With airlines in the West expecting to take years to recover from Covid-19, aircraft manufacturers depend on the resilience and growth potential of the Chinese market. But China’s own aerospace ambitions and the geopolitical tensions that surround them could make it a turbulent ride.
China has recovered from the pandemic to become the world’s largest domestic aviation market. Traffic is 8% higher than a year ago, data by Oliver Wyman’s PlaneStats show. In the U.S. and Europe, it is still down 41% and 68%, respectively.
With another 500 million Chinese expected to join the middle classes over the next few years, the country is also the industry’s big growth opportunity. The International Air Transport Association predicts 5% average annual growth in passenger journeys in the Asia-Pacific region between 2019 and 2039. Mature Western markets are expected to expand at a 2.2% rate.
Following a mild liberalization of its airline industry in 2004, China has become the second largest source of revenues for the two major plane makers,
which have since opened plants there. It is one of their few bright spots too: In November, Boeing downgraded its 20-year global aircraft demand forecast by 2%, but upgraded China’s by 6.3% to 8,600 planes.
Relative to the rest of the world, China is especially important for the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families, which are the backbone of low-cost airlines. It has accounted for a quarter of deliveries for the 737 MAX, which Boeing is scrambling to remarket after a 20-month grounding.
China’s true catch-up potential, though, is in long-haul routes, and thus the wide-body jets worst-hit by Covid-19. Traditionally, only the A330 had broad acceptance among the big Chinese state-owned carriers. Current orders, however, are finally skewed toward the nimbler A350 and 787 jets that Airbus and Boeing are focused on.
Grounded China Southern Airlines Boeing 737 MAX aircraft shown in June 2019.
Photo:
greg baker/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Backlogs underplay how many planes China will end up needing. The country represents 4.4% of Boeing and Airbus’ combined firm orders, which seems far too low. As Barclays analysts point out, this suggests fewer than 20 deliveries of the A320 in 2023, compared with a recent annual average of 120.
The alternative, which Western companies fear, is that the narrow-body gap will be filled by the C919, made by Chinese State-owned manufacturer Comac. Ironically, its development would have been difficult without the help of the foreign manufacturers it may now disadvantage.
To be sure, the C919 is delayed and unlikely to enter service before late 2021, with limited initial production capacity. Its international adoption is constrained by a shorter range and worse customer service than its peers. But it is key for Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” industrial plan. This shouldn’t be underestimated, especially in the later half of the decade. The Chinese government can sell the plane at very discounted prices, and it owns a big chunk of the customers.
The outcome may be determined by geopolitics. A few days ago, the Department of Commerce published a list of Chinese companies with military ties that will be banned from buying a range of U.S. goods and technology. It included some Comac subsidiaries, potentially dealing the C919 a heavy blow. It is unclear whether President-elect
will keep such a hard line, but Beijing may retaliate by refusing to unground the MAX.
Western aerospace’s dependence on the Chinese market has never been greater. Neither have the risks to its continued dominance.
American Airlines put Boeing’s 737 MAX back in the air with passengers Tuesday on a flight from Miami to New York. It’s the first time in nearly two years that the MAX has carried passengers in the U.S. Photo: Marco Bello/Reuters
Congress has alleged a scam in the distribution of bio-decomposer for preventing the burning of paddy.
New Delhi:
Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera alleged on Thursday a scam in the distribution of bio-decomposer for preventing the burning of paddy straw in Delhi and demanded a CBI inquiry into it.
Mr Khera claimed that Rs 10 crore was spent on advertisements of Pusa bio-decomposers by the Kejriwal government, while the actual cost of distribution of it was Rs 23.60 lakh, including Rs 75,780 as cost of the solution.
No reaction was immediately available from the government or the ruling AAP.
“We demand a CBI inquiry into this scam of Pusa bio-decomposer, initiated by the so-called revolutionary chief minister of Delhi,” Mr Khera said in a press conference held at the party office.
