Hey Influence Traders,
An absolutely massive, and I mean massive, amount of important news has come down over the past 48 hours.
But none more important than what Income Hunter Bill Griffo will announce.
At Noon EST today he will host a special event that could impact your wealth forever!
It’s called …
“The Digital Currency Arms Race: How You Can Stay Ahead of the International Plot to Kill the US Dollar.”
Apparently, a brewing digital currency showdown could DESTROY our monetary supremacy!
Bill is going to lay it open.
If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so HERE.
A Fifth Ocean
There’s a fifth ocean apparently … who knew!
Not happy with four, a bunch of scientists have officially declared the water around Antarctica to be the “Southern Ocean.”
All this time, it was right there …
The Keystone XL pipeline is dead
Early this year Biden scrapped a border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which has now led the company behind it, TC Energy Corp. (Ticker: TRP), to officially shut it down.
TRP is a diversified company, but this announcement does not help its outlook or that of the thousands of pipeline workers counting on it.
“Income Tax Out; Wealth Tax In” for Infrastructure Spending
Collapsing talks between the White House and GOP around Biden’s infrastructure spending proposal caused a bipartisan group of Senators to take tax increases off the table to spend for the infrastructure proposal.
Despite Biden’s desire to tax high-income earners and corporations, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said that tax increases are not under consideration. An alternative was not put forth.
The group is also looking at a reduced proposal of around $900 billion, compared to Biden’s initial $2.2 trillion proposal.
Pfizer and BiioNTech Vaccine Deal
The White House has reached an agreement with Pfizer (Ticker: PFE) and BioNTech (Ticker: BNTX) to provide 500 million COVID vaccine doses to low-income countries over the next year, but it might not be as lucrative to PFE and BNTX as it sounds.
The word on K Street is that the U.S. will pay for the doses at a “not-for-profit” price. More to come when I figure out exactly what that means, but my gut says that PFE and BNTX will still make some money on the deal.
China Bill
The Senate passed a bill to spend $250 billion to make U.S. manufacturing and technology more competitive with China.
The legislation, a win for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, passed 68-32 and promises to meet the economic and strategic challenge from China.
Schumer stated that “whoever wins the race to the technologies of the future is going to be the global economic leader — with profound consequences for foreign policy and national security as well.”
$190 billion in spending is authorized, with the majority of that going to universities and other institutions like the National Science Foundation, Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and DARPA for R&D.
Importantly, it also includes $52 billion in emergency outlays to help domestic manufacturers of semiconductors expand production in light of the global shortage of chips that has hampered automotive and electronics production. We’ll wait to see if Intel (Ticker: INTC), Nvidia (Ticker: NVDA), and Texas Instruments (Ticker: TXN) benefit.
President Biden has endorsed the bill, but it still has to make its way through the House.
Crypto Warnings
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce warned her colleagues that overregulating cryptos will dampen innovation and discourage investors.
Peirce, one of two Republicans among the five commissioners at the Securities and Exchange Commission, stated in a Financial Times interview that “I am concerned that the initial reaction of a regulator is always to say ‘I want to grab hold of this and make it like the markets I already regulate’ … [and] I am not sure that’s going to be great for innovation.”
El Salvador Makes it Official
El Salvador became the first country to approve cryptocurrency as legal tender, which could open the door for others.
While El Salvador currently uses the US dollar as its official currency, this move will require businesses to accept Bitcoin (BTC) as payment, allow Salvadorans to pay taxes and bank loans in BTC, and when Salvadorans convert BTC to other currencies they won’t pay capital gains tax.
This is a major push for BTC as its legal tender status could force other nations to treat it as a tradeable currency with El Salvador. It could also lead other countries to follow suit.
EV Storage
I read a story recently that Apple (Ticker: AAPL) is in discussions with Chinese EV battery makers CATL and BYD about becoming a supplier for the Apple Car.
However, AAPL has made it a condition that potential battery suppliers must build manufacturing facilities in the United States, which could dampen those discussions.
In light of that story and Biden’s Buy America policies, it has caused me renewed interest in domestic suppliers like battery start-up QuantumScape (Ticker: QS).
I like QS and have it in the PowerMoves starting line-up, but it is far from a sure thing since a lot of the noise around it has been what it CAN do and not what it has actually done.
Big talk does not always work out as we recently saw with Lordstown Motors (Ticker: RIDE). That former EV truck darling just announced in a regulatory filing that funding concerns were causing a “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern.
Andrew and I do not have any trades on RIDE at the moment.
So perhaps there are more stable ways to play this sector. After all, we’ve done really well with our newest, most favorite EV play in Ford Motor Co. (Ticker: F).
Well another major player from Detroit, General Motors (Ticker: GM), has been ramping up the EV competition.
GM announced last year that it would spend more than $20 billion by 2025 on electric and autonomous vehicle tech, and promised to offer 20 new electric vehicles by 2023.
It recently increased that investment to $27 billion, and 30 new global EVs by 2025.
To ensure that it can do so, GM has also unveiled its new Ultium battery, which can allegedly power an EV for 500 to 600 miles in a single charge.
Could that make boring old GM a Tesla (Ticker: TSLA) killer?
Cutting Through the Noise for You.
Frank