(Loic Venance/Getty Images) |
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Despite an estimated $10.5B spent on advertising for the World Cup, the brands getting the biggest buzz of the tournament might not be the official sponsors, but the banned sponsors. Consider Levi's Stadium in San Francisco, whose logo has been covered up at the request of FIFA, as it is not an official sponsor, or Heinz ketchup bottles with taped-over logos, which Kraft Heinz turned into a limited-edition product release. Sports marketing expert Adam Britton attributes this to the Streisand effect, named after Barbra Streisand, whose efforts to wipe all photos of her home from the internet only piqued search interest: blocking out these brands' logos paradoxically makes them hypervisible. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 closed lower on Friday, posting weekly losses, while the Russell 2000 eked out gains for both the day and the week. Industrials and information technology were the worst-performing sectors on Friday, while health care was the best performer. 🧠 Test yourself on our recent newsletters with the Snacks Seven Quiz. Here’s the first question: |
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The former meme stock BlackBerry surged on blowout earnings last week — the bull case has nothing to do with phones. When you think of BlackBerry, you probably picture the clunky QWERTY keyboard and yearn for the pre-AI slop era. But for many traders, that nostalgic memory could have been getting in the way of evaluating a rising star. |
- In its first-quarter earnings on Thursday, the cell-phone-turned-B2B-enterprise-software-company blew past estimates with revenue up 26% and a 44% EPS beat after back-to-back 30%+ beats before that. The company hiked its full-year profit forecast to 16 cents to 20 cents per share with revenue between $594 million and $621 million.
- “The market still misdefines BlackBerry,” analyst Suthan Sukumar of Stifel said Tuesday in a note to clients. “This is…a mission-critical software layer in the physical AI stack and a dominant partner to silicon leaders like Nvidia, Qualcomm, and AMD powering the build-out from cloud to edge, across cars, robots, factories, and medical devices.”
- QNX, BlackBerry’s real-time operating system, runs inside of 275 million cars worldwide. Modern autos generate terabytes of daily data, from tire pressure to monitoring driving behavior, and QNX is the foundation beneath all of it.
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About 20% of QNX revenue now comes from noncar segments. Uses in robotics, medical devices, drones, and industrial automation are growing. In June, Nvidia announced Halos for Robotics, and QNX is in the stack. Per QNX’s own research, 85% of robotics engineers expect software’s role in their field to increase over the next three to five years. | |
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On Friday, when Bloomberg asked if consumers could swap out iPhones for the nostalgic keyboard again, Giamatteo said “I don't think you'll see us get back into the phone game anytime soon.” BlackBerry shed its consumer identity years ago. What’s left is a profitable B2B software company that’s already embedded in tech infrastructure from cars to robots to drones. As physical AI scales, the demand for trusted safety-certified software is likely to grow. |
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Is Your Tech Strategy Worth Revisiting? |
Many investors rely on tech exposure that is based on traditional classification approaches . When it comes to gaining exposure to innovation, the selection criteria can matter just as much as sector or size. The Global X NYSE® 100 ETF (NYSX) tracks an index that uses a structured, rules-based scoring framework to track 100 companies based on market cap, liquidity, valuation, and growth. Compared to traditional tech indices, NYSX’s index isn't confined to a single exchange. It includes companies across multiple U.S. exchanges, including sub-industries like digital payments and e-commerce that may often fall outside traditional tech definitions. NYSX offers an additional perspective to market-cap weighted exposure, tracking companies associated with powering the modern economy across multiple industries. Discover the NYSX framework for exposure to technology-enabled growth. |
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Stories we’re obsessed with |
- A different methodology for investing in small caps: While the Russell 2000 is the benchmark for small cap stocks, asset managers at Bridgeway Asset Management found that some of the constituents of the index include stocks that have been demoted to the small cap category as their market cap has fallen, or recent IPOs. They discovered that excluding those two categories improved annual returns by 1.57%. For passive investors looking for a small cap index, the S&P Small Cap 600, which requires its constituents to meet profitability requirements, has a 600% higher return than the Russell 2000 over the past 30 years.
- Nostalgia toys are back: We’ve discussed the resurgence of '90s toys before, with respect to Tamagotchis, as the “kid-dulting” economy booms as more grown-ups yearn for playtime. The toys from millennials’ youth are hot again, as Beyblades, spinning tops inspired by traditional Japanese beigoma, are making a comeback in Asia. Additionally, footbags, more commonly known by their trademark brand name “Hacky Sacks,” have been rediscovered by Gen Alpha, largely thanks to TikTok.
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- ⚽️ World Cup: Today sees three huge matches in the knockout round of the World Cup, including a must-watch between Brazil and Japan, Germany’s toughest match yet, and a match featuring underdog Morocco taking on The Netherlands, a Dutch team, which has the fourth-highest chance of winning the entire tournament. As it stands going into the knockout round, France has a 27% chance of winning the tournament, Argentina17%, and Spain 15%.
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*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC. |
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- Tuesday: May US Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released at 10 a.m. ET. Postmarket earnings expected from: Nike and Constellation Brands
- Wednesday: Premarket expected from General Mills. Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh due to participate in a panel discussion.
- Thursday: US June nonfarm payrolls report to be published at 8:30 a.m. ET.
- Friday: US markets closed for Independence Day.
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