BWIB Finance Newsletter

Wednesday, April 14to Tuesday, April 20, 2021

McDonald’s has partnered with K-pop band BTS to launch BTS meal in May

McDonald’s announced its upcoming BTS meal on Monday morning, which will be launched in the US, Canada, parts of the Caribbean, and other countries on May 26
The meal will include 10 piece McNuggets with Sweet Chili and Cajun dipping sauces, a medium Coca-Cola, and medium fries.
Other collaborations in the Famous Orders program include Travis Scott and J Balvin. The meals have driven sales in the second half of 2020 and are attracting younger customers to the fast-food chain.

Massachusetts’ (MA) securities regulator has sued Robinhood to revoke the trading app’s license to act as a broker in the state, saying the app has continued to lure young beginner investors onto its platform.
Robinhood, in turn, sued MA to block the state from asserting its authority to regulate its app, saying MA’s state law conflicts with SEC’s looser standard.
In September last year, MA introduced its own fiduciary rule forcing broker-dealers to avoid, eliminate, and mitigate conflicts of interest when making recommendations.
The SEC’s looser standard allows brokers to just disclose those conflicts.

Source: CNBC

Houses have been selling for higher than their listed price.
Consumers have been concerned with the housing market price bubble and are predicting that the price bubble may burst.
CoreLogic’s measure of prices shows that prices increased by 10.4% in February “year over year”, which is the biggest annual jump since 2006.

Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla, says that the third Pfizer COVID vaccine dose will most likely be needed within 12 months. There’s a possibility that people will need to get the COVID vaccine every year. (Source: CNBC)
U.S. health authorities were initially only going to warn about a blood-clotting risk from Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccine, but decided to entirely pause administration of the vaccine out of concern that doctors would improperly treat the condition (Source: WSJ)

Covid/quarantine started a DIY boom, and with record low interest rates, lumber futures have jumped from $32 to $1,158. This could add at least $9K to the cost of apartments. (Source: Fortune)
Big companies like Shell and Exxon have made money by extracting carbon from the ground to produce more oil. Now, they hope to profit from burying heavy-polluting industries’ carbon in the ground for a fee rather than releasing it into the atmosphere to reduce carbon emissions. (Source: WSJ)

Due to national security issues, the U.K. government will examine Nvidia’s $40B deal to buy British chip designer Arm from SoftBank Group. (Source: WSJ)
Semiconductor producers are struggling to keep up with demand, which could threaten to slow down post-pandemic recovery. The shift away from lower-margin and lower-tech chips essential in cars, monitors, appliances, and more have exacerbated this shortage. (Source: WSJ)

As Covid-19 vaccines get distributed, Coca-Cola sales have been rebounding from the significant decrease in sales earlier this year when venues around the world closed. (Source: WSJ)
Apple removed Parler from its app store back in January, but Apple plans to make the social media app available again. (Source: WSJ)
Netflix stock price drops by nearly 10% after Netflix announces 4 million new subscribers, 2 million subscribers short of the 6 million prediction. (Source: CNBC)

Written By:

Director: Jacquline Ruan

Managers: Vaibhavi Bamane, Melissa Chen, Stacy Kim