Twitter Rolls Out 'View Count' Feature

MARKET MOVERS

• Elon Musk rolls out ‘view count’ feature for Twitter. witter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen.* This is normal for video. Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply, or like, as those are public actions. In another post, Musk said that the impressions will be shown to all Twitter users and not just the individual who made the post.

• Tesla suspends production at its Shanghai plant. The Shanghai plant was suspended on Saturday. The stoppage brings ahead a previous plan to pause most work at the plant in the last week of December. The U.S. automaker canceled the morning shift and told all workers at its most productive manufacturing hub* they could start their break, said the people and the notice seen by Reuters.

• Japan’s inflation speeds up, supporting BOJ shift expectations. Japan’s key inflation gauge further accelerated to the fastest pace since 1981, an outcome that will continue to fuel speculation the Bank of Japan will surprise markets again* with policy change down the line. Consumer prices excluding fresh food climbed 3.7% in November from a year ago, the internal affairs ministry reported Friday.

• Egg prices surge to records as bird flu hits poultry flocks. Grocery prices have continued to increase this year because of what companies have said are higher costs of labor, ingredients, and logistics* helping supermarkets generate higher sales and profits. Those factors have propelled egg prices, too. Wholesale prices of Midwest large eggs hit a record $5.36 a dozen in December.

• House passes $1.7 trillion Federal Spending Bill, sending it to President Biden’s desk. The U.S. House passed a bill to fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year, through September. The legislation now goes to President Joe Biden, who has said he is eager to sign it into law.* Overall, the legislation provides $772.5 billion for nondefense discretionary programs and $858 billion in defense funding.

WHAT TO WATCH

• Goldman Sachs unveils its top buy-rated stocks for 2023. They include Amazon, Weyerhaeuser, Boeing, Chipotle, Humana, and Bath & Body Works. These stocks are well-positioned for high inflation* and a recession. The firm said it expects timberland prices will hold ahead of pre-Covid norms as they moderate given structural shifts in underlying cost structures. Meanwhile, Global air travel has also largely recovered.

• We're entering the age of exponential growth for tech. Technology will become 50% of the S&P 500 weight within the decade. One of the things that people can't write off is that in order to fix and for the world to come out of the labor shortage, tech spend has to go up. It's the rise of robots, automation, and productivity within the next 10 years. Source(51:52)

• Bond yields to climb ‘for the wrong reasons’ next year. Much of the movement in both stock and bond markets over recent months has centered around investors’ hopes, or lack thereof, for a so-called “pivot” from the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks. Embark Group’s Peter Toogood suggested that the transition from QE to QT in 2023 will push bond yields higher* because governments will be issuing debt that central banks are no longer buying.

• Micron expects the worst downturn since the financial crisis. Micron now sees demand from cloud computing customers to grow "well below historical trend" in 2023 due to the impact of inventory corrections at some customers. In other words, some of Micron's cloud customers bought too much memory, and now they're working it down. Micron The company sees smartphone unit volume being essentially flat in calendar 2023.

• AT&T to build broadband services outside its current markets. The Dallas-based telecom company said it would form a venture with BlackRock* Alternatives called Gigapower LLC to reach an initial 1.5 million customer locations across the U.S. The companies didn’t disclose the financial terms of the deal or the states they would seek to serve.