A Quiet Week to Wrap Up 2021

As Omicron continues rattling markets and spoiling the holiday cheer, 2021 is coming to an end through a quiet week with only a few actionable events that include Baidu BIDU, NextGen Acquisition Corp. II NGCA, and Athena Technology ATHN.

Last week ended with Nikola Corporation NKLA achieving an important milestone that suggests its comeback is truly happening.

A Big Comeback?

After fraud allegations and delays that greatly harmed its reputation, Nikola delivered some desperately needed good news on December 22^nd. It revealed it made its first customer delivery, a milestone that greatly improves its prospects for a rapid future ramp-up. Shares surged 18% upon the news on Friday, but it will need a lot more deliveries to convince investors that its comeback as real after agreeing to pay $125 million to settle allegations it defrauded investors.

Monday – China's First Metaverse Event

Baidu is hosting its annual flagship developers' conference. Baidu Create is taking place on the XiRang virtual reality platform and therefore, it will be China's first metaverse conference. At this 3D conference, 100,000 online attendees will be able to interact with 100 speakers from across the globe as Baidu releases  its technological advances and applications in a number of cutting-edge areas such as artificial intelligence, autonomous driving,  quantum computing, and biocomputing.

Wednesday

Shareholders of NextGen Acquisition Corp. II will be voting on the SPAC deal that would take Virgin Orbit public. The satellite launch company that was split off from Virgin Galactic SPCE in 2017 is developing a space launch system based on a modified 747-400 aircraft. It recently revealed it will be expanding its partnership with Arqit Quantum ARQQ on space-based encryption services to private, defense, and intelligence customers globally. If the deal goes through, Virgin Orbit will be trading under the symbol VORB.

Athena Technology shareholders will also be meeting to vote on the SPAC deal to take solar energy company Heliogen public. The company's technology uses a field of mirrors to capture sunlight for converting into heat, electricity or clean fuels.

Friday

China PMI print will be released on Friday, last working day of the week and last day of the year. After two previous updates falling below expectations, investors are in for the last major economic report for the year that ended up being even more challenging than 2020 when the whole world was put on hold by COVID-19. Here's to hoping a better year is ahead.

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