Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell met with lawmakers today after senator collins late yesterday said that she could not support the Graham Cassidy bill. The decision not to take the measure to the floor this week was because the votes simply were not there. Now senator mcconnell says the Republican Party is moving on. Where we go from here is tax reform. Senator corker and senator toomey have reached an agreement on the parameters of the budget resolution. The Budget Committee will be marking up next week. And we plan to move forward on our next priority, which is reforming the american tax code in a significant way for the first time in 30 years. After that vote was scrapped, shares of the Health Insurance stocks rose. And hospital operators also gained on the day. Nikes shares were also on the move. The Worlds Largest sportswear brand reported a nearly 24 drop if quarterly profit after heavy discounting. But that was above forecasts. Revenue came in in line with estimates. Still, investors werent sure what to make of those results, causing the stock to pop and then drop in after hours trading. Sara eisen has the one key takeaway in nikes report. Reporter nike is feeling the heat. The company seeing slowing growth in its key market, north america, and fighting off fierce competition with discounts and a shift in strategy to focus more on its direct to consumer business, where it sells directly through its own stores and websites instead of Department Stores and others. Results reflected the changing times, driven by a slowdown in the overall athletic, apparel, and Sneaker Market and a resurgent adidas which stole the number two most popular brand spot in the United States from nikes jordan brand according to npd group. Nike remains number one and is still the dominant player globally. Perhaps thats why it was able to flex some muscles, reporting a big profit on controlling expenses, and showing Strong Performance abroad, especially in markets like china were sales rose 12 . But nikes stock has been lagging. Adidas and the Broader Market as consumers opt for more faxable athleisure over performancewear. Nike needs to get the cool factor back. Im sarah icen for nightly Business Report. The dow recorded its first fourday losing streak since june. It fell 11 points to 22,284. Nasdaq rose nine and the s p 500 was up just a fraction. The ceo of equifax is out. The Company Announcing this morning that Richard Smith is retiring in the wake of the massive breach that potentially impacted 143 million americans. And his departure comes days before he was to appear on capitol hill. Aditi roy is on the story for us. Reporter equifax announced big executive changes starting from the top. The board of directors appointed board member mark fieldler to serve as chairman, and sevenyear veteran of equifax Paulino Rivera jr. Was named as well. The ceo walking out the door days before he is to appear before congress is an abdication of his responsibility, critics said. Smith is scheduled to testify about a massive breach that affected up to 143 million americans. An equifax spokesperson says smith is still scheduled to testify before congress. Smiths departure prompted ohio senator Sherrod Brown to ask secs chair a question about it during a hearing on the secs own cyber breach. Do you think its appropriate for the executives that ran the company during the massive breach that they get to retire and keep their bonuses and stock awards . It would be inappropriate for me to comment on that specific matter. Do i believe if executives have profited from a high stock price thats as a result of failure to disclose, other acts that are clearly violations of our securities laws, shoul there be an ability to get back those gains . Yes, i do. Reporter in response, gop senator john kennedy tweeted, was pleased to hear chairman clayton isnt ignoring the possible equifax insider trading. The American People need answers. Equifax maintains the executives didnt know about the breach when they sold the shares. Equifax has lost more than 4. 5 billion in market cap since the breach was made public. Consumer groups say smiths departure isnt enough. If you want another credit card, or to refinance your mortgage, youll still have to deal with equifax. They dont have that market incentive to probably serve consumers, in fact their customers are banks and creditors and debt collectors who provide and use their information. Reporter the company says its starting the search for a permanent ceo. Meantime, interim ceo mark fiedler also issued a statement apologizing for the breach and said equifax has formed a special committee of the board to focus on the hack. For nightly Business Report, im aditi roy, san francisco. A bit later in the program well take a look at how Small Businesses were impacted by that breach at equifax. President trump plans to visit puerto rico next week to survey the damage from Hurricane Maria. Today he said a lot of food, water and other supplies have been shipped to that island and that the federal government is doing what i fema, our great first responders, and all available federal resources, including the military, are being marshalled to save lives, protect families, and begin a long and very, very difficult restoration process. I