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The Fortescue Metals Group Limited (ASX: FMG) share price was uncharacteristically out of form in March.

During the month, the iron ore producer’s shares fell a disappointing 17%.

This compares to a gain of 1.8% by the the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO).

Why did the Fortescue share price underperform in March?

There were a couple of reasons for the underperformance of the Fortescue share price last month.

The first was the company’s shares trading ex-dividend on the very first day of the month for its huge interim dividend.

When a company’s shares go ex-dividend, they tend to drop by the amount of the upcoming dividend. This is to reflect the fact that the rights to the dividend remain with the seller and aren’t transferred to the buyer.

In the case of Fortescue, it was paying shareholders a massive $1.47 per share dividend. This is the equivalent of a 6.1% yield, which accounts for over a third of the Fortescue share price decline.

What else was weighing on the company’s shares?

However, having the biggest impact on the Fortescue share price last month was the iron ore price.

The price of the base metal came under pressure in March after Chinese authorities decided to restrict the output for some steel mills in Tangshan until the end of 2021. Regulators made the move in an attempt to combat rising pollution levels.

This led to analysts at Goldman Sachs predicting that the steel making ingredient would end up in a surplus in 2022 instead of a deficit.

According to Metal Bulletin, this news led to the benchmark 62% fines iron ore price losing ~US$10 a tonne or over 6% during the month to end it at US$165.15 a tonne.

In light of this, it will come as no surprise to learn that mining giants BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) and Rio Tinto Limited (ASX: RIO) also underperformed the market materially last month as well.

More reading

• 2 ASX dividend shares with very BIG yields
• Is the Fortescue share price ring-fenced by Twiggy and its climate targets?
• Why Macquarie thinks the BHP (ASX:BHP) share price and 2 others will outperform
• ‘Remarkable resilience’ in Aussie farmland a tailwind for ASX agriculture shares
• Why the South32 (ASX:S32) share price is outperforming today

Motley Fool contributor James Mickleboro has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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The Zoono Group Ltd (ASX: ZNO) share price is flying higher today after the sanitiser producer released a company update. The announcement contained several positive pieces of information.

At the time of writing, the Zoono share price has retreated slightly but still remains a staggering 38.3% higher to 83 cents per share.

US tested and approved boosts Zoono share price

According to the release, Zoono’s Microbe Shield surface sanitiser has been tested by an independent laboratory in New Jersey, United States. The US FDA regulated facility found Zoono’s flagship sanitiser to be successful against Human Coronavirus 229E. Previously the products had only been tested against the COVID surrogate feline coronavirus.

Additionally, the product now meets the US EPA Standard ASTM E1053, which relates to the assessment of the virucidal activity of chemicals.

Following the US regulatory approval, the company has sourced new distribution partners in Norway, Luxembourg, Greece, and Poland. Reportedly initials orders are pending in each country.

Deals for days

In another win for the Zoono share price, the company has gained another two highly notable partnerships. After an extensive market evaluation, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) has offered Zoono the opportunity to be an approved supplier to the tech company’s office network.

An initial purchase of Zoono’s sanitiser products has already been received for the Redmond Campus. This location is Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Washington, with 125 buildings and 53,500 staff across the campus. A full US rollout will be engaged once employees return to the campus in May.

Secondly, Zoono has partnered with Boeing Co (NYSE: BA) to distribute Microbe Shield to airlines globally. The flagship sanitiser meets the Boeing standard for use in aircraft interiors. As a result, Boeing has made the product available from its official online store.

Sales, production, and intellectual property

Zoono indicated that its orders shipped for Q3 FY21 are in excess of $5 million. This is despite global freight and logistic challenges. Furthermore, Fine Hygiene Group is on target to meet sales projections of US$7 million over the next 6 months. Once relevant regulatory requirements are satisfied, Fine will expand into new markets including Europe, United States, and Australia.

Lastly, the company has brought its plastic bottle production in-house. This is in an effort to avoid supply chain bottlenecks. Zoono plans to commence production in the near future. As a means of protecting the company’s specialised formulations, global patent applications have been submitted.

Zoono share price rejuvenation

The update is a sight for sore eyes, after a year of disappointing share price performance for Zoono shareholders. Even with the inclusion of today’s gain, the share price is down 53% in the past 12 months.

