Jumia $JMIA Beating Amazon $AMZN & Alibaba $BABA In Africa (video)

Why Jumia Is Beating Amazon And Alibaba In Africa

Jumia has been dubbed the "Amazon of Africa" as Africa's largest e-commerce operator, surpassing Amazon and China's Alibaba, and it's the first African tech start-up to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. Investors had high hopes for Jumia when it went public on April 12. Now, Jumia is adjusting to its new international status, and figuring out what that status means for the African continent.

Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, former McKinsey & Company employees, founded the company in 2012. Like Amazon and Alibaba, Jumia allows customers to buy products like cell phones, shoes, and groceries online. Jumia also offers bill paying, food delivery, and cellular data plans.

China Daily, a Chinese state-run news organization, says that Alibaba serviced 4.2 million African customers through its AliExpress services since it entered the continent.

Jumia serviced 4.3 million users and 81,000 active sellers in 14 countries. Amazon is available in 11 countries on the African continent, but neither Amazon nor Alibaba have had the benefit of getting their start in African countries. Jumia, for example, offers unique features like allowing customers to pay for items upon delivery. CNBC video above published Jun 25, 2019.

Jumia is an e-commerce platform for electronics, fashion, and more. It has partnered with more than 81,000 local African companies and individuals and is a direct competitor to Kilimall in Kenya and Konga in Nigeria. Started in 2012 in Lagos, the company currently has a presence across 12 African countries.

Jumia Technologies AG

• Domain: jumia.com  / group.jumia.com
• Founded: Nigeria
• Traded as: NYSE: JMIA
• Founders: Sacha Poignonnec, Raphael Kofi Afaedor, Tunde Kehinde
• CEO: Sacha Poignonnec (2012–), Jeremy Hodara (2012–)
• Parent organization: Rocket Internet

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Tech Review 1) 5 Myths About 5G, 2) Alibaba $BABA in the U.S. (video)

Tech Review (TR 2019-03-09)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news: Features • 1) 5 Myths About 5G, 2) Alibaba $BABA in the U.S., 3) Investing: The Week & Investor Notes: US stocks, Eurozone, China, Brexit, Data & Narratives & "News",  4) ICYMI Tech News: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Huawei, JD.com, Facebook, Reddit, One Web, and Acquisitions.

1)  5 Myths About 5G

There are a lot of myths about what 5G, the fifth generation of wireless connectivity, can and can't do. WSJ.com's Spencer Macnaughton debunks five common 5G myths.

2) Alibaba $BABA in the U.S. 

Why Alibaba $BABA hasn't won over U.S. consumers and how it has focused on attracting U.S. businesses: Alibaba is China's largest e-commerce platform. In its latest earnings report, Alibaba disclosed having 636 million annual active consumers on its China retail marketplaces. That's almost double the entire population of the United States.

Alibaba's reach today expands far beyond e-commerce. Its realm now covers cloud computing (Alibaba Cloud), digital media and entertainment, (Youku, Alibaba Pictures, Damai, Alibaba Music, Alisports.com) and logistics services (Cainiao). Alibaba is also part owner of financial services company Ant Financial. Despite its enormous Chinese following, Alibaba is still not a well known brand to many Americans. CNBC.com video above published Mar 5, 2019.

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite -2.4% | S&P 500 Index -2.2% | DJIA -2.2%

Stocks record five-day losing streak as global growth concerns rise--marketwatch.com

Investor Notes: 

US stocks have what it takes to hit new peaks, says JPMorgan strategist--“Our key theme remains that the current market backdrop has similarities to ’15-’16 mid cycle correction episode, and not to the end of the cycle”--Mislav Matejka, head of global equity strategy at JPMorgan Chase & Co., in a Monday report (4 Mar 2019)--marketwatch.com.

Eurozone: Germany's top central banker warns against bringing back stimulus in Europe--cnbc.com. See also: "This Is Bad" - European Banks Tumble As ECB Unveils Massive Easing: Here's Why It's Not Working--zerohedge.com.

