Elon Musk’s Twitter is not exactly the oasis of free speech he promised. First, he threatened legal action against the college student responsible for the ElonJet account and now he is just straight up suspending journalists. This might have been cause for concern to investors until you remember that one of Twitter’s largest is that other beacon of free speech – Saudi Arabia.

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The lowdown

• 🏦 Global stocks tumble after Fed, ECB and Bank of England raise rates.

• 🚗 Elon Musk dumps another $3.6 billion in Tesla stock-taking his total annual sales to nearly $40 billion.

• 🤖 ChatGPT owner OpenAI anticipates revenue of $1 billion by 2024.

Featured Stories

The Activision deal amid a games industry slowdown

When Covid restrictions dictated how much time people could spend outside, industries such as video games that exist almost entirely within customers’ homes had a couple of very good years. In 2022, when restrictions eased in most parts of the world, the video game industry no longer had a captive audience and so experienced a slowdown.

Let’s take a look at the industry’s year through the lens of some of its best-known companies.

The big winner has no doubt been Activision. After receiving a takeover offer from Microsoft in January, the company is currently up 24% from its starting point. Even as the FTC has attempted to block the deal, the stock has remained buoyant.

It has been a mixed bag for other games publishers like Nintendo and Electronic Arts. Electronic Arts has suffered more due to its listing on the Nasdaq and the revaluation of anything considered to be ‘tech’. Nintendo’s primary listing is in Japan.

Then there is Roblox. Although a games publisher, it has been caught up in the revaluation of tech stocks. It currently trades on 9 times revenue down from 50 times 18 months ago ($). The company will be hoping that 2023 can provide a new high score.

The content we're consuming today

• Bloomberg: Dubai Is a New Hotspot for Idle Bankers Chasing IPO Deals ($).

• The Economist: Big tech pushes further into finance ($).

Off-balance sheet items

• Still on video games, The Last of Us has been turned into a television series. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world but was released before Covid. One thing the developers got wrong was the supermarket shelves – the food was gone but there was still toilet paper. This was corrected in the sequel which was released post-pandemic.

The bottom line