Raphael Stevens

In this photo illustration the Disney+ logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen.
SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images

Check out the companies making headlines in premarket trading.
Disney – Disney shares added more than 1% in early morning trading after the company elected independent director Mark Parker as Chairman of the board. It also opposed activist investor Nelson Peltz’s attempt to join the board as the two sides prepare for a proxy battle.

Bed Bath & Beyond — The retailer advanced 16% premarket, continuing to rally after a handful of meme stocks surged Wednesday. The stock surged almost 69% in Wednesday’s session.
American Airlines — The airline gained 5% after lifting its fourth quarter guidance, citing strong demand and high fares. American’s revenue forecast rose as much as 17% over 2019, up from a previous 11% to 13% increase. Other airlines gained in sympathy, with United, Delta and Southwest rising between 1.5% and 2%.
Logitech — The maker of mice and keyboards plummeted 16% after it missed earnings expectations for the recent quarter and slashed its sales outlook.
Netflix — The streaming giant gained 1.4% after an upgrade by Jeffries to buy from hold. The Wall Street firm, which also boosted its price target to $385 from $310, said the launch of its advertising-based offering and crackdown on password stealing will drive revenue and EBTIDA above estimates.
Anheuser-Busch InBev – Shares lost 2.5% premarket after UBS cut the brewer to sell, citing weakness in China and consumers reaching for spirits instead of beer.

Roku — The streaming stock slid 3.8% after Jefferies downgraded to an underperform rating, saying that consensus estimates are failing to account for a slowing advertising market.
Cleveland-Cliffs — The steel producer gained 2.6% following an upgrade by Morgan Stanley to overweight from an equal-weight rating, saying that shares can rally 35%.
KB Home — Shares dipped 3.4% after the homebuilder missed estimates for the recent quarter on the top and bottom lines. KB Home fourth-quarter earnings of $2.47 a share on $1.94 billion in revenue lagged analysts’ estimates of $2.86 per share on revenue of $1.98 billion.
Spotify – Shares of the audio streaming company fell by about 2% premarket after a downgrade to hold from buy at Jefferies, which said it expects Spotify’s growth margins to fall below Wall Street expectations in the next two years.
Cinemark – Shares gained 1.9% following an upgrade by analysts at JPMorgan to an overweight rating. The bank said that the movie chain looks attractive after its recent decline.
— CNBC’s Carmen Reinicke, Michelle Fox, Jesse Pound, Tanaya Macheel and Alex Harring contributed reporting

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried denied federal allegations that he misappropriated $8 billion in customer assets, months ahead of his federal trial on fraud, money laundering and campaign finance charges.
Bankman-Fried repeated several claims that bankruptcy officials and federal regulators have denied or contradicted, including that FTX US remains solvent and that the collapse of his hedge fund Alameda Research was due to broader market turbulence.
The 30-year-old’s New York federal trial will begin in October.

Former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried (C) arrives to enter a plea before US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in the Manhattan federal court, New York, January 3, 2023.
Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images

In a Thursday morning Substack post, FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried denied allegations that he stole billions in user funds and suggested that Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao conducted a monthslong effort to bring down FTX.
It is Bankman-Fried’s first significant response to federal allegations that he directed an $8 billion dollar fraud that destroyed his $32 billion crypto conglomerate. Earlier this month, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to eight federal charges including fraud and money laundering, and was released on a $250 million recognizance bond. His trial will begin in October. Bankman-Fried is the subject of complaints from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as well.

His post provides his perspective on the collapse of FTX and his hedge fund Alameda Research, and includes purported FTX and Alameda financial metrics, caveated as “JUST AN ESTIMATE.”
In the beginning of 2022, for example, Bankman-Fried says he estimated Alameda’s total net assets at $99 billion. By October, he believed that his hedge fund’s net assets had fallen to $10 billion. He pinned the collapse on a broader market downturn, even comparing his FTT token’s performance to that of Tesla, bitcoin and the Invesco QQQ, which tracks the Nasdaq 100.

