I don't know, it seems to be one of the China's well known brands and YT is full of reviews of Zeekr cars. Especially developing world is buying them a lot.

What would be the concerns one should to address before putting money on Zeekr or any Chinees companies?

I've heard everywhere how everytime the curve is negative, there is a recession once it becomes positive again.

Now the curve has been inverted for almost 2 years. Fed still expects to make interest cuts this year. What is going on?

Alibaba posted a beat on revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter ended March, even as the Chinese e-commerce giant’s net profit plunged sharply.

Here’s how Alibaba did in the March quarter versus LSEG consensus estimates:

Revenue: 221.9 billion Chinese yuan ($30.7 billion) versus 219.66 billion yuan expected. Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders came in at 3.3 billion yuan, down 86% year-on-year.

Shares of Alibaba were around 3% lower in pre-market trade in the U.S.

Alibaba had a rocky year in 2023, when it carried out its largest-ever corporate structure overhaul. It also separately implemented several high-profile management changes, with company veteran Eddie Wu taking over the reins as chief executive in September.

The Chinese tech giant said earlier this year that it increased its share buyback program by $25 billion through the end of March 2027, in a bid to signal confidence to shareholders.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/alibaba-baba-earnings-q4-2024.html

Walmart is cutting hundreds of corporate jobs and asking most remote workers to move to offices, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, workers at the U.S. retail giant’s smaller offices in Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto are being asked to move to other central hubs such as Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Bentonville as well as Hoboken or Southern California, the report added.

Walmart will still let staff work remotely part time, as long as they are in offices a majority of the time, the report said.

Walmart employed approximately 2.1 million associates as of Jan. 31, 2024, according to regulatory filings.

The company has been making moves to shrink its workforce over the past year and had said in April last year that it expects about 65% of its stores to be serviced by automation by the end of its fiscal year 2026.

In February 2023, it shut three of its U.S. technology hubs and asked hundreds of workers to relocate to keep their jobs, pushing for more employees to report to work from office.

Walmart didn’t immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/walmart-to-reportedly-lay-off-hundreds-of-corporate-staff-and-relocate-others.html

Uber Technologies will acquire the Taiwan business of Delivery Hero-owned Foodpanda for $950 million in cash, as Foodpanda focuses on other markets.

The deal, subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close in the first half of 2025, the firms said in a joint statement on Monday.

In a separate agreement, Delivery Hero will sell $300 million in newly issued ordinary shares to Uber.

“We need to focus our resources on other parts of our global footprint, where we feel we can have the largest impact for customers, vendors and riders,” said Niklas Östberg, co-founder and CEO of Delivery Hero.

Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, senior vice president of delivery at Uber, said the Taiwan market is “fiercely competitive” and the acquisition would help them grow in the market “where online food delivery platforms today still represent just a small part of the food delivery landscape.”

Foodpanda is one of the largest online food and grocery delivery platforms in Asia with a presence in markets including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines and Hong Kong. In 2016, Germany’s Delivery Hero acquired the company.

Taiwan’s food delivery market is dominated by Foodpanda and Uber Eats. Data from insights platform Measurable AI up till August revealed that Foodpanda had a 52% market share by order volume in Taiwan, while Uber Eats held the remaining 48% share.

The deal would be one of the largest international acquisitions in Taiwan, not including those in the semiconductor chip industry, according to the joint statement.

Delivery Hero said in February it had ended talks to sell its Foodpanda business in selected Southeast Asian markets. Östberg told CNBC the same month that the firm was “happy” to hold on to its Foodpanda business in Southeast Asia “forever.”

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/uber-to-acquire-foodpandas-taiwan-business-for-950-million-creating-a-potential-monopoly-.html

Home Depot on Tuesday posted quarterly revenue below Wall Street’s expectations, as shoppers postponed bigger discretionary projects like bath and kitchen remodels because of higher interest rates and made spring purchases late.

Still, the home improvement retailer reaffirmed its full-year guidance, which includes an additional week from the prior year. It said it expects total sales to grow about 1% in fiscal 2024, including those extra days. However, the retailer said it anticipates comparable sales, which take out the impact of store openings and closures, to decline about 1%, excluding that additional week.

In an interview with CNBC, Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said customers are in a waiting game that began in the second half of last year, as they responded to mortgage rates climbing. He said the company anticipated those trends would continue.

“The home improvement customer is extremely healthy from a financial perspective,” he said. “And so it’s not the case of not having the ability to spend. What they tell us is they’re just simply deferring these projects as given higher rates, it just doesn’t seem the right moment to execute.”

Here’s what the company reported for the three-month period that ended April 28 compared with what Wall Street expected, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: $3.63 vs. $3.60 expected

Revenue: $36.42 billion vs. $36.66 billion expected

Net income for the fiscal first quarter decreased to $3.6 billion, or $3.63 per share, from $3.87 billion, or $3.82 per share, in the year-ago period. Net sales fell 2.3% from $37.26 billion.

Comparable sales dropped 2.8% in the fiscal first quarter across the business and declined 3.2% in the U.S.

Home Depot is contending with a tougher housing backdrop, which has dampened demand for do-it-yourself projects. About half of Home Depot’s sales come from DIY customers, and the other half come from pros like roofers and landscapers.

