Zheng Qinwen successfully won the Olympic women's singles tennis championship last night. This is also a gold medal with extremely high gold content. Today, it basically dominated various hot searches, which shows that everyone knows the value of it.
The Olympic tennis matches do not have points in the WTA system, and the event itself does not have prize money, so it is not very important for professional players, but every session there will be some top players fighting for national honor. For Zheng Qinwen, the quarter-finals and semi-finals were extremely difficult, especially the semi-finals where she defeated the world No. 1 Swiatek, which was like a divine help. In the previous WTA competitions, Zheng Qinwen lost all 6 games to Swiatek, but the belief of winning gold for the country that day inspired her to climb this mountain.
Such an outstanding girl deserves huge business returns. It is foreseeable that her income will increase significantly from now on. I will post a picture here for you, which is the Forbes ranking of female athletes.
See the logo on the right side of the national flag? Nine of the top 10 in the world are tennis players, with Gu Ailing being the only exception. The light-colored "on-the-field-earning" on the right side means your match bonus income, and the dark-colored "off-the-field-earning" is your off-court commercial income.
Swiatek gets half of the two, after all, she is the top female tennis player today. Gu Ailing's income from the competition is negligible, and the $22.1 million is all from commercial income outside the competition, probably from brand advertisements after winning the gold medal at the Winter Olympics.
Here I have to complain that her halfpipe and diving platform are both extreme sports. Chinese women usually play these two sports... I guess there are 1,000 people? Such a niche sport has such a big commercial market, which shows that there are too many champion fans who only care about gold medals.
Zheng Qinwen's previous annual income exceeded 7 million US dollars, including 1.7 million in competition prize money and 5.5 million in commercial income. Due to her outstanding performance this year, she will undoubtedly be among the top ten next year.
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The most explosive news over the weekend was that Buffett sold nearly half of his Apple shares, which was a bolt from the blue and caused an outburst in the industry.
Buffett first started to build a position in Apple in 2016. During the window period of 2016-2018, Berkshire bought nearly $36 billion worth of Apple shares. The position was not low at the time. After that, Apple's stock soared seven or eight times, becoming Berkshire's number one position, accounting for 40-50% of the parent fund.
Objectively speaking, Apple stock can be regarded as the last big bet in Buffett's investment career, and it is the stock that made him the most money in his life. Buffett has sold some Apple stocks before, but they were all small-scale. This time, Berkshire Hathaway announced its second-quarter holdings (as of the end of June). In fact, everyone had certain psychological expectations for reducing its holdings in Apple, but almost no one expected that half of the position would be sold, from 780 million shares to 400 million shares.
That's nearly $100 billion in selling. This old man, over 90 years old, is still playing such a big game. Beneath his old skin, he still has the core of a violent gambler.
This incident fermented this weekend and swept through domestic and foreign investment circles. You cannot ignore the psychological impact it brought. I will also re-evaluate my views on the current position of US stocks. I originally considered buying the bottom in batches when the index retreated 20%, but now I plan to take it slow. As for whether to reduce my position next, I need to think carefully.
Objectively speaking, Apple is definitely an extremely excellent technology company with a very good return on capital. All the money it earns each year is used to distribute dividends to shareholders + stock repurchases. In the A-share market, if you ask listed companies to give back 30-50% of their profits, they have to beg for charity.
Buffett also sold a lot of Bank of America shares in the first half of the year. After a series of reductions, Berkshire's current account cash has reached an astonishing 270 billion US dollars. With his hands full of money, the old man is just waiting for a drop in prices to buy at the bottom.
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The US employment data on Friday night collapsed, from the expected 170,000+ to the actual 110,000+, and the unemployment rate was 4.3%. This triggered a collective decline in the US dollar, US stocks, and commodities. Institutions have updated their expectations for the Fed's interest rate cut. At this point, no one doubts that there will be a rate cut in September. This is a foregone conclusion.
The most conservative expectation now is that there will be three interest rate cuts this year, each by 0.25%. The more radical expectations are that one of the three cuts will be by 0.5%. The most radical, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, believe that the first two should be 0.5%. Everyone believes that the risk of a hard landing of the US economy is increasing.
At this time, no one will interpret the interest rate cut for the US dollar as a positive. First, it has been delayed for too long, and various expectations have been digested in advance, and now the profit-making funds are starting to withdraw. Second, the decline in US inflation is likely to be accompanied by an economic recession, which is not good news for the stock market.
Then, many stockholders are concerned about the impact on A-shares. I think there is no direct correlation. Overseas stock markets have a rhythm, and A-shares themselves have an independent rhythm. Even with the appreciation of the RMB and the decline of surrounding stock markets, it is possible that some overseas funds will flow back to A-shares for risk aversion, which is exactly the opposite of the logic of their escape in the first place.
The above is my personal optimistic interpretation. If I take a hundred steps back, I think this matter should not be significantly negative for A-shares. But if I take ten thousand steps back, I don’t know what will happen. Everyone, take care.
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1. The average housing price to income ratio of 35 large and medium-sized cities has dropped from 16.03 in 2019 to the latest 11.87. This income ratio is the comparison between housing prices and disposable income. On the one hand, housing prices are falling, and on the other hand, disposable income is growing, so the ratio is naturally lower. The official disclosure of this data is to prove that the pressure on ordinary people to buy houses has decreased, but the willingness to buy houses is definitely not as good as in 2019.
2. Shandong has recently made a major reform, planning to take back the public institutions of some provincial units, and all the staff of these units will be transferred to enterprises. I didn't expect that Shandong would be the first to implement such a reform, because I have the impression that Shandong is a region that advocates the system. This has caused a huge psychological gap for people who were originally employed by public institutions to suddenly be employed by enterprises, not to mention the changes in treatment.
In the past, many people who failed to pass the civil service exam would take the professional exam as plan B. This needs to be re-evaluated in the future.
That's all for tonight.