| Elon Musk vows to stop selling Tesla shares, Covid slows China's economic activity and Sam Bankman-Fried is released on a $250 million bail package. — Kristine Aquino Note: The Five Things newsletter will pause publication after Friday and resume on Tuesday, Jan. 3. Happy holidays! Elon Musk repeated that he'll stop selling Tesla shares, after his disposal of almost $40 billion of his holdings contributed to the stock's slide to a two-year low. "I won't sell stock until — I don't know — probably two years from now, definitely not next year under any circumstances, and probably not the year thereafter," Musk said during a Twitter Spaces live-audio conversation late Thursday. He added that he thinks 2023 will bring about "quite a serious recession." Tesla shares were little changed in premarket trading on Friday. China's soaring Covid infections are keeping people home and causing a slump in travel and economic activity. Subway passenger numbers have plummeted recently in cities including Shanghai and Guangzhou as infections surged. Congestion levels across 15 major cities are 56% below the level in January 2021, according to the benchmark used in an index compiled by BloombergNEF based on Baidu traffic data. "Many would-be consumers will likely stay home and forgo certain activities to avoid exposure to the virus," said Jesse Wheeler, economic analyst at Morning Consult.  | Sam Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bail package — which includes a personal recognizance bond secured by his parents' house in California — after making his first US court appearance to face fraud charges over the collapse of FTX. Federal prosecutor Nicholas Roos said is one of the largest pretrial bonds in US history, and its size will "severely restrict" Bankman-Fried's movement. His bond must be signed by his parents and two other people with "considerable" assets by Jan. 5. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were little changed as of 5:18 a.m. in New York. The dollar retreated amid tight ranges, boosting most Group-of-10 currencies led by New Zealand and Australia. Treasuries edged lower as yields rose slightly across the curve. Oil and gold rose, and Bitcoin climbed for the first time in three days. To catch up on the trading day in the UK and Europe, check out today's edition of City Latest. At 8:30 a.m., we'll get the latest reading for the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure. At the same time, Canada will publish gross domestic product figures. At 10 a.m., we'll get data on University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index, as well as a report on new home sales. Treasury markets will close at 2 p.m. for a holiday break. Here's what caught our eye over the past 24 hours: After the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England down-shifted in unison last week, this was supposed to be a relatively quiet stretch on the macro front. The Bank of Japan made sure that didn't happen. Policymakers sent shock waves through global markets with an announcement that Japanese government bond yields will now be allowed to rise to around 0.5%, double the previous limit of 0.25%. That move wasn't on anyone's bingo card: all 47 economists surveyed by Bloomberg ahead of the decision had expected the bank to keep its yield-curve control policy unchanged. While the BOJ maintained that the move was designed to enhance the sustainability of its monetary easing, naturally, the speculation rippling through markets is that lifting the cap is an early step on the road to an eventual departure from a decade of extraordinary stimulus policy. "Whatever the BOJ calls this, it is a step toward an exit," said Masamichi Adachi, chief Japan economist at UBS Securities and a former BOJ official. "This opens a door for a possible rate hike in 2023 under a new governorship." Obviously, the ramifications of a BOJ hike would be huge. Symbolically, it would make the official end of easy money. The BOJ is the last remaining Group-of-10 central bank with interest rates below zero, which currently stand at -0.1%. That compares to the 2.6% average policy rate among G-10 banks. A BOJ exit from negative rates and the idea that there's more to come would also upend the investing playbooks built upon Japan's ultra-easy monetary stance. The yen surged as much as 4.8% against the dollar in the wake of the BOJ's decision — the largest move this millennium. Some investors are betting the yen could surge another 10% from here, with the likes of Societe Generale SA, Schroders Plc, PineBridge Investments and Fidelity International — the list goes — making bullish noises about the currency. That could have profound implications for so-called carry trades, in which investors borrow in cheaper currencies to finance purchases of higher-yielding peers. With Japan's still-negative rates, the yen is one of the most popular funding currencies. That role may be questioned from here. "If this week's move is the first step towards tightening (which we think it is), this will likely usher in a new period of a strong yen," Brown Brothers Harriman strategists wrote in a report Wednesday. "As a result, the yen may no longer be the currency of choice for the carry trade." Follow Bloomberg's Katie Greifeld on Twitter @kgreifeld | 
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