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US and European stocks up as optimism returns, Treasuries and oil down, China built 2 new coal plants per week in 2022, More layoffs at Twitter, companies already replacing workers with ChatGPT
Last Friday, US stocks closed out the worst week of 2023. But all three major indexes were up in early trading on Monday as optimism returned, while investors awaited new retail earnings and macro data.
Dow Jones industrial futures advanced 143 points or +0.44%, while S&P 500 futures climbed 18.5 points or +0.47%, and NASDAQ futures rose 65.25 points or 0.54%, Yahoo Finance reported.
European markets were up 1.3% after also suffering their worst week of 2023, CNBC reported. The European Central Bank definitively acknowledged it intends to hike rates by another 50 basis points in March.
The benchmark US 10-Year Treasury was down -0.021 for a yield of 3.932%, while the 2-Year Treasury was down -0.014 for a yield of 4.791% as of 8:36 AM EST.
In oil futures, WTI crude was down -0.33% and trading at $76.07 barrel, while Brent crude was down -0.42% and trading at $82.81 a barrel, as of 8:38 AM ET.
A new report has found that China approved the highest number of new coal-fired plants since 2015, the equivalent of two new coal plants a week in 2022, according to a report released by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the Global Energy Monitor (GEM), CNN reported.
China has rapidly approved building new coal-fired power plants despite its promises to reduce carbon emissions. China’s emissions are more than double those of the United States.
According to a report by the New York Times, Twitter reduced its workforce by roughly another 10% over the weekend, eliminating about 200 jobs, bringing its total employees to under 2,000, CNN reported. However, a separate report by Yahoo Finance put the number of layoffs at 50 employees.
Earlier this month, 1,000 business leaders who either use or plan to use ChatGPT were surveyed by job advice platform Resumebuilder.com and roughly half had already used the artificial intelligence bot to replace workers at their companies, Slashdot reported.
The companies already using ChatGPT have implemented it in various ways:
Nearly all the respondents said they’ve saved money using the tool, with 48% saying they saved over $50,000 and 11% saving more than $100,000.
