Morning all and welcome to this weeks issue. Sjoe, we have been doing this for 20 weeks now and we have grown quite considerably. Thank you to you all and I hope to continue sharing insightful and relevant news, with some quirky stuff thrown in-between. If you feel like a friend or family member would enjoy this, you can share it with the link below.
Stocks surged for the third-straight day, led by none other than big cap tech. 🙌
🚀Blue Origin reaches new heights
The company now joins a very tiny circle of companies that have sent private citizens to space, in the biggest boost space tourism industry. Just a week earlier Richard Branson made history by being the first billionaire in space and climbed to 86km above the earth. Bezos and crewmates went slightly further to 100 km in Blue Origin. Apparently you are only really in space at the Kármán line , which sits at 100km. However, the United States Military and NASA set a lower limit of roughly 80 km, meaning in their view passengers on Virgin Galactic count as astronauts. The rocket looked a lot like this Austin powers scene, groovy baby! Watch New Shepards Takeoff here
💸 FTX is going for that #1 spot
FTX is a cryptocurrency exchange built by traders, for traders. Its lead by the formidable Sam Bankman-Fried. The company has raised $900M in new funding at an $18B valuation. It’s the largest funding round in crypto history. 🙌 Investors included big names like Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures. It recently purchases Blockfolio for $150 million and in two years has gained a lot of traction. Currently daily trading volume is around the $10 billion mark
💦Floods…
From China to Germany and eve the USA, floods expose climate vulnerability. The recent floods are a stark reminder that climate change is making weather more extreme across the globe. At least 25 people in the central Chinese province of Henan died on Tuesday, including a dozen trapped in a city subway. A further 160 people in Germany and another 31 in Belgium last week, the disaster has reinforced the message that significant changes will have to be made to prepare for similar events in future. We need to take climate change more seriously.
📈 ASML knocks it out the park
If you have been following Financial Virgin, you would have read numerous times about the semiconductor shortage. Chip makers like Nivida and Intel have been battling to keep up with demand. However, no one ever talks about the manufactuer who makes the machines to build this chips. ASML is one of the biggest producers of semiconductor equipment. The company reported Q2 earnings today, and absolutely crushed it. 🥊 💰
EPS: $3.04 vs. $3.00 est (+41% YoY*)
Rev: $4.84B vs. $4.93B est (+21% YoY*)
The company also raised its earnings consensus today, forecasting 35% sales growth in 2021 (up from 30% estimated in the previous quarter).
🐷 The “Peppa Effect”
Lockdowns have had all sort of weird effects on adults and kids. American children have become even more hooked on the English cartoon Peppa Pig, so much so that they are now emerging with British accents and vocabularies, in what’s known as the “Peppa Effect.” Six-year-old Aurelia, for example, will ask, “Can we turn the telly on?” and has referenced “the water closet,” to the surprise of her mom. Wooo! thats some crazy stuff.
💰$14.7B Buyout
Zoom acquired Contact Center-as-a-Service provider Five9 for $14.7B. Zoom will likely roll Five9’s cloud software solution into its enterprise offering as it looks to build out its base of paying business clients.
💉Moderna Added to the S&P500
So far in 2021, 11 companies have been added to the S&P500. The most recent addition has been Moderna which is currently up 187% YTD. Can it keep up the same pace as tesla when it got included? It just might, thanks to its robust pipeline. However, in the near-term, $MRNA will have to rely on its Covid vaccine to keep moving upward. The company expects $19B in sales from its COVID vaccine in 2021.
🌃Real effect of WiFi outages
Akamai’s Edge DNS service is one of the largest “internet infrastructure” services in the world. They serve financial institutions, travel companies, media players, and other cloud services companies . But with great power comes great responsibility. 🙌 Their servers crashed yesterday, taking a large chunk of the internet with them and companies like AirBNB, FedX and Amazon were offline.
🏦Just like the, that Bank swapped to crypto!
JPMorgan, US banking behemoth, will finally offer its wealthy clients access to cryptocurrency and crypto funds. Under the new directive, JPMorgan financial advisors will have the green light to accept and execute only client-requested bitcoin trades, meaning advisors can't recommend the investment themselves. But once a client solicits for bitcoin or cryptocurrency exposure, their advisor can purchase shares of Grayscale's trusts, such as GBTC, as well as Osprey Fund's Bitcoin Trust on their behalf. Its not the same as owning bitcoin physically, but it will give you exposure..
DID YOU KNOW
The Evolution of various countries share in the global bitcoin mining hashrate (monthly average).
In less than two years, the Central Asian country has increased its share in the global bitcoin extraction by almost six times, from 1.4% to 8.2%, according to a study conducted by the University of Cambridge. By crypto mining volume, Kazakhstan is now third in the world, the data quoted by RBC (a major Russian business news portal) shows, overtaking Russia which ranks fourth with 6.8%.
During the same period, between September 2019 and April of 2021, China’s share has dropped from 75.5% to 46%, while the United States has climbed to second place, increasing its share from 4.1% to 16.8%, the report details. According to the research, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now fifth with 4.6%. Still, Russia has a chance to improve its position as Kazakhstan recently introduced a surcharge for electricity consumed by miners despite opposition from the local crypto industry.
Source: University of Cambridge.
LINKS THAT DONT SUCK
💎 Luxury Penthouse Apartment In NYC Listed For $169M (video)
💰 Would You Let Your Colleagues Decide Your Salary? (video)
Thanks all and have a great weekend and enjoy the rugby!