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The mighty bark that was Dogecoin's (DOGE -12.06%) bark at the end of last week softened into a whimper on Sunday. The effect of the cryptocurrency's frequent cheerleader Elon Musk buying Twitter (TWTR 0.66%) was obviously fading fast. As of mid-afternoon that day, the meme cryptocurrency's price was down by nearly 9% over the preceding 24 hours. All things considered, Dogecoin still rose 60% between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening, Eastern Time.
Like many other cryptocurrencies frozen by the crypto winter, Dogecoin wasn't doing particularly well before The Musk Effect took hold. As the Tesla (TSLA 1.52%) CEO neared success in his renewed pursuit of Twitter, however, investors rediscovered their love of the coin. When the deal was finally clinched, Dogecoin saw a very healthy price pop.
To his credit, Musk does more than simply talk the talk with the cryptocurrency. Against any solid logic or sense, Tesla itself holds dogecoin (or at least it did, as of this summer), and accepts it as a form of payment. In the past, the company's leader has tweeted enthusiastically from time to time about its merits.
So it seems the coin's subsequent slide is due in no small part to profit-taking, as many who loaded up on it are now booking their quick and easy gains now that the Twitter deal is done. It isn't hard to drive Dogecoin up or down sharply, as it's very inexpensively priced and any heavy action usually results in quite the price swing.
While Dogecoin can be volatile, it's likely that the recent roller coaster in the wake of the Musk/Twitter saga will level out. Following that, it'll probably pop and then drop after the Tesla and Twitter honcho makes a pronouncement about it. And with the unpredictable Musk, you just never know if and when that might happen.
Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla and Twitter. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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Energy Prices: Australia Will Consider All Ways to Reduce Impact, Treasurer Says Bloomberg
How many products or services do you buy without knowing the price ahead of time? Chances are, the answer is almost none, if any. But in healthcare, getting services before knowing what you’ll be expected to pay is the norm.
A new survey adds to a body of evidence that uncertainty about healthcare costs deters people from seeking healthcare services.
In data released last week from healthcare AI firm AKASA, 35% of Americans surveyed said they would be deterred from seeing healthcare services for themselves if they didn’t know the price of that service. Just 40% said they would not be deterred by lack of available healthcare price information and one-quarter said they didn’t know if lack of healthcare pricing would get in the way of seeking services.
People are less likely to be deterred by lack of clear pricing when it comes to seeking care for a loved one.
Half (51%) of respondents said they would not be deterred from seeking out care for a dependent even if there were no price information and 18% said they would be deterred on behalf of a dependent. Similarly, half said they would not be deterred from seeking care for a parent or guardian and 20% said they would be deterred due to a lack of price information. Just under one-third (30%) of each group said they weren’t sure if they would be deterred from seeking care for a loved one without price information.
These findings are consistent with other surveys, such as a 2018 poll which showed that approximately 40% of Americans had skipped a recommended medical test or treatment, or avoided going to the doctor when they were sick, because of cost. Of those, 60% said they fear the cost of a serious illness.
Similarly, a 2020 survey showed that 39% of Americans were more afraid of the cost of Covid-19 infection that of getting the virus itself. In that data, 35% of people said they would consider putting off treatment for Covid-19 just to avoid medical bills and 60% said that medical bills were a top source of stress.
Adding to financial uncertainty and fear of unaffordable medical bills is a general lack of awareness that healthcare providers often offer tools to offset or help manage medical bills.
The AKASA survey asked respondents if their doctor or hospital offered payment plans or financial assistance. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents said they did not know if these financial tools were available. Among uninsured respondents—who may need these tools more than people with insurance to help offset costs—80% said they did not know if financial support was available from their doctor or hospital.
Previously released survey findings from AKASA showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans had never even tried to find the price of a healthcare service. Those results showed that younger people and people on high-deductible health plans were more likely to have searched for healthcare pricing than others.
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OSLO, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Equinor (EQNR.OL) landed a record third-quarter profit on Friday, driven by all-time-highs in European gas prices, and raised its dividend payout despite a lower 2022 output forecast.
The Norwegian oil and gas producer's adjusted earnings before tax for July-September rose to $24.3 billion from $9.77 billion a year earlier, beating the $23.5 billion predicted in a poll of 26 analysts compiled by Equinor.
"The Russian war in Ukraine has changed the energy markets, reduced energy availability and increased prices," Chief Executive Anders Opedal said in a statement.
"High production combined with continued high price levels resulted in very strong financial results," he added
Equinor, majority-owned by the Norwegian government, became Europe's largest supplier of natural gas this year as Russia's Gazprom (GAZP.MM) cut deliveries amid Western support for Ukraine.
Equinor's previous profit before tax record was $18 billion and was set in the first quarter.
It now expects its output to grow by 1% in 2022 compared to last year, down from a previous projection of 2% as the Johan Sverdrup Phase 2 development was set to come on stream later in the fourth quarter than originally planned.
Equinor blamed operational issues at several other fields, but did not elaborate on when the Sverdrup increase could occur.
