13 May 2024 – The Fund Society

US adopts new rules on power line rollout as electricity demand rises

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Stellantis in talks with Vale to invest in Indonesian nickel smelter

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Jeremy Hunt bets on creating a $1tn ‘British Microsoft’

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Hess investors advised to abstain from vote on $53bn Chevron deal

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Visualizing Global Losses from Financial Scams

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May 13, 2024 Article/Editing:

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

Visualizing Global Losses from Financial Scams

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Last year, financial scams led to almost half a trillion dollars in losses worldwide, roughly equal to the GDP of Singapore.

As fintech has advanced globally, cyber-criminals have exploited various platforms in complex attacks. Often, they will steal customers’ account information on digital payment systems and online banking sites as a highly lucrative form of attack.

This graphic shows the scale of financial losses from scams and schemes, based on data from Nasdaq’s Global Financial Crime Report for 2024.

The Most Common Types of Financial Scams

In 2023, there were $485.6 billion lost in total from financial scams, and below we break down the specific scams that generated the biggest losses:

Type of Financial Scam/Scheme
Global Losses (USD) Payments Fraud$386.8B Credit Card Fraud$28.6B Check Fraud$26.6B Advance Fee Scams$19.1B Cyber-enabled Scams$10.0B Impersonation Scams$6.8B Employment Scams$3.9B Confidence Scams$3.8B Total$485.6B Payments Fraud the Top Financial Scam

Payments fraud makes up a staggering 80% of the total. This type of fraud occurs when payment methods are illegally manipulated to deceive or steal from a person or business.

One example of a key risk point for payments fraud are real-time payments. Here, fraudsters exploit payment systems through rerouting fund transfers. Along with this, cyber-criminals will use “banking trojans” as a primary weapon to hack account information. This type of attack lures users to click on a malicious PDF file, website, or app which steals information on a device.

Interestingly, a separate analysis showed that Brazil was the top country in the world for banking trojan scams, with 1.8 million attempted attacks over the course of June 2022 to July 2023.

Going further, business email compromise, a type of payments fraud, was the source of $6.7 billion in losses in 2023. These types of scams involve fraudsters masquerading as legitimate businesses to deceive unsuspecting customers into sending payments into fraudulent accounts.

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GameStop soars in meme stock flashback as ‘Roaring Kitty’ reappears

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Shares of video game retailer GameStop almost doubled in value on Monday after a single post by a social media account named “Roaring Kitty”, in a frenzy that recalled the “meme stock” craze at the start of the decade.

Roaring Kitty is the account on social media platform X of Keith Gill, a day trader whose videos during the meme-stock bubble encouraged millions of others into the market, in turn propelling stocks such as GameStop to dizzying heights.

Gill’s account, inactive since June 2021, came back to life on Sunday when it posted a posted a meme of a man leaning forwards in his chair, an image that GameStop had posted on its own X account in February. The post had been viewed more than 14mn times by midday in New York.

GameStop’s shares, which had already climbed by more than 60 per cent between May 1 and Friday, soared by as much as 118 per cent in early trading on Monday. After being halted by rules designed to stop excess volatility in single stocks, the gains had eased to about 70 per cent at midday.

Monday’s jump suggests “there’s still a cult of equity” for some retail investors, said Kevin Gordon, a senior investment strategist at Charles Schwab.

GameStop became an emblem of the meme-stock turmoil when its price rose by as much as 2,400 per cent in 2021.

Gill, who is also known on Reddit as DeepFuckingValue, had in 2020 drawn attention to the sizeable bets against the company, correctly predicting that a price increase could force short sellers to buy the stock to cover their large short positions.

One of the highest-profile victims of the short squeeze was New York hedge fund Melvin Capital, which lost 53 per cent of fund’s value that January. Gill’s former employer, the insurer MassMutual, was later fined $4mn for failing to oversee his social media use.

Investors in so-called meme stocks also targeted other businesses whose shares were heavily shorted in 2021, including AMC Entertainment and BlackBerry. Both of those companies climbed on Monday, with AMC Entertainment shares up 44 per cent by midday and BlackBerry up 7 per cent.

“But it’s not a clear frenzy across the board,” Gordon said, noting that prices for cryptocurrencies and other so-called speculative assets remained subdued on the day.

