Wolf Street

Tesla’s Stock Makes it the Second Most Valuable Automaker in the World. But How About its Size? By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. Tesla shares took a little dip today, but no biggie. They still produce an astounding market capitalization of $102 billion, “astounding” not because the market cap per se is huge – there are now some trillion-dollar companies out there – but because the business Tesla is in: auto manufacturing and solar panels. Solar panels have been a nasty business from...

Shares plunged 20% on the spot, and are down 44% in nine months. By Nick Corbishley, for WOLF STREET: The shares of CIMIC, Australia’s largest construction company, plunged 20% on Thursday to a four-year low, wiping AU$2.2 billion (US$1.5 billion) off its market value, following news that the company was abandoning its Middle Eastern operations with the sale of its stake in BIC Contracting (BICC). The firm expects to suffer a AU$1.8 billion ($1.23 billion) charge-off after failing to...

Those counting on the Fed’s endless “Not-QE” or whatever to inflate the market might be disappointed. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. The Fed had doused the market with $410 billion in liquidity between September and January 1 through its repo operations and its T-bill purchases. Market hype had expected this blistering pace of money-printing to continue, but wait… While T-bill purchases continue, the repos on the Fed’s balance sheet are getting unwound, its mortgage-backed securities...

Its debt surged to fund the share buybacks. And truckers ate its lunch. But don’t tell any of this to the “market.” By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. The first thing to know about Union Pacific’s earnings, which it released this morning, is that  despite cutting its workforce by 17%, promising more layoffs in 2020, experiencing a 9.5% drop in revenues and a 10% drop in net income in the fourth quarter, the company blew $600 million in Q4 and $5.8 billion in the year 2019 on buying back...

Texas at the epicenter. We’re witnessing the destruction of money that loosey-goosey monetary policies encouraged. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. Following the sharp re-drop in oil and natural gas prices in late 2018, bankruptcy filings in the US by already weakened exploration and production companies , oilfield services companies, and “midstream” companies (they gather, transport, process, or store oil and natural gas) jumped by 51% in 2019, to 65 filings, according to data...

Even as the Fed floods the market with $400 billion in four months, with stocks at record highs, and reality pooh-pooed as irrelevant. What’s different this time? By Wolf Richter. This is the transcript from my podcast last Sunday, THE WOLF STREET REPORT: The stock market is at all-time highs. The Nasdaq has skyrocketed even more than the S&P 500, and housing in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, historically, has been closely tied to the fortunes of the Nasdaq. When the Nasdaq...

The priciest markets north of the San Francisco Bay. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. California’s “Wine Country” is typically considered to include the counties of Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake, and Solano. We’ll look at the housing markets of the two most expensive, Napa and Sonoma; and at Marin County, sandwiched between the Golden Gate Bridge and Sonoma County. Marin County is not famous for wine, but for its beauty – including the Muir Woods National Monument, Mount Tamalpais, and...

Brick & Mortar melts down on mall owners. So “repurpose” malls into housing? By Nick Corbishley, for WOLF STREET: After a weekend of fevered speculation, struggling UK mall owner Intu Properties confirmed on Monday that it plans to raise £1 billion of fresh capital to buttress its shaky finances. The company’s shares reacted in time-honored fashion, plunging 8% to a historic low of 21 pence before ending the day down just 1%. Intu’s share price is now 80% lower than it was a year...

Having become a master of financial engineering instead of aircraft engineering. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. The first thing to know about Boeing’s mad scramble to line up “$10 billion or more” in new funding via a loan from a consortium of banks, on top of the $9.5 billion credit-line it obtained in October last year – efforts to somehow get through its cash-flow nightmare caused by the 737 MAX fiasco – is that the company blew, wasted, and incinerated $43.4 billion to buy back...

Even as the Fed floods the market with $400 billion in four months, with stocks at record highs, and reality pooh-pooed as irrelevant. What’s different this time? Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? Using ad blockers – I totally get why – but want to support the site? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the beer and iced-tea mug to find out how: Would you like to be notified via email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Sign up...