Finance Tech

"Buy when there's blood in the streets..." This is likely the adage Volkswagen had in mind during the collapse of China's car market over the last quarter, as a result of both an auto market mired in pre-virus recession, and the effects of the pandemic and its ensuing lockdowns.  Volkswagen, eager to gain ground on Tesla in the EV space globally, went on an acquisition/investment spree, according to  Reuters .  The company is now sealing "its largest investments deals with Chinese EV firms".  Volkswagen will buy 50% of Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Holding , the parent of EV partner JAC Motors for $491 million and will become the largest shareholder of EV battery maker Guoxuan High-tech Co Ltd.  Anhui Jianghuai is fully state owned and has a 25.23% stake in JAC, which has a market value of $1.84 billion. Volkswagen plans to deploy fresh capital with the JV in hopes of building capacity to manufacture with its MEB platform - the company's arc

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Reliance Industries Ltd ( RELI.NS ) has launched an online grocery service, JioMart, the head of its grocery retail business said, in a move aimed at rivalling Amazon.com’s ( AMZN.O ) local unit and Walmart Inc’s ( WMT.N ) Flipkart in the huge Indian market.  FILE PHOTO: A woman checks her mobile phone as she walks past a mobile store of Reliance Industries' Jio telecoms unit, in Mumbai, India, July 11, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade JioMart will deliver groceries in more than 200 towns across the country, Damodar Mall, chief executive of grocery retail at the Indian conglomerate, said on Twitter late on Saturday.  Mumbai-headquartered Reliance has not announced JioMart’s launch at a time it is selling $7 billion in new shares.  Reliance launched a small pilot of JioMart deliveries in select areas of the Indian financial capital Mumbai late last month, days after announcing that Facebook Inc ( FB.O ) would spend $5.7 billion for 9.99 % stake

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com, According to one hedge-fund manager, known for his “doom and gloom” economic outlooks,  the federal government may soon make stashing gold away illegal for individuals.  Crispen Odey believes that governments will ban the possession of gold if they lose control of inflation of their fiat currency. Odey says that gold is a great way to protect your wealth from the inflation that central banks won’t be able to control as they continue to print money. Read more

After 102 years of operation,  Hertz is now bankrupt  and with $25 billion in debt, it just made the list of the 25 biggest bankruptcies in history. BankruptcyData @BankruptcyData $ HTZ welcome to our top 25 240 7:50 PM - May 22, 2020 Twitter Ads info and privacy 117 people are talking about this And with creditors now looking for creative ways to recover as much of their investment as possible, the Hertz fleet of just over 506,000 vehicles is a hot commodity for what's left of the company. Read more

BILL PETERS 06:49 PM ET 05/20/2020 Aurora Cannabis stock spiked yet again late Wednesday after the Canadian pot producer announced an acquisition to enter the U.S. retail CBD market for the first time — even as rivals lament the lack of clarity surrounding regulations of the substance. Other marijuana stocks rose late too. After the close,  Aurora Cannabis  ( ACB ) said it would buy Reliva, a CBD retail brand in the U.S., in an all-stock deal. Reliva will get around $40 million of Aurora Cannabis stock. The deal also includes a possible earn-out — or an arrangement for future payments depending on how well the deal goes —  Read more

Lulu Yilun Chen, Vinicy Chan, Katie Roof and Zheping Huang Bloomberg May 20, 2020 (Bloomberg) -- ByteDance Ltd.’s valuation has risen at least a third to more than $100 billion in recent private share transactions, people familiar with the matter said, reflecting expectations the owner of video phenom TikTok will keep pulling in advertisers. Stock in the world’s most valuable startup has changed hands recently at a price that suggests its value has risen more than 33% from about $75 billion during a major round of funding two years ago, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter isn’t public. Some trades recently valued the Chinese company between $105 billion and $110 billion on the secondary markets, some of people said. It has also traded as high as $140 billion, one person said. The trades are private transactions and may not fully reflect broader investor expectations. Stock in the secondary market is usually valued at a discou

Wayne Duggan Benzinga May 20, 2020 Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:  SPOT ) shares are up 15.8% this week after Joe Rogan announced he will be taking his popular "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast exclusively to Spotify. On Tuesday afternoon, Rogan announced that his podcast will be available on Spotify starting Sept. 1 and exclusively on Spotify at the end of the year. The terms of the deal were not disclosed; the Rogan podcast is the latest in a series of moves Spotify has made to beef up its podcast streaming library in recent years. The Wall Street Journal reported that Rogan’s licensing deal is worth more than $100 million over several years and includes all of his 11-year back catalogue of previous podcasts. Read more

