Big mood 💸
| 📉 MOODY MARKETS  The holidays are long over. Everything's expensive. The pandemic is entering year three. It's cold outside. And, in a surreal, 1980s-feeling twist, we're staring down the barrel of a war with Russia. We're tired. We're edgy. And that's partly why the stock market is acting, for lack of a better term, battypants.
A lot has happened in just three weeks since the market's peak on January 3. Stocks have tumbled 10% into a correction, and after a brief, stunning rebound Monday, investors aren't done selling just yet. Anyone hoping for a Tuesday turnaround were sorely disappointed: All three major indexes ended in the red.
The primary cause of the market jitters lies with the Federal Reserve, which is meeting this week and widely expected to begin raising interest rates in March to try to rein in inflation. We knew that was coming, but the Fed's tone has turned decidedly more hawkish, which has investors on edge about how aggressively the Fed will raise rates.
With little to cheer about, the market is in some ways reflecting America's mood right now. Let's just hibernate a while — wake me up when it's warm out.
Against that backdrop, we can hardly fault President Biden for venting some frustration in his hot mic gaffe yesterday. Because even though the economy is in good shape — unemployment is very low and wages are rising — Wall Street energy has a way of infecting Main Street.
Turmoil in financial markets could spill over into the real economy, erasing trillions of dollars in household wealth, my colleague Matt Egan writes. And steep losses on Wall Street could rattle already shaky consumer confidence. If your nest egg just got 20% smaller, you might be thinking of holding off on that trip to Hawaii, or that new car (if you're able to find one), or that new house (if you're able to find one). #️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY 18.8% Home prices are cooling off, but only juuuuuust a bit. Year over year, prices rose 18.8% in November, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index. But that's down from October's staggering 19.1% jump. Despite the deceleration, November's gain was the sixth highest in the 34 years covered by the index. The top five gains were notched in the months immediately preceding November.
💸 RICH MILLENNIALS  When you picture a Rolls-Royce owner, you might conjure images of chauffeured golf outings, yacht club regattas, Grey Poupon...
They are, after all, huge, cushy cars designed for comfort. Like a really, really expensive La-Z-Boy.
But when Rolls-Royce recently announced its record-breaking 2021 sales — about 5,600 vehicles sold worldwide — it also revealed a demographic surprise: The average age of its customers globally is just 43 years old.
That means the Rolls is no longer just for retirees – rich Millennials are into them, too. Few other car brands can boast an average buyer age as low as Rolls-Royce's. In fact, Rolls-Royce had a higher percentage of buyers under age 45 than many other luxury and exotic brands, including Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Lexus, and even Lamborghini.
The reason? It's an age gap between the rich and the super-rich. People who buy a Rolls are able to drop up to half a million bucks on a car — that's not merely wealthy, that's bananas. People with between $1 million and $25 million in net worth are, on average, about 62 years old, according to research by Spectrem Group. But those with a net worth over $25 million are, on average, 48 years old. Think tech entrepreneurs, star athletes, Hollywood elite.
My colleague Peter Valdes-Dapena has a deep dive into the tribe of stupid-rich Millennials who are becoming the new, less-wrinkled face of Rolls-Royce.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON? 🏦 Bank of America is handing out $1 billion worth of restricted stock to virtually its entire workforce as the bank seeks to gain an upper hand in the war for talent.
📈 The International Monetary Fund slashed its global growth forecast for 2022 by half a percentage point to 4.4%, saying the world's two largest economies, the United States and China, would grow more slowly than it predicted in October.
💳 American Express said revenue in the fourth quarter soared 30% from a year ago, thanks in large part to record spending by its members.
🍋 The latest entrant in the battle of boozy canned drinks: Simply Lemonade. TWEET OF THE DAY
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