In this week’s Recap, Marcello talks about Tesla Model Y seting a record when it became Europe’s best selling car for 2023; Apple is offering Ultra-Rare discounts on its flagship iPhone 15 in China amid sliding demand fears; The S&P500 has reached an all-time high for the 1st time un 2 years.
According to the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book report released Wednesday. U.S. economic activity over the past 7 weeks has been largely stagnant, with both hiring & prices rising at a modest to moderate pace. The summary of conditions across the Fed’s 12 districts found economic activity to be relatively unchanged since the last report Nov. 29, 2023. From a sector standpoint, housing weakened, as did the demand for mortgages amid elevated interest rates. Companies were reporting that inflation weighed on consumer activity & noted difficulty in pricing power. Wage pressures remained elevated.
Tesla shares fell -1.98% on Wednesday at $215.55, after the U.S. electric vehicle maker slashed prices for its Model Y cars across Europe, not long after announcing similar price cuts in China. The stock is down -13.25% in 2024, but still up +69.50% year on year, with a market cap of $699.08B.
U.K. inflation unexpectedly moved upwards to 4% year-on-year in December, fueled by a rise in alcohol & tobacco prices. Analysts had expected a modest decline in the annual headline Consumer Product Index (CPI) to 3.8%, after November’s sharper than expected fall to +3.9%.The closely watched core CPI figure, which excludes volatile food, energy, alcohol & tobacco prices, came in at an annual +5.1%, above a +4.9% analyst forecast & unchanged from November.
The disruption of the Red Sea as of 1 of the world’s busiest shipping routes, has exposed the vulnerability of China’s export-reliant economy to supply disturbances & external demand shocks. At stake for China now is the danger that firms will reassess their de-risking strategy, opting potentially to shift production closer to home, an approach known as near-shoring. Further Red Sea & issues will pile additional pressure on a struggling Chinese economy, already contending with a property crisis, weak consumer demand & a shrinking population along with sluggish global growth.
Scientists in China on Tuesday announced that they have cloned the 1st healthy rhesus monkey, a 2-year-old named Retro, by tweaking the process that created Dolly the sheep. Primates have proved particularly difficult to clone & the scientists overcame years of failure, by replacing the cloned cells that would become the placenta, with those from a normal embryo. They hope their new technique will lead to the creation of identical rhesus monkeys, that can be experimented on for medical research. However, outside researchers have warned that the success rate for the new method was still very low, as well as raising the usual ethical questions around cloning.
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