Weekly Market Update - 4 March 2024
New Player
Fast Retailing, home of the Uniqlo brand, wants to ramp up the presence of its other fashion label GU in the US and Europe, as Asia’s largest apparel maker accelerates efforts to become a global retailer with ¥10 trillion ($66.6 billion) in annual sales. The brand, pronounced as the letters G and U has slightly lower prices than Uniqlo and clothes aimed at a younger clientele. While it has a solid presence in Japan, it’s less known in other major markets.
Source: Bloomberg
Apple’s Shift
Apple is cancelling its decade-long effort to build an electric car, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company. The firm made the disclosure internally, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project. The decision to wind down the project is a bombshell for the tech behemoth, ending a multibillion-dollar effort that would have vaulted Apple into a whole new industry. The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The two told staffers that many employees on the car team will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division. The move is a bleak sign for the EV market as a whole, which has been showing signs of strain, but the exit of a potentially formidable rival could provide a modicum of relief for automakers already in that space such as Tesla.
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin
Bitcoin topped $60,000 for the first time in more than two years, putting it within sight of its record high of nearly $69,000. The digital asset has jumped over 40% already this year, fueled mostly by the successful launch of nearly a dozen spot-Bitcoin ETFs in the US last month. To date, the ETFs have jointly taken in more than $6 billion with a record $520 million rushing into BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF in a single day. At the heart of the rally is a simple law of economics: supply and demand. Demand generated by the new ETFs is outstripping the supply of new tokens being created.
Source: Bloomberg