meme stocks Archives

1. Bonds Drop With Tech Futures on Inflation Worries

The selloff in global bonds deepened as the benchmark Treasury yield hit a one-year high and debt from the U.K. to Australia came under pressure. U.S. stock futures slumped, with tech shares once again bearing the brunt of selling as investors rotated to companies poised to benefit from an end to pandemic lockdowns. Across markets, investors are betting on a sunnier outlook for the global economy and the risk that inflation is just around the corner. U.S. data showed fewer-than-forecast jobless claims last week. Commodities also extended gains, with investors piling into metals that can ride faster growth trends. Copper moved closer to a record high set a decade ago and aluminium touched a two-year high.

Futures on the S&P 500 Index dipped 0.4% as of 8:16 a.m. New York time.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index decreased 0.1%.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index surged 1.3%.

The MSCI Emerging Market Index added 1.2%.

2. GameStop Reignites Meme Stock Frenzy With $7.6 Billion Surge

GameStop soared in premarket trading Thursday as retail investors revived the surge in Reddit-favorite stocks, putting it on pace to reap $7.6 billion in market value over two days. The video-game retailer rose as much as 83% in New York. Among other favourites of traders populating Reddit forums, AMC Entertainment advanced 12% premarket after gaining 59% in the first three days of the week, while Koss surged 78%. Nokia Oyj, also a favourite of the meme crowd, climbed 7.7% in Europe, and BlackBerry added 5.3% in early trading.

3. Coinbase Files to Go Public on Nasdaq Via Direct Listing

Coinbase, the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, filed to go public via a direct listing, in what’s anticipated to be a break-through moment for the industry. The company won’t raise any proceeds in the transaction, Coinbase said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. Coinbase’s offering could be the first major direct listing to take place on the Nasdaq. All previous ones, including Spotify, Slack, Asana and Palantir were listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Started in 2012, Coinbase has raised more than $500 million from backers that include Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator and Greylock Partners. It was valued at more than $8 billion in 2018 after a $300 million funding round led by Tiger Global Management.

4. Debt Crisis Threatens Developing Nations: World Bank Head

Developing nations remain at risk of a debt crisis due to the impact of the global pandemic, and the World Bank is working on ways to reduce the burden, President David Malpass said. The Washington-based development lender and the International Monetary Fund are collaborating closely on designing plans that connect debt reductions to freeing up resources for countries to invest in health care and initiatives to fight climate change, Malpass said. A debt crisis is “a prominent risk for some of the countries at the bottom, and that has to do with the difficulty of getting new investment,” Malpass said. “The rest of the world should see that there’s a beneficial linkage” in finding ways to reduce unsustainable debt in developing countries, he said.

5. Facebook, Netflix Face Fresh Scrutiny as India Tightens Grip

India joined the global regulatory push to rein in Silicon Valley technology giants, tightening rules that govern how social media and streaming companies do business in the world’s biggest democracy. The new rules that come into immediate effect will require the likes of Facebook and Twitter to take down unlawful content quicker. Messaging apps can be asked to provide the identity of the originators of unlawful messages on their platforms, implying the likes of Whatsapp may have to break the encryption and dilute users’ privacy safeguards. Streaming services such as Netflix, Google’s YouTube and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video face stricter oversight over content containing sexually explicit scenes, violence and abusive language.

6. Norway’s $1.3 Trillion Fund Dumped Saudi Shares, Added Qatar

Norway’s $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund slashed its exposure to Saudi Arabian stocks last year while boosting its portfolio in neighbouring Qatar by almost seven times. Total holdings of shares in Riyadh fell to about $194 million as of the end of December from $420 million the year before. In Doha, exposure surged to $582 million from $80 million. Qatar is now its second-biggest holding in the Gulf after the United Arab Emirates. The shift highlights a turn by the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund in two Gulf countries that were on opposite sides of a spat in the oil-abundant region that ended in January after almost four years.

