January 28 top news briefs

It is Thursday, January 28. Here are today’s top news briefs.

There’s a lot of news about GameStop stocks. Over the past week, many people on Reddit banded together to buy GameStop stocks because they found out that several large investing firms on Wall Street were making bets that GameStop’s stock would fall. The bets are called short-selling. It works when someone borrows a stock, immediately sells it when the stock is at a high value, waits for the value of the stock to fall, and then buys it back at a lower price and returns it while keeping a profit after paying interest. It’s a way to make a profit. It’s a little complicated to me and I hope to post a video tomorrow about this with a deaf financial advisor.

So to go back to the story — usually Wall Street can short-sell stocks without many people noticing because it’s all happening out of sight. But with GameStop, many loyal people on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum decided they wanted to beat the investing firms at their own game and buy many stocks, which drove up the value of the stocks. This means the investment firms who hoped to make a profit ended up losing a lot of money — because they must return the stocks they borrowed and they are priced far, far higher. As of yesterday GameStop’s value went up $10 billion.

Today there is controversy because Robinhood, a popular app where people can buy stocks, blocked people from buying GameStop stocks due to “volatility.” People could sell GameStop stocks, but they couldn’t buy it. GameStop’s stock value went down 30% this afternoon. Several lawmakers said there needs to be scrutiny on why Robinhood is blocking investors while Wall Street can still trade stocks. There are already lawsuits filed against Robinhood.

I’ll cover this more in detail tomorrow. If you have any questions, feel free to comment and maybe I’ll ask the deaf financial advisor these questions.

[Sponsored Video from Sorenson: www.sorenson.com]

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced that he has raised $1.8 million from sales of merchandise of images of him sitting during President Joe Biden’s inauguration with large mittens. That image quickly went viral and became a meme. Bernie’s team sold merch on his website and items quickly sold out. The money will be given to charitable organizations in Bernie’s home state of Vermont. The mittens are made of recycled wool.

In separate news, a woman made a crochet doll of the Bernie meme and it sold for $20,300 on eBay. The seller, Tobey King, said she would donate the money to Meals on Wheels in Vermont.

Today two cases of a new Covid-19 variant that have been spreading in South Africa was detected in South Carolina. They are the first two U.S. cases. The variant is considered more contagious and is more resistant to current vaccines. This is a different variant from the one in the U.K. The two people who are infected in South Carolina had no known travel history and the two people have no connection to each other. For the U.K. variant, there have already been several cases found in the U.S. There is another Covid-19 variant in Brazil that was discovered in Minnesota. Dr. Anthony Fauci said they are keeping a close eye and Moderna said they are working on a booster shot to work against the new variants. It is likely that the new variants will spread across the U.S. because many have not been vaccinated and we’re already overwhelmed and struggling to keep the original Covid-19 variant from spreading.

Today General Motors in Detroit announced it aspires to have almost all of its vehicles to stop using gasoline and be zero emission by 2035. That means GM wants most of its cars to use electric or hydrogen fuel cell propulsion without any tailpipe emissions. GM said they want to be carbon neutral in all of its global products and operations by 2040, which means the company wants to have no contribution to CO2 or offset emissions by contributing to clean energy initiatives.

That’s all the top news briefs for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gamestop-stock-market.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/robinhood-abruptly-restricts-transactions-gamestop-stock/story?id=75537922&cid=clicksource_4380645_6_three_posts_card_hed

https://apnews.com/article/bernie-sanders-mittens-memes-charity-3f8afd8e8a5a0b8b9709dd6d4d30ec13

https://apnews.com/article/bernie-sanders-media-fashion-social-media-texas-7a704531e6fd5d5bb3a8aae5f7a98710

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/28/south-africa-covid-variant-united-states-463485

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2021/01/28/gm-hopes-to-eliminate-gas-vehicles-by-2040/4294733001/