Forbes

2022-05-30 17:05:01 Dow Jumps 500 Points, Market Rebounds As Strong Earnings Alleviate ‘Dire Recession Headlines’

The stock market rebounded for a second day in a row on Thursday, on track to snap a seven-week losing streak, as recession fears cooled amid a slew of strong quarterly earnings reports that boosted investor sentiment.

Stocks moved higher as investors continued to assess the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest policy meeting: The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.6%, over 500 points, while the S&P 500 gained 2% and the Nasdaq Composite 2.7%.

Retail stocks, which were initially hard-hit during earnings season after profit warning from major companies like Walmart and Target, continued to rebound on Thursday amid strong showings from the likes of Macy’s and Williams Sonoma, shares of which rose over 10% each.

Discount retailers Dollar Tree and Dollar General jumped 20% and 14%, respectively, after similarly solid quarterly results. Open / Comment

2022-05-30 14:05:01 Alibaba Shares Jump As Chinese E-Commerce Giant Posts Record Transactions

Alibaba’s stock jumped in Hong Kong after the Chinese e-commerce giant reported record transactions on its digital platform even as the resurgence of Covid-19 infections battered the world’s second-largest economy.

The company — which counts Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank as its biggest shareholders — said net profit in the full year ended March 31 dropped to 62 billion yuan, the lowest in five years, from 150.3 billion in the previous year. Still, Alibaba shares jumped more than 12% in morning trading in Hong Kong, continuing its rebound from record lows seen in March.

Gross merchandise value on the group’s e-commerce platform climbed to a record 8.3 trillion yuan for the year from 7.5 trillion yuan, driven by strong demand from Alibaba’s 1.3 billion active users across China and international markets. The surge in transactions helped drive the firm’s full year revenue 19% higher to 853 billion yuan. Open / Comment

2022-05-29 14:05:01 Mining Billionaire Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Electric Seeks Dual Listing In New York, Toronto

Billionaire Robert Friedland plans to list his Ivanhoe Electric Inc. in New York and Toronto as the mining tycoon aims to bankroll the development of copper mines in the U.S. that will supply raw materials needed to build batteries for electric cars as well as large-scale energy storage facilities.

The initial public offering of Ivanhoe Electric — which holds stakes in the Santa Cruz Copper Project in Arizona and the Tintic Copper-Gold Project in Utah — will be managed by BMO Capital Markets and Jefferies.

Led by Friedland as CEO, the company also owns VRB Energy, a developer of large-scale energy storage systems that could power cities and industries. VRB has about 500 megawatt hours of energy generating capacity that have been installed or under development.

Developing copper mines in the U.S. is crucial as the price of the metal surges amid increasing demand from China, Europe and North America. Open / Comment

2022-05-28 21:05:00 Sequoia China-Backed Crypto Financial Services Firm Hits $2 Billion Valuation

Babel Finance, a Hong Kong-based crypto lender and asset manager, has secured $80 million from investors including crypto venture firms Dragonfly Capital and Circle Ventures, ramping up its valuation to $2 billion four years after it was founded.

Major investors of the round are Chinese tech-focused fund Jeneration Capital, U.S. crypto private equity firm 10T Holdings, as well as existing backers that include BAI Capital, the Asian investment arm of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann.

Babel Finance said it will use the capital to fund its global expansion plan. The startup added that it will bolster its compliance team and seek regulatory approval in the jurisdictions it operates. Babel Finance has applied for licenses in Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Britain.

Babel Finance rode a wave of growing interest in cryptocurrencies last May, pulling $40 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital China. Open / Comment

2022-05-28 17:05:00 The New Youngest Self-Made Billionaire In The World Is A 25-Year-Old College Dropout

Alexandr Wang grew up in the shadow of New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Lab. His parents were physicists who worked on weapons projects for the military. Now he does too: Wang’s company Scale AI has already inked three contracts worth up to $110 million, contingent on the government’s needs, to help America’s Air Force and Army employ artificial intelligence.

Scale’s technology analyzes satellite images much faster than human analysts. It’s useful not just for the military. More than 300 companies, including General Motors and Flexport, use Scale, which Wang started when he was 19, to help them pan gold from rivers of raw information — millions of shipping documents, say, or raw footage from self-driving cars.

Wang’s estimated 15% stake is worth $1 billion, making him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Open / Comment

2022-05-28 14:05:00 Ford To Pay $19.2 Million In Multistate Settlement Over False Advertising Allegations

Ford Motor Company agreed to pay $19.2 million to settle allegations of falsely advertising fuel economy ratings and payload capacity for certain pickup trucks and hybrid cars, though the company will not admit wrongdoing.

Ford will be paying out varying amounts of money to 40 states and the District of Columbia, which pursued a multistate investigation.

The states alleged Ford misled consumers when the company claimed the coveted title, “Best in Class,” for payload capacity on its 2011-2014 Super Duty pickups after other trucks had surpassed Ford in the previous model year.

Ford is prohibited from creating false or misleading ads on new vehicles’ fuel economy or payload capacity under the settlement agreement.

Oregon, Texas, Illinois, Maryland, Vermont and Arizona spearheaded the states’ investigation. Open / Comment

2022-05-27 21:05:01 Fortunes Of Social Media Billionaires, Led By Snap’s Evan Spiegel, Plunge Billions On Tuesday

Social media companies’ share prices soared during the pandemic. Now those stocks are coming back to Earth — along with the fortunes of their billionaire founders. The fortunes of the billionaire founders of Snap, Meta Networks, Pinterest and Twitter fell by a combined $10 billion.

Shares of Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, plummeted an astounding 43%. As a result, Snapchat cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel is $1.7 billion poorer than on Monday.

Pinterest is the second worst hit in percentage terms. Shares of the photo-sharing website cratered by nearly 24% on Tuesday. Cofounders Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra are now worth $1.1 billion each after losing 20% of their net worths.

Meta Platforms, which operates Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp, is down 7.6% since Monday, erasing $5.2 billion from founder Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune. Open / Comment

2022-05-27 17:05:01 Billionaire Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel Pledges Stock Options Worth $355 Million To Undisclosed Charitable Causes

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, a veteran biotech executive whose fortune swelled during the Covid-19 pandemic, disclosed he would exercise stock options, originally granted in 2013 and set to expire in August 2023, to acquire nearly 4.6 million shares at a price of $0.99 apiece, a nearly 100% discount to current prices of about $138.

Bancel, who joined Moderna in 2011, said in an accompanying blog post the donated shares would amount to roughly $355 million at current prices — after deducting about $280 million in state and federal tax payments.

To avoid a large-scale transaction that potentially impacts the price of Moderna shares, Bancel said he would set up a trading plan in which he exercises 80,000 shares each week, beginning on Wednesday, until the options are fully exercised around June of next year. Open / Comment

2022-05-27 14:05:02 Doug LaManfa expressed his opinion on gas prices in the House of Representatives. Details in the video. Open / Comment

2022-05-26 21:05:01 Beeple’s Followers Lose $438,000 To Phishing Scam After NFT Artist’s Twitter Gets Hacked

The hackers appeared to gain control of Beeple’s account for several hours on Sunday, during which time they changed the artist’s Twitter bio to advertise a raffle for a fake collection with Louis Vuitton – with which Beeple collaborated in 2019 — and posted two messages with links that actually directed users to a phishing scam, according to ArtNet.

A phishing link in the first of two tweets posted during Beeple’s account during that time brought in about 36 ether, or $73,000, while a second scammed the artist’s followers out of $365,000 worth of various cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

When followers clicked through either of the two links, the attack would drain crypto and NFTs from users’ cryptocurrency wallets. Open / Comment