He also alleged that despite the claim that the solution would decompose paddy straw, it failed to do so.
The Delhi government adopted the bio-decomposer developed by the Pusa Institute of Technology and arranged its free-of-cost sprinkling at around 800 hectares of fields where non-Basmati rice is cultivated to prevent burning of paddy straw by the farmers.
Citing RTI replies, Mr Khera claimed that 1,200 farmers applied for the bio-decomposer but only 310 in 39 villages could get it from the government.
The AAP government-held paddy straw burning in neighbouring states as main source of rise in air pollution in Delhi during winters and strongly advocated use of Pusa bio-decomposers to check it.
If you’re still figuring out how to ring in the new year, Krispy Kreme would like to humbly suggest feasting on doughnuts. And not just any doughnuts—their melt-in-your-mouth original glazed doughnuts. To make these treats more accessible, Krispy Kreme is offering them at a special price.
In fact, they’re calling it the “Four Days of Glaze”—a period that begins today (Thursday, December 31, 2020) and ends on Sunday (January 3, 2021). Here’s what to know about the discounted doughnuts and how you can get your hands on some.
How to get cheap(er) Krispy Kreme doughnuts
Here’s the deal: During the Four Days of Glaze, customers can get two dozens of Krispy Kreme’s original glazed doughnuts for $12 (total). The offer is available via pickup, drive-thru and in-shop at participating Krispy Kreme locations across the U.S. (Sorry—not this time, Canada.) One Krispy Kreme shop that is definitely not a participating location is the one in Times Square, but there’s no reason to be in that area this weekend anyway.
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Not sure if your local branch is participating? You can find that information here, on the company’s website, along with each location’s hours of operation, distance from where you live, and whether or not they currently have hot doughnuts in the store.
The site also provides a quick link for those who want to order their food online. But be warned: While you can take advantage of the Four Days of Glaze deal when you order online, it is not valid for delivery orders. If you want those cheap doughnuts, you’re going to have to put in at least a little effort.
And as tempting as it may be to go buck wild with doughnuts, the offer comes with limitations—though it’s not entirely clear what they are. The Krispy Kreme website itself says that customers are limited to “two redemptions” of the deal, but doesn’t specify whether that’s per day, per visit, or throughout the entire Four Days of Glaze. Meanwhile, the company’s press release says that “guests can purchase up to two per day,” referring to the offer. Either way, that’s a lot of doughnuts.
Here is something many investors would have found difficult to believe during March’s stomach-churning selloff: 2020 would turn out to be a stellar year for the stock market.
made a stock-market debut so stunning that its chief executive was briefly left speechless on live television.
These are things that would be easy to imagine in boom times. But 2020 has been anything but that for the world outside Wall Street. The cold reality is that the market’s rally has occurred in the midst of a catastrophic pandemic that has killed more than a million people, halted business and travel and wreaked havoc on the economy. Although there are plenty of reasons for the market’s comeback, not the least of which is the Federal Reserve’s massive intervention, the staggering rally is still difficult to comprehend for many investors.
“The path we took to get here is something we never, ever, ever would have foreseen,” said
Ralph Bassett,
head of equities for North America at Aberdeen Standard Investments.
Here are the lessons investors say they have learned from an unforgettable year.
Markets Don’t Perfectly Reflect the Economy
When stocks bottomed March 23 and began to race higher, many observers were perplexed. Coronavirus cases were surging. Restaurants, stores and theaters went dark and millions of Americans queued up outside of career centers to apply for unemployment benefits. How could the market be doing so well when the world seemed to be doing so badly?
A Madison, Wis., theater was one of many that went dark in March during the early throes of the pandemic, along with restaurants and stores.
Photo:
Steve Apps/Wisconsin State Journal/Associated Press
The answer: The stock market often begins to recover far sooner than the economy. In the case of the financial crisis, U.S. stocks hit their nadir March 9, 2009. But it took seven years from that point for the unemployment rate to fall below precrisis levels.
