So-called meme stocks are having a moment again. What do Reddit , Trump Media & Technology Group and GameStop all have in common? They all have strong retail participation. Trump Media made its market debut on Tuesday under the ticker DJT, following its merger with shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp. The new business has a current market capitalization of about $9 billion A market cap of roughly $9 billion would put Trump Media on par with the names in the lower end of the S & P 500 , making it comparable to Caesars Entertainment , American Airlines and Mosaic . Reddit, which is not in the S & P 500, also has a market cap of about $9 billion Market capitalization Trump Media & Technology $9.4 b. Reddit $9.2 b. Caesars Entertainment $9.4 b. American Airlines $10 b. Mosaic $10.3 b. This is rather remarkable, considering Trump Media had revenues of roughly $3.3 million. The company lost $49 million in the first nine months of last year, according to The New York Times . GameStop, in comparison, had a small profit in its fiscal year , with revenues of $5.2 billion. The market cap is about $4 billion. Even if you think of these as meme stocks, this is quite a difference. GameStop has a small profit, revenues of $5.2 billion and a market cap of $4 billion. DJT has revenues of $3 million, loses money and has a market cap of $9.4 billion. GameStop makes Trump Media & Technology look like JPMorgan. Another stock that has been a high flier is Reddit, which has surprised everyone by almost doubling its initial public offering price of $34 within days of its debut, a reversal of the usual pattern in which high interest IPOs decline after their first trading session. Reddit has given an undetermined number of shares to its site moderators, who are part of its loyal user base. What meme stocks have in common What Trump Media, GameStop and Reddit have in common is a high retail base. That means there is a large base of individual investors rather than institutional. Retail investors tend to move more on emotion and are less concerned with old-school metrics like fundamental analysis, which attempts to determine what the correct price for a stock should be based on estimate of future profitability and dividends. Each of these three stocks has a user base with a strong attachment to the product or the founder. It doesn’t mean that the laws of investing have been repealed. Fundamentals do matter When GameStop first exploded in early 2021, plenty of retail traders messaged to inform me that this proved that a dedicated, organized group could move a stock and that fundamentals don’t matter. This, of course, is nonsense. A stock is a share of ownership in a company, entitling the stockholder to a claim on the company’s earnings and assets. That is literally the definition of a stock. Fundamental analysis was developed as a way to make a guess at what that future stream of profits, including dividends, would look like. You can see this in the charter of the very first modern stock company, the Dutch East India Company, which began operations in 1602. The company was set up to import spices from the Moluccas in eastern Indonesia, but it quickly expanded. In its charter , the Dutch East India Company said that ownership would entitle shareholders to receive profits from the sale of spices. According to this document, whenever the cargo arrived in port, the company was required to provide “a statement listing the goods received, and what the state the cargo is in. And what the proceeds received from sale of the merchandise are shall also be provided to the Provinces or cities, when they request this. … As soon as 5% of a return cargo has been cashed shall it be distributed to the participants.” Here, in the very first modern stock company, the owners tell you: You are buying our stock to participate in profits from the spice trade. Every company since then has made essentially the same promise: You’re buying our stock to participate in the profits from the business we are in. Have the laws of investing been repealed? As for GameStop, it has been in a long, slow descent since mid-2021, going from roughly $75 ( split adjusted in July 2022) to about $13 after the company reported disappointing sales this week. Almost every single person who has bought GameStop in the last three years is in the red. Looking out on the future of the gaming retailer, Michael Pachter of Wedbush, one of only two analysts who cover GameStop, noted that the company was continuing to see sales decline due to falling hardware sales, fewer large console releases and the growth of video game subscription services. The retailer is not in imminent danger of going under, but Pachter noted, “If we’re right, GameStop has a likely runway of no more than five years. The demise of GameStop is outside the 12- month window we use for our price target, but we expect the company’s demise at some point later this decade.” What’s it all mean? Back in the 1990s, we often had a man named Arch Crawford on our air. He gave investing advice based on astrology — I kid you not. If the stars and planets were properly aligned, it might be the right time to buy Microsoft. You might be surprised to hear that he had a following. If enough people decide they want to invest on astrology or sunspots or on the personality of a single man— or they just want to HODL and believe the stock will do well — it might be possible to move the stock, and leave everyone scratching their heads. But eventually, the story crumbles. Fundamentals do matter. You may not believe in gravity, but gravity very much believes in you.
Ted Pick, CEO Morgan Stanley, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 18th, 2024.
Adam Galici | CNBC
Morgan Stanley topped analysts’ estimates for third quarter profit as its wealth management, trading and investment banking operations generated more revenue than expected.
Here’s what the company reported:
Earnings:$1.88 a share vs $1.58 LSEG estimate
Revenue: $15.38 billion vs. $14.41 billion estimate
Morgan Stanley had several tailwinds in its favor. The bank’s massive wealth management business was helped by high stock market values in the quarter, which inflates the management fees the bank collects.
Investment banking has rebounded after a dismal 2023, a trend that may continue as easing rates will encourage more financing and merger activity.
Finally, its Wall Street rivals have posted better-than-expected trading results, making it unlikely that the firm missed out on elevated activity.
Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has invested heavily in its fast-growing international business as growth slows for its China-focused Taobao and Tmall business.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba‘s international arm on Wednesday launched an updated version of its artificial intelligence-powered translation tool that, it says, is better than products offered by Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
Alibaba’s fast-growing international unit released the AI translation product as an update to one unveiled about a year ago, which it says already has 500,000 merchant users. Sellers based in one country can use the translation tool to create product pages in the language of the target market.
