What’s going on? Foxconn (Taiwanese electronics giant) released a surprising pleasant quarterly yoy growth of 30% yoy, while reducing future sales forcast. What does this mean? Foxconn is the world’s largest manufacturer of electronic equipment for other companies, including iPhones for Apple. Strong demand for smartphones and other consumer gadgets helped its profit surge beyond…
Category: Daily News
Ep 152: SoftBank’s sad quarter and the Chinese startup investment landscape
What’s going on? SoftBank (Japanese tech conglomerate) updated disappointing quarterly results, which was 40% lower yoy. What does this mean? This shrink is partially due to the large stakes of Chinese companies that Softbank owns. The Chinese government has taken severe measures against local firms with US-listed shares E.g: Didi’s share price have decreased by the same amount…
Ep 151: The return of Saudi Aramco and the oil industry
What’s going on? After a tough time, oil producer performance is rising again. The world’s largest, Saudi Aramco, is the latest to report much-improved profit. What does this mean? As major economies reopen, commodity prices have surged: oil is up more than 30% so far in 2021, which is much more optimistic than the deep…
Ep 150: Fintech M&A with Square and Afterpay
What’s going on? Square (US payments giant) announced their plan to buy Afterpay (Australian fintech) for $29bn. What does this mean? Afterpay Afterpay is a buy-now-pay-later company that lets customers spread the cost of an online purchase over a period of time. If customers make payments on time, they don’t have to pay interests on…
Ep 149: The disappointing sales but promising ecommerce business of Adidas and Inditex
What’s going on? Adidas and Inditex (owner of Zara and Bershka) reported lower-than expected annual results, but their ecommerce businesses seem to take off. What does that mean? With so many stores shutting down last year, Inditex’s revenue and profit fell short of investors’ expectations; the latter by over 20%. Since sales haven’t improved much…
Ep 148: Burberry is feeling optimistic about the luxury industry
What’s going on? Burberry is feeling so optimistic about the luxury industry that it lifted its sales forecast for Q1/2021. What does that mean? The pandemic is thought to have overwhelmed luxury retailers like Burberry. But as China and South Korea is starting to spend lavishly again, Burberry’s expecting sales to be up by nearly 1/3…
Ep 147: JD.com’s glow and China’s digital future
What’s going on? Online retail giant JD.com reported better-than-expected results, after China proved it’s leaning into a digital future. What does that mean? JD.com’s been making the most of the pandemic, reporting an expectation-beating 31% sales jump in Q4/2020. While in-house delivery is what sets JD apart from Alibaba (which relies on 3rd-party couriers), investors are…
Ep 146: Gold is not thought to be such strong protection
What’s going on? BlackRock thinks that gold might not protect investors that much. What does that mean? Gold is typically thought of as a hedge: protecting investors from inflation by rising alongside the prices of goods and services and stock market drops (given that investors usually buy gold in bear times). But BlackRock thinks there…
Ep 145: Eurozone bond yields are promised not to rise
What’s going on? The European Central Bank promised to keep eurozone bond yields from rising. What does that mean? Like the US, the eurozone’s pumped lots of money into the economy to keep things stable throughout the pandemic. Now that a recovery’s near, investors are worried that those money would lead to inflation, forcing the…
Ep 144: FED Chairman reaffirmed the easy-money policies
What’s going on? Jerome Powell believes that the US economy is still quite far from its targets of 2%-inflation and full employment. This is the core basis for the FED to continue to maintain the current easy-money policies. Easy money occurs when FED wants to stimulate the economy and lower the unemployment rate. In general,…
with HT 