Similarly, while stocks managed to charge higher in 2020, many economists don’t expect the U.S. to recover all of the jobs lost during the pandemic until 2023 or later.
“A lot of people said the market is disconnected to reality, but stocks are pricing in what’s going to happen in six months to a year,” not what the economy looks like today, said
Andrew Slimmon,
managing director and portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. In the pandemic, investors who began betting on a stock recovery in the spring weren’t assuming the economy was about to come roaring back—they were assuming things would be better some months down the line than they were at the time. And they were right.
“It’s not until you have this huge rally that suddenly people realize, ‘Oh, the stock market isn’t wrong, I’ve been wrong,’” Mr. Slimmon said.
It Pays Not to Try to Time the Markets
With both the pandemic and the financial crisis, those who sold on bad news and waited for the economy to recover to get back into the market would have missed out on the bulk of stocks’ upside. As emotionally harrowing as sizable selloffs may be, history shows that the vast majority of investors are better off not trying to hop in and out of the market.
The returns of a hypothetical investor who put $10,000 into an S&P 500 index fund at the start of 1980 and missed the market’s five best days through the end of August 2020 would be 38 percentage points lower than those of someone who stayed invested the whole period, according to a Fidelity Investments Inc. analysis.
“What the long-term investor needs to think about is over the next year or next two years, is the economy going to grow? Are corporate earnings going to grow? We think the answer to those points is yes, and because of that, we think the market has a pretty good foundation,” said
Kelly Bogdanova,
vice president for RBC Wealth Management’s portfolio advisory group.
The November elections brought Joe Biden the presidency but failed to deliver Democrats control of Congress as had been predicted.
Photo:
Erin Scott/Bloomberg News
Forecasts Are Just Forecasts
This time last year, Wall Street’s top strategists identified the biggest risk to the markets as deteriorating trade relations between the U.S. and China. Trade all but fell off the radar for many money managers this year, quickly replaced by concerns about the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing economic shutdown.
They also widely predicted modest gains for the S&P 500. But by March, analysts at BMO Capital Markets and Oppenheimer Asset Management said they would suspend their year-end targets because of how difficult predicting the market’s path had become. Others slashed their targets after the spring selloff, only to bump them up again after the summer rally.
cut its year-end target to 3000 in March, then raised it to 3600 in August and to 3700 in November.
Then of course, the elections brought their own missed predictions, most notably that the Democrats would take control of Congress in a “blue wave.”
If anything, myriad examples of calls gone wrong show there is plenty of humility to be learned from markets, which regularly prove the smartest investors and strategists wrong.
“You always think about things trending through the influence of typical variables like macroeconomic policy, fiscal policy, global growth…but what tends to happen with big moves is unseen shocks,” Aberdeen’s Mr. Bassett said.
Tesla became the most valuable auto maker in the world in 2020.
Photo:
Zheng Huansong/Xinhua/Zuma Press
The Tech Trade Is Only Getting Bigger
Investors predicting value would finally unseat growth were proved wrong yet again.
combined. It also was the year when many technology companies disproportionately benefited from a pandemic that has forced individuals to spend more time at home and online.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a milestone of 30000. WSJ’s Jason Bellini explains how we got here and what the 30000 figure tells us about the state of the stock market. Photo illustration: Laura Kammermann
Appetite for newly listed technology stocks has been even more striking—so much so that a few companies, including Roblox Corp., decided to delay their planned IPOs to try to better understand how to price their shares.
It is the type of scenario that can make investors feel like the most reliable stock market play is simply betting on the fastest-growing technology stocks.
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How will the lessons of 2020 influence financial markets in the years ahead? Join the conversation below.
To be sure, an investor fixated on growth might have missed out on a number of cheaper, more “old-school” stocks that benefited from the pandemic, such as
Money managers who are overwhelmingly concentrated in growth stocks also have had the disadvantage of being hit particularly hard during recent market reversals, like in November when
had one of their worst days of the year Nov. 9, logging double-digit percentage declines, although they quickly made up ground in the weeks that followed.
