AirPods and Watch sales will continue to drive Apple’s stock higher in 2020, Citi’s Jim Suva says

The strong sales of Apple’s AirPods and Apple Watches will come as a “surprise” to investors when the company reports its fiscal first-quarter earnings in early 2020, Citi analyst Jim Suva told CNBC on Monday.

And it is why Apple’s stock will continue to move higher next year toward his $300 price target, he said.

“Some of their products are selling out, and you have to wait to get them,” Suva said on “Squawk Alley,” referencing a “several-week delay” to get AirPods Pro around the holiday shopping season.

“It’s not due to manufacturing issues,” he added. “It’s actually due to strong demand where the company can’t keep up.”

The demand for AirPods Pro is closely followed by interest in the Apple Watch Series 3, Suva said.

First released in 2017, the Apple Watch now has a lower starting price, around $199, than Apple’s latest two models and therefore is attractive to teenagers and other bargain-oriented consumers, Suva said.

“Apple’s wearables, we see that as being the big surprise for Apple when they report earnings in the next month or so,” the tech analyst said.

Apple is expected to release its fiscal first-quarter earnings for 2020, which covers the 2019 holiday shopping season, on Feb. 4.

When Apple reported earnings in October, analysts were impressed with the roughly 50% growth in the wearables segment, which includes AirPods, the Apple Watch and headphones from the Beats brand.

It was the second consecutive quarter in which Apple posted such growth and provided evidence to analysts that Apple could continue to innovate beyond its flagship iPhone, which has seen declining sales in recent quarterly reports.

On a day with the three major indexes trading in the red, Apple’s stock was up around 0.5% Monday at roughly $291 per share.

The stock is up roughly 84% year to date, making it the best performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Oil surges nearly 35% in 2019 and hedge funds are betting on more gains next year

West Texas Intermediate crude futures have rallied 13% this quarter and nearly 35% this year, putting oil on track to post its best annual performance since 2016. And now big investors are starting to get on board with the trade.

“Hedge funds have swung from extreme bearishness to extreme bullishness,” Ned Davis Research energy strategist Warren Pies said in a note Monday. “In two months, hedge fund short positioning in crude oil futures has gone from above 35% to below 9%.”

That said, it is important to note that much of the current quarter’s gain is retracing a decline that started at the end of September and stretched into the current quarter. Brent crude futures are on track to return more than 22% this year.

One of the factors boosting prices is the deeper-than-expected cut that OPEC and its allies announced on Dec. 5. The cartel said it was cutting production by an additional 500,000 barrels per day through the first quarter of 2020, bringing the total production cut to 1.7 million barrels per day.

WTI on Tuesday morning was trading at $60.93, down 75 cents on the day.

Following the larger-than-expected OPEC cut, Goldman Sachs raised its 2020 Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate crude forecast by $3 to $63 and $58.50 per barrel respectively, due to “more favorable inventories” following the cut.

Pies said that he heading into the end of the year he remains “officially bullish on crude oil,” especially since the long and short term trends — key technical indicators — are rising. That said, he noted that the bull case is weakening and that investors should keep an eye on inventory reports going forward.

RBC’s Helima Croft said that an improving macro outlook should continue to boost oil prices going forward. “The fact that the trade war is not dominating the headlines, the fact that people see light at the end of the tunnel, that’s a really important story for oil right now because the macro story was really holding oil back,” she said.

She also noted that Chinese demand is holding up better than expected, which is a “really positive catalyst for oil,” and that OPEC’s larger-than-expected cuts should continue to support prices.

For 2020, Francisco Blanch, head of commodities and derivatives research at Bank of America, sees WTI averaging $54 per barrel, with Brent at $60. In his 2020 energy outlook Blanch said that a “more accommodative Fed, rising US inflation, improving global growth conditions...and low oil inventories” should support prices. He forecasts global demand to reach 1.08 million barrels per day — up from 0.93 million barrels per day this year — primarily driven by non-OECD nations.

How to turn off promotional notifications from Apple on your iPhone

Apple sends push notifications advertising its services and other Apple-related announcements to your phone. You might have seen them: they advertise new iPhones, Apple Arcade and more. They’re easy to turn off if you don’t want them, but you need to know where to look.

Apple uses these alerts to send you announcements, recommendations, updates and special offers for Apple services. As Apple develops its growing services business, garnering new subscribers to these services, and keeping people using iPhones, will become more important for the company. 

