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Today's big stories

Airbnb’s stock market debut saw its shares jump even higher
New data suggests one secretive, Bill Gates-backed company is about to leave Tesla looking seriously out-of-date – Read Now
The US government sued Facebook for abusing its power

Home Sweet Home

What’s Going On Here?

Airbnb finally moved onto the stock market on Thursday, and investors loved what the house-sharing company had done with the place: its shares initially more than doubled.

What Does This Mean?

It almost goes without saying that pandemic-stalled travel has made life difficult for Airbnb, but the company surprised everyone last quarter by actually turning a profit, thanks to now-in-vogue “staycations”. Throw in the fact that some of its employees’ options were set to expire by the end of the year – which would leave their hard-earned stakes in the business worthless – and Airbnb thought it was about time it sold its shares to the public.

And boy did those shares sell: Airbnb raised $3.4 billion from its initial public offering (IPO), setting the overall company valuation at $47 billion. That’s not just one of the biggest US IPOs of the year, it also marks a massive step up from the $18 billion the firm was valued at in April.

Why Should I Care?

For markets: Confidence boost.
Airbnb upped its starting share price twice ahead of its stock market debut, which is a sign that investors are confident both in the company itself and in the travel industry’s eventual recovery (tweet this). That confidence could now spill over into other travel companies like Booking.com and Expedia – especially since their shares are looking cheaper than Airbnb’s.

The bigger picture: There’s nowhere to hide.
The sharing economy is facing more scrutiny these days: the UK government, for one, announced on Wednesday it’s going to start being stricter about taxing Airbnb’s landlords. They’re not employed by the company itself and don’t earn enough to incur the government’s “value-added tax”, which means anyone booking with them avoids paying an extra 20% on the basic fee. Now, though, that extra income sure could come in handy for a country with a $500 billion-shaped hole in its budget this year…

You might also like: How to profit from Airbnb’s dynamic debut.

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2. Analyst Take

How A Secretive Company Is Making Tesla Look Obsolete

What’s Going On Here?

For all their improvements over the past decade, electric vehicle batteries still trail internal combustion engines on pretty much every performance metric.

So if full-scale, fossil-fuel-free car adoption is going to become a reality, we’re going to need a new type of technology: a so-called “solid-state battery”.

That much has been obvious for a while, but it’s taken until this year for one company to actually make one – and it’s just released the data to back it up.

Bill Gates has thrown tens of millions of dollars behind it, while Volkswagen – the world’s biggest car company – has already agreed to put its batteries in all future EVs.

And no, it’s not Tesla.

You’ll have to check out today’s Insight to find out what the company is, and how you can invest in it.

Read or listen to the Insight here

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If you’re running a business, you know that accepting paper and plastic is important. Credit card payments might look more complicated than cash, but processing them doesn’t have to be – at least not with Square.

Their point of sale has everything you need and nothing you don’t. No unnecessary clutter, no hidden fees, and no long-term contracts. You only pay when you make a sale.

That means it’s easy for everybody to use, not just brain surgeons and rocket scientists – though those clever cookies are probably part of the two million businesses that run on Square’s point of sale, just saying.

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Will They, Won’t They?

What’s Going On Here?

Facebook’s relationship with the US got a lot more complicated on Wednesday, after the country filed lawsuits pushing the social network to break up once and for all.

What Does This Mean?

In two separate lawsuits, the antitrust regulator and almost every US state alleged that Facebook has a monopoly in the social networking market. They’re claiming the company has either bought or tried to buy smaller firms in a bid to snuff out potential competitors before they get a chance to live up to that potential. More specifically, they’re targeting two of Facebook’s major acquisitions – Instagram and WhatsApp – in hopes they can force the company to unwind them altogether.

Facebook, for its part, invoked the long-established “no takey-backsies” principle: the company pointed out that both acquisitions were investigated and approved in 2012 and 2014 respectively by the very same regulators suing them, and that this whole thing is just an unnecessary excuse for a do-over.

Why Should I Care?

For markets: Firing blanks.
Investigations and lawsuits into Big Tech’s dominance are launching left, right, and center these days, but this lawsuit makes Facebook the first of the bunch to be hit with a breakup order. Investors might want to keep things in perspective, though: if the previous notable attempt by lawmakers to break up a company – the US vs. Microsoft in 1998 – is anything to go by, it’ll be a very slow process with a very anticlimactic ending.

The bigger picture: Accept no imitations.
The lawsuit from America’s various states also focuses on Facebook’s data collection efforts, alleging the company is able to do what it likes with users’ data as long as they have no better alternative. And because Facebook has so much of that data at its fingertips, it’ll be able to keep building a customised experience other platforms just can’t copy – keeping them out of the loop for good.

You might also like: How much Facebook is worth without Instagram and Whatsapp

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🙋 Ask a question

💬 Quote of the day

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”

– Harriet Tubman (an American abolitionist and political activist)

Tweet this

🔒 Keep your crypto safe with Ledger

Cryptocurrencies are booming. But before you dive in, you should know how important safety and security are to the crypto-verse.

Together with Ledger, we’ve created a series of guides on cryptocurrencies – and part three, How To Hold Cryptocurrency Safely, will show you exactly how to keep your crypto safe. Spoiler: it’s all to do with keys and where you keep them.

That’s what Ledger do: they make super-secure hardware wallets for safe key storage – and you’ll get 20% off with code FINIMIZE20 (there are only 1,000 of them available). They offer an all-in-one app too, which will let you manage your crypto with ease: you can buy, sell, and exchange all in one place.

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🌍 Finimize Community

🏠 Show yourself out, 2020

There are only a few weeks to go in 2020, and we for one couldn’t be happier to see it behind us. But don’t let it be smug about ruining things for us: set yourself up for an even better next twelve months by, say, attending a couple of super-useful Finimize events. 2020 will hate that.

🚘 Rally Rd Founder on Alternative Investing: 1pm New York Time, December 15th
💊 Are Psychedelics the New Weed Stocks? w/ ex-Canopy CEO: 1pm New York Time, December 17th

📚 What we're reading

Everyone hates celebrities now (Vice)
Luminous mice saved us from coronavirus (Mel)
You don’t really know how to code, you just think you do (Still Drinking)

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Finimize - 😨 Tesla should be afraid, very afraid

Today's big stories

Home Sweet Home

What’s Going On Here?

What Does This Mean?

Why Should I Care?

How A Secretive Company Is Making Tesla Look Obsolete

Process payment rectangles with Square 💳

Will They, Won’t They?

What’s Going On Here?

What Does This Mean?

Why Should I Care?

🔒 Keep your crypto safe with Ledger

🏠 Show yourself out, 2020

Older messages

🥘 DoorDash’s IPO delivers

📈 BlackRock can’t wait for 2021

🇨🇳 China just keeps winning

😭 Dreadful US job numbers

🎉 Thanks for everything Reader - get 70% off Premium today

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