Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from September, 2018

Another Euro Crisis? Here's What Markets Are Saying About Italy

Italy’s stocks and bonds came under  intense pressure   on Friday, with the plunge in the country’s banks wiping $10 billion off their market value. Those who remember the chaos of the euro region’s sovereign debt crisis will be asking, whether this is the start of something much worse. Here’s what financial markets are telling us. Bond Risks The selloff in the nation’s 10-year bonds drove yields up the most since May -- a time when the Five Star Movement and the League parties were forming their coalition, and holding talks with euroskeptics who had  floated the idea  of leaving the euro area. The good news is that the hard-line rhetoric has faded somewhat, meaning the concern in markets is about the size of Italy’s debt load, rather than the risk that it leaves the currency bloc. This is reflected in Italy’s 10-year yield spread over German bunds. That gauge is hovering at around 270 basis points, still short of the year’s highs of around 323 basis points. And this week’s sell

Steve Jobs licensed Amazon’s one-click patent for $1 million in one phone call

In 1999, Amazon—then merely “ Earth’s biggest bookstore ” rather than a corporate beast that shall soon devour everything in its path—introduced and patented one-click payments. This was in the early days of e-commerce when people were fearful of sending their credit-card details online. One-click processing allowed the startup to keep customers’ billing details on file so that they could make instant purchases. That feature quickly came to Apple in 2000 in one of the earliest versions of its online store. “Licensing Amazon.com’s 1-Click patent and trademark will allow us to offer our customers an even easier and faster online buying experience,” Steve Jobs said at the time. A Wired magazine oral history of Infinite Loop, Apple’s corporate offices in Cupertino, California for most of its existence, tells the behind-the-scenes story of that decision. It was made with the usual gusto that Jobs—back at Apple for three years after having been thrown out of his own company—was known

Amazon at $1 Trillion Pushes Bezos’s 2018 Gain to $67 Billion

Gain in his net worth more than FedEx’s market capitalization Amazon briefly became America’s second trillion-dollar company Jeff Bezos   Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg SHARE THIS ARTICLE  Share  Tweet  Post  Email In this article AMZN AMAZON.COM INC 2,012.71 USD +0.00 +0.00% FDX FEDEX CORP 241.24 USD -2.71 -1.11% GOOGL ALPHABET INC-A 1,214.63 USD -17.17 -1.39% DIS WALT DISNEY CO 111.21 USD -0.81 -0.72% FOXA TWENTY-FIRST C-A 45.37 USD -0.03 -0.07% Amazon.com Inc.  briefly became America’s second trillion-dollar company on Tuesday after adding $434 billion to its market cap this year. No one has benefited more than founder  Jeff Bezos , who has added $67 billion to his fortune this year, giving him a $167 billion net worth on the  Bloomberg Billionaires Index  as of 12:30 p.m. in New York on Tuesday. Here are six ways to put that $