El Salvador Adopts Bitcoin as Currency and China Suspends Approval for New Online Games

Did you know? According to Bloomberg, September is the worst month of the year for stocks over the past 20 years.

Ford Nabs Top Talent From Apple

Ford announced this week they hired Doug Field, previously VP of Special Projects at Apple and before that, SVP of Engineering at Tesla. Doug Field is joining Ford as Chief Advanced Technology and Embedded Systems Officer and will report directly to Ford President and CEO Jim Farley. Field will lead the emerging technology efforts, which is a key focus of the Ford+ turnaround plan. He also spent several years at Tesla and was instrumental in bringing the Model 3 into production for Tesla.

ECB to Slow Bond Buying

On Thursday morning, the ECB announced that it will slow down the pace of bond buying. The Governing council decided that purchases should be at a “moderately lower pace” than the 80 billion euros of monthly purchases over the past two quarters. The Council also reiterated a pledge to keep the pandemic bond program running thorough at least March 2022 or later if needed. The ECB also pledged to keep rates at their current or lower levels until inflation is seen at 2%.  

Gamestop (GME) Earnings

Gamestop reported earnings on Wednesday night and traded down more than 10% in extended hours trading on Wednesday evening. Earnings were a disappointment when compared to analysts expectations for the quarter. Analysts were looking for a loss of 67 cents a share and EPS came in a little worse than that and losses for the quarter were 76 cents a share. Sales came in stronger than anticipated at $1.18 billion vs $1.12 billion analyst estimate average. More than 22,000 viewers listened to the company’s conference call on YouTube. The call lasted less than 10 minutes and the new CEO, Matt Furlong, didn't take any questions.  

El Salvador Adopts Bitcoin as Legal Tender

Bitcoin* sold off on Tuesday down as much as 17% intraday on Tuesday. According to the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, the electronic wallet, “Chivo,” was disconnected between 1 am and 6 am to fix bugs. These bugs, combined with reports of outages at Coinbase and forced liquidations of leveraged positions, all contributed to BTC and most cryptos trading down sharply on Tuesday.  

However, Bitcoin is now legal tender in El Salvador and on September 7th McDonald’s (MCD) announced they would accept Bitcoin as payment in their 19 restaurants in the country. The President of El Salvador also took to Twitter to announce that El Salvador had purchased 150 more Bitcoins while the market was selling off on Tuesday and proclaimed the country now owns 550 Bitcoins.  

China Freezes Approval of All New Games

According to reporting by the South China Morning Post, Chinese regulators have put the approval of new games on hold. Beijing is apparently looking to curb gaming addiction among minors, reduce spending on virtual items and push minors towards more productive activities. Tencent was down over 8% in trading in Hong Kong on Thursday and NTES was down a little more than 6% when it opened for trading on the Nasdaq Thursday morning.

About the Writer

My name is Allen Spence and I have been working in the retail brokerage industry for over 16 years. I joined Alpaca in March of 2021 as a Brokerage Operations Consultant. Before joining Alpaca I worked in a retail branch environment, call center for active traders, and spent over seven and a half years as the team lead on an equity trading desk for a large regional broker dealer. I’m excited to be at Alpaca helping bring the markets to investors worldwide. I live in Florida and enjoy traveling and spending time with my family.

About Alpaca

Alpaca is a globally distributed financial technology company that is democratizing global access to financial markets starting with our API-first stock brokerage. Alpaca offers commission-free stock trading via API, a suite of developer APIs for brokerages, advisors, and startups, as well as a market data API.

This article is solely for informational purposes only. Investments in securities involve the risk of losses and past performance does not guarantee future results. Before investing you should carefully consider your investment objectives, time horizon, and overall risk tolerance as well as the information stated in the product offering prospectuses.

*Cryptocurrency is highly speculative in nature, involves a high degree of risks, such as volatile market price swings, market manipulation, flash crashes, and cybersecurity risks. Cryptocurrency is not regulated or is lightly regulated in most countries. Cryptocurrency trading can lead to large, immediate and permanent loss of financial value. You should have appropriate knowledge and experience before engaging in cryptocurrency trading.