Author: therawinformant

(Bloomberg) — Maybe it was another case of mistaken identity, or just Pavlovian enthusiasm on a day when the FANG stocks were powering up. Whatever the reason, a company called Fangdd just jumped fivefold without any news to explain it.Fangdd Network Group Ltd., a Shenzen, China-based real estate firm that trades in the U.S. under the ticker DUO, nearly quintupled on Tuesday, jumping 395% to close at $47.06 per American depository receipt after starting the day at $10.The stock touched as high as $129.04 — an advance of more than 1,200% — before prompting a trading halt that paused the stock for an hour. The momentum continued after the bell, lifting shares an additional 34%.It’s unclear what sparked the runaway rally, which occurred in a week that’s already seen high volatility chalked up to factors from retail investors bidding up bankrupt stocks to short covering or just a fear of missing out. The Fangdd move triggered at least 14 halts for volatility throughout the day. More than 200,000 shares traded hands, about 50 times its average volume in the first five months of the year.Meanwhile, a basket of FANG stocksthat includes Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet, added just 1.2% Tuesday.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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Chewy released its first-quarter earnings results after market close on Tuesday, beating on its top line. The company offered guidance with stronger-than-expected estimates for its second quarter. Yahoo Finance’s Myles Udland breaks down the pet e-commerce company’s earnings on The Final Round.

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(Bloomberg Opinion) — It’s finally going to happen. Apple Inc. is on the verge of using its own chips over Intel Corp.’s for its Mac computers.Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that Apple is preparing to announce as soon as this month that it will use its own processors in Macs starting next year. The new Macs will incorporate the same internally-developed semiconductors, based on Arm Ltd. chip-architecture technology, that powers the iPhone. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple plans to move its entire Mac product lineup to its own chips because of their higher performance and improved power efficiency.The move will have multiple negative ramifications for Intel’s chip business. The most obvious is the direct impact of losing revenue as the sole processor supplier for Apple’s PC line. The Mac currently represents 12% of the U.S. PC market based on units sold, according to the latest Gartner data. And Bernstein estimates Apple’s laptop line accounts for 2% to 4% of Intel’s sales and mid- to high-single digit percentage of its earnings. Apple also will be able to leverage Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd.’s better chip-making technology going forward. Apple uses the Taiwan-based foundry to manufacture its chip designs. In recent years, TSMC has moved ahead of Intel in its ability to fabricate chips at smaller, more advanced chip nodes.  At first blush, the financial losses for Intel seem manageable. However, there are second-order effects that may prove more worrisome. First, if Apple is able to make better-performing and more power-efficient chips — an ability it has proven capable of in the smartphone market — then Arm-based Macs may be able to gain a larger share of the PC market on the back of its differentiated features. Further out, Apple’s move may pose a serious threat to Intel’s crown jewel server chip business. Here’s how.Currently, Intel dominates the high-profit-margin data-center business, where it sells server chips to cloud-computing providers and corporations. The segment generated sales of $23.5 billion for Intel in 2019, with operating profit of $10.2 billion. And according to IDC, the chip maker held 93% of the worldwide server processor market based on sales last year, versus Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s 5% share.While Intel has long been able to maintain its strong market position in the server space, the arrival of Arm-based Macs may change the game. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has long said the main reason Arm chips have struggled to gain traction in servers was because there weren’t any Arm-based PC platforms at critical mass. He cited the importance of developers being able to iterate and test their server code on local machines. There have been Arm-based Windows laptops on the market, but they generally have not sold well. Now, though, with Mac shifting to Arm-based chips, developers will have tens of millions of Arm-based machines at their finger tips, offering a thriving ecosystem for the up-and-coming chip architecture. Yes, it will take some time for Apple’s move to impact the market. Intel is currently enjoying strong demand as employees are forced to buy more computer hardware to outfit their remote-working home offices, on top of surging cloud-computing demand for its chips as internet services usage rises in the Covid-19 world. And applications must be ported to work well on Apple’s Arm-based chip architecture.But in coming years, Intel’s key businesses will be threatened by Apple’s move. The step is an important one and will likely prove to be a turning point for the chip industry.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tae Kim is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. He previously covered technology for Barron's, following an earlier career as an equity analyst.