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🏦 Dear future analysts, Dear students, WeWork is pushing to go public after its failed IPO in 2019. Like many companies earlier this year, this will be conducted through a SPAC. The BowX Acquisition Corp will merge with WeWork, letting its shares jump by 20.3%. Turkey's major stock index BIST-100 declined by 9,6% this week as President Erdogan replaced the central bank governor Naci Agbal with Sahap Kavcioglu which, like the president, should favor unorthodox monetary policies. International investors' fears mainly stem from two main reasons: the first being that this underlines that Erdogan has the ultimate decision-making power in the system. Whereas the second is related to the fact that the government will, by any means, continue economic growth policies in order to maintain popular support, which presents the risk of uncontrolled inflation and a lack of transparency.   Don’t miss our the “Break Into Banking” conference with our partner AlumnEye! 🔥 Last week, reportedly a combination of human error and heavy winds led to the “Ever Given”, a 400-meter-long ship, getting stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal. Besides promising a durable competition on taste, alternative protein start-ups are now starting to compete on prices too. The company Impossible Food, for instance, announced last month that it would reduce the retail price of burgers in the US by 20 per cent.  The job as the governor of the turkish central bank (TCMB) has never been an easy one. With mounting pressure from the ruling party in order to align political needs with economic measures, the TCMB could often not fully use its powers and follow its strategy of long-term stability and growth. This phenomenon could be witnessed during the course of this week again. After lifting the central bank's one-week repo rate by 200 bps to a total of 19% in order to fight inflation and halt the free-fall of the lira, Mr. Naci Agba, the head of the TCMB, was dismissed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There is less than one week left before our next event with Garry Jensen, which will allow you to discover his career as a Wall Street Banker. Following recent events over the AstraZeneca vaccine, the European Commission has announced that it has already reached an agreement with Pfizer-BioNtech for an early delivery of 10 million doses of the vaccine. Originally, the doses were supposed to arrive in the third quarter of 2021, but under the new contract they will be available by the second quarter of the year. Ursula Von Der Leyen said this will put Q2 doses over 200 million. Moreover, in the same period, the EU is expecting 55 million doses from Johnson & Johnson and 35 million doses from Moderna. This news doesn’t affect the EU forecast on vaccine supplies: 300 million total doses are expected to be injected in the second quarter of 2021. The ultimate objective of Europe is to vaccinate 70% of the adult population, corresponding to at least 255 million people, by the end of summer.  In the last week, US bonds experienced a fresh bout of selling causing a generalized yield jump to the highest level since last February. On Friday the yield of the 10Y treasury was 1.63% and remained close to such a level throughout the day, this increase also caused a decline on the NASDAQ as mostly composed of growth companies. Overall, US government bonds have been under pressure since the start of the year as investors anticipate higher inflation and better than expected economic rebound in the 3 remaining quarters of 2021. After the US government signed the $1.9tn stimulus combined with the accelerated distribution of Covid Vaccine, many banks across the world have raised their forecasts for the US economic growth. This means an increase in GDP growth and a decrease in the unemployment rate provides an optimistic future after a very dreadful 2020. This bill includes direct payments of $1,400 to individuals earning $75000 or less, which will definitely increase the consumer’s spending. The unemployment benefit of $300 weekly will continue till September this year. All eyes of Wall Street are staring at Cathie Wood and her ARK Innovation ETF these days. But what makes the person and the fund so popular? Cathie Wood is managing an active ETF with more than $22bn and became recently popular as her fund gained over 148% last year. Her top holdings are Tesla, Square and Teladoc which were able to make massive gains especially through Robinhood traders, and led to a significant outperformance of the ARK Innovation ETF. She is also the topic of several Reddit forums like Queen Cathie or Cathie Bae. However, as many investors are turning their back on these growth stocks, Cathie Wood’s funds are massively exposed and facing losses of at least 18% since mid-February. How do you measure the value of the world’s most important commodity? Biden administration $1,9tn stimulus package has been approved by congress and will target the lower and middle class. The stimulus aid known as “the American Rescue Plan” will be one of the largest US interventions and has triggered strong opposition from the republican party, raising concerns around an eventual worldwide economic overheating.    Earlier this week, the Italian treasury issued a 24-year bond to finance investments with a positive environmental impact. The issuance marked a milestone because it was the first of such kind for the Italian government, but also because of its success. The issuance sold bonds for € 8.5 billion, but because of the high demand, orders reached over € 80 billion. Both these figures broke the records for “green” bonds issuances, highlighting one more time how much investors are now caring for the externalities of their investments, or at least about being labelled as “green”. 