The bottom line

■ In the past year, rents have fallen 21.5 percent in San Francisco, 15.5 percent in New York, and 8.9 percent in Boston. The drops in the nation’s most expensive cities, though, were an exception, and of 150 large metropolitan areas in one study, 119 saw higher rents.

Bloomberg.com

■ Job openings rose to

6.65 million in December, a higher figure compared with a year earlier. But companies aren’t rushing to fill them, and hiring shrank by almost 400,000 in the month, according to the U.S. government’s job openings and labor turnover survey.

MarketWatch.com

■ Since Jeff Bezos took his company public in 1997, only one stock has beaten Amazon’s 38.4 percent annualized return: Monster Beverage, the energy drink company, at 41.7 percent. A $1,000 investment in Hansen’s Natural Corp.—what Monster was called in 1997—would be worth $3.9 million today.

Qz.com

■ According to Credit Suisse study, more than 8 percent of adults in the U.S.—more than 20 million Americans—have at least a million dollars in assets.

CNBC.com

■ More than 2 million firearms were bought last month in an 80 percent year-over-year spike. The surge is in line with the record pace already set in 2020: Nearly 23 million firearms were bought, a 64 percent jump year over year.

The Washington Post

■ Eight investment firms have raised more than $2.5 billion in funding since 2019 for buying up-and-coming sellers on Amazon’s marketplace. These so-called Amazon aggregators are looking for the next Anker Innovations, which started selling cellphone chargers on Amazon and is now worth $10 billion.

Bloomberg.com