Bezos Bows Out ✌️

Tale of the Tape

Good evening, everyone. It was almost a green day across the board. 💚 💔

Every major index finished higher. The Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average both advanced over 1.5%. 

Every sector also settled in positive territory. Financials flew 2.42%. Consumer discretionary and industrials both gained 2.12%. 

The cryptos crept higher. Ethereum broke above 1500 for the first time ever while Bitcoin bounced 6%. 

Emerging markets gapped up and gained 1.3%. iShares India 50 ETF $INDY closed at a new all-time high. 

The “meme stocks” got chopped. 🔪 $GME dropped 60% and AMC tumbled 41%. See the daily charts below. 

Amazon and Google reported earnings after the close. Google is gapping higher after hours and Amazon announced that Jeff Bezos will step down from his CEO position. See more below.

$CCIV surged 27%. Lucid Motors is rumored to merge with the SPAC, but a deal is not done yet. 

Pot stocks popped. Tilray rallied 22% and the marijuana ETF $MJ marched 9.8% to close at its highest price since September 2019.

Here are the closing prints: 

S&P 5003,826+1.39%
Nasdaq13,612+1.56%
Russell 20002,151+1.19%
Dow Jones30,687+1.57%

Earnings Round-Up

Amazon had itself a quarter as the company crushed Wall Street’s estimates, topping $100B in revenue for the first time ever. 💸

Here are the numbers:

EPS: $14.09 vs $7.23 est
Revenue: $125.56B, +38% YoY

The most interesting part of the call wasn’t earnings, though— it was announced that CEO and Founder Jeff Bezos will step down and transition to executive chair. 🤭 He will be replaced by AWS CEO Andy Jassy.

Who knows what Bezos will conquer next… he shared this in the press release: 

Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more. If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. When you look at our financial results, what you’re actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition.

$AMZN was up 1% after hours.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, posted record quarterly numbers, but its cloud business struggled.

Check out the info:

EPS: $22.30 vs $15.90 est.
Revenue: $56.90B, +23% YoY

$GOOG was trading above $2000 after hours. 

Alibaba reported earnings early this morning. The company’s cloud division was profitable for the first time in Q3. ☁️

Here are the stats

EPS: $3.38 vs $3.22 est.
Revenue: $33.88B, +46% YoY

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said: 

Our cloud computing business continues to expand market leadership and show strong growth, reflecting the massive potential of China’s nascent cloud computing market as well as our years of investment in technology.

$BABA dropped 3.8%.

Elevator Down

What goes up… must come down. 🤷 And what a difference a week makes. The “meme stocks” that shocked the world last week took the elevator to new lows. 

GameStop dropped 60%— for what it’s worth, the stock is still up 367% in 2021.

AMC fell 41%— it’s now down 61% since last Wednesday. 

BlackBerry broke down 21%. 

Pizza and Beer?

Today Uber announced its acquisition of Drizly, the alcohol delivery service, in a deal worth over $1.1B. Cheers to that. 🍻

In the imminent future, Uber looks to incorporate Drizly’s services into its UberEats app, although a representative confirmed Drizly will remain a stand-alone app for now.

Additionally, Uber hopes to expand Drizly’s list of local sellers and available cities. Currently, the service is available in over 1,400 locations in the US.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2021— we couldn’t be more excited. We have a feeling that, if it was already available, Drizly would do well during the big game this weekend.

Ford and Google, 2023’s Power Couple  

Oh no they didn’t….Ford and Google just announced a partnership in 2023 to bring Google’s AI, machine learning, and data expertise to Ford and Lincoln vehicles. 🤭 🤯

The partnership, called ‘Team Upshift,’ will bring Google Maps, Google’s voice assistant, and Playstore access to Ford and Lincoln cars via an Android operating system. 

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said this about the latest power duo: 

From the first moving assembly line to the latest driver-assist technology, Ford has set the pace of innovation for the automotive industry for nearly 120 years. We’re proud to partner to apply the best of Google’s AI, data analytics, compute and cloud platforms to help transform Ford’s business and build automotive technologies that keep people safe and connected on the road. 

Now that’s what we call a power couple. Meanwhile, Ford’s also pouring $1B into its South African Silverton manufacturing plant for its Ranger pickup. 

Ford’s already crushing it in 2021, and it’s only February. 👀 Check out the company’s press release here.  

Back, Like It Never Left

It’s official, CFB fans. The NCAA franchise is baaaaaack! 🎉

EA Sports announced today that the first edition since NCAA 2014 would be released at a later date, but no specifics were given.

As of now, the game won’t feature any names, likenesses, or images of actual college football players, but that could change. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said that he would introduce legislation in Congress to allow players to “profit off their talent.”

The only person in the world who’s upset? Joe Burrow, who’s just mad he never got to be on the cover. 

Earnings This Week

Be sure to know when your stocks report earnings. Here’s the earnings calendar

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