As interest rates remain high, consumers have been reluctant to move out of their homes and into new ones — the kind of turnover that often inspires home projects. Higher interest rates have also dinged the desire for larger-scale projects that can require financing. For the past several quarters, Home Depot has seen customers buy fewer big-ticket items and take on more modest projects – a trend that persisted in the most recent quarter.

In the fiscal first quarter, customers made fewer visits to Home Depot’s stores and website and tended to spend less when they did. Customer transactions declined 1% to 386.8 million and average ticket fell 1.3% to $90.68.

Home Depot has seen sales moderate after more than two years of explosive demand during the Covid pandemic. The company posted its worst revenue miss in nearly two decades and cut its forecast in the year-ago first quarter. Home Depot’s sales totaled $152.7 billion in the fiscal year that ended in late January, a drop of 3% year over year.

Inflation may also be playing a role in that pullback, as consumers spend more money on essentials and have to make trade-offs when spending discretionary income.

However, McPhail said Home Depot is not seeing customers trade down to cheaper items, like less expensive power tools or appliances. He pinned the company’s softer sales in large part on consumers’ “deferral mindset” and a housing market that has slowed dramatically.

“When we have seen mortgage rates decrease slightly, as we saw at the beginning of this quarter, the housing turnover seems to respond quickly and sharply in a positive direction,” he said. “And so we think that’s an indicator that there is a tremendous amount of pent-up demand for household formation and housing turnover and the larger projects that are associated with housing turnover.”

Weather pressured sales, too, in the recent quarter, he said. Spring is the biggest sales season for home improvement retailers, including Home Depot. Yet customers delayed outdoor purchases because of colder and wetter weather in many parts of the country, he said.

Those spring purchases have begun to pick up as the weather improves, he said.

To overcome slower sales, the home improvement retailer has revved up its strategy to attract pros, since they tend to buy larger quantities and offer a steadier source of sales. Home Depot announced in late March that it would acquire SRS Distribution, a Texas-based specialty distributor of roofing, landscaping and pool supplies, for $18.25 billion in the largest acquisition in the company’s history. Home Depot has a growing network of distribution centers across the country that can store and deliver roofing shingles, insulation and other supplies straight to job sites.

Along with wooing pros, Home Depot is trying to drive growth by opening about a dozen new stores this fiscal year and adding features to improve its online and in-store experience.

Shares of Home Depot closed Monday at $340.96. So far this year, Home Depot’s shares have fallen about 2% compared with the roughly 9% gains of the S&P 500.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/home-depot-hd-q1-2024-earnings-.html

Sony on Tuesday reported a 7% drop in annual profits in the fiscal year 2023, dragged down by a decline in its financial services division.

The company also narrowly missed its forecast for unit sales of its flagship PlayStation 5 gaming console for the full year.

Here’s how Sony did in the March quarter versus LSEG consensus estimates:

Revenue: 3.5 trillion yen ($22.4 billion) versus 2.89 trillion yen expected. That represents a 14% increase year-over-year — but the first drop since Sony’s 2020 September quarter, according to LSEG data.

Operating profit: 229.4 billion yen versus 236.81 billion yen expected. That marks a 57% jump year-over-year.

The Japanese gaming giant reported 2023 revenue of 13 trillion, an increase of 19% year-over-year.

Sony’s operating profit for the full year, though, came in at 1.2 trillion yen, down 7% year-over-year.

Sony narrowly missed its revised down target for PlayStation 5 sales. The firm said that sales of its flagship console totalled 20.8 million in the fiscal year 2023.

That’s slightly lower than the revised 21 million unit target that Sony gave investors in February. Prior to that, the company had forecast that its PS5 console would sell 25 million units for the full year.

Sony expects even weaker sales of 18 million units of its PS5 in the year ending March 2025, a company executive said, according to Reuters.

It comes after Sony on Monday announced a management shakeup in its Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) gaming unit, with the division’s interim CEO Hiroki Totoki becoming chairman of the business.

Long-time Sony executives Hideaki Nishino and Hermen Hulst were appointed CEO of the Platform Business Group and Studio Business Group, respectively — two newly created divisions of SIE.

Financial unit weighs on profit

Sony said its financial services business was the primary segment driving down profit.

In 2023, operating income in the financial services unit came in at 173.6 billion yen, marking a 22.5% year-on-year drop after a firm increase in 2022.

The company also suffered from a decline in its imaging and sensing solutions (I&SS) business, which houses its imaging chips.

Sony’s I&SS business recorded operating income of 193.5 billion yen, down 9% from 2022.

Sony said it’s forecasting a drop in overall group revenue for the current fiscal year. The company expects sales will reach 12.3 trillion yen for the year ending March 2025, down 5%.

Fiscal year 2024 operating income is expected to total 1.28 trillion yen, up 5%, Sony said in its consolidated results.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/sony-q4-and-full-year-2023-earnings.html

Tencent beat analyst estimates for revenue and profit in the first quarter, thanks to slightly better sales in the Chinese tech giants core gaming business and improved profitability at its advertising and business services division.

Here’s how Tencent did in the March quarter versus LSEG consensus estimates:

Revenue: 159.5 billion Chinese yuan ($22 billion) versus 158.4 billion yuan expected.

Profit attributable to equity holders of the company: 41.9 billion yuan versus 36.64 billion yuan anticipated.

