All the most important and interesting financial news in Russia and the world for a week: the mother of children Durova claims 50% of Telegram, Finland gave access to over-the-counter dollar trading, the Central Bank wants to drive pension savings into IPO, the US Fed has started to cut interest rates, IB is preparing to make it possible to make bets for elections, and Mr. Beast has released a top guide for YouTubers.

New column “Hello, 90s!”

🐌 As you remember, a corporate-family conflict is simmering between the Bakalchuk spouses in the Wildberries section of the company. Well, now you can safely add “criminal” to the list of epithets: last Wednesday, there were spontaneous disputes between the parties in the “wall to wall” format right in the office, two people were shot (read more in The Edinorog here and here, plus must-listen soundtrack).

Investigators seem inclined to blame Bakalchuk, a man, for everything; and Forbes analysts, meanwhile, have already reduced the assessment of Bakalchuk’s wife’s fortune by half.

🐌 And immediately about family conflicts: Iryna Bolgar, the unofficial ex-wife of Pavel Durov and the mother of his children, said that exactly half of the jointly acquired Telegram should belong to her. I hope that they will be able to resolve the issue a little more civilly than the Bakalchuks.

🐌 The Israeli special services first sold ultra-secure pagers and walkie-talkies to the Lebanese Hezbollah through front companies, and then it turned out that there were explosives attached to the batteries inside – which were detonated remotely on September 17-18. They say that more than 3,000 people were injured in total.

🐌 There was a journalistic investigation about the fact that the “opposition oligarch” Nevzlin went too far and started ordering attacks on other oppositionists who insulted him on Twitter. During the discussion of all this, it soon became clear that he finances quite a number of well-known opposition figures in exile. You can imagine the scale of the Twitter storm.

Currency news

🐌 With the transition of the Russian economy to a “friendly currency”, it somehow does not work out: companies that issued bonds in yuan are now complaining that it is impossible to get the currency inside Russia in the necessary quantities to repay obligations – so that, along the way, they will have to make payments in rubles .

🐌 Finam launched access to over-the-counter dollar trading for its clients. It looks cool: it remains for the rest of the brokers to do the same – and, we can say, almost-everything over-the-counter currency trading will function successfully in Russia.

IPO news

🐌 The Central Bank suddenly decided to introduce tax benefits for the NPF for active participation in the IPO – apparently to make it easier to comply with the president’s order regarding the multiple growth of the capitalization of the stock market. A little earlier, pension funds were allowed to buy shares of small companies of the third echelon. In short, with one hand, the state is pushing the NPF into the most conservative and low-income instruments (see “obligation to compensate for losses on the client’s portfolio”), with the other – the most aggressively Ludomaniac. L is logic!

🐌 Meanwhile, ordinary retail investors in IPOs fear that from 2024 they will begin to be taxed on “phantom material gains” due to the crookedly written legislative framework on this matter. The Central Bank is still thinking about how to respond to this.

Mortgage discount for cash

🐌 It is written that after the cancellation of preferential mortgages for new buildings, banks are actively promoting the “one-time payment for lowering the mortgage rate by several percent” product. I am sure that there are quasi-financial arguments like “because this way you will have LESS OVERPAYMENT!”.

In my opinion, paying out of pocket at the local peak rates for a small rate reduction on a long term loan is some hat. After all, there is a high probability that on the horizon of the next few years the rate will fall anyway, and the loan can be refinanced for free.

News of the American market

🐌 The US Federal Reserve finally began to lower the interest rate, and immediately by 50 bp. – the short risk-free dollar rate of return is now approximately 4.9% per annum. It is expected that by the end of the current year, they will have time to squeeze in several more rounds of reductions of 25 bp. Investors cheered up, S&P500 set another record!

🐌 In America, the courts are trying to figure out – is it possible to bet on the outcome of the presidential election? Interactive Brokers has already stated that as soon as possible, they will be the first to allow their clients to gamble in this direction.

🐌 Things aren’t going too well for 23andMe, the company that popularized mass genetic testing, with shares down 97% since going public in 2021. It turned out that after the entire population had spat into a test tube once, there was nothing else to earn money…

Interesting texts

🐌 Cool longread about a dude who professionally pretends to be a scumbag investor in the USA to submit scams to the SEC and pocket 10-30% of the fines (tens of millions of dollars net). It’s a pity, we don’t have such a thing, otherwise the Aggressive Investor could have made a good fortune!

🐌 Researchers analyzed statistics for 13 American states, where a few years ago it was forbidden to prohibit sharing information about one’s salary with colleagues: it turned out that although the salary inequality decreased as a result, it was mainly due to the fact that the most talented stopped offering high salaries ( So that others are not envious). As a result, the average salary decreased by approximately 2%.

🐌 The guide of Mr. Beast (the most popular YouTuber in the world) entitled HOW TO SUCCEED IN MRBEAST PRODUCTION was leaked to the network, and I fully recommend it for reading – there is a lot of interesting information about YouTube itself and how to approach work with obsession.

Kryptans have everything as usual

Hackers stole $52 million from the Singapore crypto exchange BingX. The exchange itself promises to “return everything to everyone” to the affected customers.

Interview of the week

In this column, I talk about one podcast I listened to last week: this time it’s Jason Buck at Excess Returns – Challenging the Idea of ​​Stocks for the Long Run.

As always, I talk more about what I found interesting about this podcast in the video version of this digest here.

Good news of the week

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Blindsight device has been granted the status of a “breakthrough device” by the US FDA. Along the way, human tests are not far off – in addition to the acquisition of normal vision, infrared, ultraviolet and radio frequency vision are also promised.

Bonus posts

• Ihor Kotenkov explains why the new OpenAI o1 model is not a hype, but a transition to a new paradigm in AI.

• I am sharing my list of foreign brokers for Russian citizens who do not live in the Russian Federation.

• Let’s figure it out, does it make sense to invest in any stock markets other than the US?