Weekend roundup

Here’s what you missed while you were living your best life:

• 🇫🇷 Amazon and Microsoft are boosting their investments in France. They’re among the companies set to invest billions in the country as part of President Macron’s Choose France summit.

• 🧮 Jim Simons, the billionaire hedge fund founder, died at 86. A pioneer of quant trading, Simons ran Renaissance Technologies before becoming a philanthropist and political donor.

• 🍎 Apple’s Maryland store workers voted to strike. Concerns include work-life balance, unpredictable schedules, and wages out of step with the cost of living.

Featured weekend story

SoftBank’s Vision Fund posts its first annual profit in three years

Softbank’s flagship tech investment arm has reported its first profit since 2021. The Vision Fund made a ¥724.3 billion ($4.6 billion) gain in the fiscal year ended March, boosted by increased valuations of some of its most high-profile portfolio companies, including TikTok owner ByteDance and U.S. food delivery firm DoorDash.

But that wasn’t enough to offset losses for the wider firm. Softbank posted its third annual loss of ¥227 billion, although it did report its second profitable quarter in a row.

The Vision Fund is undergoing a strategy shift, selling off or writing down its stakes in public companies while making strategic investments in semiconductors and AI. Subsidiary Arm is reportedly planning to launch AI chips as soon as next year.

What to watch this week

Stocks are calm this morning as investors await data from the US and UK. Both are expected to challenge the narrative that rate cuts are imminent from the Fed and BOE.

Indices at 12:00 AM (ET)

Here are your upcoming market events:

• 🇺🇸 US inflation. The latest CPI print drops on Wednesday. Economists polled by Reuters expect the figure will rise 0.3% on the previous month. That could empower the Fed to hold off on cutting rates.

• 🇬🇧 UK wages and unemployment. An important reading for the BOE on Tuesday. They need to show a softening to keep a June rate cut on the table.

• 🇨🇳 China bond sale. China will start selling 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) of debt on Friday to boost the economy. It’s the first sale of its kind since 2020 and will continue through November.

Off-balance sheet items

Here’s what we’re reading this week:

• 🏃 How efficient people get stuff done (The Guardian). Ever wonder how some people make juggling a million responsibilities appear effortless?

• 🏠️ Is this the worst time to buy a home? (Kiplinger). Between high prices and high mortgage rates, many people are feeling the crunch.

• 🤖 How sci-fi writer JG Ballard’s computer poems predicted ChatGPT (BBC). In the 1970s, JG Ballard used a computer to compose poems. They were a first step on the road to ChatGPT.

Chart of the week

The bottom line

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