Tencent’s adjusted net profit was up 62% year-on-year, marking the fastest growth since the March quarter of 2021, according to LSEG data. Revenue jumped 6% year-on-year.

The Chinese internet giant, which runs the world’s largest messaging app WeChat, has been on a path to recovery after suffering its first annual revenue decline in 2022.

It embarked on a cost-cutting drive that year and exited non-core businesses, in a bid to focus on its core gaming division and other areas like advertising and cloud computing.

Investors have rewarded the company’s efforts so far, with shares up 30% this year.

Tencent said revenue for its China gaming business in the first quarter fell 2% year-on-year, an improvement on the 3% fall seen in the fourth quarter. The company said revenue from one of is high-profiles games “Honour of Kings” declined year-on-year against a high base versus Chinese New Year, while there was “weak monetisable content” from “Peacekeeper Elite.”

International games revenue rose 3% year-on-year in the first quarter, better than the 1% increase seen in the previous quarter. Tencent said the growth was thanks to a rise in players of PUBG Mobile and a resurgence in popularity of games from its studio Supercell.

Still, the growth in Tencent’s gaming division remains weak.

“During the first quarter of 2024, several of our leading games in China and internationally started to benefit from team reorganisations we put in place, resulting in an increase in games gross receipts and creating a foundation for our games revenue to resume growth in future quarters,” Tencent said in its earnings release.

Ads, cloud help Tencent profits

Tencent’s other businesses helped the company in the first quarter.

The online advertising division posted revenue of 26.5 billion yuan, up 26% year-on-year — an acceleration from the fourth quarter. The company attributed this to increased engagement across various features on WeChat and “ongoing enhancement” of Tencent’s “AI-powered advertising infrastructure.”

Gross profit for the ad business grew 66% year-on-year to 14.5 billion yuan.

Tencent’s fintech and business services unit, which includes its mobile payment service WeChat Pay and its cloud computing division, posted a revenue rise of 7% year-on-year to 52.3 billion yuan. Gross profit for the business jumped 42% year-on-year.

“We continue to cultivate high quality revenue streams including advertising in Video Accounts and Weixin Search, Mini Games platform service fees, and eCommerce technology service fees, contributing to our gross and operating profit growth outpacing our revenue growth,” Tencent said in its earnings release.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/tencent-earnings-report-q1-2024.html

This is the daily discussion, so anything stocks related is fine, but the theme for today is on technical analysis (TA), but if TA is not your thing then just ignore the theme.

Some helpful day to day links, including news:

• Finviz for charts, fundamentals, and aggregated news on individual stocks
• Bloomberg market news
• StreetInsider news:
  • Market Check - Possibly why the market is doing what it's doing including sudden spikes/dips
  • Reuters aggregated - Global news

Technical analysis (TA) uses historical price movements, real time data, indicators based on math and/or statistics, and charts; all of which help measure the trajectory of a security. TA can also be used to interpret the actions of other market participants and predict their actions.

The main benefit to TA is that everything shows up in the price (commonly known as "priced in"): All news, investor sentiment, and changes to fundamentals are reflected in a security's price.

TA can be useful on any timeframe, both short and long term.

Intro to technical analysis by Stockcharts chartschool and their article on candlesticks

If you have questions, please see the following word cloud and click through for the wiki:

Indicator - Trade Signals - Lagging Indicator - Leading Indicator - Oversold - Overbought - Divergence - Whipsaw - Resistance - Support - Breakout/Breakdown - Alerts - Trend line - Market Participants - Moving average - RSI - VWAP - MACD - ATR - Bollinger Bands - Ichimoku clouds - Methods - Trend Following - Fading - Channels - Patterns - Pivots

See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

I've been following EMH (European Metals Ltd) and buying shares every now and then. Recently it has had an uptick .24 p/share and I was curious about predictions.

Analysts suggest it could go as high as 212 p/share. This doesn't seem right to me, after my DD I do have faith in their future but contemporaries in the same field have a high of £22 p/share in the region and £55 p/share in the field. 212 does not seem realistic to me.

Don't get me wrong I would love for it to go 212 and I am investing in this company based on my DD and belief in their product not these analysts.

To circle back, are they reliable?

I changed my account over from TDameritrade to schwab, while i was doing some research i noticed that they offered themed ETFs. These ETFs range from active lifestyle etfs, digital payments, EVs, online gaming, and cyber security. Alot of these ETFs seem to be doing well and all have great sector holdings. Im just wondering if anyone else had success with them and like them.

No, it’s not Bitcoin or a cryptocurrency. It’s not an Elon Musk stock. It’s a real stock with a real potential for growth.

This is a stock that will (I believe) greatly increase in value over the next couple of years barring a black swan event, and no I won’t tell you what it is or how I know it will go up. Also, this question is purely hypothetical.

Edit: maybe I’ll regret telling you guys, but here’s my plan: I’m considering buying Argentine banking stocks because I believe Javier Milei’s economic policies will greatly decrease the inflation of the Argentine peso.

Edit No. 2: what I’m really asking is for advice and resources in learning about buying calls and selling puts. I’ve read information online but I don’t feel comfortable trading options until I fully understand how they work and all the ways I could potentially loose and gain money.

Multi-State Operators (MSOs) like Trulieve, Curaleaf, Green Thumb Industries, and Verano had very positive Q1/24 results.

