{"id":146059,"date":"2023-02-11T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=913555"},"modified":"2023-02-11T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T00:00:00","slug":"3-takeaways-from-a-busy-week-in-markets-morning-brief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2023\/02\/11\/3-takeaways-from-a-busy-week-in-markets-morning-brief\/","title":{"rendered":"3 takeaways from a busy week in markets: Morning Brief"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

This article first appeared in the Morning Brief. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe
\nSaturday, February 11, 2023
\nToday's newsletter is by Myles Udland, Head of News at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @MylesUdland and on LinkedIn. Read this and more market news on the go with the Yahoo Finance App.
\nCorporate earnings season is coming down the other side of the mountain after a hectic couple weeks.
\nBut even in the absence of a Fed meeting, or jobs report, or earrings reports from the market\u2019s biggest companies, the past week offered plenty to investors on the biggest themes in markets and the corporate world that have featured so far in 2023.
\nFed bump fades
\nThis past week, the stock market saw the major indexes cap off their worst week of 2023.
\nAll three major indexes rallied to start 2023, with the Nasdaq enjoying its best January since 2001 after gaining more than 11% in the year\u2019s first month.
\nThe early-year rally was punctuated on Wednesday, Feb. 1, when the Nasdaq gained some 2% after Fed Chair Jerome Powell said \u201cdisinflation\u201d had become a feature of the U.S. economy in a press conference. In an interview with financier David Rubenstein this week, Powell reiterated his view that disinflationary pressures are reaching the U.S. economy \u2013 primarily in the goods sector.
\nThe second time around, Powell\u2019s words didn\u2019t excite investors much.
\nAnd as economic data shows the economy gained momentum in January, hopes for an imminent Fed pivot appear to be fading among some investors.
\nOutside of any Fed-related influence on the market\u2019s day-to-day action, the volatility we continue to see is not suggestive of a healthy market. Even with a rally to start the year that washed some of the stink of 2022\u2019s losses for some investors.
\nAs strategists at Bespoke Investment Group wrote Friday in a note to clients, \u201cVolatility is usually a characteristic of a weak stock market rather than a strong one.\u201d And this year\u2019s market has been notably volatile.
\nStory continues
\nThrough the first 27 trading days of 2023 \u2013 or the year\u2019s trading through Thursday \u2013 the Nasdaq has moved 1% in either direction 15 times, according to Bespoke\u2019s data. In the prior nine instances this volatility was seen, the market was down six times and the largest rally had been 7.2%, which pales in comparison to the ~12% gain seen in the index this year.
\nPerhaps more troubling for the bulls right now are the other three years the Nasdaq saw this level of volatility through the first six weeks of the year \u2013 1999, 2000, and 2001. The heart of the tech bubble bursting.
\nU.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell responds to a question from David Rubenstein (not pictured) during an on-stage discussion at a meeting of The Economic Club of Washington, at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C., U.S, February 7, 2023. REUTERS\/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
\nCuts continue
\nIn the Corporate World, the dominant theme of the last few months has been the raft of companies announcing job cuts. This week was no exception.
\nCuts at Disney (DIS) were the headliner, with the company announcing Wednesday it would trim 7,000 jobs as newly returned CEO Bob Iger looks to cut $5.5 billion out of the business.
\nIn addition to these cuts, Iger also announced another restructuring of the company\u2019s business lines, telling investors on the company\u2019s earnings call these moves \"will result in a more cost-effective coordinated and streamlined approach to our operations, and we are committed to running our businesses more efficiently, especially in a challenging economic environment.\"
\nAlongside these cost cuts, Iger also said he would reinstate Disney\u2019s dividend. His reward for this latest act of corporate wizardry? The end of a proxy fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz.
\nAnd while job cuts have spread from the tech sector out into the worlds of media, conglomerates, and beyond, the tech sector remains the center of pressure for the white collar workforce right now.
