AAPL

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 125 points Tuesday with Microsoft earnings due late. The GameStop short squeeze continued as shares soared 32%.

Among the Dow Jones stocks, Apple and Microsoft are among the top stocks to buy and watch in January 2021.

The iPhone 12 lineup has generated impressive sales for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), and the company is expected to raise production significantly in 2021 to meet the strong demand for its 5G-enabled offerings. Perhaps more importantly, the iPhone 12 could help Apple push the envelope in India, an important market where it has traditionally struggled. Apple has struggled to corner a substantial market share in India because of its premium pricing.

We're right in the thick of earnings season with results coming in daily for key companies in the S&P 500. While it can be a risky time for option traders, there is also a lot of opportunity. One popular trade among option traders is a short straddle that is held over the earnings announcement. This is a risky trade because...

The smooth trend is likely to continue with most of the companies likely to beat earnings estimates when they report this week and the next.

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices, Apple and Facebook

Micron, Match Group, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook highlighted as Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day

Services have become a bigger and bigger piece of Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) business over the years. With a greater focus on the segment, Apple has recently expanded it to include music, video, gaming, fitness, and financial services to go along with its App Store, AppleCare, and iCloud products. Apple will continue to look for ways to expand the services business in 2021.

GameStop short-sellers are blowing up professional investors' funds. But the story is far different for bets against Tesla and other large-cap stocks.

Stock futures move higher following solid earnings reports; Microsoft, AMD, General Electric and 3M report earnings; Leon Black steps down as CEO of private-equity giant Apollo; BlackBerry surges again.

Dow Jones futures were higher early Tuesday after Apple and Tesla stock set record highs. Microsoft earnings are due late Tuesday.

(Bloomberg) -- When China’s two big mobile powers clashed publicly on New Year’s Eve, the stock of a little-known gaming company surged the most ever, minting a new billionaire in 38-year-old maverick entrepreneur Huang Yimeng.Shares in his indie game distributor XD Inc. rose 24% on the first trading day of 2021 after Huawei Technologies Co. temporarily removed all Tencent Holdings Ltd. games from its app store in a dispute over their revenue split. Investors flocked to the ByteDance Ltd.-backed creator of TapTap -- a Steam-like download service for games that bypasses the dominant app stores -- on the sign of schism between China’s big two.The rare incident brought to the fore simmering resentment against the 50% cut that app stores like Huawei’s charge developers and highlighted the key attraction of TapTap: it is ad-supported and thus free to use for both players and publishers.Now Huang, inspired by Epic Games Inc.’s fight against Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc.’s platform fees, hopes to ride that upswell of rebellion and challenge the status quo in the $30 billion Chinese mobile games arena. Already counting blockbuster hits like Genshin Impact on its platform, XD is working to lure more developers disillusioned with the tight grip on game development and distribution enjoyed by Tencent and hardware vendors like Huawei and Xiaomi Corp., which make their app stores the default on every phone they sell.“More and more creators will come out and say ‘no’ to traditional distribution channels because they don’t need to pay them for selling good content,” the six-foot-one XD co-founder and chief executive officer said in an interview. “The danger of companies using hardware to trap users inside their ecosystems is something we should be looking at from an anti-monopoly standpoint.”Why Apple’s Fees Have iPhone App-Makers Up in Arms: QuickTakeHuang isn’t all talk. One of 2020’s biggest mobile hits, Pascal’s Wager, picked TapTap as its exclusive Android distribution partner in China. The thematically dark action role-player, created by Giant Network Group Co. unit TipWorks, has sold more than 1.05 million copies globally, according to the studio’s founder Yang Yang. TapTap generated half of those sales and the rest came from the iOS App Store and Google Play, said Yang, who first showcased the game during Apple’s iPhone 11 event in 2019.“The timing was perfect in that our game met with TapTap’s rapid growth,” Yang said. “If someone wants to work with you without even making money, that means they really care about your product. Their way of game publishing is disruptive.”TapTap’s rise is aided by a growing -- and global -- government and consumer backlash against the handful of mobile giants that control the app economy. It coincides with a Chinese crackdown intended to rein in its most powerful internet corporations from Tencent to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Regulators have yet to address gaming platforms, but the 50% rule set by Chinese Android stores -- which makes Apple and Google’s 30% levies look like a bargain -- is fueling discontent among game studios, big and small.Read more: Going After Big Tech Is One Thing Global Leaders Agree OnFor months, Tencent had sought a bigger cut of sales through Huawei’s app store in marquee titles like Honor of Kings, but the two companies failed to agree a deal, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. On Dec. 31, Huawei removed Tencent games from its app store only to restore them hours later. Tencent said the next day that the two sides had reached an agreement, without providing details.Against that backdrop, TapTap users grew 52% in the first half of last year. XD’s stock has risen roughly 470% since listing in Hong Kong at the end of 2019, pushing its market capitalization north of $3.7 billion and the value of Huang’s 35% stake to about $1.3 billion.XD is one of the few up-and-comers in China’s games industry that hasn’t relied on Tencent’s patronage. It’s attracted powerful backers like ByteDance -- the Tencent nemesis behind TikTok and Douyin that’s developing its own interest in gaming -- as cornerstone investors for its initial public offering. Fellow Shanghai startups Lilith Games and Genshin creator miHoYo are also among its investors, though Huang and his co-founders maintain the controlling stakes and voting rights. That’s helped TapTap become a more neutral platform, where gamers look for both Tencent blockbusters and indie tiles.The CEO’s path was as unlikely as that of his company. Huang’s first entrepreneurial effort got him kicked out of college.A former semi-pro basketball player, his first business was a peer-to-peer download network called VeryCD that was quickly overrun with pirated content. In 2003, a sex tape circulating on the network that had been recorded on Huang’s university campus drew the ire of its governors, leading to his dismissal after refusing to remove the clip. He told his school back then that online platforms shouldn’t be responsible for policing content.“I didn’t regret my decision,” he said. “I’m lucky I left school early so I got more time to work on my website.”Huang found more success in making web games, enticing fans to splurge on weapons and power-ups for their warriors and sorcerers. As China’s internet use shifted from desktop to mobile, he realized there wasn’t a Steam-style community dedicated to smartphone gamers. TapTap was born in 2016 and has been free to use from the outset.Outside of China, Fortnite maker Epic Games launched its PC games store in 2018 to challenge Steam by offering a 12% revenue split with developers rather than 30%. XD’s strategy mirrors Epic’s: its in-house games attract users to the store and the store lends more exposure to its games. For now, Huang’s company still generates the bulk of revenue from selling virtual items in games it develops or publishes. Ad sales through TapTap accounted for less than a fifth of XD’s $205 million revenue in the first six months of 2020. Huang expects TapTap to contribute a larger proportion as the platform continues to increase ad slots.“It’s about time for Huawei and its peers to make changes,” said Chundi Zhang, a gaming analyst with Ampere Analysis. “But if the big guys do cut their fees, it will be TapTap’s turn to be threatened. This is a game of checks and balances.”(Updates with share price move in 10th paragraph; a previous version of this story corrected the sales figure of Pascal’s Wager in sixth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

The best 5G stocks to invest in will change over time. The consumer smartphone market will evolve into broader 5G wireless enterprise opportunities.

Warning follows study that found iPhones could ‘inhibit lifesaving therapy in a patient particularly while carrying the phone in upper pockets’

Apple's (AAPL) first-quarter fiscal 2021 results are expected to reflect expanding Services business as well as solid iPad, Mac and Wearables sales.

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google

Jim Cramer discusses the latest stock market news including how to trade Apple and GameStop and markets on Monday.

The Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) CEO still plays an instrumental role in guiding the investment decisions of his conglomerate, albeit with help from investment managers who might eventually take his place. As of his most recent report, Berkshire had more than $150 billion invested in just three stocks. Although they're not new stock picks, the fact that Buffett still has confidence in these companies is a recommendation in itself.

Apple hardware boss Dan Riccio will step down from his current role to focus on a secret, mysterious project, the company has said. Mr Riccio will instead "transition to a new role focusing on a new project and reporting to CEO Tim Cook", Apple said. The new project is something "new and wonderful that I couldn't be more excited about", Mr Riccio said, but neither he or the company gave any information on what that might be.

(Bloomberg) -- Tencent Holdings Ltd. slumped after a world-beating surge in the stock pushed its market value to the cusp of $1 trillion for the first time.The Chinese Internet behemoth lost 6.3% in Hong Kong on Tuesday, putting its market capitalization below $890 billion. Traders took profit after Monday’s 11% rally, which was Tencent’s biggest in almost a decade. Adding to the caution were comments by an adviser to China’s central bank at a conference, reported by local media, indicating that excessive liquidity was creating asset bubbles.Read more: China Asset-Bubble Warning Threatens Stock Frenzy in Hong KongThousands of bullish Tencent options lost almost all their value, after some surged as much as 118,300% on Monday. The frenzy in derivatives trading pushed the cost of one-month Tencent options to the highest since March 2014 relative to those tracking the Hong Kong benchmark, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.The prospect that China will tighten funding conditions threatens to derail Tencent’s stock rally, which has been underpinned by a relentless flow of capital from the mainland. Onshore funds have purchased a record amount of Hong Kong shares this month, with about a quarter of that targeting Tencent. As more than a billion people use its WeChat social-media platform, Tencent is ubiquitous to Chinese investors who have no access to Hong Kong shares of rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. through the trading links.Tencent was the most recent mega-cap company to benefit from investor enthusiasm for the tech sector, with its looming milestone a marker for the euphoria sweeping the stocks globally. Before Tuesday, the stock had added $251 billion in January alone -- by far the biggest creation of shareholder wealth worldwide. Warnings are rising that easy monetary policy is fueling bubbles in global equities, especially in the U.S., where gains have been led by the Nasdaq.As investors seek cheaper alternatives, they’ve been piling into Hong Kong equities. That’s helped make the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index one of the world’s best-performing benchmarks in the past month.While Tencent has long been an investor favorite in Asia, returning more than 100,000% since its 2004 initial public offering as of Monday, there are other risks to the rally.In 2018, a government crackdown on China’s online gaming industry squeezed Tencent’s most profitable business, which at the time accounted for about 40% of its revenue. Coupled with a slowing Chinese economy and a weakening yuan, Beijing’s nine-month halt on approvals for new games contributed to a 22% slump in the shares.A campaign against monopolistic practices since late last year has targeted many of the industries in which Tencent and rival Alibaba operate, including the online payments industry. But while increasing regulatory risk has left Alibaba’s shares about 18% lower than their October peak, Tencent has closed at a record in seven of the past nine sessions.Tencent would be the second Chinese firm to join the trillion-dollar club after PetroChina Co., which was briefly worth more than that in late 2007 before collapsing in value. U.S. tech giants Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are also worth more than $1 trillion each, as is Saudi Arabian Oil Co.Tencent was founded in 1998 by four college classmates and a friend from Shenzhen who devised a Chinese version of the instant messaging service ICQ. Led by “Pony” Ma Huateng -- ma is Chinese for “horse” -- the company’s chat software became the primary communication tool for a generation of young Chinese.Tencent’s surge has outpaced all but the most bullish analysts’ forecasts. The stock’s closing level of HK$766.50 on Monday was almost 10% higher than the consensus 12-month price target compiled by Bloomberg, the widest gap since 2014.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.