Weekly Cache

Weekly Investment News and Analysis

Please see what we’ve been reading in technology and ESG related investing this week. Please feel free to send us what you’ve found interesting.

Latest Investment News

April 13, 2025: There Will Be Volatility

In a volatile week, stocks rebounded from 2025 lows. 2025 volatility has not yet resulted in as many +/- 3% days as we saw in March 2020 (~15 days that month). Aided by Wednesday’s historic gains, Dow Jones was up 4.95% last week, S&P 500 gained 5.7%, while NASDAQ rose 7.3%. Notable tech gains included Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla. However, due to increased tariffs, Micron Technology raised prices on certain memory products, while Apple rapidly shipped 600 tons of iPhones from India to avoid immediate tariff impacts. Fearing a potential price increase, many customers reportedly flocked to Apple Stores to buy new iPhones and other products before they get more expensive. The president of the European Commission said Europe could tax digital ad revenues of Meta Platforms and Google in retaliation for US tariffs. MicroStrategy, said it will report an unrealized loss of US$5.91 billion from its bitcoin holdings, as a cryptocurrency selloff wiped out most of its recent gains. Broadcom is launching a new share buyback program of up to US$10 billion. The U.S. Secretary of Defense directed the Department of Defense to cancel US$5.1 billion in contracts with consulting firms including Deloitte, Accenture and Booz Allen Hamilton as part of efforts to slash government spending. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy forecasted AI costs would decline despite the company’s aggressive investments, earmarking up to US$100 billion for AI-related projects. Google Cloud introduced new AI tools and unveiled the Ironwood chip designed for complex reasoning tasks. In Canada, Sophic Client, Kraken Robotics secured $11 million in new orders for its underwater batteries, pushing its year-to-date battery orders to $45 million. Kraken also announced a new synthetic aperture sonar service for offshore energy markets launching July 2025.

Invesment News in the Past Weeks

September 27, 2020

IPO activity in the USA cooled a bit after a few heated weeks, while M&A kept chugging along. In Canada, publicly listed technology companies announed ~$85 million in bought deals.

September 20, 2020

It’s great to see Nuvei have a successful IPO on the TSX last week — we believe robust IPOs are a very important part of the Canadian public markets ecosystem, even as US capital markets rediscover SPACs. Canadian VC also reported strong activity.

September 13, 2020

Lots of activity in the Canadian VC space this past week, as well as Lightspeed’s NYSE debut. Sophic client, Kontrol (KNR-CSE) had positive news of another successful test of its Covid detection product, BioCloud.

September 6, 2020

We hope you’re enjoying the long weekend with your loved ones. Many high growth stocks pulled back on Thursday, and Friday to some extent – however, valuations still remain elevated. Interestingly a Financial Times piece on Friday suggested Softbank’s option trading could have been tech stocks higher over the summer.

August 30, 2020

Monday saw the one the highest number of SEC S-1 filings for high profile companies going public as we have seen in nearly fifteen years in capital markets. September, should be a very interesting month!

August 23, 2020

While the Tik-Tok drama continues to unfold, high profile companies including SpaceX, Robinhood, Airbnb, Ant Financial, Palantir move ahead to either raise capital or go public. Palantir also plans to move its headquarters from the Bay Area to Denver, which could aid the trend of tech companies being more widely located, which we believe is a tailwind for the Canadian tech ecosystem. For example, Odyssey Interactive’s founders previously worked in the United States but opted to establish the company in Canada, because of the strong startup ecosystem in Canada.

August 16, 2020

Epic Games and Facebook appear to be pushing back against app store policies, which could have far reaching implications. Several high profile companies are expected to go public this fall & Robinhood is garnering lots of attention (including, gracing the cover of this week’s Barrons).