Good morning. US stock futures slipped in Thursday morning trading as investors digested the latest batch of corporate earnings reports.

"I’ve found that investors who rely on crystal balls frequently wind up with crushed glass"

Martin Zweig

Top News

Biden expands scope of “junk fees” attack

WHAT: The White House isn’t pulling any punches when it comes to its war on “junk fees”! In a sweeping announcement, the Biden Administration said they were expanding their scope to include junk fees in the rental housing market, would be cracking down on price fixing in the food and agriculture markets and unveiled new merger guidelines as part of an ongoing push to support US consumers.

WHY: The new measures come on the heels of the second anniversary of a Biden executive order that created the 18-agency Competition Council, and a full-scale, government-wide attack on anti-competitive practices.

Congress probes US firms investments in China

WHAT: A US House of Representatives Committee has got their magnifying glasses out and are investigating a few US venture capital firms and their semiconductors and artificial intelligence buddies. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent letters to GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, Walden International and Qualcomm Ventures asking for information on their investments in China.

WHY: The Biden Administration is considering new rules that would restrict the flow of US investments in Chinese companies working on advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

Economists expect Fed rate hike at next meeting

WHAT: Most economists are placing their bets that the Federal Reserve will resume interest rate hikes at its next meeting after a brief pause in June. The survey of economists conducted by Bloomberg showed that they are projecting a final quarter point increase by the Fed, taking rates to a range of between 5.25%-5.5% — the highest level in over 20 years.

WHY: Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues have signaled plans to hike rates further following a pause in June that was intended to slow the pace of increases as they approach a level believed to be restrictive enough to return inflation to their 2% target.

In Other News

Musk commits $1 billion to build “supercomputer”

 WHAT: Tesla is diving head-first into the supercomputing game with the revelation of its latest technical adventure “Project Dojo”. CEO Elon Musk said the company will spend upwards of $1 billion on the project which is designed to handle massive amounts of data including video from Tesla’s cars needed to create autonomous driving software.

WHY: Musk said Tesla has a staggering amount of video at its disposal thanks to its customers use of camera-based driver assistance software called Autopilot, and a related feature known as “Full Self Driving Beta” that has racked up more than 300 million miles of data.

Apple GPT?

WHAT: Move over Siri! Apple’s got a secret chatbot up its sleeve! According to reports from Bloomberg, Apple is cooking up its own AI-powered chatbot which some engineers are calling “Apple GPT”. The company reportedly does not have any plans to release the technology to the public yet.

WHY: As other tech giants including Meta, Google, and Microsoft have moved quickly releasing generative AI products, Apple has been fairly quiet in the space.

TikTok opens up EU access

WHAT: TikTok is getting ahead of the game in Europe! To comply with the European Union’s new regulations, they’re offering access to their research software to European researchers. “TikTok is proactively rolling out its Research API ahead of further technical guidance, and launching a content library ahead of the DSA compliance deadline” the social media app said in a statement.

WHY: TikTok, owned by Chinese conglomerate ByteDance, is one of 19 platforms and search engines subject to tougher EU requirements that will kick in from August under the Digital Services Act.

Key Economic Events

• Thursday - Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook

• Friday - No Major Economic News

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