EV shares rise on Super Bowl visibility, Netflix up from popular documentaries, BlockFi fined by SEC
Yahoo Finance Live looks at several notable gains and losses from today's trending tickers.
Video Transcript
- Welcome back. It's time now to check some winners and losers, the time in our show when we break down the company or stock or individual who made headlines in a positive or negative way today. Now let's start with the good news, the winners. And today it's a good day to be an electric vehicle maker. EV companies are our winner in this session. Stocks, including Rivian and Lucid Motors, had been trending on the Yahoo Finance site and app earlier today.
As we can see, shares of Rivian, Lucid, and Tesla all closing in positive territory. And yesterday, there was a big showing of EV commercials at the Super Bowl. BMW, Polestar, Kia, all of these companies showing off some of their latest electric vehicles during the big game in a big shift towards EVs and away from some of the legacy combustion cars typically shown during the Super Bowl in years past. But Rachelle, it seems like the visibility of electric vehicles is only going to keep rising from here.
- I mean, we certainly know that's going to be the case. Whether or not people are going to really get on board, a lot of people really still waiting for a lot of these charging stations to become a reality. So while we're seeing all this incredible tech and all this investment, you have to wonder how much of this is going to end up being actually adopted by people
Now I will say, in terms of my winner of the day, I made that Netflix. And that's because we've seen that it's documentary called "The Tinder Swindler" has really drawn a lot more attention to some of these romance scams. We're going to have more on that coming up in the show.
But basically, "Tinder Swindler" is about a man who romanced people out of about $10 million worth of their goods and services. It's really put these scams front and center to the point where the FBI said just in the Bay Area, around $64 million was lost to romance scams in 2021 alone. That's almost double the previous year. And what's interesting is that crypto is a large part of that increase. A lot of people on dating websites now asking people if they're into crypto. So the winner is Netflix for really drawing attention to something that's clearly quite prevalent.
BRAD SMITH: Yeah, and thinking through Netflix and how important these titles are, especially if they are able to get some type of virality around them too and create that social fanfare that, if you will, can contribute to some of the uptick in either returning subscribers or net new subscribers, that's so important for Netflix because of where they've already signaled their forecasts to be, decelerating growth. And so with that in mind, I think investors are looking across these titles to try and understand exactly where, not just how they can bring customers and new subscribers to the platform. But how they can maintain them, continue to monetize them beyond the entertainment and content in itself. But how that can-- like a "Stranger Things." and this is perhaps the only addition that they've been able to do or title that they've been able to do merchandising, that they've been able to create that into other gaming and other content opportunities as well.
And so, it comes down to the documentaries. Sure, that gets people on the platform and on the premise. But where can you additionally make sure that the monetization of these titles comes forward in the future? And I think that's something investors are going to want to hear about in addition to the net new ads so that customers and subscribers don't feel like they're getting swindled at the end of the day too.
But we've got to talk about our loser on the day here. Because one thing in particular that we do know is BlockFi and the newest fine that has come forward, especially at the time where this company has been anticipated to go public in 2022. Any type of fine to this magnitude, $100 million, that is extremely significant for a company that's trying to prove their model, that's trying to prove their operations, and the legitimacy of their services. And this particular fine, I think, is one for investors to take a look at to see what the allegations have been and where BlockFi is answering for some of those allegations as revealed in this fine as well that's come forward.
- Absolutely, Brad. And at the center of this fine here is the fact that BlockFi, according to the SEC, did not register the offers and sales of its crypto interest accounts. And with those, investors had been loaning their crypto assets to BlockFi in exchange for monthly interest payments. BlockFi, in turn, was using these assets to make loans to other borrowers.
So at the center of the concern here for both the SEC and the consortium of states who are also going to be receiving some of this fine from BlockFi is the fact that there hadn't been an official registration from the company in regards to some of these financial instruments. So something definitely to keep an eye on here as we continue to watch the crypto regulatory front and the SEC. Gary Gensler, of course, really cracking down and enforcing some of these concerns around some of the biggest crypto players.
- Well certainly a lot to watch. So we know that crypto, it's always a lot of volatility, always a lot of things to keep an eye on. Thank you guys.
