| Good morning. Today's newsletter is dedicated to the great state of Delaware, which is home to the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, elite quarterbacks, more than 66% of the Fortune 500, and later today, the 46th president of the US. | | | |  | NASDAQ | 13,197.18 | + 1.53% | | | | S&P | 3,798.91 | + 0.81% | | | | DOW | 30,930.52 | + 0.38% | | | | GOLD | 1,839.30 | + 0.51% | | | | 10-YR | 1.095% | + 0.40 bps | | | | OIL | 53.01 | + 1.24% | | | *As of market close | - Covid-19: The seven-day average of new cases in the US has fallen 16% from a week ago, and the declines are occurring across all regions. However, as of yesterday, the US death toll from Covid-19 hit 400,000.
- Government: President Trump issued another big round of pardons, granting clemency to his former WH aide Steve Bannon and rapper Lil Wayne.
- Markets: Stocks rose as investors prepared for a new era under a President Biden—one that may include a whole lot more stimulus to blunt the worst economic effects of the pandemic.
| |  Andy Manis/Getty Images | With just a few hours left in President Trump's term, let's crack open the scrapbook and review his administration's influence on business and the economy. Trade: Trump vowed to bring American jobs back from overseas by renegotiating free trade agreements. He immediately ditched the Trans-Pacific Partnership and, in 2018, launched an 18-month trade war with China that frustrated many American multinational companies. Hundreds of billions in tariffs later, the US trade deficit with China hit a 14-year high last August. - Trump successfully replaced NAFTA, a North American trade deal he's called "the worst trade deal ever made," with USMCA, an updated agreement for a modern, digital economy.
Markets: Supported by a red-hot economy, strong corporate earnings, and expansionary policy from the Fed, the US stock market soared over the last four years (the S&P is up about 67%). Not all sectors performed equally—tech shares have surged while energy stocks lost value. Taxes: Trump and the GOP overhauled the US tax code with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. This law significantly reduced the corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21% and lowered the rates on most individual income tax brackets. Jobs: In February 2020, the US unemployment rate hit a 50-year low of 3.5%, which reflected a searingly hot job market during the first three years of Trump's presidency. But the coronavirus crisis changed all that. In March and April of last year, the US lost more than 22 million jobs—and Trump will become the first president since Herbert Hoover (1929–1933) to leave the White House with fewer jobs than when he moved in. Big picture Because of his erratic approach to policymaking and his embrace of far-right extremists, President Trump's once-cozy relationship with Corporate America deteriorated over his term. Any remaining goodwill was extinguished with the storming of the Capitol on January 6, after which social media companies banned Trump's accounts and the National Association of Manufacturers pushed for his removal via the 25th Amendment. | |  Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images | Someone get Janet Yellen a permanent nameplate for the Senate Finance Committee. Yesterday, the former Fed chair had her fifth confirmation hearing, this time for the US' top fiscal policy job: Treasury secretary. Yellen wants to "act big," which means more... Stimulus. She forcefully defended Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion aid bill. She argued that failure to support workers and businesses risks "a longer, more painful recession now and longer-term scarring of the economy." Climate action. Yellen will establish a Treasury team to examine climate change's threat to financial systems. Corporate taxes: Eventually, Biden and Yellen want to raise the corporate rate to 28%. Yellen also called for coordination with the OECD (a group of wealthy nations) to set a minimum corporate rate to stop the "destructive, global race to the bottom." Yellen is also willing to consider reissuing 50-year Treasury bonds. She dismissed weakening the US dollar. And she said she'd use the Treasury's arsenal to address China's "abusive, unfair, and illegal practices.'' Looking ahead...Yellen is expected to receive quick confirmation, potentially this week. | | ![A gif of a young girl doing double]() Giphy | The high-tide of funding for electric automakers isn't going out just yet. Two big deals from yesterday: - GM's autonomous division, Cruise, announced a meet-the-parents-level relationship with Microsoft, which—together with GM, Honda, and other investors—poured $2 billion into Cruise, bumping its valuation to $30 billion.
- Electric auto startup Rivian is valued at $27+ billion after a $2.7 billion round from T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, and Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund. Rivian will launch its first pickup and SUV this summer.
Picking up on some themes? It's getting harder to write about the auto industry without mentioning Big Tech. Amazon was already a Rivian investor, Alphabet's Waymo subsidiary has begun self-driving commercial service in AZ, and Apple is working on an "Apple car" with Hyundai. Hefty valuations for companies like Cruise that don't even have customers yet highlight how bullish investors are about the next era of transportation. - For comparison: Ford's market cap is ~$40 billion. Honda and Stellantis (aka the recently merged Fiat Chrysler + PSA Group) are worth almost $50 billion.
