INTERNATIONAL: Let’s have a look at today’s finance. The CSX Index is currently at 523.35 Points DOWN 4.43 Points or 0.84%
The Daily Exchange Rate: is 4,048KHR to the USD$
HSBC SHARES RISE AS MARKETS WARM UP TO BREAK-UP PROPOSAL BY TOP SHAREHOLDER.
Shares in HSBC Holdings gained on Tuesday after its largest shareholder, Chinese insurance giant Ping An (601318.SS), urged a break-up of the London-headquartered bank in a bid to improve returns.
Sources familiar with the situation said on Friday that Ping An had called on HSBC to look at options including spinning off the Asian business, where it earns two-thirds of its pre-tax profits, or taking other steps to boost its valuation. L2N2WR21M.
HSBC shares added 1.85% in Hong Kong trade, helping lift the broader market (.HSI), which edged up 0.1% to pare earlier market declines. The Hong Kong and London bourses were closed on Monday for a holiday.
"That Asia makes up the majority of HSBC's revenues suggests that a spin-off may be logical, but it needs to be balanced by the fact that a significant portion of that is the result of HSBC's global footprint bridging East and West," said Justin Tang, head of Asian research at investment advisory firm United First Partners.
HSBC, Europe's largest bank, has not commented on Ping An's involvement but defended its overall strategy in a statement, saying that it believed it had the right strategy and was focused on executing it. L2N2WR21M
WALL STREET CLOSES SHARPLY LOWER ON AMAZON SLUMP, INFLATION WORRIES.
Wall Street slid on Friday to its deepest daily losses since 2020, as Amazon slumped following a gloomy quarterly report, and as the biggest surge in monthly inflation since 2005 spooked investors already worried about rising interest rates.
Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) tumbled 14.05% in its steepest one-day drop since 2006, leaving the widely held stock near two-year lows. Late on Thursday, the e-commerce giant delivered a disappointing quarter and outlook, swamped by higher costs.
Apple Inc (AAPL.O), the world's most valuable company, dropped 3.66% after its disappointing outlook overshadowed record quarterly profit and sales.
All 11 S&P 500 sector indexes fell, led lower by a 5.9% slide in Consumer Discretionary (.SPLRCD) and a 4.9% drop in Real Estate (.SPLRCR).
The S&P 500 logged it largest one-day decline since June 2020. The Nasdaq's decline was its largest since September 2020.
The Nasdaq (.IXIC) has lost about 13% in April, its worst monthly performance since the global financial crisis in 2008.
The S&P 500 has fallen 13% so far in 2022, its steepest four-month decline to start any year since 1939.
Adding to fears on Wall Street, data showed the personal consumption expenditures price index - the Fed's favored measure of inflation - shot up 0.9% in March after climbing 0.5% in February.
Cryptoverse: Venture capitalists catch crypto fever.
Scared of being left in the digital dust, private equity investors are stampeding towards crypto projects - blockchain-based apps and platforms fuelled by cryptocurrencies that are native to the virtual economies of the metaverse and Web3.
VC investment in such projects totalled $10 billion globally in the first quarter of this year, the largest quarterly sum ever and more than double the level seen in the same period a year ago, according to data from Pitchbook.
A trickle has become a torrent: the full-year totals for 2019, 2020 and 2021 were $3.7 billion, $5.5 billion and $28 billion.
"You're seeing a lot of VC investment into a lot of protocols because they all believe, as we do, that some of these protocols are the infrastructure of the future," said Steve Ehrlich, CEO of crypto brokerage firm Voyager Digital.
Such projects, which can range from crypto and NFT exchanges to decentralized finance applications and token issuers, are often known as protocols in reference to the rules embedded in their computer code.
The recent action is different from the past when venture investment levels tended to track the price of bitcoin, albeit with a short delay, according to Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at blockchain-focused bank Galaxy Digital in New York.
Investment levels in crypto have continued to grow during a bitcoin price slump this year - it's down about 16% - as well as during another decline last summer, Thorn notes.
"This decoupling is demonstrative of investors' disbelief that a prolonged bear market in digital assets is forthcoming, as well as the significant amount of dry powder held by funds seeking to allocate to the sector," he wrote last week.
The VC crypto craze in 2022 has also coincided with a slump in the tech-heavy Nasdaq (.IXIC) benchmark, which is down 21%.
