Recap August 22: Magnetic Pole Danger, Warren Buffett Prepares for Crisis, Afghanistan (Recap Ep137)

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In this week’s recap, we see that U.S. and global stocks ended generally lower, although the S&P 500 reached a new all-time high for the week. This indicates that it may be time for the market upswing to begin to decline. The American dollar rose to a 9-month high vs the Euro, Australian & New Zealand currencies on Thursday, with U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers mostly now in agreement that a stimulus taper will start later this year.

As U.S. President Biden scrambles back to the White House to contain an absolute unmitigated disaster, after he ordered a sudden U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, his administration has decided to send 1000’s troops back, as the Taliban insurgents overran the country in a matter of days. He has ordered another 1K paratroopers to Kabul. It brings the total number of U.S. ground forces to 7,000. On Monday, shocking scenes of 1000’s desperate Afghan civilians fleeing their homes & mobbing the Kabul international airport in response to the rapid Taliban takeover of Kabul. U.S. troops are now attempting to secure order at the airport, as military airlifts of American personnel continue. Shots were being fired as U.S. troops arrived, to find the situation spiraling out of control.

Robinhood, a U.S.-based financial services company, saw shares drop -10.26% on Thursday at $44.69, its lowest price since shortly after its IPO 3 weeks ago. Although the company reported that revenue more than doubled in Q2 to $565M, an outsized amount of its growth came from dogecoin, a cryptocurrency with an uncertain future. Revenue from crypto transactions surged over 45x from a year ago to $233M, accounting for 52% of total transaction-related revenue. Present market cap it at $42.34B.

The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing numerous companies to rethink their overall investment strategies. Palantir, for example, purchased $50.7M worth of 100-ounce gold bars in August, according to the company’s latest earnings statement, in preparation for a possible “black swan event”.

Over 90 policy & rights groups globally published a letter Thurs urging Apple to abandon plans of scanning children’s messages nudity & phones of adults for images of child sex abuse concern is used to censor protected speech, threaten privacy & security of people around the world.

For the first time in history, rain falls on Greenland’s highest point; Russia fined Alphabet for violating the country’s rules on banned content; huge demonstrations in Latvia against the prospect of compulsory vaccination; Tesla shares fall due to accidents with its Autopilot system; New Zealand dollar falls after the announcement of a national blockade.

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