The sector remains undervalued, trading at an average 2024e EV/EBITDA of 8.8x compared to an analyst's base-case sector valuation of 11.8x.

According to the ATB analyst, as most companies have reached positive Free Cash Flow (FF) generation, investors could start valuing the sector based on FF multiples or yields, offering significant upside potential. MSOs are trading at an attractive average 5.2% 2024e FCF yield.

With re-scheduling on the horizon, and states like Ohio - which just green lit adult use sales next month - will foster strong growth tailwinds churning cashflows higher.

However, a significant short interest across the sector is preventing the true value from being realized. This short interest presents an opportunity for investors who recognize the long-term potential of the industry.

Notably, call option activity has been spiking for weekly and monthly May 17th/May 24th strikes, indicating increasing interest and potential volatility in the near term.

Hi all, I have seen a few comments on Reddit and YouTube regarding Google and their future. As you all know the competition in the search space is getting more competitive as companies trying to get a slice of that ad money. Meanwhile search bots have proven to be useful in many instances.

As many bear cases have been written all over the internet, I will focus on the bull cases. I will share my top ten with you, and I promise you, this is fully written by myself without the help of AI. You will believe me as my English grammar is bad AF.

Let me give you first an overview about Google revenue streams by percentage:

57% Google Search ads, 10.3% YouTube Ads, 10.2% Google network ads, 11.3% Subscriptions and devices, 10.8% Google Cloud, Rest Are other bets.

Of course Google search makes up a huge chunk of the revenue and even more of the profits. But I think what many people are missing in many of the discussions about Google is:

1. Google will not lose their 90% market share over night IF at all. It will be years until the majority of people will even notice that there are other options now. They know about ChatGPT and are still googling.

2. Regarding to Statcounter Google had 91.8% market share in January 2021. Now after ChatGPT and MS Copilot and whatever, Google stands at 90.9%. This is so little change, that we cannot even speak about a trend at the moment.

3. IF Google is going to lose substantial market share it won’t go to zero. People are often pretending like Google is going to be irrelevant and losing all business. Not going to happen, Bing and DuckDuckGo existing during Googles dominance proves this.

4. ⁠The minimum market share will always be the Android users. As Google will be defaulted with Android and Chrome devices. As long as the Apple Safari deal is legal and active the minimum base for Google is HUGE. I can’t see people changing the standard search engine pro actively, especially if it’s what they know - Google. That something like Bing even has market share at all, shows that people are likely to stay with the default. That is not an insult from my side this is an argument from Satya Nadella himself, made in court. At the moment, IF they change the default, they are more likely to switch from Bing to Google, than from Google to Bing. Additionally I think you can also add Google cloud business customer to this baseline.

5. That means advertiser will continue to pump money into Google search. Even if their market share goes down to 50-70%(very conservatively). They will very likely remain the number 1 search engine for a very long time. A few anecdotal tech bubble guys are not representative for changing the habits of billions of people. And with more people getting access to internet, the market as a whole will continue to grow.

6. ⁠Google does not only have the number 1 search engine, they also have number 2 with YouTube. YouTube is also getting a lot of advertising money and is still growing double digits.

7. Even if Google search money stops to grow or would decline, you have to look out for, if it would decline faster than the other segments will grow. If it’s flat or declining like 1-2% a year while Cloud and YouTube and Networks are growing double digits, Google will still generate Billions of cash flow a quarter. Similar to the current state of Apple with their IPhone sales.

8. Googles businesses are alle potential high margin businesses and are still growing double digits. Of course search is the number 1 but the other businesses would also be worth 100s of billions on their own.

9. I don’t see the threat of Google getting broken up by the authorities. You cannot made a bear case for both. Either they have monopoly that needs to be broken up, or they are threatened by AI companies. You cannot make a case for both at the same time imho. But even if they are getting punished or broken up, this will take YEARS in courts and after that they will be appeals by Google which will also take years. Until then there is a chance that Google businesses are more worth broken up in parts anyway. I see that very relaxed.

10. All of this doesn’t factor in any bets (like Waymo or their 8% SpaceX stake) that could take off or anything they are doing with Deepmind and AI which is a potential upside imho.

Google will be fine. Why I think YouTube, Networks, Cloud and other businesses are too businesses that will continue to grow would take another 100000 words and I think there are enough sources and analysis for that. So that’s it from my side, would love a positive vibes discussion.

Long story short: They could have some short term struggles due to sentiment and temporary revenue and profit lost. But they will be fine long term.

I have had a position in JEPI for long enough that I have made more in dividends than I have lost in capital (ie, $21k divs minus $10k loss). I also have a much smaller position in JEPQ but it is doing much better overall.

I would like to close JEPI at a loss and use the proceeds to buy JEPQ but not sure if I need to wait 30 days. Does anyone know if these two funds are similar enough for the wash sale rule to apply?

A few days ago, I was considering buying some Arm shares due to its promising revenue, and sell off in the mid of April. However, today, it surged 7% in response to the news where it will introduce a new Ai chip in 2025.

The hype is real, and now the price is still surging at this moment.

I personally think the company hasn’t really proved it self like and just started trading not even a year ago. Also the price now is over the analyst’s consensus price.

Do you think there will be a sell-off soon? Or the expectation for it is realistic?