Junior partner Aker BP (AKRBP.OL) earlier this week said it expected Sverdrup Phase 2 to come on stream in early December, two months later than it had previously predicted.
Phase 2 is expected to increase Sverdrup's production capacity by 220,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed) just as the European Union's ban on Russian seaborne crude imports comes into an effect in December.
Equinor lifted its extraordinary dividend, paid as a result of high oil and gas prices, to $0.70 per share for the third quarter from $0.50 in the second, corresponding to an increased payment of about $640 million.
The company kept its regular quarterly dividend payment at $0.20 per share and maintained plans for share buybacks of $6 billion in 2022.
Europe's benchmark TTF front-month wholesale gas contract soared to a record 343.08 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) in August, but has since fallen to 106.5 euros/MWh due to falling demand, full storages, mild weather and rising LNG supply.
It remains more than four times higher than before Russia began to throttle supplies last year.
Equinor has said it sells most of its gas output on a day-ahead or month-ahead price basis.
"Of course, the (gas) prices in Europe are very high. We have offered long-term contracts to make sure we can have commercial deals that can keep prices more stable," Opedal told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
The EU has said it plans to coordinate some of its gas purchases in the hope of bringing down prices.
"We will cooperate with those buying institutions planned in the EU and negotiate gas prices in the future," Opedal said.
Equinor, which makes most of its profit from production in Norway, paid $17 billion in taxes during the third quarter and is not subject to additional windfall payments to the government, which owns 67% of its shares.
Equinor's net profit for the quarter amounted to $6.72 billion, while larger European rivals Shell (SHEL.L) and TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) on Thursday each reported profits of more than $9 billion.
Equinor's Oslo-listed stocks have risen 59% year-to-date, outperforming a 24% rise in European petroleum stocks (.SXEP) thanks to its big gas reserves.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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HONG KONG, Oct 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Tesla’s (TSLA.O) China price cut is a double-edged sword. The $700 billion carmaker says lower production overheads prompted it to lop up to 9% off the cost of new vehicles in the country. But it also smacks of a price war.
The reduction is an aggressive manoeuvre. China is increasingly important for Tesla and its investors, accounting for around a quarter of the electric-car maker’s top line in the first nine months of 2022. If sales reach nearly $120 billion next year as forecast by Refinitiv, a 9% cut would equate to around $2.5 billion in revenue. But if it doesn’t affect the bottom line, it sends a strong message that Tesla is making use of its formidable economies of scale.
It is also a defensive move. Elon Musk’s marque remains China’s most popular foreign brand for battery-powered cars by a long chalk. Chinese drivers, though, are starting to snub international badges in favour of home-grown alternatives, especially for electric and premium models. Chery Automobile, Geely Automobile (0175.HK) and GAC (601238.SS) Aion are increasing their share of the EV segment, according to Bernstein. Shenzhen-based BYD (002594.SZ), (1211.HK) has taken Tesla’s top spot as the world’s best-selling brand of electric cars this year, thanks to triple-digit growth in sales of battery-powered and hybrid models, multiple research groups report.
At the same time, China’s car market could slow as incentives designed to gin up Covid-stricken sales wind down. And President Xi Jinping’s power play creates new risks. Hong Kong-listed shares in Nio (9866.HK), Xpeng (9868.HK) and Li Auto (2015.HK) lost an average 10% in value on Monday, the day after Xi picked members for his 24-strong Politburo who seem more focused on political control than economic growth. Nio and Xpeng have since rallied.
Price cuts are not the only sign of insecurity: Tesla faces up to the possibility of flagging demand, with Reuters reporting last month that Tesla is rethinking its China sales strategy, and keeping its vast Shanghai plant running below full capacity despite recent upgrades.
If others are also nervous, Tesla’s tactics and the chunky discount could set the tone. Smaller competitors such as Nio, which lack Tesla’s scale and profitability, have yet to make cuts and would struggle to take a huge hit to the top line. But larger groups such as Geely could retaliate. Musk might want to buckle up.
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Electric-car maker Tesla has cut starter prices for its Model 3 and Model Y cars by as much as 9% in China, reversing a trend of increases across the industry amid signs of softening demand in the world's largest vehicle market. The company posted the price cuts on its China website on Oct. 24.
Tesla told Reuters it was adjusting prices to reflect lower production costs, saying that capacity utilisation at its Shanghai Gigafactory has improved, while the supply chain remains stable despite the impact on the economy of China's stringent zero-Covid restrictions.
Tesla’s U.S. shares fell 1.49% to $211.25 on Oct. 24.
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Halloween may feel more like trick than treat this year.
Candy prices are estimated to be 14% higher than last year, according to a recent report from S&P Global Market Intelligence. That’s the highest increase since the firm started tracking Halloween candy prices in 1999.
“A 14% increase in candy prices is the largest on record by a significant margin,” Akshat Goel, senior economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, told CNN. This year’s projected bump is twice the 7% jump recorded in 2008, during the financial crisis. That was the next highest increase tracked by the firm.
