Japan’s “dormant” crypto accounts are starting to see activity as Bitcoin breached a critical price resistance level this week. According to the Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck, their trading volume this week has risen by two to three times in comparison to the previous one. 

Speaking to a selected number of the Japanese outlets, Yusuke Otsuka, the co-founder of Coincheck explained that existing users who hadn’t traded for a while became active again this week: “Some of our users already have accounts so the initial velocity is high.”

If users already have accounts, they don’t have to take time to go through Know Your Customer check to open new accounts and can resume buying cryptocurrencies immediately. In contrast, those new to the trading platform had to wait for their account to become approved, so there was a time lag before they could start trading. “This time is different”, Otsuka emphasized. 

According to Coincheck, the volume of the direct sale this week was twice as big as seen during the previous one, while the demand for the exchange service increased threefold. Otsuka also believes this is correlated with the Japanese Coivd-19 stimulus payments. In April, the Japanese government began distributing 100,000 yen payments — about $930 —  to every household. 

Moreover, Oki Matsumoto, CEO of Monex Group, a parent company of Coincheck points out the possibility that those who missed buying gold are now interested in Bitcoin. The gold price has surged recently, breaking previous highs while Bitcoin just started breaking the resistance at the beginning of this week.

Libra on the agenda

Matsumoto also commented on the recent development of central bank digital currencies:

“I think David Marcus made a mistake. He should have said it was Facebook Token. Because they said it was ‘the future currency,’ the U.S. government criticized it heavily”.

Matsumoto added that “the role of Libra might be just to open Pandora’s Box and that was it”. Meanwhile, the United States is behind the competition precisely because “they crushed Libra by themselves and could no longer say they would start developing CBDC”, Matsumoto analyzed. 

Some industry insiders are worried about American reluctance to move forward with CBDC. Takaya Nakamura, an executive from Japanese crypto exchange Fisco recently claimed that Japan’s role should be to urge the United States to take CBDCs more seriously.

Stock splits have all but disappeared from corporate playbooks, even though history shows shares of companies that split their stock often see a bump in price.

Stocks in the S&P 500 tend to rise 5% in the year following share splits, including 2.5% immediately following the announcement, according to research from Nasdaq Inc. on splits between 2012 and 2018.

“Splits…

Investing in stocks is a great way to grow your net worth, but it can also be somewhat of a guessing game. Unless you have the knowledge, time, and patience to vet each individual company you’re considering before buying its stock, you could wind up with a portfolio that’s weighed down with bad deals and underperformers.

That’s one reason why many investors tend to appreciate index funds. These passively managed funds are designed to track the performance of a market index — usually by holding all the companies in it in proportion to their weight in the index. The performance of an S&P 500 index fund, for example, should mirror that of the S&P 500.

This makes them a wise option for people who want to simplify the investing process. You don’t need to research stocks one by one, and you get instant portfolio diversification. (Case in point: Invest in an S&P 500 index fund, and you’re effectively putting your money into 500 of the largest U.S. companies by market capitalization — which makes it a fair proxy for the country’s economy.) And index funds are also fairly inexpensive.

Image source: Getty Images.

When you invest in any mutual fund, you pay a set of annual fees that add up to its expense ratio. With an actively managed fund, what you’re getting in exchange for that cost is the expertise of a seasoned fund manager and their team, who will assemble a well-researched collection of stocks, put it into a neat package, and shift the fund’s holdings when they see that as a smart idea.

That doesn’t come cheap.

With index funds, by contrast, most of that work (and pricey expertise) is not necessary, so their expense ratios can be as little as one-tenth of what you’d pay for an actively managed fund. But despite the many benefits of index funds, they aren’t particularly popular among wealthy investors.

Why the rich tend to look elsewhere

Index funds are an extremely cost-effective, convenient investment choice. But they generally aim to match the performance of their associated indexes, not surpass it.

The ultra-wealthy, however, may not be satisfied with that. Rather, they might want to invest in ways that offer them the opportunity to beat the market, even if that means taking on more risk in their portfolios — risk they can tolerate far more easily than the average investor.

Imagine that you have $400,000 invested in stocks in your tax-advantaged retirement accounts. That’s probably a lot of cash for you, and if your portfolio declined in value by half — or worse — it would have a major impact on your future quality of life.

