*** Editor’s note: There are still three seats available for the CES dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s Pub on Thursday, January 5. Please let us know at sundaybrief@gmail.com if you are interested in attending. ***

Happy Holidays from the chilly tundra of the Midwest. It was a pretty light week from a stock performance perspective, with the Fab Five down an additional $131 billion this week ($289 for the two-week period) and the Telco Top Five up $9 billion last week (down $12 billion for the fortnight).

Weighing on the market is the persistent high yields on short-term Treasury bills. The 2-year bond (chart here from CNBC) ended Friday at 4.327%. If you are in a top tax bracket, that’s the equivalent of about a 5.9% taxable bond (or dividend). For many, that’s not a bad alternative for the next two years. Previous arguments of “There is no alternative” have been replaced by “this is a terrific opportunity to get in at a low basis and prepare for multiple expansion.”

Meanwhile, as the charts show, each of the Fab Five are down at least $580 billion on the year. Absent an incredible year-end rally, they will collectively lose a trillion dollars more than they gained in 2021. We will have a lot more to say in first Brief of 2023 next Sunday, but there’s not a lot of hope of a quick rebound to the COVID-related valuations of late 2021.

Given the Holiday season, we will be very brief on news. However, there are a couple of great articles on Microsoft’s response to the FTC lawsuit blocking the Activision Blizzard here and here. For those of you who don’s use LinkedIn regularly, here’s AT&T’s announcement of their out-of-region open fiber venture with BlackRock (lots to say about this in next week’s Brief). And, in case you missed it (we nearly did), the details of Google’s deal to acquire rights for the NFL Sunday Ticket are here.

File is below. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year!