Bank Year-end Predictions, Musk Woes & ChatGPT Turns One!

Vonetta Logan's weekly recap of the big business, news, markets, political, cultural and viral trending stories featured this week on Daily Dose.

What’s up tastynation! Welcome to this week’s edition of Weekly Dose! Each week, I recap the top stories that I covered on Daily Dose. If you missed any eps of Daily Dose you can catch up on them here. 

I’m back! The recap took last week off because of the Thanksgiving holiday, but we’re back this week (full of pie). 

Let’s get to this week’s recap. 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year (big bank version) 

The days are getting shorter, the sales are getting hotter and the banks are putting out their year-end forecasts. Gather ‘round children as the banks try to enthrall us with their best guesses about what the market will do next year. Never mind that no one is ever held accountable for any of these predictions. You get it right you can call yourself a genius. You get it wrong, well who could’ve predicted that anyway? What a sweet racket.

But let’s get to the predictions. Wells Fargo (WFC) sees things getting sloppy and choppy for the market in ‘24. Fargo’s analysts see a volatile path to S&P 500 (SPY) to a 4,625 year-end target. The peeps over at Deutsche Bank (how are they still in business?) have a rosier outlook. Deutsche Bank on Monday forecast the S&P 500 to end next year 12% higher as it expects corporate earnings to remain resilient even if the United States experiences a mild and short recession. Finally, BMO asked to copy Deutsche Bank’s homework and DB said, “OK, but just change your answer a little.” To which BMO replied “I gotchu. Our number is also 5,100.”

So there you have it. Big banks with big numbers that really don’t mean anything to anyone. BUT if you love prediction get ready! The upcoming issue of Luckbox is all about prediction so stay tuned! 

Musk craps (advertiser) Love 

First, I am very pleased with myself for coming up with that headline just now. If you know, you know. Anyhoo, the week started off with headlines screaming that the mass advertiser exodus from X (formerly Twitter) could amount to a $75 million dollar loss for the social media site by the end of year. The fallout from Musk’s seeming endorsement of anti-semitic content on the site has “shockingly” continued. In a well-timed body blow, the mayor of Paris announced she was leaving the site because it had “become a global sewer.”.Tres sauvage!

Then, all puffy-chested from their victory with the Big 3 automakers, the United Auto Workers announced Tesla and other car manufacturers were in their sights for unionization efforts. Then, (girl, I am already tired and we aren’t even halfway through this drama) at the 2023 Dealbook Summit in New York, Musk gave a truly unhinged interview to Andrew Ross Sorkin. Within the first two minutes, setting a new all-time record for self-destruction, Musk claimed X’s fleeing advertisers were “trying to blackmail” him and that they could go fornicate themselves

Musk, inexplicably dressed as a Charles Lindbergh cosplayer, then gave the cringiest interview of all time, providing his lukewarm takes on everything from political discourse to the state of AI, at times pausing for non-existent applause.

Then, he ended the week by rolling out the brand new Tesla (TSLA) Cybertruck at a glitzy event in Texas. But Cybertruck diehards are gonna have to pony up a lot of cash to drive something that looks like a robot had sex with Yugo. With a starting price of $60,990 before federal tax credits, the Tesla Cybertruck comes in at just over $20,000 more than the base model that was originally discussed at the vehicle’s debut in 2019.

Popular tech YouTuber (GOOGL) Marques Brownlee has thoughts on the launch which he shared via video with his 18 million followers. He says Musk is “straight up not delivering” on any of the promises that he’s made. Even the Tesla website offers very few details about the Cybertruck. It is expected to be more widely available in 2025.

Finally, in a parting shot, Consumer Reports came out with its annual reliability guide, and they are not fans of EVs. They say to choose hybrids if you want “significantly fewer problems.” Okay, I’m getting a hand cramp from all this nonsense. Tesla’s stock has been trading within a pretty tight range this week, but we’ll see what Musk can destroy next week. 

Happy birthday, Chat GPT! (please don’t kill us) 

Me: Hey ChatGPT, what do you get an all-knowing, all-seeing generative AI chatbot as a birthday present? 

ChatGPT: Vapes. And the new Britney Spears memoir. 

Me: …

Happy B-day GPT!. One year ago, Chat GPT launched and the world would never be the same. The app gained 1 million subscribers in just five days. Today, that number is over 1.7 billion. I’m sure the non-profit would rather we focus on all of the accomplishments in the AI space instead of the very messy drama surrounding the firing and re-hiring of Sam Altman. But now that Altman is back at Chat, users are still in the dark about what went down. Was an existential threat discovered, or did Altman microwave fish in the office break room? We demand answers!

But OpenAI has a shiny new board, and it seems like they’re even playing nice with Microsoft (MSFT) by offering them a board seat but no voting power. So a board seat at the kiddie table? Nonetheless, even though ChatGPT had monumental success kicking off an AI revolution in corporate America, both Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOGL) straight up refused to name ChatGPT app of the year. I am here for the pettiness! They picked AllTrails, the hiking and biking companion, and Imprint, an education app, instead. Soooo all of the knowledge in the world or a map of the John Muir Trail? Hmm. Too close to call!

Shaking off the haters, OpenAI still looks poised to have a tender round in January. I also try a round of Tinder in January, usually with disastrous results. The offer will value the company at $86 billion and employees will have until Jan. 5 to decide whether to participate. It will be interesting to see much AI will dominate the market in 2024. 

Well that’s it for this week’s recap. See ya next week! 

Vonetta Logan has more than a decade of markets experience and has been a trader for five years. She is an on-air personality, creative writer and news correspondent at tastylive. Vonetta  appears Monday-Friday on Daily Dose and contributes to Luckbox Magazine. @vonettalogan

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