For example, last year Apple sent notifications about new iPhones and payment plans. Earlier this year, Apple sent notifications to iPhones advertising a 3-month free Apple Music trial for lapsed subscribers. Most recently, In December, some Apple Arcade subscribers received a push notification about “Ultimate Rivals,” a new game that had been added to the Apple Arcade subscription.

It can be a little much for users who don’t want these notifications.

Apple provides tools to limit and control the alerts iPhones receive from third party applications. Apple’s guidelines even strongly discourage push notifications for “advertising, promotions, or direct marketing purposes.” 

Promotional push notifications are permitted, and if app makers are thoughtful about what they push, they can send marketing push notifications, CNBC reported in June.

Here’s what you do to turn them off:

• Open Settings.
• Tap your name at the top of the screen.
• Choose “Name, Phone Numbers, Email”
• Scroll down and turn off the toggles for “Apps,” “Announcements” and “Apple News Updates.”

That’s it. Now you shouldn’t receive notifications for new Apple products and services if you don’t want them.

Congress gives a holiday gift in the form of favorable tax provisions

As part of a year-end budget bill, Congress just passed a package of tax provisions that will provide savings for some taxpayers. The White House has announced that President Trump will sign the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 into law. It also includes a retirement-related law titled the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act.

Here’s a rundown of some provisions in the two laws.

The age limit for making IRA contributions and taking withdrawals is going up. Currently, an individual can’t make regular contributions to a traditional IRA in the year he or she reaches age 70½ and older. (However, contributions to a Roth IRA and rollover contributions to a Roth or traditional IRA can be made regardless of age.)

Under the new rules, the age limit for IRA contributions is raised from age 70½ to 72.

The IRA contribution limit for 2020 is $6,000, or $7,000 if you’re age 50 or older (the same as 2019 limit).

In addition to the contribution age going up, the age to take required minimum distributions (RMDs) is going up from 70½ to 72.

It will be easier for some taxpayers to get a medical expense deduction. For 2019, under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), you could deduct only the part of your medical and dental expenses that is more than 10% of your adjusted gross income (AGI). This floor makes it difficult to claim a write-off unless you have very high medical bills or a low income (or both). In tax years 2017 and 2018, this “floor” for claiming a deduction was 7.5%. Under the new law, the lower 7.5% floor returns through 2020.

If you’re paying college tuition, you may (once again) get a valuable tax break. Before the TCJA, the qualified tuition and related expenses deduction allowed taxpayers to claim a deduction for qualified education expenses without having to itemize their deductions. The TCJA eliminated the deduction for 2019 but now it returns through 2020. The deduction is capped at $4,000 for an individual whose AGI doesn’t exceed $65,000 or $2,000 for a taxpayer whose AGI doesn’t exceed $80,000. (There are other education tax breaks, which weren’t touched by the new law, that may be more valuable for you, depending on your situation.)

Some people will be able to save more for retirement. The retirement bill includes an expansion of the automatic contribution to savings plans to 15% of employee pay and allows some part-time employees to participate in 401(k) plans.

Also included in the retirement package are provisions aimed at Gold Star families, eliminating an unintended tax on children and spouses of deceased military family members.

Stay tuned

These are only some of the provisions in the new laws. We’ll be writing more about them in the near future. In the meantime, contact us with any questions.

© 2019

Demand for Amazon Alexa in cars is ‘through the roof,’ exec says

SEATTLE — Demand from automakers for Amazon’s voice-enabled technology is “through the roof” heading into 2020, according to Ned Curic, vice president of Alexa Auto.

“Two and a half years ago, we had nothing,” he told CNBC following a tour of Amazon’s headquarters last week in Seattle. “We’re much further than I thought we would be. I’m quite pleased with the speed we were able to build and deploy.”

Amazon wants to capitalize on a growing demand for connectivity in vehicles and create a seamless ecosystem for Alexa on the go and at home. Automakers are looking to improve current in-vehicle voice recognition systems after years of lackluster offerings that have harmed quality and reliability ratings.

Automakers started partnering with Amazon for rudimentary tasks such as starting the vehicle remotely through Alexa in-home devices in 2016. The sides have since expanded those collaborations to embed Alexa into vehicles, allowing Alexa to control some vehicle functions. The tech giant also earlier this year released Echo Auto, an aftermarket in-vehicle device with Alexa.

Amazon has announced partnerships with 10 automakers. Additional tie-ups, expanded relationships and increased functionality with current vehicles are expected next year and beyond.

