Tale of the Tape
Happy Friday, folks!! What a week we witnessed— cheers to those who survived! 🥂
The major indices finished mixed. Tech, consumer discretionary, and communications were the only positive sectors. Meanwhile, utilities lost 1.9%, financials fell 1.99%, and energy dropped 2.37%.
iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF had its best day since March 23, 2020. $TLT towered 3.31% and closed at its highest price since last week. 💸
Fisker flew 32% and closed at a new all-time high. $FSR soared 58% this week after the company announced its partnership with Foxconn. See the weekly charts below.
Airbnb had its best day as a public company. 🙌 $ABNB accelerated 13% following last night’s earnings. Check out the daily chart:
DraftKings reported earnings early this morning. The stock soared 6% and closed within 4% of its all-time high. See more below.
The SEC suspended trading in the securities of 15 companies due to “questionable trading and social media activity.” 🤔 Should Elon be worried??
Here are the closing prints:
| S&P 500 | 3,811 | -0.48% |
| Nasdaq | 13,192 | +0.56% |
| Russell 2000 | 2,201 | +0.04% |
| Dow Jones | 30,932 | -1.50% |
Weekly Charts
It was a wild week on Wall Street. We saw heavy rotation from tech towards energy and financials. Here’s the weekly S&P 500 heat map:
Financials broke out to blue skies, ☁️ ☀️ but ultimately retreated from new highs. 🌩️ $XLF was up as much as 4% on the week, but closed down 0.3%.
Energy carried higher for its fourth straight week. $XLE advanced 4.27% and closed at its highest price since last February.
The Airline ETF accelerated another 5%. $JETS finished the month up 22%. ✈️ 💰
Deere dashed 5.79% to all-time highs. $DE has drifted 9% since the company reported earnings last Friday.
Ta-ta-ta-Twittah tapped $80 for the first time ever this week. 🔥 The social media stock surged 6.6% as the company introduced a handful of new features and shared its goals. $TWTR is up 60% since January 11, 2021.
Fisker flew 58% and had its second-best week since it began trading. On Wednesday, the company announced a partnership with Foxconn to collaborate on an EV. Here’s the weekly chart:
GameStop galloped 150%. $GME bounced back after three consecutive down weeks, but the stock is still down 70% from its January 27th closing print. Who else is ready for March MemeStock Madness??? 🤪
Keep an eye out, we’ll share some monthly charts in the Weekend Rip on Sunday. 👀
Italian Aerospace IPO 🇮🇹 🚀
Italy’s largest aerospace company, Leonardo, just approved an IPO plan for its US-based electronics system manufacturer.
The IPO will list Leonardo’s DRS division on the NYSE with the potential to raise up to $1.27B, or 1.05B euros. The DRS listing would significantly boost Leonardo’s market cap amidst the company’s pandemic struggles (in September, Leonardo reported a negative free operating cash flow of 2.6B euros 😬).
In the first couple months of 2020, DRS revenue rose 6.4% in conjunction with technological advancements in the US military. Hopefully the company keeps some positive traction as it plans to complete its IPO by the end of March 2021.🤞
Billion-Dollar Birkenstocks
LVMH is on a roll. 💎 😤 Only days after disclosing its acquisition of Jay-Z’s champagne brand Armand de Brignoc, the conglomerate announced its acquisition of Birkenstock.
Although the deal’s details haven’t been shared, a Bloomberg report disclosed the acquisition’s $4.9B price tag. This is also the first time in its 250-year history that Birkenstock will no longer be family-owned.
LVMH won the deal over fellow bidder CVC Capital Partners thanks to LVMH’s great track record with other family-owned businesses, as well as its prior success in expanding to Asian markets.
We only have one question for you about this deal: are socks and sandals (we like to call the look ‘Birkensocks’) okay? 🧦
“Uh Boss, I Messed Up”
—Some guy at the Fed, probably
On Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Reserve experienced a widespread outage of several financial services. Following an investigation, the Fed announced that the outage was not caused by hackers, but by simple human error. 😂
Here’s what the Fed said:
The incident was caused by an operational error involving an automated data center maintenance process that was inadvertently triggered during business hours. This was human error.
So… in other words, it was a simple SNAFU that wrecked the busiest part of the day for almost all of the key financial players relying on the Fed. RIP.
We just hope the employee involved learned a lesson. 🤦
Federal Aid Update 💰
Today, House Democrats rushed to pass a $1.9T Covid aid plan before March 14— the day many types of federal aid are set to expire.
Democrats are also trying to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour. Thursday’s parliamentary ruling, however, prevents federal relief packages from including a minimum wage boost.
Since Democrats can’t raise the minimum wage in a relief bill, they’re encouraging companies to do it themselves. By offering tax breaks and other incentives, Democrats hope companies will pay employees above a base salary. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden said this about federal attempts to boost wages:
We couldn’t get in the front door or the back door, so we’ll try to go through the window.
Here’s the WSJ with more on Covid aid.
Earnings Round-Up
DraftKings reported earnings early this morning. The company raised next year’s guidance and saw revenue grow ~150% YoY. 🌱 💸
Here are the numbers:
EPS: ($0.69) vs ($0.49)
Revenue: $322M, +146% YoY
Jason Robins, DraftKings’ Co-founder, CEO, and Chairman, shared this:
With a favorable fourth quarter sports calendar and strong marketing execution, DraftKings was able to generate tremendous customer acquisition and engagement that propelled us to $322 million in fourth quarter revenue, a 98% year over year increase. In the fourth quarter of 2020, we saw MUPs increase 44% to 1.5 million and ARPMUP increase 55% to $65. We are raising our revenue outlook for 2021 due to our expectation for continued growth, the outperformance of our core business and newly launched states that were not included in our previous guidance.
In case you missed it, Howard Lindzon spoke with DraftKings’ Co-Founder last September on the future of sports and betting. Tune in here: Spotify | Apple | Google Podcast
$DKNG dashed 6.4% and closed JUST $2.34 off its all-time high (63.87). Here’s the daily chart:
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