Data from S&P Global

The revived craze for GameStop is confusing Wall Street. It’s ‘not in a position to be profitable’

The return of “Roaring Kitty” sparked a jaw-dropping advance in GameStop shares Monday, but such a speculative rally in an unprofitable company will likely end badly once again. Roaring Kitty, the man who inspired the meme stock mania of 2021, resurfaced online with a cryptic image showing a man in a chair leaning forward. That was enough to spark a buying frenzy among amateur traders. Shares of GameStop traded as high as 110% higher with a slew of trading halts for volatility. However, from a fundamental standpoint, the brick-and-mortar video game company isn’t deserving of such a pop in the stock price. In late March, GameStop said it cut an unspecified number of jobs to reduce costs and reported lower fourth-quarter revenue amid rising competition from e-commerce-based competitors. “I don’t know of anything fundamental that would drive the stock this high,” Michael Pachter, Wedbush analyst covering GameStop, told CNBC. “They are not in a position to be profitable.” “They made $6 million last year and burned cash,” Pachter said. “We expect them to lose $100 million a year going forward. It’s a race to see if they can close stores fast enough to limit losses, but they have no plan that would suggest they can grow revenues or profits, and their core business is in decline.” GME 5D mountain GameStop Pachter has a underperform rating on GameStop and a $5.60 price target. At Monday’s peak, GameStop hit $38.20. During 2021’s mania, GameStop shares hit an all-time high of $120.75 intraday, adjusted for a subsequent 4-for-1 stock split in the summer of 2022. But as interest from individual investors eventually faded, the stock collapsed along with other meme names. GameStop hit a three-year low of $9.95 last month. The revival of the meme stock craze is happening at a relatively quiet time for the broader market, with the first-quarter earnings season winding down and about a month away from the next Federal Reserve policy meeting. The Cboe Volatility Index , known as the VIX or Wall Street’s fear gauge, shot above 20 last month but it’s been trading around 13 as of late. Jeff deGraaf, chairman and CEO of Renaissance Macro Research, said while he’s not at all involved in the GameStop trade, he could be looking to take advantage of the wild swings in meme stocks. “We don’t traffic in

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Charting the Next Generation of Internet

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May 13, 2024 Graphics & Design Could Tomorrow’s Internet be Streamed from Space?

In 2023, 2.6 billion people could not access the internet. Today, companies worldwide are looking to innovative technology to ensure more people are online at the speed of today’s technology.

Could satellite internet provide the solution?

In collaboration with MSCI, we embarked on a journey to explore whether tomorrow’s internet could be streamed from space.

Satellite Internet’s Potential Customer Base

Millions of people live in rural communities or mobile homes, and many spend much of their lives at sea or have no fixed abode. So, they cannot access the internet simply because the technology is unavailable.

Satellite internet gives these communities access to the internet without requiring a fixed location. Consequently, the volume of people who could get online using satellite internet is significant:

AreaPotential Subscribers Households Without Internet Access600,000,000 RVs 11,000,000 Recreational Boats8,500,000 Ships100,000 Commercial Aircraft25,000 Advances in Satellite Technology

Satellite internet is not a new concept. However, it has only recently been that roadblocks around cost and long turnaround times have been overcome.

NASA’s space shuttle, until it was retired in 2011, was the only reusable means of transporting crew and cargo into orbit. It cost over $1.5 billion and took an average of 252 days to launch and refurbish.

In stark contrast, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 can now launch objects into orbit and maintain them at a fraction of the time and cost, less than 1% of the space shuttle’s cost.

Average Rocket Turnaround TimeAverage Launch/Refurbishment Cost Falcon 9*21 days $1,000,000 Space Shuttle252 days$1,500,000,000 (approximately)

Satellites are now deployed 300 miles in low Earth orbit (LEO) rather than 22,000 miles above Earth in Geostationary Orbit (GEO), previously the typical satellite deployment altitude.

What this means for the consumer is that satellite internet streamed from LEO has a latency of 40 ms, which is an optimal internet connection. Especially when compared to the 700 ms stream latency experienced with satellite internet streamed from GEO.

What Would it Take to Build a Satellite Internet?

