Crypto News: 5 Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day

A Chinese fighter jet buzzed a US Air Force plane. Italy found no new concerning Covid variants in its first tests of Chinese travelers. Markets are trending green on the final trading day of the year. Here's what you need to know today.

A Chinese fighter plane flew within 20 feet (6 meters) of a US Air Force reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea in what the US Indo-Pacific Command called "an unsafe maneuver." The incident, which happened Dec. 21, was revealed Thursday, the same day that China said it was up to the US to take steps toward resuming high-level military discussions. Separately, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said that he want his nation to have "overwhelming" military strength against North Korea. "As we saw in the war in Ukraine," Yoon said, "asymmetric power has become a very important factor."

Italian officials didn't find any new concerning Covid mutations among recent arrivals from China, reassuring worries about fresh health threats. While a handful of other nations, such as the US and Japan, have demanded Covid tests for travelers from China, European health officials have deemed such screenings and restrictions unjustified. As infections continue to spread throughout China, the nation's CDC is planning to calculate, then release, excess mortality data.

Stocks in Asia are heading for gains after US equities rose by the most in a month after jobless claims data fell in line with forecasts, easing worries a hot labor market would support more aggressive policy. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 outperformed, with Tesla climbing more than 8% and tech giants Apple, Amazon and Microsoft also among the biggest gainers. In a miserable year for stocks globally, three equity markets in Asia are competing to become the biggest gainers in the world — a battle that will be decided on the final trading day.

China vowed to expand fiscal spending "appropriately" next year while playing a stronger role in leading private investment, boosting consumption and stabilizing foreign trade and investment to support the nation's strategic development. The pledge comes as one of Hong Kong's top foreign business groups warned the city still faces challenges in trying to restore its reputation as a global financial hub.

TSMC, the primary chipmaker for Apple, kicked off mass production of next-generation chips in a move to remain the linchpin of a critical technology fought over by governments from Washington to Beijing. South Korea's chip production shrank for a fourth straight month and fell in November by the most since the global financial crisis. The drop in activity suggested a further cooling of overseas demand for tech components as the world economy slows.

Pele, Brazilian star of the "beautiful game," died at 82.
The world's 500 richest billionaires lost $1.4 trillion in a year.
Wall Street's top stars were blindsided by this year's market collapse.
Some imported cars will likely qualify for US EV tax credits.
Goldman Sachs will do a fresh round of job cuts next month.
Hong Kong's exports dropped by the most in nearly seven decades.

This year has seen the worst bond rout in at least a generation, but investors are more than ready to close the door on that episode and look forward to more normal programming in 2023. The decades-long bull run for Treasuries has been broken, but with the Federal Reserve's rapid interest-rate hikes expected to cause a recession, the narrative has been building that the peak is in for yields.

That may well be the case, and it would be a riskier case than widely believed. That downtrend in yields has been decisively broken, signaling that a lot needs to go right for bonds before investors can breathe easy. Inflation has to come down a long way to satisfy the Fed, which is also expected to keep trimming its balance sheet. Add in the potential for fresh supply-chain disruptions from the war in Ukraine and expected outflows from Japanese investors as they take money home to higher interest rates there, and it is going to be no easy task to snap the current uptrend for yields.

Garfield Reynolds is Chief Rates Correspondent for Bloomberg News in Asia, based in Sydney.

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