A bullishness from shareholders despite lower earnings estimates could be seen as a sign of a broad bubble in tech shares.

SIGNS OF A TECH BUBBLE?

Source USA TODAY research

KRIS KINKADE, USA TODAY

AMAZON

GOOGLE

ORACLE

Jan. 8 April 8

0

$80

$160

$240

$320

$400 $381.20

$300.46

Jan. 8 April 8

0

$10

$20

$30

$40

$50

Jan. 8 April 8

0

$120

$240

$360

$480

$600 $548.84

$506.91

$43.11

Q1 earnings per share estimate in January:

18-cent profitQ1 earnings per share

estimate currently: 12-cent loss

Change in share price since Jan. 8:

27.7%

Q1 earnings per share estimate in January:

$7.03 profitQ1 earnings per share

estimate currently: $6.64 profit

Change in share price since Jan. 8:

8.6%

Q1 earnings per share estimate in January:

96 cents profitQ1 earnings per share

estimate currently: 87 cents profit

Change in share price since Jan. 8:

-0.1%

$43.41

FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2015 SECTION B

Chrysler 300 endowedwith good looks, 4B

Large andin charge

CHRYSLER

USA SNAPSHOTS©

New workplace vibeHow long did it take to know if you could stay in a new job long term?

Source Ultimate Software Workplace Survey of 1,005 adultsJAE YANG AND PAUL TRAP, USA TODAY

Less than Less than Less than a weeka weeka week Within

a month

Half a yearHalf a yearWithin a year

Over a year

23% 40%24%24%6%6%6%6%6%

7%7%7%

INDEX CLOSE CHGNasdaq composite 4974.57 x 23.75S&P 500 2091.18 x 9.28T- note, 10-year yield 1.96% x 0.05Oil, light sweet crude $50.77 y 0.18Euro (dollars per euro) $1.0640 y 0.0158Yen per dollar 120.68 x 0.72SOURCES USA TODAY RESEARCH, MARKETWATCH.COM

uUSA MARKETS, 3B

17,750

17,800

17,850

17,900

17,950

18,000

DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVG.

56.22

9:30 a.m.17,903

4:00 p.m.17,959

THURSDAY MARKETS

MONEYLINE

But didApple aimtoo high formost users?Ed Baig, 5B

MacBooksteps intothe future

APPLE VIA EPA

PERSONAL TECH

TEST DRIVE

The head of the InternationalMonetary Fund said Thursdaythat global growth remains “mod-erate and uneven,” and that’s“just not good enough” to erasethe scars of the Great Recession.

IMF Managing Director Chris-tine Lagarde, speaking ahead ofnext week’s IMF-World Bankspring meetings in Washington,D.C., proposed steps governmentscan take to reduce debt, overhaulproduct and labor markets, andpromote more cooperationamong countries.

Lagarde’s speech comes twodays after World Bank PresidentJim Yong Kim told an audience atthe Center for Strategic and In-ternational Studies in Washing-ton that slow global economicgrowth threatened the WorldBank’s goal of nearly wiping outextreme world poverty by 2030.

Bettering the world economywill be discussed more at nextweek’s IMF-World Bank meet-ings, which will be attended bycentral bank governors and fi-nance ministers from 188countries.

“The global recoverycontinues, but it is mod-erate and uneven,” shesaid Thursday morning atthe Atlantic Council inWashington. “In toomany parts of the world,(growth) is not strongenough. In too manyparts of the world, peopledo not feel it enough. Inaddition, financial andgeopolitical risks have increased.”

Lagarde said global growth of3.4% in 2014 was in line with theaverage for the past three dec-ades, but that’s inadequate to healthe damage from the recession,including 50% youth unemploy-ment in some countries.

“Six months ago, I warnedabout the risk of a ‘new mediocre’— low growth for a long time,” shesaid. “Today, we must preventthat new mediocre from becom-ing the ‘new reality.’ ”

The banking system, she said,has stabilized since the 2008 fi-nancial crisis, but risks have been“migrating to others ... frombanks to non-banks, and from ad-vanced economies toward emerg-ing markets.” For example, shesaid, a strong dollar that hasweakened foreign currencies ispinching emerging-market busi-nesses burdened by massive dol-lar-denominated debt. And lowinterest rates are spurring exces-sive risk-taking by investors.

Among other steps, Lagardesaid, debt-saddled emergingmarkets should use low oil pricesto reduce government energysubsidies, channeling those re-sources into infrastructure andother investments.

She also said oversight of non-bank financial institutions mustbe strengthened and risk-takingshould be curtailed.

Economicgains glum,IMF warns

Says rateof globalgrowthwon’t fixdamagefrom therecession

Paul DavidsonUSA TODAY

SAUL LOEB,AFP/GETTY IMAGES

IMF Manag-ing DirectorChristineLagardespeaksThursday atthe AtlanticCouncil inWashington,D.C.