have directed all relevant departments and agencies to assist in the response and recovery effort. One catastrophe modeling firm puts the damage from Hurricane Maria at an estimated 40 to 85 billion in insured losses, most of those in puerto rico. College basketball found itself in the middle of a massive scandal today. The fbi arrested ten people on charges of fraud and corruption including coaches, managers, Financial Advisers, and representatives of Sportswear Company adidas. They are accused of making illicit payments on an attempt to cash in on the big money athletics can potentially generate. For the defendants charged today, the madness of College Basketball went well beyond the big dance in march. Month after month, the defendants exploited the hoop dreams of student athletes around the country, allegedly treating them as little more than opportunities to enrich themselves through bribery and fraud schemes. Among those charged were current and former Coaching Staff members at Oklahoma State university, the university of arizona, the university of southern california, and auburn. Eric chemi is here with more. Good to see you. Good to see you, sue. Lay out whats going on. Theres two Different Things going on. In one set of documents they filed, its about bribing coaches to get the College Athletes to pick certain Financial Advisers and agents when they leave college and go pro. The other version is when theyre coming into college, paying the right families to get them to pick certain schools because those schools are sponsored by adidas, lets say. Why would the coaches risk doing Something Like this . Coaches make a lot of money in college. Not just the head coaches, but the assistant coaches can make hundreds of thousands of dollars. And in a lot of cases, an assistant coachs job is not there to coach. Youre there to recruit, thats your job. You have to get the players in the door. Thats a good point. What about these companies . One of their employees is alleged to do it, not adidas the company, but one of their employees. Whats going to happen on their front, why would an employee do that, it endangers the brand, it endangers themselves. This employee is the head of Global Sports marketing for basketadidas. He has a long track record as a High School Basketball coach in new york city, hes wellknown, knows the athletes, knows the pipeline. If youadidas, youre doing deals, you want the best kids going to these schools that youve already given millions of dollars for. March madness, we know how big those ratings are. Absolutely, even here in our studio. Thank you very much, eric chemi. Ahead, are you better off having machines pick stocks an dont look now, but shares of General Motors are close to an alltime high. It is the latest indication that wall street is warming up to the game plan Ceo Mary Barra has put in place to transform the countrys largest automaker. Phil lebeau has more on why gm is finally connecting with investors. Reporter after years of being seen as a symbol of detroit and the perception that American Automakers cannot adjust to a changing world, gm is now viewed by some as the company to watch in a rapidly changing Auto Industry. In fact Deutsche Bank says gms burgeoning mobility business is too big to ignore. That mobility business includes cruise automation, which gm bought last year. Its now testing selfdriving cars in california. Meanwhile, General Motors is expanding its car share startup. And it still retains a stake in lyft, which is steadily cutting into ubers dominance in the growing ride share industry. Throw in more than 7 million on star subscribers, and you see why gm appears ready to shift with consumers when they start renting or sharing cars and instruction instead of buying them. Make no mistake, gms primary business of building and selling cars is still where the Company Makes its profits, which remain strong. But wall street sees the real payoff for the Auto Industry coming years from now, when electric and autonomous drive vehicles dramatically change how we get around, and increasingly, investors believe General Motors will be driving that change. Phil lebeau, nightly busine. Higher ticket prices helped sales at carnival. Thats where we begin tonights market focus. The Worlds Largest cruise operator also said its better than expected results were helped by a rise in on board spending. The Company Raised the low end of its full year profit forecast and also noted the impact from Hurricane Harvey would cut into its results. Carnival also said many of its ships are back in busine. There are a number of ports that have been temporarily impacted, five that people frequent often on cruise ships. But there are over 40 ports that are up and operating. And of course our own destinations also, we have private islands and other destinations operating. All the ports in mexico. Theres plenty of places to go. We have over 20 ships right now in the caribbean sailing. Carnival shares rose almost 3 to 65. 