What’s Going On Here? Slack, the American workplace messaging service, listed on the US stock market on via a direct listing – cutting out the investment banks (which normally manage the sale of new shares). Direct listings are an alternative to IPOs in which a company does not work with an investment bank to underwrite the issuing…
Category: Daily News
Ep 33: Freeze Frame
What’s Going On Here? The Federal Reserve said it would freeze the key US interest rate in place; Although it admitted that rates might ultimately trickle downward this year. What Does This Mean? There’s been much anxiety among investors about which way the US central bank would go. On the one hand, recent data has shown improving consumer spending, super-low unemployment, and American factory output picking back…
Ep 32: Cloak And Dagger
What’s Going On Here? The US reported that China’s April holdings of American government bonds were at their lowest level in two years. Investors pondered whether the decline was in retaliation to ongoing trade tariffs. What Does This Mean? China owns almost 1/3 of all US debt held outside America. (China likes Uncle Sam’s bonds: they’re low-risk since the US can always print more…
Ep 31: Ad Libra
What’s Going On Here? After six months of anticipation, Facebook finally spilled the beans on its forthcoming Libra “cryptocurrency”. What Does This Mean? Facebook (inspired by the success of Chinese giants like WeChat), wants to create a global financial network – but with its own brand-new currency. Libra is scheduled for launch in 2020 via a new subsidiary and app…
Ep 30: My Way Or The Huawei
What’s Going On Here? Chinese telecoms giant Huawei (pronounced “wah-way”) cut its revenue forecast for this year and the next. What Does This Mean? Last year, Huawei’s revenue grew 20% to $104 billion as it overtook Apple in global smartphone shipments. But the company is now expecting sales to decline to “just” $100 billion in 2019 – significantly less than the…
Ep 29: The Art of the Deal
What’s going on here? New signs emerged that the trade war is dragging down the global economy. The International Energy Agency cut its projection for energy demand this year by 100,000 barrels to 1.2 million barrels per day, citing the “worsening trade outlook” as a “common theme across all regions”; China reported the slowest growth…
Ep 28: Tyson Gets to the Alternative Meat of It
What’s going on here? The meat-based Tyson Foods joined the plant-based bandwagon. Tyson announced it’s launching a series of meat alternative products, including veggie chicken nuggets and a pea-infused burger. Butthe company isn’t going vegan. The plant-based nuggets contain eggs, and the new beef patties still have beef, just mixed with pea-protein. What’s does that mean? This is a…
Ep 27: Word of the Week: Deepfake
You should know what deepfake means because SAT vocab, and this week’s news cycle has been centered squarely on the technology—and just how out of hand it can get. A deepfake is an artificial intelligence-generated video that depicts someone saying or doing things that person never actually said or did. Exhibit A: Zuck This week, the Facebook…
Ep 26: Tesco Eats It
What’s Going On Here? Tesco (UK’s 100-year-old largest retailer), reported weaker-than-expected sales growth thanks to a rotten grocery market. What Does This Mean? Tesco’s UK sales grew only 0.4% last quarter (down from 1.7% in the previous one). Sales in central Europe fell by 5%. Tesco (like other retailers) pointed to the weather: an unseasonably cold May and the previous hottest-since-records May was a…
Ep 25: Why Hong Kong Matters
What’s going on here? After weekend protests spilled (at times violently), we’re keeping a close eye on what exactly is going on in the global financial hub. The backstory Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to oppose a bill that would permit extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China, undermining the “one country, two systems”…
with HT 