Wall Street Journal (November 20)
“America’s spendthrift relationship with electric vehicles has lost some spark. It will take new generations of products to rekindle the romance on tighter budgets…. Whether or not adoption of EVs in the U.S. is actually stalling—the jury is out—it is clearly weaker than manufacturers were anticipating.” Average prices of EVs fell to “about $52,000 in October, down from around $65,000 a year ago” with U.S. sales levelling out at “around the 100,000-a-month mark.”
Tags: $52, 000, 65%, EVs, https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/are-americans-falling-out-of-love-with-evs-2c7e6a1a?page=1 U.S., Manufacturers, October, Sales, Spendthrift, Stalling, Tighter budgets, U.S.
New York Times (November 18)
“An under-the-radar lawsuit has privately been a hot topic of conversation in Fortune 500 boardrooms and corporate security departments.” The suit by the SEC against SolarWinds and its chief information security officer appears to be the first lawsuit “in which the S.E.C. has charged a company with intentional fraud related to cybersecurity disclosures.” The suit suggests “boilerplate disclosures” are no longer “sufficient if the company knows of more specific risks.”
Tags: Boardrooms, Boilerplate, CISO, Corporate security, Cybersecurity disclosures, Fortune 500, Fraud, Lawsuit, SEC, SolarWinds, Specific risks, Under-the-radar
Reuters (November 16)
“Restructuring a restructuring isn’t good news. Alibaba scrapped the spinoff of its prized cloud computing business, blaming U.S. curbs on advanced chips,” causing its shares over 10% lower. “The U-turn dashes market expectations of stability among technology companies after the end of Beijing’s years-long regulatory crackdown. The country’s weak economy and bad geopolitics mean the sector hasn’t yet hit a bottom.”
Tags: Alibaba, Beijing, China, Chips, Cloud computing, Economy, Geopolitics, Market expectations, Regulatory crackdown, Restructuring, Shares, Spinoff, Stability, Technology, U.S.
Bloomberg (November 16)
In China, “home prices fell the most in eight years in October, signaling the property slump is worsening even after the government ramped up efforts to revive demand.” Prices of new homes (non-state subsidized) in 70 cities “declined 0.38% last month from September, when they dropped 0.3%, National Bureau of Statistics figures showed Thursday. The decrease was the steepest since February 2015.”
Tags: Steepest
CNN (November 15)
Since peaking above 10% in January, “UK inflation plunged to its lowest level in two years in October, allowing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to declare victory on his pledge to halve the rate of price increases this year.” However, “Sunak’s second pledge to voters — to get the economy growing — is looking increasingly out of reach.” During the three month’s ended in September, GDP managed “zero growth… compared with the previous quarter, when it grew by a measly 0.2%.”
Tags: 10%, Economy, Inflation, January, Lowest level, October, Peaking, Pledge, Plunged, Price increases, Sunak, UK
Financial Times (November 15)
“One of Asia’s sleepiest investment sectors has outperformed tech stocks.” Share prices have soared at Japanese banks and their earnings now “confirm the prescience of that rally…. Earnings at Japan’s five biggest banking groups rose 56 per cent to a record of about ¥2tn ($13bn).” Higher spreads and buybacks are part of the equation, “but the biggest driver of the rally has been rising hopes that the central bank may end its ultra-easy monetary policy soon.”
Tags: Asia, Banks, BOJ, Buybacks, Earnings, Investment, Japan, Outperformed, Rally, Share prices, Soared, Spreads, Tech stocks
Wall Street Journal (November 13)
“Foreclosures are surging in an opaque and risky corner of commercial real-estate finance, offering one of the starkest signs yet that turmoil in the property market is worsening.” Through just October, the Journal found notices for “mezzanine loans and other high-risk loans” had already more than doubled the number for all of 2022 and likely reached “the highest total ever for a single year, as higher interest rates and rising vacancies punish the property sector.”
Tags: Commercial, Finance, Foreclosures, Highest, Interest rates, Mezzanine loans, Property market, Real estate, Risky, Surging, Turmoil, Worsening
Barron’s (November 12)
“Germany’s economy, historically the powerhouse of Europe, is going through a rough patch. Its reliance on Russian energy and trade with China will have to be scaled back and new sources of growth found.” The nation’s GDP “declined in the third quarter, bringing down the rest of the euro zone with it,” and the OECD now “expects Germany to be the second worst performer in its group of 30 advanced economies this year, ahead only of Argentina.”
Tags: Argentina, China, Economy, Europe, GDP, Germany, Growth, OECD, Powerhouse, Reliance, Russian energy, Trade, Worst performer
The Guardian (November 11)
Sam Bankman-Fried, the convicted cryptocurrency fraudster, “talked a lot of venture capitalists into pouring millions of dollars into his business. Maybe they should be more careful next time. Despite protestations of improving VC due diligence, little is likely to change due to the fear of missing out (FOMO). So-called reforms are instead likely to amount to “stable door securely locked… until next time.”
Tags: Bankman-Fried, Careful, Convicted, Cryptocurrency, Dollars, Due diligence, FOMO, Fraudster, Improving, Protestations, Venture capitalists
New York Times (November 9)
The U.S. economy “has accomplished what many, perhaps most, economists considered impossible: a large fall in inflation without a recession or even a big rise in unemployment.” A recent Goldman Sachs report declares “The Hard Part Is Over,” making the case “that we’re managing to combine rapid disinflation with solid growth, and that it expects this happy combination — the opposite of stagflation — to continue.”
Tags: Accomplished, Economists, Economy, Goldman Sachs, Growth, Impossible, Inflation, Rapid disinflation, Recession, U.S., Unemployment
