Global Stocks Fall after Fed Steps up Inflation Fight
Asian stocks fell for a third day Friday after more rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and other central banks to control persistent inflation spurred fears of a possible global recession.
Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul and Sydney declined. Oil prices edged lower. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday.
Wall Street's benchmark S&P 500 index fell Thursday for a third day after rate hikes by central banks in Britain, Switzerland, Turkey and the Philippines. The Fed hiked its key rate on Wednesday for a fifth time this year and indicated more rises were on the way.
Ethereum Posts Biggest Losses on Merge Week
Ethereum is down bad after merge week. The long-anticipated transition to a proof-of-stake network happened on Thursday as planned. Once it did, Ethereum (ETH) dipped 8% to under $1,500 and kept falling further.
ETH begins the weekend at $1,424, down 17% over the last seven days. It took the biggest losses among the top thirty cryptocurrencies by market capitalization this week.
On Thursday, Ethereum completed the long-awaited transition from being a blockchain validated by a proof-of-work consensus mechanism—like the one currently employed by Bitcoin, in which miners with the most computing power generate the most coins—to a much more energy-efficient proof-of-stake algorithm—where miners who stake the most ETH validate the most transactions, and reap the rewards.
Thums Up captures a decade-high market share
After becoming a billion-dollar brand in 2021, desi soft drink brand Thums Up has hit a decade-high market share of 20 per cent. The company owned by global soft drinks major The Coca-Cola Company tops the Rs 50,000-crore packaged carbonated soft drinks market in the country.
Citing July-August 2022 data sourced from NielsenIQ, two industry executives have shared that the soft drinks major’s market share has touched a decade-high.
According to Arnab Roy, vice-president and head, of marketing at Coca-Cola India and Southwest Asia, Thums Up has grown in double digits year on year, powered by its 'soft drink Nahin, Toofan' campaign among other factors.
US-China semiconductor battle
Earlier this month, the US government blocked the sale of specific chips to anyone in China. We see this as an important change by the government in the tactics they are deploying. The United States has gone from blocking specific companies in China, to blocking all companies and focusing on specific products. This is a big change, and opens up the question – what exactly are they hoping to achieve? This matters obviously in that it can help us predict the outcome, but we increasingly hold the view that the government may not have entirely thought through how this will ultimately play out.
