This is Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend, our global look at the top stories in the coming week from our Daybreak anchors all around the world, and straight ahead on the program. It's shaving up to be a very merry cryptomis with bitcoin and ethereum soaring in value. Will the surge continue in twenty twenty four with the SEC poise to approve the first ever spot bitcoin ETF. I'm Tom Busby in New York.
I'm calin Hedge in London, where we're thinking about the lessons learned from the past year in stocks.
I'm Doug Prisoner looking at the odds for a better gaming business in Macau for twenty twenty four.
I'm Kaylie Lynes in Washington, where we're reflecting on a wild year in Congress and the legislative winners and losers.
That's all straight ahead on Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend on Bloomberg Eleve on Free Own New York, bloombergon ninety nine to one, Washington, DC, Bloomberg one O six one, Boston, Bloomberg nine sixty, San Francisco, DAB Digital Radio London, Sirius XM one to nineteen and around the world on Bloomberg Radio dot com and via the Bloomberg Business Appen.
Good day to you. I'm Tom Busby, and we begin today's program with a look at cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, starting the year just under seventeen thousand dollars. Fast forward nearly twelve months later, Bitcoin is more than double trading above forty thousand. Why the big rally and will it continue? We're pleased to welcome Mike McLoone. He's senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence and Bloomberg Markets editor Michael Reagan. Thank you both
for joining us. What is behind the big rally in bitcoin this past year and what has changed if anything?
Hey, Tom, Well, the potential the US is going to be launching Bitcoin ETF starting nine. The dates really January tense, but that's kind of more than micro The market sorty price, and it's the macro. I think that matters is virtually all risk assets were pretty well beat up at the end of last year, and virtually all risk assets are up this year. Bitcoin is just the riskiest. It's the highest beta up the most. So that's what I look
at next year. That tilt is a pendulum, Mike swing the other way and kind of just revert a little. To me, that's the key risk. And it's the example of you know, bitcoin's up one hundred and sixty percent this year and the NASSEX up about fifty three percent, and on a voweltily weighting basis, that's just about what Bitcoin should be up.
And Michael Reagan, so it's kind of mirrored the rise in equities this past year.
Yeah, mirrored it and really out on it.
Yeah.
You know, Mike's talking about the beta in the market, which is kind of a technical term for if you know, one asset is moving one percent, a higher bait asset might move two percent or three percent. So, you know, Bitcoin just more a beneficiary of this return in risk appetites than the equity market, even both are really just putting in tremendous rebounds this year.
And as Michael alluded to, with the SEC expected to approve January tenth, the spot bitcoin ETF, this could change everything.
Yeah, I mean that's the thinking.
You know.
The idea is that there are a lot of investors and financial advisors out there who were reluctant to invest in crypto because they didn't quite trust all the crypto native platforms FTX obviously giving the best example of that
when it collapsed last year. So, you know, the thinking is, now that it's available in an ETF, you can buy it from your traditional brokerage whoever that is that you deal with, and there's a little bit more safety there involved now, you know, to Mike's point, I think the question is is all that priced into the market already for the price of bitcoin and then some you know, is it a sell the news event, And it's really hard to predict that when the CTF one and if
it is actually approved. But you know, I think the general thinking is that even if even if investors allocate a tiny percent of their entire portfolio, say one or two percent to crypto, now that's going to add up to tens hundreds of billions of dollars potentially. So the optimism is that these ETFs will be a big hit, and that perhaps while they might not rally, bitcoin might not rally the way it did this year, once they're introduced, that it will be a support going forward in the market.
But to Mike's point, you know, this market rallied so hard this year that it would be sort of natural to expect a little bit of a pullback a correction from that.
So what do you think, Mike mcloon, I'll address this to you. Why the change of heart from Gary Gensler federal regulators about now going forward with this?