32. Axovant Sciences Says its experimental alzheimers treatment was not effective in improving patients cognitive functions during a trial study. The Company Plans to see if the drug works in treating other neu neurod diseases. Objectis ceo says the stakes remain high in finding an alzheimers treatment, but that the company is up to the challenge. Over the last 14 years, not a single drug has been approved for alzheimers disease. In fact there have been more than 125 consecutive failed trials for alzheimers disease. So we knew this was a risky place to be. This is one of those areas, you just cant let fear of failure, of losing a battle, deter you from entering the war. But shares cratered nearly 74 to 6. 33. Hurricane harvey dented samestore sales at Darden Restaurants and the company warned there may be more pain ahead. Despite reiterating its full year outlook for earnings and revenue growth, the owner of olive garden said the impact from Hurricane Irma could cause shares to disappoint. The shares fell 6 to 77. 71. American express is raising its Quarterly Dividend 9 , 35 cents a share. The yield on that stock is just under 1. 5 . American express shares were slightly higher, ending the day at 88. 69. Technology is taking over the investment industry. And that means an increasing number of decisions are being made by machines for both Retail Investors as well as hedge funds. Leslie picker is in london at the Third Largest hedge fund in the world. Reporter it looks like your typical guitar lesson. But its taking place inside man group, the worlds Third Largest hedge fund. The student leads Investment Strategy for their quant fund, a Hedge Fund Strategy reliant on computers to trade. Many of their employees are mathematicians building algorithms. To clear their heads, they go to the music room. Man Group Invests 40 billion as part of its quant strategy. Theyre one of the earliest adopters of quant starting 30 years ago. The amount of assets in quant have doubled since 2009. The Largest Hedge Fund companies in the world employ their strategies. Even retail Money Managers like blackrock and state street have been using more technology for their products. That just adds to the Competitive Pressure for a firm like man. To get ahead, theyve been focused on the new frontier of quant, Machine Learning. The firms chief Investment Officer says with Machine Learning, the computers dont have to be told how or what to trade. They do it of themselves. A good example might be if you want machines to buy on dips, then its sometimes quite hard to describe a dip perfectly, but the Machine Learning will look for patterns of what dips look like and what happened next after a dip. It will be much less where we set the strategy for it, much more that it learns from the data that you present. Reporter he says the use of Machine Learning has helped deliver returns above and beyond that of traditional quant. The firm has been employing the strategy for three years now and partnered with university of oxford to stay ahead of the curve. Meanwhile, its clear that the combination between technology and human investment will only become more intertwined over time. A good computer will always beat a good human at chess. But a good human with a good computer will beat a computer most of the time at chess. Its sort of the same even today in discretionary spending. If you try to do everything manually, youll get beaten by people who use Quant Technology to help their discretionary process. Reporter in finding coders can be a challenge, and the best coders are critical for quants returns. Its worth keeping them happy with a music lesson during the day. Im leslie picker for nightly Business Report, london. Is it a good thing that technology it playing a bigger role in investing your money . Ben johnson is director of etf research at morningstar. Ben, good to see you. Sue, thanks for having me. You think technology has been a positive for investors. Why . Its absolutely been a positive, to the extent that it advances an information and Investment Technology thats driven down costs for investors. What we know about investing is that every penny that youre able to save on fees and costs is another penny that youre able to reinvest and allow to compound to meet your long term goals. Is that the only benefit that you see . I was fascinated by leslies report where the gentleman she was talking to from man group said you dont basically have to program the machine, the machine will learn itself. Thats a little frightening to some of us out there, that the machine can learn an algorithm all by itself. Well, i think these fears are probably overblown. In this battle between man and machine, when it comes to security selection and portfolio construction, the jury is still out as to whether machines or some sort of partnership between man and machine will do any better than just flesh and blood humans have for years. And what weve seen uniformly is that theyve tended to struggle, tended to struggle to get the better of their benchmarks, the better of the markets at large. Again, that brings us back to what can we as investors control. We can control our costs. We know knowing about the future, nor what it means for markets. What we know, again, is that every penny we save is another penny that will compound from here into the time that we take that money out of our accounts to meet our long term goals. The man versus machine, honestly, who knows . Theres an arms race going on, which if anything assures mutually assured destruction amongst the various participants who are trying to