1. China is rattling stocks

CNBC reports that stocks fell Monday as social unrest from China’s prolonged Covid restrictions weighed on markets and pushed down oil prices. Over the weekend, demonstrations against Beijing’s zero-Covid policy underlined the threat that China poses to the global economy, with the fall in oil prices showing that. “The negative headlines from abroad are putting pressure on domestic markets,” said Charlie Ripley, vice president of portfolio management at Allianz Investment Management. “I anticipate we’ll have more volatility and more activity in the markets as we go through the rest of the week, looking at the economic calendar.” Later this week, the Yanks see the Fed-favoured PCE inflation reading and the jobs report for November.

2. The latest economic readings

Retail trade fell 0.2% in October, which is good for inflation-fighting. Last week, the average Australian pump price for unleaded petrol fell by 6.6 cents a litre to 187.1 cents a litre, which is also a plus for bringing down inflation.

3. RBA boss says sorry for rate call

RBA Governor Dr Phil Lowe had a session in Canberra with his political masters and made an apology for his ‘rates won’t rise until 2024’ call, which he implied was misinterpreted by borrowers because they don’t understand economists and bankers way of speaking. While that’s true, Dr Phil should have explained it to normal people after he saw what media outlets were saying. On 2GB, Sky News and on all my media outlets, I actually said “don’t believe it”, especially when I saw the economic and stock market rebounds in late 2020. And for what it’s worth, Dr Phil told Senate Economics Legislation Committee yesterday that he’s optimistic that Australia could pull off a “soft landing” for the economy.

4. Why BOQ’s CEO copped the chop

AFR bank watcher Karen Maley says “few were surprised” when George Frazis abruptly left the Bank of Queensland’s building. Some say George wasn’t a Queensland kind of guy, but as Maley pointed out, he “recognized that BoQ couldn’t rely on organic growth. It needed to make an important strategic acquisition to give it sufficient scale and to give it a presence in the important NSW and Victorian markets. So in January last year, after spending just over a year in the top job, he and BoQ chairman Patrick Allaway lobbed a $1.3 billion bid for ME Bank, which was jointly owned by 26 industry super funds.”

But while the acquisition helped drive BoQ’s home lending, some analysts queried whether the bank was sacrificing margin in its pursuit of growth. While there are many stories offered for George copping the bullet, the bottom line is that he became CEO in September 2019 when the share price was over $9 and it’s now $7.14! Interestingly, some smarties liked George, with the share price falling 5.56% yesterday on the news of his exit, when the market was down 0.42%

5. Will big companies trump Elon’s Twitter?

Bloomberg reports that “Elon Musk said that Apple Inc. has cut back its advertising on Twitter and even threatened to withhold the social network from its app store, suggesting that a fight is brewing between the two companies.” In a tweet, of course, Elon told us: “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?” The reports says “a number of large companies have paused their ads on Twitter since the billionaire acquired the company for $US44 billion ($66 billion) last month. The exodus included General Mills Inc. and Pfizer Inc., and the billionaire acknowledged that the defections led to a “massive drop” in revenue.” This anti-twitter stance follows Elon welcoming back Donald J. Trump back to Twitter following his axing following the attack on the US Capitol. That’s why Elon is wondering about US companies having trouble with free speech but in today’s new age, CEOs don’t like their brands being politically incorrect, discriminatory and dare I say, Trump-like, unless you’re selling guns I guess.