Despite a 2020 that blew up every best-laid plan, Wall Street can’t help being optimistic when it comes to 2021. Recovery and revival are two of the words dominating market outlooks from the biggest banks and investment firms. Caveats abound, but the consensus is that after the Covid-spurred crash, the availability of vaccines is setting the stage for a new period of economic growth—and rising asset prices. Bloomberg News has once again assembled the most important predictions of the new year, just for you. —David E. Rovella

Bloomberg is tracking the progress of coronavirus vaccines while mapping the pandemic globally and across America. 

Here are today’s top stories 

That optimism may seem misplaced given the bad news that has accompanied the start of 2021. A more-easily spread variant of the novel coronavirus first spotted in the U.K. has landed in multiple U.S. locations, including New York, as the slow U.S. rollout of vaccines by the Trump administration and state authorities triggers widespread criticism. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered a full return to lockdown as the island nation’s healthcare system buckles.

It gets worse. There is yet another coronavirus variant, this one having emerged in South Africa. The new version is driving a surge of infections in that country, and like the U.K. strain, appears to be more infectious than previous mutations. Here is the latest on the pandemic.

Donald Trump’s latest effort to undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and cling to power—a phone call pressuring Georgia officials to dig up some more votes—could trigger yet another criminal investigation of the soon-to-be former president (he and his businesses are already the subject of criminal and civil investigations in New York). The phone call also spurred demands on Capitol Hill that Trump be impeached for a second time. The attempt to change the outcome in Georgia comes as two of his fellow Republicans fight to retain Senate seats there in tomorrow’s runoff election, and his followers in Congress pledge to oppose the certification of Biden’s election, claiming fraud without evidence of any. 

Jon Ossoff, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, speaks at a campaign event in Garden City, Georgia, on Jan. 3.

Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg

U.S. lawmakers are receiving urgent security instructions in advance of potential violence in Washington tied to the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to count Electoral College votes. Trump has urged his supporters to show up and protest the sealing of Biden’s victory, and white supremacist groups are reportedly planning to oblige him. 

China is turning the screws on its companies as Beijing seeks to use the pandemic to strengthen the nation’s industrial might. After letting inefficient firms survive for years, authorities there are allowing them to fail.

Boeing faces a new cash drain from structural flaws on its 787 Dreamliner, potentially slowing the company’s recovery from Covid-19 fallout and the grounding of the 737 Max after it crashed twice, killing hundreds of passengers.

A Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner 

Aeva, a laser-sensor startup founded by two ex-Apple engineers, is poised to increase its war chest by $200 million with an investment by a Hong Kong-based hedge fund. 

What you’ll need to know tomorrow 

• Markets greeted the new year with high volatility.
• Bitcoin ran into a wall Monday, dropping the most since March.
• This inflation gauge is starting to rise.
• Google employees are forming a union.
• Electric vehicle stocks have been sky-high, except for this one.
• Julian Assange beat back a U.S. extradition effort.
• Teeny-tiny Hong Kong apartments are selling like crazy.

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What you’ll want to read in Bloomberg Design

The Radical Architecture of Tomorrow—Today

The world of tomorrow tends toward grandiosity, at least in popular imagination. From utopias with towering skyscrapers (and flying cars) to dystopias with polluted megacities (and flying cars) to recent futuristic designs of sprawling “green” metropolises (electric cars), the one thing that everyone can agree on, it seems, is that the future is going to be full of heroic, monumental structures. But what if the world of tomorrow is already here? And what if it’s not very grand at all? 

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