Tech giants' profits soar as pandemic boom continues

Apple's profits nearly doubled to $21.7bn in the three months to 30 June as customers bought pricier 5G iPhones. Microsoft saw a $16.5bn profit at the same time - up 47% year-on-year, due to demand for cloud services and games. Analysts warned that the figures may lead to calls for tech company curbs. Google's parent company, Alphabet, also reported on Tuesday that quarterly sales and profits had surged to record highs. That was largely down to an increase in spending on online advertising aimed at customers who were stuck at home shopping online due to restrictions. 

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Millions become millionaires during Covid pandemic

More than five million people became millionaires across the world in 2020 despite economic damage from the Covid-19 pandemic. While many poor people became poorer, the number of millionaires increased by 5.2 million to 56.1 million globally, Credit Suisse research found.

 In 2020 more than 1% of adults worldwide were millionaires for the first time. Recovering stock markets and soaring house prices helped boost their wealth. Wealth creation appeared to be "completely detached" from the economic woes of the pandemic, the researchers said.

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Rimac unveils new Croatian electric hypercar

Today, hypercar manufacturer and electric technology specialist, Rimac Automobili, unveiled the production version of the C_Two, now becoming the Nevera, an all-electric, 1914hp, 258mph, €2m hypercar designed and engineered to unleash an unprecedented level of performance. 

 The Nevera is the production-ready iteration of the Rimac C_Two concept car, which was revealed at the International Geneva Motor Show in 2018. Since then, Rimac’s engineers have refined their new flagship on every level during an extensive development program, in the pursuit of the ultimate electric hypercar driving experience. With the majority of key components of the Nevera developed in-house at Rimac’s HQ in Croatia, all systems have been improved and enhanced since the initial prototypes to deliver on the ambitious performance targets set for at the beginning of the project in 2018.

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GameStop

Until the start of the pandemic, it had never occurred to Alex Patton that he could become an amateur trader. But now, in the wake of the GameStop shares frenzy, he is something of an unlikely veteran of the financial markets.

 "Before Covid struck, I didn't know the first thing about investing," says the 28-year-old railway cyber-security engineer, of Kingston upon Thames, south-west London. But after the stock market took a bad tumble in March last year and dealt his pension savings a blow, he decided that he should, as he puts it, "take a more active role in managing my money". 

 As a dual national with British and American citizenship, he had no difficulty in setting up an account with US trading platform Robinhood, which has found itself at the centre of the GameStop furore. 

And, encouraged by friends, he started checking out Reddit's chat thread wallstreetbets. "I thought, 'This is crazy,'" he told the BBC. "Lots of people losing lots of money." "I didn't give it much thought until my friend said, 'You should check out GameStop.' 

And I realised that some of the people on Reddit do some really impressive work in researching those stocks."

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