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SINGAPORE – Chinese electric vehicle makers like Nio, Xpeng and Li Auto are strong companies but their stocks are likely to be corrected, the executive director of an auto consultancy told CNBC this week.

That’s because their stocks have skyrocketed in recent months, said Michael Dunne, CEO of ZoZo Go, which advises automakers on doing business in Asia. He said the stock movement “looks like a bubble” but companies have the potential to become the “Tesla of China”.

There has to be a correction, these are young companies.

“There are merits. There are strong companies built by tech billionaires, much like [Tesla CEO] Elon Musk, “he told CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia on Wednesday.

“There are good reasons to invest in these stocks, but be careful,” he warned. “The stock launches have been sensational over the past three months.”

On Wednesday, Nio shares, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, closed at $ 62.15, up more than 1,500% year over year. The stock rose roughly 187% over the past three months, while the NYSE-listed Xpeng rose 163% and the Nasdaq-listed Li Auto rose 83%.

“There has to be a fix. These are young companies,” said Dunne.

Li Auto and Xpeng went public in July and August, respectively, while Nio went public in 2018. And the companies lag far behind the market leader Tesla in terms of market capitalization and vehicle deliveries.

Dunne said Chinese automakers need to focus on the domestic market.

“To be truly successful, these companies – Xpeng, Nio, Li Auto, and others – have to succeed at home first,” he said.

They are not welcomed in the US for political reasons, and Europeans will “be very tough on the Chinese as they were on the Japanese and Koreans before them,” he added.

“So look to the Chinese to focus their efforts on their home market, which is after all the largest in the world and has all kinds of potential at the top and bottom,” he said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer hit one of his favorite semiconductor companies on the table after stocks were informed of a leadership change at one of its top competitors, Intel.

Advanced Micro Devices shares fell nearly 4% after Intel announced it would replace its chief executive in one month. Intel stock rose 7% as investors welcomed news that current CEO Bob Swan would step down to take over from Pat Gelsinger, an Intel alum who heads VMware, in February.

“As much as Intel needs a change, the important thing here is that you get the chance now to buy Intel’s more agile rival AMD for more than $ 3 for something that may not happen: a turnaround at Intel within the next three Years ago, “said the Mad Money host. “Gelsinger did a good job at VMware, but Intel doesn’t need an old Intel hand. It takes someone new, young, and hungry who can shake up, if not blow up, the culture.”

At AMD, buyers would get a piece of a $ 110.4 billion company whose shares nearly doubled over the past year. Shares of Intel, a larger company with a market capitalization of $ 233.4 billion, fell more than 16% in 2020 as the company reported a delay in new chip development and lost a key partnership with Apple.

Before these problems, companies like AMD and Samsung began to gain market share from Intel.

Cramer, who applauded AMD CEO Lisa Su for her responsibility for the graphics chip maker, also reiterated his love for Nvidia, a $ 335 billion semiconductor player.

“I’d much rather buy the stock of a company that beats Intel to a pulp, AMD,” said Cramer. “Under the incredible leadership of Lisa Su, they have evolved from a semiconductor that also operates – always second fiddle to Intel – into one that makes better chips.”

The comments came after a mixed day of stock trading on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the session down 8 points, or about 0.03%, at 31,060.47. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite extended their gains from Tuesday, up 0.23% to 3,809.84 and 0.43% to 13,128.95, respectively.

The three averages remain in the red week to this day.

Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable foundation owns interests in Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia.

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Shoppers make their way through the Grand Coastal Mall on Black Friday as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continues on November 27, 2020 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, USA.

Micah Green | Reuters

Reluctant shoppers found they couldn’t avoid the mall during the vacation.

A data analysis released this week by Placer.ai shows how shopper visits to shopping malls have subsided amid the Covid pandemic. The research firm, which uses cell phone data to track consumer behavior, surveyed pedestrian traffic in more than two dozen “top tier” malls across the country during the year.

Visits to the tracked shopping malls, which Placer.ai refused to name, peaked in February before the pandemic, up 10.7% from 2019. In March – when retail stores and malls closed to slow the spread of Covid – visits fell 59.5%. A year-on-year decline of 95.9% followed in April, marking a low point.

During the summer months, when Americans were feeling a little more comfortable leaving the house, visits to these shopping centers steadily recovered from month to month into the fall. But a revival in Covid cases hit traffic in November, leading some to believe that U.S. malls would be particularly bleak in the final weeks of the year.

A surprise came in December, however, when visits recovered. Some procrastinators had no choice but to hit the mall in the last few days before Christmas for last minute gifts. The upward trend shows that malls still play a role as a convenient shopping option for some consumers.

