Category: Stock Market

(Bloomberg) — Dan Gilbert’s long-awaited initial public offering of Rocket Cos. may have been downsized on Wednesday, but it finally reveals the vast fortune he’s built in a city battered by the last financial crisis.The listing values his mortgage company at about $35 billion after it priced 100 million shares at $18 each on Wednesday. While below a marketed range of $20 to $22 for 150 million shares, the Detroit-based firm, which includes Quicken Loans, has a higher market value than Ford Motor Co.The IPO makes Gilbert, 58, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the era of ultra-low interest rates and caps a career that’s seen him rise from delivering pizzas to befriending Warren Buffett, winning an NBA championship and becoming a figurehead for the transformation of downtown Detroit.His net worth is about $30 billion, more than three times the previous estimate on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It means for now he’s among the 40 richest people on the planet, ahead of Blackstone Group Inc.’s Stephen Schwarzman, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and cosmetics titan Leonard Lauder.Julia Sahin, a spokeswoman for Rocket Cos., declined to comment.Quicken Loans is the bedrock of Gilbert’s wealth. It’s the largest retail mortgage originator in the U.S., underwriting about $145 billion in 2019. That powered the company to $892 million in net income in 2019. This year — despite a pandemic — origination volumes hit a record in March, April, May and June with falling rates encouraging homeowners to refinance. And those rates keep dropping. The average for a 30-year fixed loan fell to 2.88%, the lowest in nearly 50 years of record keeping by Freddie Mac. Assembly Line“Quicken was able to create an assembly line for mortgage banking,” said Les Parker, managing director of consulting firm Transformational Mortgage Solutions.The specialization of every step in the lending process allowed it to process loans more efficiently, at lower cost, than banks.The company will have to contend with a mixed tracked record for retail lenders that have gone public, Parker said, with the cyclical nature of the industry making sustained growth difficult. Rocket’s diminished listing came after investors pushed back on the company’s valuation, arguing it should be priced as a consumer or financial company rather than a technology business, a person familiar with the matter said.Pizza DeliveryGilbert was born in a Detroit suburb in the early 1960s. A law student, he parlayed his earnings from delivering pizzas to set up lender Rock Financial in 1985, according to a 1998 prospectus. He later started direct mortgage lender Rockloans.com.This won’t be Quicken’s first experience as a public company. Rock Financial was bought by software maker Intuit in 1999, and renamed Quicken Loans. Gilbert bought the company back three years later when its annual mortgage originations stood at $7 billion. Low interest rates in the aftermath of the global financial crisis helped supercharge Quicken’s growth and it became the nation’s largest retail lender in 2017.With his company prospering as a private entity, Gilbert’s profile rose. He acquired the majority ownership of Cleveland’s National Basketball Association team in 2005 and bought up dozens of buildings in downtown Detroit during the last recession in a bid to revitalize Motor City. Other prized assets — such as the Cavaliers basketball franchise and real estate investment firm Bedrock — are held outside the newly listed entity.Christopher Leinberger, a research professor at the GW School of Business, part of George Washington University, estimates that these investments resulted in about $18 billion of increased economic activity for the city.“Who in his right mind would invest in 100 buildings in Detroit in 2010?” Leinberger said, adding that the gamble ultimately worked. “There wouldn’t be headlines about how downtown Detroit is back without Gilbert.”Perfect BracketGilbert also developed a rapport with another Midwestern billionaire.When Quicken’s marketing team offered a $1 billion prize to a contestant who predicted the winner of each game in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s men’s basketball tournament in 2014, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. insured the payout.The calculated gamble paid off: no one won but the prize drew plenty of attention to Quicken. The two also teamed up for an unsuccessful bid for Yahoo in 2016, the same year the Cavs won their first-ever championship.While its been nearly two decades since Gilbert stepped back as Quicken’s chief executive officer, the company still bears his imprint. The IPO filing highlights core principals Gilbert espoused like “Ignore the noise,” and “Every second counts.”His continuing influence was underlined when he had a stroke in 2019, news of which sent shockwaves through his companies and hometown.He’s since been able to return to work and there’s little indication he’s planning to relinquish control anytime soon. The filing notes he holds a class of shares with majority voting rights.(Updates with mortgage rates in sixth paragraph. An earlier version corrected the outcome of Gilbert’s Yahoo bid.)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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Today we will run through one way of estimating the intrinsic value of B&G Foods, Inc. (NYSE:BGS) by taking the…