The new version is based only on large language models, allowing it to draw on contextual clues such as culture or industry-specific terms, Kaifu Zhang, vice president of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group and head of the business’ artificial intelligence initiative, told CNBC in an interview Tuesday.
“The idea is that we want this AI tool to help the bottom line of the merchants, because if the merchants are doing well, the platform will be doing well,” he said.
Large language models power artificial intelligence applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can also translate text. The models, trained on massive amounts of data, can generate humanlike responses to user prompts.
Alibaba’s translation tool is based on its own model called Qwen. The product supports 15 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
Zhang said he expects “substantial demand” for the tool from Europe and the Americas. He also expects emerging markets to be a significant area of use.
When users of Alibaba.com — a site for suppliers to sell to businesses — are categorized by country, developing countries account for about half of the top 20 active AI tool users, Zhang said.
Chinese companies have increasingly looked abroad for growth opportunities, especially e-commerce merchants. PDD Holdings‘ Temu, fast fashion seller Shein and ByteDance’s TikTok are among the recent global market entrants. Many China-based merchants also sell on Amazon.com.
Zhang declined to share how much the updated version would cost. He said it was included in some service bundles for merchants wanting simple exposure to overseas users.
His thinking is that contextual translation makes it much more likely that consumers decide to buy. He shared an example in which a colloquial Chinese description for a slipper would have turned off English-speaking consumers if it was only translated literally, without getting at the implied meaning.
“The updated translation engine is going to make Double 11 a better experience for consumers because of more authentic expression,” Zhang said, in reference to the Alibaba-led shopping festival that centers on Nov. 11 each year.
Alibaba’s international business includes platforms such as AliExpress and Lazada, which primarily targets Southeast Asia. The international unit reported sales growth of 32% to $4.03 billion in the quarter ended June from a year ago.
That’s in contrast to a 1% year-on-year drop in sales to $15.6 billion for Alibaba’s main Taobao and Tmall e-commerce business, which has focused on China.
Nomura analysts expect that Alibaba’s international revenue slowed slightly to 29% year-on-year growth in the quarter ended September, while operating losses narrowed, according to an Oct. 10 report. Alibaba has yet to announce when it will release quarterly earnings.
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading: UnitedHealth — Shares plunged 7.2% after the health-care giant lowered its earnings guidance due to ongoing headwinds from a cyberattack earlier in the year. UnitedHealth cut the top end of its full-year earnings forecast, which is now $27.50 to $27.75 per share, compared to previous guidance of $27.50 to $28.00 per share. UnitedHealth still reported a top- and bottom-line beat in the third quarter. Walgreens Boots Alliance — The stock soared 11.9% following the drugstore chain’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and revenue beat. Walgreens also plans to close about 1,200 stores over the next three years, which will be “immediately accretive” to its adjusted earnings and cash flow, the company said. ASML — Shares dropped more than 16% after the Dutch semiconductor equipment maker released its earnings report early and offered a weaker-than-expected sales outlook for 2025. The company’s CEO also warned of a “more gradual” recovery ahead. Other chip stocks fell as well, with Nvidia , Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom last down at least 4% each. Wolfspeed — Shares popped 23% on news that the North Carolina-based chipmaker will obtain up to $750 million in U.S. government grants for its new factories in North Carolina and New York. A group of investors including Apollo and Baupost will provide an additional $750 million in funding for its more than $6 billion plan. Bank of America — The lender saw shares gain 2% after it exceeded analysts’ estimates for third-quarter profit and revenue on better-than-expected trading results. Net interest income, one of the key ways that banks make money, fell 2.9% to $14.1 billion, edging out the $14.06 billion StreetAccount estimate. Enphase Energy — Shares slid 6.8% on the back of a downgrade to sector perform from outperform by RBC Capital Markets. The firm said Enphase should grow at a slower rate than the consensus forecast pencils in. Johnson & Johnson — The health-care conglomerate gained 1.6% after posting quarterly results that exceeded expectations on the back of strong sales of oncology drugs. Johnson & Johnson reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.42 and $22.47 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, analysts surveyed by LSEG had forecast $2.21 in earnings per share on $22.16 billion in revenue. The firm also raised guidance for its 2024 profit and sales. Energy stocks — Energy stocks declined as oil prices dropped about 5% , with the sector last down more than 2%. APA was the biggest laggard, tumbling 6%. Diamondback Energy tanked 4.3%, while Occidental Petroleum , Valero Energy and Halliburton lost more than 3% each. Coty — The CoverGirl parent plunged 11% after trimming its fiscal first-quarter guidance and warning of slower growth trends in the U.S. Citigroup — Shares lost about 4% despite stronger-than-expected third-quarter earnings . The bank posted earnings per share of $1.51 on $20.32 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had anticipated earnings of $1.31 per share on revenue of $19.48 billion. Charles Schwab — Shares of the brokerage company rallied more than 8% as third-quarter results topped analysts’ expectations. The company posted earnings of 77 cents, excluding one-time items, on $4.85 billion in revenue. PNC Financial — The Pittsburgh-based regional bank rose more than 3% on a better-than-expected earnings report. Earnings came in at $3.49, topping an LSEG estimate of $3.30 per share. The company reported $5.43 billion in revenue, topping a forecast of $5.39 billion. Boeing — Shares added about 2.1% after the aircraft manufacturer said it could raise up to $25 billion in debt and shares to increase liquidity. — CNBC’s Yun Li, Alex Harring, Hakyung Kim, Michelle Fox, Pia Singh, Sarah Min contributed reporting.