The December index of consumer sentiment jumped to 69.7 from November’s 61.3. This was still below its April 2020 level of 71.8. In February 2020, it was at 101.
Warburg Pincus turned to investment giant Apollo Global Management Inc. for a $1 billion loan to pay down bank facilities involving an older fund.
U.S. Steel, the Pittsburgh steel producer that played a key role in the nation’s industrialization, is being acquired by Nippon Steel in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $14.1 billion. The transaction is worth about $14.9 billion when including the assumption of debt. The price tag for U.S. Steel is nearly double what was offered just four months ago by rival Cleveland Cliffs.
In the U.S., tax receipts at all levels of government climbed to nearly 28% of GDP last year, up from 25% in 2019 and the highest level since at least 1965.
The VIX gauge of implied volatility this week reached its lowest since before the pandemic lockdowns in 2020. The ratio of put options written to protect a portfolio to bullish call options has plunged back to what counted then as unusually low levels. Each of the past three years had a similarly strong consensus that proved entirely wrong.
Consumer spending showed unexpected strength at the start of the holiday shopping season, as Americans shopped in-person and online, shrugging off signs of economic cooling. Retail sales, which include spending at stores, restaurants and gas stations, rose 0.3% in November from the month before, while economists had expected sales to fall. Sales rose 4.1% in November from a year earlier, outpacing inflation.
Many investors are still keeping too much of their assets in cash, advisers said. Households held 17% of their financial assets in cash or cash-like investments such as money-market funds or certificates of deposits in 2022—the highest share since 2012.
The amount of money that institutional investors have in Chinese stocks and bonds has declined by more than $31 billion this year, through October, the biggest net outflow since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
As of Friday, 557 stocks listed on U.S. exchanges were trading below $1 a share, up from fewer than a dozen in early 2021, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Many of these sub-$1 stocks went public in 2020 and 2021 during a boom in initial public offerings and deals with special-purpose acquisition companies.