Warner Bros. Discovery's (NASDAQ: $WBD) Q1 2024 earnings call highlighted significant developments in content strategies, advertising, and streaming services.

1. Key Content Acquisitions and Partnerships

• Expanding Content Libraries: Warner Bros. Discovery is aggressively pursuing content enhancement, with notable acquisitions and deals aimed at enriching consumer experience. Recent collaborations include South Park, NASCAR, and Hockey.
• Strategic Movie Output Deals: A partnership with indie film company A24 is set to bolster the company's movie offerings, promising a diverse range of high-quality films.

2. Advertising and Streaming Synergy

• Balancing Ad Loads: CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels discussed the potential of carefully increasing ad loads, especially on platforms like HBO, which have traditionally been ad-free.
• Streaming Growth: There's a significant acceleration in streaming services, with an increase in advertising inventory to tap into this growing viewer base.

3. Financial Highlights and Challenges

• Box Office Success: The company reported over $1.8 billion in global box office revenues, marking a solid start to the year.
• Gaming Sector Struggles: Despite past successes like Hogwarts Legacy, newer releases such as Suicide Squad have underperformed, impacting overall financials.
• Advertising Sales Decline: Total company ad sales saw a 7% decrease, although improvements in direct consumer segments and strong international performance are expected to counterbalance this dip.

4. Strategic Initiatives and Distributor Relationships

• Leveraging Broadband and Apps: CEO David Zaslav emphasized the importance of strategic collaborations with distributors to enhance broadband and app products, crucial for adapting to new consumer consumption patterns.
• Global Focus: The company continues to strengthen distributor relationships worldwide, ensuring a robust presence in key markets.

5. Analyst Q&A Session

When asked about its marketing strategy for the new bundle with Disney+ and Hulu and its international partnership, JB Perrette (CEO and President, Global Streaming and Games) said that they would have significant marketing support from both parties, with a high prominence of the offering across all buy flows. Internationally, WBD will continue to execute partnerships with Telco, Mobile, and Broadband players, and explore partnerships with other programmers and streamers.

Source: https://earnings-summary.streamlit.app/?c=reddit&t=WBD

With Warner Bros. Discovery increasing its ad load on platforms like HBO, how do you think this will affect viewer experience and subscription rates?

Microsoft and Amazon are ploughing billions of dollars into France.

Microsoft said in a statement Monday that it’s committing 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion) toward expanding its cloud and AI infrastructure in France, in addition to funding AI skilling and support for France’s technology industry.

The company said it plans to invest bring up to 25,000 of the most advanced GPUs, or graphics processing units, to France by the end of 2025. Microsoft will also train 1 million people up and support 2,500 AI startups by 2027.

The announcement was made during the “Choose France” summit, a gathering dedicated to encouraging foreign investment in France.

“This major investment demonstrates a steadfast commitment to supporting digital innovation and economic growth in France,” said Microsoft’s President Brad Smith in a statement Monday.

“We are building state-of-the-art Cloud and AI infrastructure, training people with AI skills, and supporting French startups as they use our technology with confidence to grow in a fair and responsible way.”

As part of its investment, Microsoft will also open a new data center in the French city of Mulhouse.

Amazon, meanwhile, made a commitment of its own to invest 1.2 billion euros in France.

The money will go toward creating more than 3,000 jobs in France — in addition to the 2,000 new jobs Amazon’s already announced for 2024 — as well as broadly increasing Amazon’s footprint in the country, according to Frederic Duval, Amazon’s country manager.

“The expansion of our logistics network supports local economic development, creates quality jobs and allows us to reduce the carbon footprint of our deliveries while improving the overall customer experience,” Duval said in a statement Monday.

Collectively, the commitments from Microsoft and Amazon to France amount to $5.6 billion of funding. In total, France reportedly bagged a record 15 billion euros of investment commitments from foreign companies at an annual “Choose France” summit on Monday.

French President Emmanuel Macron has been trying to promote France as an artificial intelligence hub. Paris is already a major center of AI research and development, with Facebook having established one of its main AI labs, FAIR, there in 2015.

Last year, at the VivaTech technology fair in Paris, Macron announced 500 million euros ($540 million) in new funding to create new AI “champions,” adding to previous commitments from the government, including a promise to pump 1.5 billion euros into AI before 2022.

Microsoft is also making a charm offensive of its own with its commitment to invest billions of euros into France at a time when French officials have expressed concerns with the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant’s investment in AI startup Mistral.

Microsoft recently made a 15 million euro investment into Mistral. The deal saw Microsoft getting a stake in Mistral and the latter adding its large language model to the technology giant’s Azure cloud computing platform.

Microsoft has pushed back on competition concerns surrounding its investment in Mistral, saying that the company remains independent and that its partnership is a minority equity investment and a commercial relationship, not a merger. Britain’s competition regulator is seeking feedback on the deal.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/13/amazon-and-microsoft-to-invest-5point6-billion-into-france.html

Squarespace, the website-building platform, announced on Monday it would go private in a $6.9 billion all-cash deal with private-equity firm Permira, after nearly three turbulent years on the public market.