Oh, the good check and balances of courts. One example was coinbase and GBTC Gray Scale Bitcoin Trust. They won their actions in courts. There's been some other ones, but it's that pendulum and it's just a wonderful check and balance of our system. You might have people push back on this rapidly advancing technology, then people push forward, and that's what's happening. So I think what Michael pointed out is the key thing is there is just so much
optimism and expectation. Okay, the ETFs are going to be launched. The key thing we like to say about it is that when we launched the Bloomberg Galaxy crypto inext in twenty eighteen, this was the goal to get ETFs tracking cryptos and most lightly a broad index, and we're just so far behind. Now they happen, They already exist in other countries. The US is just catching up. But it's
Michael mentioned, it's the key thing that matters. The point I'm worried about is what it's doing for the space is since futures were launched in bitcoin in twenty seventeen, valtile is getting squashed. So what's happening is this teenager or this child acid is becoming an adult rapidly, and ETFs are going to push into the adult space really
fast meeting. Can I expect those very big returns we've had in the past when it was trading at a volatility of one hundred to two hundred percent, and now that valtil is around thirty percent, that's the lowest ever. That's a two hundred and sixty day measure or an annual measure. And the thing is it's still much higher volatility than stock market goal. And that's where I think people I'm worried about if we do get that normal reversion in the stock market next year bitcoin keep thinking
about Bitcoin. It's trades twenty four seven. It's one of the most significant leading indicators in the planet. It might lead that way down. That's why I look at is yes, there's always going to be small pullbacks. I'm looking at the pendulum for next year swinging more towards reversion as the best Maybe we've already seen the best buy the rumor in the markets.
Michael, Yeah, and that falseeity issue is a fascinating once unpacked, because you know, that's something these traders like, you know, your typical buy and hold investor might not level lot of volatility in their portfolio, but crypto investors, that's that's their bread and butter, right, So you know, regardless of what Bitcoin does, it's fascinating to look at some of the other areas of crypto market and what's going on. I'll give you an example. Solana is the big star
of the industry this year. Their native token soul is up like eight hundred percent. And the thinking there is this is a blockchain that's much faster and cheaper to run transactions on than Bitcoin or ethereum. So a lot of these really crazy sort of meme coins and NFTs and all that very very speculative and extra risky. I mean, all of crypto's risky, but this stuff is super ultra risky.
Has really found a home on that blockchain and Avalanche, so you know, the market is kind of I think to Mike's point, there's a potential for sort of a a fork in the road where bitcoin becomes more of
the mainstream, lower volatile the side of the market. But then you still have this sort of more wild west, wildly volatile and speculative angle of the market where all the true crypto you know, guys who like to trade and really actively go long, go short, we'll be happy to sort of move over to that side of the market.
Well, it seems also there are always new ones, ones happening now you've never even heard of. Yeah.
Absolutely, I mean it's so easy to create a new coin. You can basically copy the code from the last one, change a few variables in it, give it a new name, and you're off to the racist. And then it's you know, a matter of you know, how strongly can you market it and pump it up and get other people excited about it. It's kind of a crazy scheme, but that is sort of the nature of the market these days.
Oh, it's a crazy scheme. Now, Mike mcgoon, I want to talk about something I know you have spoken about, referring to bitcoin as a form of digital gold. What do you mean, why is that and what do you mean?
It really struck me when I was in Hong Kong, the twenty eighteen visying colleagues, and almost everybody met there when they're talking about mainland this and mainland that is a no. And that was a significant bear market cryptos. Yet there was one bull market, and that was the market capitalization of the number one stable going called Teather.
And the key thing that really struck me is now on a global basis, sort of first time in history, everybody in the planet with an iPhone, which you can get now a phone in India for twelve bucks, has access to a stable currency or something more like digital like bitcoin, through their digital assistant or their phones. And the key thing I like to stay about bitcoin is in terms of gold is average Ask your average thirty something person or someone like the age of my kids.
They don't really care about goal. And that to me is like to say, is if you are in the gold space, you're bullish gold. I'm bullish gold, You're you're involved in gold. That's kind of you have to have some consideration of the world's going digital and bitcoin being in that space. So it's me it has to have some bitcoin in that space. Now, how much you put in there is subject, but the world is going digital,
and it's just a better way to transact. But one thing I really want to touch on it's happening in this space is Michael alluded to a little bit with Solona is proliferation of stable coins. This technology allows everybody in the planet to get access to the dollar. Call them stable coins, I call them crypto dollars because they
all track the dollar and the AUM. And these crypto dollars now are almost about one hundred and twenty five billion, and that's something that's just happening more and more, and it's because the technology allows everybody in the will to get access to this, particularly when you live in a country with a melting currency, which most hour in the long term is just the dollars, the most, the strongest, and just in terms of bitcoin, to me, it's digital
gold versus regular golden analog gold. You probably should put them together. And then in the space, what's significant is just the technologies allowing people to get to the dollar. And what's really it's called basically tokenization. What's next in tokenization through the technology, And a lot of people I hear say, are US treasuries?