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(Bloomberg) — Dirt cheap, automated on apps and championed by newbie traders who brandish their broker balances on Twitter, the stuck-at-home trading phenomenon, born in the USA, has become a global craze.Retail’s tentacles are everywhere. In the U.K, tax-free savings account openings at Interactive Investor jumped 238% for investors between 25 and 34 years of age in April and May. In India, newly minted day traders are crowing after falling in love with stocks that trade below 7 U.S. cents apiece and riding most of them straight up. Small-time investors in Moscow bought almost twice as many Russian shares in June than in April. In Malaysia, individual buyers are at least partially behind giant rallies in medical glove makers — one gained more than 1,500% this year. In Japan, tiny investors boosted an obscure biotech venture with seven straight years of losses by almost 11-fold on optimism for an unproven coronavirus treatment.With savings accounts paying out nearly nothing and people finding extra time while working from home, amateur investors who’ve gotten a taste of stock market may become a permanent feature. The trend is being fueled by zero-fee trading apps like Robinhood that have not just simplified day-trading but gamified it. Relentless support of global central banks has also buoyed equity markets despite the worst economic fundamentals in living memory.“Via news and social media, trading has become the talk of the town. The ease of access, low costs and large moves of many stocks since March have been key drivers,” said David Friedland, Asia Pacific managing director at Interactive Brokers. “The line between institutional and retail continues to blur and retail certainly have shown their ability to move markets.”The pandemic has kept millions at home just as low-fee trading platforms spread from America to the rest of the world.As No-Fee Trades Spread, Here’s Why There Are Limits: QuickTake“Zero fees are especially beneficial to day traders or scalpers whose participation in the markets are now virtually free. The super-nimble and sophisticated day traders will have a field day,” said Margaret Yang, a strategist at DailyFX. “But there is no free lunch in this world. Higher return is positively correlated to higher risks.”Warnings like that are everywhere, though doing little to calm the fervor. Professional investors have watched with a combination of amusement and envy as retail investors mostly rejected the tenets of fundamental investing and bought companies at staggering valuations. So far, it’s working for them.Japanese venture Tella Inc., which says it’s developing a coronavirus treatment under limited testing in Mexico, is the top-performing stock of the country’s around 4,000 listed companies this year. A Korean maker of a malaria treatment, Shin Poong Pharmaceutical Co., surged 987% this year to be the top gainer on the nation’s benchmark Kospi.“The interest in trading and investing on the part of newcomers, especially millennials and Gen Z, whose time horizon until retirement is 40-plus years, is likely to remain elevated and is one of the main reasons for higher stock prices in 2021 and beyond,” said Julian Emanuel, head of equity and derivatives strategy at BTIG LLC in New York.Reality CheckMany of the same themes are playing out across the globe. With the virus foremost on almost everyone’s mind, traders flocked to the dozens of companies developing vaccines, treatments and tests, driving a range of pharma and biotech companies. An index tracking Asian health-care stocks is trading at all-time highs.Individual investors also piled into initial public offerings of biotech companies in Hong Kong and left almost nothing for anyone else. In April, Akeso Inc., a Chinese developer of immunology and oncology treatments, said retail investors had put in orders for 639 times the amount of stock initially made available to them. That feat was exceeded by ophthalmic therapy developer Ocumension Therapeutics’s offering in July, which drew a staggering 1896-times retail subscription, the second highest in Hong Kong this year.One adage of investing seems to have survived the retail invasion: Fidelity Investment legend Peter Lynch’s advice to “invest in what you know.” The shift online has spurred many digital natives to buy into the services they’re using.“All the technology shares have been on a stellar rally,” said Edmond Hui, chief executive officer of Bright Smart Securities, pointing to stocks such as e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Chinese food delivery behemoth Meituan Dianping and smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp.His Hong Kong-based platform saw new accounts increase more than 200% last quarter, and trades on its platform jump 57% on year. “It’s natural for them to switch to these new technology sectors.”For now, stocks globally have done well. But the market that keeps going up must inevitably — if only just temporarily — come down.“This will be the new normal until we get a material correction lower in equity markets,” said Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst for Asia Pacific at Oanda Asia Pacific Pte. “Financial markets can be harsh mistresses, but retail traders arriving in the last four months have yet to be given the savage education of two-way pricing risk.”“The longer the rally goes on, the more savage the reality check will be.”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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This news release contains forward-looking statements. For a description of related risk factors and assumptions, please see the section entitled "Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" and the other relevant sections of this news release.

