CMG Daily - November 29th, 2023
RIP Charlie Munger 🙏
Good morning investors!
The S&P ended the day slightly higher after mixed comments from Fed speakers, a rise in consumer confidence and a housing report that indicated home prices continued to rise despite the current interest rate environment.
We also lost legendary investor Charlie Munger at 99 years old.
Today we get our first look into the GDP report as well as earnings from Dollar Tree and Salesforce.
Don’t miss a thing - head to the Discord to get full breakdowns of all earnings and economic reports.
Market Recap
It was a green day for the major indexes, Bitcoin, and oil prices while treasury yields ended lower.
Charlie Munger, investing genius and Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, dies at age 99
Billionaire Charlie Munger, the investing sage who made a fortune even before he became Warren Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway, has died at age 99. In addition to being Berkshire vice chairman, Munger was a real estate attorney, chairman and publisher of the Daily Journal Corp., a member of the Costco board, a philanthropist and an architect. In early 2023, his fortune was estimated at $2.3 billion. “Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” Buffett said in a statement. Read more
Amazon announces Q, an AI chatbot for businesses
Amazon AMZN 0.00%↑ on Tuesday announced a new chatbot called Q for people to use at work. The product, announced at Amazon Web Services’ Reinvent conference in Las Vegas, represents Amazon’s latest effort to challenge Microsoft and Google in productivity software. It comes one year after Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI launched its ChatGPT chatbot, which has popularized generative artificial intelligence for crafting human-like text in response to a few lines of human input. Q is named after the character by the same name in the James Bond movies or the Q character in the Star Trek television shows, depending on which AWS executive you ask. Read more
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Home prices kept rising even as mortgage rates surged, S&P Case-Shiller says
Higher mortgage rates appear to be doing very little to cool home prices. Nationally, prices were 3.9% higher in September compared with the same month a year earlier, up from a 2.5% annual gain in August, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index. This occurred as the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage climbed toward 8%. Year to date, home prices nationally have risen 6.1%, much more than the median full calendar year increase in more than 35 years of this index’s data. Of the 20 metropolitan markets highlighted in the report, Detroit saw the biggest annual increase at 6.7%, followed by San Diego at 6.5% and New York at 6.3%. Read more
With Fed likely done hiking rates, Waller flags pivot ahead
Federal Reserve policymakers look increasingly comfortable closing out the year with interest rates on hold and the clock ticking on the timing of the U.S. central bank's first cut as they try to engineer a "soft landing" for the economy. "Inflation rates are moving along pretty much like I thought," Fed Governor Christopher Waller, a hawkish and influential voice at the central bank, told the American Enterprise Institute think tank on Tuesday. If the decline in inflation continues "for several more months ... three months, four months, five months ... we could start lowering the policy rate just because inflation is lower," he said. "It has nothing to do with trying to save the economy. It is consistent with every policy rule. There is no reason to say we will keep it really high." Read more
Disney CEO Bob Iger tells employees he wants to start building again during town hall
Disney DIS 0.00%↑ Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger told employees Tuesday during an internal town hall that he is looking forward to “building again” after spending 2023 mending parts of the business that “needed attention.” Disney’s 2023 has been defined by 7,000 job cuts and a company-wide mission to cut spending. Disney said this month it projects to save $7.5 billion this year, largely through job elimination and content spending rollbacks. “I feel that we’ve just emerged from a period of a lot of fixing to one of building again, and I can tell you building is a lot more fun than fixing,” said Iger. Read more
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Thank you for taking the time to read today’s newsletter. Until next time investors!
Chris
CMG Venture Group
Disclaimer
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Curious to see if Amazon will also benefit from the AI hype with the release of Q chatbot!