‘Tis the Season to Go Public

If you’re ever upset about an off-day in the stock market, consider the alternative: an off-month. 🤢 That’s what happened to Chinese stocks in July.

The broad sell-off began with $DIDI’s failed IPO last month, but the losses really started compounding in the last few days. Chinese and Hong Kong stocks have lost over $1.5T in market value since Tuesday. 😬

The Chinese Communist Party has launched a public campaign designed to curtail China’s Big Tech companies—think Jack Ma and Ant Financial, but like, every single tech company. The country is supposedly concerned about conflicts of interest that come with listing overseas, as well as data security.

Among the greatest losers are China’s mega tech leaders: Tencent, Alibaba, Meituan, and Pinduoduo. These four players lost astronomical amounts of market cap in July. 

But that’s not all. China is making it clear that no business is safe. The company banned private tutoring companies from making a profit, crushing most education stocks. 

This is likely just the beginning of an enormous/ongoing change to both policy and capitalism in China.

Germany has embraced cryptocurrency. 💘 The former crypto-skeptic country will now allow certain institutional funds to invest in crypto assets. 👏

Bloomberg’s latest report says Germany’s institutional funds may now put up to 20% of holdings in cryptocurrencies, effective Monday.

These so-called Spezialfonds (special funds) can only be accessed by institutional investors, like pension companies and insurers (who manage trillions of euros).🔥

Hypothetically, what if Spezialfonds decided to allocate all 20%?? We’d see a flood of roughly €360B ($428B) into cryptocurrency. 

Banks are going all in. DekaBank, one of the country’s largest asset managers, will consider investing in Bitcoin. DekaBank currently holds $403B in AUM. 

Prost, to crypto!! 🍺

Grill company Traeger was overshadowed by Robinhood yesterday—it shouldn’t have been. 🔥 💸

Traeger had a much better market debut than $HOOD. Traeger priced shares for its IPO at $16-18, but the stock opened well above that range at $22. $COOK maintained its upside today, +0.95%. 

Traeger won’t be the only one cooking up some price action, though. Earlier this month, BBQGuys started the process of going public after agreeing to merge with a SPAC. Next week, another Grill Master will join the barbeque mania when Weber makes its market debut on August 5. 

What’s with the grilling rush?? Grill companies have benefited from stay-at-home cooking, but they also benefit from the return of BBQ SZN. According to CNBC, $1.8B of grills, smokers, stoves, and accessories were sold last quarter.  

Consider this: grill and smoker sales (which represent $1.1B of the aforementioned $1.8B) are up 81% from the same quarter in 2019. In other words, grilling is doing better because of the pandemic. With figures that juicy, it’s obvious why investors want a bite out of these stocks. 🍔 🥩 😋

Turns out, broker-dealers and grilling companies weren’t this week’s only IPOs. Today, one of the largest produce companies in the world went public. 🌎 🍓🍌

Dole, like Robinhood, did not get a great start to its IPO. The produce giant fell over 9% today… even after delaying and downsizing its IPO. 

This isn’t the company’s first rodeo—Dole has gone public twice before, so this makes #3 for the company. This time, Dole raised $400M from its listing. 

At the close today, $DOLE was worth just over $1.3B.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is in international hot water. 🥵

The exchange was just scolded by the Malaysian government for operating an illegal digital asset exchange (DAX). Malaysia’s Securities Commission has ordered Binance to halt all operations and marketing in the country within 14 days.

Malaysia’s Securities Commission advised:

“Those who currently have accounts with Binance are strongly urged to immediately cease trading through its platforms and to withdraw all their investments immediately.”

Authorities in the UK, Japan, Germany, The Netherlands, and Italy have also cut off Binance’s derivatives trading and other services—even India’s anti-money laundering agency is investigating a betting scandal involving a Binance acquisition. 🚨

Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, has likened regulatory inquiries and action to “FUD” on Twitter in the past. The executive claims to be addressing communications with regulators, but this is an awful lot of international heat. 🔥