How strongly will the Fed react to surging inflation? That’s the question worrying investors as they struggle to make smart choices over the next several days.
“Stocks were little changed on Friday morning as investors tried to determine the next step for the Federal Reserve amid the highest inflation in decades,” write Jesse Pound and Yun Li of CNBC. “Friday’s moves followed a sharp sell-off in bonds and stocks in the previous session. Treasury yields spiked in reaction to data that showed consumer prices surged more than 7% last month, the highest gain since February 1982. The 10-year Treasury yield jumped above 2% for the first time since 2019, while the rate-sensitive 2-year yield soared more than 26 basis points at one point in its biggest intraday move since 2009.”
Savvy Investments Help Uber Rebound
Arguably the world’s best known ride-hailing company, Uber reported that its revenues have rebounded significantly, aided by its investments in other firms.
“Uber said on Wednesday that growing revenue and returning passengers sent a strong signal that its business was bouncing back in the final three months of 2021 from the slowdown caused by the pandemic,” writes Kate Conger in The New York Times. “Uber’s revenue grew to $5.8 billion, an 83 percent increase from a year earlier, exceeding analyst expectations. The company also marked its second profitable quarter as a public company, earning $892 million largely from its investments in Grab, the Southeast Asian ride-hailing company that went public in December, and Aurora, the autonomous vehicle start-up.”
“Apple on Tuesday said it plans to introduce a contactless payment option later this year that will let businesses use iPhones to process transactions in stores without any additional hardware, competing with services like Square,” writes Jennifer Korn of CNN Business. “The new ‘Tap to Pay’ feature will allow US merchants of all sizes to accept payments simply by holding their iPhone close to the customer’s iPhone or Apple Watch. It also works with contactless credit and debit cards. The feature … will only be available on iPhone XS models and later, could help Apple deepen its relationships with retailers.”
“A British reactor has smashed the world record for the amount of energy made in a sustained nuclear fusion reaction, in what scientists said was a ‘landmark’ in the quest for clean and reliable power,” writes Tom Whipple of The Times. “The Joint European Torus in Culham, Oxfordshire, announced (Wednesday) that over the course of five seconds it had recreated the processes used in the Sun to make 59 megajoules of energy from fusing together hydrogen to make helium. The result more than doubles its own record from 25 years ago, of 22 megajoules.”