But none of that necessarily means 2021 will be the year that growth stocks take a back seat to value. Society as a whole was becoming more technology-oriented, even before the pandemic, Mr. Bassett said. The end of the coronavirus pandemic won’t be a panacea to companies in already struggling sectors such as oil or bricks-and-mortar retail.
“I don’t recommend buying companies that were tarnished goods before Covid,” Mr. Slimmon said.
Microsoft Surface Duo just got an update that brings bugs fixes and app optimisations as well as improvements, as spotted in an update on Google Play. The Microsoft Launcher update is now rolling out for Android users and brings along improvements such as opening the feed page in landscape and concurrently with another app, screen time support, as well as keyword search in Office apps. Surface Duo is Microsoft’s first dual-screen Android smartphone, and it comes with a 360-degree hinge, with two separate OLED displays.
As per the Microsoft Launcher changelog on Google Play Store, (first spotted by XDA-Developers) the update comes with the firmware version 6.2.201102.92686. It is now being rolled out for Surface Duo in the US, and brings optimisations and bug fixes, shared by the report.
The update brings improvements on opening the feed page in landscape and concurrently with another app on Surface Duo. It also gets overview on a single screen and screen time support on the foldable device from Microsoft. There are improvements in app group creation flow via context menu as well as on spacing and icons’ consistency in the app drawer. Users can now search via keywords in Office apps on the device.
Apart from this, there are bug fixes in the app drawer, app icon size, and folder swipe up gesture. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it will make Surface Duo available outside of the US. The foldable Android phone from the company will be available in Canada, the UK, France and Germany in early 2021.
Will Xbox Series S, PS5 Digital Edition fail in India? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.
I started therapy in January 2020, which was, in retrospect, quite incredible timing, considering the next month hit me with a layoff and the one after that…well, you know. January was also an ideal time to have read The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma, by Bessel Van Der Kolk, a pioneering researcher into post-traumatic stress disorder.
In walking us through decades of case studies with his patients—many of them war veterans, victims of sexual abuse, and abused children—Van Der Kolk unpacks a very convincing theory that traumatic experiences live in the brain and body, and that addressing the source of trauma through various therapies, rather than simply treating the symptoms with drugs, is the path forward. Even if you don’t buy all of that, it’s hard to argue with the conclusions he draws about how trauma begets trauma, and how we can work to break the cycle—particularly useful lessons for 2020. —Joel Cunningham, managing editor
People live better in big houses and in big clothes. I try to contrast; life today is full of contrast. We have to change! I am not interested in the past, except as the road to the future. Give me time and I’ll give you a revolution. I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.
Mass-market fashion is very modern
I think the idea of mixing luxury and, very now no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore. There has to be a balance between your mental satisfaction and the financial needs of your company. A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.
Happy girl opening her present
I never look at other people’s work. I can’t get sucked into that celebrity thing, because I think it’s just crass. Give me time and I’ll give you a revolution. I can’t get sucked into that celebrity thing, because I think it’s just crass.
I can design a collection in a day and I always do, cause I’ve always got a load of Italians on my back, moaning that it’s late. Sometimes the simplest things are the most profound.
Looking to the future with optimism
Luxury will be always around, no matter what happens in the world. There is always the new project, the new opportunity. Attention to detail is of utmost importance when you want to look good. I have a fantastic relationship with money. I use it to buy my freedom.
I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore. I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore.
Confidence. If you have it, you can make anything look good. Abstinence from coffee, tobacco. Adventists has afforded a near-unique opportunity.
Clothes can transform your mood and confidence
I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress. Elegance isn’t solely defined by what you wear. Clothes can transform your mood and confidence.
Fashion moves so quickly that, unless you have a strong point of view, you can lose integrity. I like to be real. I don’t like things to be staged or fussy. I think I’d go mad if I didn’t have a place to escape to. You have to stay true to your heritage, that’s what your brand is about.