2021 has not been a great year for bonds so far, with yields on the rise everywhere in the market. However, as the high demand testifies, this issuance was highly appreciated by investors, because of the necessity to balance funds’ portfolios as well as its interesting yields. Two months after Britain’s actual departure from the EU on New Year’s Eve, the city of Amsterdam has emerged as the future possible leading financial centre for the next decade. As it can be seen from MSCI index - that follows equites trends in 27 countries – Emerging Market stocks had a peak last week, gaining almost 90 per cent in US dollar terms from their lowest point in March 2020. The rush was mainly due to investors’ search for returns after central bank stimulus brought developed markets’ interest rates to record lows. Australia’s legislators passed a new law this week, with the objective of making Tech companies pay for the news content: after this new provision, also other countries might be encouraged to enact an analogous law. Indeed, Canada, United Kingdom, and some European States could take Australia as an example and come up with similar legislations. The @gea_escp team, in collaboration with the ESCP Finance Society, is thrilled to announce its new online event: SUSTAINABLE FINANCE ROUNDTABLE! Coinbase, a digital currency exchange platform, where you can sell, buy and trade different forms of cryptocurrency, is aiming to list in late March. This long-awaited public listing was a result of the boom in the cryptocurrency market last year which revealed the company’s paperwork. Coinbase became profitable last year by generating a profit of $322m as compared to a loss of $30m in 2019, according to the US securities filings. 🏦 Dear future analysts, While still very far away from the finish line, Fundstrat Global Advisors’: Tom Lee makes "big talk" on a great oncoming market shift; in which Big Tech will greatly underperform on economically sensitive stocks. Founded by Cathie Wood in 2014, ARK is an investment fund whose mission is to find opportunities in highly innovative sectors such as robotics, genomics, automation, blockchain technology and aerospace.  The Nasdaq’s shrinkage may be just commencing. While still very far away from the finish line, Fundstrat Global Advisors’: Tom Lee makes "big talk" on a great oncoming market shift; in which Big Tech will greatly underperform on economically sensitive stocks. Analysts predict an industrial metal supercycle coming in. This led the markets to value metals at record highs as an international recovery glooms and demand expectations surge. Hence, copper hit its ten year high with a price of USD 8,930 per tonne at the London Metal Exchange on Friday. In the same way, aluminium and nickel spiked with their strongest levels since 2014 and 2018 respectively. During this week, Mario Draghi managed to obtain an overwhelming support from both houses of parliament in Italy. The new PM via various speeches immediately pledged to combine investments via EU funds and structural reforms to help Italy recover from one of its worst crises. The focus was also the plan to accelerate the struggling national COVID-19 vaccination program described as a key for recovery. From a geopolitical standpoint Draghi said he would work to progress further the integration of the country in the EU frameworks/system. His first objective is to define how Italy should spend the €210bn from the Next Generation EU recovery program, Mr. Draghi outlined the willingness to follow the path of the former government and focus on digitalization, ecological transition, research and training, and health. One key difference to be noted from the previous administration is that the current PM has pledged that the current government will be “strongly pro-European and Atlanticist, in line with Italy’s historical anchors”. Three economic indicators are showing bullish signs this week. First, 30-year treasuries were bought massively by investors, which led to a difference in the respective yield to five year treasuries of 147 basis points. Thus, the US yield curve was pushed to its steepest slope since mid 2015. Second, the gap between two- and ten-year treasuries widened in the same manner to 101 basis points. Lastly, the ten-year break-even rate (derived from inflation protected US government securities) now trades at 218 basis points, its highest rate since 2018. South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai-KIA and Apple are close to finalizing a deal to produce an Apple-branded autonomous electric vehicle at the Kia assembly line in Georgia, USA. If the deal goes through, the production of the so-called “Apple Car'' is scheduled to go into production around 2024. Apple shares rose more than 2.1%, Kia around 13.9% after the news-release on Wednesday. Besides Hyundai-KIA, Apple is also working with other car manufacturers for a partnership. GameStop shares (GME) faces losses of more than 80% this week, as well as other Reddit /WallStreetBets hyped stocks like AMC (-48.5%), Bed Bath & Beyond (-24.9%), and Tootsie Roll (-21.1%). Many young stock traders have sold their positions in these stocks so that this rally is probably petering out. Traders who have not sold their positions are facing massive losses in their GME, AMC and co. positions which could massively damage the trust in the stock market.
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The ESCP Finance Society is the oldest and largest student-run Association active in the finance field of ESCP Business School.

The mission of the ESCP Finance Society is to help ESCP students to break into the Finance Industry, organising dedicated networking events and providing useful materials to support the application and interview process.

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