#7 The world’s longest flight

Thursday was a big day for Singapore Airlines. The company restarted a direct service between Singapore and New York. By doing so, the Airbus A350-900ULR performs the longest direct flight by miles, CNBC reports.

The flight covers 9537 miles and takes 18 hours and 25 minutes. It operates with no economy class.


#6 Honda’s $2.75 billion investment

The self-driving vehicle industry continues to attract major (automobile) players. Reuters reports that Honda is investing no less than $2.75 billion in Cruise, the self-driving vehicle unit of General Motors.

Honda’s investment comes on top of the $2.25 billion investment from Japan’s SoftBank in the same GM unit. Honda, GM and Cruise will jointly develop the vehicles.  


#5 Bitcoin technicals breaking bad

Not so great news for Bitcoin investors this week. The world’s biggest digital token seems to have entered a new negative divergence pattern, Bloomberg reports.

For now, all eyes remain on the $6000 support level - this hasn’t been tested since mid-August. 


#4 App store beats Google play

The fact that there is a gap between the amount of money Apple’s App Store makes compared with Google Play is no news in itself. The fact that this gap widened - a lot - in the third quarter of 2018, however, is.

According to a new report from Sensor Tower, the App Store has generated almost 93% more money than Google Play in Q3, TechCrunch reports. Apple’s App Store made $12 billion, 23.3% more than in the same period last year while Google Play made $6.2 billion, up 21.5% compared to last year. 


#3 Walmart joins forces with PayPal

Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, and PayPal are teaming up to allow their customers to deposit and withdraw cash at Walmart stores in the United States, Yahoo! Finance reports.

The collaboration with PayPal is another move by Walmart in an attempt to make its stores a one-stop shop for customers. For PayPal, it’s the first time that its customers will have a way to access cash at brick-and-mortar stores.


#2 Crude slumps

Uncertainty about the global oil demand outlook and the impact of the reimposition of US sanctions on Iran’s energy sector led to a slump in crude prices on Thursday, the Financial Times reports.

Brent prices fell $2.05 a barrel to $81.05 and West Texas Intermediate prices dropped $1.73 a barrel to $71.44.


#1 Tech stocks drive S&P 500 drop

Speaking of slumps, the falling oil prices mentioned above were part of a market-wide sell-off that started on Wednesday and still rippled across global markets on Thursday. As a result, tech stocks drove the S&P 500 to its worst one-day drop since February, the Financial Times reports. 


That's this week's wrap-up all done again. Of course, we’ll keep on top of the latest Tweets and we’ll continue to bring you the most trending financial micro-messages from the web. See you back here next Friday.

Source: www.scoopnest.com.