Stocks Rise Higher to Kick Off Q3

Dow: +0.38% | Nasdaq: +0.13% | S&P: +0.52%

Catch Up Quick

• Krispy Kreme shares ($DNUT) rose 24% in its first trading session

• Robinhood officially filed for an IPO, revealing 18M accounts and $80B in assets following impressive last-twelve-month growth

• Electric vehicle maker Nio delivered over 8K vehicles in June 2021 → a 116% increase from June 2020 (putting pressure on Tesla!)

• Cowen cited recent Netflix underperformance as a buying opportunity → says next subscriber count will top forecasts and boost shares

• Bitcoin now accounts for only 47% of total crypto market capitalization → was 70% at the beginning of the year

• BMO raised its price target for Nvidia ($NVDA) to $1K → now the most bullish outlook on Wall Street

• The U.S. dollar recently rose to a 3-month high → is on track for its best month in ~5 years

• Propelled by booming earnings, the S&P 500 has risen ~15% in the first half of 2021 → up 27% from its pre-pandemic high

• Wells Fargo raised it’s price target for Gap ($GPS) ahead of Kanye West’s Yeezy collaboration → sees an upside of 30%

• Language-learning platform Duolingo filed to go public after last-twelve-month revenues doubled

• TikTok raised its maximum video length to 3 mins → up from 60 secs

• Dogecoin accounted for 34% of Robinhood’s crypto revenue in Q1

• Barclays thinks ZipRecruiter’s stock price can rise up to 20% amid U.S. labor supply and demand mismatch

Thought of the Day

• Zipline, a drone delivery service based in San Francisco, announced $250M in new funding from investors such as Google Ventures, Goldman Sachs and The Rise Fund → 2.75B valuation

• Best known for its medical supply drops in Africa, the new capital likely will be used to control U.S. expansion, starting with a pilot program where the company will deliver health related products to Walmart customers

• Against the backdrop of a broader commercial + government drone landscape, an interesting bit about Zipline is its vertically integrated model

• For example, other drone competitors may design hardware in-house before sending blueprints overseas for outsourced manufacturing and assembly

• Also, for image recognition, flight path optimization, threat detection, and other add-ons, it’s more common to acquire or license software from companies such as Neurala or Dedrone

• Oppositely, vertical integration for Zipline entails in-house ownership of design, manufacturing, software components, landing systems, and everything in between

• Thus, if the company can navigate the FAA + other drone governance regulations and thrive during its summer test run with Walmart, having business components “all in one place” via vertical integration will make it an extremely attractive acquisition target

• Amazon ($AMZN), UPS ($UPS) and other companies that have been effortfully attempting to commercialize drone-based delivery may soon be able to do so in one seamless swoop, obtaining an entire drone delivery value chain in a single acquisition!

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