Permira agreed to pay $44 per share in cash, a roughly 30% premium to Squarespace’s unaffected share price. In recent years, Squarespace struggled to capture public-market support: It opened below its $50 reference price in 2021 and never again traded above its $48 open price.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Permira on this new leg of our journey,” Squarespace founder and CEO Anthony Casalena said in a release. Casalena and current investors Accel and General Atlantic control 90% of Squarespace’s voting shares. All three have approved the transaction and will continue to be investors after the Permira deal closes.

Squarespace competes with Wix and Shopify for a slice of the website-builder and e-commerce marketplace. Shares rose nearly 13% to $43 per share in pre-market trading. Permira will finance the deal with the help of Ares Capital, Blackstone and Blue Owl.

“We are excited to partner with Anthony and his team to support the company in unlocking its full potential,” Permira partner David Erlong said in a release.

Squarespace’s move to go private marks a trend by smaller technology companies over the last two years, some of which have been burned by the public markets or believe they could create more value being amalgamated with other PE portfolio companies. Qualtrics, for example, was spun off from SAP in 2021 and was quickly taken private again in 2023 by Canada’s pension plan and Silver Lake in a $12.5 billion deal.

Japanese giant Toshiba also went private in 2023 in a $13.6 billion deal, after years of speculation and tumult, including a sustained engagement with activist investor Elliott.

Investors are keeping a close eye on the deal-making space, after a quiet 2022 and 2023 left many late-stage companies in an IPO holding pattern. There are some signs that M&A is picking up again, and some late stage companies have already gone public or plan to do so.

Centerview, J.P. Morgan, Skadden and Richards, Layton & Finger advised Squarespace and its special committee. Goldman Sachs and Latham & Watkins advised Permira.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/13/squarespace-to-go-private-in-7-billion-private-equity-deal.html

May 13 (Reuters) - Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab is in advanced talks for a deal with Apollo Global Management (APO.N), opens new tab in which the equity firm would provide more than $11 billion to build a facility in Ireland, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The move comes as Intel looks to expand its presence across the United States with a planned $100-billion spending spree across four states, to boost its manufacturing business and catch up with chipmaking rival TSMC (2330.TW), opens new tab Intel and Apollo are in exclusive talks for the deal, which could be signed in the coming weeks, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Other investment firms including KKR (KKR.N), opens new tab and infrastructure investor Stonepeak were also in the running before Apollo recently pulled ahead, the report added. Apollo Global Management and Intel declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. Intel forecast second-quarter revenue and profit below market estimates last month as it faces weak demand for its traditional data center and personal computing chips, amid a surging market for AI components.

The company announced plans in 2022 to build chip factories in Ireland and France as it seeks to benefit from easier European Commission funding rules and subsidies.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/intel-nears-deal-with-apollo-11-bln-ireland-partnership-wsj-reports-2024-05-13/

GameStop shares jump 30% as trader ‘Roaring Kitty’ who drove meme craze posts online again

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/13/gme-jumps-as-trader-roaring-kitty-who-drove-meme-craze-posts-again.html

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GameStop shares rallied more than 37% in premarket trading Monday after “Roaring Kitty,” the man who inspired the epic short squeeze of 2021, posted online for the first time in roughly three years.

The post, a picture on X of a video gamer leaning forward on their chair as if to indicate he’s taking the game seriously, marked Roaring Kitty’s first post on the platform — or on Reddit — since 2021.

Roaring Kitty, whose legal name is Keith Gill, is a former marketer for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance. Also known as DeepF------Value on Reddit, Gill drew an army of day traders who cheered each other on and piled into the brick-and-mortar video game stock, and GameStop call options, between 2020 and 2021.

The “meme stock” frenzy involved individual investors taking aim at short sellers and hedge funds who were pessimistic about the outlook for GameStop and other companies, forcing them to cover their short positions and drive up the price of the target stocks. Currently, the short position in GameStop shares amounts to more than 24% of all its shares that are freely-available to trade, also known as the float.

The poster child was hedge fund Melvin Capital, which was heavily shorting GameStop and became a target of the army of amateur traders, suffering huge losses that prompted an arm of Ken Griffin’s Citadel, as well as Point72, to backstop Melvin’s finances with close to $3 billion in support.

The GameStop mania that drove its stock above $120 a share, split-adjusted, in early 2021 from as little as $3 in the space of three months, forced brokerages including Robinhood to limit trading in heavily shorted stocks. In response, one Robinhood user filed a class-action lawsuit following the app’s decision to restrict GameStop trading on its platform. The suit was dismissed in August 2023.

Another class-action lawsuit brought against Gill alleged that he pretended to be a novice trader despite being a licensed professional.

The volatility spawned a series of Congressional hearings around brokers’ practices and gamifying retail trading, and testimony from leaders of Robinhood, Melvin Capital, Reddit and Citadel, as well as Gill. The entire episode finally inspired the 2023 movie “Dumb Money,” in which Paul Dano played Gill.

In January 2021, GameStop shares hit an all-time high of $120.75 intraday, adjusted for a subsequent 4-for-1 stock split in the summer of 2022. But as interest from individual investors eventually faded, the stock collapsed along with other meme stocks such as AMC Entertainment Holdings

. GameStop last month hit a three-year low of $9.95.

Recently, the stock has started to move higher, which may have rekindled Gill’s interest, along with the enormous amount of short interest in the stock. GameStop has soared 57% so far in May, closing Friday at $17.46.