However, this seemingly positive update has brought a renewed interest to Zoono. In fact, the traded volume is in excess of 5.8 million shares — more than 17 times the shares monthly average volume.

The company’s share price remains volatile due to its small market capitalisation of $135 million.

More reading

• Why AMP, Boral, Rhipe, & Zoono shares are pushing higher
• Here are the US shares ASX investors have been buying
• 2 top ASX ETFs to buy right now
• Why is there no ASX All Ordinaries ETF?
• How to counter the ASX 200’s Achilles heel

Teresa Kersten, an employee of LinkedIn, a Microsoft subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Mitchell Lawler has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. owns shares of and recommends Microsoft. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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The Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) share price is having a decent start to April today. At the time of writing, Telstra shares are up 0.44% to $3.42 a share. But we’re not here to talk about April, we’re here to talk about the Telstra share price in March.

And March was an unusually good month for the ASX’s largest telco. The Telstra share price started March at $3.08 a share (the closing price on 26 February). Telstra shares closed at $3.42 yesterday. That means Telstra shares were up 11.04% in March overall. And that’s not even including the 8 cents per share fully franked dividend Telstra shareholders received last week.

An 11% rise is a very decent move, especially for an old blue chip share like Telstra.

And it’s fairly obvious why this company had such a good month if we dig in. So let’s do it.

March madness for Telstra shares

So the first thing to note is that the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) experienced something of a ‘rotation’ over March. A rotation is a rather horrible Wall Street term for when large fund managers move together in shifting money out of one sector into another. In this case, it was growth shares into value shares, to put it a little too simply.

Rising bond yields over February and March sparked a distaste for high flying growth shares. That’s why we saw blue chips like Telstra and the big banks do well over the month, while growth shares like Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) got walloped. That supported Telstra from the get-go.

But Telstra also excited the market with some details regarding its planned structural separation. On 22 March, Telstra outlined how it intended to split its core operations into four divisions: InfraCo Fixed, InfraCo Towers, ServeCo and Telstra International. This split will still see Telstra remain one company on paper (under the name ‘Telstra Group’). But these divisions will be legally and regulatorily separate. The company is planning on completing this split by the end of the year.

This was evidently well-received by Telstra investors. It seems the consensus is that a move like this will unlock significant value in the telco’s assets. This view was supported by a well-known broker. As my Fool colleague James Mickleboro reported at the time, Morgans upgraded its price target for Telstra shares from $3 a share to $4 following the announcement.

More reading

• ASX 200 boom as Joe Biden unveils massive infrastructure, tax package?
• Why the Afterpay (ASX:APT) share price fell 20% in March
• ASX 200 up 0.25%: AMP names new CEO, Boral’s buyback, Webjet sinks
• Why the South32 (ASX:S32) share price is climbing
• The Zip (ASX:Z1P) share price crashed 29% lower in March

Motley Fool contributor Sebastian Bowen owns shares of Telstra Limited. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of and has recommended Telstra Limited. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of AFTERPAY T FPO. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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In a sign of how much market sentiment has turned against growth and technology stocks, Deliveroo Holdings PLC (LON: ROO) shares crashed on the first day of listing.

The UK food delivery giant’s initial public offering (IPO) was much anticipated as one of Europe’s biggest this year, with shares snapped up for £3.90.

But when they started trading on the London exchange overnight, they immediately fell 30%.

The stock recovered slightly to end a wild first day on £2.87, which is still more than 26% down on the IPO price.

Investors boycotted Deliveroo’s IPO 

Food delivery cyclists with the familiar aqua warmer bag on their backs have become ubiquitous in both the UK and Australia. 

But recent concerns over labour relations scared away some investors during Deliveroo’s IPO, despite its famous brand name.

“Several influential institutional investors declined to participate in this IPO. They included Aviva, Legal & General, and Aberdeen Standard. They expressed concern over Deliveroo’s employment practices,” said The Motley Fool UK’s Cliff D’Arcy.

“They also disliked dual-class shares that hand extra votes to co-founder Will Shu for a further three years. Hence, they declined to invest in the eight-year-old business.”

Deliveroo did not reply to The Motley Fool’s request for comment.

Even at the IPO price of £3.90, some experts already thought Deliveroo was overvalued for a business that’s still incurring huge losses.

Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Sophie Lund-Yates compared Deliveroo’s valuation to the owner of Menulog, Just Eat Takeaway.com NV.