Yeah, well they've got a lot to look forward to. Our thanks to Mike McLoone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence and Bloomberg Market editor Michael Reagan. Coming up on Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend runaway, inflation, raid hikes, job cuts and more. What lessons have we learned from this past year? I'm Tom Busby and this is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg day Break Weekend, our global look ahead at the top stories for investors in the coming week. I'm Tom Busby in
New York. Up later in our program the big winners in this year's do Nothing Congress. But first, twenty twenty three has been a year of inflation, rate debates, job cuts, geopolitical tensions. We'll look back at twenty twenty three through a number of different lenses and ask what lessons can be learned from the past year and how they can help us navigate the next twelve months. For more, let's go to London and bring in Bloomberg Daybreak anchor Caroline Hepger.
Some might be asking what twenty twenty four could possibly throw at markets after a year packed with every challenge in the book. Again, as the year draws to a close, investors have been hit with a curveball at tax on merchant ships in the Red Sea, threatening to d stable as the global economy. There's also been a final surprise in the UK this week's CPI data showing that inflation slowed to three point nine percent. Now, that was a bigger drop than had been originally forecast. No one saw
it coming, including Bloomberg's Markets Today reporter Dave Goodman. Here's his reaction.
Pretty stll in reading, wasn't it. I sit next to Connor, who deserves squalwk on on Bloomberg, and I think everyone heard me shout wow loudly in the background as he was reading out to people a three point nine percent No one we Bloomberg had surveyed thirty five economists, Not one of them saw of reading below four point two percent. So that kind of shows you how much of a shock in terms of a downward surprise. It's it's the biggest since February twenty twenty one.
That was Bloomberg's David Goodman there. So what are the takeaways then from an unforgettable year for global equities? We asked Bloomberg Stocks Guru, our director of Research, Tim Craighead, to help us make sense of it all, starting by asking him his biggest lesson from the past year in stocks. Here's what he had to say.
I guess one thing that really comes to mind is that composition matters. If you look at the nature of the markets that have worked in Europe, or think about Europe versus the US, it really does boiled down the composition. The SMI has been awful basically because of four stocks Rosa, nov Artists, Nesle, and Richmond. If you take those out, that market's up twenty one percent. It's equal to the US. If you look at Europe, it looks awful at up
twelve percent versus the US up twenty one percent. But if you look at the Eurostocks fifty, which is concentrated into some of the biggest important names in the Eurozone, it's up nineteen percent. That's call it roughly in line. It's the UK and Switzerland that have been awful for Europe and taking the whole index if you look at the stock six hundred down, So composition really matter.
So then how do you think about Europe and how it will fare against the United States?
Looking to next Yeah, yeah, well two things here come immediately to mind. One is clearly the US has gotten an awful lot more TMT and that's been a huge driver of the rally that we've seen since the October lows. They tend to be higher duration in terms of longer term cash flow growth if you get into the math, which makes them more sensitive to interest rate changes as well as longer term secular growth drivers. So that is a big difference in the last six weeks. That's really mattered.
It brings up what happens from here, and we can talk a little bit more about that from the standpoint of how much the market is now baked in central bank pivots, which I think is definitely the case across both continents, but probably even more so in the US. The second thing is China. China is a big deal for Europe. Call it four hundred and sixty billion dollars in a billion euros in revenue across eighty big companies
in Europe. That's a lot of exposure. It's roughly thirty percent of the market index that that's got China exposure. That's a tough first half comparison. I think there's a tale of two halts for European markets looking into twenty twenty four. Tough earnings to begin with, but maybe an interesting second half looking towards twenty twenty five.
So there's loads to unpack there. But I just want to hone in on what you said about the UK.
When do you think people will start deciding that Britain's cheap and it's a bargain and it's time to buy.
Never buy.
So it is cheap, but it's cheap for a reason, and that goes back to the composition issue. It's got a bunch of banks. Banks tend to trade cheap relative to do a lot of other sectors. It's got a heavy heavy dose of oil and metals and mining. Those are contra to earnings, and right now we're still at relatively higher earnings, so you're at relatively low valuations. The only time you're going to see real revaluation in those is when you have a down cycle in the commodity
prices that really depresses earnings and inflates multiples. But as you look at it's interesting if you look over a two year period, the Footsie's actually outperformed both the EERO stocks and the S and P five hundred. Take a look at that. Going back to January one, twenty twenty two, and it's because it was relatively flat and when we had down drafts in the market, the FOOTE totally outperformed. So if you're concerned for whatever reason tactically at certain
points in time, the Footsie is a safe haven. If you're looking for juice, you know, the foot sis global defensives don't give you that a space. The pounds a little bit stronger. Depends on what you think about commodity markets. It's got a lot of exposure there, but right now those are relatively depressed, and it's got a heavy dose in financials where margins are very inflated. And if you think we're going to have a central bank pivot, that puts those margins at risk a little bit of deflating.