Arianne Walker, Amazon chief evangelist of Alexa Auto, said the tech giant is “essentially talking” with all major automakers on partnering in some form.

“It’s really more of a matter of getting things lined up for the cars that are going to be released as opposed to any hesitation,” she said.

Amazon also could potentially bring Amazon’s Fire TV streaming service into rear-seat entertainment systems, according to Curic, a former executive with Toyota Motor. The company, he said, is analyzing if it’s something that’s needed given the proliferation of smartphones and tablets.

“There is a lot of demand by automakers for having something like a Fire TV in a rear seat,” he said. “They still think it’s very important. It’s something we’re going to have to figure out. We’re doing lots of data analysis.”

Alexa in-vehicle

General Motors has announced the largest plans to embed Alexa into its vehicles. The automaker in September said the technology will be available on millions of newer Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC vehicles with compatible infotainment systems in the first half of next year.

“This brings the best of two fantastic companies,” Santiago Chamorro, GM’s vice president of global connected services, told CNBC when announcing the plans. “We have listened to our customers, and their insights are clear, they want to carry those ecosystems into their vehicles.”

New rule would make it possible to track and identify nearly all drones flying in the U.S.

The Federal Aviation Administration put forward a rule Thursday that would empower the government to track most drones in the U.S.

The rule will require drones to implement a remote ID system, which will make it possible for third parties to track them. The measure will help law enforcement identify unauthorized drones that may pose a security threat, paving the way for wider adoption of commercial drone technology.

The rule said that the FAA expects all eligible drones in the U.S. to comply with the rule within three years. 

The approval is a milestone in commercial drone delivery, as companies including Amazon, Uber and Google parent Alphabet are racing to add unmanned aircraft to their fleets to save costs and deliver goods faster.

In June, Amazon debuted its newest delivery drone as part of a push inside Amazon to speed up its delivery times for Prime members. 

In October, Alphabet’s drone unit Wing officially launched the country’s first commercial drone delivery flight. UPS’s Flight Forward subsidiary said in October that it received federal approval to operate a fleet of drones, giving it broad privileges to expand unmanned package delivery. It was the first time the FAA had granted such broad approval to a company to operate a fleet of drones as an airline.

“This is an important building block in the unmanned traffic management ecosystem,” the rule reads. “All UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] operating in the airspace of the United States, with very few exceptions, would be subject to the requirements of this rule.”

Such a rule has been in the works for several years. Congress first directed the FAA in 2016 to publish guidance regarding remote tracking by July 2018. The FAA requested multiple extensions on the deadline, drawing ire from Congress.

“Our concerns are exacerbated by that fact that once a final rule is issued, the date by which UAS operators must comply with remote identification requirements may be months, or even years, after issuance,” members of the House Committee on Transportation wrote in a letter to the FAA in July.

Nasdaq hits 9,000 for the first time, S&P 500 reaches all-time high in year-end rally

Stocks climbed Thursday, hitting record highs as the market rallied into the end of 2019.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 60 points, while the S&P 500 climbed 0.3% to a fresh all-time high. The Nasdaq Composite hit 9,000 for the first time ever. Amazon led the gains, jumping 3% after the e-commerce giant said the holiday shopping season broke all records. Trading volumes are expected to remain thin this week.

Stocks have been piling up records as the market wraps up 2019. The S&P 500 has risen 2.9% this month and 8.6% this quarter, bringing the year-to-date gains to 29%. The benchmark has a good chance at scoring a historic year: It is less than 1 percentage point from posting the best annual performance since 1997.

“Stocks look like they just wont quit. The rally is for real,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG, said in a note Thursday. “The economy’s engines continue to hum.”

U.S. weekly jobless claims decreased 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 222,000 for the week ended Dec. 21, the Labor Department said Thursday. The number is slightly higher than estimates of 220,000 in a Dow Jones poll of economists.

In a shortened Christmas Eve session Tuesday, the S&P 500 finished flat and Nasdaq rose to another record. The tech-heavy index also posted its ninth consecutive record close for the first time since 1998.

Markets in Europe, Australia and Hong Kong remained closed Thursday for the holiday.

Investors have been adding more risk after the U.S. and China announced they have reached a phase one trade agreement earlier this month. The two countries are in the process of translating the deal, aiming to sign it in early January.

