vestact posted: " Market Scorecard Yesterday, US markets advanced with both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq indexes closing near session highs. We are now up by more than 3% in the last four trading days, which is very satisfactory. Fed Chair Jerome Powell's second " Vestact - Money with a dash of funny
Yesterday, US markets advanced with both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq indexes closing near session highs. We are now up by more than 3% in the last four trading days, which is very satisfactory. Fed Chair Jerome Powell's second day of testimony to Congress seems to have inspired investors to rethink the path of inflation and interest hikes, and maybe the worst is now behind us?
In company news, Uber is said to have explored a sale of its Indian ride-hailing arm, in a possible share-swap deal. This comes as no surprise as they already sold their India food-delivery business to Zomato.
Izolo (yesterday in Zulu), the JSE All-share closed down 0.63%, the S&P 500 gained 0.95%, and the Nasdaq was up a healthy 1.62%.
Our 10c Worth
One Thing, From Paul
Here's a simple piece of advice for a Friday: keep an open mind. Try new things, to see if you like them. Stay flexible.
Theodor Geisel, more commonly known as Dr. Seuss, wrote the book "Green Eggs and Ham" after taking a bet with his publisher that he couldn't do it with only 50 words.
The result was a masterpiece, a 62-page story about Sam-I-Am who tries to get a man to eat unfamiliar foods, in unusual locations. The man starts out being very resistant, but warms up in the end. It's a good story to read to kids.
I can't say I have much experience with augmented reality (AR). With 3 kids under 5, my life is wild enough. But I have no doubt it will be a big part of our future, especially for gamers.
According to The Verge, Apple is working hard on virtual reality headsets. As we have seen in the past, Apple does not pioneer hardware products, they let other companies do that. If it turns out to be popular, Apple jumps in and perfects the device. They have 800 million loyal customers and the world's best manufacturing platform, so when they get started, there's no stopping them.
I am not saying this will happen again, but if history is anything to go by, Apple will win the AR race too. If you haven't seen Apple's head office before, that's what it looks like below.
Michael's Musings
Yesterday Eskom announced that they will award 18 private companies grid connections for power generation, totalling 1 800MW. Eskom owns huge amounts of land around their power stations, so they can easily lease space to private power generation companies. Being close to a power station also means minimal infrastructure is needed to integrate the new power source into the grid.
Probably the best part of the plan is that Eskom won't be buying the power, instead, the electricity will be sold directly to big companies, Eskom will just provide the transmission infrastructure.
For a layman like myself, Eskom seems to get all the upside without taking any risk. They are using unproductive land to increase the electricity supply on the grid, without needing to spend any of their own money. On top of that, Eskom will receive rent from the land and they will get a transmission fee for transporting the power. Winning all around.
Bright's Banter
UK-based payments company SumUp just raised $624 million at a $8.5 billion valuation. The money will go towards developing new products and expanding their business. These guys made a name for themselves with dongles that turned smartphones into card payment terminals.
SumUp was founded in 2011 by Jan Deepen, Marc-Alexander Christ, and his disciples. They provide card readers to over 4 million small merchants such as coffee shops and taxi drivers in 35 countries, charging them a small fee for the machine and 1% to 1.5% of every transaction.
SumUp has raised some $1.6 billion over the last ten years, about 60% of that has been in the form of debt, not equity. They were chasing a $20 billion valuation at the beginning of the year, but sanity seems to have set in in private markets. Top backers said the company should rather focus on survival than aggressive growth.
Asian markets are up this morning, yay! The MSCI Asia-Pacific index rose for the second day in a row, aided by Chinese tech shares. Companies like Alibaba and Baidu are up 5.7% and 3.7%, respectively.
US equity futures are also moving higher this Friday morning. The Rand is becalmed in the doldrums, trading at R15.93 to the US Dollar.
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