Bankman-Fried compared the performance of his exchange’s token against the Invesco QQQ and other assets in his Substack post.

Bankruptcy lawyers, federal prosecutors and regulators have contradicted many of the claims Bankman-Fried made in his post.
Regulators and prosecutors allege that neither FTX nor Alameda were wholly legitimate businesses but were instruments of Bankman-Fried’s fraud.
FTX’s restructuring officers have said that the businesses faced significant and inexplicable cash shortfalls after FTX filed for bankruptcy in November.

The case against Bankman-Fried was constructed with the assistance of his longtime executives Caroline Ellison and Zixiao “Gary” Wang, both of whom pleaded guilty to charges of fraud. Bankman-Fried’s post did not acknowledge their cooperation with federal probes.
In his post, Bankman-Fried also noted that other crypto firms have been “blown out.” He did not acknowledge that three of those firms — BlockFi, Genesis and Gemini —allegedly suffered because of FTX’s collapse.
Many of his claims were ones he’s made before, including that FTX US remained solvent, that Alameda’s liquidity crisis was not due to misconduct but because of broader market turbulence, and that FTX International and Alameda were wholly legitimate, profitable businesses.
The former FTX CEO also pointed to a Nov. 6 tweet from Binance’s Zhao as the culmination of an “extremely effective months-long PR campaign against FTX.”
Zhao has denied those claims. “FTX killed themselves […] because they stole billions of dollars,” the Binance CEO tweeted in December.
At the end of the post, Bankman-Fried doubled down. “All of which is to say: no funds were stolen,” the 30-year-old wrote.  

Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Our currency, your problem. That is how John Connally, America’s Treasury secretary, described the dollar to European leaders in 1971. The phrasing was apt. His boss, Richard Nixon, had suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold and demanded a change to the exchange-rate system established at Bretton Woods in 1944. Other countries were told to strengthen their currencies, or America would subject them to trade restrictions. Compliance followed in short order. By the end of the year, the Smithsonian Agreement had devalued the dollar by around a tenth against key foreign currencies. Today’s exchange rates are mostly floating, set by the market rather than at crunch talks. Yet once again a weaker dollar is prompting sighs of relief. Last September the dxy, a gauge of the dollar’s strength against other currencies, was at its highest in 20 years (see chart). The yen had tumbled; the pound at one point looked like it was racing towards parity with the dollar; the euro spent a few brief spells below it. Since then, the greenback has weakened: measured by the dxy, it is now 10% below its recent peak.A mighty dollar causes no end of problems. Poorer countries tend to borrow in the currency. When it strengthens, these debts become heftier. Even in rich countries, where governments mostly issue debt in their own currency, a stronger dollar squeezes corporate borrowers. Analysis in 2020 by Matteo Maggiori, Brent Neiman and Jesse Schreger, three economists, showed that in Australia, Canada and New Zealand more than 90% of corporate bonds held by foreigners were denominated in outside currencies, typically dollars.It is not only debtors that suffer. Commodity prices are quoted in dollars; when the currency strengthens they get dearer. American exporters become less competitive, as their products are more expensive for foreigners. American investors with overseas assets have their returns eaten away. Good reason, then, for the cheering at the greenback’s retreat. Unfortunately, the relief may be temporary. To see why, consider the sources of the dollar’s recent strength. One is monetary policy. Throughout 2022, America’s Federal Reserve raised rates higher and faster than other central banks. This made the dollar a good target for a “carry trade”: selling a low-yielding currency to buy a high-yielding one and pocketing the difference. A second source is fear. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s unsustainable “zero-covid” policy and the teetering of the global economy towards recession all ratcheted up markets’ anxiety levels. In anxious times investors tend to reach for the perceived safety of American assets. A final source is America’s economy. In part because of higher energy prices and the country’s status as an energy exporter, it seems in better shape than much of the rest of the world’s.True, the pace of the Fed’s tightening is slowing, and its governors expect rates to peak this year. But they expect that peak to be higher than investors do, at above 5%, and that it will be maintained longer before being cut. Were the market to accept the central bank’s view, the carry trade might yet have another leg. So may the fear trade, which is dependent on the progress of an unpredictable war.Even an American recession may not dent the dollar. The greenback tends to do well both when America’s economy is motoring ahead and when it falls into a downturn, a phenomenon currency traders call the “dollar smile”. If American growth is sputtering, the global economy is likely to be in jeopardy as well, enhancing the appeal of dollar assets as havens.Yet the best argument that the dollar will strengthen is investors’ conviction that it won’t. In Bank of America’s recent survey of fund managers, a near-record proportion thought that the greenback would weaken. Among forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg, a data provider, the median projection is for the dollar to fall against every other major currency this year, and to continue to drop after that. With some $6.6trn traded against other currencies every day, it is difficult to imagine that at least some of these bets have not already been placed. The more that have, the greater the potential for a rise. Shortly after the Smithsonian Agreement was struck, speculators threw currency markets back into chaos by forcing the dollar to devalue further, eventually breaking the Bretton Woods system altogether. Nowadays, the greatest pain would come if the dollar were driven in the opposite direction. Investors could be in for a shock.Read more from Buttonwood, our columnist on financial markets:Will investors have another awful year in 2023? (Jan 5th)India’s stockmarkets are roaring. They also have serious faults (Dec 20th)For bond investors, every country is an emerging market now (Dec 8th)For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, finance and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, held this year in New Orleans, wonks discussed everything from inflation and technological progress to the economics of crime and the energy transition. Yet those looking for big breakthroughs would have left unsatisfied. Most new work focused on rigorous analysis of data or painstaking theoretical modelling. As one attendee noted, such modelling often fails to produce surprising results, since it tends to reflect the assumptions that go into it.Evidence for this downsizing of ambition is not purely anecdotal. A recent paper in Nature analyses citation data from 1945 to 2010 to assess the disruptiveness of papers and patents. The authors consider new work to be disruptive if later work that cites it is less likely to also mention its predecessors. The paper concludes that the share of disruptive research in the social sciences has fallen precipitously, even more so than in the actual sciences. As Tyler Cowen of George Mason University puts it: “In the last 30 years the reliability of empirical work and estimations has risen dramatically. Which is good. But few new important ideas have really been generated.”In New Orleans economics’s biggest names offered ideas that were fresh and interesting, but hardly breakthroughs on the scale of, say, the Nash equilibrium or the idea of asymmetric information. Gita Gopinath, the imf’s chief economist, discussed research on how the economics of international finance has shifted since the seminal work of Robert Mundell and Marcus Fleming in the 1960s. In a seminar on economic growth, Thomas Philippon of New York University argued that growth follows linear trends, rather than being an exponential process. Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology presented work on “distorted innovation”, arguing against the idea that markets tend to get innovation right.New theories without robust empirical support can be dangerous, as demonstrated by the rise of central planning during the 20th century. And big advances are easier to spot in hindsight. It may even turn out that there were some hidden among the presentations in New Orleans. Some conference attendees were also more optimistic about the present state of affairs. A professor noted that good questions in economics tend to come from real-world events—and the past few years have been tumultuous enough to raise plenty of good questions. Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University observes that the use of large datasets, machine learning and field experiments are all “game-changers”. Innovation may therefore simply be shifting from theory to practice. Indeed, the use of high-frequency data, a feature of a presentation by Lisa Cook of the Federal Reserve, has given economists and central bankers a helpful new way to look at the world in their fight against inflation. Yet the most compelling evidence on the impact of monetary policy on inflation came from Christina Romer of the University of California, Berkeley, who dusted off an old-fashioned method. In her talk, she argued that monetary-policy changes have bigger effects on unemployment than inflation, and that it sometimes takes a few years for their main impact to be felt. The method used by Ms Romer and her husband and co-author, David Romer, was not a new statistical technique or even timelier data, but a “narrative approach”. The Romers combed through transcripts and minutes from meetings held by the Federal Open Market Committee—just as they had when they developed the method in a paper published in 1989. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, finance and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

The world’s largest digital currency climbed above $18,000 for the first time since Dec. 14 late Wednesday, increasing in value by about 5% in the last 24 hours.
On Wednesday, attorneys for collapsed crypto exchange FTX said they had found around $5 billion in “liquid” assets, including cash and digital assets.
U.S. data due out Thursday is expected to show a softening in inflation, according to economists, with the consumer price index predicted to decline 0.1% month-over-month.