“New Economic or Financial Crisis” could start in Italy: French government frets--French banks are heavily exposed to Italy--wolfstreet.com. Euro: “The problems with the euro are problems with governance. It has been deeply flawed from the outset. It doesn’t look like a very safe haven to go to from the U.S. dollar.”--Catherine Schenk, an economic historian at the University of Oxford--NYTimes.com.

Four Manufacturing Giants, China, U.S., Japan, and Germany, account for 58% of global manufacturing value added, but three of the four, Germany, Japan, and China are getting hit.--wolfstreet.com.

China: an auto industry running at 50% capacity, car sales hugely negative Y/Y "and China is about to halt state subsidies for Electric Vehicle production: why wouldn’t Beijing encourage foreign capital when they are bleeding like that? It also doesn’t sit well with China shooting down a mild WTO report stressing China needs to reform its SOEs"--zerohedge.com. See also Trade Isn't China's Only Worry. Exports from China in February were horrible, falling 20.7% year-over-year, compared to an expected 5% decline, but it’s not just exports, as February auto sales also fell by 18.5% from a year ago to 1.19 million units, the eighth consecutive drop. Don't blame Trump--"the United States imported a record number of products, including from China, widening the deficit to $891.3 billion"--NYTimes.com citing figures for 2018, adding December "was the highest monthly trade deficit since 2008, when the American economy was mired in recession."

Brexit: Bentley (video), is prepared for a hard Brexit. Brexiteers urge May to pursue a no-deal Brexit, arguing that even if Parliament voted for an extension to negotiations, it wouldn’t be binding on the government--bloomberg.com. Carmaker Rolls-Royce says a short Brexit delay would make things worse--reuters.com. Any Brexit extension could be challenged in EU courts--reuters.com.

Data & Narrative: don’t frame the data to the narrative. "The data-mining trap is easy to fall into"--10 Rules for Forecasting: | cfainstitute.org. News Narratives, Mainstream Media Bias & Credibility: Americans' trust in mainstream media hits rock bottom--Gone are the days when US consumers looked to the nightly [TV] news and print media [newspapers, magazines] as trusted sources of information according to the Columbia Journalism Review--see here and here. Editor's note: so what is their function in society today? To serve as echo chambers reflecting the respective biases of each media "news" organization and their respective "target audiences." Beware the "news narratives" of your favorite "news sources." The "narrative" or even "consensus narrative," is often misinformed, incomplete, or outright wrong. Aware of this, bold investors and speculators have made $Billions on Wall Street.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

Apple's China Woes: $AAPL core strategy is to provide high-quality products at a premium price, which has helped the company sell billions of dollars worth of iPhones since its introduction more than 10 years ago. However, the Chinese smartphone market does not have the Apple fanaticism that is so popular in the US and brand value is less likely to be a major decision driver."----seekingalpha.com

At Google, men are more frequently underpaid for doing the same job as a female engineer--zerohedge.com.

Microsoft Built a Bot to Match Patients to Clinical Trials--bloomberg.com. See also Microsoft says it will first offer quantum computing via Azure, debuts the Microsoft Quantum Network, a network of partners collaborating on quantum innovations--microsoft.com.

Huawei to be arraigned in U.S. fraud case in New York on March 14--reuters.com.

Chinese e-commerce company JD.com launches store on Google shopping site--reuters.com.

Facebook $FB Backfire: Facebook’s global lobbying against data privacy laws revealed, including against the EU's GDPR--theguardian.com.

Reddit announced a $300 million funding round last week, giving it a $3 billion valuation. With 330 million monthly active users and reportedly revenue of about $100 million, Reddit.com is generating an estimated $0.30 per user (ARPU), much less than Twitter: ~$9.48, Facebook: $7.37, Pinterest: ~$2.80, and Snap: $2.09. Editor's note: think monetization.

OneWeb's first six satellites have launched, part of a planned constellation of 650 to provide global internet access, after four years and $2B+ in funding--techcrunch.com.

