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Today's big stories

Chinese online retailer JD.com reported better-than-expected results, and its future is looking bright
The world’s first psychedelics-focused ETF has arrived, but there are reasons to be cautious – Read Now
Burberry lifted its sales forecast for this quarter, in one of several signs that luxury retail is bouncing back

The Online Shoppers’ Republic Of China

What’s Going On Here?

Online retail giant JD.com reported better-than-expected results late last week, after China proved it’s ready, willing, and able to lean into a digital future.

What Does This Mean?

The pandemic’s driven a drop-off in window shopping, sure, but JD.com’s been happy to make the most of the spike in Windows shopping: the online retailer reported an expectation-beating 31% sales jump last quarter. Still, investors weren’t exactly delighted to hear it’ll be spending big to maintain and expand its delivery network, which they’re worried will eat into the company’s profit. JD.com might take issue with that, mind you: the second-biggest Chinese ecommerce retailer’s in-house delivery network is exactly what sets it apart from the biggest, Alibaba, which relies on third-party couriers.

Why Should I Care?

The bigger picture: Chinese ecommerce is where it’s at.
The shift to online shopping is one of the trends that’s expected to outlast the pandemic, and China looks like it’ll be leading the way. This year, in fact, it’s forecast to make 52% of its retail sales online – a big jump from 2019’s 29%, and an even bigger one from the 15% and 13% expected this year in the US and West Europe (tweet this). Better still, that would make China the first country where more sales are made online than in person. And when you consider that favorable backdrop, it might make sense why 92% of authors on data platform Nobias Financial are feeling positive about JD.com’s stock.

For you personally: You can now buy into South Korea’s biggest ecommerce player.
The country with the next-best ecommerce rate is South Korea, with 29% of retail sales expected to be made online this year. That probably worked in Coupang’s favor late last week: the so-called “Amazon of South Korea” – which almost doubled its revenues in the past year – saw its shares climb 41% on its debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

You might also like: How to profit from China’s economic recovery.

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2. Analyst Take

Is The World’s First Psychedelics ETF A Dope Buy?

What’s Going On Here?

The world’s first psychedelics exchange-traded fund – known as PSYK – has arrived, giving you a way to buy into mooted disruptors of the $70 billion mental healthcare market.

Psychedelics, remember, could effectively rewire the brain to cure depression and opioid addiction, among other things. That opens up a lot of potential for shroom stocks.

But it also makes sense to diversify across a basket of them: one bad clinical outcome could, after all, be disastrous for a fledgling company’s share price.

That’s not to say PSYK itself doesn’t come with shortcomings: it’s pretty pricey, for one. But if you’re keen on the sector, there’s a workaround for that.

So that’s our Insight today: if PSYK is actually a good investment, and why you might want to build your own basket of psychedelics stocks instead.

Read or listen to the Insight here

Time to up your presentation game

All credit to tech companies: they’ve ironed out a lot of WFH kinks in the past year.

But let’s face it, a slick, socially distanced presentation is still hard to come by.

So thank goodness for Pitch. With Pitch’s presentation software, you can create engaging, professional, on-brand presentations quickly and collaboratively.

Upload your brand colors and fonts, use templates to quickly create quality slides, and collaborate from anywhere in real time.

Pitch even integrates with Unsplash and Giphy, so you can add images and GIFs straight from your presentation. You can embed YouTube videos and import data from Google Sheets too.

See it for yourself: try Pitch for free.

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Resting Rich Face

What’s Going On Here?

Don’t be fooled by Burberry’s sultry pout: the British fashion house is feeling so optimistic about the luxury industry that it lifted its sales forecast for the quarter on Friday.

What Does This Mean?

It’s famously counterintuitive to get all dressed up with nowhere to go, and there really has been nowhere to go. So it stands to reason that the pandemic has taken its toll on luxury retailers like Burberry. Lucky for them, the world’s fatcats – particularly those in China and South Korea – are starting to splash out again, which might be why Burberry’s expecting sales to be up by nearly a third this quarter compared to the same time last year. That’s both a big rebound from last quarter’s 9% drop and more than analysts were predicting, and that suited investors just fine: they sent Burberry’s stock up 8% – back to pre-pandemic levels.

Why Should I Care?

For markets: Luxury retail really does look like it’s bouncing back.
Burberry can’t take all the credit for that positive investor reaction: other luxury brands – like Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica – brought their own promising news for the sector last week. They said their sales were all boosted by strong demand from Asian customers last quarter too, doubling down on Burberry’s evidence that luxury retail might finally have turned a corner.

The bigger picture: Luxury’s all about ecommerce and big-name brands.
Analysts at GAM Investments have pointed out that the pandemic's accelerated two previously underlying trends in the luxury industry. First, the rise of ecommerce: the sector saw a decade’s worth of growth in the sector in just three months, with online sales doubling from before the outbreak. And second, the power of brand: big names like Louis Vuitton, Dior and Chanel have been winning market share off lesser-known rivals, and they might not give it up any time soon.

You might also like: Three things you should know about luxury retail stocks.

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💬 Quote of the day

“Mistakes are part of the game. It’s how well you recover from them, that’s the mark of a great player.”

– Alice Cooper (an American singer, songwriter, and actor)

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📚 What we're reading

At last, the perfect cookie (The Takeout)
Save $500 on your next adventure (Dollar Flight Club)*
If there’s life in space, this is how we’ll find it (Nautilus)
Hugging is a thing of the past (Mel)

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Finimize - 🤩 Psychedelics are dope

Today's big stories

The Online Shoppers’ Republic Of China

What’s Going On Here?

What Does This Mean?

Why Should I Care?

Is The World’s First Psychedelics ETF A Dope Buy?

Time to up your presentation game

Resting Rich Face

What’s Going On Here?

What Does This Mean?

Why Should I Care?

Invest your money, make a difference

🍪 Take the lead on our events

Older messages

💅 BlackRock: gold is pointless

📈 Game on, Roblox

🏀 Tech stocks bounce back

💥 Oil goes boom

📈 The US boom is back

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