Thank you for joining me. JP Morgan paid its chief executive the bank’s highest salary ever as profits and share price outperformed rivals.
Jamie Dimon received $36 million (£28.4 million) for 2023, a 4.3 percent increase from the previous year.
5 things to start the day
1) Hunt plans tax cuts as inflation crisis eases | The Chancellor admits voters are “very angry” about high taxes
2) Thousands of jobs are at risk from net zero plans at Britain’s largest steelworks | Tata Steel plans to decarbonize by replacing its blast furnaces with green technology
3) Norfolk couple win battle against Louis Vuitton over ‘absurd’ name dispute | The battle between “David and Goliath” ends with a victory for the gardening company
4) Ben Marlow: A fleeting Christmas will not restore faith in Royal Mail | The company’s misguided optimism does little to distract from the pervasive sense of decline
5) Matthew Lynn: Sunak’s pride allowed Labor to steal the show at Davos | Britain’s main champion missed the chance to change the country’s fortunes
What happened overnight?
Asian stocks rallied, buoyed by a rally in global chipmakers, while the yen was expected to end the week with heavy losses as investors scaled back bets that the Bank of Japan would soon abandon its overly accommodative policies.
Taipei-listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) rose 6.3 percent after the chipmaker forecast revenue growth of more than 20 percent in 2024. Its U.S. stocks rose nearly 10 percent overnight, sparking a broad tech rally on Wall Street.
Shares in Tokyo closed higher on Friday, led by gains in chip-linked stocks, with the benchmark Nikkei 225 index rising 1.4%, or 497.10 points, to 35,963.27, while the broader Topix index rose by Closed down 0.7% or 17.94 points at 2,510.03.
Data showed that core consumer inflation in Japan slowed for a second straight month in December, adding to speculation that the BOJ is in no hurry to tighten its ultra-loose monetary policy.
The yen lost 0.2 percentage point to 148.48 per dollar, after falling nearly 2.5 percentage points this week to its lowest level since early December.
Chinese stocks fell again after bouncing off five-year lows a day earlier on signs of government support. Chinese blue chips fell 0.3 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.2 percent.
Wall Street rallied on Thursday, recouping almost all of the losses it suffered earlier in the week.
The S&P 500 rose 0.9 percent to 4,780.94, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average of America’s top 30 companies rose 0.5 percent to 37,468.61. The Nasdaq Composite Index, which is heavy on technology stocks, rose 1.3 percent to 15,055.65.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose again on Thursday to 4.13 percent from 4.11 percent late Wednesday, suggesting confidence in impending rate cuts has fallen. But the move was milder than earlier in the week, when it jumped from 3.95 percent.
