The Great Trade Streak Continues – Closing Bull Feb. 4th, 2022
Quick Summary:
In this week’s Closing Bull, we’ll be discussing Facebook’s loss of more than $230B in market value after disappointing earnings, big earnings for Snap, Pinterest, and Amazon, GM’s self-driving-car unit Cruise secured a $5B credit line, the Bank of England raises interest rates again, gas prices are up 50% from a year ago as profits soar for energy giants, and lastly, an interesting fact.
Let’s get into the news!
Key News This Week:
Update on the system
Facebook’s loss of more than $230B in market value
Big earnings for Snap, Pinterest, and Amazon
GM’s self-driving-car unit Cruise secures a $5B credit line
The Bank of England raises interest rates again
Gas prices are up 50% from a year ago
Interesting Fact
Read the Transcript
Hi and welcome to my financial markets’ re-cap for the week.
Before we get to the news, a quick update on the system. It was a great week around here, another big win.
It could have been a really big win if Facebook, (or Meta as they are now called), earnings were better received, but oh well, it was still a great trade.
Now we are back sitting on our hands, but something is coming next week and of course more on that next week.
Bottom line is that we continue our great start to the year.
So that was the system update, now what happened in the news this week?
The big news this week was in tech earnings. Meta, aka Facebook, lost more than $230B in market value yesterday after disappointing earnings — that was the largest one-day loss EVER for an American company.
It wasn’t all bad for tech: Snap, Pinterest, and Amazon soared after-hours on earnings.
Snapchat shares jumped 60% after the little ghost app reported its first-ever quarterly profit.
And Amazon jumped 15% today, a huge move for such a titan of the market.
This was all following news earlier in the week when Google posted its third straight quarter of record sales, as holiday searches drove ad revenue.
And they announced that they are also splitting each of its shares into 20 starting in July. That’s right, a 20:1 share split. Never heard of such a thing.
Speaking of tech, GM’s self-driving-car unit Cruise secured a $5B credit line to help launch its autonomous ride-hailing business. This month GM started assembling 100 Cruise Origin shuttles, so the self-driving thing is really heating up.
Across the pond, the Bank of England (Which is basically the UK’s Fed) raised interest rates again for the first back-to-back rate hike since 2004. This is of course in order to tame inflation. The federal reserve remains expected to rise in March.
In energy news, if you are doing a double-take on the gas-price sign like me this week. Then know that gas prices are up 50% from a year ago and oil is near a seven-year high.
That’s hurting our wallets but helping the energy giants. Last quarter, Exxon’s sales climbed over 80% from a year ago, to a slick $85B. Annual profit hit $23B, the highest since 2014. And as you can imagine, profits are soaring at the other energy giants like Shell and Chevron. Something has to give…
Lastly an interesting fact:
Jeff Bezos’ superyacht is so big that the Dutch city of Rotterdam is considering temporarily dismantling a historic bridge to help the 417-foot boat reach the ocean. WOW, You know you made it when…ha!
That’s it from me, It’s Friday, time to down tools, thanks for watching, and bye for now.