WEEKLY BUSINESS ROUNDUP
The state of Financial markets & Economies, Weekly Charts, Business Trends & Statistics
Stocks fell broadly on the U.S market on Friday as investors took profits following a flurry of earnings reports, also coinciding with a growing drumbeat for higher taxes, coming out of the White House. The equity markets limped into the final trading day of the month, ending another week of choppiness as investors tried to navigate all-time highs amid fears of bubbles. Also not surprising, considering it comes after an 80% run from the market lows of late March 2020, some investors are eager to book their well-earned profits.
The money flows inside the markets speak to a growing cautiousness…
WEEKLY BUSINESS ROUNDUP
The state of Financial markets & Economies, Weekly Charts, Business Trends & Statistics
Record gains in the U.S equities continued to pile up as investors took heart from retail sales, housing starts, and jobless claims, that all came in better than the market was anticipating. Money keeps flowing into equities, with $25.6 billion going into stocks, and $47.3 billion coming out of cash — the most weekly outflows in four months. In the past five months, $602 billion has flowed into the global equity market.
For the week, the Nasdaq gained 1.1%, the Dow rose 1.2%, and S&P 500 increased 1.4%, it's sixth weekly gain in the past seven. This week brought us…
HEALTH TECH INNOVATION
In a new study, scientists recorded people’s brain activity wirelessly throughout the day
Technology has enabled us to continue our lives with some kind of normalcy in these crazy pandemic-driven times, where many of us were left home-bound under strict lockdowns. E-commerce and food delivery apps allowed vulnerable people to avoid infection. Videoconferencing & workplace collaboration apps enabled remote work and online schooling while streaming services and video games provided in-home entertainment. Most importantly, mRNA technology and the rapid development of effective Covid-19 vaccines saved lives and put us on the path to recovery.
I am a huge fan of using technology in the healthcare field. In fact, the achievement of developing a…
SOLAR SYSTEM
New observations from Earth are lifting the veil from some of the enigmatic properties of our planetary neighbor
Venus is dubbed as our sister planet, owing to its rocky surface similar to ours along with it having the same size, mass, and density. Yet, its hellish atmosphere is not even remotely like Earth’s — imagine an average surface temperature of 462° C (864° F) that can melt lead, along with a dense atmosphere containing 96.5% carbon dioxide with sulphuric acid downpours. Despite all these climatic extremities, astronomers believe that the planet may have been habitable until 700 million years ago, as indicated by detailed maps of its surface from over 40 years of space probes.
CRYPTO INVESTING
A rapid rise in the price of the second-largest crypto comes amid its growing use in Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
One can’t seem to catch a breath when it comes to price action in Cryptos. And the rapid rise in Ethereum recently is one such example of that. It was only a couple of days ago that I reported ETH running through the $3300 level. Well, it’s two days later and Ethereum has already crossed $3600 — yet another all-time high. If it was Bitcoin that powered the Cryptos to a strong finish in 2020, Ethereum is taking them through in 2021.
Talking about Bitcoin, the premier digital coin has been consolidating quietly in a tight range, within $52k-$59k. The…
CYBERSECURITY BULLETIN
More than 200 organizations across the country including the government and parliament were affected
Let’s kick things off with the news that a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack took down the websites of more than 200 organizations across Belgium, including government, parliament, universities, and research institutes. As reported by ZDNet, the cyberattack overwhelmed the websites with traffic, rendering their public-facing sites unusable for visitors, while the attack overwhelmed internal systems, cutting them off from the internet.
The main target of the attack was the government-funded ISP provider, Belnet, which provides connectivity to the county’s educational institutions, research centers, scientific institutes & government services. The attack was so disruptive in nature that the…
RECYCLABLE ELECTRONICS
Engineers at Duke University demonstrated their transistor invention that can be reduced to its original building blocks
As if the waste we produce on a daily basis is not enough of a problem, the increased consumption of electronic devices and their eventual recycling has added a new dimension to it. At least I do my part of not throwing the unused or discarded electronics in the garbage — instead, collect the discarded devices and go hand them over to the big box retailer which takes the responsibility of recycling them. However, electronic devices are difficult to recycle. While scraps of copper, aluminum, and steel can be recycled, the silicon chips at the heart of the devices cannot.
…
QUANTUM DEVELOPMENT
A novel type of thermometer that can simply & quickly measure temperatures during quantum calculations with high accuracy
With every new development and invention, we edge closer to a quantum future. The last time I wrote on the subject was a couple of months ago when an international team of Physicists determined the minimum time for complex quantum operations to process — which basically helped them define the physical limitations of getting quantum information from one point to another, without any data loss. Another noteworthy achievement was the creation of the World’s First rudimentary Quantum network by Dutch developers.
Now, in another breakthrough, Researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg (Sweden) have developed a novel type of…
CRYPTOS
ETH has propelled to new All-time highs on the back of Defi & NFTs boom, futures launch & upcoming upgrades
For once I feel like saying… Told you so! Early in January of this year, I wrote a piece on why I felt it was Ethereum’s turn to climb higher. I am not going to get into details of what I wrote at the time, sufficed to say most of the factors mentioned at the time played out well for the second-largest crypto. The only thing that was not anticipated at the time was the exponential growth of NFTs seen in the past few months.
The general crypto market has continued to see healthy growth, Defi boom hasn’t let up…
FUTURE TECH
Researchers developed soft, mechanical metamaterials that can “think” and respond via preprogrammed reactions
With inventions like these, we move ever close to an autonomous future where machines would be able to “think” on their own and act accordingly. Cities of the future are already being planned at various locations around the world. “Woven City” is one such example — a completely autonomous and integrated smart city being built in the foothills of Mount Fuji, by the automaker Toyota.
Talking about autonomous machines, a team of researchers from Penn State University and the U.S. Air Force have developed a soft, mechanical metamaterial that can “think” about how forces are applied to it and respond…
Faisal Khan
A devout futurist keeping a keen eye on the latest in Emerging Tech, Global Economy, Space, Science, Cryptocurrencies & more