The price increases coincide with difficult economic periods, and Goel noted that “the high inflation era of 1970s/1980s could easily have seen larger price increases.” But he added that the firm doesn’t have candy price data that tracks back to that period.
The higher prices should come as no surprise. Inflation has remained stubbornly high, with an unadjusted annual rate of 8.2% reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in September. Food prices have jumped even higher. In the year through September, food got 11.2% more expensive, with grocery prices spiking 13%.
Food manufacturers have been steadily raising their prices, and candy makers are no exception. In its 2022 financial forecast shared early this year, Hershey said that it was planning to raise “list price increases across all segments.”
Even so, people seem to be willing to shell out for candy this spooky season. Household spending on Halloween candy in the US is expected to hit $3.2 billion this year, according to S&P Global, a 1% increase over last year.
The National Retail Federation, which partners with Prosper Insights & Analytics on an annual Halloween Consumer survey, found that 67% of respondents planned to hand out candy this year, up from 66% in 2021.
Overall, the NRF expects US consumers to spend a record $10.6 billion on Halloween celebrations in 2022, up from $10.1 billion last year.
Candy shoppers might not find exactly what they’re looking for, however.
In July, Hershey (HSY) said that high interest in its regular candy offerings meant it wouldn’t be able to meet demand for Halloween items.
The chocolate maker uses the same manufacturing lines for its regular and seasonal products, and as a result was unable to amp up production of its regular sweets and Halloween or holiday items simultaneously.
“We had a strategy of prioritizing everyday on-shelf availability,” CEO Michele Buck said during an analyst call over the summer. “That was a choice that we needed to make,” she said. “It was a tough decision.”
For Hershey, that likely means ceding ground to competitors such as Mars Wrigley, maker of M&Ms and Snickers, and Sour Patch Kids seller Mondelez (MDLZ) during the Halloween season.
-— CNN’s Matt Egan contributed to this report.
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There has been so much media space dedicated to the gas supply troubles of the European Union and the associated spillover effect for developing economies that another fossil fuel problem has remained relatively unnoticed: oil prices. Oil prices have been on a general decline over the past couple of months, shedding about 30 percent from the peaks reached earlier this year, pressured by expectations of a global economic slowdown.
The slowdown itself has a close causal link with energy prices, more specifically, oil and gas prices. And speaking of oil prices, despite the 30-percent drop in benchmarks, many buying nations are facing a steep bill for their oil imports, which would aggravate the challenge for their economies.
Take India, for instance—one of the world’s biggest oil importers. A recent analysis in the Indian Express detailed that because of the oil price rally from earlier this year, India’s trade deficit for the first half of the year had reached $150 billion and could double to $300 billion for the full year.
This would, in turn, cause a problem with the country’s balance of payments as various parts of the economy slow down due to higher oil prices, not just in India but in the West as well. And speaking of the West, its European part has similar oil price problems to those that India has.
Related: Texas Natural Gas Prices Sink Close To Zero
In a recent article on the troubles of oil-importing nations, Bloomberg noted that Europe was more than just a major importer of natural gas. The continent, and the EU specifically, also imports most of the oil it consumes, meaning it is highly vulnerable to price swings.
All the big European economies, including Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, the report said, depended on imported oil for as much as 90 percent of their consumption. And this means that, like India and China, the EU has a problem with the U.S. dollar.
A rally in the greenback resulting from tighter monetary policies at the Fed contributed significantly to the affordability problem that most oil importers have been struggling with this year. Since most of the oil traded around the world is priced in U.S. dollars, the more expensive the dollar, even if oil prices themselves haven’t changed much, the higher the import bill for this oil would be.
“A stronger dollar is a headwind for oil consumer nations whose currencies are not linked to the greenback,” Giovanni Staunovo, commodity analyst at UBS, told Bloomberg. “Over the last 12 months, oil prices have increased much more in local currency terms.”
This state of affairs might have major implications for the oil markets of tomorrow. They might be markets with a bigger role for local currencies.
China—the world’s largest importer of oil—has been trying to expand the use of its national currency in international trade for years. By a happy coincidence, its BRICS partner and major oil supplier, Russia, is very much on board with the idea of local currencies, especially so after the EU began shooting sanction packages at it following the invasion of Ukraine.
Other developing nations, including India, are also entertaining the idea of replacing the global trade currency with their local currencies in bilateral trade deals. India has even developed a mechanism for international deal settlement in rupees, although it is still paying for Russian oil in U.S. dollars.
This might be an emerging trend worth watching, but how it could play out in the European Union is an entirely different matter. The EU has time and again declared its close alliance with the U.S., especially in energy.
So, moving away from the greenback for oil trades would probably be as bad of an idea as President Macron’s accusations that the U.S. is employing double standards in having lower gas prices at home than the price of the LNG that U.S. companies sell to Europe.
Yet, with the U.S. dollar’s important role in the affordability of oil amid what is increasingly looking like a global economic slowdown, other importing nations might get a boost for their plans to move away from it and start using their local currencies more.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.
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