Elon Musk's Chest-Thumping, Shiba Inu Rallies, Google Issues Ultimatum To Workforce: 5 Key Stories You May Have Missed From The Weekend

The past weekend saw some activity in the crypto market, and it remains to be seen if the buoyancy spills over into their equity counterparts. As the major U.S. averages fight to carry on the momentum from last week, here's a recap of a few major headlines that hit the wire over the weekend.

1. Tesla Achieves Major Production Milestone: Tesla, Inc.’s TSLA CEO Eon Musk on Sunday took to Twitter to announce that the company’s Giga Shanghai has rolled out its one-millionth vehicle off its production line. He also confirmed that Tesla has now cumulatively produced three million vehicles globally. As an EV manufacturer, this is a feat to be lauded, but drawing parallels with traditional automakers, it appears that Tesla still has a long way to go. Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corporation TM sold over 10 million cars in 2021 alone.

2. Shiba Inu Brisk Over Weekend: Meme cryptocurrency Shiba Inu SHIB/USD took off on Sunday, as it broke above a consolidation range seen since mid-May. After closing Saturday’s session at $0.00001263, SHIB rallied early morning on Sunday and hit an intraday peak of $0.00001774, a gain of about 40%. It gave back some of the gains and yet closed higher at $0.00001691.

The strength may have been due to the burning of more than 292 million Shiba Inu tokens, as reported by the Shibarium blockchain platform.

Read Benzinga’s story on the near-term outlook for Ethereum after it topped $2,000

3. Salman Rushdie On Long Road To Recovery: Booker Prize-winning Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie is recovering and will survive, the British-American writer’s ex-wife Padma Lakshmi suggested on Twitter. Rushdie was attacked and stabbed multiple times when he was on stage at an event in New York City on Friday.

“Worried and wordless, can finally exhale. Now hoping for swift healing,” Lakshmi said.

4. Alphabet To Cut Jobs? Alphabet, Inc. GOOGL GOOG CEO Sundar Pichai broached the subject of a hiring freeze earlier this year and this has apparently left employees paranoid. They now fear job cuts, according to a Business Insider report. Google Cloud sales leadership has reportedly threatened employees to perform or face the prospect of elimination.

5. China’s Surprise Rate Cut: In a surprising decision, China’s central bank – the People's Bank of China, reduced the main rate at which it provides short-term liquidity to banks from 2.1% to 2%. The rate of the bank’s one-year lending facility was also lowered from 2.85% to 2.75%. The central bank reasoned that this would maintain reasonable and sufficient liquidity in the banking system. This marked the first rate cut since January.

A slew of data released by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics on Monday showed a soft patch.

What Else?

Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman said in his weekly “Power On” newsletter that Apple, Inc. AAPL could significantly expand its advertising business, but wondered whether users are willing to live with it.

Meta Platforms, Inc. META and online food ordering and delivery platform DoorDash, Inc. DASH have reportedly begun testing a service, which provides for the latter delivering purchases made through the former’s Facebook Marketplace feature. This is expected to be a win-win proposition for both companies.