What happened this week
The East coast had a very unexpected week, on Friday morning a 4.8 magnitude earthquake occurred along a fault line in New Jersey, this was the strongest earthquake in NJ in over 200 years. There were no reports of significant damage, thankfully. Today we await a full solar eclipse, this a rare phenomenon, the last one occurring in 2017 for part of Central United States.
Gold looks ‘very vulnerable’ to a setback, veteran advisor says, after prices hit record high: Whilst we have continued to see new record highs in the stock markets, Gold (the “recession hedge”) has also continued to rise. Analysts comment this could be due to a longer term underperformance of the precious metal versus equity markets, whilst others speculate the rise in prices could be due to an underlying move by central banks (particularly Asian) to increase their asset allocation and gold reserves.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/08/gold-prices-look-very-vulnerable-to-a-setback-strategist-says.html
Yellen says she won’t rule out possible tariffs on China’s green exports: The US has been expressing concerns about the oversupply of green energy exports, such as solar power, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries. Yellen spoke about how the US would like to work with China but is considering all measures including imposing tariffs to protect domestic industries.
Apple laying off 614 California workers after scrapping electric car project: Apple is laying off 614 workers after they have decided to abandon their efforts to build an electric car.
Surge in US small businesses started as side hustles: The number of new small businesses launched last year almost doubled those of 2022, analysts contribute this surge to the new hybrid/remote work style.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/surge-small-businesses-started-side-hustles
Looking ahead to the rest of the week:
Wed April 10th: US Consumer Price Index
Wholesale Inventories
Thurs April 11th: Initial Jobless Claims
Producer Price Index