“A market cap of £7.6 billion means the company’s worth 6.4 times last year’s revenue, which is some way above rival Just Eat’s 4.8 times.”

‘Terrible economics’: why Deliveroo is not a tech company

Both D’Arcy and Royston Wild of The Motley Fool UK recommended staying away from Deliveroo shares.

That’s despite Wild’s bullish outlook on the British takeaway food sector.

“I fear that the Deliveroo share price still looks too expensive despite today’s fall,” he said.

“The firm operates in a highly-competitive area, and one in which the issue over workers rights is becoming an ever-hotter potato, which makes this particular UK share too risky in my opinion.”

D’Arcy, as a value investor, disagrees with Deliveroo’s self-characterisation as a technology business.

“I see an intermediary or distributor in an ultra-competitive market. It may have a snazzy app and website, but the hard work is done by roughly 100,000 ‘independent contractors’,” he said.

“If Deliveroo had to pay the minimum wage to those delivery drivers as employees, I struggle to see how it would overcome the terrible unit economics of home delivery.”

More reading

• ASX 200 boom as Joe Biden unveils massive infrastructure, tax package?
• Here’s why the Identitii (ASX:ID8) share price is surging today
• Why the CSL (ASX:CSL) share price is going around in circles
• Why the SG Fleet (ASX:SGF) share price is one to watch next week
• Amazon is doubling down on this multibillion-dollar opportunity

Motley Fool contributor Tony Yoo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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US President Joe Biden has unveiled plans for a massive infrastructure program for the United States.

It’s only been a few weeks since President Biden’s Democratic Party ushered in a mammoth coronavirus stimulus package. This package, which included direct cheques and support for vaccination programs, cost US$1.9 trillion.

New infrastructure bill on the table

But now that that law has been passed, the Biden administration is now turning its attention to infrastructure. According to the White House, President Biden stated that the ‘American Jobs Plan’ will be the largest American jobs investment since World War Two and “will create millions of jobs”.

Biden’s proposal is set to cost approximately US$2 trillion, but that cost will be spread over 8 years. Here are some of the details from the President’s address:

The American Jobs Plan will build new rail corridors and transit lines, easing congestion, cutting pollution, slashing commute times, and opening up investment in communities that can be connected to the cities, and cities to the outskirts, where a lot of jobs are these days. It’ll reduce the bottlenecks of commerce at our ports and our airports… modernize 20,000 miles of highways, roads, and main streets that are in difficult, difficult shape right now. It’ll fix the nation’s 10 most economically significant bridges in America that require replacement.

It will also reportedly include funding for more modern infrastructure, such as internet connections and electric vehicle charging stations.

This package will not be entirely funded with debt, like the stimulus package was. President Biden is proposing a raft of changes to the American tax code to help come up with the extra cash.

This most prominently includes raising the US corporate tax rate to 28%, from the current level of 21%. It also includes various tax loophole closures and plans for a “global minimum tax rate” for companies.

What does this proposal mean for ASX shares?

Any large stimulatory program in the United States, the world’s largest economy, is likely to have positive flow-on effects for the global economy, which of course includes Australia. As such, this package is likely to be a piece of good news for S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) companies.

Infrastructure requires a lot of raw commodities, such as copper and iron ore for steel. As such, this plan could be beneficial for ASX mining companies in particular, such as BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) and Rio Tinto Limited (ASX: RIO).

Of course, this plan is only a plan at this stage. Biden will need to wrangle it through the US Congress, where his party only holds slim majorities in both houses. This could result in significant changes to the measures we’ve discussed. Particularly around the tax plans.

But this space is certainly one to watch for any ASX investor.

More reading

• ASX 200 up 0.25%: AMP names new CEO, Boral’s buyback, Webjet sinks
• Why the South32 (ASX:S32) share price is climbing
• Why the BHP (ASX:BHP) share price fell 9.5% in March 
• These were the best performing ASX 200 shares in March
• These were the worst performing ASX 200 shares in March

Motley Fool contributor Sebastian Bowen has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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The Identitii Ltd (ASX: ID8) share price is surging in early-afternoon trade following a contract renewal. At the time of writing, the financial technology company’s shares are swapping hands for 14 cents, up 8%.

What’s moving the Identitii share price higher?

Investors are buying Identitii’s shares after the company released a positive update to the market this morning.

