Seeking Alpha’s roundup of statements, announcements, and remarks that could impact markets, sectors, or individual stocks.
- Amazon’s (AMZN) Zoox robotaxi service has officially launched in San Francisco, where it will compete with Alphabet’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) Waymo.
The company is offering rides first to members of the public who joined its waitlist.
“Our Explorers program is an early rider initiative that invites people to ride for free and share valuable feedback to help us refine the experience before we scale. This is an important moment for people to learn about Zoox as we prepare to grow our service area in San Francisco,” Zoox said in a blog post.
Zoox already operates in Las Vegas.
Other companies involved in developing robotaxi services include Tesla (TSLA), Baidu (BIDU), Pony.ai (PONY), Lyft (LYFT), and Uber (UBER).
- Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Tom Barkin said he believes the labor market may be weaker than recent data suggests, but that inflation doesn’t appear to be increasing significantly.
“Our outreach suggests a somewhat weaker labor market than these numbers suggest. If you ask businesses how they see the labor market today, they say, ‘balanced.’ But as they describe that ‘balance’ in more detail, it doesn’t seem so,” said Barkin, in a speech on Tuesday.
“With the exception of skilled trades, labor feels quite available with plenty of quality applicants per opening. Recent layoff announcements by sizable firms like Amazon, Verizon, and Target give additional cause for caution,” Barkin continued.
“Our outreach leads me to believe inflation remains somewhat elevated but isn’t likely to increase much,” Barkin added.
Barkin also addressed the Fed’s upcoming FOMC meeting, which is scheduled for Dec. 9-10.
“You may notice nothing I just said gives any guidance for our next meeting. That’s intentional, as I think we have a lot to learn between now and then,” Barkin said.
Barkin is not currently a voting member of the FOMC.
- BXP (BXP) CEO Owen Thomas said he thinks the U.S. office market has finally bottomed out following news that Q3 saw the first year-over-year decline in vacancies since Q1 2020.
“I definitely think we hit bottom. I think we hit bottom in 2024,” Thomas told CNBC. “There are lots of positive things that are going on for part, not all, of the office business.”
BXP, the country’s largest office REIT, was formerly known as Boston Properties, CNBC noted.