Cemile Bingol | Digitalvision Vectors | Getty Images

Bitcoin on Thursday surged to its highest price in nearly a month, as traders bet on a U.S. inflation cooldown and digested news that lawyers for defunct crypto exchange FTX found billions of dollars’ worth of assets.
The world’s largest digital currency climbed above $18,000 for the first time since Dec. 14 late Wednesday, increasing in value by about 5% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin was trading at $18,154.35 as of 5 a.m. ET Thursday morning, according to CoinMetrics data.

related investing news

16 hours ago

On Wednesday, attorneys for collapsed crypto exchange FTX said they had found around $5 billion in “liquid” assets, including cash and digital assets. The recovery will be a welcome boon to FTX customers after the crypto exchange imploded in November.
FTX lawyers nevertheless warned the $5 billion cache was so high that selling the assets could lead to significant downside pressure on the market, driving down their value.
“Bitcoin has been in a downtrend for over a year now, which is a standard period of a bear market in crypto,” Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development and international at crypto exchange Luno, told CNBC in emailed comments Thursday morning.
“We’ve had many negative events transpire over the past year, and if one looks at the price reaction to those events, in general it’s been declining less and less — an indication that the market is accepting the news quite well, sell pressure is being absorbed, and hence we’re moving to an accumulation stage,” he added. “This could also mean that the market thinks the worst is over for crypto and that most negative news in now priced in.”

U.S. inflation data due out Thursday is forecast to show a softening of inflation. Economists polled by Dow Jones anticipate that the consumer price index declined 0.1% month-on-month in December.

Inflation is still expected to rise 6.5% year-over-year, though this would be down from a 7.1% jump in November and well off a 9.1% peak rate in June. Investors hope the decline may put pressure on the U.S. Federal Reserve to reverse interest rate increases.
The Fed and other central banks have been raising interest rates over the past year or so in an effort to tame soaring inflation — in moves that forced stocks and cryptocurrencies sharply lower in 2022.
The hope now is that the central bank will cut rates, taking some pressure off risk assets.
“Today’s CPI numbers could be quite telling, and a hot CPI print could definitely throw a spanner in the works for risk-on assets such as crypto,” Ayyar said.
That or further negative news in crypto may cause the price of bitcoin to slip below $17,000, Ayyar warned, setting the stage for additional declines and a potential fall of the digital asset within a $12,000 to $14,000 range.
Bitcoin is down about 74% from its November 2021 all-time high of $68,990. Last year, nearly $1.4 trillion of value was wiped off the cryptocurrency market, as traders dumped risky assets like technology and growth stocks.

Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro

Bitcoin and the broader digital currency market also slumped, suggesting increasing correlation with major stock benchmarks like the Nasdaq Composite.
The plunge was also caused by crypto-specific issues, including the collapses of projects and companies like FTX and Terra.
Bitcoin has however started 2023 on positive footing, with its price rising steadily over the last 12 days.
Other digital currencies were buoyed by the jump in bitcoin prices Thursday. Ether, the second-largest coin, rose almost 5% to $1,397.78 while Binance’s BNB token rose 3% to $283.
Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, told CNBC Wednesday that the exchange plans to increase hiring by 15% to 30% in 2023, in stark contrast with other exchanges that have cut jobs.
Binance, which earlier earmarked $1 billion for a fund aimed at propping up the industry after the collapse of FTX, has itself been beset by fears over the soundness of its reserves. The auditor working on the company’s so-called proof of reserves, Mazars, paused all work with crypto companies in December.
Binance says it has more than enough assets to cover liabilities.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More