Business, Financial & Legal - Page 65

Former President Donald Trump is currently planning on launching his very own social media platform, and it's expected to go live in the next couple of months.

According to longtime Trump advisor, Jason Miller, who appeared on Fox News "Media Buzz" on Sunday, former President Trump is currently planning a return back to social media, but it won't be on traditional social media platforms such as Twitter, it will be on his own platform. Miller says, "I do think we're going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about two or three months here with his own platform. This is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media."

Miller goes on to say that Trump's own social media platform will "completely redefine the game", and that "everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does, but it will be his own platform." Miller didn't reveal any specifics about Trump's social media platform project, but he did say that Trump has had "a lot of high-powered meetings" at Mar-a-Lago since losing the election and that "numerous companies" have expressed interest in helping him launch a new platform.

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su was recently on Jim Cramer and his "Mad Money" Monday segment, right after the company had unveiled its next-gen Zen 3-based EPYC processors.

During the chat, Su talked about not just the new third-gen EPYC processors but also the chip shortage that is having an affect on everything right now. CPUs and most of all, GPUs, are near-impossible to buy and when you can buy them the prices are skyrocketing out of control. But hey, this is all good for AMD.

But it was the comments regarding the chip shortage directly, which Cramer asked the question "is it good or bad for AMD" regarding the shortages. Su said "we have enormous demand, demand is very, very strong" continuing their seeing record growth in multiple areas including PC, gaming and datacenter. Lisa added: "to answer your question, it's good -- it's very good".

A cursory glance shows that Apple's app store revenues have risen astronomically in the last 10 years, driven by massive consumer-level hardware adoption and widespread app access.

According to figures collected by journalist Jon Erlichman (sourced by Sensor Tower), Apple's app store earnings have spiked by 3500% in the last 10 years. In 2010, the app store made $2 billion, and in 2020 the digital marketplace raked in a whopping $72 billion. Over half of these earnings--roughly 66%, or $47.5 billion--was from games and in-game purchases sold on the storefront, Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad said.

This services growth is attributed to increased access points from more hardware availability, as well as the recent emphasis on digital sales and content from COVID-19 lockdowns. Apple has yet to reveal official data on its app store revenues, but CEO Tim Cook affirmed the store grew throughout 2020.

Elon Musk is trolling pretty hard right now and it's not even April 1... I mean we're weeks away from April Fools Day, and now Tesla has submitted a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with new titles for the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Tesla.

Tesla explained in its filing with the SEC: "Effective as of March 15, 2021, the titles of Elon Musk and Zach Kirkhorn have changed to Technoking of Tesla and Master of Coin, respectively. Elon and Zach will also maintain their respective positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer".

Yes, you read that right -- Elon Musk is now the "Technoking of Tesla" while CFO Zach Kirkhorn is the "Master of Coin".

Some countries around the world are dealing with hyperinflation, and one, in particular, is now introducing a million-dollar note.

That country is Venezuela, and according to a statement from the country's central bank, new 200,000, 500,000, and 1,000,000 bills are soon going to be printed. According to Bloomberg, around 66% of "transactions across the country are (now) estimated to be made in foreign currency." Additionally, the New York Post states that most citizens in Venezuela are actually "turning to the U.S. dollar for everyday transactions".

The President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has said that Venezuela will eventually become the world's first fully digital economy. In the last year, Venezuela has seen a staggering increase in its inflation, which has reached a ridiculous high of 3,000% in 2020. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

HP will soon own HyperX, the maker of PC peripherals like mice, mousepads, keyboards, and headsets in a sweeping deal worth over $400 million.

Kingston has agreed to sell its HyperX peripherals division to HP for $425 million, the company today announced. Kingston will still own its DRAM and memory business, and HP will add the HyperX brand to its billion-dollar Personal Systems business, which pulled in $10.4 billion in revenue last quarter. HP expects the deal to close in the second quarter of 2021.

"HyperX is a leader in peripherals whose technology is trusted by gamers around the world and we're thrilled to welcome their outstanding team to the HP family," said Enrique Lores, President and CEO, HP Inc.

As an Australian, I have just awoken to some world-changing news: Facebook and the Australian government are having a blue -- a fight, they're having a fight.

Australia's proposed new Media Bargaining law is swinging its 1984 powers around, with the federal government forcing social media companies to pay for news content -- Google buckled under pressure and coughed up the money, but Facebook didn't and now things are changing.

