📈 Historic landing

Odysseus becomes first US spacecraft to land on moon in over 50 years, Reddit files to list IPO after two years on sidelines, SEC filing shows Sam Altman is Reddit's third-largest shareholder, Goldman pushes back bet on interest-rate cut to June, and Nvidia fires up AI mania…

Author

Smart Owl
February 23, 2024

Good morning.

The Fast Five → Odysseus becomes first US spacecraft to land on moon in over 50 years, Reddit files to list IPO after two years on the sidelines, SEC filing shows Sam Altman is Reddit's third-largest shareholder, Goldman pushes back bet on interest-rate cut to June, and Nvidia fires up AI mania.

Your 5-minute briefing for Friday, February 23:

BEFORE THE OPEN

As of market close 2/22/2024.

PRE-MARKET

MARKETS

  • US stocks rallied to new highs yesterday as Nvidia's strong earnings helped lift the tech sector and broader market

    • The Nasdaq had its best day in a year, almost fully recovering from its November 2021 fall

  • Europe's Stoxx 600 hit an all-time high

  • The global MSCI ACWI index also posted a record high

EARNINGS

  • Block shares rose ~14% after reporting a surprise Q4 profit and beating revenue estimates (link)

  • Moderna shares jumped ~14% thanks to a surprise quarterly profit boosted by deferred revenue and cost cuts (link)

  • What we're watching this week:

    • Today: Warner Bros. Discovery

  • Full calendar here

NEWS BRIEFING

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C cargo lander, named “Odysseus” after the mythological Greek hero, is the first U.S. spacecraft to soft land on the lunar surface since 1972.

Reddit on Thursday filed to go public. Its market debut will mark the first major tech initial public offering of the year and the first social media IPO since Pinterest went public in 2019.

  • Wall Street may follow Canadian trend of using synthetic securities to transfer credit risk (link)

  • PE turns to new fundraising tactics in tough market (link)

  • Private credit moves into banks’ infrastructure lending turf (link)

  • JPMorgan CEO Dimon sold ~$150M of his shares (link)

  • Sam Altman is Reddit's third-largest shareholder, SEC filing reveals (link)

  • Goldman pushes back bet on first Fed interest-rate cut to June (link)

  • Stocks hit new records as Nvidia fires up AI mania (link)

  • Nvidia identifies Huawei as a top competitor (link)

  • Investors swap gold ETFs for Bitcoin ETFs (link)

  • Nvidia adds record $277B in market value (link)

  • ECB reported a record loss for 2023 as rate hikes bite (link)

  • Google restricts AI image generation amid racial inaccuracies (link)

  • Capital One-Discover merger deal termination fee set at $1.38B (link)

  • Red Sea ship attacks not driving inflation (link)

  • Tax evasion by the wealthy tops $150B / year (link)

  • FBI and Homeland Security is investigating AT&T's outage (link)

  • Half of college grads are in jobs that don't require degrees (link)

CRYPTO

  • Retail investors were likely behind February's crypto market rally (link)

  • Nigeria ordered telecoms and internet providers to block access to crypto trading platforms (link)

You Can Sponsor this Newsletter details here.​

BULLISH BITES

🧐 Shady-trade: Husband snooping on wife’s M&A work gets Insider Trading charge.

🪐 Investing in Space: Former NASA official explains ‘shots on goal’ approach to cargo moon landings

🛍 Lefties: Zara's secret weapon in fast-fashion fight against Shein.

🏁 ‘Burning Man for rednecks’: Inside King of the Hammers, the gnarliest off-road race of the year.

DAILY SHARES

Keep the curation going! Buy the team a coffee ☕️