But for someone with an investment portfolio worth $40 million, a major loss would still leave them very wealthy. That allows them the freedom to take on more risk than the average retail investor will be comfortable with.

In fact, wealthy investors often favor actively managed mutual funds, regardless of their higher fees — and their iffy odds of delivering that sought-after outperformance. In any given year, the large majority of actively managed funds won’t beat the market, and over multiyear periods, the share of them that do drops even further. By contrast, index funds often outperform active funds across different asset classes.

The wealthy also can more easily invest in real estate, antiques, and other less-liquid assets — whereas you probably can’t afford to take on the risk associated with buying a $50,000 piece of art you hope will appreciate in value. And in the “actively managed” sphere, the wealthy also have the ability to put money into hedge funds, which most of us are legally barred from.

But even though index funds aren’t popular among the very rich, they’re still a great choice for the everyday investor. If that’s the category you identify with, you’d be wise to add some to your portfolio. They may not make you rich overnight, but by capitalizing on the broad long-term gains of the U.S. market, you could over time accumulate quite a substantial sum and achieve your own financial goals.

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Operation Warp Speed (OWS), the Trump administration’s bold effort to deliver at least 300 million doses of a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine by January, took another expensive step forward. On Friday, Sanofi (NASDAQ:SNY) and GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) signed a vaccine-supply deal with the U.S. government worth up to $2.1 billion to help the collaboration partners scale up manufacturing of a vaccine candidate — before there are clinical-trial results that prove it safely prevents SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, from spreading.

Bottomless expense accounts have allowed the leading vaccine candidates to advance at top speed. Here’s a quick rundown to help you keep tabs on the top five programs and the funds that are pushing them forward.

Data source: Company press releases.

Who needs a name?

Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline are committed to developing a coronavirus vaccine candidate at top speed but haven’t yet bothered to give their protein-based vaccine candidate a name. Sanofi will provide the partnership with a protein that mimics part of SARS-CoV-2, and GlaxoSmithKline will contribute an adjuvant designed to spark a stronger immune response to Sanofi’s protein.

Image source: Getty Images.

The government has promised the partners up to $2.1 billion, around half of which will pay for clinical trials that aren’t expected to begin until the fall. If a phase 1/2 study planned to begin in September produces encouraging results, a phase 3 trial could start by the end of 2020.

Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline will use the remaining portion of committed funding to support the manufacturing of their vaccine candidate. The partners will produce 100 million doses long before it has a chance to prove itself effective. The government also has an option for the supply of an additional 500 million doses down the road.

BNT162 from BioNTech and Pfizer

In partnership with Pfizer, BioNTech is one of two clinical-stage biotechs with OWS-backed vaccine programs that rely on strands of messenger RNA (mRNA) that get human cells to produce proteins that mimic SARS-CoV-2. Unlike the other mRNA program, mRNA1273 from Moderna, BNT162 entered phase 1 testing as multiple related candidates. 

When the government placed an initial order for 100 million doses with an option to buy another 500 million, the partners hadn’t selected the specific candidate they would move into phase 3 testing yet. Shares of BioNTech vaulted higher when the company reported encouraging signs of efficacy from BNT162b1 in early July, but the partners began a phase 2b/3 trial with BNT162b2 because patients who received it were less likely to report fever, fatigue, and chills.

Image source: Getty Images.

NVX-CoV2373 from Novavax

This Maryland-headquartered biotech company has been developing vaccines since the 1980s but still hasn’t sent any new drug applications to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Despite this troubling track record, the government has purchased 100 million doses of NVX-CoV2373, the company’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate, for delivery in late 2020 

In July, OWS granted Novavax a $1.6 billion award that the company will use to complete the late-stage development of NVX-CoV2373. This is an adjuvant-boosted protein similar to the candidate Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline are testing.

During the first week of August, Novavax will share results from a 130-patient phase 1/2 clinical trial that began in May. The company expects to begin a phase 3 study that will enroll up to 30,000 people in the fall.

AZD1222 from AstraZeneca

This is one of three OWS-backed vaccine candidates that use the carved-out husk of another virus to deliver genetic material that cells use to produce proteins found on SARS-CoV-2. AstraZeneca’s partners at Oxford University began a phase 3 trial with AZD1222 in Brazil, all the way back on June 20, 2020.

