Japanese manufacturers' confidence index turned negative to the central bank's forecast in December. A short-term survey in Reuters, Japan, found that Japanese manufacturers' business confidence deteriorated further in December due to concerns about US protectionist policies. The survey of 505 large Japanese non-financial enterprises showed that manufacturers' confidence index fell from 5 in November to -1 in December, which was the first time since last February, and the number of pessimists exceeded optimists for the first time in 10 months. The loss of business confidence may cast a shadow over the Bank of Japan's forecast. The Bank of Japan had previously predicted that a steady recovery driven by rising wages and consumption would help inflation reach the 2% target in a sustainable way and justify further interest rate hikes. Many manufacturing industries have reported that business confidence has declined. Among electronic machinery manufacturers, steel and non-ferrous metal manufacturers, pessimists far exceed optimists.CITIC Securities: The logic of "grabbing exports" is expected to support the short-term performance of China's exports. According to the CITIC Securities Research Report, in November, China's exports maintained a certain growth rate, exports to emerging markets maintained a high growth rate, and exports of mechanical and electrical products performed brilliantly. In the short term, both CCFI index and SCFI index are on the rise, and the logic of "grabbing exports" is expected to support the short-term performance of China's exports. In the long run, if the United States imposes tariffs on China, China's export performance may be dragged down. However, based on the analysis of the import share structure of the United States, the European Union, Vietnam, Mexico and other economies, we can see that the current pattern of China's trade diversification has improved compared with the last round of Sino-US trade friction, and the trade between emerging markets and China has become closer and closer. The imposition of tariffs by the United States on China may affect the bilateral trade between China and the United States more, and domestic enterprises going to sea and re-exporting trade may still be effective ways to hedge the impact of US tariffs on China.GM will withdraw from the driverless taxi business, and the Cruise self-driving car division of GM will withdraw from the driverless taxi business. According to a statement on Tuesday, Cruise and GM's technical team will be combined to focus on developing autonomous driving and advanced driver safety technology for GM's future sales models. GM said that it will no longer provide funds for the development of self-driving taxis "considering the large amount of time and resources needed to expand its business scale and the increasingly fierce competition in the self-driving taxi market". The company said that giving up the development of self-driving taxis will save it more than $1 billion in annual costs.
OpenAI released the ChatGPT built-in tool Canvas. On December 11th, OpenAI launched the fourth day of technical live broadcast and released the latest function Canvas. According to reports, Canvas is directly built into ChatGPT, providing a separate window, which is mainly used for programming and writing tasks, providing opinions, reviewing and executing specific functions, and providing more detailed services. Simply put, Canvas is equivalent to a built-in Agent to help and guide ChatGPT to make better content generation and modification, and it is automatically triggered.Hyundai Motor: Parker will continue to be the CEO of Hyundai Motor's North American business.Shenzhen Holdings: Auditor replacement: PricewaterhouseCoopers resigned and Ernst & Young took over. On December 10th, Shenzhen Holdings (00604.HK) announced that according to Rule 13.51(4) of the Rules Governing the Listing of Securities on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited, PricewaterhouseCoopers agreed to resign as the auditor of Shenzhen Holdings with effect from December 10th, 2024. At the same time, the board of directors of Shenzhen Holdings decided to appoint Ernst & Young as the new auditor of the company, which will also take effect from December 10, 2024 until the end of the next annual general meeting.
Hyundai Motor: Parker will continue to be the CEO of Hyundai Motor's North American business.Non-bank deposit self-discipline initiative has landed, and bank financial management has welcomed "three changes". "Non-bank deposit self-discipline initiative involves a large scale of deposits, and some banks have begun to rectify. For the banking industry, the overall advantages outweigh the disadvantages. On the one hand, some configurable high-yield assets are gone; On the other hand, self-regulatory initiatives are beneficial to the bond market, and bond assets are an important direction for bank financial allocation. The most important thing is that in terms of risk-return characteristics, bank wealth management products are similar to interbank deposits, and it is expected that a large amount of funds will flow into the bank wealth management market from the interbank deposit market. " On December 10, a person from a financial company of a city commercial bank in the southern region bluntly told reporters.With the general election approaching, German Chancellor Angela Scholz supports reducing the value-added tax on basic groceries. German Chancellor Angela Scholz said in an interview on the evening of December 10th local time that he was in favor of reducing the value-added tax on basic groceries from 7% to 5% to help low-income families cope with inflation. The center-left leader also said that although the opposition Conservative Party has a big lead in the polls, he is confident of winning the early election on February 23rd.