Here’s what you need to know today

The Big Picture

• Fed leaves rates unchanged for first time since July. The US Federal Reserve kept rates unchanged at 3.5%–3.75%, despite pressure from President Trump to continue cutting. Jerome Powell said the economy is still expanding at a “solid pace,” tempering expectations for further easing. (BBC)

  
  

• S&P 500 briefly hits all-time high. The S&P 500 touched 7,000 for the first time before pulling back. In the past 5 years, the S&P 500 with dividends reinvested is up 98% - almost doubling your money. (CNBC)

  
  

• Australia hits record power demand as renewables take the lead. Electricity demand across Australia’s National Energy Market (NEM) hit an all-time high in Q4, driven by warmer conditions in the north and cooler weather in the south. For the first time, renewables supplied more than 50% of total power demand during the quarter. (ABC)

  
  

• UK looks to reset China ties. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer became the first British leader in eight years to visit China, meeting President Xi Jinping to pursue a “more sophisticated relationship.” The visit follows similar trips by leaders from France, Canada, Ireland and Finland, as countries reassess trade ties amid growing uncertainty around US reliability. (BBC)

  
  

• Uranium prices hit 2-year high. Prices crossed US$100 a pound, driven by growing demand for nuclear energy to power AI data centres. Investors also keep buying, with the world’s largest uranium fund, Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, buying 500,000 pounds of uranium. (AFR)

Companies in the news

• Big Tech keeps getting bigger. A big week of earnings in the US was capped off by Microsoft, Meta and Tesla all reporting results. While Tesla’s revenue was down 3%, Microsoft and Meta showed no signs of slowing down with revenue up 17% and 24% respectively. (Microsoft | Meta | CNBC)

  
  

• AI spending isn’t slowing down. The most notable takeaway from Big Tech earnings was even more AI spending. Microsoft spent US$37.5bn in the quarter, while Meta invested US$22.1bn and announced plans to double its spending this year. ASML, a company critical to the semiconductor supply chain, also announced record orders. (BBC | AFR)

  
  

• Amazon cuts 16,000 jobs. Amazon confirmed it was cutting 16,000 jobs, hours after employees were mistakenly emailed about a new round of redundancies. The layoffs take total job losses to 30,000, following 14,000 cuts announced in October. (FT)

  
  

• Deutsche Bank raided by German police. Offices in Berlin and Frankfurt were raided as part of a money laundering investigation into funds tied to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, former owner of Chelsea Football Club. (BBC)

  
  

• News Corp launches California Post. Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch has launched the California Post, a west coast sibling to the New York Post. As most news outlets in major metro areas pull back from physical newspapers, Murdoch is bucking the trend in America’s most populous state. (AP)

What the…?

Former Disney Channel star raises US$100m for space startup. As space startups continue to boom in 2026, an unlikely name is leading one of them. Bridgit Mendler — best known for playing Teddy in Good Luck Charlie — has raised US$100m in a Series B round for Northwood Space, where she is co-founder and CEO.

Northwood Space provides end-to-end space infrastructure for commercial and government missions. The company raised US$30m in Series A less than a year ago and counts Andreessen Horowitz among its backers. Mendler said the fresh funding will help deliver a US$50m contract with the US Space Force to upgrade its satellite control network, while supporting other space missions.

So… we’ve had Katy Perry in orbit, now a Disney star running a space tech company. Surely Hannah Montana on the Moon is next? (Tech Crunch)

What’s got us thinking?

Investing is a lifelong journey. Here’s what you can learn today.

China’s birth rate crisis

This was taken from the Equity Mates Investing episode titled ‘Bryce reveals 500 to 5k results, China’s warning signs and are software companies on sale?’ Check it out in the links (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

Alec: Let's start with birth rate and population because this is a structural challenge for the world's second largest economy. So what's happened?

Bryce: Well, let's have a look at the numbers. So in 2025, 7.9 million babies were born, so that's about 5.63 births per 1000 people. What does it actually mean? China's population has now shrunk for the fourth straight year down 3.39 million people to 1.405 billion. The birth rate though is less than half what it was just nine years ago. And we're seeing deaths also hitting a 21st century high. So their population is now effectively a pyramid flipping upside down.

Alec: Yeah, the population pyramid inverted. The one child policy is going to be looked at as one of the biggest public policy own goals in a long time. So that was scrapped in 2016, but it's so hard to reverse demographic trends. And so yeah, China's birth rate has hit a record low the lowest since records began, and it's going to be impossible to reverse it.

Bryce: Well, they're trying to reverse it. So you said they scrapped the one child policy in 2016. They then ditched the two child limit in 2021, and they're now allowing three kids with no fines. Not only that, they're paying families roughly $500 a year for every child under three, and they've also slapped a 13% tax on birth control. So condoms, birth control pills, et cetera, now cost 13% more, but it's obviously not working.

Alec: As your population starts to decline, it's really hard to reverse that. And as China's working age population ages out and they don't have new workers coming in to replace it, then all of a sudden the ratio of working age people paying tax to older people relying on the tax system gets inverted and it gets harder for the government to fund services that it needs to fund. As the tax base gets smaller, it's going to be decades of problems for China. They already have 40 million fewer workers than 2015

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