In a regular press briefing on Thursday, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said China is in close touch with the U.S. on signing the initial trade pact. President Donald Trump said Tuesday the deal is “getting done,” adding there will be a signing ceremony with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Stocks typically get a boost this time of the year during the so-called Santa Claus rally period. In the final five trading days of the year and the first two tradings days of the new year, the S&P 500 has posted a 1.3% gain on average since 1950, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac. This year’s period began Tuesday.

A lot has changed since the market panic last Christmas Eve with the S&P 500 up nearly 40% since

The stock market saw a dramatic sell-off last Christmas Eve, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 653 points. The S&P 500 briefly entered into a bear market — typically defined as a drop of more than 20% since recent highs — during the trading day on an intraday basis. Both indexes and the Nasdaq finished down more than 2% for the day.

The Dow and S&P 500 last year posted their worst December since 1931 and their biggest monthly loss since 2009. The turmoil was punctuated by the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates that month and President Donald Trump’s aggressive stance toward China in trade negotiations.

The markets snapped back quickly, however, and then kept climbing. The S&P 500 is now up 37% from the bottom of the sell-off.

All 11 main sectors of the S&P 500 are up at least 10% since their closing level last Christmas Eve. Information Technology leads the way, up nearly 58%.

The factors that helped to spook investors last year have reversed themselves as well. The market’s banner year has been accompanied by easing monetary policy and hints of progress in trade disputes.

The Federal Reserve has cut its benchmark interest rate three times this year, with the latest cut in October bringing the target range to 1.5% to 1.75%. The United States and China have announced an agreement for phase one of a trade deal, and the U.S. House has passed the new USMCA trade deal involving North American countries.

The list of top stocks since last holiday season have been dominated by semiconductors, with Advanced Micro Devices, Lam Research Corporation and KLA Corp seeing their stock prices more than double in the past year. Target and Chipotle Mexican Grill also had returns of greater than 100%.

Small caps have also had a strong year, with the Russell 2000 rising almost 32%. This was a bigger run than the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has climbed more than 30.5%.

Wayfair revisited — It’s time to review your sales tax obligations

In its 2018 decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld South Dakota’s “economic nexus” statute, expanding the power of states to collect sales tax from remote sellers. Today, nearly every state with a sales tax has enacted a similar law, so if your company does business across state lines, it’s a good idea to reexamine your sales tax obligations.

What’s nexus?

A state is constitutionally prohibited from taxing business activities unless those activities have a substantial “nexus,” or connection, with the state. Before Wayfair, simply selling to customers in a state wasn’t enough to establish nexus. The business also had to have a physical presence in the state, such as offices, retail stores, manufacturing or distribution facilities, or sales reps.

In Wayfair, the Supreme Court ruled that a business could establish nexus through economic or virtual contacts with a state, even if it didn’t have a physical presence. The Court didn’t create a bright-line test for determining whether contacts are “substantial,” but found that the thresholds established by South Dakota’s law are sufficient: Out-of-state businesses must collect and remit South Dakota sales taxes if, in the current or previous calendar year, they have 1) more than $100,000 in gross sales of products or services delivered into the state, or 2) 200 or more separate transactions for the delivery of goods or services into the state.

Nexus steps

The vast majority of states now have economic nexus laws, although the specifics vary:Many states adopted the same sales and transaction thresholds accepted in Wayfair, but a number of states apply different thresholds. And some chose not to impose transaction thresholds, which many view as unfair to smaller sellers (an example of a threshold might be 200 sales of $5 each would create nexus).

If your business makes online, telephone or mail-order sales in states where it lacks a physical presence, it’s critical to find out whether those states have economic nexus laws and determine whether your activities are sufficient to trigger them. If you have nexus with a state, you’ll need to register with the state and collect state and applicable local taxes on your taxable sales there. Even if some or all of your sales are tax-exempt, you’ll need to secure exemption certifications for each jurisdiction where you do business. Alternatively, you might decide to reduce or eliminate your activities in a state if the benefits don’t justify the compliance costs.

Need help?

Note: If you make sales through a “marketplace facilitator,” such as Amazon or Ebay, be aware that an increasing number of states have passed laws that require such providers to collect taxes on sales they facilitate for vendors using their platforms.

If you need assistance in setting up processes to collect sales tax or you have questions about your responsibilities, contact us.

© 2019

Medical breakthroughs, looser FDA made biotech stocks one of the decade’s best investments

Biotechnology was one of the decade’s best investments as a dizzying pace of clinical innovation fueled the discovery of treatments once thought beyond the reach of modern medicine. A more aggressive FDA also aided the trend.

