Morning Download from Invincible Money

Personal finance + economics + markets

Finance in 5 minutes a day to help you make better money decisions.

Good morning investors! The S&P 500 is officially in bull market territory - up 20% since October, 2022, after 4 straight weeks of gains, U.S household net worth is up and crypto had a tough week.

📊 Economy 

The rising stock market helped increase U.S. household net worth by $3 trillion in Q1.

• Household equity holdings up $2.4 trillion

• Real estate values down $671 billion.

Unemployment benefit applications jumped to 261,000 - above the 235,000 forecasts.

• The labor market may be weakening as this broke a downward trend.

• Applications were the highest since October 2021.

📰 News

Quest vs Vision Pro

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg painted a stark contract between his vision of VR/AR goggles and Apple’s, saying,

“Our vision for the metaverse and presence is fundamentally social. Our device also encourages active engagement and participation. In contrast, every demo they [Apple] showcased featured an individual sitting alone on a couch.“

Apple’s Vision Pro is $3,500, while Meta’s Quest Pro is $1,000. The Apple goggles has control through eye movements and hand gestures with no controllers, is lighter and has a translucent, high resolution display. However, that takes a lot of juice so the user has to wear a battery and have a wired connection.

Here’s an interesting thread about it.

GM and Ford have now both agreed to adopt Tesla’s EV charging standard.

China’s consumer price index fell as the country still struggles after reopening from Covid last year. The index in May fell 4.6%, the steepest drop in 7 years. Inflation has stayed relatively low in China and month-to-month prices fells 0.2%.

The U.S. prioritizes A.I. development

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced the Global Technology Leadership Act, which would establish an Office of Global Competition Analysis to assess the U.S.'s competitiveness in key technologies like A.I.

• The bill is part of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's plan to prioritize A.I. development and comes in response to the increasing use of A.I. by adversaries.

• The Office of Global Competition Analysis would be comprised of experts from various agencies, including the intelligence community and the Pentagon. (The Deep View)

• Last week Chat-GPT was made available to the U.S. government through Microsoft’s Azure Cloud and it’s Azure OpenAI Service.

Walgreens Opens Digital Store

Walgreens has opened an experimental store in Chicago that focuses on digital shopping. Shoppers can browse two aisles of merchandise and order other products online or through a kiosk.

Walgreens says the new format is not aimed at preventing theft, but rather at meeting the needs of modern shoppers who prefer to use self-checkout and online order/store pickup. (sure, Walgreens)

📈 Stocks

End of the Bear Market?

A Bank of America analyst said Friday “the bear market is officially over” and equities still have legs.

• She added that the S&P 500 typically has extended gains in the 12 months after crossing the 20% turning point 92% of the time going back to the 1950s.

• Also, the return of positive real yields and improved company margins after cost cutting will help equities, in her view.

✅ DocuSign [DOCU -2.50%] beat earnings with $0.72 EPS (vs. $0.56 expected) and $661 million in sales (vs. $624 million expected).

💰 Tesla shares closed up 4.06% Friday after announcing GM will use their charging network.

🕹️ GameStop [GME +5.78%] regained some ground after firing their CEO.

🎬 Netflix [NFLX +2.60%] closed Friday up after announcing the crackdown on password sharing is working. The company had the 4 biggest days of sign ups in the past 4.5 years with nearly 100,000 each day. (Details here)

🔐 Crypto

Crypto.com suspends service to institutional clients in the U.S. citing weak demand. Their retail platform is still fully operational.

Binance.us is warning that fiat withdrawals may be paused and suspends USD deposits citing “extremely aggressive and intimidating tactics” by the SEC.

Robinhood announced they’re removing support for Cardano, Polygon and Solana tokens, all which have been deemed as unregistered securities by the SEC.

The Atomic wallet hack of $35 million seems to be the work of North Korea’s Lazarus Group. The 5 largest accounts that lost funds total $17M and 1 wallet lost $7.85M.

💵 Personal Finance

Want to improve your credit score (FICO)? Start by focusing in 2 things:

Payment history is the most important factor in determining your credit score and makes up 35% of your score. This is because lenders want to see that you have a history of making your payments on time.

The amount of debt you have is also important to lenders and accounts for 30% of your score. If you are carrying too much debt, it can lower your credit score. Lenders want to see that you are able to manage your debt responsibly.

Pro tip: If you have a credit card, always keep the balance below 30%. So if your limit is $1,000, always pay your balance down below this $300 and preferably pay it off completely every month. That will help your “utilization rate,” which ideally needs to be under 30%.

Here’s what makes up the rest of your credit score:

Length of credit history - 15%

New credit - 10%

Credit mix - 10%

💰 Be a Better Investor

🧠 Get Smarter

What’s a bear market exactly?

A bear market is a prolonged period of declining stock prices. It is typically defined as a decline of 20% or more from a recent high. Bear markets can be caused by a variety of factors, including economic recessions, rising interest rates, and political instability.

👩🏽‍⚖️ Legal Stuff
Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice. Always do your own research and think for yourself.