Le Studio Monthly - JANUARY
💻 News of the MONTH
Remember when Joe Exotic predicted the recession prices?
PREDICTIONS 2023
The US economy will grow at 0.5%-1% pace, a drop from 1.5%-2% in 2022, and there will be a mild recession near the end of the year. (JPMorgan)
Inflation will decline to 4%-5% by May, but it will take much longer to bring it down to 2%-3%. (Mihir Desai, Harvard Business School)
The S&P 500 will decline, in what is the first negative aggregate prediction tracked by Bloomberg since at least 1999. (Bloomberg)
The stock market will improve after an early sell-off. (An aggregation of strategists tracked by TKer)
Real estate will be a “nobody’s market,” with high-priced homes and limited options. (Danielle Hale, chief economist of Realtor.com)
🌍 International news round up
The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, happened this month- here is what you need to know.
Chinese officials estimate that ****nearly 18% of China’s population (around 250 million people) **** likely caught the virus in the first 20 days of December—with almost 37 million people infected in one day.
The US crashed into the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling this month
💻 Tech news round up
Data compiled by tech layoffs tracker Layoffs.fy shows there were 153k+ job cuts in tech in 2022, compared to just 15k in 2021
some examples of companies laying off parts of their workforce: Robinhood (31%), Snap (20%), Stripe (14%), Lyft (13%), Carvana (8%), and DoorDash (6%).
Amazon’s layoffs will impact around ~17,000 employees (WSJ)
Salesforce will lay off 10% of its staff
On average, ~1.6k tech workers have been laid off every day of 2023, totaling 25k+ workers across 91 companies.
Alphabet became the latest tech giant to conduct mass layoffs, beginning to let go of 12,000 employees (~6% of its workforce)
That brings total layoffs in the tech industry to more than 200,000 over the last year (FT).
The UK’s tech sector reached a total market valuation of $1 trillion in 2022 (report from the UK government and Dealroom), double its 2019 valuation of $500 billion.
Like Rome around 400 CE, Facebook and Google appear to be an empire in decline. Considered for years to be a “duopoly” over the advertising industry, they are on track to account for only 48.4% of US ad revenues this year. It’s the first time their market share has fallen below 50% since 2014 (Insider Intelligence).
Elon Musk is the first person to lose $200B in net worth thanks to sagging Tesla shares, though he’s still worth ~$137B.
Startups get created out of the layoff wave, which is a good sign.
💵 Investment news round up
Global equities lost a record $18 trillion in 2022 amid nearly 300 interest rate hikes from central banks around the world.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s other other company, is raising $750 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation of $137 billion.
In 2022, global venture funding totaled $445 billion (Crunchbase). That’s a 35% YoY decline from the $681 billion startups raised in 2021, representing a steeper pullback than was experienced after the 2008 financial crisis or dot-com bubble (Preqin data reported by Bloomberg)
However, investors spent $100 billion, or 29% more, in 2022 than they did in 2020 (Crunchbase).
Globally, fintech venture funding dropped 46% YoY in 2022 to $75.2B, though deal volume fell just 8%. Positively, Africa saw deal volume climb 25%.
😊 HAPPY NEWS CORNER
More than $128B in investments toward EV and battery plants and battery recycling were announced in the US in 2022.
The ozone layer is set to be fully restored over most of the world within the next two decades, according to a new UN report. Trends indicate a full ozone layer recovery by 2040 will take place across the planet, excluding the poles: The ozone is expected bounce back to 1980, pre-crisis levels over the Arctic by 2045 and over the Antarctic by 2066.
Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey Sustainability announced Frontier, which aims to do just that and plans to spend $925 million collectively over the next nine years on permanent carbon removal.
2022 may prove to be a turning point in how governments, companies, and investors think about CDR and the importance of scaling this technology—from less than 10,000 tonnes of CO2 removal this year—to several billion tonnes of CO2 per year by 2050.
🔎 Find of the MONTH
Nice reassuring office noises when you work remote
Learn to trade without risks
Coolest archeology discoveries of 2022
Customizable daily planner
🕔 LONG-FORM Article of the MONTH
David Glasheen, the millionaire who lost it all and became a castaway.
Humanity at its finest through Google Reviews
🔉 Podcast of the MONTH
The Happiness Lab - the podcast helps you look at life differently and redefine your idea of what it means to be happy.
🙌🏼 Thanks for reading! See you next month!
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