Global
Meta shares down
Digital advertising giant Meta warned of the impact of hyperinflation and supply chain bottlenecks on advertisers’ budgets, and the weak monetization ability of short-form video products, which users prefer at a time when the meta-universe has yet to be built, plunged 23% after hours, erasing $165 billion in market value and dragging the Nasdaq 100 ETF QQQ down more than 1.8%.
Eurozone CPI
Data released by Eurostat on Wednesday showed that the Eurozone’s reconciled CPI rose 5.1% year-on-year in January, an increase well above the median estimate of only 4.4% growth among economists surveyed by Bloomberg: none of the 44 analysts surveyed expected inflation to accelerate; it was also up from 5% last December.
Despite the slowdown in Germany and France, the eurozone’s two largest economies, but soaring energy costs pulled the overall rise in prices in the 19 eurozone member states. Excluding other volatile factors such as energy and food, the eurozone’s core reconciled CPI was 2.5% year-on-year in January, down from 2.7% the previous month.
OPEC+ agreed to stick to its original production
The OPEC+ coalition, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, held its monthly oil production policy meeting and agreed to stick to its original plan to increase production by 400,000 bpd in March. This broke Goldman Sachs’ expectations that OPEC+ was likely to accelerate production increases given the recent sharp rally in oil prices.
There are reports that the OPEC+ video conference was held in just 16 minutes to reach consensus, setting a new speed record. Sources close to the meeting said there was no proposal to “accelerate production” before or during the meeting. The next oil production policy meeting will be held on March 2.
U.S. oil WTI once expanded to $1.51 or up 1.7%, the daily high rose above $89 to $89.71, refreshing the seven-year high set last week at $88.84 since October 2014.
U.S. debt surpassed the $30 trillion
The total U.S. debt surpassed the $30 trillion mark for the first time in history as of Jan. 31, according to U.S. Treasury Department data. The total outstanding U.S. public debt stood at $30,012,386,059,238.29, an increase of nearly $7 trillion from the end of January 2020.
Australia
ASX low
The S&P/ASX200 is lower today, dropping 25.10 points or 0.35% to 7,062.60. The bottom performing stocks in this index are CREDIT CORP GROUP LIMITED and AMCOR PLC, down 6.34% and 3.54% respectively.