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LAVAL, QC, Aug. 6, 2020 /CNW/ — * Second-Quarter 2020 Financial Results * Revenues of $1.

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dollars and in accordance with IFRS.MONTREAL, Aug.

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After COVID-19 forced Disney to delay the theatrical release of the live-action movie for months, the company has finally decided to release 'Mulan' on its streaming service Disney+.

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Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) shares are up another 74.9% in the past year, but at least one larger option trader is betting its recent rally may come to an end soon.The Amazon Trade: On Wednesday morning, Benzinga Pro subscribers received an option alert related to an unusually large Amazon trade.At 11:28 a.m., a trader bought 407 Amazon put options with a $3,100 strike price expiring on August 21 near the ask price at $50.011. The trade represented a more than $2.03 million bearish bet.Why It's Important: Even traders who stick exclusively to stocks often monitor option market activity closely for unusually large trades. Given the relative complexity of the options market, large options traders are typically considered to be more sophisticated than the average stock trader.Many of these large options traders are wealthy individuals or institutions who may have unique information or theses related to the underlying stock.Unfortunately, stock traders often use the options market to hedge against their larger stock positions, and there's no surefire way to determine if an options trade is a standalone position or a hedge. In this case, given the relatively large size of Wednesday's Amazon option trade it could certainly be institutional hedging.Earnings Beat Breather? The huge put option purchase comes six days after Amazon's second-quarter earnings report blew expectations out of the water. The company reported $10.30 in EPS on $88.91 billion in revenue, crushing consensus analyst expectations of $1.46 and $81.56 billion, respectively.The shelter-in-place environment has created booming demand for Amazon's e-commerce and cloud services business, and Amazon is gaining huge chunks of market share from brick-and-mortar competitors. However, the stock's 4.5% post-earnings gain has pushed Amazon's market cap to $1.6 trillion, and some traders may see limited additional near-term upside and the potential for an aggressive pullback at some point. AMZN Chart by TradingView new TradingView.widget( { "width": 680, "height": 423, "symbol": "NASDAQ:AMZN", "interval": "D", "timezone": "Etc/UTC", "theme": "light", "style": "1", "locale": "en", "toolbar_bg": "f1f3f6", "enable_publishing": false, "allow_symbol_change": true, "container_id": "tradingview_29861" } ); Benzinga's Take: The $2 million put purchase has a break-even price of $3,050, suggesting 4.4% downside for the stock in less than three weeks. The near-term expiration of the puts in question suggests the trader anticipates some form of bearish Amazon catalyst on the horizon in the near future, potentially even a follow-up from Congress after the recent Washington tech antitrust testimony.Related Links:Long-Term Investors Prefer Microsoft And Amazon Over Tesla And Facebook, Tech Survey Says How To Read And Trade An Option Alert See more from Benzinga * Amazon's Post-Earnings Run Mirrors Positive Voices From The Street * Big Tech Stocks Among The Most Shorted In The Market(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Microsoft and TikTok continue to negotiate the acquisition deal as TikTok announced that it will establish new rules in order to help mitigate misinformation and the manipulation of information going into the 2020 elections. Yahoo Finance’s Final Round panel discuss the details.

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