What Moved The Markets This Week 📈

Dec 31, 2023

Sunday Morning Markets

Trading Week 52, covering Monday, Dec 25 through Friday, Dec 29. Your weekly financial markets update, in less than 5 minutes.

Home prices rise for the ninth straight month as inventory shortages spur competition among homebuyers. On an annual basis, price gains accelerated to 4.8% in October, compared with a 4% annual increase in September.
Mastercard says retail sales grew 3.1% this holiday season led higher by a whopping 6.3% increase in online sales. While still positive, the reading shows quite a slowdown compared to last year’s 7.6% growth.
Bristol Myers to buy RayzeBio for $4.1 billion to bolster its cancer drug business, marking Bristol’s second major acquisition in less than a week. Bristol will pay $62.50 cash for each share of RayzeBio.
Amazon to start placing ads on Prime Video starting in early 2024. Members who want to keep their content ad-free will have to pay an additional $2.99 per month. Amazon says ads will allow them to invest in new content.
Maine removes Trump from 2024 primary ballot due to his role on January 6th. The decision was made by the Democratic Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, but said it would not be enforced until the courts weigh in.

China's Xiaomi unveils its first EV called the ‘SU7’ as it looks to compete with Porsche and Tesla. The CEO claims it beats the Taycan and Model S on acceleration. The price of the new vehicle has not been finalized.
Nvidia launches a slower version of its gaming chip in China to comply with the export rules set by the Biden administration. The RTX 4090D will have 11% fewer processing cores than versions sold outside of China.
Softbank gets $7.6B of T-Mobile shares at no additional cost after conditions in the merger agreement between SoftBank’s Sprint and T-Mobile were met. The transaction nearly doubles Softbank’s stake in TMUS 0.00%↑ to 7.64%.
JD.com preps massive salary increases for next year despite struggling with intense competition and wavering demand. Front-line staff may see their salaries nearly double at the beginning of 2024.
India blocks multiple crypto websites and exchanges including Binance, Kraken, Kucoin, and Mexc, claiming they are operating “illegally” in the country and not complying with the local anti-money laundering act.
Russia’s Lavrov claims the West now wants to end the war in Ukraine, a major shift in strategy as the conflict approaches its third year. The Foreign Minister said he’s hearing requests to talk with Europe about Ukraine.

New York Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI over copyright infringements in a major development in the AI training space. The publisher accused the firms of creating a business model based on “mass copyright infringement.”
Apple allowed to temporarily sell watches again after an appeals court ruled in its favor. The two watches in question, the Series 9 and Ultra 2, were listed for sale again on its website on Thursday.
Google settles $5 billion consumer privacy lawsuit alleging that Google's analytics and cookies let the company track user activity even when they set Google's Chrome browser to "Incognito" mode.
Plug Power installs electrolyzer at Amazon facility in Colorado. The equipment splits water molecules to produce low-carbon hydrogen to power over 225 hydrogen fuel cell-powered DEN8 forklift trucks.
SpaceX sets record with 96 successful launches in 2023, topping its previous record of 61 launches last year. The company also landed the same rocket 19 times, continuing to push the boundaries of reusing rockets.

No companies reported earnings this week. This section will return next week.

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