Category: Portfolio Management

March 26th, 2024 - Reddit, the beloved social media platform, made headlines with a staggering 30% jump in its shares following its recent IPO; Debuting at $34, the stock closed at an impressive $59.80 on Monday, reflecting investors' fervent interest. Together with existing investors, Reddit raised around $750 million in the offering, marking a significant milestone for the company's financial trajectory. What sets Reddit's IPO apart is its inclusive approach, allowing moderators and users, affectionately known as “Redditors”, to participate alongside institutional investors: this novel strategy echoes successful models employed by industry giants like Airbnb and Rivian, fostering a stronger sense of community ownership and democratizing the access to investment opportunities. Early investors, such as Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, saw their stakes in Reddit skyrocket: Altman's investment surged from…

23rd March, 2024 - This week saw an unprecedented rise in the IPO tech market, bringing to end a prolonged period of drought triggered by the public offering of Reddit and Astera Labs. The two companies, which patrolled the same world within the tech-investment space, represented the first known venture-backed tech flotation in the U.S. since September. Morgan Stanley emerged as the ultimate victor among other banks, landing the title lead position of both IPOs in the victory of dry spell which the bank had been experiencing. The revival follows after a period of stagnancy in the tech IPO market, with only 15 tech IPOs occurring in the past 2 years since 2021 which have proved to be bullish. The number of IPOs has been on the decline over the…

22nd March, 2024 - Despite beating revenue and profit analysts’ expectations, Nike stock fell nearly 7% after giving a soft outlook for the full year and announcing slowing sales in China. Going through the numbers, revenue rose by 0.3% to $12.43 billion, beating the estimated revenue of $12.28 billion, while EPS came in at 77 cents, surpassing again analysts’ estimates. An important turnaround for the company might be the Paris Olympics, in which the Oregon based firm has put a lot of trust and belief as it is going to launch several products and marketing campaigns around the event.  On Wednesday 21st, Reddit made a stellar debut after its initial public offering, soaring 48%. On Friday though, the social media company’s share price fell around 9%, cooling off, even though…

March 21, 2024 - Thursday was a pretty good day for Wall Street, the Dow Jones closed in on the 40,000 threshold for the first time in its 128 years as markets rallied to new highs closing in at 39,781.5. Also the other two major indexes reached new highs with the S&P 500 increasing 0.3% reaching an all time high of 5,241.53 and the Nasdaq grew 0.2% breaking its record to reach 16,401.85  The Justice department sued Apple in an antitrust case, saying that the company has a monopoly over the phone market that harmed consumers, developers and rival companies. As a result of the suit Apple (AAPL) shares fell more than 4% on thursday. The lawsuit claims that Apple’s anti-competitive practices extend beyond Iphone and Apple watch businesses, citing…

20th March 2024 - Today, the Federal Open Market Committee announced they kept interest rates between 5.25%-5.5%, aligned with investors expectations. Even though they kept the rates at the same level, the signal of three possible rate cuts fueled investors’ risk appetite. Additionally, the Fed’s announcements were approached positively because since the recent data was slightly hotter than expected, investors were prepared for worse. Fed chair Jerome Powell didn’t specify when they are expecting to start the cuts but following the announcements on the finished FOMC meeting, markets are expecting a 75% probability of the first cut at the June 11-12 meeting according to CME FedWatchTool. (https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html) Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed by 1%, Nasdaq and S&P 500 increased by 1.3%, and 0.9% respectively. Intel (INTC) is given…

19th March, 2024 - An important announcement regarding its competitive strategy in the near future has been released  by the oil giant Shell (SHEL). The company is about to shift its focus from the traditional retail  businesses to EV charging sites, with the London based company that opted for expanding the number of charging stations mainly in Europe and China. Shell will divest about 500 old sites (like the gasoline ones) per year in 2024 and 2025, with these closures contributing in reducing retail’s footprint  drastically (about 2.1%). With respect to these important changes, Shell decided to give more importance to public charging rather than in-home charging, with the latter being an alternative that is popular in the US. Shell plans to increase the total number of its charger points…

18th March, 2024 - Portfolio holdings Google (GOOG) (Purchased 0.8 units @ $133.93) and Apple (AAPL) (Purchased 0.6 units @ $183.96) had a positive run on Monday, rising 4.60% and 0.64% respectively. This came following a Bloomberg article outlining the possibility of a partnership between Google’s Gemini AI and Apple’s iPhone’s.  Both tech firms have had a tough start to the year, with Alphabet underperforming the Market and Apple being in the negative year to date. The Cupertino based firm has recently made the shift from building the Apple Car to working on Generative AI, meaning a large amount of funding has rendered itself available to focus on integrating and developing Artificial Intelligence for iPhones. Not a definitive win, but definitely a step in the right direction to commence a…

In a recent Interview, Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, illustrated his views for the rest of the year on global trading. As we all know the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and Panama Canal drought have driven up ocean freight with rates on key routes up 75% to 150% year-to-date. Despite these problems the CEO of the fifth largest ocean carrier tells that his views improved for the rest of the year after conversations with clients and logistic companies led him to rethink the forecasted projections on demand. This comes in the same week as the company reported a steep decrease in 2023 profits and a drop in dividends which led to a stock decline. The poor results reported were a consequence of the difficult last quarter of…

After doing a master’s degree in Finance, there are many career opportunities one can access. However, the choice for the most competitive candidates, who attend the best schools, usually boil down to either Investment Banking or Private Equity. Today we will take a look at these options in order to understand what a career in the highest chambers of finance might look like.  Investment Banking:  Investment Banking is an expression used to refer to the activity of connecting SSU’s, operators with more money than they need, with DSU’s, the ones with less money than what is necessary in order for them to undertake specific investment projects.  Investment banks (JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, BNP Paribas, ecc.) are the entities that play a key role in ensuring this…

14th March, 2024 - After reaching its all time high on Wednesday, Bitcoin’s rally ended on Thursday. On Friday the most famous cryptocurrency continued to struggle, losing more than 4% at the time that this article was written (8:30 p.m. CET). The fact that Bitcoin did reach an all time high before its halving, was something unprecedented in the recent history of the cryptocurrency. This was due to the increasing demand for the Bitcoin spot ETF, that we explained in our recent article of the 12th of March that you can read on our website. For those of you that do not know what the Bitcoin halving is, I will now explain it to you. Bitcoin halving is a monetary policy of the cryptocurrency that reduces approximately every four years…