MARKET MOVERS
- Warren Buffett gets permission to buy up to half of Occidental Petroleum. Carlos Clay, acting director of the division of electric power regulation, granted the permission Friday. The conglomerate has already increased its Occidental stake drastically this year. It surpassed a key threshold where Berkshire could record some of the oil company’s earnings with its own, potentially adding billions of dollars in profit.
- Wayfair to lay off almost 900 workers. The reduction represents about 5% of the company’s global workforce and about 10% of its corporate team, Wayfair said Friday. Wayfair is among several online retailers that enjoyed rapid growth during the health crisis and are now struggling as consumers have returned to shopping in stores, and high inflation leads price-conscious customers to hold off on discretionary purchases.
- FTX gets a warning from FDIC to stop ‘misleading’ consumers about deposit protection. The FDIC issued letters to five crypto companies demanding they stop making false claims about deposit insurance. The recipients were FTX US, along with Cryptonews.com, Cryptosec.info, SmartAsset.com, and FDICCrypto.com. The FDIC said the companies must “take immediate corrective action to address these false or misleading statements.” Read more here.
- Regal owner Cineworld nears bankruptcy as theater comeback lags. The London-based cinema company has engaged lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis LLP and consultants from AlixPartners to advise on the bankruptcy process. Cineworld is expected to file a chapter 11 petition in the U.S. and is also considering filing an insolvency proceeding in the U.K. Recent admissions have lagged below expectations due to a limited film slate.
- Celsius spent $40 million on crypto mining in the first two weeks of bankruptcy. Celsius said the amount covered expenses including electric utility bills tied to its mining rigs. The company said it believes it is worth spending money on its mining operations rather than selling the mining assets to generate cash for the estate. Celsius expects the mining operation to start turning a profit by January. Read more here.
- The Fed is creating a search for a yield environment. Joe Terranova says that in this environment, savers, especially the older generation that was relying on income, will be punished. And the trade-off for speculators is there will be a low volatility environment. That's why hedge funds underperformed because they assumed too much data in a market that's got low volatility. Source(36:52)
WHAT TO WATCH
- Walmart and DoorDash plan to end their four-year delivery partnership. The decision to split up was reported earlier by Insider, which said DoorDash advised Walmart earlier this month that it would end the partnership in September, saying the deal “was no longer mutually beneficial.” Walmart said it would continue to work with multiple providers to bring delivery to customers.
- Cardano plunges 15% as the developer warns of 'catastrophic' issues. As Cardano's Vasil hard fork approaches, there's tension in the Cardano camp over whether more testing is needed. Developer Adam Dean took to Twitter to share his misgivings about Cardano's testnet is catastrophically broken due to a bug in Cardano Node v 1.35.2." Version 1.35.2 is crucial to Cardano's Vasil upgrade. Read more here.
- China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia are increasing their relations. It has been reported that Xi Jinping is taking a trip to Saudi Arabia just a few weeks after Biden made his trip. Xi Jinping is going to end his more than two years of self-imposed in-person diplomatic isolation and his first trip is a meeting with Saudi officials. Meanwhile, China is reportedly doing military exercises inside Russia. Source(46:05)
- More pain for Zillow and its peers. The company's Zillow Home Value Index showed that in July, American home values slipped marginally by 0.1% compared to June. Now while this wasn't exactly a rush-for-the-exits decline, it was the first fall in the company's metric since 2012. It also represents quite a slowdown from the hot growth in real estate prices of the last two years.