Acquisition? “Don’t do it ... If you look at the collective evidence across acquisitions, this is the most value destructive action a company can take”--Aswath Damodaran.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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Two Internets, One For Chinese Apps and One for U.S. Apps? (video)

Two internets will form to cater to Chinese and US apps, strategist says | World Economic Forum

Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures (sinovationventures.com) (and former President of Google China), discusses the possibility of the internet splitting between the U.S. and China and discusses the AI race between the two superpowers. CNBC International TV video Feb 2, 2019.
Tweets by kaifulee

4th Paradigm becomes the 5th #AI unicorn invested by @sinovationvc https://t.co/OEJX4AtuiD via @technology

— Sinovation Ventures (@sinovationvc) December 20, 2018

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Starbucks $SBUX Q1 FY19 Earnings LIVE Webcast, Jan 24, 5pm EST

How Starbucks Became An $80B Business

It's no secret that Starbucks has been struggling to get U.S. customers to frequent its cafes more often. While sales have been positive, the number of customer visits continues to stagnate. Same-store sales, a key metric in the restaurant industry, have dwindled over the last 12 months as competition heated up and customers were uninspired by some of Starbucks' limited-time offerings. While comparable-store sales exceeded expectations in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, rising 4 percent, much of that was due Starbucks charging more for its lattes.

In its 47-year history, Starbucks has transformed from a single coffee bean store in Seattle to a 30,000 cafe international coffee power house. But massive expansion hasn't come without growing pains. Under the leadership of Howard Schultz, Starbucks pursued a strategy of aggressive expansion in the late '80s and early '90s.

Overexpansion of Starbucks Stores
By the time Starbucks went public in 1992, it had 165 stores, and four years later, Starbucks opened its 1,000th location, including international cafes in Japan and Singapore. Just two years later, Starbucks opened its 2,000th cafe. While unit expansion helped boost sales throughout the last two decades — Starbucks has had positive same-store sales growth since 2010 — it has spread itself too thin. With more than 14,000 locations in the United States alone today, Starbucks is regrouping and rethinking its expansion, and is expected to close 150 underperforming locations in 2019, three times the amount it typically does.

Changing consumer preferences are also an issue which CEO Kevin Johnson has addressed with investors. In 2015, sales of Frappuccinos were 14 percent of Starbucks revenue. However, in the first half of 2018, Frappucino sales were down 3 percent — and accounted for only about 11 percent of the company's revenue. Frappuccino sales were also hurt by a lack of innovation said analysts. CNBC video above published Jan 10, 2019.

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) (domain: starbucks.com)

$SBUX

Starbucks Q1 Fiscal Year 2019 Earnings LIVE Webcast January 24, 2019 5:00 pm EST.

Listen to the webcast -- a replay of the webcast will be available on the Starbucks Investor Relations website (until end of day Friday, February 22, 2019) -- investor.starbucks.com (investor relations).

UPDATE: Starbucks Reports Q1 Fiscal 2019 Results -- Press Release  01/24/19 highlights below:

• Q1 Consolidated Net Revenues Up 9% to Record $6.6 Billion
• Q1 Comparable Store Sales Up 4% Globally Driven by 4% Growth in the U.S.
• China Comparable Store Sales Up 1% in Q1 and Total China Stores Up 18% Versus Prior Year
• GAAP EPS of $0.61; Non-GAAP EPS of $0.75, Up 15% Year-Over-Year Including Income Tax Favorability
• Active Starbucks RewardsTM Membership in the U.S. Increases 14% Year-Over-Year to 16.3 Million

Questions re: Q1 FY19 Starbucks $SBUX: top line revenue hit the consensus mark of $6.5B? Shift of prior FY19 guidance for global comparable store sales growth near the lower end of the 3% to 5% range? How is the UberEats pilot progressing? Impact in China from slowing GDP, trade tensions, and competitor Luckin Coffee?

source: statista.com

We are expanding our delivery capabilities in China, equipping 2,000 stores in 30 cities to bring Starbucks right to their doors. Excited to be partnering with Alibaba! $SBUX pic.twitter.com/789adgNlhO

