The Renaissance IPO ETF is up 34% YTD as seven more companies are expected to float this week, MarketWatch reports. This follows seven companies that debuted last week. Vertex hopes to raise $137m in its IPO this week, while Vital Farms ($125m), Li Auto ($855m), Vasta Platform ($306m), AlloVIR ($251m), Fathom Holdings ($20m), and Goedeker ($10m) are also debuting.
Mounting COVID-19 cases unsettle markets
European markets still seemed daunted yesterday, with mixed results from major indices in the region. In Asia, the Nikkei 225 bucked the trend among indices, which were generally positive. In the US, where the coronavirus continues to hit headlines, benchmarks were pointing down.
- FTSE 100 – 6,129.26 (+0.40%)
- Dow Jones – 26,502.93 (-0.31%)
- S&P 500 – 3,240.56 (+0.03%)
- NASDAQ – 10,649.30 (-0.23%)
- Stoxx 600 – 367.87 (+0.47%)
- SSE Index – 3,227.96 (+0.71%)
Top Mover This Week – AutoNation’s Share Price
Online car retailer AutoNation’s share price has accelerated after it highlighted record quarterly adjusted EPS and gains, related to its investment in used-car marketplace Vroom, during its earnings call last week.
Failure to launch
Despite the whirlwind rally in Chinese markets, the new Hang Seng Tech Index ended its debut down 1.3% on Monday, The Wall Street Journal reports. The performance of the index tracks 30 Hong Kong-listed tech companies including China’s two most valuable — Tencent and Alibaba. Its disappointing opening was mirrored by Beijing’s Third Board Select index, after two-thirds of the index’s 32 stocks dropped, the Financial Times reports.
Earnings preview: PayPal
Could another record quarter in terms of active accounts keep the digital payments firm’s share price rallying? Investors and traders will certainty hope this is the case when PayPal — the stock of which is currently up 64.5% for the year to 27 July — reports its Q2 earnings later today.
Ready for anything
South Korean food producer Cheiljedang Corp has wowed investors with a 139.4% rise since March. The company has been a key beneficiary of demand for ready meals during lockdown, especially in the US and China, according to Bloomberg. The stock has more than doubled the 52.2% gains seen by the Korean Composite Stock Price Index during the same period.
Top table for TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co continued a record-breaking run yesterday, jumping as much as 9.9% to briefly become the world’s tenth most valuable company at $410bn, Bloomberg reports. The company overtook industry heavyweights such as Johnson & Johnson and Visa before paring back its gains — attributed to, among other things, recent production issues by competitor Intel.
Hedge fund fees at all-time low
In H1 2020, hedge funds lost 3.4% to marginally underperform against the S&P 500, while fund fees have fallen to an all-time low, according to Hedge Fund Research (HFR) data reported by Bloomberg. However, this is nothing new. The publication highlighted the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite index, an equal-weighted index of over 1,400 single-manager funds that report to HFR’s database, has underperformed against the S&P 500 since the financial crash.