Facebook has now seen the end of Australian news publishers being able to post their stories on Facebook, while international news won't be seen on Australian users' walls nor will they be able to be shared by Aussies on Facebook. Across the pond, everyone else won't be able to read or share any Australian content on Facebook.

Intel is fresh with its new CEO Pat Gelsinger stepping into the role, sending out a note to Intel's vast 110,000+ employees telling them he's thirsty for the company to be the leader in every single category.

Gelsinger explains that Intel must "stay ahead of customer needs and become more agile in a very competitive market and prove the differentiated value of our products, our roadmap and our manufacturing capability". He adds that Intel needs to executive flawlessly to their commitments and push the envelope when it comes to innovation using their "unmatched IP, engineering talent and research into new next-generation computing architectures".

He also notes that there are 4 key superpowers with the world turning everything digital, with the new Intel CEO noting the cloud, mobility fueled by 5G, artificial intelligence and the intelligent edge. Gelsinger said: "Intel is the only semiconductor company that has the depth and breadth of intelligent silicon, platform, software, architecture, design, manufacturing and scale that our customers need to capitalize on these opportunities and fuel their next-generation innovations".

It's not just Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd (TSMC) that is setting up manufacturing fab plants in the USA, but it looks like Samsung is joining in on the fun, too.

Samsung Foundry has filed the appropriate documents with authorities in Arizona, New York, and Texas so that it can build a next-gen semiconductor manufacturing facility in the US, according to our friends at AnandTech. The new facility would cost over $17 billion, create over 1800 jobs, and would see it made somewhere near Austin, Texas.

We don't know what node Samsung would make at this new facility, but we should expect a next-gen 3nm node at the very least. Samsung Foundry already has a huge 640-acre site known as 'S2' in Austin, Texas with the plan submitted to the government of Texas would see the company building a 7 million square feet (650,000 square metres) facility next to their current S2 plant.

In what should come to a surprise as most people but Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder of Amazon, has just announced that he will be stepping down from his role as CEO of Amazon in Q3 2021.

Later this year Bezos will transition from his role as CEO to the Executive Chair of the Amazon Board, while the current CEO of Amazon Web Services -- Andy Jassy -- will become CEO of Amazon. Bezos wrote to his employees: "In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives".

Bezos continued: "Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have." From the letter, it sounds like Bezos intends to use the time he has outside of running Amazon's day-to-day operations to focus on other initiatives, including the "Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions".

Seriously, I'm not sure how any leadership at Robinhood is sleeping right now -- but things have gone from bad to so much more worse with their latest move.

Robinhood, in their infinite wisdom, is now blocking users from getting their statements -- something I noticed in a post on r/WallStreetBets. Why are the statements important? Well, you need those statements from your Robinhood account in order to transfer over to another broker that isn't on fire.

It was only a couple of days ago that Robinhood stopped their Instant Deposits for crypto, which pissed a lot of people off -- but left the Instant Deposit features for crypto for Gold members. Robinhood CEO also said during an interview that the limited buying of GameStop shares was to "protect" people, and the company.

Not all heroes wear capes, but this guy did in a way -- but his cape was a huge banner behind a plane that read: "SUCK MY NUTS ROBINHOOD". See... a true hero.

Kaspar on Twitter said: "It's happening. At 3-4:30pm PST a plane will be flying a banner over San Francisco that says "SUCK MY NUTS ROBINHOOD" and I slid the pilot some extra $$ to circle right above RobinHood's HQ for a while. Go take some photos, I don't even live there".

Absolutely beautiful. Here is the flight path if you missed it:

It was only a few hours before I went to bed last night that Robinhood stopped its Instant Deposit feature to access crypto, pissing off users -- but now it's worse: they're limiting your purchases on "WSB stocks".

These stocks include GameStop ($GME), AMC ($AMC), BlackBerry ($BB) and Nokia ($NOK) which have all been selling some great returns on investment for people. GameStop in particular which has mooned and caused hedge funds to lose billions of dollars, make worldwide headlines, and disrupt the entire market.

Well, now Robinhood is completely limiting the sales of shares of GameStop ($GME), AMC ($AMC), BlackBerry ($BB) and Nokia ($NOK) to just 1 share per customer at purchase. Stock Market News on Twitter shared the new images, which limits the super-popular shares to 1 purchase per customer at the moment.

It's not like Robinhood wasn't already knee-deep in a pile of DOGE sh*t, the company is piling on -- making changes where it has made Instant Deposits "temporarily unavailable for crypto purchases".

