| Bloomberg Evening Briefing Americas |
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| US companies announced the largest number of job cuts for any January since the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, according to data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Companies last month announced 108,435 job cuts, a 118% increase from a year earlier. The report on Thursday also showed hiring intentions slid 13% from a year earlier to 5,306—marking the weakest total for any January in the firm’s records back 17 years. “Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” said Andy Challenger, the company’s chief revenue officer. “It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026.” Almost half of the job cuts announced in January were tied to three companies—Amazon, United Parcel Service and Dow. Amazon announced plans to cut 16,000 corporate positions while UPS said it would shed as many as 30,000. Chemical maker Dow intends to eliminate about 4,500 positions, while Peloton Interactive and Nike also announced mass dismissals. —David E. Rovella | |
What You Need to Know Today | |
| Amid all those employee terminations, Amazon said it plans to spend $200 billion this year on data centers, chips and other equipment. It’s stock subsequently dropped 7%. The company’s investors, like those of other free-spending tech giants, are increasingly worried that colossal bets on artificial intelligence will shrink profits while it waits for investments to pay off. Or worse. | |
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| The deregulatory Trump bump has now been fully erased. Bitcoin tumbled below $65,000 as the unwinding of leveraged bets and broader market turbulence deepened a selloff that’s wiped out all of the gains since the crypto friendly Republican returned to the White House. The token fell as much as 11% Thursday to $64,944, the lowest since October 2024. The rout has erased nearly half of Bitcoin’s value since it reached a record four months ago and has spread to other tokens, related exchange-traded funds and companies like Strategy that hold vast sums of coins. “The fear and uncertainty across the market is evident,” said Chris Newhouse, head of business development at Ergonia. “Without conviction-based buyers willing to lean into the selling, each wave of ETF redemptions and liquidation cascades.” He said that’s “amplifying the magnitude of each leg lower and reinforcing the defensive positioning that’s keeping organic demand on the sidelines.” | |
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| Anthropic is just getting started with Wall Street. After taking more than a few hairs off the top of the software industry this week, the AI darling is taking aim at the financial sector itself. The company is releasing a new version of its most powerful AI model that’s designed to carry out financial research. The company on Thursday unveiled Claude Opus 4.6, which it says can scrutinize company data, regulatory filings and market information to come up with detailed financial analyses that would normally take a person days to complete. Opus 4.6 is also meant to be better at a range of other work-related functions, including making spreadsheets and presentations—as well as software development. | |
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| The criminal investigation by the Trump administration of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, the high-water mark of a year-long campaign of insults and threats by Donald Trump, may upend the president’s pick to replace him. Senate Republicans, who have broadly followed Trump’s direction and applauded his nomination of Kevin Warsh to lead the Fed, increasingly view the probe as an unnecessary roadblock in a confirmation process that would otherwise be uneventful. That’s because Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican member of the Banking Committee (who isn’t running for re-election), said he would oppose any Trump Fed nominee until the issue is resolved. | |
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| Rio Tinto Group is walking away from talks to acquire Glencore after the two sides failed to agree on valuation, scuttling a potential mega merger that would have created the world’s largest mining company. The deal would have been the largest in a series of attempted takeovers among the world’s top miners, as executives look to bulk up in copper and boost their valuations to gain more relevance with global investors. The idea of a combination of the two companies has been discussed several times over more than a decade. It was first floated before the global financial crisis, and then revived in 2014—when Rio quickly rejected an informal approach from Glencore— before conversations resumed in earnest in 2024. | |
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