Month: February 2021

Since the creation of the first company, nothing has created more wealth for more people than investing in companies. A lot of this is due to the awesome power of compounding.

The stock market has been designed to encourage activity. Prices updated every second, the steady stream of company announcements, all amplified by a financial media that breathlessly reports the key moments of the day. For everyday people, it is easy to feel like we can’t keep up. The good news is, you can ignore all this frantic activity. Getting rich in the stock market may be for the lazy.

As Bitcoin continues its steady march upwards (last week it passed $50,000 USD) we’re all going to have to get more familiar with the term ‘Bitcoin Billionaire’. One of the first people in the world to achieve this was Arthur Hayes, the founder of BitMEX, a crypto exchange through which more than $3 trillion has flowed. Hayes has been charged by the US Justice Department for failing to maintain an anti-money laundering program in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act.

UberEATS, DoorDash and GrubHub have ushered in a new era in restaurants. The past few years have seen a rise of ‘ghost kitchens’ (aka cloud kitchens), restaurants with no in-person ordering or in-person dining. These kitchens are set up never to see a customer. Rather, they are optimised for the food delivery platforms.

This article tells the story of a former ByteDance employee, that worked on TikTok’s censorship program and is now blowing the whistle. The employee explains the mechanics of the program, including how the ByteDance Content Quality Centre responded to directives from the Chinese Government’s Cyberspace Administration of China.

These forms offer great insight into what some of the biggest investors in the world are buying. Every quarter, funds managing over $100 million are required to publicly disclose what American stocks they own. From this information, we can figure out what they’re buying, what they’re selling and what they’re holding on to.

Vice has reviewed some recently filed patents from the US Navy, giving us all an insight into some of the strange, cutting-edge technologies the US Military is working on.

Elon Musk may be the CEO and face of Tesla, but he was not a founder. That fact is often overlooked as the enigmatic CEO has certainly made the company his own over the past decade and a half. However, the world’s richest person was actually Tesla’s 4th CEO when he took over in October 2008.

eSports leagues around the world are starting to take the shape of more traditional sporting leagues. Much like the global market for footballers and basketball players, the best Call of Duty, League of Legends and Starcraft players from around the world are being offered millions of dollars to sign with professional teams. These professional gamers, much like their sporting counterparts, put in gruelling training hours to be the best - with some training 18 hours a day to hone their craft.

With Jeff Bezos announcing that he would be stepping down as Amazon CEO to focus on his space efforts with Blue Origin and his charitable work with the Day One Fund, there has been a lot written about the greatest businessman of our age. As he steps down from the $1.7 trillion dollar company he started in Seattle, he finishes as the second wealthiest person in the world making $149,000 every minute from the retail and web services giant.

An under-reported story has reached its climax and may usher in the next step in the building space race. Three countries have had space ships travelling in convoy, racing to reach Mars. Two of them, unsurprisingly, are the US and China. The third, is the United Arab Emirates. If successful, all three countries will achieve a first. The UAE’s first foray into deep space, China’s first independent attempt to land on Mars and the US’ first deployment of a Martian helicopter.

In this week's Get Started Investing podcast episode, we were joined by Candice - an Equity Mates community member, who is pursuing FIRE. So here's our take on FIRE.

Don't work for the company, own the company. This is a key reason we invest. Own shares in some of the best companies in the world and have them work hard to make you more money.

Snowflake was one of the best IPOs of 2020. The data warehousing company was led by veteran CEO, Frank Slootman, that is developing a reputation as a ‘CEO-for-hire’ (a label that doesn’t really mean anything, isn’t any CEO a CEO-for-hire?). When Slootman took over, Snowflake was valued at $4 billion. Today, it is valued at $85 billion.

Earlier this year, WhatsApp, the secure messaging app owned by Facebook, announced it was updating its terms of service. The change, allowing Facebook and other businesses to store messages, created a lot of alarm and set off a search for more securing messaging services. One of the biggest beneficiaries has been Signal. The encrypted messaging app saw an additional 2 million users in a 12 hour period after Facebook first announced these policy changes. Since then, the messaging app jumped to #1 in the App Store in 70 countries and reports are that they have doubled their user base since these WhatsApp policy changes.

If you’ve heard about the constant struggle between “growth” and “value” stocks, you’re probably aware that lately, it hasn’t been much of a contest. Over the past 13 years, growth has easily outperformed value. In Howard Marks' latest memo, he discusses this contest and offers a different way to look at this decades-old debate.

There’s an ongoing battle amongst hedge funds, private equity and venture capital firms to get a piece of some of the fastest growing technology businesses. However, at the other end of the spectrum, there is a whole different breed of investment firm looking for bargains amongst the unloved. In the massive number of family businesses, side hustles and unloved apps, there is some real opportunity. The Micro PE firm has been created to find these needles in the haystack.

In this post we’re featuring two stories that add more colour to the story. The first, tells the story of one Pennsylvania mother that was radicalised by far-right media, came to be involved in the Capital riots and is now a fugitive from the FBI. The second, covers the Boogaloo Boys, a loosely organised far-right extremist group in the US that were involved in the Capital riots. Together, they help explain the interrelated nature of the right-wing ecosystem.

Sisters Carmel, 26 and Zoe, 24 have set out to solve this problem and provide millennials with the resources and tools they need to start having these important conversations. ‘Meet, Pay, Love’ is the latest podcast by Equity Mates Media hosted by two powerhouse women coming to your ears this month.

As public companies every quarter or half year, every listed company must report their results to the stock markets. Here's what you need to know.