Despite Friday’s confirmation of another month of robust job growth, Wall Street couldn’t shake a “relentless decline” that’s going on 6 weeks now and was fueled on Monday “by new data from China that added to concerns about a global economy that’s being battered by high inflation, rising interest rates and a malfunctioning supply chain.” That data—which unsurprisingly showed a significant slowdown in growth correlated to recent Covid-prompted lockdowns—was enough to take another 3.2% bite out of the S&P 500 and confirm volatility as the new normal for traders - NYTimes and Bloomberg and WSJ and MarketWatch
Bitcoin continues to slide in tandem with markets in general, falling below $31k—some 55% off from its all-time high in November 2021 - WSJ and Bloomberg and Mashable and TechCrunch
All of which is to say, these are not boom times for Cathie Wood and her ARKK fund - Bloomberg
Match Group, the parent company of online dating services like OKCupid and Tinder, has sued Google, arguing that the company “broke antitrust laws with the rules it set for its smartphone app store” that “restrict the ability of apps to charge consumers for in-app products using their own payment systems.” The N.D. Cal. Federal lawsuit is the “latest salvo in a long-running fight with app developers on one side and Google and Apple on the other” - NYTimes and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
Less than a week after ownership of Rivian’s stock dragged down the company’s quarterly financials by billions, Ford has “sold off about 8% of its stockholdings” in the e-truck maker, “pushing shares of the electric-vehicle startup to an all-time low.” Ford is “no longer partnering to develop an EV with Rivian” and is taking steps to “gradually reduce its stake in what has become a rival in the electric-truck market” - WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
A rising threat of legal liability has prompted Goldman Sachs to retract its once-strong support of “working with most SPACs it took public , . . . throwing into doubt the fate of billions raised for those blank-check companies.” Goldman, the “second-biggest underwriter of special purpose acquisition companies last year,” appears shaken by recent SEC guidance that would tighten “oversight of SPACs” and expose “underwriters to greater liability risk” - Bloomberg and Law360
Facial recognition software maker Clearview AI has agreed to resolve an ACLU-led lawsuit and will “limit its face database in the United States primarily to government agencies and not allow most American companies to have access to it” and its “more than 20 billion facial photos.” The deal marks the latest in a series of consequences stemming from the company’s practice of scraping photos from the web, a business model that’s run afoul of privacy authorities in Canada, Australia, and parts of Europe and led to fines north of $20M in parts of the world - NYTimes and Law360 and TechCrunch
G7 leaders reached an agreement over the weekend to “ban or phase out Russian oil, aiming to still further erode Russia’s economic standing as it pursues its invasion of Ukraine.” Details of the pledge remain murky, but the group promised to enforce the plans in a “timely and orderly fashion, and in ways that provide time for the world to secure alternative supplies” - NYTimes
Speaking of Russia, more on Elvira Nabiullina, the Russian central bank chief tasked with keeping her nation afloat and undoing the years of work she did in recent years of connecting her country’s economy to the rest of the world - NYTimes
Tobacco giant Philip Morris International is reportedly in talks to acquire Swedish Match AB, an international rival, “in a deal that could be valued at $15 billion or more and bolster the [company’s] exposure to the rapidly growing market for smoke-free brands” - WSJ
CityLab explores what the new NYC e-bikes mean for the future of transportation in “a city where all e-bikes were technically illegal until 2018,” where they “stand to play an outsized role in shaping the city’s transportation picture for years to come” - Bloomberg
Stay safe,
MDR
The Robins Kaplan Financial Daily Dose features top stories and latest news headlines in financial markets, banking, securities and technology topics.
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