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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(Bloomberg) — Nano-cap Immuron Ltd. saw shares surge more than ten-fold on Tuesday afternoon as euphoria for retail traders took to the biopharmaceutical industry.The Australia-based company, which was valued at roughly $9 million coming into Tuesday’s session, saw its American depository receipts change hands at a record clip as retail investors cheered and Twitter users were left confused. More than 74 million shares were traded Tuesday which compares to a one-year average volume of less than 100 thousand.The biopharmaceutical company disclosed earlier that the Naval Medical Research Center, its partner, requested a regulatory meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration so it could test its drug for the prevention of acute infectious diarrhea. The pair will plan to start a pair of mid-stage trials sometime in the first half of next year if all goes well with regulators.Tuesday’s 850% gain marked the firm’s best single session since going public in 2017 and is an all-time high.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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(Bloomberg) — Just in the last week, 96,000 people on the Robinhood investing app opened a position in Hertz Global Holdings Inc. The number of users holding Whiting Petroleum Corp. grew roughly 10,000 in the last 24 hours.Two things the companies have in common: They’ve filed for bankruptcy protection. And each saw their shares double to start the week.It’s the same thing for Chesapeake Energy, as it prepares a potential filing. In the past, the court process usually wiped out equity shareholders. In this day and age, as small day traders salivate at any opportunity to get rich quick, a filing has apparently become a buy signal for many of them. There’s evidence retail investor actions have become a decisive driver of price.“Retail has a lot to do with it and I don’t think you’ve seen institutional investors buying those kinds of stocks,” said Christopher Grisanti, chief equity strategist at MAI Capital Management. “It’s too much risk. I would call it catching a falling knife.”The 2020 stock market has been full of peculiarities that nobody saw coming. The fastest drop for the S&P 500 into a bear market, followed by the fastest 50-day rebound in nine decades. Mom and pop scrambling to the right side of the recovery trade, while the advice of Wall Street legends falls flat. A health-care crisis forcing one of the deepest recessions, and in the midst of it, equities emerging unscathed.In a market as bizarre as this, it seems only fitting that the next step would be a growing affinity for companies that can’t pay their debts.According to website Robintrack, which uses Robinhood’s data to show trends in positioning but isn’t affiliated with it, individual investors on the app have been flocking to bankruptcy-protected companies in droves. (The site says it downloads popularity data each hour for every stock directly from Robinhood via a public application programming interface, or API. A Robinhood spokesperson declined to comment for this story.)Of course, interest in these stocks isn’t flowing solely from Robinhood clients. But the app is a lens into retail interest, particularly among younger investors, because unlike other popular brokerages, it’s possible to see holdings of its users in real-time. Some of the rallies in these shares may also be due to short covering.Robintrack’s data show 159,000 users now hold Hertz stock in some form. That’s a record high, and up from 37,000 users a month ago. Over the last three days, the car rental firm has seen the largest surge in popularity on the platform. Right now, more users on the investing app hold bankrupt Hertz than do Netflix Inc.Call it crazy, but don’t call it dumb. In the three sessions through Monday, Hertz shares surged 577%, just weeks after the company filed for bankruptcy. Trading volume in the stock has surged to an average of 197 million shares a day in June — more than 60 times what was typical in 2019.Chesapeake Energy has seen a similar turn. The oil company jumped 182% on Monday, and after markets closed, news broke that the firm was said to be preparing to file for bankruptcy. More than 20 million shares changed hands, the most turnover on record for the stock in a single day, Bloomberg data show. In recent days, Chesapeake’s popularity with users of Robinhood ballooned to 38,000 — a gain of 9,000.Same with Whiting Petroleum, a shale driller that went bankrupt in April. The number of users holding shares of the company rose to a record 50,000 this week. On Monday, the stock surged 152%, and more than 104 million shares traded.“It’s great that Vegas is open again, but who needs it when you have the stock market instead,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer for Bleakley Financial Group. “After an incredible run since March, we now have clear froth in parts of the market. We know this level of speculation has coincided with a sharp increase in the activity of retail investors.”Boockvar added the activity has been encouraged by a “zero rate” and “unlimited QE” environment, referring to the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing measures. Ahead of the central bank’s decision Wednesday, he’s not the only one laying blame.“In this tape, bankruptcies have become the flavor of the day,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading. “At what point will Jay Powell and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve realize they have broken the market’s pricing mechanism? The bankruptcies are only a small part of the story.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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