Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Bitcoin goes for gold

A record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November. The unprecedented level of departures, including 1 million in leisure and hospitality alone, illustrates the continuing struggle to retain talent amid the social and economic tumult of the pandemic. The data come ahead of Friday’s monthly employment report from the Department of Labor, currently forecast to show the U.S. added 420,000 jobs in December. On Wall Street, U.S. stocks slipped from an all-time high after worries over rising interest rates sparked a selloff in tech shares. Here’s your markets wrap. —David E. Rovella

Bloomberg is tracking the coronavirus pandemic and the progress of global vaccination efforts.

Bitcoin will continue to take market share from gold as part of broader adoption of digital assets, making the often touted price prediction of a $100,000 by crypto advocates a possibility, according to Goldman Sachs.

Meanwhile over at JPMorgan, everything is coming up roses for equities. “Stay bullish—positive catalysts are not exhausted,” they told clients on Tuesday, predicting stocks will keep climbing. What about pesky risks like a more hawkish turn by central banks, a slowdown in China’s economy, or more significant coronavirus restrictions? JPMorgan says such speed bumps either won’t happen or are already priced in.

A year after followers of Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol in an  insurrection tied to the Republican’s lies about his 2020 election defeat, Attorney General Merrick Garland faces critical decisions about whether to indict the former president or his top advisers. The department has been using a federal grand jury for an investigation into the deadly Jan. 6 assault and the events that led up to it, and it could be used to pursue criminal charges against the twice-impeached Trump. Meanwhile, a Capitol Police officer who helped evacuate members of Congress during the attack sued Trump for inciting the insurrection, at least the fourth such complaint by police employees injured that day.

Merrick Garland Photographer: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

The U.S. added more than 1 million people to its Covid-19 case count on Monday as the true scope of a holiday surge in infections comes into view. The Biden administration said testing capacity should expand nationwide in the coming days, but U.S. hospitals are so far seeing significantly fewer severe outcomes from the omicron wave than in past spikes, echoing the experience of other countries. In China, some people in massive lockdowns are having trouble finding food to eat. Thailand’s main Covid-19 task force will review the suspension of its quarantine-free entry program for vaccinated visitors amid an uptick in new cases among foreign tourists. And the World Health Organization said a coronavirus variant found in France—different from omicron—hasn’t become much of a threat since it was first identified. Here’s the latest on the pandemic.

The newspaper and software business that counts Charlie Munger as chairman, Daily Journal Corp., almost doubled its holding of Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding shares in recent months. 

Charlie Munger  Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

Turkey’s central bank posted an extraordinary daily profit of around $10 billion on the final day of 2021, sparking questions on what caused this overnight windfall.

U.S. homebuyers hoping for relief from skyrocketing prices aren’t likely to get any in 2022. Growth in home values will exceed 14% nationally through November, Zillow predicted. These are the places where everyone is looking.

• More bad Brexit news for the U.K.: trucks are caught in red tape.
• Convicted of fraud, Theranos’ Holmes may head to a cushy prison.
• London’s fintech boom opens the door for dirty money.
• Europe’s energy crisis is its own fault, and could last years.
• Prescription weight loss drugs are working—if you can get them.
• Bloomberg CityLab: How to design buildings that don’t kill birds.
• The BlackBerry is finally dead. Many will mourn it.

More than 1,000 books from the private library of late Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are set to come to auction this month. The online-only sale, which will run Jan. 19-27, will be divided into about 165 lots, including a combination of heavily annotated law books, fiction and first editions. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Photographer: The Washington Post

Like getting the Evening Briefing? Subscribe to Bloomberg.com for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and gain expert analysis from exclusive subscriber-only newsletters.

Sign up for Bloomberg CityLab’s most popular newsletter, a weekly digest of what’s trending in the future of cities.