What's up, Market Movers! Welcome to the podcast where we serve up a curated, snackable summary of the latest news, trends and financial models, giving you all the intel you need to make better decisions when it comes to thinking about your money, protecting your money, and building wealth. For more, visit us at MarketMoversDaily.com And now for your Market Movers Daily update: Monday, January 20th, 2023. Mercedes beats the category king Tesla in self-driving.
Mercedes seems to have won a crucial race against Tesla recently by becoming the first certified Level-3 autonomous car company in the United States. The key to Mercedes success is Drive Pilot, which is a dance between various technologies, including cameras, GPS, LiDAR arrays, radar, and ultrasound sensors, and audio mics to get the car to safely drive itself. New home sales at 616,000 annual rate in December; annual sales down 16.4% in 2022.
Sales of new single family houses in December, 2022 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 616,000, according to estimates. This is 2.3% above the revised November rate of 602,000, but is 26.6% below the December 2021 estimate of 839,000. Mortgage rates just hit a 4-month low. The average rate for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage ticked down 2 basis points, but is still above 6% at 6.13%, according to Freddie Mac, continuing a pattern of rates seesawing lower since topping 7% in the fall.
In fact, mortgage rates are at their lowest level since September, 2022. Yet while lower borrowing costs are a boon for home buyers, few seem to be pouncing on this opportunity as they might have a year or two earlier. The US economy continued to grow in Q4, but the threat of a recession looms. The US economy, regained all the output from the Covid recession, and also returned to its growth trajectory from before the pandemic.
Real GDP per capita, which factors in inflation, has reached its highest level ever, but don't write off a recession just yet. Consumers are pulling back. The housing market got pummeled and companies are slowing down their spending. Toy Giant Hasbro has announced disappointing results for its Q4 holiday quarter with revenue expected to reach $1.68 billion, a 17% decline from the previous year.
The company has been grappling with a range of challenges, including difficult comparisons with pandemic-era, toy sales, inflationary pressures on consumers, and high levels of inventory. As a result, Hasbro has announced a 15% reduction in its workforce. What to watch this week... The housing market slowdown may be coming to an end as pending home sales rose 2.5% in December, marking the first increase since May.
New home sales also saw a 2.3% increase last month with mortgage rates being the primary driver for these positive changes. These recent declines and rates are helping to stabilize the market, according to industry experts. The FDA is called on lawmakers to help regulate the use of CBD. The agency claims that the science surrounding the safety of long-term use is lacking.
The FDA stated that CBD does not fit into the mold of dietary supplement and food additives that the agency typically monitors, such as ginseng, and caffeine. This call for regulation highlights the need for further oversight in the growing CBD industry. Airbus is set to hire 13,000 new workers as delivery delays continue to rise.
The company, which currently employs over 130,000 people across its commercial jet, space, defense and helicopter businesses, plans to base 9,000 of these new jobs in Europe with the remainder spread across operations in places such as the US and China. Ripple effect of China's reopening on commodities. Andreas Steno Larsen thinks we have clear spillovers to the commodity space. Industrial metals outperforming and energy is also moving.
With China's opening, there's this huge stimulus and it's a pulse pushing through all across the markets. The question is whether it's going to persist or that momentum will be regained through the spring and push on through. EU probes Microsoft over Slack complaint based on bundling Teams. The allegation is that Microsoft unfairly ties its product Microsoft Teams and other software to its widely used office suite.
The regulator is reportedly planning a statement of objections regarding how Microsoft treats its competition unfairly in an anti-competitive manner. An assessment regarding the probe is ongoing. And that caps off your snackable new summary for the day. But now what? What can you do with this new found intel? How can you wield this information to protect and grow your money? The first thing you can do is head over to MarketMoversDaily.com and subscribe.
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