So how do we think about then the central bank pivots. I mean, we've been slower in pricing in the potential of interest rate cuts on the Bank of England than we have for the ECB and the FED, but it is there. And if you think about the GDP data that some are concerned about the stagnation slash recession story for the UK, you know, how do you think about the pivot?
So between now and say year in twenty twenty four. I think it's a positive backdrop and it's good for the foot seat, and it's going to be good for the European markets because both central banks are humble opinion, likely to either be pivoting. You know, there's a lot more visibility on that progress continuing into twenty twenty five.
The concern I suppose right now is that we've had in all markets such a big discounting of a pivot in the past six weeks that you know, just technically we're getting a little bit extended, and you know, does that balk a little bit, especially for the UK market and Europe as we get into January February and have to face fourth quarter earnings that are probably going to be similar to third quarter, where yeah, they were somewhat resilient, but we saw negative revisions and we think you could
see a bit more on the negative revision front. So first quarter I think is a little dicey, especially at these elevated market levels, but an interesting second half of the year.
My thanks there to Bloomberg's director of research, Tim Craighead. I'm Caroline hepget here in London. You can catch us every weekday morning for Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, beginning at six am in London. That's one am on Wall Street.
Thanks Carolina. Coming up on Bloomberg day Break weekend and look at how Mcow's casino industry has weathered the challenges of a global pandemic and a slow economic recovery in China. I'm Tom Busby, and this is Bloomberg.
Broadcasting from the Bloomberg It a active brokers studio in.
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This is Bloomberg Daybreak weekend, our global look ahead at the top stories for investors in the coming week. I'm Tom Busby in New York. After a devastating pandemic and a prolonged economic slowdown in China, how has Macow's casino and gaming business recovered? For more, we go to Bloomberg Daybreak Asia co host Doug Krisner.
Tom The major casinos in Macau are still in the process of recovering after being hard hit by the pandemic obviously when China closed its borders. Despite the sluggishness of the overall Chinese economy, though, many analysts have a positive outlook for Macau as we approach the new year. The city, if you didn't know, is the world's largest gambling center by revenue. For a closer look at gaming and McCaw let's bring in Bloomberg's Angela han Lee, gaming and Hospitality
analyst for the apack at Bloomberg Intelligence. It's a pleasure to have the chance to chat with you, and I know that in peak times, Macau gets a lot of activity during the Lunar New Year festivity and the Golden Week holiday in October. But since the Christmas holiday is upon us and New Year's is just around the corner, Angela, I'm curious will these holidays produce any traffic in a meaningful way for the casinos.
Yes, I think that in the past, the Luna New Year and October Golden Week were the major events for McCall casinos because that's basically where mainland China has the longest holidays. But now I think it's a bit different because we are having more young people who likes to celebrate Christmas. And also given that this consumption downgraade trend, people cannot travel too far. That's why they prefer to
go make shock hold trips. And Macau is one of the popular places because it's outside Mala in China but still very attractive. So and also because the Macau's integrity results now have much more amenities. They are hosting a lot of concerts and also events. So you see that some TV stations of China is hosting some year end concerts and events in Macau as well, so that it's going to also bring more traffic from mailing Chinese people.
So did the.
Gaming companies use the opportunity of a decline in business during the pandemic to really reinvest and put some of these new venues in place so that hopefully when things emerged from the pandemic that a lot of new venues would be in place for people to take advantage of.
Yes, there are some new casinos that open during the pandemic, say s GM's grandl Isba Palace and recently Galaxy Macau also expanded fifty three, so it's new capacity and its new capacity can bring much more traffic because in the past those hotel rooms were only for big rollers, but now there are much more hotel rooms in Macau. So that's why, like some young people can also pay for the hotel biers by themselves and stay in Macau.
So I think the.
Whole maccaunt is changing towards this type of mass lasor travel thing rather than pure gambling.