Bottom line: Tesla's competition is getting big-money backup. Want to know more? Subscribe to Emerging Tech Brew, which will go deeper into these investments in today's edition. | |  | What's the most versatile (but under-appreciated) marketing tool that cuts through all the noise? If you said, "Quizzes from Typeform," consider us quiz-pressed. Typeform's quizzes take care of every touchpoint, from lead generation to product recommendations to (if you're us) weekly news recaps. So if you're looking for some Q&As that can E&I (engage and intrigue) use Typeform to keep customers involved from the bottom of the funnel to the top. Get your quool quizzes here. | |  Francis Scialabba | Yesterday, Office Depot's parent company ODP turned down an acquisition offer from rival Staples for more than $2 billion, a 60%+ premium over ODP's average closing price in the 90 days leading up to the offer. The backstory: stretches back to before "bitcoin" or "solo artist Beyoncé" meant anything. Staples first tried to buy its office supply competitor in 1997, then again five years ago, when it was blocked by a federal judge who cited concerns about limiting competition. The nowstory: ODP Chairman Joseph Vassalluzzo said similar competition concerns that might invite regulatory attention made a tie-up untenable. He left the door open more than a crack, though, adding that he'd be open to 1) a partial sale of ODP's retail and consumer-facing e-comm operations or 2) a joint venture with its retail segment. - Staples argued that, given recent shifts in the retail sector that rhyme with Bamazon, competition isn't an issue anymore.
Looking ahead...Staples said that if it can't reach an agreement, it'll call up ODP shareholders to buy stock directly from them. | |  LEON NEAL/AFP via Getty Images | Yesterday, the London Metals Exchange (LME) kicked off a consultation on potentially closing its famous "Ring," Europe's last bastion of "open-outcry" trading. Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like—in the Ring, traders swap metals via hand signals and yelling. The NYSE and Chicago's Mercantile Exchange are among the remaining few that practice it. - Like most buildings in Europe, the Ring is even older than you'd anticipate at 144 years of age.
- Whatever the British equivalent of "fratty" is, that's the Ring's rep. In 2019, the LME had to institute a no-day-drinking rule and crack down on meetings at strip clubs and casinos.
Zoom out: The LME plays a key role in the commodities market, and its prices are viewed as important benchmarks for metals. But last March, lockdowns forced the four words you're tired of reading—a shift to digital. And LME leadership thinks it's gone well enough to consider scrapping the famous Ring altogether. Looking ahead...the LME hopes to make a final decision in April. | | - Netflix passed 200 million global subscribers last quarter and said it doesn't need external financing to fund its operations. Its stock shot up 13% after hours.
- Goldman Sachs's investment banking and stock trading units powered the Wall Street firm to its highest quarterly profits in more than 10 years.
- Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma made his first public appearance in months.
- Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, said retailers including Kohl's had stopped carrying the brand. Kohl's cited flagging sales, not Lindell's pushing of election-related misinformation, for dropping MyPillow products.
- The US State Department officially declared the Chinese repression of Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang region as "genocide." The US recently imposed a ban on Xinjiang-made cotton and tomato products.
- Sea shanty PSA: Stop trying to make sense of them.
| |  | We're banking on 2021. You're probably finalizing your resolutions for the new year, and if you've got investing on your list, Fundrise can help. They bring diversification to just about any portfolio with real estate assets that are uncorrelated to the stock market. Right now, you can invest with Fundrise for as little as $500. Make this the year you diversify your portfolio. Get started with Fundrise. (Here's all the legal jargon we know you love reading.) | | | The inaugural address is a time-honored tradition of a president trying to land a quote in a future history textbook as hundreds of thousands of Americans freeze their butts off on the National Mall. Can you identify which presidents said the following famous lines in their inaugural addresses? - "We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists."
- "Today we can declare: Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution. We—the American people—we are the solution."
- "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
- "Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics."
- "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds..."
| | | When you share the Brew with your network, you earn free swag like our classic Morning Brew t-shirt. Are you one of those people who is always going places? Then you probably need a shirt. Might as well be this bad boy with the Morning Brew logo plastered across the chest. 
Hit the button below to learn more and access your rewards hub. Click to ShareOr copy & paste your referral link to others:
morningbrew.com/daily/r/?kid=8386977e | | | 1. Thomas Jefferson
2. Ronald Reagan
3. Barack Obama
4. FDR
5. Abraham Lincoln | | |
Retail newsletter → 
Tech newsletter → 
Marketing newsletter → 
Recommendations newsletter → 
Business podcast → 
No comments:
Post a Comment