Hi! How long is too long… 20-year Target veteran Michael Fiddelke will take the helm of the struggling mega-retailer from early 2026, as "Tarzhay" looks to win back customers from discount store chains and ecommerce alternatives. Today we're exploring: |
- SU fast, SU furious: Xiaomi's EV business is racing to catch up with legacy players.
- Top dollar: Global investors spent billions to "Buy America" in June.
- Homebound: Shein is looking to IPO in Hong Kong.
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Xiaomi is speedrunning building an electric vehicle business |
Going first is hard, and scary. You have to forge a path, fixing problems no one else has ever faced, without the ability to ask anyone for help. There's a reason Google wasn't the very first search engine and Facebook wasn't the OG social media platform. It's almost always easier to build on existing work — and no company is proving that better than Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, with its new electric vehicle business. |
Before 2021, no one at Xiaomi knew how to make cars. Indeed, going from smartphones to EVs isn't exactly a logical or easy next step — just ask Apple, which finally gave up on its moonshot car project after a decade. But when faced with a fresh round of US trade sanctions, execs at Xiaomi ran a scary thought experiment: what would happen to the company if the sanctions killed off its phone business? Xiaomi Auto was founded in September of that year, and now, less than four years on, the company thinks it can deliver 350,000 electric vehicles like its SU7 this fiscal year. That's a milestone that took Tesla more than a decade, and domestic rival BYD even longer. |
As yesterday's earnings report revealed, cars are speeding up to become Xiaomi's future, as the company — which has a ~15% share of the smartphone market — noted that the global smartphone industry is likely to experience near to zero collective growth this year, while intense price wars continue to chip away at profitability. Meanwhile, Xiaomi's smart EVs, AI, and new initiatives segment reached some $3 billion (RMB 21.3 billion) in revenue — finding a swath of middle- to high-income consumers that already love Xiaomi and aren't swayed by rival BYD's cheaper EV alternatives. The company is now looking to expand into Europe by 2027. Being first is nice, but being second (or more like 50th in Xiaomi's case) doesn't prevent you from catching up quick. |
If April was "Sell America" month, June was "Buy America" month — and it was 9x the size |
Much has been made of the "Sell America" trade, as President Trump's "Liberation Day" in early April upended notions of what global trade norms should be, sending stocks and the US dollar tumbling. But the truth is that "Sell America" — the idea that investors were redrawing the world, reacting to a seismic shift in the global order — never really happened. Or, if it did, it was A) very brief, and B) more of a currency market phenomenon than a stock market one. Treasury International Capital (TIC) data reveals that foreign investors plowed $279 billion (net) back into US equities in the last two months, including $163 billion in June alone — the highest monthly figure ever. |
For context, in April, net flows out of US equities totaled $18.4 billion; June's buying was 8.9x that figure. Indeed, tariffs have become old news. Recession risks have receded, the AI boom has barely blinked, and any lingering trade issues in supply chains are being lumped into the "solvable" category of jobs to be done. That's given the green light for global investors to run the same playbook that retail traders have been employing: buy each and every dip, sending US stocks to new highs. |
Interestingly, this has been more of a stock market story than anything else. US Treasury bonds continue to reflect more of a US inflation and policy uncertainty premium, with 30-year yields at 4.91% and fiscal concerns still fresh in many minds — and, of course, the US Dollar Spot Index itself remains down roughly 10% for the year. So, from the perspective of foreign buyers, the S&P 500 is roughly flat year to date. |
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Cut through the noise of mega-caps and market swings |
Rather than answering to tariffs and Big Tech, Cytonics is choosing to answer to real people. While the market flails, Cytonics is focused on a years-long fight: developing a disease-modifying therapy for osteoarthritis (OA). They've already treated 10,000+ patients with their first-generation biologic therapy for OA — and now, their breakthrough drug CYT-108 is undergoing FDA human clinical trials. If successful, this may offer regenerative effects to osteoarthritis joint tissues. A $9M raise from investors in 2021-2022 paved the way for Cytonics to complete IND enabling studies and begin human clinical trials. A further $6M was crowdfunded in 2023-2024, aiding the development of CYT-108. Right now, Cytonics is still open to everyday investors at $3/share — but not for long. |
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Shein wants to move back to China to secure a Hong Kong IPO |
New York looked like a no-go and London was taking too long — now, years into its scrambling efforts to secure a place on the public market, Shein is planning to move its base back to China to nail down an IPO in Hong Kong, per Bloomberg reporting. |
The fast-fashion giant known for ultra-affordable clothes of varying quality moved its core operations to Singapore in 2021. Four years later, company execs are hoping a return to the country where it was founded will help get national regulators on board with its public offering plans. Previously, Shein's efforts to IPO were met with resistance on both sides of the Atlantic, as US and UK lawmakers raised concerns around forced labor and other issues. With the de minimis trading exemption sewn shut, American shoppers learned to live without cheap Chinese imports... for a month or two at least. Now, traffic to Temu's and Shein's websites is on the up once again, as the two rivals saw site visits rise in July, data from Similarweb shows. |
Shein's 85 million figure — the most it's clocked since at least February 2024 — was slightly outshone by Temu. Indeed, just as it looked like the two might be leveling out in June, desktop and mobile visits to Temu more than doubled, with some arguing that the plaform, owned by PDD Holdings, might already be benefiting from Amazon pulling out of Google Shopping ads last month. Can Americans live without $1 necklaces, $2 phone cases, and $4 T-shirts? The answer, at least for now, seems to be no — great news for Shein, as it hopes to finally carve out a place on the stock market. |
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- The US government confirmed Tuesday that it's in talks to buy a 10% stake in Intel — just one day after the struggling chipmaker announced a $2 billion investment from SoftBank.
- A 113-year-old Swedish church has arrived at its new location, following a two-day trip where lamp-posts and traffic lights were removed to make way for the 672-tonne building.
- Return of the SPAC: Chamath Palihapitiya, the so-called "SPAC King," is reportedly aiming to raise $250 million through a new speculative vehicle called the "American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp."
- Google will pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit claiming that it violated children's privacy by collecting watch data on YouTube from users under the age of 13.
- A three-day walkout and more than 2,700 flight cancellations later, the Air Canada strike is finally over after reaching a deal with the flight attendants' union yesterday.
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- Mind your manners… Find out how your tolerance for rude behavior stacks up against other people your age with this Pew Research quiz.
- Frozen assets: AP's guide to iced drinks, from milkshakes and malts to concretes and frappes.
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Off the charts: What do Americans use smart assistants for the most, per a new YouGov survey? [Answer below]. |
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