What we’re reading (3/16)
“SEC Prepares Proposal To Eliminate Quarterly Reporting Requirement” (Wall Street Journal). “Publicly traded companies in the U.S. have reported results every three months for the past 50-plus years. Trump briefly explored the idea of moving to semiannual earnings reports during his first term, but the effort went nowhere. Those in favor of less-frequent reporting requirements believe a switch could help boost the shrinking number of public companies in the U.S. Among the reasons companies cite as to why they remain private is the time-consuming and costly clerical work required to list and maintain publicly traded shares.”
“Oil Jumps Over 2% As Doubts Linger Over U.S.-Backed Plan To Protect Strait Of Hormuz Shipping” (CNBC). “Oil prices jumped over 2% on Tuesday as uncertainty lingered over a U.S.-led coalition to protect shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. International benchmark Brent crude gained 2.45% to $102.57 per barrel, while the U.S. West Texas Intermediate rose 2.51% to $95.85 per barrel as of 8:44 p.m. ET.”
“America Depends Less On Oil Than Ever” (New York Times). “[T]he U.S. economy is less “energy intensive,” for a few reasons. One, the U.S. economy now depends largely on services like health care, retail and entertainment, which require much less energy than manufacturing industries. There are only about 21 million jobs in goods-producing sectors, while private services employ 114 million people. And two, the machines that Americans do use are now much more efficient, a trend that started in earnest after the oil price shocks of the 1970s.”
“March FOMC Preview: The Fog Of War And The Credibility Of Policy” (BNP Paribas). “We expect the FOMC to acknowledge that risks to inflation have increased on account of the Iran war, and to underscore the importance of maintaining stable long-term inflation expectations. We see a significant, underappreciated tail risk that the FOMC moves toward a ‘symmetric policy bias’,i.e. either a rate hike or a cut is roughly equally likely to follow. However, our base case is that policymakers delay this change for now, as the US labor market does not seem to be overheating and the war’s length, severity and economic impact are uncertain. We still expect the FOMC to remain on hold this year, owing to economic resilience and high, sticky inflation. The oil price rise increases our short-run conviction in this view, but leaves us with greater, bidirectional risk over the medium term.”
“OpenAI To Cut Back On Side Projects To Focus On Core Business, WSJ Reports” (Reuters). “Fidji Simo, chief of applications at OpenAI, previewed the changes to employees in an all-hands meeting, telling them that leaders including CEO Sam Altman and chief research officer Mark Chen were actively looking at which areas to deprioritize, the Journal said, adding that they expect to notify staff about the changes in the coming weeks.”
