Niantic, an augmented reality platform that was spun out of Google raised $300 million to ramp up investment into the metaverse. The company which is behind hit-breaking games such as Pokemon Go is now valued at $9 billion.

Its proposition of what the “metaverse” is much different from Facebook. Facebook wants to bring everyone into the virtual world, whereas Niantic wants to bring it into the real world. It’s a blend of realism and virtual reality which is often termed augmented reality.

John Hanke, Niantic CEO said that he likes the idea of the virtual to the physical world. “At Niantic, we believe humans are the happiest when their virtual world leads them to a physical one,” he said. “Unlike a sci-fi metaverse, a real-world metaverse will use technology to improve our experience of the world as we’ve known it for thousands of years.”

It’s going to be an interesting decade to see how far the whole idea around the “metaverse” will develop. Various tech companies see it as an opportunity that they can capitalize on and become a leader in or the main contributor.

Niantic’s success with Pokemon Go generated over $1 billion in 2020. It goes to show that there is a market for these types of products. Pokemon Go is niche-based and has a lot of video game followers.

It will be a unique and profitable challenge if companies can cross the concepts and ideas into everyday life.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste” – Winston Churchill

When the pandemic started I for one thought that investors were going to take money out of the market due to the global catastrophe that was about to ensue. They would instead opt to liquidate a good portion of their stocks and have live cash on hand. My assumptions were wrong, instead, investors just shifted money around into different markets.

Markets that flourished pre-pandemic such as the airline industry, real estate, events, etc. Was given a downgrade and money was fueled into tech stocks which were seen as a better option to weather the storm.

Those smart investors were rewarded greatly as we saw the market kept on going up and the bears left hanging. We saw Google, Apple, Amazon, and Tesla all reaching trillion-dollar market capitalization. A feat that is unprecedented in recent times. We even saw a bull run in cryptocurrency which we are still witnessing today.

If we should extract the pandemic and causalities from the picture and look at it objectively, it was a good year for investors who had the stomach to invest.

If we look at the broader picture and analyze the entire system, we can see the different effects the pandemic is having on different areas of society such as inflation, jobs, etc.

Darlings of the Pandemic

Throughout the pandemic, there were stocks that would seem to be darlings for investors to dabble in. These companies were quite adaptable to the “lockdown” period because they fit the home-based lifestyle. They all soared while giving investors favorable returns.

For example, Peloton Stock rose to approximately 470 percent. Zoom on other hand really skyrocketed passed 500% at one point. Today, Peloton is down 64 percent for the year and Zoom is showing signs of cooling as they plunged nearly 17 percent in late August.

Edtech stocks such as Chegg plunged close to 50% in a single trading session in November.

Back to Normal

As the world economy slowly gets back to normalcy, persons are yearning to go out and socialize again. Instead of Zoom chats, they want to meet in person. Peloton Group, which also provides an at-home workout suite such as an exercising bike is seeing a massive slump in its stock this year.

One of the main reasons is the fact that as traditional gyms start to reopen, we will see persons signing up for gym memberships. Investors are now funneling their money back into markets that were once yielding favorable returns such as real estate, events, and the airline industry.

Zoom and some of the others will still be around. The pandemic might be over within a couple of years. Although it’s hard to assess given that we are close to two years since the first case and we are still struggling to a grip on this thing.

What is also true is the fact that it has sped up a lot of innovation and adaptation that was lingering within niche groups and early adopters for years that are quickly gaining mainstream traction.

Rivian Automotive went public on November 10 2021 issuing roughly 153 million shares at an offering of $78 per share. At that point, the company was valued at $66.5 billion. Roughly a week later it is now valued at $167 per share, with a market capitalization of $141.8 billion.

It’s quite an impressive journey given the fact that they have only delivered 42 vehicles thus far. The electric Automotive maker now joins an exclusive club of Tesla, Lucid, Fisker, Lordstown Motors, and Nikola. Their combined market capitalization is nearly $1.3 trillion.

To put things into perspective, the combined market capitalization of the 9 largest automakers is $845 billion, this includes GM, Ford, Stellantis, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler-Benz. Traditionally automakers out sale the top 7 Electronic vehicle manufacturers by 100-1.

Trevor Milton who is the CEO of Nikola currently facing charges relating to his elusive company that is yet to create a workable model of an electric semi-truck. Rivian too is yet to fulfill it’s potential being placed on it by investors who at the moment believe in the company.

Boom or Bust

Despite all the hype surrounding the electric automotive industry and the perceived “global” impact, it will have on the well-being of the environment. It’s still some way off and is filled with scandals. On one side you have greedy and naïve investors looking to make a quick buck off of every hype cycle.

If they see a stock being touted up by analysts as a stock of the future, they will readily invest without much due diligence. Hence, why we will continually have scandal after scandal. It’s as if the riskier the stock or industry is, the higher its valuation because it’s unpredictable.

Modern-day investors seem to be okay with that risk. Additionally, with the amount of capital being floating around, it’s an okay bet to take. Rivian seems a bit overvalued at the moment, especially given their low output of vehicles. Probably investors know more than I do, time will tell.

National Commercial Bank Financial Group (NCBFG) records a 25% dip in net profits as the company’s financial year came to a close on September 30. This decrease in net profits could be caused by a myriad of factors: Covid-19, global forces, etc.

Covid-19 restrictions seem to be one of the main reasons for such a dip in its net profit. It was even stated in the company’s notes accompanying its financials that was released to the stock exchange. This goes to show that large multinational companies are not somehow immune to the impact of the pandemic.

Within NCBFG, there were fractions of the business that seems to drag down the overall performance of the organization. One of these is the insurance sector which saw a 29% decrease in contribution or a $9.5 billion decrease from the prior year. One of the main causes is the Covid-19 restrictions being imposed in Trinidad and Tobago during the financial year.

Another sector that never beat analyst estimates was the banking and investment segment. Even though it has seen an overall improvement, it’s still some way off their initial estimate. Its cost-to-income ratio increased to 76.19%, up from 68.48% from the prior year.

There was a 16% increase in operating expenses over the prior year which led to an overall total of $94.9 billion in operation cost. They made emphasis on the fact they are investing heavily in technology to improve their overall service.

It’s been a bumpy ride for NCBFG, since the start of the year the company has lost 16% of its value. Their overall market capitalization was valued at $296 billion. This is quite some distance from their prior high a year ago at $353 billion. Overall expect NCBFG to recover as the economy slowly improves over the upcoming years.