vestact posted: " Market Scorecard US stocks rose sharply yesterday, thanks to strong results from retailers and helpful comments from some Fed governors. After underwhelming profit reports from Walmart and Target last week, it was feared that all US consumers were" Vestact - Money with a dash of funny
US stocks rose sharply yesterday, thanks to strong results from retailers and helpful comments from some Fed governors. After underwhelming profit reports from Walmart and Target last week, it was feared that all US consumers were under pressure, but good results from Macy's, Williams-Sonoma, Dollar Tree and Dollar General restored some confidence.
If the market holds up tonight, we will record our first week of gains after seven tough weeks in a row of losses. That will be a huge relief!
In company news, Vestact-owned Nvidia closed up 5.2% after the chipmaker posted record revenues, 46% higher than last year. Profits jumped even more, by 55% to nearly $4 billion. Sales of chips for data centres are really booming.
In summary, the JSE All-share gained 2.31%, the S&P 500 climbed 1.99%, and the Nasdaq rose 2.68%.
Our 10c Worth
One Thing, From Paul
John Collison, co-founder of Irish-American payment processor Stripe (pictured below) made an interesting comment recently, noting that "things around you weren't just always there; people made them happen. I see now how much tenacity everything requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects."
That's a great point. Everything of value in the modern world, outside of nature, is the product of someone's vision, care and diligence. It's the good stuff that makes a permanent impression.
You could extend the point to the mainstream economy. Every great business is the result of a lot of hard work, over a long period of time. Profitable enterprises were built up painstakingly by their founders and current employees.
So, that's my advice for this Friday. Find something to be passionate about, take your time and build it to last.
Michael's Musings
The launch of Disney+ in South Africa earlier this month has increased the range of video entertainment available. The hard part is deciding which services to sign up for. You can pick from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, AppleTV, Britbox, Showmax and DStv. The shows offered and the technical quality of the platform (app) are the two main choice criteria.
DStv has all the live sports, so they are in a league of their own. Looking at the rest, I'd say that Netflix is still the standout winner. The other options either have limited shows or a glitchy app or both. For example, I really enjoyed WeCrashed on AppleTV, but there is not much else to watch and the app was very frustrating to use. I haven't used the new Disney+ service yet, but this is what the internet has to say, Disney+ is Pretty Horrible in South Africa.
The experience highlights how well Netflix has done to scale globally as quickly as they have. Their service has the biggest library, the app streams really well, and they have the best suggestion algorithms around. Can they hold on to this lead against other services? In the short term, it seems very likely, longer-term it is hard to know.
Bright's Banter
The UK antitrust watchdog is investigating Google on suspicions that it may be abusing its dominant position in online advertising. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is concerned that Google may be favouring its own ad exchange services, while taking active steps to exclude the services offered by rivals.
Google's rivals in this space are Amazon Ads, Trade Desk, MediaMath, maybe Meta and. . . that's it. They are by far the largest, and there are no other meaningful competitors in this highly technical business. You need complex ad servers, demand-side platforms, publisher-side ad servers, and analytic tools. Without those there's no way in.
Of course, the company has its own view and made this statement: "Advertising tools from Google and many competitors help websites and apps fund their content, and help businesses of all sizes effectively reach their customers. When publishers choose to use our advertising services, they keep the majority of revenue."
This will be hard to investigate and harder to remedy, in my opinion. Hold this stock.
Oryx antelopes bred in the UAE have been released into a nature reserve in Chad. The programme aims to increase herd numbers and bring back variants that are extinct in the wild- Environment Agency Abu Dhabi saving the Oryx.
Signing Off
Asian markets are buoyant this morning thanks to better-than-expected earnings from Alibaba and Baidu. Those two stocks are underpinning a rally in tech stocks in Hong Kong. The MSCI Asia-Pacific is on track for a modest advance, its second in two weeks.
US equity futures are basically flat in early trade. The Rand is trading at around R15.68 to the US greenback.
Enjoy your weekend. It's Memorial Day in the US on Monday, so markets there will be closed until Tuesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment