Market summary: 📊
Freaking bloodbath in India on Friday with the new COVID variant spooking investors. Folks in the US returned for half a session after thanksgiving to offer a similar beating!
US:
S&P 500 - down 2.27%
Nasdaq - down 2.09%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 2.91%
Sensex - down 2.87%
Saturday shot of espresso ☕
✅ Back to normal, my a** — the South Africans discovered a new COVID variant that appears significantly deadlier than before — affecting about 22-known people in the country, and 1 in Hong Kong, indicating active global transmission. That, coupled with inflation worries, weighed heavily on global markets. US responded swiftly by banning travel from 8 African-nations for the foreseeable future. Others will follow. Airline stocks were murdered, and OG Zoom was seen flying! 2020, that you?
✅ Apple got plans — Ming Chi-Kuo, the Taiwan based Apple analyst, who is Wall Street’s best paid guy to keep a tab on Apple’s supply chains, designs, and other secretive moves, says the company’s M-1 chip powered AR-headset is coming next year. With the Smartphone maturing (little innovation, not suitable to experience mixed reality), and rivals like FB catching up on hardware, Apple is forced to accelerate timelines a bit and push R&D. Ming says the headset is see-through, will be powered by Sony displays, and will be launched alongside the iPhone 14.
Mr. Beast hosts real life Squid Games 📽️
King of YouTube for a reason! The OG-vlogger conducted an equally nail biting imitation of the Squid Game contest — albeit where nobody dies, and the winner takes home a $456K cash prize.
Needless to say, total hit! 💯
Some deets — Beast spent $3.5 million out of his own pocket to organize the games, bringing in 456 contestants. $2.5 million was spent on building out the game arena apparently, with the rest going towards prizes.
So far the video has 58 million views in barely 2 days. Here’s a link.
For comparison, Netflix got some 140 million households to stream the show, and made $900M on it.
Big picture — bringing in hundreds of fans, and making them part of an “experience” — possibly opened a whole new chapter in the solo-creator business here!
Real winner though, is $GOOGL.
China wants to wreck Didi’s life 🤷♂️
What happened — Didi, the Uber of China, which had IPO’ed on Wall Street earlier this year, is now being asked to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, by Chinese regulators. Reason? “Data security” risks. 🙄
Didi’s listing was already one of the worst ever — as soon as the IPO had opened in July, China had pushed to ban Didi’s apps, which led to investors running for cover, dragging stock down nearly 50% from its IPO price.
So what now — Bloomberg says Didi will either have to go private again, which means buying back shares at the IPO price (yuuuuuge ask given poor credibility with investors), or list itself in Hong Kong, which is also a lengthy process costing them hundreds of millions at least.
Also, pretty certain that the company would have to give up all control over user data to a third-party, which possibly will be a govt agency.
Bottomline — no wonder Chinese stocks are being avoided like the plague on the street right now.
Long week folks! That’s all we have for today, and here’s a quick look at big stuff that went down this week…
🥱 Reliance and Saudi Aramco part ways — after years of dancing together, Reliance called off the deal for Saudi’s state-oil company Aramco to invest $15B+, for a 20% stake in Reliance’s oil business. The decision seemed amicable. Aramco is busy printing money as oil-prices shoot up, while Reliance focuses on becoming as a major renewable energy player in India, already setting an audacious target of hitting 100GW in clean energy production by 2030.
👀 El Salvador proposed a BTC city — after making Bitcoin a legal tender, the South American nation announced plans to build a Bitcoin City, in what could be BTC community’s toughest real-life litmus test so far. The state will raise a billion dollars in debt on Bitcoin bonds and use that to fund malls, entertainment centers, hospitals, and all other staples of a well-designed town. Money will also be spent on mining rigs, designed to work using a volcano’s geo-thermal energy.
🔥 Back to office drives fortune for PC makers — offices are reopening, and companies are spending $$ on upgrading computer systems, which is helping PC-vendors make bank. Dell blasted a 21% YoY growth for the last quarter, with enterprise PC sales growing a sharp 35%. HP followed with a 24% YoY growth in enterprise demand. Both stocks were seen flying as investors adjust their sails to post-COVID opportunities. Too early with the new variant tho?
🤔 Indian regulators wrecked Crypto — GOI decided to table its crypto-regulation bill as an agenda-item for the upcoming winter session of the parliament. Specifics are elusive, language is confusing but terse, which most news-outlets picked as a blanket ban in the making. But in summary, GOI wants to stop most crypto-projects outside of a select few with meaningful, established end use-cases (whatever that means), while creating a framework for a RBI-backed central currency.
📢 ITC's cute little surprise — ITC’s Life Sciences business is working on a COVID-19 nasal-spray, kicking off clinical trials for the product soon. ITC will be marketing the spray under the Savlon brand, expanding its already pretty-extensive portfolio of hygiene products. Several other global pharma companies are working on mass market treatments for COVID too, like Merck and Pfizer, both with their oral pills.
🦄 Unicorn shower November — 6 unicorns this month, 3 this week alone... ✌️
NoBroker closed a $210 million Series E from Tiger Global doubling valuation to $1 billion! They run a real-estate discovery platform, charging ₹2K for personal concierge service, serving 16 million people across 6 major cities.
Used-cars biz Spinny closed a $285 million Series E, again from Tiger Global, doubling valuation to over $1.75 billion! Spinny sells over 3,000 cars each month right now.
Lastly, Entrackr says Upstox raised some $25 million from Tiger Global, at a $3.4 billion valuation. The discount stock broker serves some 4 million customers on its app. 37, 38, 39 done… 40th wen?
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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