— Starbucks News (@Starbucksnews) December 13, 2018

Starbucks has a 55% market share of China’s coffee market, however, it faces competition from McDonalds, Costa Coffee, Peets and Luckin, and hundreds of thousands of smaller operators.
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Tech Review | Why Communist China Has So Many Tech Billionaires

Tech Review (TR 2019-01-19)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news: Features • 1) Why Communist China Has So Many Tech Billionaires, 2)Ecommerce: Online Spending Putting Traditional Retailers Under Pressure, 3) Investing: The Week; Notes: Why You Can't Trust Most "Financial News" and more,  4)ICYMI Tech News: Amazon AWS, Facebook, Tencent, Robotics, 5G, Apple, IBM, Vodafone, and more. 

1) Why Communist China Has So Many Tech Billionaires

By one estimate, China mints a new billionaire every two days, far exceeding the rate of countries like the United States. But how did China remain a nominally Communist state while becoming a hotbed for billionaires-in-the-making? Bloomberg QuickTake explains how capitalist compromises and moves begun decades ago have made China the not-quite-Communist country it is today. Featured: Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba Group (alibabagroup.com) $BABA. Bloomberg (bloomberg.com) video above published Jan 9, 2019.

2) Online Spending Putting Traditional Retailers Under Pressure

Richard Lim, CEO of Retail Economics (retaileconomics.co.uk), discusses the U.K. retail sector after M&S and John Lewis suffered their worst Christmas sales since the financial crisis. CNBC International TV video above published Jan 10, 2019. #retail #ecommerce #bricknmortar

Ecommerce & Truckers: since consumers now buy online appliances, treadmills, outdoor grills, etc., national trucking companies are buying up local delivery operators.--bloomberg.com.

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite +2.7% | S&P 500 Index +2.9% | DJIA +3.0%

Notes: Why You Can't Trust Most "Financial News"

Article out today with my name in the headline. No interview. No fact check. Reporter sent an email saying “hope this is accurate”. Sheesh.

— Jeffrey Gundlach (@TruthGundlach) January 13, 2019

To be clear: “Hope this is accurate” email was sent with a link to the article, but only after the article was already run in global media.

— Jeffrey Gundlach (@TruthGundlach) January 13, 2019

Editor's note: "Hope is not a strategy."

Other Notes:

• China signals more stimulus as economic slowdown deepens--reuters.com.
• Eurozone: risks besieging European Bonds spill over into 2019--bloomberg.com.
• Germany: German GDP grew 1.5% in 2018, compared with 2.2% in 2017, the weakest growth rate in five years--Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) (flash data).
• Why digital strategies fail: for most companies, the pace of disruption is uneven, and they can’t just walk away from existing businesses. They need to digitize their current businesses and innovate new models--mckinsey.com.
• WeWork a/k/a WeCompany: "You can’t put lipstick on a property gamble and call it a Tech paradigm shift"--morningporridge.com: "Softbank founder Masayoshi Son was the perfect mark"--Editor's note: We Work was expecting a $16 bln capital injection from Softbank’s Visionfund.
• Index funds are dominated by only three asset management firms--Vanguard (Jack Bogle RIP), BlackRock, and State Street Global--marketwatch.com. 
• Brexit: UK Government's next steps will be tabled on Monday 21 January. It will be debated Tuesday 29 January.  Most likely now: renegotiate withdrawal agreement or leave with "no deal" March 29, 2019. More on Brexit here.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

• Amazon Web Services announced Jan 16, 2019, AWS Backup, its fully-managed, centralized service for customers to back up their data from across AWS services and on-premises--press.aboutamazon.com. 
• German antitrust order in the works re Facebook and user data--reuters.com. FTC (US) commissioners met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine against Facebook for failing to safeguard user privacy, violating 2011 consent decree--TheHill.com.  
• UK engineers have finished building Quantum, the first fully software-defined communications satellite that can be reprogrammed in orbit, launching this year--bbc.com.
• Tencent's Xiaowei, AI voice assistant for WeChat, integrates with Tencent's own services and apps by third-parties such as Meituan or Didi.
• 10 robotics companies to watch in 2019--therobotreport.com.
• 5G network and deployment, investment implications--seekingalpha.com. Qualcomm says every Android phone maker will beat Apple to 5G.
• IBM links up with Vodafone for $550m cloud computing contract--cityam.com.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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The Declining Fortunes of China’s Tech Giants Tencent & Alibaba $BABA

The Declining Fortunes of China’s Tech Giants Tencent & Alibaba $BABA

After years of stellar growth, 2018 saw Tencent and Alibaba $BABA cut back down to size. The FT explains what's behind their fall. Financial Times (ft.com) video above published Jan 15, 2019.

