Fortune (December 31)
“Tesla Inc. shares have fallen so far, so fast that some individual investors are piling in.” but the company still faces “mounting challenges” and remains expensive. “Even after this year’s record 65% drop, the electric-car maker’s meteoric surge during 2020 and 2021 has left it with stock-market value of $389 billion, more than Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors Co., Stellantis NV and Ford Motor Co. combined.”
Tags: $389 billion, Electric car, Expensive, Ford, GM, Individual investors, Market value, Mounting challenges, Stellantis, Stock, Surge, Tesla, Toyota
Straits Times (December 30)
“By sheer international travel volume, Changi Airport topped the Asia-Pacific region, beating Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport and Seoul’s Incheon International Airport by quite a distance: 32 million passengers handled to the other two’s 18 million each. In terms of recovery, it is also finishing by as much as 10 percentage points higher than the South-east Asia average.”
Tags: Asia-Pacific region, Bangkok, Changi Airport, Incheon International Airport, International, Passengers, Recovery, Seoul, Suvarnabhumi Airport, Top, Travel volume
Washington Post (December 28)
ChatGPT, which is “is conversant in a way previous chatbots haven’t been,” has captured the imagination and stoked new fears. “Humans today are still in control…. Ultimately, unleashing the full potential of the technology that appears tantalizingly close to our grasp comes down to this: What do we as a species hope to gain from artificial intelligence, and — perhaps more important — what are we willing to give up?”
Tags: AI, Chatbots, ChatGPT, Control, Conversant, Fears, Humans, Potential, Species, Tantalizing, Technology
New York Times (December 28)
“China’s hospitals were already overcrowded, underfunded and inadequately staffed in the best of times. But now with Covid spreading freely for the first time in China, the medical system is being pushed to its limits.”
Tags: China, Covid, Hospitals, Inadequate, Medical system, Overcrowded, Spreading, Staff, Underfunded
Oilprice.com (December 26)
“Although the EU embargo and the EU-G7 price cap on Russian crude oil at $60 per barrel didn’t immediately roil the oil market – although traders were concerned about a possible demand hit from slowing economies – uncertainty is growing over how the bans on Russian imports will affect supply balances over the next few months.”
Tags: $60, Bans, Barrel, Crude oil, Demand, Economies, Embargo, EU, EU-G7, Imports, Oil market, Price cap, Roil, Russia, Supply, Traders, Uncertainty
Wall Street Journal (December 26)
“As temperatures plunged this weekend, Americans in much of the country were told to turn down their thermostats and avoid using large appliances to prevent rolling blackouts. The cascading grid stress… was all too predictable to anyone paying attention. The interconnected U.S. grid is supposed to be a source of resilience, but the government’s force-fed green energy transition is creating systemic vulnerabilities.”
Tags: Americans, Cascading, Green energy, Grid stress, Plunged, Predictable, Resilience, Rolling blackouts, Temperatures, Transition, U.S.
Investment & Pensions Europe (December 23)
“After seeming to hit a wall last week, negotiations” at COP15 ultimately “yielded an agreement on biodiversity – in a move that some hope will make it easier for the finance sector to address nature-related risks to their portfolios.” Similar to the breakthrough Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework “lays down a plan for dealing with the ecological crisis over coming years,” codifying a “commitment to ‘take action’ to conserve 30% of land, sea and freshwater sources by the end of the decade – known as the ‘30×30’ pledge.”
Tags: Biodiversity, Breakthrough, Commitment, COP15, Ecological crisis, Finance, Freshwater, Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Land, Nature, Negotiations, Paris Agreement, Portfolios, Risks, Sea, Take action
Institutional Investor (December 22)
“Africa may not be the first continent that comes to mind for investing in emerging markets — but given its vast potential, maybe it should be.” Moreover, “Africa is increasingly becoming a critical player in the race to net zero, thanks to its population, infrastructure, and resources.”
Tags: Africa, Continent, Critical, Emerging markets, Infrastructure, Investing, Net zero, Population, Potential
Reuters (December 22)
Despite official government figures citing just 1,800 Covid cases and only seven resulting deaths last week, more realistic estimates place the true figures at over one million daily infections, with “more than 5,000 people … dying each day from COVID-19 in China.”
Tags: Cases, China, COVID-19, Deaths, Estimates, Figures, Government, Infections, Official, One million, Realistic
Washington Post (December 21)
“China’s new covid nightmare could become a global catastrophe. The absence of a coherent fallback strategy” not only “threatens a fresh set of nightmares for its population, its economy and the Communist Party leadership. A new crisis could shake the whole world. As the Wuhan outbreak demonstrated three years ago, what begins in China does not necessarily stay there.”
Tags: China, Communist party, Covid, Crisis, Economy, Fallback strategy, Global catastrophe, Leadership, Nightmare, Outbreak, Population, Threatens, Wuhan