So younger people, I understand. What about for the family, if you have even younger children, is it a good destination?
True?
If you go to Macau, you will find some fancy facilities, say in Galaxy Macau.
There are places like.
You know, artificial Beach that you can go and enjoy video kids. And also there is a water park in Still City face two. And you also see many other events and shows that you can go with kids. So Macau is transforming. I would say mask gaming revenue is something coming with the higher profit margin, so I guess that also benefits Macaus casinos to achieve itBit the improvement faster than gaming revenue.
So I suggested that many analysts have upgraded their opinion of twenty twenty four in terms of outlook for revenue. What is driving a lot of this optimism if.
They say so the pre pandemic numbers by ten percent. It's about the mask gaming revenue, meaning the people who go and gamble with their own cash, excluding the gaming revenue coming from credit gamblers.
But this is a major driver for ma CAA casinos.
That makes sense, and the major reason is orgain because of the hotel inventory has increased in Macau, making like people to be like the hotel rooms are much more affordable for some people as well, So I think that's one thing. The other is because the people who used to travel long hauld don't go there far because too expensive for them, so they prefer coming to Macau. So Macau is kind of benefiting from this consumption downreature in China too.
I'm wondering if the government has been involved in helping to promote the industry from countries like South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore. Has there been an active campaign to try to get tourists from those jurisdictions to come to Macau.
I think that's the trend as well.
So to start with, I would say Macau's hirola business, which means credit gamblers, junket business has been under crackdown, so some people has been who used to play in Macau with credit facilitated by underground banks in China are also to like cash gamblers. That is also a type of thing that Macau and Melan government is urging those players and the whole industry to become much more transparent.
That's one thing.
The other is that you know, like there are a lot of crackdowns going on regarding some human trafficking and some organized crimes in Southea Asia. You may also have seen some news saying that, like China has sent their own military forces to crack down those organized crimes in Miyama.
So all the things together, I think even government and even some like a media in China are kind of promoting that, you know, like a be more careful when you travel out and try to try to be like a stay in safe places.
Angela, We've touched on two things, and I'm wondering whether there's a connection. The interesting attracting young people to a lot of these casinos, and you're talking about the extent to which these gaming companies are more reliant on cash rather than credit. And I'm wondering whether young people now are using the latest technology when they walk into these gaming facilities, so they're able to take their phone and essentially gamble using the phone.
Is that is that happening?
You are not allowed to use phone when you're gambling. If you take out your phone to take pictures. They were coming say like, don't take pictures of the casinos. That's about privacy thing. And also because they want to prevent this phone gambling, they don't want people to do the video streaming with the gaming tables because that is allowing another kind of proxy gambling online that used to happen more like in other parts of the world, like
in Philippines, which was which used to be legal. In Macau it has been illegal for a long time, like for the past I think Alice in my memory should be more than seven years. So Macaw's gaming business is really about in person gambling thing rather than online streaming.
If you do online stream you get caught.
But what about using new forms of money technology. I'm not necessarily saying a cryptocurrency, but are there technological platforms that you might have on your phone where you could use the phone just in a moment to transfer money at the casino so that you could get cash in hand and then go to a table and play.
So one to start with that, you know, China has some limits if you want to vitual money off show. If you are we're doing the money which is under the like a lot amount, then you obviously can do through the union pay. But if you want to do more than a lot of amount, then you have to do something else, which is like a weed chad or something else that you know, like some underground banks will facilitate.
So at the end, what Macau will do is that Macau casinos will try to make money from more people who spend less than before.
I'm wondering how the office of the Chief Executive in Macau, how that office is expressing a view on the business, whether or not the office of the Chief Executive is as optimistic as many of the animals that we've been talking about.
He's also optimistic, and government is always trying to express that the most important is promoting non gaming business and then they don't like gaming business. But from casino product perspective, casino business is the best business with better ROI.
So there's some suggle over there.
But we come to a point that you know, casino products now understand that if they want to draw more traffic and keep players longer, they should have more non gaming amenities to people to let peper use. So on, this says, I believe casino operators will keep investing in non gaming amenities including hotel rooms or other like you know, say, other retail shops or even like a concert. There are so many concerts going on and this is driving so much traffic.
They did like a.
Black Pink in the middle of this year, and Brunomas is also coming like the next year. They also have like some big Canton pop stars like a Jackie Chen as well like this year. Everyone is just trying to bring more people to the property so that they can generate more gaming and on gaming revenue.
