Bit shipments will decline sequentially in the first quarter and there will be “significant sequential declines in revenue and margins,” Micron said in a

US productivity slumped for a second-straight quarter as the economy shrank, driving another surge in labor costs that risks keeping inflation elevated and further complicates the Federal Reserve’s efforts to tame price increases.

Productivity, or nonfarm business employee output per hour, decreased at a 4.6% annual rate in the second quarter after falling at a 7.4% pace in the previous three months, Labor Department figures showed Tuesday.

Investments in US college endowments declined the most since the global financial crisis, owing in part to double-digit losses in US equity markets.

Endowments lost a median 10.2% before fees for the 12 months through June, according to data to be published Tuesday by Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service. The largest funds -- those with assets of more than $500 million -- fared substantially better, with a slight gain of 0.9%. Larger endowments tend to invest more in alternatives such as private equity funds, which offered a buffer against the equity-market losses, while smaller ones rely more heavily on US stocks. 

Franklin Templeton’s Jenny Johnson is confronting the kind of problem her grandfather encountered decades ago.

With companies now taking longer to go public, Johnson wants to bring more private investment opportunities to everyday customers. The chief executive officer of the $1.4 trillion money-management giant sees the “democratization of private assets” as analogous to her grandfather offering mutual funds to retail investors at a time when it was hard to diversify. 

Online prices in the US declined from a year earlier in July for the first time since 2020, as pandemic-era demand for consumer goods cools off. 

Prices dropped by 1% on an annual basis, according to the Adobe Digital Price Index, ending a run of 25 straight months of inflation in goods purchased online. Before the pandemic, online prices had been falling steadily for several years. 

The Federal Reserve is penciling in at least another couple of years of running down its bond portfolio of around $8 trillion. But observers are increasingly predicting it will end a whole lot sooner than that.

Even before the Fed’s balance-sheet runoff plan, known as quantitative tightening, gets up to full speed in September -- at a monthly clip of up to $95 billion, or over $1.1 trillion a year -- two camps of economists and strategists have emerged predicting an early end, at some point in 2023.

If the US avoids a recession, or at least a deep one, it will most likely be able to thank industrial companies.

While demand on the consumer side of the economy is weakening, it remains solid in the manufacturing sector and, more important, appears to be sustainable even if shoppers cut back further. Consider the outlook from a few companies most people pay little attention to.

In boom times many big companies turn themselves into venture capitalists, backing young enterprises in a bid to stay competitive or discover the next big thing. But when the economy slumps -- as it is now -- some corporations rethink their ties to startup funding, as the investment divisions of food giants Kellogg’s and Kraft Heinz show.

Though tech companies like Alphabet Inc. have well-entrenched corporate investment divisions, other firms may lack the same level of commitment to their venture arms, and as US recession signals

Hi, I’m Julian Lee with today’s edition of Elements, Bloomberg’s new energy and commodities newsletter. We bring you a daily mix of commentary from Bloomberg Opinion writers and the best of our market-leading news coverage. We hope you’re enjoying it, and if you haven’t yet signed up to get it direct into your inbox, you can do that here.

The world’s three big oil agencies update their forecasts this week. Demand will be in the spotlight, with traders weighing a worsening economic outlook against limited spare production capacity and looming European Union sanctions on Russian exports. I’m expecting another downward revision to oil consumption forecasts.

While the northern leg of the Druzhba pipeline, which runs through Belarus to Poland and Germany, was unaffected, according to Transneft, oil prices rose in London. Brent crude was 1.4% higher at $97.97 a barrel as of 12:25 p.m.

Since bottoming in mid-June, the iPhone maker’s shares have surged 27%, outpacing the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq 100 Index. That’s put Apple back on top as the world’s most valuable company and within sight of turning positive for the year. Apple is now down just 7.2% in 2022, compared with a drop of 19% for the Nasdaq 100. 

Markets await inflation report, meme stocks surge and is the 60/40 portfolio still viable? 

Financial markets seem to be in a holding pattern ahead of crucial inflation data for July that are due on Wednesday. Consumer prices rose 8.7% after climbing 9.1% in June, according to the median forecast of economists. Meanwhile, consumer expectations for price increases declined sharply in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's latest survey. While that may give policy makers some comfort, the surge in energy prices is raising the cost of everything from bread to sugar, which will keep price pressures on the boil.

Wilson, who has advocated for investment in infrastructure across the UK for years and made L&G one of the UK’s biggest backers of such projects, said restrictive regulations were holding back funds from going into sectors such as renewable energy and making homes more energy-efficient.

Britons booking a break in some of Europe’s most popular holiday destinations this summer are seeing airfares climb by almost a third amid booming demand, high oil prices and curbs on airline capacity.

Fares in the first week of August, the peak month for UK travel, were up 30% on average for the top 36 routes compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to data compiled by online travel agency Kayak.

The pandemic brought a shift toward digital payments, but now it seems more and more consumers are turning back to cold hard cash to help budget during the cost-of-living crisis.

Britain’s Post Office, which has 2,700 ATM locations across the country, said its branches handled a record £801 million ($969.45 million) in cash withdrawals in July. That’s up almost 8% compared to June and 20% from the same period last year. 

Europe’s bond market is enduring its worst drought in at least 8 years.

The market has seen 32 days without a single public debt offering from governments and corporations this year, already surpassing 2018 as the slowest year since records begin in 2014, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That tally is certain to rise since activity usually slows markedly during the August vacation season. 

Highly optimistic analyst stock recommendations are flashing a warning signal for the equity market rally, according to Citigroup Inc. strategists.

An index of global sell-side ratings “is back to peak bullishness levels reached in 2000 and 2007, after which global equities halved,” strategists led by Robert Buckland wrote in a note.

When investor demand for Chinese property debt was approaching its peak back in 2018, a banker could pull together the makings of a multi-million dollar deal during a Saturday boat trip around Hong Kong’s harbor and barely look up from her drink while doing it.

Now, the $203 billion market—which once yielded several deals a week and padded portfolios across the world from Pimco to UBS—is all but dead. And offshore investors are swallowing almost all of the losses.