S&P, Nasdaq Reach Fresh Record Highs

Dow: +0.09% | Nasdaq: +0.52% | S&P: +0.15%

Catch Up Quick

• Meme stocks skyrocketed today → AMC Entertainment (AMC) +20%, GameStop (GME) +28%

• Airbnb (ABNB) will temporarily house 20K Afghan refugees

• Chinese tech stocks rallied from a steep recent sell off → JD.com (JD) +14%, Alibaba (BABA) +6%

• As short selling (betting on stocks to fall) rebounds, Tesla (TSLA) and Moderna (MRNA) are current hedge fund short target favorites

• Morgan Stanley cited Disney (DIS) and Netflix (NFLX) as top equity picks amid a positive outlook for streaming

• Facebook launched Horizon Workrooms, a virtual reality (“VR”) app for working remotely where users can meet in 3D as avatar versions of themselves

• Waymo will open self-driving car testing to select CA residents

• Ramp, a corporate card company targeting small to medium sized businesses (“SMBs”) raised a $300M Series C doubling its valuation since April to $3.9B → Ramp cardholders have surged 5x this year

• Microstrategy revealed purchases of 3.9K bitcoins in Q3 for $177M → average price of $45K per token

• EtherRock NFT (a literal digital image of a rock) sold for $1.3M (CNBC)

• Goldman Sachs still thinks the Fed could start tapering (a contractionary fiscal policy in which the central bank halts asset purchases, typically sending stocks down) by year end → the firm is eyeing a November announcement

• The FDA fully approved Pfizer's vaccine → 30% of unvaccinated adults said they’d be more likely to get an FDA approved shot (Kaiser)

• Nordstrom beat expected earnings and raised forecasts → shares are down however >7% in after hours as sales failed to exceed 2019 levels

• Japanese lunar start-up ispace revealed a next generation moon lander for missions starting in 2024

• Microsoft will officially launch cloud gaming on Xbox consoles

• The CEO of Kohl’s said that rumored Amazon department stores won’t ruin its relationship with the eCommerce vanguard

• Virgin Orbit, the satellite-launching spinoff of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, will go public through a SPAC at $3.2B valuation

Thought of the Day

• We recently discussed how Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG) have been heavily investing in internet connectivity for Africa and Asia

• Traditionally, telecom companies have owned and operated internet infrastructure, charging businesses (like Facebook and Google) a fee per bandwidth consumed

• However, with fees growing larger as internet penetration rates rise, big tech is simply investing vertically to avoid payments to external internet providers

• Boosting connectivity in underdeveloped nations will undoubtedly drive economic growth by facilitating the spread of global information and web / mobile applications that boost living standards

• Though with Facebook and Google soon to control both access to the internet as well as the flow of internet information from an infrastructure perspective, the level of consumer data they will access is unprecedented, providing an even bigger advantage over competition

• At the end of the day, while past monopolies damaged consumers via malicious pricing power, left unregulated, future monopolies could be far worse → depleting consumer internet privacy

• And while Capitol Hill doesn’t have the most technologically savvy reputation, it appears at this rate that increasing big tech anticompetition will inevitably reach a critical mass at some point, eventually sparking real political action that could devastate the all-time-high Nasdaq

• Just because big tech companies have lawfully gained market positions, this doesn’t guarantee they are legally maintaining them!

  Afternoon Audit Home

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