Hi Reader, here's what you need to know for July 30th in 3:02 minutes.

😴 It’s all bitcoin this, bitcoin that these days. But Grayscale’s Rayhaneh Sharif-Askary thinks ether deserves some love too – especially considering how much it could be worth by 2030. Rayhaneh will be joining us for An Intro To Investing In Ethereum on August 12th, and you should too. Get your ticket here

Today's big stories

Amazon's earnings came in below expectations as bricks and mortar stores reopen their doors
Almost everyone agrees stocks won't climb much further, but one world-leading strategist thinks the only way is up – Read Now
Fresh data showed the US economy grew less than expected last quarter

Mom And Flop

What’s Going On Here?

Amazon announced weaker-than-expected quarterly earnings late on Thursday, and the tech giant’s stock fell 5% as the pandemic continues to weigh on the little guys the hardest.

What Does This Mean?

Amazon’s ecommerce business has done seriously well from the rise of stay-at-home shopping, but that momentum was only ever going to stumble when stores reopened. And right on cue, the segment’s revenue only grew 16% last quarter compared to the same period in 2020 – a significant slowdown from the 44% of the quarter before. On the plus side, at least the working-from-home trend is still going strong despite the loosening of restrictions. That suits Amazon’s cloud computing segment – whose sales grew by a better-than-expected 37% last quarter – just fine.

Why Should I Care?

For markets: If it’s not one thing, it’s another.
In-flux lockdown restrictions are having the most significant impact on Amazon’s share price right now, but something else entirely could be driving its stock before too long. Speculation is rife that Amazon will start accepting bitcoin as a payment method as soon as next year. And if it does, its stock price might start to correlate with the OG crypto’s price – just like it did with Tesla's.

Zooming out: Is Robinhood a steal?
The arrival of a big-hitter like Amazon onto the crypto market could also drive up trading volumes, which would be good news for commission-free trading apps like Robinhood. And it could certainly do with some: the company made its stock market debut on Thursday at $38 a share – the low end of what it had hoped for. That "only" valued the entire company at $33 billion, and its shareholders – many of whom were customers – were disappointed: Robinhood’s stock fell 8% on its first day of trading.

You might also like: Here’s what “AmazonPrimeCoin” could mean for the company and the crypto market.

Copy to share story: https://www.finimize.com/wp/news/mom-and-flop/

🙋 Ask a question

2. Analyst Take

Why Does This Strategist Think The Only Way Is Up?

What’s Going On Here?

US stocks are up 17% this year, and they’ve been setting record highs almost every day lately.

The market’s so strong, in fact, that the average Wall Street strategist now thinks stocks are bound to pull back by the end of 2021.

Not Michael Purves: the Tallbacken Capital analyst just increased his year-end target for the S&P 500 to a massive 4,800 – nearly 10% above the current level.

And naturally, we wanted to know why.

So that’s our interview for today: why Michael thinks stocks have so much higher to climb, and his thoughts on bitcoin’s price too.

Read or listen to the Insight here

That portfolio is so you

Look, no one knows what kind of investor you are better than you.

That’s why InvestEngine launched its DIY portfolios: to give you a way to invest just the way you like.

Here’s how it works:

Choose from a handpicked range of ETFs. There are over 150 of them: they’re low-cost and diversified, and cover stock markets, bonds, and commodities.

Personalize your portfolio. You get to dictate the balance you want in your portfolio, adjusting where and how much money you invest.

Let your investments do their thing. You can trust InvestEngine’s smart technology to buy and sell based on your portfolio weights when you want it to.

Throw in commission-free investing, one-click rebalancing, and a simple-to-use app, and you’ll be totally in control every step of the way.

Check out InvestEngine’s DIY portfolios here.

Choose Your DIY Portfolio