vestact posted: " Market Scorecard Yesterday, US markets swung higher, delivering an emphatic bounce back after a week of punishing losses. The S&P 500 snapped a six-day losing streak and rose by almost 2%. Treasury yields went down for a change, their biggest " Vestact - Money with a dash of funny
Yesterday, US markets swung higher, delivering an emphatic bounce back after a week of punishing losses. The S&P 500 snapped a six-day losing streak and rose by almost 2%. Treasury yields went down for a change, their biggest one-day drop since 2009. It's not clear what all this means, and economic growth may be slowing, but since we are always fully invested, we'll take an up day, thank you.
After a week of drama in the UK, the Bank of England unveiled a $71 billion bond-buying program, which triggered a global rally in government debt. That's a discordant move because all countries have ditched that kind of Covid-era quantitative easing. Last week, the UK government unveiled the country's biggest tax cuts in decades, which some say will further fuel inflation in the UK. What are they thinking?
Elsewhere, European Union officials unveiled fresh economic sanctions on Russia in response to their latest annexation of Ukrainian territory. The plan is to ban sales of Russian oil by third-party countries, beyond a set cap.
In company news, Biogen surged 40% after the company said its experimental Alzheimer's drug significantly slowed the disease's progression in a large study. Its partner in the study, Japanese pharma company Eisai, rose 17% in Tokyo trading.
In summary, the JSE All-share was down 0.34%, the S&P 500 gained 1.97%, and the Nasdaq rocketed up by 2.05%.
Our 10c Worth
One Thing, From Paul
It's hard to predict the future, beyond making vague generalisations. For example, I might confidently say that the Internet will be a "big thing" for decades to come. It's harder to predict exactly which private companies will benefit the most from selling services to people using the Internet.
The Washington, DC-based private equity firm Carlyle apparently uses 100- to 200-page memos to justify each individual investment.
Michael Moritz (seen in the picture below) from rival firm Sequoia Capital, said he thought that was nonsense in a recent interview. He went on to say, "People tend to overcomplicate these things. We know that any financial prediction is going to be wrong, we just don't know how wrong. So huge spreadsheets are useless and worthless."
I agree. I'd say it's good enough to buy Apple, Google, and Amazon shares on the basis that they are big, reliable and well-positioned in a fast-growing part of the global economy.
Michael's Musings
Yesterday Bright wrote about the recently released Forbes 400 list. He pointed out that being a billionaire doesn't automatically get you onto the list anymore; the number of ultra-rich people is growing because the global economy is getting bigger. Forbes supplements their list with additional research to give us insights into the lives of those 400 people.
In a healthy economy, there is a regular churn of those at the top of the wealth pile. You want an economy where someone can climb the economic ladder through hard work, perseverance and luck.
On the current list, about 7% of people inherited a fortune and are not actively working to increase it in any way. At the other end of the spectrum, around 7% of people once lived below the poverty-line before building their fortunes. Most importantly though, 70% of the people on the list are considered self-made.
VW said it was pricing the IPO of Porsche at the top end of the targeted range, putting it on track to become one of Europe's largest listings in over a decade. I'm glad to see massive demand from investors because this signals confidence in the iconic luxury carmaker, especially in the current gloomy trading environment.
The offering will value Porsche at more than $73 billion, which will rank the German manufacturer among the top five largest car companies measured by market value behind its parent VW, but ahead of Mercedes-Benz, which is worth around $56 billion. Tesla towers over the sector with a market capitalisation of $886 billion, followed by Japan's Toyota Motors.
In a sly reference to Porsche's iconic 911 sports car, VW created a total of 911 million Porsche shares, divided equally between ordinary and nonvoting pref shares. They're only selling 25% of Porsche's pref shares to raise EUR19.5 billion, which equates to 12.5% of the entire business in the IPO.
Porsche made EUR33 billion in revenues last year by selling a little over 300 000 cars, generating a return on sales of 16%. The good news is that the business is well insulated from threats of a global recession since buyers of these high-end machines are wealthy enough to absorb rising inflation and rates without cutting back on spending.
Linkfest, Lap It Up
Does your brain go into overdrive in the evenings? You need to learn how to wind down at that time - How to prepare your head for sleep.
Supersonic flight might return in a few years. Jet-maker Boom has orders from American Airlines, but still needs someone to make the engines - Boom is in a bind.
Signing Off
Asian markets have perked up at last, thanks to yesterday's rally in US stocks. Shares in Japan, mainland China, and South Korea are all in the green this morning, snapping a two-week losing streak. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong is down, maybe those guys missed the memo.
China's onshore Yuan advanced for the first time in nine sessions, after the central bank issued a verbal warning against currency speculation.
US equity futures are down for now, but let's see how those go later. The Rand is trading at around R17.89 to the US Dollar.
We are already looking forward to the weekend. So is former Brazilian President Lula da Silva who has widened his lead over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, in the presidential elections there. Voting happens on Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment