1. #tech. Pitchbook

Apple acquired an AI start-up Xnor.ai for $200M, with the potential to shore up its core money-maker – Iphone. Xnor.ai can makes technology that allows Ai to operate on locally low-power devices, which could help free Apple products from relying on cloud for complicated tasks

2. #economics. MorningBrew

Details on the first deal between US and China. US will export more to China ($200B for the next two years) and in return, it will lower tariff on $120B China exported goods from 15% to 7.5%. The losers are US farmers, and winner is…China

3. #movicestreaming. Inc.com

The competition in streaming market is going steamed witht the debut of Peacock from NBCUniversal. However, Netflix, the market leader is still going well as their subscribers do not leave it.

Summary of my favorite topic: Fool: Spotify – How a pure-player compete with loss leaders

Music streaming has been the growth engine of music industry’s resurgence over the last decade, and Spotify is one of the key contributors to that engine. The battle in streaming is highly competitive and Spotify has taken further steps to maintain its present.

Spotify’s competitors are small companies under colossuses’ umbrellar, such as Apple music by Apple and Amazon music limited my Amazon. To rack up as many subscribers as they can, these ones are willing to make losses when label price hits a wall. In contrast, Spotify must define its own path to profits

In reality, Spotify has implemented two steps. First, it is building a two-sided marketplace, where artists can utilize the massive network of listeners instead of depending on record labels. Second, Spotify has jumped into the podcast world and became the biggest player, then the advertising future is promising ahead.

 03 most interesting news today

1. #tech. Nytimes

Despite many challenges ahead, Alphabet reached the market cap milestone: $1 Trillion, after Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.

2. #fashion. Fortune

Gap spinned of Old Navy, on the premise that its growth doesnt reflect on GAP stock price. Then GAP stock price rise, but it’s underlying health is still a concern as it has lost its identity in recent years.

3. #economic. Nytimes

US and China signed the phase 01 of trade deal, in 8 terms and rolling out in…phase. The terms revolves around central topic of the disagreement such as intellectual property, increase purchase of agriculture goods and and the resolution of business dispute

Summary of my favorite topic: Benzinga: Why growth in Latin America matters for Netflix

Netflix has achieved the penetration rate of 650-700 points in Latin America, even higher than its peak in the US in 2013. This successful performance previews the growth in emerging markets.

Latin America is perceived as a lower-developed than the US. But it has a young population and high-TV pay price. Netflix has put some investment in local content to create some hits widespread all over the key countries.

The context is quite the same in Asian-Pacific countries. However, two problems arose: higher TV price and the difference in local taste, which is hard for Netflix to resonate with. To tackle them, Netflix has aggressively ramping its local content production in Asian countries.

 03 most interesting news today

1. #banking. Morningbrew

US banks are up. Trade wars trimmed the growth of commercial and industrial loans as business paused new investment. They shifted the focus to other less volatile business such as wealth management.

2. #ridehailing. Quartz

Uber made some changes to its business, no more upfront pricing for non-Pool and the return of surge multiplier for long trips.

3. #banking. SeekingAlpha

JP Morgan delivered the best performance among its peers, with growth in consumer cards, IB and markets.

Summary of my favorite topic: Visa acquired Plaid

Source 1: PitchBook

Source 2: Forbes

Source 3: Businesswire

Visa has made a big move, acquiring Plaid for ~$5.5B (35x revenue multiple valuation), making this the biggest M&A in FinTech of all time. The acquisition is expected to fuel the growth trajectory of Visa (the provider of network) in 2 ways: (1) Expanding customer base and (2) Making it easier to connect all the financial networks within Visa.

Buying Plaid, Visa can get access to the ballooning base of Plaid customers, which is estimated to be approximately 200M, CAGR 100% since 2015. It’s a chance to sell additional financial services to these customers.

Also, Plaid with it software technology will help Visa connect all of its global unparalleled financial technology. Plaid’s software link a a number of personal finance apps with banks and other platforms. This technology is the one Visa needs to go global with its services, to the goal of not only being a payment method, but enabling movement of fund in any settings globally

 03 most interesting news today

1. #retail. Fortune

Walmart on online retailing. Walmart accounts for 56% grocery revenue in the US, which creates a sustainable number of visiting customers to their website every day. Instead of shifting the focus to other non-grocery merchandise, the CEO said that they will look at the overall growth of digital business as a whole.

2. #startupvaluation. Thesaigontimes

A lesson from the failure in WeWork’ valuation, which led to their IPO scandal. Analyst used Community Adjusted EBITDA (a non GAAP number) to mislead investors. 

3. #airline. Morningbrew

Tasks for the new CEO of Boeing. #1 Get Boeing flying again, as it has already pulled many US suppliers down. #2 Restore trust, Boeing is having “new” culture of prioritizing speed over safety.

Summary of my favorite topic: Meituan Dianping’s Path towards Profitability

Meituan Dianping (MD), Super App in China, just became profitable last quarter, after 6 years of cash burning in a crowded market. This article illustrates what it is and why it can make profit in a notorious loss-making food delivery service.

MD offers users a wide range of services, ranging from food delivery, to group coupon, household cleaning and hotel booking. Normally MD users first came to the app for scouting restaurants or food delivery, but continue with more than 5 services after that. Its users stickiness and retention rate is the highest among other players.

MD food delivery came profitable from economy of scale and increasing revenue from advertising. MD targeted 2-tier cities first, instead of 1-tier to avoid high competition. When the number of order increases, MD groups different orders in one delivery and optimizes its advanced routing algorithms to reduce cost per order. Also, when the app dominates the market, the increasing number of revenue and orders incentivizes SMEs in China to pour money into the app for advertising