In its announcement, Identitii advised it has renewed its original contract with global banking giant, HSBC.

Under the renewed contract, Identitii will continue to provide services to support HSBC’s Digital Account Receivables Tool (DART). This will see Identitii offer new features, training and maintenance, as well as support for DART’s expansion into new markets.

DART, centred around Identitii technology, is built specifically for HSBC’s Global Liquidity and Cash Management business. The platform also enables users to track invoices and receive payment information, resulting in faster business payments.

Furthermore, DART streamlines the customer experience and automates the accounts receivables process for HSBC’s corporate clients, leading to working capital efficiency.

DART first went live in India in 2018 and is now available in Indonesia. It is being slowly rolled out across Asia.

The 3-year deal is worth up to a total of $2 million in revenue for Identitii. This consists of $0.6 million in annually recurring revenue, along with up to $1.4 million in professional services and other fees.

In addition, both parties have also renewed their global Master Framework Agreement (MFA). This gives Identitii to right to licence its technology to any other business arms of HSBC globally.

Words from the CEO

Identitii CEO John Rayment welcomed the extended partnership, saying:

Renewing a contract with an existing customer is an exciting time for any business as it points to the success of the initial project and continuation of the relationship.

This announcement is particularly exciting for Identitii as HSBC was our first production customer in 2017 and since then we have delivered HSBC DART and provided ongoing development and support that has enabled them to expand the platform into new geographic markets.

The Identitii share price has fallen heavily over the past 12 months, down 55%. Year-to-date, the company’s shares are around 15% lower.

More reading

• Deliveroo shares flop on market debut
• ASX 200 boom as Joe Biden unveils massive infrastructure, tax package?
• Why the CSL (ASX:CSL) share price is going around in circles
• Why the SG Fleet (ASX:SGF) share price is one to watch next week
• Amazon is doubling down on this multibillion-dollar opportunity

Motley Fool contributor Aaron Teboneras has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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The CSL Limited (ASX: CSL) share price finished March down 1.5%, largely in-line with the flat ASX 200 and 0.67% fall for the S&P/ASX Health Care (INDEXASX: XHJ). 

The CSL share price has seemingly gone nowhere since its all-time record high of $332.68 back in February 2020. Despite the lacklustre share price performance, the company has continued to lift earnings. Additionally, it has played a pivotal role in the global pandemic. 

Classic CSL growth  

CSL delivered a strong set of results for the six months ended 31 December. Its revenue increased 16.9% to US$5,739 million. This can be broken down into a 9% increase in CSL Behring revenue and 38% jump in Seqirus revenue. The company also acknowledges that the pandemic has tempered with Behring’s performance, whilst boosting the performance of Seqirus. 

Solid revenue growth was backed by higher margins. This translated to a 45% surge in net profit after tax to US$1,810 million. 

Eyes on plasma collections 

Plasma is an essential raw material for many of CSL’s therapies. Plasma collection headwinds has been a key factor that has dragged the CSL share price since the start of COVID.

The company has said that its “plasma collections have been adversely affected during the pandemic”. Furthermore, collection volumes in December 2020 represented~80% of December 2019 volumes. 

Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX: MQG) provided its view on the plasma collection environment on 26 March. The note highlights that foot traffic for CSL’s ~100 US-based plasma collection centres had fallen in recent weeks. This was also consistent trends across key states. Current foot traffic on a 7-day rolling average basis was below levels recorded over July-December 2020. 

The note acknowledges that there is a seasonal weakness across late-February to early-March. This is associated with the timing of annual tax returns. This should be followed up with a steady improvement from mid-March to June according to 2019 data. 

Macquarie has put more emphasis on the absence of improvement in recent weeks, resulting in a neutral rating for CSL shares. 

What’s next for the CSL share price? 

CSL has continued to demonstrate earnings growth despite the disruption in its supply chain. The company has forecasted FY21 net profit after tax to be in the range of approximately US$2,170 million to US$2,265 million at constant currency. This represents a 3.2% to 7.7% increase on FY20 NPAT of US$2,103 million. 