We buy insurance to protectagainst the things we fear, andwe’re more likely to buy insur-ance if we’ve experienced thosethings. If your home has beenburgled, you’re more likely to gettheft insurance. If you’ve driven

with your sister, you’re more like-ly to get life insurance.

And if you lived through the1970s, you probably want infla-tion insurance, as well as insur-ance against anyone putting yourprom pictures on Facebook. Con-sumer prices soared an average7.4% a year from 1970 to 1979,scarring an entire generation.

The consumer price index hasgained just 2% a year the pastdecade, and central bankers aremore worried about falling pricesthan they are rising ones. Butanyone who has lived through the1970s probably feels the need fora bit of inflation insurance. So to-day we’ll talk about the warning

signs of runaway inflationand which investmentshelp when prices rise.

The consumer price in-dex, the government’s maingauge of inflation, hasn’t risen aspeck in the 12 months endedFebruary, according to the Bu-reau of Labor Statistics. That’slargely because oil and gas prices.The average price of a gallon ofgas has fallen to $2.40 from $3.60a year ago, according to AAA.

If you take out food and ener-gy, inflation has risen 1.7%, theBLS says. Now, you may disagreewith that, because some itemsnear and dear to your wallet haverisen more. But if you’re an inves-

tor, your personal rate of in-flation doesn’t matter onebit. Your investments willonly react to some third-party measure, and in most

cases, that will be the CPI. What are the early warning

signs of inflation?uStrong economic growth.

A roaring economy increases de-mand, which puts upward pres-sure on prices. U.S. grossdomestic product rose at a lack-luster 2.2% in the fourth quarterof 2014, down from 5% in thethird quarter. “GDP above 3%should get increased demand,”

Don’t fear inflation: Prepare for itFor those left scarredby it, hedges can help

v STORY CONTINUES ON 2B

John Waggonerjwaggoner@usatoday.comUSA TODAY

INVESTINGEVERYFRIDAY

“The market can re-main irrational longerthan you can remainsolvent.” — economistJohn Maynard Keynes.SAN FRANCISCO In-vestors who still be-lieve stock prices arebased on the fundamental finan-cials of specific companies —rather than broader market senti-ment or economic trends — maywant to take a look at 2015 pricecharts for some of the largest U.S.technology firms.

Some of them show a glaringdisconnect between the trajec-tory of earnings expectations andwhat buyers are willing to pay forthe shares of big-cap tech names.

Amazon provides the best ex-ample of the trend.

Three months ago, the onlineretailing giant was expected to re-port earnings per share (EPS) of18 cents for the quarter ended inMarch, based on the average esti-mate of Wall Street analysts.

This week, on the eve of tech-earnings season, Amazon is

expected to report aloss of 12 cents, as

the companyspends more oneverything fromdrone test flightsto new Web-TVshows.

Earnings ex-pectations for the

current quarter end-ing in June and for all

of 2015 have also beenslashed on Amazon.

Analysts have choppedby more than half their av-erage profit estimates forthe full year, to 40 cents ashare as of Thursday from89 cents in early January.

Yet during that sametime, Amazon shares surged 28%.

It would be easier to explainthis disconnect if it applied onlyto Amazon, because over the pastdecade investors have cared

Tech titanslook frothy

THE NEWTECHECONOMY

Amazon, Google rise even as profit estimates fall

John Shinal@johnshinalUSA TODAY

v STORY CONTINUES ON 2B

How much HSBC Holdings mustpay in bail to French authoritieswho are conducting a criminaltax-evasion investigation ofHSBC’s Swiss private bank.HSBC, the London-based globalbank, confirmed French magis-trates have opened a formalprobe of “alleged tax relatedoffenses” in 2006 and 2007.

NUMBER OF THE DAY:

$1.07 BILLION

— BenjaminLawsky, super-intendent ofthe New YorkState Depart-ment of Fi-nancial Ser-vices, whichregulates ma-jor banks. Law-sky’s depart-ment found nearly a third of the40 banks it surveyed don’t re-quire third-party vendors to alertthem to cyber security breachesas well as other frequent short-comings in hacker defenses.

QUOTE OF THE DAYA bank’s cybersecurity is often

only as good as thecyber security of itsvendors.”

BLOOMBERG

LinkedIn, the social networkingsite for professionals, is buyingLynda.com, an online learningand professional developmentcompany, in a $1.5 billion cash-and-stock deal. Lynda.com is asubscription service that allowsmembers access to thousandsof courses and video tutorials inmultiple languages. The busi-ness was started in 1995 by Lyn-da Weinman and Bruce Heavin.

LINKEDIN HITS THE BOOKS

Weak demand for desktopcomputers caused PC sales toplunge again in the first quarterof this year, reflecting the indus-try’s ongoing struggles with theshift to smartphones, tabletsand other mobile gadgets.Gartner estimates PC makersshipped 71.7 million computersin the first quarter, down 5.2%from a year earlier. A secondresearch firm, International DataCorp., used different methods toestimate a decline of 6.7%.

PC SALES DOWN AGAIN