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Today's big stories

Meta posted a mixed set of quarterly results
Our analyst has laid out why the beleaguered Japanese yen could be about to make a comeback – Read Now
Deutsche Bank reported its highest quarterly profit in nearly a decade

Reality Check

What’s Going On Here?

Meta reported a mixed set of quarterly results late on Wednesday, even as the tech giant tries to bring new meaning to the phrase “online shopping”.

What Does This Mean?

Meta’s last earnings update was a disaster: the company’s stock price collapsed 25% after Facebook posted a drop-off in active users, triggering the biggest one-day valuation drop in US history. But the scrappy underdog has picked itself back up again, posting 6% more monthly active users across all its platforms than the same time last year. Its Reality Labs segment – which specializes in VR and the metaverse – performed well too, with revenue up 30%. And sure, Meta’s ad revenue missed expectations, probably partly because it decided to focus on formats like Reels – a short-form video that tends to earn less ad revenue than Feed and Stories. Still, more users is more ad revenue up for grabs, and Meta’s shares initially jumped 19%.

Why Should I Care?

The bigger picture: Your body is holding you back.
There’s a lot resting on the success of the metaverse for Meta, but the company has some work to do on that front: its metaverse brand Horizon Worlds only has 300,000 users to Facebook’s 3 billion-odd. So to get the word out, the company announced this week that it’ll be opening its first-ever retail store in California next month. It’ll use the store to showcase its virtual reality headsets and other hardware, in hopes of convincing you to abandon your feeble corporeal form once and for all.

Zooming out: Snap vs. TikTok.
Meta’s not the only one with advertising problems: Snap reported worse-than-expected results last week, as rising inflation took its toll on companies’ marketing budgets. That’s the last thing it needed after Apple rolled out new privacy settings that have made it harder for companies to target their campaigns to the right prospects. Throw in stiff competition from Gen Z-favorite TikTok, and its outlook for this quarter missed expectations too.

You might also like: Meta is betting big on the metaverse. Should you be too?

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Analyst Take

Can The Yen Pull Itself Back Together?

Stéphane Renevier, Analyst

What’s Going On Here?

The Japanese yen is quickly becoming one of the biggest macro stories of 2022.

The currency has fallen 11% versus the US dollar, and it’s hit lows not seen for more than 20 years.

There are a few reasons for that, chief among them that investors are abandoning the country – which has managed to keep inflation low – for those with higher interest rates.

But with everyone betting heavily against the yen, is it time to be contrarian and buy the dip?

That’s today’s Insight: why Japan’s currency has fallen from grace, and whether you should buy the dip.

Read or listen to the Insight here

The $5 million crypto bet

Crypto might be volatile, but that hasn’t stopped some of the world’s top investors from buying in.

Bill Gates, for one, has called bitcoin a “technological tour de force”, and Elon Musk has bought more than his fair share of bitcoin, ether, and – yup – dogecoin.

And now The Motley Fool has joined them: it just used its own money to buy $5 million worth of one cryptocurrency that it thinks could go the distance.

The Motley Fool tells you which coin it bought – and why – here.

Find Out More