The company emails that this means you "won't be able to buy crypto with funds from a deposit until it settles (which can take up to 5 business days to complete). Your Crypto Buying Power will also not reflect your deposit until it settles". So if you've been trying to use Instant Deposits for the last couple of hours and couldn't figure out why -- now you do.

But never fear! If you are a Gold customer, Robinhood has your back as "you will still be able to use Instant Deposits to crypto purchases". The tweets from 'Doopie' who added that "I hear they're also limiting stocks tomorrow, so like 5 shares max for specific stocks which in guessing will be the big ones. GME, NOK, BB, etc".

It wasn't even 12 hours ago that I was reporting that the Robinhood app had been review bombed on the Google Play Store, but in the last few hours we've seen Google remove 100s of thousands of negative reviews.

Are you surprised? I'm not.

Above, I've got a screenshot of the now-changed Robinhood app listing on the Google Play Store, where the search giant is now meddling in this debacle and is wiping negative reviews... like we weren't going to notice. Below, I've got a screenshot of the Robinhood app page on the Google Play Store reviews which were all negative at the top and from January 29, 2021.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is probably one of the most talked about people in the world right now, with the Robinhood CEO talking with CNBC on Thursday night about all-things Robinhood.

The company restricted trading of stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment, with Robinhood only allowing sell positions and not letting people open new ones. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explained to CNBC: "In order to protect the firm and protect our customers we had to limit buying in these stocks".

Tenev added: "Robinhood is a brokerage firm, we have lots of financial requirements. We have SEC net capital requirements and clearing house deposits. So that's money that we have to deposit at various clearing houses. Some of these requirements fluctuate quite a bit based on volatility in the market and they can be substantial in the current environment where there's a lot of volatility and a lot of concentrated activity in these names that have been going viral on social media".

Apple has shipped an incredible amount of iPhones in Q4 2020 alone, with IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo showing just how huge this quarter was. Check it out:

The company kicked the year off with the super-popular 2020 iPhone SE which costs $399, ending the year with a huge 90.1 million iPhones sold in Q4 2020 alone. If we look at just Q3 2020, the Apple iPhone 11 and 2020 iPhone SE made up over 50% of all iPhone sales in the US for the quarter.

Apple has reportedly asked its suppliers to boost iPhone production by 30% in the first half of 2021, with Apple taking up 80% of TSMC's new 5nm production capacity for 2021 alone.

Elon Musk is in hot water right now, with the US Department of Justice investigating SpaceX over the company possibly discriminating against non-US citizens during its hiring process.

New court documents filed on Thursday by DOJ attorney Lisa Sandoval explain: "The charge alleges that on or about March 10, 2020, during the Charging Party's interview for the position of Technology Strategy Associate, SpaceX made inquiries about his citizenship status and ultimately failed to hire him for the position because he is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident".

The Immigrant and Employee Rights (IER) division said it made SpaceX aware it had opened an investigation on June 8, 2020 and that it required more documents and information from SpaceX in regards to its hiring and employment eligibility verification processes.

You know the world is changing when you've got politicians on both sides agreeing on something as large as the huge Robinhood + r/WallStreetBets + GameStop + AMC trade drama -- scandal -- explosion. I don't even know how to describe it anymore.

The previously super-popular trading app Robinhood halted trades -- even SELLING users GME stock without permission -- on the to-the-moon stocks of GameStop, AMC and other companies because of the huge swath of Redditors coming in from r/WallStreetBets and now all over the world. Their bets caused hedge funds to lose billions of dollars, while they made huge profits. It has already led to class action lawsuits.

Well, now we have Donald Trump Jr and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighing in on the GameStop and Robinhood fiasco. AOC tweeted: "Gotta admit it's really something to see Wall Streeters with a long history of treating our economy as a casino complain about a message board of posters also treating the market as a casino".

Well, well, well -- that was faster than I thought.

Robinhood Markets -- the trading app that is in the headlines right now, has reportedly drawn credit lines with banks to the tune of "at least several hundred million dollars" reports one of Bloomberg's sources. Robinhood lenders include companies like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Bloomberg adds that the "behind-the-scenes rush to bolster Robinhood's finances adds to signs that recent market havoc is putting a strain on the company". Robinhood explained in a blog post on its website today: "As a brokerage firm, we have many financial requirements, including SEC net capital obligations and clearinghouse deposits".