👜 Louis Vuitton: Luxury and Beyond!

^{“Any luxury too easily obtained is probably not a luxury at all.”}

— Saskia Havekes

👋 Friends, Rallie here. The newsletter popping in to hand you the latest on crypto, finance, and tech news.

On the menu:

• 👜 Louis Vuitton: Luxury and Beyond!

• 🗞️ Headlines That Hit

• 📈 Refresh: S&P 500 Index

• 🤓 Trivia Tuesday

• 💯 Top Tweets

The Rallie Recap

✨ Louis Vuitton launches a €39K NFT of its 170-year-old design, the VIA Treasure Trunks. However, how it can be utilized as a digital asset may start a new trend for brands to follow. Here’s the breakdown: 

• Louis Vuitton is often called the world’s most valuable luxury brand as it owns some of the world’s most iconic labels such as Tiffany & Co. and Fendi. The LV trunks sold today have always been key in its history, and now they’re moving digital.  

• This is not the first time Vuitton has invested in the future of the metaverse. In 2021, they made Louis the Game, where players had the chance to find one of the 30 NFTs, with more being added, through interacting with the game.

• However, the scale has increased. The brand is offering up a chance to purchase a NFT of the trunk for €39K with a physical counterpart. Owners are given “privileged experiences” and the ability to purchase drops of digital keys throughout the next three years to unlock undisclosed Louis Vuitton collectibles. 

• Soulbound to you. The Treasure Trunks are connected to your identity and cannot be sold or transferred to another person. Eligible participants must have a crypto wallet valued at more than $1 million, contain a digital collection valued at more than $200,000, or own collectibles from LVMH, other luxury fashion brands or blue-chip digital collections. 🤑

• Opinions are split:

• With the emerging Web3 ecosystem, which is the convergence between physical and digital world, assets showcased by Vuitton may highlight a new era of economics.

• Blockchain has also been used to the track luxury goods and crack down on counterfeit products, so there could be more interaction between iconic brands and the emerging digital space in the future.

• The current NFT market. With unpredictable NFT liquidity, volatile demand, questionable sustainability, 1% of NFT projects taking up over 50% of the total market cap, sprinkled in with some success stories, will Louis Vuitton revolutionize the landscape? 

• The power of a soul. Due to the soulbound aspect of the token, some of the fears and goals associated with NFTs may not apply to Vuitton’s latest project. Furthermore, the prestige of the brand and the power its Treasure Trunk brings to customers could play into the influence of scarcity.

• Will the embracing of digital technology be a hard lesson or a new direction for other brands to consider?

Headlines That Hit

• 🚘 Industry shifts. GM plans to invest $632 million for production of its next-generation full-size pickup trucks at an Indiana plant.

•  Back at it again. Apple’s 1st 15-inch screen on its new MacBook Air could boost sales with the computer’s increased functionality.

• 🔌 Blackout! Thousands of Reddit communities go “dark” in protest of the company’s API policy set to put third-party apps out of business.

• 🚪 Tyrannical dethroning?! US lawmakers file the ‘SEC Stablization Act’ to protect its capital markets and fire the head of the SEC.

• 👀 Hawkish Fed pivot? Goldman Sachs anticipates an unexpected downturn in growth and stubborn inflation which will trigger a change in US’s Federal Reserve plans.

• 😬 The financial haunting. JP Morgan Chase prepares to pay $290 million to resolve claims by a victim of Jeffrey Epstein. More legal battles pending…

Rallie Refresh: S&P 500 Index

📈 Always in the news and the stock charts, what is this index? Let’s see how it helps investors make informed decisions quickly and effectively!

🗂️ What is the S&P 500 Index?

• Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ”is a market-capitalization-weighted index of 500 leading publicly traded companies in the U.S.” 

• This means that the index uses the market cap of the top 500 U.S. publicly traded companies to analyze American equities’ performance and the health of the overall stock market.

• Its wide range of analysis gives it a reputation of being one of the best gauges of large U.S. stocks and the equities market.

🤨 What does it mean by float-weighted/market-capitalization-weighted?

• S&P being a float-weighted index means that market capitalizations of the companies in the index are adjusted by the number of shares available for public trading.

• However, it does contribute to its limitations. Stocks can become overvalued/inflated beyond what may seem warranted because of its weight in the index.

• The size of a company in the market determines the level of influence its stock changes have on the index.

• Consider adding both market-cap-weighted indexes such as S&P 500 and equal-weighted indexes (each company’s stock price movements have an equal impact on the index, ex: S&P 500 EWI) to your watchlist for a better view of the market.

😊 We hope you have learned something today! Reach out for any questions and/or suggestions for the next newsletter.

Fun Fact

📈 The answer for Thursday’s newsletter (what country has the highest debt-to-GDP ratio?) is Japan! Tune in next time for today’s fun fact answer.

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That's all for today. Stay hungry & we'll catch you next time. ✌️

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial or legal advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions.