🍋 Power Shift in the Job Market

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Oil and gas prices hit the highest annual profit in the industry’s 115-year history. ChatGPT officially announced a paid subscription service for $20/month, and Fidelity and Vanguard both say Americans are withdrawing from their 401(k)’s in record numbers.

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1. Story of the Day: Power Shift in the Job Market

After years of being in a constant state of panic and trying to hold on to every single employee, executives are breathing a sigh of relief as the job market stabilizes.

The days of doling out lavish pay raises to underperformers are long gone, and filling positions is becoming a breeze. This newfound power has given executives the confidence to start trimming the fat, cutting back on projects and streamlining operations. 

A lot of manager-employee dynamics can be explained by the job market. During Covid, companies struggled to attract and retain top talent as employees moved around in record numbers. But now, the job market is starting to show some signs of fatigue and managers are gaining some power back.

December hiring was a bit of a snooze fest, with the lowest number of new hires in two years. According to a survey by The Wall Street Journal, economists are predicting that the job market took an even deeper nap in January and year-over-year wage increases have started to decline. We'll find out just how comatose the job market is on today when the Labor Department releases the January jobs report.

Takeaway: With a tightening job market, no longer are employers groveling at the feet of top candidates. Instead, executives and their confidants are crowing about a shift in power dynamic. Employers who once felt like they were stuck in a labor market chokehold are now confidently wielding the power of negotiation. With less urgency to snap up the best talent before it's gone, managers are also free to enforce office attendance policies that have previously been disregarded, and that could spell the end to remote work.

2. Markets Rundown

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Stocks closed higher as tech earnings continue to be positive.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Coinbase ($COIN) +24% after a class-action suit against Coinbase was dismissed by a Manhattan federal judge.

• (+) Meta ($META) +23% after it announced a $40 billion stock buyback plan.

• (–) Eily Lily ($LILY) -3% after poor Q4 earnings.

Private Dealmaking

• Saviynt, a cloud-based identity management platform, raised $205 million

• MNT-Hanan, an Egyptian lending and payments fintech, raised $200 million

• The Exploration Company, the French rival to SpaceX, raised $46 million

• Log9 Materials, a developer of EV batteries, raised $40 million

• Hnry, a New Zealand-based accounting fintech, raised $25 million

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3. Top Reads

• Central banks vs. the markets (Axios)

• Meta wowed Wall Street, but investors remain skeptical about tech (CNN)

• Amazon’s ad business grew by nearly 20% while Meta and Google saw slowdown (CNBC)

• China’s reopening spurs returns in emerging markets funds (Axios)

• 80% of workers who quit in the Great Resignation have regrets (CNBC)

• Where inflation is hitting hardest (Axios)

• Apple forecasts another revenue decline after quarterly profit miss (Reuters)

• Blackstone will be #1 in CLO’s with AIG’s $3.6 billion deal (BB)

• Alphabet misses revenue estimates as ad business slips after Covid (Reuters)

• Why Charlie Munger thinks America should ban crypto (Fox)

4. Book of the Day: The Great Money Reset

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The Great Money Reset is your guide to getting serious and building your best life. A road map for navigating our present era, this book shows us how to take advantage of the seismic changes unfurling all around us to make big life improvements. 

Whether it’s negotiating a better deal with your boss, starting or selling a business, moving to a new locale, retraining for a new career, taking time off to find yourself, or saying “the heck with it” and retiring early, The Great Money Reset provides an essential frame-work for strategizing and planning your next move.

Is quitting your job a wise decision or the biggest mistake of your life? Should you pursue that graduate degree or are you throwing away your money for a few meaningless letters after your name? 

What kinds of lifestyle sacrifices will you need to make―and could you tolerate―in order to realize your dreams? What tax and investment moves should you make to secure your future as you head into uncharted territory? 

And how can you put yourself in a strong position to undertake future life transitions that you can’t fully imagine now?

“Ten timely financial steps to build the life you really want.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

• Weightlifting tips from an unlikely expert

• How to improve your life with the 80/20 rule

• How to become indistractable 

• 5 benefits of thinking out loud

• The best way to deal with unpleasant emotions might be by doing nothing

• 4 affirmations to combat imposter syndrome

What Else to Read

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6. Daily Visual: Cities with the Highest Inflation

12-month change in CPI as of Dec '22

Source: Axios

7. Daily Acumen

When someone is giving you feedback, they’re doing you a favor. 

Even if you’re upset to hear about your mistakes, and even if you think they are wrong and

you shouldn’t change your behavior, they’re giving you the gift of information, you didn’t

have before.

8. Memes of the Day

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