman, was taking over as new editor in chief of new Yahoo! news. Now, jury still out whether Marissa Mayer can turn Yahoo! around, but she is very clearly focusing on the idea that hiring media talent is going to increase her online audience and bring in more add revenue. This is not just a search engine any more. This is a media.</s>SAMBOLIN: Do we know how much the deal is worth for Katie Couric?</s>ROMANS: I do not know. I do not know, but Katie Couric is one, one smart woman --</s>SAMBOLIN: No kidding.</s>ROMANS: So, I assume it's very good for her and very good for Yahoo! Something that's good for you. I don't want anybody to be tricked on Black Friday or Brown Thursday or Cyber Monday.</s>ROMANS: Zoraida heard (ph) me, I'm the, you know, I'm the bah hum bug correspondent in time of year.</s>ROMANS: The retail industry has tapped deep into American psychology. We all want to get a deal, right? What they get are profits and what you get too often are credit card bills. So, I want to really show you the truth about all of these sales. One, mark downs are usually carefully engineered, right? You're not really -- they never sold at the stated price. They were always designed to be sold at the -- selling prices are sometimes raised and then they're lowered. You might find better deals later for seasonal merchandise. Toys are often the worst deals because of peak demand. If you don't pay it off right away, you're not going to deal (ph) it off. Do you know about 58 percent of people pay everything off by January, which is what you should do. You need to make sure if you buy it for the holidays, you could pay it off by January. So, the people -- the 18 percent of people I think who are still paying off this year's Black Friday next year, it wasn't a deal. Now, you're paying interest, late charges and you've hurt your credit score. So, I want everyone, don't be lured in by all of the marketing and the hype about Black Friday. Be careful.</s>SAMBOLIN: I love the advice. I mean, I think it's terribly important. So, follow it. All right. We're going to take a quick break and be right back.