“The immediate nature of the recovery after Black Friday, the strength in early 2020 and the height in 2020 in exceptionally difficult circumstances confirm the idea that 2021 could be a lot friendlier for malls than many expect,” said Ethan Chernofsky, vice president of marketing at Placer.ai said in the report.

However, this report only analyzed traffic in the top performing malls in the US – likely owned by Simon Property Group or Brookfield Property Partners, which operate some of the most valuable malls in the country. The picture was certainly darker elsewhere.

Two shopping center owners, CBL & Associates and Pennsylvania REIT, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2020. The latter has since surfaced. But shopping center owners are under pressure again in the New Year as tenants continue to ask for rent relief after the holidays or plan additional store closings.

“It’s a total renters market,” said Tom Mullaney, director of restructuring services at commercial real estate services company JLL. “Landlords are told that you can either drop ‘X’ or I’ll just leave.”

Visits appear to be heavier at outdoor centers, where many Americans have been more comfortable during the pandemic.

In a presentation this week at the annual ICR conference, the Tanger Factory Outlet Centers said that traffic fell back to about 90% of 2019 levels during the fourth fiscal quarter. The Real Estate Investment Trust owns outdoor outlet centers in cities such as Daytona Beach, Florida and Charleston, South Carolina.

Some retailers this week also discussed their plans not to invest in malls due to rapidly changing shopping patterns.

“Not many people out there want to invest in business today [at] Especially in the mall because we’re waiting for this dust to settle, “said Scott Lipesky, CFO of Abercrombie & Fitch, during an ICR presentation.” We will retire this year. We did not get [to 2021] yet … but our real estate investments are likely to decline. “

Jerome Griffith, CEO of Lands’ End, said in a separate presentation that the clothing retailer’s typical expansion plans – opening 10 to 15 stores annually – are being put on hold for the foreseeable future.

“We don’t see any traffic,” said Griffith. “So we’ll see how consumers react to bricks and mortar when things are a little more open. And then, if it makes sense to think again, we’ll do it at this point.”

– CNBC’s Crystal Mercedes contributed to this data visualization.

Dominic Raab, First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, walks to Downing Street on September 3, 2019 in London, England.

Leon Neal | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON – The UK has put in place new measures to eradicate the presence of suspected forced labor in UK supply chains in China’s Xinjiang region.

China is accused of extrajudicial detention over 1 million Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in political re-education camps in the Northwest Autonomous Region, along with invasive surveillance, restrictions on Uyghur culture and the use of forced labor.

China firmly denies the allegations, claiming that the centers are aimed at combating extremism and promoting professional skills development.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic announced that companies with annual sales in excess of £ 36 million (US $ 49.2 million) that fail to demonstrate adequate diligence in ensuring the forced labor of their supply chains under the Modern Slavery Act are now being fined Raab an in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

“We need to make sure that UK companies are not part of the supply chains that lead to the gates of detention camps in Xinjiang and that the products of human rights abuses that take place in those camps do not make it to the US supermarket shelves where we week.” shop here at home for a week, “said Raab.

The government will also launch an urgent review of export controls to prevent exports that could lead to human rights abuses, issue new guidelines for businesses operating in the region, and extend the Modern Slavery Act to the public sector unless businesses are forced out of industrial relations public contracts.

“Really terrible”

Raab claimed the evidence is now “extensive” and “paints a truly harrowing picture”, accusing China of operating internment camps, arbitrary detentions, political re-education, forced labor, torture and forced sterilization on an industrial scale.

“It’s really terrible – the barbarism we had hoped was lost in another era that is practiced today as we speak in one of the leading members of the international community,” he added.

Raab cited first-hand reports from diplomats and escaped victims, satellite images of factories in internment camps and the destruction of mosques, and reports from third parties from the UN Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Raab stressed that China’s refusal to allow access to a UN human rights officer or any other credible external agency was inconsistent with these claims.

“China cannot simply deny access to trusted third party agencies that can verify the facts while maintaining a position of credible denial,” he added.

A protester outside the White House urges the United States to take action to stop the suppression of the Uyghurs and other Turkish peoples on August 14, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Raab’s actions have stopped sanctioning individual Chinese officials for their involvement in the alleged atrocities, and Labour’s shadow foreign minister Lisa Nandy alleged that her counterpart had not gone far enough, likening Raab’s actions to “tinkering with the margins”.

The presence of forced labor in international supply chains has been the target of a number of large governments in recent years. In late 2020, several US companies came under fire for allegedly lobbying to weaken a bipartisan bill banning imports from Xinjiang.

“Some US politicians have invented disinformation about so-called ‘forced labor’ in order to restrict and suppress relevant parties and companies in China and to curb China’s development,” Hua Chunying, spokesman for the Chinese State Department, told CNBC in December.

“All ethnic groups in Xinjiang choose their occupations at their own will and sign ’employment contracts’ based on equality of their own choosing.”