Sunday, July 2, 2023

5 things to start your day

Tesla's electric performance. France tries to quell riots. Elon Musk caps how many tweets you can see. Here's what you need to know today.El

Tesla's electric performance. France tries to quell riots. Elon Musk caps how many tweets you can see. Here's what you need to know today.

Tesla's Record

Electric-vehicle maker Tesla delivered a record 466,140 cars worldwide in the second quarter, outpacing Wall Street estimates as billionaire Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk chases volume by cutting prices. Tesla is easily the largest EV maker in the US but faces fresh competition around the world. In China — its No. 2 market — the company has fallen well behind BYD, which has a much fresher lineup and increasingly global ambitions. Tesla announced last week that it was cutting prices of its premium car models in China by more than 4.5%.

French Unrest

French President Emmanuel Macron is counting on law enforcement to restore order after almost a week of nationwide riots touched off by a police officer's fatal shooting of a teenager. Macron met with key cabinet ministers on Sunday to craft a response to the violence, which is testing his authority and ability to carry out reforms. He's keeping some 45,000 police, special forces and armored vehicles deployed to contain clashes. Tensions have abated slightly compared with the initial upsurge in unrest.

Twitter Limits

Twitter is imposing a temporary cap on the number of tweets that accounts can see each day, a move that sparked a backlash from some users. The company's owner Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday that unverified users will be able to view as many as 600 posts daily while Twitter Blue subscribers can see 6,000 posts "to address extreme levels of data scraping" and "system manipulation." He later revised the caps to 1,000 for unverified accounts and 10,000 for verified users. Users started reporting issues accessing the social media site earlier Saturday, after they received notifications that they had exceeded their "rate limit."

China Central Bank

Chinese President Xi Jinping's elevation of a long-serving technocrat as the central bank's top Communist Party official signals policy makers will avoid any drastic shifts for now as the world's second-biggest economy struggles. Pan Gongsheng's appointment Saturday as party chief of the People's Bank of China indicates the bank will stay the course, consistent with its recent approach of only modestly cutting interest rates and encouraging banks to lend more to targeted areas. The government has faced calls for greater stimulus as China's economy loses steam.

Fear and Greed

Many investors are warning against becoming too greedy after a 13% jump in global equities in the first half of the year. Some of the world's top money managers argue that chasing the rally from here is risky as it's only a matter of time until elevated interest rates crimp company profits. On the flip side, July tends to be positive for shares, if history is any guide. Equity futures suggest a tailwind for Asian bourses Monday from a Friday rally in the US. Meanwhile, bond traders are bracing for another big week: key employment data could push yields on 10-year Treasuries toward 4%, a level that market watchers see luring investors into government debt.

What we've been reading

And finally, here's what Garfield's interested in this morning

Central banks shocking investors by raising rates further than expected was the key dynamic for the first half of this year, seasoned with some angst about recession fears. Major currencies reflect just how confused traders became, with the major developed currencies evenly split between winners and losers. Monetary policy settings do help to explain why the pound and the euro are among the biggest winners — central banks there hiked 1.5 percentage points this year, double the Federal Reserve's move. The yen's cellar-dweller role also can be slated to the Bank of Japan's decision to stay uber-dovish, but after that the ties to policy fray. How to explain losses for the Norwegian krone given a full point of increases? Australia, New Zealand and Sweden saw their exchange rates wilt too, despite matching the Fed. That could be down to the slide in commodities, though that didn't stop the currency of oil-rich Canada surging despite a laggardly half point of hikes. The Swiss franc's No. 2 position also sits oddly given its central bank's solitary quarter-point move. 

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

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