The ongoing 5,000-patient phase 3 study in Brazil was sponsored entirely by concerned Brazilian entrepreneurs, but the U.S. government will fund a phase 3 study with 30,000 patients, which is expected to begin soon. In addition to a giant pivotal study, AstraZeneca will also use up to $1.2 billion of taxpayer dollars to produce 400 million doses for the U.S., making it the least expensive vaccine OWS has backed so far.

Image source: Getty Images.

mRNA-1273 from Moderna

In April, Moderna received a $483 million commitment to support the development of its mRNA-based vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273. In July, the company received a $483 million top-up to run a much larger phase 3 trial than originally intended. 

Before results of the 30,000-participant Cove study are complete, the company will use its OWS award to scale up manufacturing. Moderna thinks it will be able to deliver up to 1 billion doses of mRNA-1273 annually in 2021.

So much more

It might feel like forever, but the COVID-19 pandemic will end in the foreseeable future, along with any cash flows these vaccines might produce. Investing in any of these companies simply because there could be a large (but short) windfall in their near future probably isn’t a great idea. 

While the amount of demand for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is unprecedented, so is the level of competition. In addition to these five well-funded programs, at least a dozen more will produce their first clinical-trial results by the end of the summer.

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s bank accounts haven’t suffered in the few days following their virtual testimony before Congress. In fact, they’ve actually tacked on billions of dollars to their fortunes in the last two days.

Zuckerberg added about $7 billion to his net worth on Friday, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, as Facebook’s stock rocketed higher a day after the company reported Q2 revenue and earnings that topped Wall Street’s projections. The 36-year-old is now worth an estimated $96 billion.

At the same time, Bezos was $6.3 billion wealthier by the end of Friday’s trading session as well, after Amazon’s share price increased 3.7% on the day. Like Facebook, Amazon’s stock jump came after the e-commerce giant reported a $88.9 billion in Q2 sales, easily lapping analyst projections. 

Both Bezos and Zuckerberg also enjoyed modest gains — at least relative to Friday’s surge — on Thursday, one day after they testified in front of Congress for six hours.

Also Read: Facebook Stock Hits All-Time High After Big Q2 Earnings Report

If Amazon’s Wall Street run continues next week, Bezos could be the first person to hit $200 billion in net worth; right now, his fortune stands at $188 billion, per Bloomberg.

The hearing aimed to see if Amazon and Facebook, along with Apple and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, have used anti-competitive practices to build their businesses and hamper their rivals. But the hearing touched on a number of topics as well, including social media censorship, China, and even spam emails, vacillating between the serious and the bizarre for much of Wednesday afternoon. To read a full recap of the hearing, go here.

Read original story Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos Have Made $6 Billion Each Since Wednesday’s Congressional Hearing At TheWrap

Apple has been facing accusations of anticompetitive practices as the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigates the company for potential antitrust concerns mostly related to the App Store. Following Tim Cook’s testimony at a public hearing this week, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney criticized Apple claiming the company imposes unfair conditions on developers.

Sweeney said in an interview with Bloomberg that he tried to contact Apple several times about the App Store subscription model, but the company denied all requests. He also mentions that Epic Games reached out to Apple to ask about the possibility of launching Epic Games Store on iOS, but Apple lawyers sent a letter refusing the request.

That’s in no way an acceptable situation for a platform for a billion users. […] And you know these are disingenuous arguments. They’re aimed at supporting unfair business practices.

Epic Games is the company behind the popular game Fortnite. When asked about Google’s relationship with developers, Sweeney says that although the company has some similar practices with the Play Store, users can install apps from different sources on Android. “Apple’s playing field is the most uneven in the history of technology products,” he said.

The CEO of Epic Games also argues that Apple imposes anti-competitive practices by not letting developers create apps that compete with other apps created by Apple. “They have rules that outright say you cannot build software that competes with the categories of Apple apps which we do as a key to our platform,” Sweeney defends.

Apple takes 30% of any transaction made within its own App Store system. This includes sold apps, in-app purchases, and subscriptions. After some developers accused Apple of abusive and anti-competitive practices, the company reduced its commission to 15% when the user is paying for the subscription for more than one year.

Tim Cook said during the hearing this week that Apple’s commission is fair as it helps the company maintain the entire App Store platform. Apple’s CEO also suggested that unsatisfied users can migrate to Android. With more developers criticizing Apple’s platform, it seems that this antitrust discussion is just beginning.

You can watch the full interview on Bloomberg’s website.

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