Episode 78: Markets Shave Off Gains Today
We shaved off the highs from last week across the market today. Stock picking is getting more difficult — here's what Goldman says investors can do: "Going forward, key catalysts are likely to be more micro in nature, led by tax reform, infrastructure spending, and pricing power," Goldman wrote in a note.
Revenge spending: US retail sales soared 10 percent in March from February, the largest jump since May. As $1.4K stimulus checks hit bank accounts and vaccines hit arms, Americans splurged on (non-stretchy) clothes, restaurants, and travel. A whopping 1M jobs were added last month. Now, consumer spending is expected to propel economic growth to +6.4 percent this year, the best rate in decades.
Clubhouse: the live audio content app, raised an undisclosed amount of funding at a $4 billion post-money valuation led by existing backer Andreessen Horowitz. Other participants included DST Group, Tiger Global, and Elad Gil. The startup, which raised at a $1 billion valuation in January, declined to say if the funding was primary, secondary, or a mixture. http://axios.link/G3nz
About the meme cryptocurrency: Dogecoin was created in 2013 as a form of crypto satire, a riff on the explosion of altcoins (non-bitcoin tokens). The dogecoin protocol is based on luckycoin. $Doge has no intrinsic value, underlying fundamentals, or supply cap. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins, whereas there could theoretically be an infinite supply of dogecoins. But that doesn’t matter to extreme online traders. At its all-time high, $Doge had posted a gain of 9,200 percent year-to-date. The coin’s market cap maxed out above $50 billion, for those keeping score at home. The rise of $Doge shows the power of online communities and reminds us of GameStop.
Market Close
Dow 30 34,082.44 -118.23 (-0.35%)
S&P 500 4,163.59 -21.88 (-0.52%)
Nasdaq 13,914.77 -137.58 (-0.98%)
IPOs
Unicorn stock UiPath (PATH) boosted both the size and price range of its IPO, increasing the company’s expected valuation to as high as about $28B. PATH also wrote that it now expects the stock to sell for $52 to $54 per share, up from a previously expected $43-to-$50 range. UiPath will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “PATH.” Wall Street expects underwriters to set a final price for the stock on Tuesday after the bell, with trading likely to start on Wednesday. The Financial Times ranked UiPath as No. 2 on its 2020 list of The Americas’ fastest-growing businesses, noting that the company’s revenues grew at a 621.5 percent compound annual growth rate from 2015 to 2018.
Squarespace, a New York-based content management platform, filed for a direct listing. It plans to list on the NYSE (SQSP), and reports a $7.7 million net loss for 2020 on $621 million in revenue. The company raised over $900 million in VC funding, most recently at a $10 billion valuation, and reports Accel, General Atlantic, and Index Ventures as its largest outside shareholders. http://axios.link/O92A