Daily Highlights | 16th November

Knockout Stage Matches
Week 1 | Day 3
16th November 2022

Solana vs. Neo

Today’s Score 0:1

Total Score 1:2

After managing to secure one round to its name Solana’s team has once again fallen in deep waters.

And as we’ve seen numerous times during this week, once again FTX was the reason behind the downfall of yet another Crypto market leader.

As it turns out FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was a prominent backer of the network!
And Bankman-Fried’s downfall translated to generally falling fan support for Solana, given his prominent endorsement of the network.

At their peak last November, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications stored more than $10 billion on the Solana network, due to backing by prominent figures such as Sam Bankman-Fried. And today the value has dropped to just over $300 million.

Hence, it was no brainer that when Solana’s team entered the field today, they were sluggish in their attempts and couldn’t even hold off the attacking players of Neo (A team that ranks #71 in the Crypto arena).

As where Solana fell by 0.91% today, Neo rose by 0.29% claiming another round to their name!
Infamously known as the “Chinese Ethereum”, Neo’s players capitalized on this opportunity just like they did on Ethereum’s loopholes and are coming out strong!

Will Neo continue the stride and take out Solana once and for all? Or will the Solana network be able to recover from this mess? No doubt, tomorrow’s round is going to be crucial!

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial vs. UBS

Today’s Score 1:0

Total Score 3:0

In another explosive knockout this week, Japan’s largest lender by Assets, the Mitsubishi Financial group has eliminated the Swiss Investment Banking company from the tournament!

Despite experiencing, a 70.5% slide in second-quarter net profit because of another one-off loss related to the sale of U.S. unit MUFG Union Bank the Japanese team is going strong, but how?

As Mitsubishi UFJ revealed a net profit of 117.41 billion yen ($841.83 million) for the July-September period, against 398.4 billion yen a year earlier!

But that’s not all!

As in efforts to boost shareholder returns, they just announced plans to buyback billions of yen worth of shares as global rate hikes spurred an increase in income from loans that helped earnings beat analyst estimates.

No wonder the arena was dominated by rooting for Mitsubishi!

The UBS Group, although a fan favorite throughout this tournament hasn’t been faring very well.

The Zack analysts gave the team a rank of 3 (which means hold). Albeit they believe the stock may be undervalued and you should the stock but not so undervalued that you purchase on the current price.

Well, it was a good run UBS - better luck next time!

CIBC vs. Bank Central Asia

Today’s Score 0:1

Total Score 0:3

We all knew this was the knockout stage but in the words of the commentator: “Man, what a knockout!”

The Canadian Bank of Commerce was absolutely thrashed by the Asian bank for the 3rd round in a row! Eliminating the team that had fought so hard to get here before the match is even over.

Although now it is over!

Despite making headways such as signing a Multi-Year Sponsorship Agreement with Canada Soccer & Canadian Premier League, CIBC’s stock has been falling this week. Resulting in poor performance by the team.

On the other hand, Bank Central Asia has been on the rise with its net income and revenues up a whopping 24.73% & 20.27% year-on-year, respectively. Showing improvement in operating margins.

It seems this week is for the Asians as they are dominating in both the Crypto and the Stocks arena!