Lina Khan's Federal Trade Commission is suing to block Tapestry's $8.5 billion acquisition of Capri Holdings, saying the deal would harm consumers by reducing competition and raising prices in the affordable luxury handbag sector. Monday's lawsuit challenges the proposed deal that would have Tapestry controlling Coach, Kate Spade, Stuart Weitzman, Michael Kors, Versace and Jimmy Choo. According to the FTC, the acquisition could have a negative impact on the millions of American shoppers who...

Check out Eight Sleep and unlock $200 off using my link: https://www.eightsleep.com/boyle/  British stocks closed at an all-time high this week, but as exciting as a new all-time high might sound, the British stock market has been lagging US and European stocks since the Brexit referendum. A recent report from Goldman Sachs says that the British economy is 5% smaller than it would have been had it remained in Europe. The IMF last week listed the UK in its Fiscal Monitor publication as one of...

Saudi Arabia’s plan to build a 170km long, 500m tall, mirrored city in the desert, filled with 9 million people has been curtailed to 2.4km long. According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia’s government had “scaled back its medium-term ambitions” for Neom, of which The Line is the most significant sub-project. The Saudi government had hoped to have 9M residents living in The Line by 2030, but this has been scaled back to fewer than 300,000, according to the report. The curtailment of plans comes...

Sales growth of electric vehicles has slowed dramatically this year.  Tesla delivered 20% fewer cars in the first quarter of 2024 than in the prior quarter, and BYD who was previously the world’s biggest EV maker saw sales decline more than 40% over the same period. BYD’s EV sales were still up 13% when compared to the same quarter a year earlier, while Tesla’s sales were down 9%. Both companies have been slashing prices to stimulate demand. While EV sales overall are still rising, they are...

Japan’s central bank raised interest rates last week for the first time in seventeen years, ending the world’s only remaining negative interest rate regime. The Bank of Japan also abandoned its yield curve control policy which has been in place since 2016, which saw it buying Japanese government bonds to keep longer term interest rates from rising.  It has however maintained bond buying at the same pace for now. Patrick's Books: Statistics For The Trading Floor: ...

After a decade of decline, bankruptcy filings around the world are on the rise.  In the United States, business bankruptcy filings rose more than 40 percent last year and non-business bankruptcy filings rose 16 percent. Bankruptcies in England and Wales just hit a 30-year high according to the latest figures. In Japan, corporate bankruptcies involving a total liability of 10 million Yen or more increased year on year by more than 35 percent. Patrick's Books: Statistics For The Trading...

Elon Musk filed a lawsuit last week against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging the company’s deal with Microsoft compromised the start-up’s original mission.  Musk is seeking disgorgement, additional unspecified damages and specific performance.  Let’s go through these claims one by one, see what legal experts have been saying about the case. We will also discuss the Open AI memo saying that the claims in this lawsuit suit stem from Elon’s regrets about not being involved with the...

Office mortgage default rates are rising around the world which could mean problems for the banks, insurance companies and pension funds who lent money to real estate investors. Let’s discuss the distressed sales of office buildings that have been happening over the last few months, why New York Community Bancorp is down more that 65% year to date, what banking regulators are saying about loan portfolios at large US banks and how banks are hedging their loan books. Patrick's...

A new Harvard Business School study analyzed the impact of giving AI tools, to white collar workers at Boston Consulting Group. In the study, management consultants who were told to use Chat GPT when carrying out a set of consulting tasks were far more productive than their colleagues who were not given access the tool. Not only did AI-assisted consultants carry out tasks 25 per cent faster and complete 12 per cent more tasks overall, but their work was also assessed to be 40 per cent higher...

As the global fight over manufacturing share and exports heats up, with surplus economies doubling down on exports, and deficit economies discussing protectionist strategies, the policies of the largest global economies are in clear conflict. Are trade wars likely, how do they work, and can the global economy regain balance? Michael Pettis Books: The Great Rebalancing: https://amzn.to/4bDIGKf Trade Wars Are Class Wars: https://amzn.to/3I2xHMH Patrick's Books: Statistics For The Trading...

Adam Neumann has been trying to buy WeWork - the company he cofounded out of bankruptcy — allegedly with the help of the hedge fund manager Dan Loeb of Third Point. Neumann’s new real estate company "Flow" has sent a letter to WeWork requesting that they consider its takeover approach. Flow has already raised $350 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, disclosed in the letter that Loeb’s Third Point would help finance a transaction.  The Financial Times contacted Third...