7. China’s Traders Are Hoarding Scrap Copper as Rally Powers On

The supply tightness that has helped fuel copper’s epic rally is showing signs of spilling over to the Chinese scrap market, with traders hoarding the metal on bets on further price gains. Refined-copper’s premium over scrap slid to 3,934 yuan ($610) a metric ton on Thursday, a 10% drop from Monday, when it hit the highest in eight years, according to data from Mysteel Global. The spread has narrowed as prices of the waste metal climbed after some traders hoarded supplies in anticipation of even more gains.

8. Pfizer-BioNTech Shot Could Help End Pandemic: Israel Study

Pfizer and BioNTech SE’s Covid-19 vaccine was overwhelmingly effective against the virus in a study that followed nearly 1.2 million people in Israel, results that public-health experts said to show that immunizations could end the pandemic. Two doses of the vaccine prevented 94% of Covid-19 cases in 596,618 people vaccinated between Dec. 20 and Feb. 1, about one-quarter of whom were over the age of 60. The researchers matched each vaccinated person with someone who hadn’t gotten a shot, enabling the best analysis yet of whether extremely good results from an earlier clinical trial would hold up in the real world. The Pfizer-BioNTech shot cleared every hurdle. It was so effective, in fact, that outside experts said that with broad enough use it may be possible to halt the pandemic.

9. Fallen Diamond Billionaire Loses Bid to Stop India Extradition

One-time diamond tycoon Nirav Modi lost a bid to challenge his extradition from the U.K. to India, where he’s wanted on charges that he orchestrated the largest bank fraud in the country’s history. Modi is accused of defrauding state-run Punjab National Bank of around $2 billion over seven years. In addition, the one-time billionaire jeweller is charged with threatening to have a witness killed if he testified against him. London Judge Sam Goozee on Thursday dismissed Modi’s argument that he would face an unfair trial if he were extradited to India.

10. U.K. Companies Say Brexit Paperwork Is Biggest Headache

British companies say new customs forms required following Brexit are the biggest hurdle to trading with the rest of the world. About 38% of exporters and 39% of importers identified form-filling as their main hurdle. While half of the exporters reported no difficulties trading internationally, the concerns on paperwork exceeded those about disruption at U.K. borders and transportation costs. The findings add to evidence that friction at ports is weighing on Britain’s ability to trade following after the nation left the European Union’s common customs system. Importers are warning they face even more red tape when new regulations come into force in April and July. Almost a third of the companies moving goods from Britain to Northern Ireland in the past two weeks said volumes have fallen.

Curated from Bloomberg.com

1. Global Stocks Extend Rally as Tech Leads Gains

The rally in global stock markets extended into a third day as companies from Amazon.com to Vodafone Group posted strong results and the retail-trading frenzy subsided. Tech was firmly back in favour in the U.S., with Nasdaq 100 contracts climbing as earnings from Alphabet and Amazon impressed investors, while futures on the Russell 2000 Index of small-cap stocks dipped. Treasury yields rose after Senate Democrats put President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan on a fast track to passage. The Stoxx 600 Index climbed 0.6%, with most sectors in the green as corporate results rolled in. Italian stocks and bonds surged after Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank president, was tapped to be the country’s next prime minister.

Futures on the S&P 500 Index climbed 0.4% as of 8:23 a.m. New York time.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index gained 0.5%.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index advanced 0.9%.

The MSCI Emerging Market Index increased 0.5%.

2. Jeff Bezos to Step Down as CEO: Opens a New Age for Amazon

Bezos said he will resign as chief executive officer of Amazon.com and become executive chairman later this year. He will hand day-to-day control to Andy Jassy, his longtime head of Amazon Web Services, a swiftly growing division that has almost single-handedly changed the way companies buy the technology that powers their businesses. With that comes at least a partial end to one of the most epic runs in modern business history. Over the last 25 years, the Amazon founder, now 57, led the company through perhaps the most fertile period of any American business ever. Over the last decade, he has piloted Amazon to a $1.7 trillion market capitalization, where it currently occupies the same rarified trillion-dollar air as Microsoft and Apple.

3. Ant Reaches Agreement With China Regulators on Overhaul

Ant Group and Chinese regulators have agreed on a restructuring plan that will turn Jack Ma’s fintech giant into a financial holding company, making it subject to capital requirements similar to those for banks. The plan calls for putting all of Ant’s businesses into the holding company, including its technology offerings in areas like blockchain and food delivery. One of Ant’s early proposals to regulators had envisioned putting only financial operations into the new structure. An official announcement on the overhaul could come before the start of China’s Lunar New Year holiday next week.

