Southwest Airlines says holiday meltdown will ‘certainly’ hit fourth-quarter results (5 min read)
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Southwest Airlines resumed normal flight schedule on Friday after mass cancellations due to the holiday winter storm. While most airlines restored their operations just before Christmas, the problem worsened for Southwest. The chaos left hundreds of thousands of customers stranded. Southwest declined to provide an estimate of how much the disruptions will cost in total but said it will certainly have an impact on their fourth quarter financials.

China regulator asks Futu and UP Fintech to stop soliciting mainland clients (3 min read)
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The US-listed shares of Futu and UP Fintech were down roughly 30% after China’s regulator banned both online brokerages from offering trading services to new mainland investors. The ban was due to their lack of licenses in China. Existing Chinese clients can still trade via the platforms but new accounts will be restricted going forward. It’ll likely have a bigger impact on Futu’s future business as a large number of its clients are mainland Chinese citizens.

Money managers are hopeful about the stock market in 2023 (2 min read)
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A recent survey with about 400 money managers showed that most of them are fairly optimistic about the stock market in 2023. Majority believes the S&P 500 will rise at least 6% to 10% in 2023 while a smaller group predicts it can even go higher than 20%. Nearly half of the respondents think a soft landing for the economy is still possible but the Fed’s rate policy remains the biggest concern. Most said they will focus on value over growth stocks in the new year.

Stocks fall to end Wall Street’s worst year since 2008 (2 min read)
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US stocks slipped on the last trading day of 2022 and ended the year on a sour note. All three major indexes snapped their three-year winning streak and had the worst year since 2008. The Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq were down 8.8%, 19.4%, and 33.1% respectively for the year. Despite the yearly losses, the Dow and S&P 500 had a positive Q4. The tech-focused Nasdaq, however, suffered four consecutive negative quarters for the first time since the dot-com crash.

Element Funds Taps EV Batteries With First ETF Launch (2 min read)
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Element funds launched their first ETF, CHRG, that focuses on EV and energy storage markets. CHRG is actively managed and provides exposure to future contracts of commodities that are necessary for the adoption of battery technology like lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper. CHRG was the fourth ETF launched that was dedicated to EV batteries. This niche space is a growing trend of commodity ETF launches, propelled by the surging global demand for EVs.

Best-Performing ETFs of 2022 (3 min read)
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The top performing ETFs in 2022 were mostly in the energy sector except for iShares MSCI Turkey ETF (TUR) and Simplify Interest Rate Hedge ETF (PFIX). TUR was the best performing ETF with a return of 104%, driven by domestic investors plowing assets in stocks to hedge against the country’s outrageous inflation. PFIX was designed to hedge against sharp rate increases and was the second best performer with a return of 93%. Full list of the best performing ETFs in 2022 are available in the article.

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Thomas

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