🎊 New Year, New Challenges in 2025

Sponsored by UseFidelity

🏛️ Financial News

• 🌦️ Market Outlook Why one firm sees the US stock market headed for a third-straight year of 20% gains in 2025 – Yahoo! Finance: Analysts at Capital Economics believe the US stock market could see gains of more than 20% in 2025, driven by continued AI enthusiasm and US economic strength.

  • ⚖️ Counter-Point How to handle a stock market downturn

  • 💡 Ideas VIDEO: How do dividend stocks work?

• 🧾 Purchasing Index US manufacturing PMI rises to nine-month high, but challenges loom – Reuters: With production rebounding and new orders rising further, U.S. manufacturing moved closer to recovery in December. But the outlook remains uncertain amid the threat of higher tariffs that could raise prices of imported raw materials.

• 💂🏼‍♂️ London Markets FTSE 100 hits a two-week high in kick-off to new year trade Reuters: Boosted by gains in commodity-linked stocks, the UK's blue-chip FTSE 100 advanced 1.1% higher on first trading session of the year, to an over two-week high, logging its best day since Nov. 22.

📈 Stocks

• 💻 $MSFT Microsoft plans to invest $80 billion on AI-enabled data centers in fiscal 2025 Reuters: Microsoft plans to invest about $80B in fiscal 2025 on developing data centers to train artificial intelligence (AI) models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications.

• 🍎 $AAPL Apple's China troubles mount as foreign phone sales sink for 4th month Reuters: According to data released from a government-affiliated research firm, shipments to China of foreign-branded smartphones (including Apple iPhones), fell by 47.4% in November from a year earlier, and down for the fourth straight month.

• 🍃 $TSLA Tesla annual deliveries fall for first time as incentives fail to drum up demand Rueters: Tesla reported its first fall in yearly deliveries on, as lucrative year-end incentives for the EV car maker's aging lineup and the new Cybertruck pickup failed to lure customers wary of high borrowing costs.

  • ⚖️ Counter-Point EV maker Rivian beats expectations for deliveries

• 🏗️ $X Biden blocks $14.9B US Steel Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel Barron’s: US President Joe Biden cited a strategic need to protect domestic industry. But the move of the Japanese company buying its US rival drew sharp criticism, as both companies threatened legal action.

📊 Exchange Traded Funds

• 🏛️ Inflows 2024 ETF inflows topped $1.1T, shattering previous record – ETF.com: Investors pushed $1.12T into U.S.-listed exchange-traded funds during the year, almost double the $600 billion of inflows seen in 2022 and 2023.

🏡 Real Estate

• 🛍️ Commercial VIDEO: Retail real estate sees big demand as investment volume surges in Q3 – CNBC: Malls are using new restaurants to draw consumers as shopping centers reinvent themselves.

• 🏰 $VNQ Europe’s real estate recovery looks set to pick up steam in 2025 – CNBC: Real estate firm CBRE says Europe’s real estate sector is poised for further recovery, as investment picks up and growth returns across key market segments, with the office, residential and logistics markets all seen growing.

💱 Crypto Currencies

• 🌦️ Market Outlook Bitcoin bulls run at $97K: Key BTC price resistance levels to beat CoinTelegraph: Bitcoin investors are lining up crucial BTC price points as the market starts to show new-year signs of life.

• 📊 $IBIT Bitcoin investors pull $333M from BlackRock IBIT ETF in record outflow CoinTelegraph: BlackRock’s IBIT also saw a record three consecutive trading days of outflows.

  • ️‍🔥 Hot Take Investors are locking in the past year’s gains by selling one Bitcoin ETF, while buying another ETF to avoid the SEC’s 30-day wash sale.

🛢️ Commodities

• 🛢️ Oil US oil executives expect faster permitting under Trump, says Dallas Fed Rueters: Cold weather in Europe, and economic stimulus flagged by China and the US, helped push Oil prices the first week of January to their highest in more than two months.

• ⛽ Natural Gas Natural gas prices jump on colder winter predictions MarketWatch: Traders responded to expectations for falling temperatures in the U.S. and Europe, as well as uncertainty surrounding whether Ukraine would take steps to cut off supplies of Russian natural gas to Europe.

Happy new year to everyone in the PortfolioGPT community in the US, Europe, Asia and Africa.

If you have suggestion for how to improve our financial news, e.g. more Europe or Asia news, crypto or real-estate, please drop us a line!

And thanks to UseFidelity for sponsoring.

Happy Unprompting!
Rawee
[email protected]