4. Tesla Puts China Supercharger Plant Into Production

Tesla Inc. will start making superchargers in a newly built plant in Shanghai, the American electric automobile maker said in a statement on Wednesday. The move marks Tesla’s latest effort to grow its business in the world’s most populated country. The 42-million-yuan ($6.5 million) plant will make up to 10,000 supercharger poles annually, the statement said. China has built more than 410 charging stations for Tesla in 2020, the statement said.

5. Yellen Summons Regulators to Discuss Financial Market Volatility

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has summoned U.S. financial regulators to discuss recent volatility in financial markets, in her first public effort to address the tumult involving GameStop shares and broker-dealer Robinhood. Yellen called a meeting with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “Secretary Yellen believes the integrity of markets is important and has asked for a discussion of recent volatility in financial markets and whether recent activities are consistent with investor protection and fair and efficient markets,” the department said.

6. Reddit Stocks Lose $167 Billion as Crowd Preaches Defiance

The 50 stocks that Robinhood originally put on its restricted list had added $276 billion in value from the end of 2020 to the height of the recent mania. But now, $167 billion has been wiped out in just a matter of days, and there’s little sign the pain is easing. GameStop plummeted 60% Tuesday to $90 a share, bringing its two-day loss to 72%. If anything, the last few days have served as a reminder that in spite of a popular mantra that they do, stocks don’t always go up.

7. U.S. Plans Record Debt Sale; No Changes Before New Stimulus

The U.S. Treasury held steady its planned issuance of longer-dated securities at a quarterly debt auction next week as the department awaits the result of the Biden administration’s push for a fresh coronavirus relief package. The Treasury already boosted its so-called quarterly refunding in each of the last three quarters, and its stockpile of cash remains near an all-time high. With the outcome of President Joe Biden’s push for a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill uncertain, the department held off on tweaking its issuance of longer-dated securities. The Treasury will sell $126 billion in long-term debt next week.

8. U.K. Offers to Help Save Eurostar, Says France Must Take Lead

The U.K. said it’s ready to pitch in with state funding to help rescue Eurostar International if France takes the lead on bailing out the Channel Tunnel rail business that’s been savaged by pandemic travel restrictions. British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said options including the Bank of England’s coronavirus loans and the U.K.’s export finance regime could be available to help London-based Eurostar, which operates a passenger train link with the continent. But he insisted that the primary responsibility for the bailout remains with France, which controls the company via state railway SNCF. The coronavirus crisis has wiped out 95% of Eurostar’s passenger traffic and SNCF has warned that there is a real risk to the business’s survival without government aid.

9. Kuwait Taps Into Wealth Fund as Cash Dries Up

Kuwait’s government has transferred the last of its performing assets to the country’s sovereign wealth fund in exchange for cash to plug a monthly budget deficit of $3.3 billion, leaving one of the world’s richest nations with few options to pay its bills. Fitch on Wednesday cut Kuwait’s outlook to negative from stable, citing “the imminent depletion of liquid assets” in the absence of parliamentary authorization for the government to borrow.” The rating was affirmed at AA. The assets include stakes in Kuwait Finance House and telecoms company Zain. State-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. was also transferred from the government’s treasury to the $600 billion Future Generations Fund, meant to safeguard the Gulf Arab nation’s wealth for a time after oil.

10. UAE Job Market Improves as Vaccine Rollout Boosts Confidence

Business activity in the Arab world’s two largest economies improved at the start of 2021, with the United Arab Emirates seeing growth in its job market for the first time in over a year. Non-oil private sector activity in Saudi Arabia soared during January as new work levels increased and operating conditions improved marginally in neighbouring UAE, helped by an expansion in new orders and output. Purchasing Managers’ Index surveys last month for the two Gulf nations were above the threshold of 50 that separates growth from contraction. The rapid roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines in the UAE should help to restore confidence in markets over the first half of 2021, although firms were still relatively downbeat about future growth in January.