outsmart one another and ou one another. As an individua investor, do you think we should actively seek out an Investment Firm or money manager or hedge fund that utilizes Quant Technology and technology to a large extent . I think individual investors should remain firmly focused on those things that are a burden, those things they can control with a high degree of certainty, which really almost begins and ends with cost and with fees. What weve seen without a doubt again is that over the course of decades, advances in technology have driven down investment costs to the point that now you can invest in a broadly diversified u. S. Stock Market Index Fund for as little as 3 on a 10,000 investment in a given year. That is inarguably a Huge Positive for all investors of all sizes. All right, well leave it there, ben, thank you very much. Thank you. Ben johnson with morningstar. Machines are also transforming madison avenue and redefining the future of advertising. Julia boorstin reports tonig fr ad week, where the technology thats changing marketing is front reporter no technology will transform advertising in the next few years as much as Artificial Intelligence, making marketing messages customized and interactive. Hi there. Reporter a startup unveiled su in stores and ed to interact malls. Ceo and cofounder ben conway gave a sneak peek. Julie, im hungry. Thats a good one. Give me one second. If youre looking for a sit down meal, head to the Italian Restaurant on q for their signature pasta dish. Reporter 50 of all marketing leaders are already using ai for things like ad targeting and placement. With marketers saying their ai use will grow more than 50 over the next two years. But Artificial Intelligence certainly isnt foolproof. Both facebook and google have recently been in the news for the failures of ai such as racist and antisemitic ad sales and violent and extremist content. Thats why the companies are investing more in human oversight. Facebook announced its doubling its team focusing on election integrity. The technology has gotten ahead of the human ability to be able to bring those back to what culture and society wants. Reporter but facebook and google are also counting on ai to target their ads to drive growth. One analyst estimates the two platforms have a potential of 20 billion in respectivenu ove next three to five years. Last week fandango released a ticketbuying messenger bot. And another company uses what it calls unsupervised and supervised ai systems to review videos. One thing is for sure. With ai powering the likes of this dragon, the better marketers can use the technology to understand who people are and what they want, the more valuable and entertaining brand messages will be for the consumers. Julia boorstin for nightly Business Report in new york. Coming up, a new worry for smal in the wake of the equifax breach, millions of americans are concerned that their personal information was stolen. Small Business Owners are worried as well. And last week, a Class Action Lawsuit was brought on their behalf. Andrea day has o here in business there really is no system to check whether or not its been a victim. Reporter a new worry for Small Businesses after the latest equifax breach. Small businesses remain kind of unaware that theyre a frequent target and really viewed as low hanging fruit by cyber criminals. Reporter unlike consumers, according to attorney jason doss, theres no way for a business to check to see if its data was stolen. And the free credit reports they get come at a cost. Small businesses have been sort of the forgotten class of folks who have been harmed. Reporter doss filed a class action suit, hoping to protect americas 28 million Small Businesses. Lines of credit could be opened in the name of the business. There could be fake tax returns filed. Reporter and he says most rely on loans based on the other owners creditworthiness. Equifax determines who is responsible for getting loans. Reporter equifax says, we cant comment on pending litigation but we remain focused on helping customers, employees, and consumers to navigate this situation. Neal feather is president of a Cybersecurity Company specializing in helping Small Businesses. About 80 of attacks are targeted at companies with fewer than 100 employees. What attackers will do is, instead of compromising one large enterprise like an he can wi i fequifax, they can get the same impact by attacking unprotected Small Businesses than they would with a lot more work to attack a wellprotected enterprise. Reporter he says confidential info can end up on the dark web. Half the businesses that get breached will go out of business in the first six months. Reporter what do you do . Experts say the best way for small Business Owners to protect yourself is to cough up now to pay for those credit reports. Being prepared will help protect you from any new attacks. For nightly Business Report, im andrea day. That does it for nightly Business Report tonight. Im sue herera. Thanks for joining us. Have a great evening. Well this is bbc world news america. Funding of this presentation is made possible by the freeman foundation, and kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for americas neglected needs. 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