Friendshoring is on. Friendzoning, eh..not so much

At Feasible, we are not big on trends. You see trends come and go, but you got to bet on sustainability. Don’t believe us? Here’s what Benjamin Graham said. Wait, why do you care about this guy and who is he? He was Warren Buffet’s guru and talked about value investing with stock fundamentals. Didn’t care too much about traders, quarterly or even annual plays. You see there’s quite a bit we can learn from boomers.

In today’s daily we have,

• US and China are doing that on again - off again right now

• Apple wants to build a digital wallet

• Angry Birds company just got acquired

• Car companies are looking are trying to protect their passenger eyeballs.

  Let's do a look-see.

The Big Picture

US and it’s allies are looking to reduce trade dependency on China and increase trade with it’s G7 Allies - Canada, Japan, Italy, France, Germany and Italy. The move comes in the aftermath of the IMF predictions showing slowing growth of the G7 countries. There are warning of geopolitical blocs being drawn as US has enacted laws to restrict export of advanced semiconductors and related equipment to China. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen calls this increased trade between the G7 as ‘friendshoring’, and believes this is the alternative to increase resilience and move away from China and Russia post the Ukraine war. Europe has raised concerns about the major subsidies announced in the Inflation protection Act which has increased green energy investment into America. Several. Solar panel and battery manufacturers are moving out their investments out of Europe after the announcement of the Act. US is trying to ease European concerns by means of trade deals as it tries to manage this volatile situation carefully.

Sector Sweep

Tech

• Apple just launched a savings account with an annual percentage yield of 4.15%. The company has partnered with Goldman Sachs as part of their efforts to transform the IPhone to a digital wallet.

• Weeks after signing a petition to slow down the progress of AI development, Elon Musk has is starting a new initiative called Truth GPT - “A maximum truth seeking AI to understand the nature of the universe”.

• SEGA has agreed to pay about $800 million to Finland based Rovia Entertainment Oyj, the company behind the viral game Angry Birds.

Media

• Canadian Broadcasting Corp(CBC) is said its pausing activity on Twitter after being labeled as government funded. This comes just a week after NPR backing away from Twitter for the same reason.

Automotive

• GM is dropping the Apple carplay integration as it puts it’s hat in the ring to monetize passenger attention for the car screen. It joins Tesla in their strategy to battle with tech companies for the digital real estate they own.

• After multiple allegations of not installing the anti-car theft feature, Cleveland, Seattle, St Louis and five other cities are suing Kia and Hyundai for property damage and loss of police resources.

Space

• SpaceX Starship launch was delayed due to ‘valve problem’. According to SpaceX, it will be humanity’s most powerful launch vehicle developed capable of carrying 150 metric tonnes including crew, cargo to interplanetary missions.

Pharma

• Bill Anderson, the new CEO of Bayer which acquired Montasanto is carefully laying out his strategy as he deals with the turmoil Montasanto faces. Bayer, the chemical and pharmaceutical company known for inventing aspirin is dealing with series of litigations Montasanto faces.

Easy peesy, lemon squeezy

Too much no-code out there