The Shit to Know Thursdays

Hey bro,

Read below for some legendary alpha. Surprised we haven’t started charging for this shit to be honest. Enjoy.

Market Indices & Commodities

Fiscal Policy
Biden Wants To Raise Taxes Again

Our resident retard, President Biden, wants to raise taxes yet again. He has already raised the likes of corporate tax and death tax, and now wants to raise capital gains tax.

And boy he is not just raising it, he is fucking sending it hardcore. To the highest ever in US history in fact. The number being thrown around is 44.6%, although this comes with ‘many asterisks and caveats’. Whatever that’s supposed to fucking mean.

Capital gains tax is at about 37% right now in the USA, at least that’s the highest possible bracket.

Fuck me. What is he doing. He’s really going to win votes with timely announcements like this. I so can’t wait to vote blue 👉👈

Earnings
US Futures Dive After Facebook Earnings Shocker

Long story short, Meta’s earnings yesterday were fucking shit. Its share price tanked by as much as 17% and it lost $200b in market cap. This was all due to poor revenue guidance and higher capital expenditure (capex) projections.

This sent US futures down too, after Meta’s shit results rippled into the share prices of other companies like Amazon and Alphabet. S&P futures went down 0.6%, and NASDAQ futures dipped by 1%.

Hopes for these massive tech stocks have been astronomical since the frenzy around AI powered Wall Street’s record-breaking rally. But, as I said in MMO, these companies are gonna struggle to live up to these massive expectations. These results, and the market’s reaction, is one of the first real examples of this. What will this mean for the future of tech stocks?

Technology
Silicon Valley AI Is Running On Coal

We all know that there are a ton of servers, which our tech relies on. In particular, AI uses these servers. And with the boom of AI, these servers are constantly running, this makes them hot, just like your phone gets hot after watching 3 hours of pornhub on full brightness.

So, these servers obviously need cooling, this is done by air-conditioning. You can probably work out the issue now: energy-hungry servers plus air con on full blast 24/7 uses a fuck ton of energy.

Officials who are in charge of the power grid are saying that the energy usage by these server farms is unsustainable, although there are a couple of solutions:

1. Hundreds of miles of new transmission lines must be built, cutting up neighborhoods and farms in 3 states.

2. Coal-powered electricity plants which are scheduled to close will need to keep running.

Considering these big Silicon Valley tech companies love to talk about how eco-friendly they are, you really have to ask what’s going on here. The irony is crazy. Why can’t they invest some of their billions in profit in some damn solar panels?

Crypto
DOJ Seeks 3 Years Prison For Binance Founder Zhao

US prosecutors want Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former CEO of Binance (the world’s largest crypto exchange) to serve 3 years in the joint after pleading guilty to laws surrounding money laundering.

Prosecutors said that sentencing Zhao to double the maximum of 18 months under federal guidelines would reflect the severity of his crimes.

Zhao is likely to be sentenced on April 30.

Zhao stepped down as CEO of Binance last November after admitting to evading anti-money laundering requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act. Binance then went on to agree to a $4.32b criminal penalty.

Prosecutors argue that Binance welcomed criminals and did not report over 100,000 suspicious transactions with designated terrorist groups including Hamas and ISIS.

I don’t know what this guy was thinking. Just not giving a fuck about terrorists moving their cash around on your platform seems like a shit idea. Obviously the feds are gonna catch on if you don’t report over 100,000 suspicious transactions.

Technology 
UK Watchdog Sus Of Microsoft’s And Amazon’s AI partnerships

Britain’s competition watchdog, The Competition and Markets Authority, said on Wednesday that they were taking a look at the AI partnerships between Microsoft and Mistral AI, as well as between Amazon and Anthropic.

The regulator said that they had not formed any conclusions as to whether the deals are within UK merger rules, or raised competition concerns.

Microsoft said they were confident everything was legit and said they’d give the above mentioned regulator any information they needed.

Amazon said that they were surprised by the actions, but will also comply.

Don’t ask me why the Brits are being so gay about this shit, I don’t get it either.

China
HSBC Says Growing Chinese Wealth Is Increasing Investment In US

HSBC’s wealthiest clients in Hong Kong and China are still keen on investing in the US, according to Michael Roberts, the bank’s CEO for the USA and the Americas.

China’s economic growth is still strong and its wealthy citizens are now focusing on foreign investments.

This all comes at a time when tensions between the US and China are higher than ever before. The wealthy Chinese evidently don’t care though, and just want to make some bread. Based.

HSBC manages roughly $1.8 trillion for wealthy clients, with a large part of this coming from Asia. HSBC also recently sold more than 200 of its US retail branches, in order to shift its focus to wholesale businesses and wealth.

Looks like some valid moves from China’s wealthiest. You love to see it.

Feature
Weinstein Conviction Overturned On Appeal

A New York Court of Appeals has overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction of felony sex crime charges. It was for these crimes that he was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

The court found that the trial judge in the case made a huge error, by allowing prosecutors to call a number of women as witnesses who said that Weinstein had assaulted them, but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.

Weinstein was convicted of sexually abusing over 100 women, and convicted of assaulting 2 of these women in the New York case.

This is obviously all massively controversial, and I don’t really know what to think. What do you think?

Thank you 
That’s all Folks

An extra long one for you guys today, hope you enjoyed x

Enjoy FMC tomorrow!