The Daily Chase: Meta launches Threads; Oil prices remain resilient

Good morning! Here are five things you need to know to start your day.

So... did you try Instagram’s Threads last night? After lovingly putting the kids to bed (picture attempting to brush the teeth of three rabid racoons and wrestle their tiny but freakishly strong bodies into organic cotton pyjamas), I downloaded Threads. First reaction: It is exactly like Twitter. Second reaction: I have no followers. Third reaction: Is Beyoncé here yet? I don’t know if this will work but I do know that Meta has 3.8 billion monthly active users and Twitter never made it past 500 million. With US$44 billion at stake, if Threads is successful Twitter could be hanging by one in short order. 

Oh also, Mark Zuckerberg tweeted for the first time in 11 years. 

1.       Good news is bad news (again): North American markets are under pressure, picking up from a brutal session in Asia that saw the Hang Seng plunge three per cent to a one-month low. The key takeaway from the U.S. Federal Reserve minutes was that they are going to raise interest rates again. Indeed that is what the market is pricing in. Now we turn our attention to jobs. Today’s data suggests we could get an upside surprise. Yields on the U.S. 10-year hit four per cent as the ADP National Employment Report job numbers came in double the expectation: 497,000 vs the 225,000 expected. Tomorrow economists are expecting 225,000 new jobs in Canada – but consensus has been wrong 14 times in a row.