SpaceX, the private company that operates Starlink, currently has 4,500 satellites. However, the

Index INDEXES internet MSCI MSCI indexes next generation internet rockets satellite internet satellites Space Technology

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Walgreens, GameStop, Intel, Robinhood and more

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading: Walgreens Boots Alliance — The stock advanced 5.4% on news that Walgreens is looking for potential buyers for its $8.8 billion Boots drugstore chain in the U.K., Bloomberg reported Monday. Xponential Fitness — Xponential Fitness shares were last up nearly 8.5% in volatile trading. The stock earlier Monday had tumbled more than 9%, reaching a 52-week low, after the company’s top executive was suspended without a return date. GameStop — Shares in the video game retailer soared more than 65% on Monday after “Roaring Kitty,” the man who fueled the 2021 GameStop mania, posted online on Reddit for the first time in roughly three years. Trading was halted multiple times due to volatility. Reddit , Robinhood — Shares of the two companies that were involved with the meme stock mania in 2021 rose on Monday as GameStop surged. Reddit rose more than 9%, hitting its highest level since March, while retail brokerage stock Robinhood gained about 6.2%. Squarespace — Shares of the website platform company jumped more than 13% after it announced a $6.9 billion deal to go private . Squarespace will be sold to private equity firm Permira for $44 per share, a 15% premium to Friday’s close, after its continued underperformance as a public company. Arm Holdings — The chipmaker’s stock price jumped 4.6% following a Nikkei report that Arm is looking to launch its first artificial intelligence chips next year. Incyte — Shares climbed 8.4% after the biopharmaceutical company approved a $2 billion share repurchase program. Nexstar Media Group — The Irving, Texas-based television and digital media company added 2.1% following an upgrade to overweight from equal weight by Morgan Stanley. The bank said the owner of 75% of the CW Network is seeing strong retransmissions for 2024 and improved ad sales as programming expands. Intel — The chipmaker gained nearly 4% after The Wall Street Journal reported that it is in talks for an $11 billion deal with Apollo Global Management to build a factory in Ireland. SolarEdge Technologies — The solar stock surged nearly 6% despite being downgraded to neutral at Susquehanna, with the firm also slashing its price target over concerns tied to the company’s gross margin moving forward. About eight million shares of SEDG are sold short, equal to roughly four days in

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Inflation outlook rises, fueled by expected increases for housing costs, New York Fed survey shows

The outlook increased across the one- and five-year horizons as respondents expressed little confidence the Fed will reach its 2% inflation goal anytime soon, a central bank survey showed. Respondents to the survey indicated they expect median home price growth of 3.3% over the next year, the highest reading since July 2022. College education costs are expected to increase by 9%, a 2.5 percentage point monthly surge. People shop at a grocery store in Monterey Park, California, on April 12, 2022. Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

Consumers in April raised their expectations for price increases both in the near and longer term, fueled by higher inflation in home prices along with fuel and energy, according to a New York Federal Reserve survey released Monday.

The central bank’s New York district reported in its monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations that the outlook increased across the one- and five-year horizons as respondents expressed little confidence the Fed will reach its 2% inflation goal anytime soon.

On a one-year basis, the expectation increased to 3.3%, up 0.3 percentage point from March and the highest since November 2023. For the five-year outlook, the expectation rose to 2.8%, up 0.2 percentage points. However, at the three-year horizon, the outlook fell to 2.8%, down 0.1 percentage point.

The results mirror the University of Michigan sentiment survey released Friday that showed the one-year outlook for May at 3.5%, also up 0.3 percentage point, while the five-year outlook nudged higher to 3.1%.

All of the readings are well ahead of the Fed’s 2% goal and reflective of the stubborn nature of inflation this year following a substantial disinflationary trend in 2023.

Inflation pressures are expected to come from a wide variety of sources. However, expected increases in housing prices are particularly troublesome for policymakers who expected shelter costs to ease this year.

Respondents to the survey indicated they expect median home price growth of 3.3% over the next year, up 0.3 percentage point from a level that had remained steady for seven months. That was also the highest reading since July 2022 and boosted by those with a high school degree or less, a lower-income cohort of particular worry to Fed officials during a period of surging inflation that took off in early 2022.

Along with expected higher home costs, respondents