Tencent Holdings Ltd

OTCMKTS: TCTZF

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd

$BABA

Chinese exports - looking behind the numbers

The FT's Asia news editor Joe Leahy looks at whether the fall in Chinese exports is down to the trade war with the US or a broader economic slowdown. Financial Times (ft.com) video above published Jan 14, 2019.
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Tech Review: 1) Huawei CFO Arrested (video), 2) U.S. Oilfield Technology

Tech Review (TR 2018-12-08)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news with commentary, analysis and opinion: Features • 1) Huawei CFO Arrested, 2) U.S. Oilfield Technology, 3) Investing: The Week, Notes, 4) ICYMI Tech News: Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, Tumblr, Ninebot, Google.

1) Huawei CFO Arrested

Fortune.com video above published Dec 6, 2018. Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Chinese telecom giant Huawei (and the daughter of the company's founder) was arrested earlier this week in Canada, is facing a series of fraud charges that could set the stage for her extradition to the U.S., a Canadian prosecutor has revealed.

Huawei arrest heightens US-China trade tensions

Financial Times (ft.com) video above published Dec 6, 2018: Canada has arrested Huawei’s CFO following a US extradition request, reigniting investor concerns over heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing days after Donald Trump and Xi Jinping tried to resolve their trade conflict at the G20 summit.

Arrest shakes Huawei--Global Skepticism of Huawei's Business Grows--nytimes.com: "all around the globe, the walls are going up for Huawei ...  a wider patch of the world appears to be siding with Washington against Chinese technology."

More:

• Japan’s government halts use of Huawei and ZTE products out of security concerns. 
• National Security Adviser John Bolton in an NPR News interview.
• 6 reasons why Huawei gives the U.S. and its allies security concerns. 

Huawei’s Dependence on U.S. Suppliers:

Huawei’s Dependence on U.S. Suppliers https://t.co/BVeyi8viAj

— ChinaEconomicReview (@chinaeconreview) December 7, 2018

2) U.S. Oilfield Technology: 

statista.com

The U.S. Just Became a Net Oil Exporter for the First Time in 75 Years | bloomberg.com Dec 6, 2018: Crude, refined products exports exceed imports in weekly data. Shale boom has boosted U.S. crude oil shipments to a new record.

Large rivals in the race to grow U.S. shale production and profits, include BP ($BP), Exxon Mobil Corp ($XOM), Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and Norway’s Equinor. All are expanding drilling and acquisitions, particularly in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, the largest U.S. oil field and the center of the shale revolution--How BP found shale profits with 'crystal ball' oilfield technology | reuters.com.

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite -4.9% | S&P 500 Index -4.6% | DJIA -4.5%

Biggest Worry for Traders? They Don't Know Why Stocks Are Moving--bloomberg.com.

Investing Notes:

"History shows that once the Treasury yield curve inverts (10s yield less than 2s) a US recession is likely."--datatrekresearch.com

Editor's note: the above quote is about as helpful as saying, "History shows that when a person is born, they will die."  The data shows there is a considerable lag time from the time of the first 10/2 inversion to the point where a recession manifests itself, sometimes years (look at the chart above or here or here (e.g., 2006 inversion to 2008 recession).

Apple $AAPL: if you had a 5 percent weighting of Apple in 1998 and invested the rest in SPY, $AAPL would have grown to close to 90 percent of your portfolio. If you owned a portfolio of individual stocks, Apple would be closer to 100 percent, as you'd inevitably have losers (two-thirds of individual stocks underperform the market).--SeekingAlpha.com.

