This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity Business Podcast. Here are 12 stories that were found today, December fifth, 2023. The first, the markets fell yesterday, but are flat today, flat at least this morning today, and they work down, the Vans are recovering some, and in fact, the ESP and the NANSEC are slightly up right now. The DAO are slightly down. And they're really moving in the right direction based on the job openings reported. So jobs openings reported were 8.7 million or so. This is down from 12-13 million not that long ago. Let's see, there were so many open jobs that you couldn't fire anybody. Unemployment was completely low. Now you see less employers trying to hire people, less jobs open. That means that there's more confidence that at some point, the Fed will stop tightening rates. That's what the way this all comes back to. Less jobs opened means the economy not quite as healthy and vibrant, and the Fed a little bit slower to raise rates and maybe quicker to start to reduce rates, although Powell the other day said not likely to reduce rates yet. Second, Starbucks stock has fallen for 11 days in a row.

That's its longest downturn in a very long time. It's down around 1.6 % year to date, down about five % the past week. But it's based on slowing sales at Starbucks, is why they're seeing, even after a great first half of the year, why they're seeing the stock go down 11 days in a row. It's what happened today, but fascinating to watch. Third, Moody's down creates China's credit outlook. This is ultimately a big, big story. China overloaded on debt. Their state and local services overloaded on debt. They've got big property debt problems. And this is ultimately a horrible situation for all of us. China might be our biggest competitor, but at the end of the day, the world's second largest economy. If China gets very sick economically, we're likely to see all of us get very sick economically. This concept of loading up on debt and having pretend great growth is a little bit of what I'm afraid of in the United States. United States, we just supported five % growth, and people are touting, I mean, how good that is. But if you borrow tremendously to fuel that growth, it's not real growth. The Wall Street Journal reports, China's colossal hidden debt problem is coming to a head.

We hope that the US learns from this and gets tougher about their own debt and what we're doing. For the for today, India, in contrast to China, truly seems to have the economy moving in the right direction. Story to get today India stocks on virtual record, $4 trillion valuation. That market moving in the right direction. Fifth, Bitcoin rose to $42,000. I'm not sure if I was dumber to buy Bitcoin based on a whim or sell it based on concern. Either way, I've done nothing but poorly on Bitcoin. The only thing I've got to show for is financial losses that turn into tax losses. Sixth, Russia is opening their jails to use convicts to fight in Ukraine. Oh, my goodness, this concept of not keeping people in jail, it's something reminiscent to, again, what we see in the United States, it's a report day in The Wall Street Journal, the violent homecoming of Russian convicts free to fight in Ukraine. And when they come back home, the havoc that they're causing. Sort of it that they ask her. Seventh, Spotify to cut 17 % of staff. Again, Spotify is the leading podcast network in the world.

They're cutting 70 % of their staff. A listen to podcast at Becker private equity and Becker's healthcare. Becker's Healthcare has done a lot of this week, rank number one on the podcast listings. God bless that. Ninth, the one year treasury moved up again yesterday to 5.147 %. A great question for investors becomes, at what point do investors start to lock in yields on longer term treasuries versus continuing to stick with the very attractive yields on one year treasury? The 10 years close to 4.3 % at what point you start to ladder your treasures again? I know professional money managers probably tell you always, many of us have not done that with Chase's higher yields and finally come home, and we'll see what happens over the next couple of years. 10th, oil has softened to 70 % to 50 a barrel. 11th, cannabis, which has been down a great deal and is still down 15 %, 30 % year to date. Cannabis tox, at least based on the ETF I follow, is now 15 % over the last month, so seeing some recovery. The 12th story is this concept of leaders. We talk about leadership often.

We often talk about leaders being authentic, flawed, and ridiculous. Another concept that was thrown at me today is do most leaders have an edge of some sort? And we talk a lot about this concept of leaders being liked and respected. It used to be you just want to be respected. Now it's probably important because you've got to build teams and recruit, be liked and respected, particularly in the world that we're in. But to my experience, most leaders have some hard edge. It doesn't mean they're bad people, but they've got some hard edge. Separately, we probably believe that most leaders have some flaws as well. I don't know the person or whether it doesn't have a flaw, anybody that pretends like they don't is probably playing on stage, but not for real. In any event, thank you, Felissa, to the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We'll be back at you with a couple other episodes today. Thank you very much for listening.