Finimize - ☃️ Less Omicron, more snowmicron

Hi Reader, here's what you need to know for December 9th in 3:14 minutes.

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Today's big stories

Visa announced plans to launch a crypto advisory service
Our analyst has some tips on how to put Omicron, inflation, and all that chaos out of your mind for the Christmas break – Read Now
Commodity trading firm Trafigura reported record profit

Man’s Best Friend

What’s Going On Here?

Who said old dogs can’t learn new tricks: Visa announced on Wednesday that it’s planning to launch a cryptocurrency advisory service.

What Does This Mean?

Visa’s been backed up against a wall recently: young-blooded fintech firms have been putting the payments company under more and more pressure, while Amazon’s just gone and blocked UK customers from using the firm’s credit cards. That’s got Visa looking for new ways to earn a buck, and it’s landed on crypto as the solution. The company probably realizes the market’s only headed one way: one of its own studies has shown that nearly a third of participants have either invested in or made payments with crypto.

So Visa announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a crypto advisory service, which will advise everything from businesses to central banks (tweet this). And the company thinks it’s well-qualified to dole out some worldly wisdom: it processed $3.5 billion of digital currency transactions between October 2020 and September 2021, and it’s already worked with with over 60 crypto platforms.

Why Should I Care?

The bigger picture: Visa wants some stability in its life.
Visa did admit that payment platforms might never accept crypto as a form of payment in light of its price swings, but it’s less skeptical of stablecoins – virtual currencies that are pegged to the value of traditional currencies and are therefore less volatile. The company already accepts them as a way of settling payments, and it said it intends to go one step further by developing a range of stablecoin-focused products.

Zooming out: You can teach a new dog new tricks too.
Square is likewise leaning into crypto: the payment rival announced last week that it's changing its name to Block – a pretty on-the-nose nod toward crypto’s underlying blockchain technology. The company’s even reportedly considering building a bitcoin mining system, as well as a decentralized crypto exchange for trading bitcoin and other assets.

You might also like: Why stablecoins are set to disrupt the crypto industry.

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Analyst Take

How To Switch Off From The Markets This Christmas

Andrew, Analyst

What’s Going On Here?

There’s only a couple of weeks left before markets close for Christmas.

And investors have been all set for December’s typical “Santa rally”, as fund managers buy well-performing stocks and sell off the weaklings to end the year on a high.

No such luck: investors hoping for a soothing end to the year have just been battered by the sharpest bout of volatility in 10 months.

Stocks, after all, have just been hit by a double whammy: the appearance of the Omicron variant, and anxiety-inducing comments from Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.

And with Omicron spreading like wildfire, US inflation data due on Friday, and the Fed’s last meeting of 2021 due next week, you’ll want to prepare for more volatility to arrive.

So that’s today’s Insight: five tips to get your portfolio straight before the Christmas break, so you can have a very happy holidays.

Read or listen to the Insight here