?? Musk pops Man Utd as Sudoswap erupts
STOCKS & STARTUPS
Walmart's second-quarter beat expectations, as Target profit plunges 90%
Walmart (WMT) rose 5.1% after it beat estimates on both earnings and revenue and raised its fiscal year outlook less than a month after issuing a profit warning.?Read more .
The takeaway:?Consumers are having to shift more of their spending to higher priced food and gasoline, and so are now leaning into lower priced goods, Boosting some retailers, like Walmart and Home Depot.
But Target (TGT) is not seeing the same benefit, due to an ongoing inventory issue, putting “significant pressure on [their] near-term profitability" as consumers pull back their spending.
Target profit plunged 90% as they’ve been forced to cut prices because of excess inventory of goods - but they’ve reported that the price cuts did little good: It ended the quarter with 1.5% more inventory than it had three months earlier and 36% more than it had a year ago.
Manchester United shares briefly popped 17% in premarket after Elon Musk jokes about buying the club
This came after Elon Musk tweeted “Also, I’m buying Manchester United ur welcome,” before clarifying that he was joking. Fans reacted with a mixture of excitement and scepticism, as Musk has a history of tweeting similar jokes. Don't worry he's not serious, later tweeting “No, this is a long-running joke on Twitter. I’m not buying any sports teams” before?adding : “Although, if it were any team, it would be Man U. They were my fav team as a kid.”?Read more .
The takeaway: Manchester United shares, which are traded under the abbreviation MANU on the New York Stock Exchange, were up 3.68% in premarket trading as of 4:30 a.m. ET, paring gains after initially surging 17% after the tweet. Based on the club’s most recent stock market valuation, buying Manchester United would have cost Musk around $2 billion. Manchester United declined to comment on the matter when contacted by CNBC.
The billionaire has a history of making similar jokes online, and often is accused online of using this as a tactic to distract from other unwanted headlines for Tesla and his other businesses. If that online hunch is right, I wonder what he’s distracting us from this time…
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TECH & WEB3
Sudoswap erupts as NFT traders capitalise on royalty-free sales
Up until now, the NFT ecosystem has relied on centralised marketplaces, most notably OpenSea. Now, the decentralised alternative Sudoswap is gaining traction - fast. According to?Dune Analytics , Sudoswap did ~$2 million in sales yesterday alone, or ~14% of the daily market share vs OpenSea. They’ve also added over 10k users and traded over 60k NFTs on its platform, and its total value has jumped from $120,000 to $3 million, all in under a month.?Read more .
The takeaway:?Poor liquidity and slippage has long plagued NFT markets. Sudoswap solves a number of the key issues when it comes to NFT marketplaces, most importantly - by letting anyone become their?own?marketplace - as NFT trading is done through liquidity pools. This means you can immediately liquidate your NFT by selling it to one of the liquidity pools, and you don’t have to wait for a buyer. It also has fewer fees, and everything is completely on-chain.
Ultimately, they have a long way to go to catch Opensea, but increasing competition like this is only healthy for the ecosystem in continuing to push value based innovation forward. Watch this space!
Andreessen Horowitz invest ~$350m in WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann’s Flow, a new rental real estate startup.
It’s being dubbed the “fundraise heard around Twitter”. Infamous WeWork founder Adam Neumann has raised a massive $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) again.
领英推荐
The raise gives Neumann’s latest venture a valuation of more than $1 billion, according to the New York Times - or the status of an immediate Unicorn, during an investor pullback in a bear market. Pretty impressive stuff.?Read more .
The takeaway:?It is the largest individual check a16z has EVER written and the second time they've backed a Neumann-founded company this year alone.
But, Neummann’s tenure at WorkWork garnered him a reputation for worker mismanagement and he led his company to a disastrous IPO and Neumann’s second (and third) chance(s) comes as women and founders of colour struggle more than ever to get starter capital, causing widespread backlash.
As TechCrunch put it:
“Women are tired of shattering glass ceilings; their hands are slashed from the dropping shards.”
Conditions have created a discriminatory barrier so strong it can no longer?“shatter like glass; it’s sturdy like concrete and must arduously be drilled through”.
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COMMS & CULTURE
Is Apple about to become an advertising giant?
Apple is about to embark on a new strategy that will see it displaying ads on preloaded iPhone apps. The iPhone maker is aiming to triple the revenue of its ads business, according to Apple commentator Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter.?Read more .
The takeaway:?Last year, Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT) - the little pop-up asking if you’d like an app to track you. It was a “win for privacy”, but caused a lot of pain for the mobile advertising industry and the competition - mostly Zuckerberg who said the ATT move could lose him $10B this year. Now… Apple is moving deeper into ads. Funny that.
Why the move? Consider Apple’s capabilities as an ad platform: iPhone’s sensors and Apple’s own apps (Maps, Music, News, Stocks, Weather), Apple TV, AirPods, AirTags, the Apple Watch, Apple Pay, and more. It’s the perfect ad landscape.
This also gives context to Zuckerberg’s obsession with the metaverse - he needs to escape Apple’s grasp and win the?device ?game if he’s going to win the power back.
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Meme of the week
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Cyber Weatherman ?? | In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity
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