Brexit: May’s Brexit Deal Is a Betrayal of Britain, If the U.K. parliament supports her plan, it will never be forgiven.--opinion in bloomberg.com by Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England for a decade, beginning in 2003, now a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business.

Next week the Brexit vote is scheduled for December 11, 2018: Editor's note: if you always wanted to invest in the UK or London-listed companies, or own some London real estate, there may be some real opportunities emerging.

"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."--Warren Buffett. 

4) ICYMI Tech News:

• Microsoft $MSFT is building a Chromium-powered web browser that will replace Edge on Windows 10--windowscentral.com.

• Facebook $FB CEO Mark Zuckerberg, more ruthless than clueless?--bloomberg.com.

• Alibaba $BABA, Tencent, and more caught up in China's anti-graft crackdown--reuters.com.

• NSFW Tumblr (tumblr.com owned by Verizon $VZ) will permanently ban adult content from its blogging platform beginning December 17, 2018.

• China's Ninebot (ninebot.cn) makes almost all the world's scooters--bloomberg.com. 

• Personal Tech: another failed Google $GOOG $GOOGL chat app experiment, this time Allo which will stop working March 2019.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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Tech Review | Priyanka Chopra: Technology Gives Us Freedom (video)

Tech Review (TR 2018-11-17)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news with commentary, analysis and opinion: Features • 1) Priyanka Chopra: Technology Gives Us Freedom, 2) Fintech: The Business Case For Financial Inclusion, 3) Investing: The Week, Investing Notes, 4) ICYMI Tech News: Facebook, Nvidia, IBM, SAP, Alibaba, FCC, SpaceX, Cloudflare.

1) Priyanka Chopra: Technology Gives Us Freedom

Priyanka Chopra may be known for acting, but now she's investing in tech companies. In an interview with CNN, Chopra tells Laurie Segall why she's investing in Bumble (bumble.com). CNN.com businesss video above published Nov 5, 2018.

2) Fintech: The Business Case For Financial Inclusion

1.7 billion adults across the globe do not have a bank account. The data revolution and innovations in digital finance have the potential to provide access to financial services for everyone and offer huge growth opportunities.Video above published Nov 2, 2018, by FT.com.

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite -2.15% | S&P 500 Index -1.61% | DJIA -2.22%

S&P chart pattern points to breakout ahead, technician says--cnbc.com

Wall Street's Charging Bull

Investing Notes:

Why Tech Investors Love the SaaS Model
(See full infographic: https://t.co/DMBqUs5AQ6) pic.twitter.com/J0qXnqF5ie

— Visual Capitalist (@VisualCap) November 16, 2018

iShares Automation & Robot ETF is now listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. This #ETF tracks our iSTOXX FactSet Automation & Robotics index, which is composed of companies related to automation and robotics around the globe. https://t.co/2EqrzzWOPG #investing

— FactSet (@FactSet) November 15, 2018

4) ICYMI Tech News:

$FB

• Meltdown at Facebook $FB? More than 50 interviews conducted by the New York Times reveal Facebook's failures in dealing with multiple crises, which Zuckerberg and Sandberg initially tried to obscure. "Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis"--NYTimes.com. Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg replied. See also Facebook Board and this on "Facebook Fights Dirty."

• Nvidia $NVDA: Supply glut mars Turing effect for Nvidia shares--reuters.com.

• IBM $IBM: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source--a16z.com.

• SAP $SAP acquiring Qualtrics (qualtrics.com) for $8B before IPO--bizjournals.com. Did SAP pay too much? SAP says no.

• Alibaba $BABA sets new Singles’ Day record with $31B in sales, but growth is slowing--techcrunch.com.

• FCC approves expansion of satellite-based internet services: Telesat, Kepler Communications Inc and LeoSat MA, Inc. approved for high-speed internet service and connectivity for sensors and other intelligence devices a/k/a IoT (Internet of Things). SpaceX approved for access to additional frequency and to operate some satellites at low-Earth altitudes--FCC Boosts Satellite Broadband Connectivity And Competition In The United States | fcc.gov (pdf). 