People out on the streets again
Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.
Fashion fosters cliches of beauty, but I want to tear them apart. Every day I’m thinking about change. The only way to do something in depth is to work hard. For me, art is about learning. I’ve always tried to push myself technically and to push myself visually. That’s been part of the journey. I adore the challenge of creating truly modern clothes, where a woman’s personality and sense of self are revealed.
Some things are just a tough sell online. Traditionally, makeup and fragrances have fallen squarely in the category of goods that consumers want to sample in person. Yet even this industry may not be immune to the pandemic’s effects on consumer behavior.
Yet e-commerce sales are growing fast at Ulta: by 200% in the quarter ended Aug. 1 compared with a year earlier. Even when stores had fully reopened, online sales were up 90%, hinting at some e-commerce stickiness.
This might pose a dilemma for beauty retailers. Push hard on e-commerce and they risk making consumers too comfortable with online shopping, potentially lowering the barrier for online competition and rendering their store fleets obsolete. A similar dynamic has played out with apparel, for example, as newer competitors flooded the market, notes
Simeon Siegel,
an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.
On the surface, Ulta Beauty’s decision to place its shops inside Target stores and Sephora’s plan to set up inside Kohl’s department stores look like bets on traditional bricks-and-mortar. But look more closely and they are also smart hedges against an online future. These setups require less resources than stand-alone stores and also include an online component, as
-owned Sephora—roughly doubled in 2020, accounting for nearly half of all sales, according to
Larissa Jensen,
beauty industry adviser at market research firm NPD Group. And yet, overall sales have declined. Through November, beauty product sales were down 21% compared with the same period of 2019, according to NPD Group data.
Still, consumers’ newfound familiarity with buying beauty products online could have far-reaching impacts. Even when consumers choose to go out to shop in person again, there is the risk they will treat bricks-and-mortar stores as showrooms—places where they try out products but ultimately transact online. That will be less of a concern if customers are going directly to those retailers’ websites, but a headache if they migrate elsewhere.
is dipping its toes into beauty, just as it has with a few luxury brands. The category is attractive: Makeup and fragrance tend to be high margin, small in size, popular as gifts and also something that needs replenishment. In 2019, Amazon announced a deal with Lady Gaga’s beauty product line.
example. The retailer was once known as Amazon’s showroom for electronics, but impressively managed to hold on to its market share through investing in e-commerce capabilities and creating a great in-store experience.
Ulta Beauty and Sephora can end up like Best Buy if they make the right moves now, or else face the fate of Barnes & Noble.
How will the pandemic affect America’s retailers? As states across the nation struggle to return to business, WSJ investigates the evolving retail landscape and how consumers might shop in a post-pandemic world.
In October 2020, output grew despite the contraction in eight core sectors by 2.5 per cent.
The output of eight core sectors contracted by 2.6 per cent in November 2020, mainly ascribed to a decline in the prediction of crude oil, refineries, natural gas, steel, and cement. According to data released by the commerce and industry ministry showed on Thursday, December 31, the production of the core sectors had registered a growth of 0.7 per cent in the corresponding month last year. The output of the core sectors remained in the negative trajectory for the ninth consecutive month. After showing recovery signs in September this year, the output growth of these sectors declined in the months of October and November. (Also Read:Industrial Output Grew In October Despite Contraction In Eight Core Sectors )
The combined index of eight core industries stood at 125.9 in November 2020 which declined by 2.6 per cent (provisional) as compared to the index of November 2019. The cumulative index of eight core sectors during the period of April to November this year contracted by 11.4 per cent, indicating the adverse impact on industrial production amid COVID-19 lockdown as compared to the 0.3 per cent growth in the corresponding period of last year. There was a broad-based contraction across the sectors during this period except fertilizer, the output of which grew by 3.8 per cent, due to favourable monsoon and sowing season this year.