But the fundamental business at GameStop, evidenced by its most recent earnings report, shows a discouraging picture at the video game company. In late March, GameStop said it had cut an unspecified number of jobs to reduce costs, and reported lower fourth-quarter revenue amid rising competition from e-commerce-based competitors.

GameStop posted revenue of $1.79 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $2.23 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

SoftBank posted a 724.3 billion Japanese yen ($4.6 billion) gain on its Vision Fund in the fiscal year ended March, the first time the flagship tech investment arm has been in the black since 2021.

For the full fiscal year, SoftBank’s Vision Fund segment posted a profit of 128.2 billion yen, swinging to profit after a 4.3 trillion yen loss the year before.

A recovery in the Vision Fund helped SoftBank Group swing to a profit in the fiscal fourth quarter that ended March.

The Vision Fund was helped by the gain in value of some of SoftBank’s most high-profile investments, including TikTok owner ByteDance and U.S. food delivery firm DoorDash. However, SoftBank took a hit on some of its other investments such as Chinese ride-hailing firm DiDi as well as office sharing company WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.

The gain in the Vision Fund was due in large part to the initial public offering of chip designer Arm last year.

The Japanese firm said gains associated with the IPO of Arm, which is a subsidiary of Softbank, are not reported in its “consolidated statement of profit or loss.” Excluding gains associated with Vision Fund’s investments in its subsidiaries, the tech investment arm posted a loss of 167.3 billion yen.

Still, there are signs a recovery is underway for SoftBank which has been hit by bad bets on some tech firms as well as volatile markets.

Here’s how SoftBank did in the March quarter against LSEG estimates:

Net sales: 1.75 trillion yen ($11.3 billion) versus 1.84 trillion yen expected.

Net profit: 231.1 billion yen versus a 71.64 billion yen loss expected.

Still for the full year, SoftBank posted an overall loss of 227.6 billion yen, but that is narrower than the 970.1 billion yen loss from the fiscal year before.

Arm ‘core’ to AI shift

SoftBank’s flagship tech investment arm, the Vision Fund, had a tough time in the fiscal year that ended in March 2023, posting a record loss of around $32 billion amid a slump in tech stock prices and the souring of some of the business’ bets in China.

However, in the June quarter of last year, the Vision Fund posted its first investment gain in five consecutive quarters, signalling early stages of a recovery.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son flagged in 2023 that the firm would shift into “offense” mode, from defense mode, and depart from its cautious approach to start making more investments.

SoftBank’s Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said in the previous quarter that SoftBank had shifted from an “Alibaba to AI-centric portfolio.”

The tech conglomerate grew into one of Japan’s biggest companies thanks to Son’s early bet on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2000, which has boomed over the coming years.

The firm has been cutting its stake in Alibaba, and senior executives, including Son and Goto, have touted their excitement around artificial intelligence technology and the SoftBank’s potential to invest in companies in the sector.

Arm has become a central part of SoftBank’s portfolio. At the end of March, Arm accounted for 47% of assets held by SoftBank, compared to just just 10% in March 2020, Goto said on Monday. Alibaba accounts for 0% of assets held versus 48% in the same period.

“Arm is core to our AI shift,” Goto said.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/13/softbank-earnings-q4-and-full-year-fy-2023.html

These daily discussions run from Monday to Friday including during our themed posts.

Some helpful links:

• Finviz for charts, fundamentals, and aggregated news on individual stocks
• Bloomberg market news
• StreetInsider news:
  • Market Check - Possibly why the market is doing what it's doing including sudden spikes/dips
  • Reuters aggregated - Global news

If you have a basic question, for example "what is EPS," then google "investopedia EPS" and click the investopedia article on it; do this for everything until you have a more in depth question or just want to share what you learned.

Please discuss your portfolios in the Rate My Portfolio sticky..

See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

My understanding is that both holders benefit from a rise in share price, but preferred owners get a fixed dividend while common holders do not. So if this is true, why would anyone ever buy common stock? I can’t seem to find much about the risks of preferred stock.

I have most of my money in SPY, QQQ, and various tech companies.

I’m looking to dip my toe into Biotech just to experiment. Nothing major - probably a 20k investment. I know Biotech is wildly risky…you either lose it all or you get very lucky.

Since most of money is safely (?) in SPY/QQQ, if I had a spare 20k to invest in a single biotech firm, what would you suggest? I am thinking something small/mid cap for growth potential (yes, I know it’s also much riskier). CRSP? NVO?

As the regulatory landscape for cannabis remains uncertain, particularly with the unlikely passage of safe banking measures, the American cannabis industry is poised for a significant transformation. Without access to traditional banking services, smaller, non-scaled businesses are at a distinct disadvantage. These companies struggle to secure capital, lack the efficiencies of scale, and consequently, cannot compete on price and profitability.

In contrast, larger cannabis companies such as GreenThumb Industries, Trulieve Cannabis, Verano Holdings, and Curaleaf Holdings are poised to dominate and consolidate the market. This consolidation trend is likely to create an oligopoly, where a small number of large firms control the majority of the market.

This shift towards oligopoly is not just a change in market structure; it also creates a substantial business moat for the dominant players. With their scale, these companies can achieve economies of scale, access capital more easily, and invest in infrastructure and technology to further solidify their market position.