Angela, You've given us a lot of good information. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. That is Angela Han League Gaming and Hospitality analyst for the apack at Bloomberg Intelligence. I'm Doug Prisner in New York and you can catch Brian Curtison myself weekdays here for Bloomberg Daybreak Asia beginning at seven am in Hong Kong six pm on Wall Street, Tom.
Thank you Doug. Coming up on Bloomberg day Break weekend. The US Congress this past year passing the fewest laws in decades. How did that benefit some of the biggest players on Wall Street. I'm Tom Busby and this is Bloomberg. I'm Tom Busby in New York with your global look ahead at the top stories for investors in the coming week.
Turmoil this year in the one hundred and eighteenth Congress, which went through several House speakers even voted out one of its own members while lawmakers did little to actually govern. That meant good news for banks, tech giants, and big pharma.
More.
Let's head to our Bloomberg ninety nine one Newsomen Washington and Bloomberg Sound on co host Kaylee Lines.
Yeah.
Tom.
Congress is officially done for twenty twenty three, and what a year.
It was.
Started off with fifteen rounds of votes to elect Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House, continued on to a dead ceiling fight, multiple almost shutdowns, the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, the election of a new Speaker, My Johnson, the expulsion of New York Congressman George Santos, and for all of the drama in the headlines outside of major must pass legislation that barely squeaked through, what was actually accomplished and
who were the winners and losers within that. Megan Scully, who leads Bloomberg's congressional coverage, took a closer look at that exact question and is joining me now with the answers. So, Megan, there were winners this year.
There were largely thanks to inaction on Congress's part, which is, you know, how lobbyists make their money in Washington is trying to prevent legislation from happening more times than not. So you had big winners such as banks and the tech industry certainly walked away from this year without any
new stringent regulations placed against them. Railroad industry as well, you know, following the East Palestine disaster, the real push to enact new reforms for that industry fell by the wayside amid you know, partisan fighting on Capitol Hill.
So when we think about legislation that didn't pass, often, you know, legislation can be viewed as a threat to industries in some senses. You mentioned banks and the railroads, but there also were a few industries that were actually pushing for legislation to get through that actually hasn't fully come through yet, like crypto. Yeah, you had a couple bills passed out of house financial Services of course, helmed by chair Patrick McHenry, and yet didn't get anywhere in
twenty twenty three beyond that. So in that sense, I guess it's a loss that the bills didn't happen.
Yes, there are occasions, you know, certainly in the semiconductor industry as well, and new regulations on China. You know that China hawks tried to push through at the end of the year and that fell by the wayside. Those were certainly all losers this year. Perhaps the biggest loser we sort of reversed it on our list, but was Ukraine,
which is walking away without aid. Yet Congress is going to come back to that early January when they return, you know, on our list we made that Putin certainly is walking away with some bragging rights this year, or at least attempting to use congressional inaction to say that this demonstrates a weakening resolve in the US to fund Ukraine in this war.
So you mentioned this is something they're going to have to come back to. Of course, that's not the only big item they're going to have to deal with very early on in the year, and when you're dealing with so much big picture must deal with stuff, does all of these other legislative efforts, you know, targeted at specific industries, other bills just kind of fall to the wayside? Again, is that what we're in. We're in twenty twenty four.
So if you look at the last several congresses, the first year of a Congress, which was twenty twenty three, doesn't tend to have much legislative action. This one was unusually low. There are only twenty two bills as of December nineteenth that were passed. Maybe some more will be enacted before the end of the year, and usually that numbers in the seventies or eighties.
We will see.
Some a flurry of activity next year, even though it's an election year. Probably some of these pieces of legislation getting attached to other bills, be it spending bills or the Annual Defense Authorization Bill that somehow managed to squeak through at the end of each year. So there is another hope legislation doesn't expire at the end of a year. It expires at the end of a congress, so they do have a second chance to get this done.
Bloomberg Congressional team leader Megan Schully, thank you so much as always, and Tom, I guess we'll see what they can do in twenty twenty four.
Thank you, Kaylee. That was Bloomberg's sound on co host Kaylee Lines reporting from our Bloomberg ninety nine to one news from in Washington. And you can hear sound on weekdays one to three pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg day Break Weekend. Join us again Monday morning at five am Wall Street Time for the latest on the markets, overseas and the news you need to start your day. I'm
Tom Busby. Stay with us. Top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.