n.195

Investors, such as hedge funds, have distanced themselves from the Magnificent Seven (which includes Amazon)


according to Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. The Bloomberg index tracking the Magnificent Seven has gained only 1% this year, with losses by Tesla, Microsoft and Alphabet offset by a 25.8% rally for Meta. The stocks of the Magnificent Seven rose more than 160% between the beginning of 2023 and the end of 2024. (The Magnificent Seven are : Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, parent company of Google, Amazon, Tesla, Nvidia and Meta, parent company of Facebook).

Amazon
 

n.193

PFAS in drinking water: companies and the City of Paris denounce


Faced with the crisis of eternal pollutants, two drinking water distributors have decided to play the game of transparency and launch a counter-attack. Eau de Paris, the main public water company in France, and Atlantic'eau, the public water service in the Loire-Atlantique region, communicated on Thursday 13 February the results of their analyses on the presence of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in water to respond to the 'legitimate concerns' of their users. The Paris agency announces that it will file a complaint against X in the coming days. The latter concerns several offences: pollution of drinking water supply networks due to the spillage of substances, abandonment of waste and substantial degradation of the environment. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, had declared the day before that she was preparing appeals with other authorities and local operators to obtain compensation for ecological damage and to have the staggering costs of the clean-up financed by the producers. "It is the polluters who have to pay, the chemical multinationals that market these pollutants whose toxicity they have known for decades," explains Dan Lert, president of Eau de Paris. Not the users, not the drinking water operators, not the local authorities. "...

Water
 

n.192

Increasing notifications of trade fraud, counterfeiting, adulteration and food alerts in the European Union


This is revealed in the Food Safety Alerts and Fraud Investigation Report for the year 2023, published in mid-September by the European Commission. The document brings together the results of the work of the Alert and Co-operation Network, through which member states share information on official controls in the agri-food chain... Last year, there was an 8% increase in notifications, totalling just under 4,700. The most frequent reason for notification was the presence of pesticide residues, followed by microbiological hazards, especially Salmonella, and mycotoxins... Most of the notifications concerned non-compliant fruit and vegetables rejected at customs (mainly for the presence of unauthorised pesticides)... Source. In the USA, the situation with listeria does not look any better. Added to this is the affair involving Mc Donald's. And the 'salmonella' egg affair in Franceshould be noted. Cases like this one: Rsa in Florence, they feel ill after the meal: 3 elderly people hospitalised die, 114 intoxicated people are likely to increase. P.S.: there were 4 RSAs. Compiled 1 October 2024 and updated 18 February 2025

Fruit and vegetablesMc Donald'sPesticides
 

n.188

US inflation, helped by egg price hike, unexpectedly rises to 3% in January


Wednesday's consumer price index figure exceeded the expectations of economists polled by Reuters, who predicted inflation would remain stable at 2.9% in December. The month-on-month increase - for January - also exceeded expectations, at 0.5 per cent compared to the 0.3 per cent expected. A big contributor to the increase was the surge in the price of eggs, which rose 15.2% during the month and 53% year-on-year, partly due to the impact of bird flu. Source

Inflation
 

n.186

700% increase in prescriptions of GLP-1 drugs used for weight loss between 2019 and 2023


and a market that is expected to grow to $150 billion by 2030...Although GLP-1 drugs get a lot of buzz for their benefits, a large percentage - 50%-75% - of people who try the drugs stop using them within a year, due to side effects that can range from mild to severe... Among consumer goods companies, Conagra and Nestlé are trying to gain market share by marketing products to GLP-1 buyers. Read this article

Nestlè