\nZoom (ZM), one of the stock market\u2019s first and biggest pandemic-related winners, announced this week it would cut 15% of its workforce, or around 1,300 workers. CEO Eric Yuan will also take a 98% reduction in base pay for this year while the balance of the company\u2019s executive staff will see a 20% pay cut.
\nYuan said the company\u2019s trajectory was \u201cforever changed\u201d during the pandemic, but said Zoom \u201calso made mistakes\u201d as it staffed up to meet these challenges.
\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyze our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities,\u201d Yuan wrote in an email to employees. \u201c[The] uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers, means we need to take a hard\u2014yet important\u2014look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom\u2019s long-term vision.\u201d
\nDell (DELL), eBay (EBAY), and JPMorgan (JPM) were also among the major public companies that saw some level of staff reductions over the last week.
\nSHANGHAI, CHINA - FEBRUARY 27, 2022 - (FILE) Customers shop at the first Disney flagship store in China in Shanghai, China, February 27, 2022. February 9, 2023 - Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company will cut 7,000 jobs to cut $5.5 billion in costs. That's about 3 percent of the global workforce. (CFOTO\/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
\nCrypto pressures rise
\nAs markets rallied to start the year, crypto was front and center with bitcoin enjoying its best January performance since 2013, gaining nearly 40% in the year\u2019s first month.
\nBut the early part of February has served as another reminder for the industry that crypto winter is here, even if the price for some blue chip crypto assets has firmed of late.
\nBNPL giant Affirm \u2013 which also announced a 19% cut to its staff \u2013 said this week it would shutter its Affirm Crypto initiative. Like most companies cutting back, Affirm said in a shareholder letter due to economic uncertainty, \u201cwe are doubling down on our core businesses.\u201d
\nEvidently buying stuff now and paying for it later with crypto was not core to the business.
\nElsewhere in corporate crypto maneuvers, Robinhood said it would take a $12 million charge and had backed out of a deal to buy crypto company Ziglu, a deal initially announced back in April 2022.
\nOn the regulatory side, a busy year remained that way with the SEC announcing on Thursday a settlement with exchange Kraken over its staking business. As part of the settlement, Kraken agreed to pay a $30 million fine and shut down its crypto staking offering for U.S. users.
\nAhead of Thursday\u2019s announcement, shares of Coinbase (COIN) fell 13% after CEO Brian Armstrong cryptically tweeted about talk of the SEC trying to shut down all staking for U.S. retail investors. The stock fell another 4% on Friday.
\nWhether Armstrong\u2019s fears turn out to be founded or not, Thursday\u2019s action from the SEC against Kraken was the agency\u2019s fourth this year against crypto firms as the regulator continues to tighten its control of the industry.
\nAs SEC Chair Gensler told Yahoo Finance in December: \"We are enforcing [existing securities laws]. We have publicly been saying to these crypto intermediaries\u2026to come into compliance with the law.\u201d
\nGensler told Yahoo Finance he had one goal when it came to regulating crypto in 2023: make crypto exchanges and lending platforms come into compliance.
\n\"They can do that appropriately, working with the SEC, or we can continue on a course with more enforcement actions, and I would have to say that the runway's getting shorter,\" he said.
\n\u2014
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This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article first appeared in the Morning Brief. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe
\nSaturday, February 11, 2023
\nToday's newsletter is by Myles Udland, Head of News at Yahoo Finance. Fol…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126,144,1527,393,586,671,477,194,222,472,1002,401,465,1284,1542,1242],"tags":[10382,2005,5567,7705,10333,1845,6823,6002,10315,10328,3479],"class_list":["post-146059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-china","category-currency","category-disney","category-economy","category-finance","category-investment","category-news-chinese-law","category-online-video","category-renminbi","category-retail","category-shanghai","category-social-media","category-stock-market","category-technology","category-twitter","tag-activist","tag-android","tag-bitcoin","tag-blockchain","tag-crypto","tag-facebook","tag-fintech","tag-hotel","tag-media-intelligence","tag-pandemic","tag-stocks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146060,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146059\/revisions\/146060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}