An investor who purchased shares of the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF in December 2009 is now up more than 350% in returns. In other words, a $1,000 stake in biotech in 2009 would now be worth over $4,500.

The broader stock market over the same period was up 187%, meaning that a stake in the S&P 500 in December 2009 would now be worth about $2,870.

Industry experts point to breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases like hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis and a variety of malignancies for biotech’s big decade and the eye-popping profits the industry’s therapies promise.

“If you look at the areas of oncology, virology and many rare diseases, we are at the point where we are looking at curative therapies in many cases,” said Jefferies analyst Jared Holz.

“You’ve really gone from no treatment with these unmet medical needs [a decade ago] to many therapies across hepatitis as well as solid and liquid,” he added. “Patients are living far longer than they were ever expected to.”

Banner decade

Gilead Sciences stunned Wall Street on Nov. 21, 2011 in announcing its intent to buy a small, Princeton, New Jersey-based biotech company with just over 80 employees and no commercial products.

Making Gilead’s gambit even riskier was what it was willing to pay for little-known Pharmasset: A hefty $11 billion price tag and 89% premium — more than one-third of Gilead’s market value.

Investors, unconvinced by Pharmasset’s promising Phase II hepatitis results or Gilead CEO John Martin’s assurances, punished the stock in the hours following the announcement. Gilead equity fell 9% to $18.13 during the session, its single-worst day on Wall Street in 19 months.

One year later, its stock price had more than doubled. The year after that it rose 90%.

Central to the Gilead thesis for Pharmasset — emblematic of the decade’s trend to come — was an openness to pursue and invest early in potentially breakthrough treatments. One positive trial in Phase II or Phase III or a glowing review by the FDA could transform a company overnight from a money-losing lab to a multibillion-dollar success.

But picking individual winners can be a tricky business in biotech. Since investors hoping for a big upswing often need to invest before a company’s therapy is approved, an unexpected FDA rejection or ineffective trial can result in sudden, steep declines.

Biogen, by no means unheard of by 2011, saw its own market value mushroom 33% over 12 trading sessions in April 2011 after new data showed the effectiveness of its new oral multiple sclerosis treatment. A more recent example, Vertex Pharmaceuticals is up more than 20% in the last three months after regulators approved its new cystic fibrosis treatment.

FDA fast track

But behind the decade’s flurry of new biotech treatments is also a more amenable FDA.

For years, the FDA subject new drugs to a deluge of tests before allowing pharmaceutical companies to market the treatments. Very few were “fast-tracked” to make them available sooner.

But that standard has reversed in recent years, with the FDA approving a record 43 new drugs last year through fast-track programs that reduce or skip major analysis that regulators would otherwise conduct. In other words, 73% of all new drugs approved by the FDA in 2018 received the FDA’s expedited process.

The administration says its attempts to accelerate approvals are important to satisfy the demands of drugmakers, practitioners and patients with the greatest medical needs, who often suffer from terminal or debilitating diseases without other recourse.

So far that trade-off between regulatory stringency and speed has worked to make investments in the space all the more attractive to investors looking to deploy cash, Jefferies’s Holz said.

“The science has been the fastest and the best that we have seen to date. And it continues to accelerate into 2020,” Holz said.

Rally on?

But biotech’s rise over the last decade was far from steady.

The “IBB” ETF topped out in July 2015 as a bipartisan coalition of presidential hopefuls lambasted rising health-care costs and threatened to regulate how much major biotech and pharmaceutical companies could charge for their medicines. Biotech stocks fell 40% by February 2016 and only very slowly recovered.

But signs of better growth emerged late in 2019.

Though the ETF has yet to return to its 2015 high, the industry’s equity has posted a whopping 27% rally over since early October and analysts say it shows no signs of stopping. Analysts at RBC in a recent note to clients explained that cheap capital and strong balance sheets have set the stage for the sector’s rebound into 2020.

“We expect maintained momentum for the biotech sector into early-2020, buoyed by continued M&A activity and improved sentiment following a recent string of favorable clinical, commercial, and regulatory catalysts,” analyst Brian Abrahams and others wrote.

The team said a series of surprise positive data from smaller companies 

like Axsome and Karuna as well as revitalized growth opportunities for previously-stagnant large-cap companies (Biogen with aducanumab and Amgen with Otezla) could be the beginning of a longer bounce.

