Stock Market

Robinhood Inc. – a 2013-founded commission-free investment and trading app – has filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering (IPO) and plans to go public later this year.

"Robinhood Markets, Inc. has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) relating to the proposed initial public offering of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The initial public offering is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions," the company's statement read.

Berkshire Hathaway bought back its own shares in 2020 for more money than ever before. In total, the conglomerate spent 24.7 billion dollars (20.5 billion euros) on this kind of share price maintenance, according to its annual report published on Saturday.

In the fourth quarter, Warren Buffett's investment company invested nine billion dollars in its own shares, which was almost exactly the same as the record volume in the previous quarter. Berkshire Hathaway was able to strongly increase its net profit at the end of the year.

YouTuber "Roaring Kitty", whose real name is Keith Gill, is being sued in the US for his involvement in the GameStop stock hype. A class action lawsuit accuses Gill of violating stock laws and causing "huge losses" to investors, according to the statement of claim filed in Massachusetts and dated Tuesday.

The lawsuit accuses Gill of actually being an expert in securities trading who manipulated the market to profit himself. The YouTuber concealed his expertise and misled private investors on social media to buy shares.

Following the fabulous ups and downs of GameStop's share price, the YouTuber is due to testify alongside hedge fund managers and company CEOs before a US House of Representatives committee on Thursday. Gill released a written version of his planned testimony on Wednesday. "The notion that I could have used social media to promote GameStop stock to uninformed investors is absurd," he wrote. "I made it sufficiently clear that my channel was for educational purposes only and that my aggressive investment style was probably not appropriate for most people."

In January, 9.2 billion euros were traded daily on the Amsterdam stock exchanges, significantly more than in London with 8.6 billion euros, according to figures from the financial market firm Cboe Europe.

By comparison, in 2020, an average of 17.5 billion euros per day had still been traded in London, according to Cboe, while Frankfurt was second with 5.9 billion euros per day and Amsterdam only sixth with 2.6 billion per day.

Amazon's quarterly figures have just been published. Here are the most important key figures:

Revenue is $125.56 billion (year-ago quarter $87.4/expected $119.7).

Earnings per share are $14.09 (prior-year quarter $6.47/expected $7.23).

For the current ongoing quarter, revenue is now expected to be $100-106 billion.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) delivered $12.74 billion in revenue (prior year $10/expected 12.8 today).

The stock is trading at -0.4 percent in after-hours trading.

The hedge fund Melvin Capital apparently lost more than half of its assets in January. The reason is the heavy increase GameStop stock which Melvin Capital has short positions on. The news agency Reuters quotes an insider familiar with the company's figures. According to the report, the assets invested by Melvin Capital, which amounted to 12.5 billion dollars at the beginning of the year, had fallen by 53 percent by the end of the month.

Nevertheless, the company ended January with more than eight billion dollars in assets - after hedge funds Point72 and Citadel prevented the collapse of their partner with a financial injection of 2.75 billion dollars.

A Robinhood customer filed a class-action lawsuit against the stock-trading app Thursday after the company barred traders from buying shares of GameStop promoted by WallStreetBets, a popular Reddit group for investors. The lawsuit claims Robinhood's decision deprived retail investors of potential gains they could have made by buying when the stock was low and selling when its price rose.

In addition to Robinhood other brokers worldwide had limited the trade with GameStop and other stocks.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that the White House is monitoring the wild and ever-changing situation with video game retailer GameStop's stock price during her daily briefing on Wednesday, telling reporters that US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and her team are watching what's going on, though there is no word on if any action will be taken.

Psaki said that their economic team "are monitoring the situation. It's a good reminder, though, that the stock market isn't the only measure of the health of our economy,"

Since January 1, despite no real change in the underlying business, GameStop's share price has surged 1,915 per cent.

Shares of video game retailer GameStop and movie theater giant AMC Entertainment soared to astronomical levels Wednesday as an apparent swarm of ordinary investors, spurred on by a Reddit message board, took on big Wall Street funds that had bet the stock prices would fall.

The GameStop and AMC price surges were so dramatic that trading for both companies was temporarily halted by the stock exchanges to temper volatility.

The market new allows farmers, hedge funds, and municipalities to hedge bets on the future price of water and water availability in California.

RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray has stated that "Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come," and added that "We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops".

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos sold shares in his company worth more than $3.0 billion this week. This was revealed on Wednesday from mandatory notifications to the US stock exchange supervisory authority SEC. According to SEC data, Bezos has already sold Amazon shares worth more than $10.2 billion this year.

Peloton, the connected fitness-equipment company, reported a fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $89.1 million, the first-ever since the company went public a year ago. The company revenue totalled $607.1 million, up from $223 million a year ago.

During a conference call Thursday, the company CEO James Foley said: "The strong tailwind we experienced in March as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold has continued to propel the demand for our products into the fourth quarter and the first couple of months of the Q1 fiscal year 2021."

According to a report from the consultancy Ernst & Young out of 58 Austrian companies that are publically traded at the stock exchange, only 13 have a female board member. In total out of 191 board members, only 14 are female.

Every fourth company does not fulfill the quorum of 30%.

Almost six years after its IPO, German startup factory Rocket Internet announced Tuesday its plan to delist its shares from the Frankfurt and Luxembourg Stock Exchanges.

The company, now valuated at 2.6 billion, is offering investors 18.57 euros per share.

Apple hit a market cap of $2 trillion Wednesday, doubling in valuation in just over two years to become the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach the milestone.

The stock market value of Apple company has doubled since March in the midst of the technology rush and equals the Italian GDP.

The CEO of the car company Tesla, Elon Musk, has tweeted that in his opinion the stock price for his company is "too high". Following this, the market value of the company has fallen around $14 billion, with Elon Musk's personal loss being around $3 billion.