• Personal tech: Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver app--cloudflare.com.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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Tech Review: 1) The Google Monopoly; 2) Credit Card Chips & Fraud

Tech Review (TR 2018-11-10)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news with commentary, analysis and opinion: Features • 1) The Google Monopoly, 2)Credit Card Chips & Fraud, 3) Investing: The Week, Investing Notes, 4)ICYMI Tech News: Amazon, Apple, Alibaba, Crypto.

1) The Google Monopoly

CNBC International video above published Nov 1, 2018: Google has been fined record-breaking amounts by the European Commission for violating antitrust rules. Is Google a monopoly that needs to be broken up? CNBC’s Elizabeth Schulze explains from Brussels.

See also: The New York Times is digitizing its 5-7M photo archive using Google AI to recognize text describing the photos and will use Google's storage services--cnet.com.

Charts above courtesy of statista.com.

2) Credit Card Chips & Fraud

Fortune.com video above published Nov 5, 2018: Credit card chips fail to end fraud according to a new report.

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite +0.7% | S&P 500 Index +2.1% | DJIA +2.8%
For the year:

• The NASDAQ Composite is up 503.51 points, or 7.3%.
• The S&P 500 is up 107.40 points, or 4%.
• The DJIA is up 1,270.08 points, or 5.1%.

Wall Street's Charging Bull

Investing Notes:

• Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook have a combined market capitalization of $3.7 trillion, equal to Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) last year--Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up--reuters.com.
• China: "Chinese President Xi Jinping and his team did not get the midterm [Blue] wave they were hoping for. The Chinese side may once have had a fantasy that the midterm elections would force President Trump to back down on tariffs but there is little to nothing in the results that would lead Trump to change his approach to prosecuting his trade war with China, and in fact he may see reasons to redouble his efforts."-- Bill Bishop of Sinocism | Axios.com.  Trump and Xi will discuss trade issues when the two meet for dinner on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit at the end of November in Buenos Aires, Argentina--reuters.com
• Buffett's Berkshire doubles profit, repurchases $900 million stock in third quarter--reuters.com.
• Move over Netflix: Disney says its new streaming service will be called Disney+ and will launch in the US in late 2019--cnbc.com.
• Goldman Sachs ensnarled in vast 1MDB fraud scandal--NYTimes.com.
• Hilarious How Wall-Street Crybabies Whine about the Fed’s QE Unwind after a Decade of “Wealth Effect”--Their “Everything Bubble” is being pricked “gradually,” and they don’t like it.--WolfStreet.com.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

• Amazon $AMZN is spending billions to win Indian shoppers--bloomberg.com. Also: Amazon plans to split HQ2 evenly between two cities--wsj.com; Amazon.com Inc. said effective Nov 5, it would offer free shipping with no purchase minimum for the first time, this Christmas shopping season--reuters.com. 
• Apple $AAPL: India iPhone sales to fall for first time in four years: researcher--reuters.com. Amazon signs a deal with Apple--cnet.com--will start selling its latest devices, except the HomePod, in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and India.
• Alibaba $BABA cuts sales forecast on economic uncertainty, trade fears--reuters.com. Alibaba Singles Day Nov 11, a major shopping extravaganza in China--cnbc.com video.
• China's leading self-driving startups are betting on leveraging talent and capital in Silicon Valley--axios.com.
• Tech CEOs Are in Love With Their Principal Doomsayer--The futurist philosopher Yuval Noah Harari thinks Silicon Valley is an engine of dystopian ruin. So why do the digital elite adore him so?--NYTimes.com.
• Crypto: Policing the Wild West of Cryptocurrency--morganlewis.com. See also Bitcoin: New Asset Class or Pyramid Scheme? | cfainstitute.org.
• Personal Tech: a. New MacBook Air threatens both MacBook and MacBook Pro with function keys--appleinsider.com; b. Files by Google: Clean up space on your phone--Google’s Files Go hits 30 million users and is getting a new name--theverge.com.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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