US Markets
The S&P 500, an index that measures the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States hit an all-time high of 3,395.06 points on Tuesday’s trading session. This was despite a weakening US Dollar which extended losses for the fifth day in a row amid increasing tensions between the US and China.
Precious Metals Rise
Driven by a weakening dollar, the price of precious metals continued to rise on Tuesday led by gold which surged to hit a high of $2015.50 per ounce, nearing its 52 week high of $2063.
Last week, Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathway announced it had purchased a $564 million worth of stake in Barrick Gold, the world’s second-largest gold miner. Barrick Gold’s shares rose to a historical high on today’s session as indicated in below;
Major Stocks
Apple Music Radio
Tech giant Apple Inc. has announced the launch of two new radio stations on Apple Music and renaming its global flagship radio station Beats 1 to Apple Music 1. The new stations will be called Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country and will be available to Apple Music users in 165 countries starting on Tuesday.
Apple’s shares are up by more than 58% since the start of the year.
Tesla Shares
Tesla shares on Tuesday continued to rise and hit a new all-time high of 1923.87 ahead of the firm’s recent announcement of a 5-for-1 stock split which will take place on August 31. Tesla’s shares are up by more than 350% on a year to date basis.
This comes as SoftBank Group Corp, announced on Monday that it had invested $3.9 billion into 25 of the world’s largest technology companies including Amazon.com Inc., Tesla Inc., Netflix Inc. and Alphabet Inc.
Meanwhile, registrations of China-manufactured Tesla cars fell by 25% to 11,623 in July from 15,529 units registered over the previous month.
JD Earnings
Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com on Monday released its earnings for the second quarter with revenue rising 33.5% to $28.5 billion. Active customers rose 30% to 417 million in the twelve months ending June 30. The firm’s shares rose to hit a historical high following the positive earnings data.
Walmart Earnings
US retail giant Walmart Inc has released its earnings for the second quarter of 2020 with revenue rising by 5.6% to hit $137.7 billion. Operating income for the period was up 8.5% to $6.1 billion. The company also announced that its e-commerce sales in the United States skyrocketed 97% during the period.
Toyota cloud deal with Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services has announced the signing of a deal to collaborate on Toyota Motor’s Mobility Services Platform. Under the deal, Amazon will provide a platform for Toyota to process and analyze data from its cloud-connected vehicles.
Oracel Shares Rise on TikTok Acquisition
Shares of Oracle Corp. rose on Tuesday after reports that the company had entered the race to buy TikTok. According to Reuters, Oracle has already held preliminary talks with TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance. The company is considering buying the app’s operations in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Bitcoin Price
Bitcoin price surged on Tuesday to hit a one year high $12,408.9. Data shows that the bitcoin hashrate; the estimated number of tera hashes per second dedicated to mining blocks, rose to a new all-time high of 129.03 tera hashes per second.