More reading

• Macquarie (ASX:MQG) share price lower after APRA crackdown
• What’s happening with the CSL (ASX:CSL) share price?
• The A2 Milk (ASX:A2M) share price was down almost every day in March
• Over 1 in 4 Australians are investing in the ASX: report
• Here’s why the Macquarie (ASX:MQG) share price is attractive

Kerry Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. owns shares of CSL Ltd. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of and has recommended Macquarie Group Limited. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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The SG Fleet Group Ltd (ASX: SGF) share price is one to watch when the ASX re-opens on Tuesday. Shares in the Aussie fleet management and leasing solutions group are set to return to trade after a successful equity raise this week.

Why is the SG Fleet share price on watch next week?

SG Fleet shares were voluntarily suspended on Wednesday 24 March 2021. That suspension is expected to be lifted on Tuesday when trading resumes after the Easter break.

SG Fleet this morning reported the successful completion of its institutional equity raising. The 1 for 7.44 pro-rata accelerated non-renounceable entitlement offer raised $72 million for the company.

Those proceeds will be used to partially fund the acquisition of LeasePlan ANZ for $387 million. The institutional offer was raised at $2.45 per New Share — a 4.5% discount to the $2.56 theoretical ex-rights price (TERP). That’s also a 5.0% discount to the last closing price of $2.58 on Tuesday 23 March 2021.

The institutional offer raised approximately $72 million with a 99.98% take-up rate from eligible shareholders. A further $14 million is expected to be raised from the retail component of the equity raising.

The Aussie company’s shares will be worth watching when it returns to the boards in Tuesday’s trade. Following the scrip consideration as part of the LeasePlan ANZ transaction, SG Fleet’s majority shareholder, Super Group Limited, will control 52.3% of issued share capital, down from 60.1% at present.

Shares in the Aussie leasing group had climbed 7.5% in 2021 prior to the acquisition update last Wednesday. In the last 12 months, the SG Fleet share price has climbed 106.4% to outperform the S&P/ASX 300 Index (ASX: XKO) by nearly 70%.

Foolish takeaway

All eyes will be on the SG Fleet share price when the Aussie fleet management group returns to the ASX after Easter. Tuesday will represent the first day of trade since the major LeasePlan ANZ acquisition announced last Wednesday.

More reading

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Motley Fool contributor Ken Hall has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has been making solid inroads into India’s fast-growing e-commerce market by expanding into smaller towns and cities by partnering with local stores to quickly expand its delivery network.

The strategy has paid off nicely for Amazon so far, with the company’s Local Shops program growing more than tenfold in the space of less than a year to cover 50,000 sellers across 450 Indian cities. The e-commerce giant is now looking to use that impressive network of local stores to tap into another fast-growing niche — the online grocery market in India’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Let’s see why that could be a big deal.

Amazon’s sales in India’s smaller cities are booming

Indian financial daily Mint reports that 65% of Amazon India’s orders and over 85% of new customers in the past year came from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. This is good news for the company, as the contribution of these smaller cities to India’s e-commerce pie has grown impressively of late. A report from management consulting firm Kearney points out that the e-commerce volume share of smaller towns and cities in India has increased from 32% at the end of 2019 to 46% at the end of 2020.

Additionally, smaller Indian cities held 43% of the e-commerce sales value in India in the fourth quarter of 2020 as compared to just 26% in the year-ago period. All of this tells us why Amazon is looking to make a bigger play for the online grocery market in small Indian cities.

In an interview with the Mint, an Amazon India executive said that the customer base of Amazon’s grocery operations (Amazon Pantry and Amazon Fresh combined) has doubled in the past year. The report added that the number of first-time buyers on the grocery platforms has also doubled. The interesting thing to note here is that more than 60% of the new grocery customers came from nonmetro markets.

According to the Amazon executive, the company now plans to follow a two-pronged approach to tap into India’s online grocery space. It will now expand its dry grocery offering (Amazon Pantry) into more markets to capture more first-time customers. At the same time, it plans to “double down” on the range of both dry and fresh groceries in its top 50 markets in India.

Amazon recently integrated its Pantry and Fresh grocery platforms in India in cities where both services were available. The company was operating the Amazon Fresh perishable grocery service across eight Indian cities last year as compared to Amazon Pantry’s (the nonperishable grocery platform) presence in 300 cities. So, Amazon plans a significant expansion of its fresh grocery operations, targeting a sixfold increase in the number of cities currently covered by Amazon Fresh.

