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Our top 10 things to watch Wednesday, Dec. 27
1. Stocks started the day flat as bond yields pulled back again. The S&P 500 is less than 1% from record highs, can it make it there before the New Year? With just three trading days left, the S&P is on pace to end 2023 up 24%, while the Dow is poised for a 14% gain. The Nasdaq, led by the Magnificent Seven (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla), is up a whopping 44%.
2. Just how light is trading volume this holiday shortened week? On Tuesday, volume on the NYSE registered at about 53% of the 30-day average, according to FactSet. The SPY ETF (the most active S&P 500 ETF) traded at about 74% of it’s last 30-day average, while the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) traded at about 50% its 30-day average.
3. WTI crude oil prices fell 1%, but are settling in the mid-$70s per barrel as rising geopolitical tensions are offsetting any recession concerns. Gold rebounds back to around $2,080 an ounce. The dollar index at around 101 is trading near its lowest level since July 27.
4. Amazon Prime video will start showing ads on Jan. 29. Members who wan’t to avoid the interruptions will need to pay an additional $2.99 per month. As someone currently awaiting the next episode of Reacher, that’s annoying. But as investors in the company, we like the move because we don’t see this increasing churn. Rather it should only add to revenues either via folks paying that additional $2.99 per month or from the growth in ad revenue.
5. Apple appealed a decision to ban the sale of certain models of its Apple Watch resulting from a complaint from medical monitoring technology company Masimo. Masimo has accused Apple of stealing its pulse oximetry technology and incorporating it into the popular Apple Watch.
6. The New York Times is suing Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement, contending “that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.” This is an ongoing concern and certainly a lawsuit we will be monitoring as it’s not entirely clear what data is used to train these large language models and who to credit or compensate for certain aspects of their training.
7. Bloomberg News reported that Tesla is planning an updated version of its Model Y from its Shanghai plant, with mass production set to begin potentially as early as mid-2024.
8. Eli Lilly completed its acquisition of POINT Biopharma Global, a radiopharmaceutical company with a pipeline of clinical and preclinical-stage therapies in development for the treatment of cancer.
9. Wedbush raised its price target on Meta Platforms to $420 from $350, calling it the No. 1 pick in digital advertising. Alphabet is No. 2. The analysts also raised its price target on Pinterest to $35 to $32, saying they are encouraged by the company’s deeper path to monetization, product roadmap and its partnership with Amazon.
10. After the close Tuesday ,The Information reported that Anthropic, an OpenAI rival backed by Amazon and Google, expects to generate more than $850 million in annualized revenue by the end of 2024.
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