Markets
Nikkei 225
27,736.47
▲ +70.49 / +0.25%
SSE Composite
3,282.72
▲ +30.51 / +0.94%
IBOVESPA
120,953.73
▼ -616.42 / -0.51%
Straits Times
3,416.97
▼ -2.14 / -0.06%
BMV IPC
56,483.49
▼ -126.05 / -0.22%
Dow Jones
34,867.47
▲ +49.20 / +0.14%
DAX 30
14,518.16
▲ +71.68 / +0.50%
BSE SENSEX
60,611.74
▲ +1,335.05 / +2.25%
FTSE 100
7,558.92
▲ +21.02 / +0.28%
JSE Top 40
68,940.52
▲ +5.59 / +0.01%
Last Week’s Highlights
Oil had the worst week in 10 years
Oil posted its biggest weekly loss in 10 years. West Texas Intermediate was down 1% on Friday and more than $14 in total for the week. This drop came after the U.S. President, Joe Biden, ordered an unprecedented release of U.S. strategic stockpiles to curb runaway prices. The U.S. plans to release 1 million barrels per day for six months and other countries part of the International Energy Agency (IEA) also assured that they will release another round of oil reserves. Biden’s decision comes after gasoline prices have soared in the U.S. and because of the level of concern about supply shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ford and GM halt production
Ford Motor Company and General Motors have both individually announced that they will cancel production next week due to supply problems. Ford will stop production at its Flat Rock assembly plant, where the Mustang is manufactured, due to the worldwide shortage of semiconductors. Something similar happened last month when they were forced to stop production at their Kansas City assembly plant, which manufactures the F-150 pickup trucks, for a week. Ford had already announced that due to this problem, the production volume of its vehicles in the current quarter will be reduced. On the other hand, General Motors canceled next week’s production at its Lansing Grand River assembly plant due to a temporary shortage of other pieces, not at all related to semiconductor chips.
Coming Up This Week
Intel’s new acquisition
Intel Corporation announced that there is an agreement to acquire Granulate Cloud Solutions for an undisclosed amount. Granulate is a developer of real-time optimization software. With this acquisition, Intel will help cloud and data center customers improve the performance of computing workloads. This will also reduce infrastructure and cloud costs. Intel’s goal is to build a portfolio of software optimization tools that meet the high demands in today’s computing market. This deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.
Apple getting into fintech
Apple is reportedly developing a project called “Breakout”, which aims to replace its fintech partners. The company’s CEO, Tim Cook, said: “We continue to invest in innovation across our services business, which set another all-time revenue record last quarter and performed even better than we had anticipated”. According to several specialists, those venturing into the payments market do it to retrieve financial data from consumers, useful for developing other services. Apple could become a major fintech powerhouse. Companies currently developing in this area should be careful if this tech giant enters the market.
