The Death of the Dollar?

Tale of the Tape

Good evening everybody.

Stocks were lit again today and before we proceed, let us pay homage to as beastly a bull as we have ever seen.

The Nasdaq Composite closed at an all time high of 10,998. This is a 60% gain from the March 23rd close. Much respect and humility oh stock market Gods. We are grateful for this magical bounty 🙏🏻

Even the Russell 2K got into the act today, closing up almost 2% today and printing a 5 month high. Have a look at the price viz on this puppy:

The United States Dollar continued its inevitable descent to zero (we kid) with the $DXY printing a fresh 2yr low.

Bitcoin ripped 4% with a quote, oh let’s call it $11,625.

Financials and Industrials were strong and the long bond finally got sold. Is this what recovery road looks like?

Here’s your daily closing prices:

S&P 500	3,327	+0.64%
Nasdaq	10,998	+0.52%
Russell 2000	1,546	+1.91%
Dow Jones	27,201	+1.39%

Square Early Earnings

Earnings for Square came a day earlier than expected after a media organization leaked the numbers. The earnings data was stellar as $SQ saw a 64% increase in revenue YoY for Q2.

The Cash App, a key player in Square’s report, saw its gross profit up 167% YoY at $281 million. 🤑

The stock opened up 11% and faded a bit intraday to close up 7%.

Here are the official numbers:

EPS: $0.18 vs ($0.05) est.
Revenue: $1.92B vs $1.01B est.

$SQ is up 134% YTD.

Costco YOLO Gambit

We were just reading about how Costco Canada partnered with Instacart for same-day grocery delivery across 76 stores. The two companies already partner widely in the US.

It’s sure neighborly watching $COST share a good thing with Instacart but c’mon guys – are you playing to win or not to lose?

Sometimes you gotta throw caution to the wind even when you’re one of the greatest retailers in the history of bulk dumplings, pomegranate nectar and paper goods.

The barbarians are at the gate and they’re hurling molotovs.

You gotta raise that digital delivery game bruh. You gotta buy Instacart outright. The whole enchilada.

That way you’re not sharing your girl with every mom and pop grocer south of Hackensack, New Jersey. You’re taking on Amazon for real – mano a mano.

You’re gonna want to be able to stuff those tractor wheel size pumpkin pies directly into all of the faces at your whim and their leisure for years to come dawgs… LFG!

Walmart Drive-Ins

For a limited time only, Walmart will be turning its parking lots into drive-in movie theaters. This is what we love to see.

Tickets are free and even Space Jam will be featured.

Here’s the map of where Walmart will be hosting the cinema. Click here to learn more.

A HealthTech Giant Is Born

This morning, Teladoc and Livongo Health announced a $18.5B remote health merger. This is a big deal.

Teladoc provides telemedicine and virtual healthcare services. It has been a COVID beauty queen up 150% YTD even after the 19% drubbing it took today on the announcement.

Livongo provides 21st century wellness services to chronic conditions most notably Diabetes. $LVGO is up 500% YTD even after today’s 10% schneid on the news.

This is a future powerhouse match made in heaven. New world shit. Health and Wellness tech nirvana.

Look, you’re not going to recognize a doctor’s visit 5 years from now.

You’ll be taking blood tests in your living room and doctors will be taking snapshots of your aortic valves from your living room while you’re watching Sandler’s latest romcom on the Netflix.

The finance news media paid this deal a bit of lip service this AM but should be making a much bigger deal of the deal.

Instagram Reels aka Vine aka TikTok

Lord Zuck does it again.

Zuckerberg and the Instagram team ripped off the concept of TikTok. The new product is called Instagram Reels and is now available in 50 countries. (Probably not China)

This is an amazing quick response from Zuck and we’d expect nothing less. But remember, with all that greed, he eventually bloated the golden goose with greed and sucked all the cool out of Facebook.

Will this be the day he does it again with Instagram? We kinda hope so. 😉

Here’s Axios with more.

Earnings Round-Up

Roku’s earnings came in better than expected with streaming hours up 65% YoY. The streaming service added 3.2 million active accounts in the 2nd quarter.

EPS: ($0.35) vs ($0.55) est.
Revenue: $356.1M vs $315.4M est.

$ROKU is trading down 1% after hours.

Etsy reported after the close and blew out estimates on top and bottom lines.

Here’s what $ETSY CFO, Rachel Glaser, had to say,

“With a highly variable cost structure and a disciplined strategy, we’ve seized this opportunity to lean into investments that are designed to drive long-term profitable growth, improve the experience for buyers and enable our sellers to grow on Etsy.”

The stock closed at an all-time high on Wednesday and it’s up 1.75% after hours.

Here are the numbers:

EPS: $0.75 vs $0.39 est.
Revenue: $427.8M vs $329.8M est.