I always thought of Mario Kart as a true socialist game. If you’re in first place, you get useless items like banana skins. Languish at the back and you could get a blue shell, a homing missile that takes out whoever is leading.

Let’s hope for Nintendo’s sake that the real world is less egalitarian. Selling Switches is a much nicer way of making money than bashing your head into bricks to release coins.

The lowdown

• 📈 UBS shares rise after beating underlying profit expectations.

• 📉 Saudi Aramco reports a 23% fall in third-quarter net profit on lower crude oil prices.

• 🚢 China’s imports grow for the first time since February.

Featured story

Nintendo profits get boost from Super Mario movie

Nintendo is hiking its profit forecast after a strong quarter, amid a surge fueled by the Super Mario Bros. Movie and the latest Zelda game.

Investors have been concerned that sales of the Switch console have peaked. It’s more than six years old, and some have called for Nintendo to release a new console. But Switch sales in the first half of the fiscal year were the highest since its launch.

The Mario movie has brought in more than $1 billion at the box office since its April release, driving sales of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Although it was released in 2017, it was Nintendo’s second-most popular game in the first six months of its fiscal year. Nintendo also sold 19.5 million copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in the same period.

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