At the same time, it is likely that the number of cities covered by Amazon Pantry is going to witness a significant expansion as the company aims to bring more buyers from smaller cities into its fold. This two-pronged strategy of expanding its grocery operations in both smaller and bigger cities of India could give Amazon a big shot in the arm in the long run and substantially boost its revenue from India’s burgeoning online grocery market.

Stealing a march over rivals

Amazon’s strategy of expanding its grocery operations points toward the company’s intent of staying ahead of its rivals in a lucrative market. Walmart-owned Flipkart, for instance, recently announced that it plans to scale its online grocery operations from 50 Indian cities to 70 cities over a six-month period. That’s well behind Amazon’s expansion efforts. And homegrown rival JioMart is also behind Amazon when it comes to a presence in online groceries.

In all, Amazon is positioning itself to make the most of the rapidly growing online grocery space in India that’s expected to generate $29 billion in revenue by 2024, up from just $2 billion in 2020 as per Goldman Sachs analysts’ estimates. More importantly, the market seems set to grow at a strong clip over the long haul, as online grocery sales are expected to make up just 5% of the country’s total grocery sales by 2024.

In the end, it can be concluded that Amazon is doing the right thing by moving aggressively in this area. The company could add billions of dollars to its revenue total in the long run by grabbing a bigger share of India’s online grocery space and becoming a top retail player in that country, which is why investors should keep a close eye on Amazon’s moves there.

This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Harsh Chauhan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. owns shares of and recommends Amazon and recommends the following options: long January 2022 $1920 calls on Amazon and short January 2022 $1940 calls on Amazon. The Motley Fool Australia has recommended Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

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The Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) price has been on a tear again over the past week.

At the current price of US$58,965 (AU$77,586), Bitcoin has gained 16% since this time last week. Not bad for the world’s largest crypto, which has again broken through the US$1 trillion market cap to reach US$1.1 trillion at the time of writing.

And it puts Bitcoin back within 4% of its all-time high of US$61,557, hit on 14 March this year.

Although this past week’s bullish run won’t end the ‘Bitcoin bubble’ debate, it certainly adds fresh ammo for the Bitcoin bull camp, who argue this is only the beginning.

What’s helping drive the Bitcoin price back to new record highs?

There are all manner of forces at work on the Bitcoin price. Some pulling it lower, many pushing it higher.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll narrow the focus to 2 big announcements that have supported Bitcoin this week.

On Monday, Visa Inc (NYSE: V) announced a trial program that will see the global payments giant accept USD Coin, a so-called stablecoin, for payments. Unlike many cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, which see major price fluctuations, stablecoins are pegged to certain assets or fiat currencies. In this case, the US dollar.

As Bloomberg reports, “As part of a pilot program, Visa is using USD Coin to settle transactions over Ethereum, with the help of the Crypto.com platform and Anchorage, a digital-asset bank…”

Bitcoin gained more than 6% on the day of the announcement.

Commenting on the pilot program, Visa’s chief product officer Jack Forestell said:

Crypto-native fintechs want partners who understand their business and the complexities of digital currency.

The announcement today marks a major milestone in our ability to address the needs of fintechs.

What else helped spur Bitcoin this week?

You may be familiar with a little firm called Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS).

Yesterday, overnight Aussie time, the global wealth manager revealed it is preparing to offer investment vehicles for Bitcoin to clients of its private wealth management sector. Expectations are that it will commence in the second quarter of 2021.

Mary Rich is the global head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs. In an interview with CNBC, she said:

We are working closely with teams across the firm to explore ways to offer thoughtful and appropriate access to the ecosystem for private wealth clients, and that is something we expect to offer in the near-term.

Rich added:

There’s a contingent of clients who are looking to this asset as a hedge against inflation, and the macro backdrop over the past year has certainly played into that. There are also a large contingent of clients who feel like we’re sitting at the dawn of a new Internet in some ways and are looking for ways to participate in this space.

If Bitcoin indeed does mirror the dawn of a new internet, then Bitcoin’s record price on 14 March may soon be broken once again.

More reading

• Goldman Sachs plans to let wealthy clients invest in Bitcoin
• ASX 200 Weekly Wrap: ASX 200 gets its mojo back
• Did the Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) price fly too high too fast?
• At today’s Bitcoin price that’ll be 2 Bitcoin for a Tesla Model S
• 3 ways to help protect your ASX share portfolio against inflation

Bernd Struben has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. owns shares of and recommends Bitcoin and Visa. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.

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