US retail sales slowed in Oct, with prior months revised higher, net-net being stronger than expected going into the holiday season. Prices paid to US producers declined by the most since Apr 2020, down -0.5% m/m, which was a surprise—mostly on the back of lower gas prices. So, it’s a mixed bag this morning for the “guess what the Fed will do” game. Yields were up at the open. Global bonds are shy erasing this year’s loss, given traders’ current bets that interest-rate hikes are done. The Bloomberg Global Aggregate Bond Index popped +1.3% yesterday, the biggest 1-day gain since Mar.
House lawmakers passed a temporary gov funding bill to avert a shutdown. The new Speaker (which one are we on?) got the Dems on board to make that happen. The Dems are expected to back it in the Senate, even though it doesn’t include Ukraine and Israel aid they want. Our politicians get a golf clap for this one, for finally doing their paid job.
China ordered securities firms to cap OTC equity derivatives trading, to “curb risks.” Hedge funds obviously are annoyed. Brokers are losing profitable business and are annoyed. Similar restrictions were imposed on lending for short selling and some prop trading activities.
Japan’s economy declined by -2.1% y/y in the 3Q23, coming in worse than expected. So, the BOJ is looking smart for keeping its foot on the easing pedal. China’s consumer spending was better than expected in Oct, with retail sales up +7.6% y/y. Industrial production also beat slightly.
SpaceX may spin off its Starlink satellite business via IPO in 2H24.
TGT’s stock popped after its earnings beat forecasts, given fewer markdowns and better inventory management.
Short sellers are flooding the SEC with tips on stinky accounting and other issues (18k formal tips in the 2023 fiscal year, 2x the amount of all SEC enforcement actions over the past decade). Big names like Nate Anderson, Kyle Bass and Carson Block look like they’re targeting a new revenue stream.
Bernstein listed the US tech stocks hitting 52-wk highs yesterday, which included: AMZN, META, PINS, TTWO, UBER, DASH, GDDY, ADBE, AVGO, DELL, MSFT, MU, NOW, ZS. The list didn’t include: NFLX, GOOGL, AAPL, NVDA, SNAP, SHOP, BKNG, ABNB, INTC, AMD, ORCL, CRM, DDOG. Looks like some tech will remain hot. Sam Altman tweeted that OpenAI is so hot that it can’t keep up.
The parent co of TikTok had rev increase more than 40% to $28bn in the 2Q y/y. FYI—META generated $32bn in 2Q23 rev.
Does anyone else hate Weather.com? GOOG, PLEASE create a simple app that tells accurate weather! A publication in Science talks about GOOG’s “GraphCast,” a machine learning-based method trained directly from reanalysis data to predicts hundreds of weather variables. Per Bernstein, “it significantly outperforms the most accurate operational deterministic systems on 90% of 1380 verification targets, and its forecasts support better severe event prediction, including tropical cyclones tracking, atmospheric rivers, and extreme temperatures.”