AnalytixInsight

In the US holiday shortened week, the Dow Jones Industrial was up 1.7%, S&P 500 index climbed 1.5%, and the Nasdaq was up 0.8%. In the third quarter, Canada saw $896 million invested across 144 VC deals, according to the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association’s latest report. On both fronts, these numbers represent a steep year-over-year decline compared to what was an especially hot Q3 2021 and Q3 2019 for Canadian VC funding. WorkJam closed a US$50 million round. Shopify saw bigger Black Friday orders, and more in-store sales versus last year. Converge Technology announces commencement of strategic review process to maximize shareholder value. Coupa Software shares surged on a report of interest from Vista. Activision stock falls after report says watchdog will block Microsoft deal. Berkshire has cut it BYD stake by 22%, made US$1.2 billion profit. DraftKings stock falls after report cites cases of unauthorized account withdrawals. More than 20,000 employees at Apple Inc supplier Foxconn’s huge Chinese plant, mostly new hires not yet working on production lines, have left, a Foxconn source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. Google has a secret new project that is teaching artificial intelligence to write and fix code. Amazon plans to invest US$1 billion a year in movies for theaters. Bob Iger is returning to head Disney as Bob Chapek steps down. Thanksgiving 2022 online sales pip past forecasts at US$5.3 billion, up 2.8% on last year, mobile accounted for 55% of all purchases. Domino’s is rolling out over 800 Chevy Bolt pizza delivery EVs.

After the previous week’s gain, the Dow Jones was up very modestly last week, S&P fell 0.7%, and the Nasdaq was down 0.7%. Global venture funding plateaued in October, with valuations likely to blame. Masayoshi Son owes US$4.7 billion to SoftBank following tech rout. Ant’s consumer-lending unit to raise US$1.5 billion in scaled-down capital plan. BYD Co Ltd said on Tuesday it had scrapped plans to list its semiconductor unit in China, saying a move to increase investments in wafer production would significantly affect the unit’s asset structure. Shares of Alibaba inched about 1% higher in premarket action Thursday after the company topped adjusted earnings expectations for the latest quarter and said it was upsizing its buyback program. Taiwan Semi stock surges toward best day since 2008 after Buffett’s Berkshire reveals stake. Micron stock falls as chip maker cuts supply forecast, citing market conditions. Shares of Coinbase slipped 6% Thursday as the fallout from FTX’s collapse continues to hit the broader cryptocurrency market. Microsoft and Nvidia announced plans to work together to build a cloud-based supercomputer capable of training large-scale language models like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, which translates text to images, and GPT-3, which can generate realistic-sounding news articles. Apple plans a 3D world and video service for its mixed-reality headset. Nike Inc. is opening an online store and trading platform for virtual sneakers as management pumps investment into the metaverse. Twitter may be in big trouble when it comes to generating advertising revenue: GroupM, part of WPP, the world’s biggest ad company — and Twitter’s biggest spender — is reportedly telling its clients that buying ads on the platform is “high-risk”. Epic says more than half of all announced next-gen games are made on Unreal Engine. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Wray told lawmakers during a hearing that the FBI has national security concerns about TikTok, the popular video app owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance. Democratic senators urge FTC to investigate Twitter.

Last week, the Dow Jones gained 4.15%, S&P 500 was up 5.9%, and the Nasdaq rose 8.1%, in its best weekly gain since March, aided by a cooler-than-expected inflation report. The rest of week was defined by seemingly never ending FTX and Twitter headlines. Crypto exchange FTX has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. and founder Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned as CEO on Friday. Alameda Research, the trading company founded by Bankman-Fried, has also filed for bankruptcy. Crypto lender BlockFi freezes withdrawals, cites ‘Lack of Clarity’ on FTX. Elon Musk sells at least US$3.95 billion worth of Tesla shares after Twitter deal. Some laid off Twitter employees say they’re being asked to come back to Twitter after mass layoffs. Twitter pauses Twitter Blue as trolls overtake platform. Boosted by Twitter drama, Mastodon reaches 1 million active monthly users. Disney warns on economic impact on Disney+ profit target, and is likely to announce layoffs. TikTok slashes global revenue targets by at least US$2 billion. Netflix is interested in carrying live sports. Meta to lay off more than 11,000 employees, or 13% of staff. Apple warns iPhone 14 Pro availability is limited as COVID-19 restrictions close supply chain factories in China. Roblox stock drops on widening losses in Q3, but other growth metrics remain strong. The U.S.-listed shares of ASML shot up 12.8% toward the biggest one-day gain in 20 years in midday trading Thursday, after the Netherlands-based semiconductor equipment maker set a new 12 billion euro (US$12.2 billion) stock buyback program. MicroStrategy stock tumbles, as bitcoin prices fall well below ‘low watermark’ for carrying value in Q3. In Canada, Xanadu closed US$100 million Series C as the quantum computing firm becomes Canada’s latest unicorn. Hopper closed a US$96 million round from Capital One at more than US$5 billion valuation.