Jenny Surane and Hannah Levitt Bloomberg May 20, 2020 (Bloomberg) -- Millions of Americans getting breaks on their loans are about to hear from their banks. Nationwide, lenders are preparing to take a closer look at consumers who have arranged to delay payments, potentially pushing some out of the programs, as the industry tries to get a clearer picture of how many customers are truly unable to keep up during the coronavirus pandemic. Read more

The Fed is currently undertaking one of the trickiest projects it has ever taken on:  lending $600 billion  directly  to companies that need it.  It's an area where the Fed hasn't really ventured, as the  WSJ  points out, and one that puts them far closer to the realm of directing fiscal policy in the country than they have ever been.  In other words, it's a political and financial headache - even for the Fed.  The goal of the program is to get cash to companies that are too large to get small business loans, but too small to benefit from the Fed's other  genius  programs, like buying junk bond ETFs. The Fed's middle market "Main Street" program instead allows companies to get loans from banks, who turn around and sell up to 95% of the debt to the Fed.  In other words, the Fed is hell-bent on becoming the world's worst counterparty. Read more

Having already collapsed in March, analysts expected further terrible weakness in both housing starts and building permits in April as the impact of lockdowns really escalated, and the data did indeed come in ugly. Housing Starts fell 30.2% MoM  in April (worse than the 26.0% drop expected and accelerating considerably from the 22.3% drop in March). This is a record drop. Building Permits fell 20.8% MoM  in April (better than the 25.9% expected) Source: Bloomberg Read more

Via PeakProsperity.com, Back in mid-January, Grant Williams, Mike Maloney, Charles Hugh Smith, Chris Martenson and I sat down for an in-depth discussion on the dangerous distortions to financial markets and the global economy that central bank intervention is causing. That video, titled  WTF: What The Fed?!?  was released soon after the US Federal Reserve had added $200 billion dollars to its balance sheet in Q4 2019.  At the time, we worried so much liquidity being added to the system so quickly could recklessly exacerbate the extreme overvaluations in the markets, and further increase the instability of our over-indebted economy. Read more

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com, As the Nasdaq makes a new high for the year, the world outside the stock market timebomb is falling apart. For example the UN agency, The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reports that 1.6 billion jobs are at risk in the global economy. That is half of the global workforce of 3.3 billion. Particularly vulnerable are the 2 billion people in the informal economy. For most of these vulnerable people, this means no income, no food and no security reports the ILO. This is a human tragedy on a massive scale and most people in the Western world are totally unaware.  HALF UK ADULTS PAID BY THE STATE Looking at the UK, 23 million people which is half of all adults are now paid by the state.  This includes people being furloughed, on unemployment benefits and public sector workers and pensioners. That is just an incredible proportion of the population which are getting free money for making no productive contribution. Ye

One could argue there's significant overlap to the types of car buyers that would consider both Tesla and Volkswagen brands. Both brands offer unique engineering and sleek designs.  But up until now, only Tesla was offering an EV. Enter the Volkswagen ID3, which, with a price point of $33,000  possibly represents the biggest challenge to Tesla's dominant EV status yet. The vehicle goes on sale in Europe and the UK this summer, despite the coronavirus and offers the same amount of range and storage space as a Tesla Model 3. The ID3 is going to offer three different battery choices and two power outputs. It has a claimed range of 260 miles. Volkswagen has been taking pre-orders for the car and more than 35,000 people have placed deposits so far,  according to  Autocar . Those who placed deposits will be able to buy their cars starting June 17 in Europe. The UK will follow in mid-July due to the time it takes to get approval for right hand drive models. Volkswagen sales

If Jerome Powell hoped that he had put to rest the topic - and debate- of negative interest rates in the US (if only for a few weeks) he failed. One day after Powell's ad hoc appearance in a Peterson Institute video chat in which Powell was very clear: the Fed doesn't support negative rates even with downside economic risks - the question of when, not if, rates will turn negative continues to dominate. In an attempt to amplify Powell's message, BofA's rates strategist and former NY Fed staffer Mark Cabana writes today that the Fed is rarely this unified in any view:  "US negative rates are not an attractive monetary policy tool" , adding that Chair Powell was very clear in this view yesterday. It's not just Powell of course, and below the strategist has assembled a summary "of the uniform and widespread opposition to negative rates from a range of Fed officials." The most striking rebuke of negative rates came from the October 2019 FOM