Investors looking to capitalize on this trend should consider the long-term potential of these leading cannabis companies as they navigate the evolving regulatory environment and position themselves as key players in the emerging American cannabis market.

https://cnevpost.com/2024/05/11/automaker-share-of-china-nev-market-in-apr-2024/

BYD (HKG: 1211, OTCMKTS: BYDDY) continued to dominate China's new energy vehicle (NEV) market in April, with Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) dropping in its ranking.

BYD's retail sales of passenger NEVs in China totaled 254,131 units in April, giving it the No. 1 spot in the NEV market with a 37.5 percent share, according to a ranking released today by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

The NEV maker was the only one with a share of more than 30 percent, with retail sales up 31.1 percent year-on-year.

BYD released figures earlier this month showing it sold 313,245 NEVs in April, up 48.96 percent from a year earlier and up 3.57 percent from March. The figures are wholesale sales and include both passenger cars and commercial vehicles.

China's passenger NEVs sold 674,000 units at retail in April, up 28.3 percent from a year ago but down 5.7 percent from March, CPCA data released yesterday showed.

Tesla's retail sales in China in April were 31,421 units, down 21.4 percent from a year ago, and ranked No. 5 with a 4.6 percent share.

In the CPCA's March retail sales rankings of NEVs released last month, Tesla was No. 2 with an 8.8 percent share, behind BYD's 36.6 percent.

It's worth noting that in China, NEVs include battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and fuel-cell vehicles. BYD produces PHEVs and BEVs, while Tesla only produces BEVs.

Tesla sold 62,167 China-made vehicles in April, including 30,746 exported, according to CPCA data released yesterday.

Tesla has a factory in Shanghai that produces the Model 3 sedan and Model Y crossover, both for deliveries to local customers and as an export hub for it.

Tesla's pattern is to produce cars for export in the first half of the quarter and for the local market in the second half, it previously said.

Geely's retail sales of NEVs in April were up 76.3 percent at 49,155 units, placing it at No. 2 with a 7.3 percent share.

Changan Automobile's NEV retail sales in April were up 119 percent to 40,507 units, placing it 3rd with a 6 percent share.

In the January-April period, BYD's NEV retail sales were 840,137 units, up 19.6 percent year-on-year, and ranked No. 1 with a 34.3 percent share.

FAW-Volkswagen sold 119,032 units at retail in April, down 15.6 percent year-on-year, and ranked No. 2 with a 7.8 percent share.

Geely had retail sales of 115,723 units in April, up 31.2 percent year-on-year, to take 3rd place with a 7.6 percent share.

In the January-April period, BYD was No. 1 in China's passenger car market with a 13.2 percent share, FAW-Volkswagen was No. 2 with an 8.1 percent share and Geely was No. 3 with a 7.9 percent share.

China NEV retail falls to 674,000 in Apr, penetration reaches record 43.7%.

In my 401k, I have been absolutely plowing gains with 50% in FXAIX and 50% in FBGRX.

However, I just have a gut feeling that FBGRX will be not as bullish as it has been the past 2 years here shortly. So just tonight I divested a lot of my FBGRX into WTLRNX.

Just curious if there was anyone can think as to why I SHOULDN’T have divested my Blue Chip fund into a large value growth fund instead of an S&P 500 fund.

I did a lot of research and, while WTLRNX may eat my lunch via fees, I see it has a better gain than an S&P 500 fund. I still have a lot of my contributions pumping into FBGRX at the moment, as I feel the “blue chip” run isn’t over.

But can anyone convince me why I shouldn’t divest a lot of money out of a Bluechip fund in our current environment and put it into a large cap value fund? And can anyone tell me why I shouldn’t divest those funds into a large value index as opposed to an S&P 500 mutual fund?

Anyone have a list or history or any cases of a stock going up by extreme amounts in a short time frame? Whether it be after an incredible earnings or some other event, just curious to see which stocks have blown up rapidly in under a very short time frame.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-bill-restrict-wuxi-apptec-other-chinese-biotech-cos-revised-give-more-time-2024-05-10/

Going through Congress currently is Biosecure act, which is an act to ban US companies from doing business with Chinese biotech companies due to national security concerns.

However, the issue is that many US pharmaceutical companies depend on their supply from Chinese biotech companies such as Eli Lily's weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro. Among 134 respondents to BIO’s survey, who represent 124 biopharma companies, 79% of individuals said they have at least one contract or product being supported by a Chinese CDMO.

On Friday, the house adjusted the BIOSECURE Act with the new draft laying out a 2032 deadline for the separation mandate. The House Oversight Committee is expected to mark up the bill on May 15. In an unusually swift action, House leadership is considering reserving a floor vote for the BIOSECURE Act this month, Axios reports.

Potentially this is great news, not just because it allows 8 years to divest but to put the vote to the floor so quickly in order to end the uncertainty. Off the top of my head Wuxi Apptec does business with Astrazeneca (AZN), Eli Lilly (LLY), Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY), Pfizer Inc. (PFE). Wuxi Apptec (WUXAY), and Wuxi Biologics (WXXWY) have lost half their share price since the announcement of Biosecure act rose 6% and 7% respectively on Friday.

Final thing to mention is that there is a chance this act may not pass even though it has bipartisan support. After Bidens 'win' on tariffs on EVs and solar panels, the Republican party may not want to give another win to Biden just before the election but to push it to after the election.