Finimize - 🚛 The US kept on trucking

Hi Reader, here's what you need to know for January 27th in 3:10 minutes.

👣 Good balance helps you stay on your feet when things get rocky – and in the world of investing, that means having a wide, stable spread of assets. Join IG’s Martin Harris for How To Build A Smart Portfolio on February 14th, and find out how to keep your footing when the whole world starts to shake. Get your free ticket now

Today's big stories

The US economy slowed less than expected last quarter
This stock could be the best AI investment play going – Read Now
The world’s biggest spirits maker Diageo celebrated tequila-shot-worthy sales

Easy Does It

What’s Going On Here?

Fresh data out on Thursday showed that US economic growth slowed less than expected last quarter.

What Does This Mean?

Rate hikes are one of the main weapons the Federal Reserve (the Fed) has in its war on inflation, and it hasn’t been particularly shy about firing them off. But while the economy’s sustained some damage, it still managed to stay on its feet last quarter. After all, a key measure of consumer spending – which makes up the lion’s share of the economy – increased by just over 2%. That’s less than economists expected, sure, but growth is growth. Government spending took its biggest leap in almost two years too, and companies upped their inventories – all of which helped plug the gap left by plunging residential property investments and dwindling exports. On the whole, the news was good: the economy grew at an annualized pace of 2.9%, a slowdown from the previous quarter, but better than the 2.6% economists expected.

Why Should I Care?

The bigger picture: Time will tell.
There’s no denying that the economy showed pluck last quarter, but some pundits still think rate hikes haven’t had their full impact yet, and reckon they’ll knock the economy into a mild recession as the year wears on. That chimes with a recent survey by Bloomberg: it revealed that economists think the economy will shrink by 0.6% and 0.3% in the second and third quarters of this year – marking a technical recession.

Zooming out: Deny all knowledge.
The Fed isn’t done yet: the central bank’s widely expected to hike rates by 0.25 percentage points next week, and eventually bring rates to 5% and hold them there for a while. But while economists are already sounding the recession alarm, the central bank insists a good old “soft landing” is still a possibility. At any rate, there’s no guarantee it’ll fess up if things do take a turn: it kept mum when a technical recession set in last year, after all.

You might also like: abrdn sees the world on the brink of recession.

Copy to share story: https://go.finimize.com/wp/news/easy-does-it-3/

🙋 Ask a question

Analyst Take

Nvidia Could Be The Best Way To Invest In AI Right Now

By Paul Allison, Analyst

You don’t have to know a ton about artificial intelligence (AI) to know it’s going to be huge.

What’s less clear is how to invest in its future. AI is new – and there are companies beyond the Big Tech titans with a major stake in the technology.

Nvidia is one of them. And it could be the single best AI investment play out there.

That’s today’s Insight: a close look at Nvidia, and whether it belongs in your portfolio.

Read or listen to the Insight here

In a world full of somebodies, become a Nobody

There are tons of perks to being a Nobody, like investing once to be a part of 100 up-and-coming companies.

See, Nobody Studios is using the latest tech innovations to radically overhaul the way that new companies are created, funded, and operated.

With good reason, too: plenty of high-potential startups fail because they can’t access capital, or end up overfunded – and plenty of would-be investors just can’t find the right opportunities.

Nobody Studios, though, is on a mission to build up 100 companies in 5 years, and has enlisted top execs from Amazon, Facebook, Google, Stripe, and Coca-Cola to do just that.

Now’s your chance to own a piece of every business Nobody builds up: you can become a Nobody too.

Find Out More