The crisis in Turkey’s financial markets has been rumbling on for some time now but until Friday wider international markets were taking events in their stride and refusing to panic. However, following the Turkish lira’s 20% crash on Friday, a new record low against the U.S dollar, concern that the situation could spill over into other emerging markets and even the euro began to bubble to the surface.
Tesla is one of those companies that investors either love – huge perceived potential – or simply don’t get – it burns through a lot of cash and has never turned a profit. Nonetheless, despite the love/hate relationship between Elon Musk, the company’s controversial and outspoken founder, and the public markets moving distinctly closer to the ‘hate’ side of the seesaw over recent months, yesterday’s announcement that he is looking into taking Tesla back into private ownership has sent shockwaves through markets.
One of Warren Buffet’s regularly quoted slices of investment wisdom is to invest in businesses you understand. With that in mind, it is perhaps no surprise that companies earning profits from the kind of beverages closely associated with hot summer days are currently flying high on the stock market. It’s safe to say that over the course of this summer, many Brits investing online in ISAs and SIPPs have gotten to know the products of listed companies selling their favourite tipples that little bit better.
For the hopefuls that have backed Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by investing online in the digital currencies, 2018 hasn’t, so far, been a great year. While Bitcoin’s value and the wider cryptocurrency market has managed to hold on to a good portion of the gains that resulted from last year’s bull run, values have also dropped to less than half of their peak around the turn of the year.
In the lead up to Apple publishing its Q3 results on Tuesday a handful of the more optimistic analysts on Wall Street speculated that a strong report that came in well ahead of forecasts could propel Apple’s market capitalisation towards $1 trillion. The most optimistic posited that with strong headwinds the milestone could be reached within a week. It took 2 days. Yesterday, the iPhone maker’s shares closed at $207.39 in Wall Street, taking their combined value to exactly $1 trillion.
As largely expected, today’s meeting of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) resulted in the decision to incrementally raise the base UK interest rate to 0.75%. The immediate reaction to the development has been a 1% slide for the FTSE 100 today. However, pound sterling, despite an initial rise in the immediate aftermath of the announcement, quickly feel again and actually lost 0.5% against the dollar.
Apple’s keenly awaited quarterly results yesterday saw the iPhone maker beat analyst forecasts to set up what many expect a share price push that could propel the company’s value to $1 trillion within days. The world’s most valuable company reported strong growth in revenues to finish what has been a volatile reporting season for the U.S.’s tech giants on a positive note.
Independent FCA-registered capital markets researcher Hardman has released data that shows the liquidity of London-listed companies valued at between £600 million and £5 billion fell by nearly 10% over the first six months of this year. Small caps such as the companies listed on the LSE’s AIM market have been hit even harder with liquidity down by as much as 25%. Volatility in the share price of mid and small-cap companies is also increasing in correlation to falling trading volumes. However, while a general concern, the situation could also present an opportunity to savvy and experienced stock pickers investing online.
It’s not been a good week for those investing online in social media giants as Twitter’s share price today mirrored Facebook’s Thursday crash by also shedding 20%. The Facebook sell-off followed Q2 figures that showed user growth had dropped to a new, significantly lower, record low and total user numbers in Europe had declined by 1 million. Slowing revenue growth was also signalled in forward guidance for upcoming quarters. Twitter’s own report showed a drop in total user numbers over the second three months of the year.
Amazon’s share price is up around 1.5% today after the online retail, cloud computing and content streaming tech goliath once again blew away earnings forecasts when it reported on its most recent quarter yesterday. With a market capitalisation approaching $920 billion dollars, Amazon has again narrowed the gap in its race with Apple, market cap $954 billion, in the race to become the world’s first trillion-dollar company.