Meanwhile, the industrial production based on the index of industrial production (IIP) recovered to an eight-month high and increased by 3.6 per cent year-on-year as against a contraction by 6.6 per cent in the corresponding month last year. The industrial output grew in October this year, despite the contraction in eight core sectors by 2.5 per cent, which almost has a 40 per cent weightage in the index of industrial production.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a recall for some Sportmix pet food products, following the deaths of at least 28 dogs after eating the food. So far, there are concerns over the safety of nine total lots of cat and dog foods manufactured by Midwest Pet Food, Inc. for potentially fatal levels of a toxin. The affected products were distributed to online retailers and stores nationwide. Here’s what to know about the recall, and how to keep your pet safe.
Why is the food being recalled?
Midwestern Pet Food, Inc. announced the recall on December 30, 2020, after the FDA was informed of the deaths of at least 28 dogs, as well as eight that have fallen ill after eating the recalled Sportmix pet food. At this point, there have been no reports of feline illnesses or fatalities.
The Missouri Department of Agriculture tested numerous samples of the food, and found them to contain very high levels of aflatoxin—a toxin produced by the mold Aspergillus flavus. When present at high levels (which is possible even if there is no visible mold) it can cause illness and death in pets.
The FDA is still investigating the situation, including conducting follow-up activities at the manufacturing facility. Today, the agency issued a public advisory regarding all the products involved to make sure people don’t feed the potentially toxic food—which may have been purchased a few weeks ago and is still sitting on their shelves—to their pets.
Jaundice (yellowish tint to the eyes, gums or skin due to liver damage)
Diarrhea
Because cats and dogs don’t tend to have much variety in their diets, when they eat food containing aflatoxin, it can build up over time, in some cases causing long-term liver issues and/or death. It’s also important to note that some animals suffer liver damage without showing any symptoms, so even if your pets seems to be OK, if it has been eating any of the recalled products, contact their veterinarians.
Currently, there is no evidence that humans who handle products containing the toxic mold are at risk of poisoning, but the FDA recommends washing your hands after touching it.
Which pets foods are involved in the recall?
The FDA says that it will be continuing to update their advisory if/when other products are found to contain the toxic mold, but for now, here are Midwestern Pet Food, Inc. products that are part of the recall:
Sportmix Energy Plus, 50 lb. bagExp 03/02/22/05/L2Exp 03/02/22/05/L3Exp 03/03/22/05/L2
Sportmix Energy Plus, 44 lb. bagExp 03/02/22/05/L3Sportmix Premium High Energy, 50 lb. bagExp 03/03/22/05/L3
Sportmix Premium High Energy, 44 lb. bagExp 03/03/22/05/L3Sportmix Original Cat, 31 lb. bag Exp 03/03/22/05/L3
Sportmix Original Cat, 15 lb. bagExp 03/03/22/05/L2Exp 03/03/22/05/L3
Lot code information may be found on the back of bag and will appear in a three-line code, with the top line in format “EXP 03/03/22/05/L#/B###/HH:MM.”
What to do if you’ve purchased recalled pet food
If your pet looks or acts sick after eating these products, call your veterinarian right away. Bring your pet’s full diet history to your vet, along with photos of the labels (including lot numbers) of the food that you suspect made them ill.
Of course, don’t feed the recalled foods to your pets. If you’re not sure how to dispose of the food, contact the company listed on the package for further instructions, or throw it away in a way that ensures children, pets, and wildlife cannot access them. Finally, sanitize your pet’s food bowls, scoops and storage containers using bleach, rinsing well afterwards with water, and drying thoroughly, the FDA recommends.
How to report a suspected case of aflatoxin poisoning to the FDA
If you suspect your pet has been poisoned by the recalled food, it’s a good idea to report that to the FDA. You can do that electronically through the FDA’s Safety Reporting Portal or by calling your state’s FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinators. If possible, the FDA says that it’s most helpful if you can work with your veterinarian to submit your pet’s medical records as part of your report. More information on lodging complaint to the FDA can be found on their website, specifically: How to Report a Pet Food Complaint.