“The group shows no signs of slowing down – we see more room to run, especially given that the sector remains underowned by many generalists likely to return to the space given the demonstrated alpha,” they wrote.

Still, investing in biotech isn’t without its potential pitfalls.

More than one Democrat running for president in 2020 has threatened to crack down health care’s biggest drugmakers. President Donald Trump, too, has often castigated high drug prices and pressed his rivals into more aggression action on expensive medicines.

It’s “Time for the Democrats to get serious about bipartisan solutions to lowering prescription drug prices for families,” Trump tweeted in November. “House Republicans are showing real LEADERSHIP and prepared to enact bipartisan solutions for drug prices.”

Your iPhone tracks where you go, here’s how to see what it knows and take control

The New York Times published a story on Thursday about how lots of companies are able to track your location data and even identify people when that information is supposed to be anonymous.

Apple’s latest iPhone software, iOS 13, helps protect you more than ever before, and lets you know which apps are tracking your location and when. But your iPhone is still tracking everywhere you go, often by default.

For example, there’s a System Services page in iOS that shows 20 different ways your iPhone tracks your location. It does so for a variety of legitimate reasons, but most people probably don’t know this page even exists.

Your iPhone uses your location for HomeKit to identify if you’re away or near home, one way it can automatically turn on your lights when you get home or turn them off when you leave, for example. There’s also a setting to automatically set the time zone based on your location, or to make sure it’s searching for the right cellular networks. And another setting can be turned on to share your location with other people, like in the “Find My” app.

But there are a few places where you might not want your iPhone to track you at all. Apple tracks your location for “Location-Based Apple Ads,” for example. It can use your location for “Location-Based alerts,” or to let you know about merchants where you used Apple Pay to buy something.

More importantly, there’s an entire section called “Significant Locations” where Apple stores the places you go frequently — like work, home, or anywhere you’ve traveled. Apple uses this information for some legitimate purposes, too, like improving “Photo memories” so it can send you recaps of pictures you’ve taken in certain places. It can also improve your results in Maps, Calendar and other apps. These are all “end-to-end encrypted,” which means the information is scrambled on your phone, and “cannot be read by Apple,” according to the settings page.

But most of my colleagues who saw this for the first time didn’t like it, even if Apple does keep the location data private, largely because they didn’t know this area existed. So let’s change that.

Here’s how to see how your iPhone is tracking your location and how to manage what it tracks.

• Open Settings on your iPhone.
• Tap “Privacy.”
• Choose “Location Services.”
• Scroll to the bottom and select “System Services.”

The hollow purple arrow means that Apple might receive your location “under certain conditions.” So, for HomeKit, which has that arrow on my phone, it would only access my location if I’m using HomeKit to control my smart home based on my location and if the app needs to know when I’m home or not. The regular purple arrow shows that a system service has recently used your location, and the gray arrow show that it has logged your location in the last 24 hours.

Turning some of these off could cause problems with your phone. You probably need your location information on for finding cellular networks properly, for example, and for properly configuring the compass so Apple Maps knows which way you’re facing. But, you can also safely turn off “Location-Based Apple Ads” or things like “Popular Near Me,” “iPhone Analytics” and “Share my location” if you don’t ever share your location with friends and family.

Now open up “Significant Locations.”

This will show you a list of many of the places your iPhone has logged your location, again maybe just to improve some of your experiences. And again, Apple says it doesn’t share this with anyone. But, you might be surprised to see that it tracks much of where you go.

My iPhone knows I was in Seattle in October, Miami in November and many other places. When I tap in, it has an exact log of where I was in each city, right down to the Pentagon in Washington DC and a restaurant I stopped at in Bristol, Rhode Island this month.

Again, Apple says all of this is be stored safely on your device and isn’t seen by Apple or other companies. It’s also protected behind Face ID or Touch ID, so other folks can’t just take your iPhone and see where you’ve been.

But you should know that your iPhone knows where you’re going, and that you can turn it off if this makes you uncomfortable. To turn it off, go back to the top of Significant Locations page and toggle the button to off.

Finally, you should also just double check that you know how your apps are using your location. To do this:

• Open Settings.
• Open Privacy.
• Select Location Services.
• Scroll down the page.

You’ll see a list of the apps that have access to your location. Tap into each to choose whether you never want them to use your location, while you’re using it or all the time. Generally, you want apps only to use your location while you’re using them, because lots of apps need to know your location. A retail app might want to show you the closest store, for example, or a ride-sharing app needs to know where to pick you up. The decision is up to you.