To The Moon

Finally Arrived. On Tue, 25 Jun 2024 - Microsoft finally came face-to-face with a hefty antitrust fine, after the European Commission accused the IT giant of illegally linking its chat and video app “Teams” with its Office product. It was first reported by Reuters back in April 2024 that the EU was preparing the charges. It finally happened. It has been 20 years since Microsoft was last fined by the EU. The EU competition watchdog's latest action was triggered by a 2020 complaint from rival workspace messaging app Slack, owned by $Salesforce.com(CRM)$ . The Complaint. In 2017, MS Teams was added to Office 365, free. It replaced Skype for Business, subsequently. Team’s popularity soared during the pandemic due in part to its video conferencing featu

At first when I read the post, I was surprised too and not happy about it. (see below) This is because I am rooting for Google Cloud, for selfish reasons of course ! On closer reading and research into Acceleration Economy - Cloud War Minutes, I realized that they have their proprietary ranking system. Ranking Benchmark: Market share and Growth. Product portfolio and Innovation. Customer focus and Satisfaction. Global reach and Scale. Their Top 10 Cloud providers: Microsoft. Google Cloud. Oracle. Amazon. SAP. ServiceNow. Workday. Salesforce. IBM. Snowflake. Needless to say, I became suspicious by the time I research until here but I decided to press on, with an “open mind”. Hopefully I could learn something new along the way. Oracle ranking justification. Their argument centred squarely on

* Nasdaq ends higher on strength in technology stocks; Hong Kong stocks rise on bargain hunting. 🇺🇸 S&P 500: 0.39% 📈 🇺🇸 Nasdaq: 1.26% 📈 🇪🇺 Stoxx 600 Index: -0.23% 📉 🇯🇵 Nikkei 225 Index: 0.95% 📈 🇭🇰 Hang Seng Index: 0.25% 📈 🇨🇳 CSI 300 Index: -0.54% 📉 * U.S. markets were upbeat on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rising 0.4% and 1.3%, respectively, driven by strong performance by shares of Nvidia and other technology giants, while the broader chip industry outperformed, The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 1.8%. * U.S. consumer confidence fell to 100.4 in June 2024 from 101.3 in May, in line with expectations as consumers faced rising costs of living, higher borrowing costs and a softening labor market. * Asia-Pacific stocks closed mixed, with the Hang Seng up 0.3%

Recently, semiconductor company stock prices have significantly pullbacked, among which:Lithography giant $ASML Holding NV(ASML)$ corrected 22.5%; $Applied Materials(AMAT)$ , the world's largest semiconductor equipment company, saw an 11% pullback; $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ pullbacked 23.6%;Chip contract manufacturing giant $Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing(TSM)$ back 19.4%...What happened? Is this semiconductor pullback a buying opportunity?In general, the main reason for this wave of semiconductor pullback is that semiconductor fundamentals cannot match skyrocketing stock prices.For example, Applied Materials, befo