A Delaware court this week voided Elon Musk’s $55.8 billion dollar pay deal with Tesla. The voiding of these stock options erases about a quarter of Musk’s current wealth. The judgement came in response to a shareholder lawsuit launched by Richard Tornetta who owned nine shares in the company.  Judge Kathaleen McCormick found Tesla directors, who negotiated the pay package, were "perhaps starry eyed" due to Musk's "superstar appeal" and did not adequately inform shareholders. Elon Musk...

Jesse Lauriston Livermore was a famed American stock trader known for his huge successes and devastating failures in the early 20th century. Starting as a "chalkboard boy" in a Boston brokerage, he became hugely wealthy as a trader first in "bucket shops" and then on the exchange in New York.  Livermore made millions in the Panic of 1907, the roaring 20's and in the 1929 market crash. His experiences are chronicled in the classic "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Edwin Lefèvre. Despite...

Big startups are shutting down. More than 3000 private venture backed startups failed in the last year.  Of the startups raising money, 19% were funded at a lower valuation than in prior funding rounds. 38% of VCs disappeared from dealmaking last year and more than a quarter of a million workers at tech companies lost their jobs over the same period. US corporate bankruptcy filings closed out 2023 with the most filings since 2010. The year has been described as a mass extinction event for...

How much do you need to earn per year to be in the top 1%?  The answer to this question varies depending on if you are asking about the 1% in a given country or globally? In today's podcast we discuss how much you have to earn and how wealthy you have to be to be considered in the top one percent.  We discuss the careers and lifestyles of the one percent.  We look at inequality research to understand if inequality is actually growing as much as researchers like Thomas Piketty say it...

How is China able to sell European drivers so many cheap cars? Customs data shows that Chinese EV shipments to the European Union have increased by 361% since 2021. All over the world, Chinese automakers are taking market share which is threatening European automakers.  Patrick's Books: Statistics For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3eerLA0 Derivatives For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF Corporate Finance:  https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC Patreon Page:...

Dozy Mmobuosi, the founder and CEO of Tingo Mobile has been accused by US Regulators of running a "staggering fraud." Tingo Mobile claimed to provide mobile phones to rural farmers in Nigeria and build a fintech super app. It quickly grew into a multibillion-dollar empire with a listing on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange. Dr Dozy, the London-based tycoon attempted to buy the Premier League football team Sheffield United but struggled to prove his financial resources. It turns out that...

In this week's podcast we look at the biggest financial news stories of the year, bank runs, The Elon Musk - Mark Zuckerberg fight, The Sam Bankman Fried Trial and much more. Patrick's Books: Statistics For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3eerLA0 Derivatives For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF Corporate Finance:  https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle Visit our website:...

Higher mortgage rates should be expected to depress the housing market, and the US has just seen one of the steepest rate increases in history. Would-be homebuyers are facing massive sticker shock, with measures of affordability worsening at the fastest pace on record.  The US real estate market has frozen up with the volume of new sales slowing at a faster pace than even during the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Does this mean that home prices are about to collapse?  Will we see...

Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei describes himself as an anarcho- capitalist and says that he will take a chainsaw to the Argentine economy. He has campaigned that he will dollarize the economy and shut down the central bank.  What does this mean, and could it work? Argentina mostly exports agricultural commodities but used to be one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Decades of economic mismanagement have destroyed the economy and created a web of artificial price and exchange...

Elon Musk told advertisers who have halted spending on X due to his endorsement of an antisemitic post to “go f**k” themselves, in an unhinged interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin (who Elon calls Jonathan). Musk said that a recent exodus of big brands was “going to kill the company, and the whole world will know the advertisers killed the company”. Musk, who bought Twitter (which he has renamed X) for $46.5 billion dollars (including transaction costs) in October 2022, dismissed the idea that...

Fired CEO Sam Altman will return to run OpenAI - the company he co-founded, following days of speculation and turmoil at the leading generative artificial intelligence start-up. In a dramatic reversal, Altman, who was fired by OpenAI’s board of directors last week, will be reinstated under the supervision of a new board. Greg Brockman, the co-founder and president who quit the company on Friday after Altman was fired, will return alongside him.  Under an “agreement in principle”, Altman...

When Mao Zedong died in 1976 his successors seized the opportunity to reassess the wisdom of Chinas rigid commitment to Marxist doctrine.  With Deng Xiaoping in charge, China scoured the globe in search of economic expertise to put China on the path to domestic prosperity and ultimately global economic power. The World Bank describes China’s growth as “the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history,” In today's video we try to understand what changes were made that allowed...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a wake-up call to all western governments. Alongside China’s rise, the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and instability in Africa, the new era of global conflict has forced governments around the world to commit to more defense spending. Will voters around the world accept the high price of military deterrence? Patrick's Books: Statistics For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3eerLA0 Derivatives For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF Corporate...