Tag: Financial Times

Israel provides first signs of mass vaccination driving down virus cases

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ft.com/content/0cdc8563-1e6d-4089-bedb-b0f675c0d683

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Excerpt:

Cases and hospital admissions in Israel are falling steeply among vaccinated age groups in the first clear sign worldwide that Covid-19 jabs are preventing illness following a mass inoculation campaign.

Daily case rates among people aged 60 and above have fallen by 46 per cent relative to their mid-January peak, compared with a much smaller decline of 18 per cent among under-60s, according to analysis by a team from the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv.

Author(s): John Burn-Murdoch in London and Mehul Srivastava

Publication Date: 5 February 2021

Publication Site: Financial Times

Melvin Capital, GameStop and the road to disaster

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ft.com/content/3f6b47f9-70c7-4839-8bb4-6a62f1bd39e0

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Excerpt:

It was a routine regulatory filing, the kind hedge funds must make every three months, where Melvin Capital first showed its hand.

The “Form 13F” filing that landed on August 14 last year listed 91 positions it held at the end of the second quarter, including shareholdings in household names from Microsoft and Amazon to Crocs and Domino’s Pizza. Halfway down the list: an apparently innocuous bet against GameStop, a struggling video game retailer.

That the New York hedge fund should think GameStop’s shares were going lower was hardly remarkable — many others were betting the same way. Wall Street analysts had sell ratings on the stock and the retailer’s prospects looked grim as gamers switched to downloads. But by using the options market for the bet, which forced it to disclose the position, Melvin had put a target on itself.

Author(s): Ortenca Aliaj and Michael Mackenzie in New York and Laurence Fletcher in London

Publication Date: 6 February 2021

Publication Site: Financial Times