vestact posted: " Market Scorecard US markets rose yesterday, bouncing nicely after Friday's selloff. Traders seem to have concluded that the Omicron impact will be less than initially feared. You know how we say it's best to keep calm and wait out the tough times?"
US markets rose yesterday, bouncing nicely after Friday's selloff. Traders seem to have concluded that the Omicron impact will be less than initially feared. You know how we say it's best to keep calm and wait out the tough times? This was yet another example of that advice in action.
In company news, Moderna shares added 12%, on top of Friday's 20% surge after confirming that they are already working on a booster shot to combat all known Covid variants, for distribution in January.
Yesterday, the JSE All-share was up 2.03%, the S&P 500 rose by 1.32%, and the Nasdaq added 1.88%.
Our 10c Worth
One Thing, From Paul
The CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, just quit. He is being replaced by Parag Agrawal (see him in the picture, below).
Agrawal joined Twitter in 2011 and became the Chief Technology Officer in 2018. He studied Computer Science at Stanford University and followed that up with a PhD in Philosophy. Impressive!
According to the internet, the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, and now Twitter all grew up in India. That's pretty cool, and underscores what a good place America is for talented immigrants.
According to one wag on Twitter (where else?) this compares favourably with the list of companies run by CEOs from the US state of Indiana: Disney, Cisco Systems, Broadcast.com, Whirpool and XM Radio Canada.
Byron's Beats
I remember, not so long ago, when Elon Musk would announce production goals that seemed far too ambitious. The market took them with a pinch of salt. One of the more recent "shoot for the stars" goals was to manufacture 1 million cars inside 1 calendar year. Tesla is not very far off that target now.
In 2020 Tesla manufactured 500 000 vehicles. This year they are approaching 900 000. They completed 238 000 cars in the last quarter and expected an even bigger number in the fourth quarter.
These goals are largely being met because of the superlative output of the Gigafactory in Shanghai. The speed and scale that Tesla has achieved in China has been phenomenal. In my opinion, it was the turning point for the company. The market realised how quickly Tesla could reach scale, and the share price took off.
Shanghai is expected to manufacture 550 000 cars this year alone and is aiming for the 1 million mark, by itself, next year. Read more on Teslarati. Just incredible!
Michael's Musings
Statista had an interesting infographic out over the weekend showing the five biggest listed companies in the EU compared to the five biggest in the US. It's very noticeable that the US has done much better. None of the EU leaders are tech companies, even though the whole 4th Industrial revolution is based on new technology. Maybe we could argue that ASML, a company that makes the machines to manufacture semi-conductor chips, is really a tech business?
The EU is known for being less innovative and less business-friendly, although EU leaders are trying to change that. This is why we don't feel like we are missing out by only focusing our investments on US-listed companies. As an aside, most leading global companies also have a secondary listing in the US. All five European companies shown below are listed in New York, so we can buy them too if we choose.
The infographic is a reminder of the impact of government policies. Here in South Africa, our inefficient public sector has created many opportunities for privately-owned competitors, but bad policies do restrict overall economic growth.
Grammarly raised $200 million in its latest round of funding, valuing the startup at an astounding $13 billion. The popular grammar-checking tool also catapulted its Ukrainian-born co-founders Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko into the 'three comma club'; both are now worth at least $4 billion.
The San Francisco-based company launched in 2009 as Sentenceworks, an automated writing assistant that focused on fixing grammar. Today, the company uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to help improve people's writing, from basic spelling, grammar and style to more advanced suggestions on tone and context-specific language.
You can use Grammarly to weed out errors in emails, documents, and anything you put into words. The company has enjoyed great returns from products such as Grammarly for business which now has clients such as Zoom, Cisco, Dell, and Expedia, to name a few. They have over 30 million daily users including ourselves. Yes, this message was put through Grammarly.
Omicron cases are popping up all over Southeast Asia, and markets in Hong Kong and Tokyo have slipped into the red. The Shanghai Composite is hanging on to slender gains.
US futures are down in early trade, but let's wait and see how they change over the day, as the planet revolves. The Rand is having an identity crisis and was last seen trading at R16.20 to the US Dollar.
It's the last day of November. 2021 is on its way out, just one month to go to 2022. Make it a good one.
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