Earnings expectations will need to be tempered because of the inflationary fallout from the war in the Middle East, according to BlackRock Inc.’s Helen Jewell . “If you look at earnings forecasts at the moment for the year, they’re still well into double digits — 15, 16, 17, 18% — so there’s a lot of headroom for the earnings to come down a little bit,” Jewell, who is international chief investmen...
Earnings expectations will need to be tempered because of the inflationary fallout from the war in the Middle East, according to BlackRock Inc.’s Helen Jewell . “If you look at earnings forecasts at the moment for the year, they’re still well into double digits — 15, 16, 17, 18% — so there’s a lot of headroom for the earnings to come down a little bit,” Jewell, who is international chief investment officer for fundamental equities at the world’s largest asset manager, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Forecasts for stable earnings in the consumer sector are “hard to reconcile, particularly if you think about interest rates and the inflationary impact of what we’ve seen in the Middle East,” she said. There have already been some early signs of a change in bullish profit expectations. After weeks of analyst upgrades, Citigroup Inc.’s index of earnings momentum for the US turned negative last Friday, with downgrades outpacing upgrades by the most in nearly a year. Even so, analyst projections remain elevated at a time of high uncertainty and the risk of a surge in price pressures. Consensus expects S&P 500 earnings-per-share will rise 16% this year, which would be the strongest showing since 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. The first-quarter earnings season kicks off in earnest next week when JPMorgan Chase & Co. reports on Tuesday. Jewell said that the potential for increased earnings for energy and materials stocks was countered by downside for sectors like airlines, suggesting that profits would stay “pretty flat.” “Even if there was a full ramp-off today, these markets cannot normalize straightaway,” she said. “The market is underestimating the level of inflation that is likely to come through, that the oil price will remain sticky for a lot longer.” Concerns over the Iran war’s impact on inflation have turned interest-rate expectations on their head. Traders have shifted from predicting widespread policy easing this year to...
Scholar and author Sheng-Wei Wang discusses how studying an ancient Chinese world map led her to conclude China explored and mapped the world before the European Age of Discovery and how the legacy of colonialism and a Eurocentric record of global history continue to affect power dynamics today. SCMP Plus readers get early access to articles in the Open Questions series. What first made you suspec...
Scholar and author Sheng-Wei Wang discusses how studying an ancient Chinese world map led her to conclude China explored and mapped the world before the European Age of Discovery and how the legacy of colonialism and a Eurocentric record of global history continue to affect power dynamics today. SCMP Plus readers get early access to articles in the Open Questions series. What first made you suspect that it was Chinese explorers and not Europeans who launched the true Age of Discovery? The...
最近,小米宣布MiMo大模型面向全球开发者推出Token Plan订阅套餐,雷军亲自发微博官宣:Max档659元/月,面向国际开发者定价100美元/月,与Anthropic Claude Max 5x相同。同一天,雷军发文称MiMo大模型前一日调用量突破1万亿Token。 作为一家从手机做到汽车,制造业基因极强的公司,如今把大模型订阅套餐价格直接锚定全球AI第一梯队,这在行业里还是唯一一家,也引起...
最近,小米宣布MiMo大模型面向全球开发者推出Token Plan订阅套餐,雷军亲自发微博官宣:Max档659元/月,面向国际开发者定价100美元/月,与Anthropic Claude Max 5x相同。同一天,雷军发文称MiMo大模型前一日调用量突破1万亿Token。 作为一家从手机做到汽车,制造业基因极强的公司,如今把大模型订阅套餐价格直接锚定全球AI第一梯队,这在行业里还是唯一一家,也引起了不少的争议。仔细看,Mimo Token Plan的订阅制,和大模型行业惯用的订阅制还有一些根本上的不同。 01 罗福莉的发声,不踩Anthropic踩过的坑? MiMo Token Plan发布三天后,Anthropic宣布禁止Claude Pro和Max订阅用户通过OpenClaw等第三方Agent框架调用。 MiMo大模型负责人罗福莉随即在社交平台发布长文,详细分析了这件事。 她首先解释了Anthropic的困境。Claude的订阅制(Pro 20美元/月,Max 100-200美元/月)原本是为个人用户的正常使用强度设计的,但OpenClaw等Agent框架的调用模式完全不同:在单个用户查询中,框架会以独立API请求的形式发出多轮低价值的工具调用,每个请求都包含超过10万Token的上下文窗口,即使命中缓存,这也是一种浪费,在极端情况下还会拉低其他查询的缓存命中率。 她表示:“实际每次查询的请求数比Claude Code自身的框架高出数倍。换算成API定价,实际成本可能是订阅价格的几十倍。这可不是小差距,而是天壤之别。” 换句话说,Claude订阅制的本质问题是: 固定月费无法覆盖Agent场景下的实际算力消耗。 用户付200美元,却用掉了几千美元的计算资源。 罗福莉由此引出MiMo Token Plan的设计逻辑。她说, Token Plan支持第三方框架接入,但按Token配额计费,“与Claude新推出的额外使用套餐的逻辑相同”。这意味着用户用多少付多少,不会出现订阅制下“薅羊毛式”的成本倒挂。 “我们的目标是长期稳定地交付高质量的模型和服务,而不是让你冲动付费后就弃用。” 她也扮演了一次行业定价的“吹哨人”角色:“我建议LLM公司在弄清楚如何在不造成资金流失的情况下为Coding方案定价之前,不要盲目地竞相压低价格。以极低的价格出售Token,同时对第三方...
Financial Stability Board Chair Andrew Bailey warned stresses may be emerging in private credit after the shock to markets from the Iran war. Bailey, who is also Bank of England governor, said on Thursday that regulators needed to focus on the threat posed by private credit given its rapid rise and the febrile market responses to the conflict in the Middle East. “Private credit is a relatively opa...
Financial Stability Board Chair Andrew Bailey warned stresses may be emerging in private credit after the shock to markets from the Iran war. Bailey, who is also Bank of England governor, said on Thursday that regulators needed to focus on the threat posed by private credit given its rapid rise and the febrile market responses to the conflict in the Middle East. “Private credit is a relatively opaque world and it’s not yet, of course, because of its relative newness, actually come under stress, and we may be seeing that now,” Bailey said in a hearing in the European Parliament. Bailey has repeatedly warned of dangers from private credit after its boom since the financial crisis, when efforts to tighten regulation on banks drove corporate borrowers toward investment funds and other routes outside public markets. Read more: Shadow Banks Cross $250 Trillion Mark as Watchdog Warns on Data There are concerns that any problem in the sector could quickly spread to regulated banks and the wider economy, with Bailey warning of parallels with the subprime debt crisis. Jamie Dimon , head of JPMorgan Chase & Co. , has said there could be more “cockroaches” after the implosion of auto lender Tricolor Holdings and car-parts supplier First Brands Group last year, though he added this month that private credit is unlikely to pose a systemic risk. Meanwhile, the rush of retail investors into private credit funds has slammed into reverse over fears about high-risk investments such as AI infrastructure, forcing some money managers to impose gates on redemptions. While the FSB chair on Thursday said regulators shouldn’t be surprised by the rapid growth of non-bank lending, Bailey warned of a “double whammy” scenario where volatile markets combined with a loss in confidence in the private credit world. Markets have swung erratically since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran with increased hedge fund activity in government bond markets thought to be adding to the volatility. “We’v...