Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis. Good afternoon, today is Monday, June 30th, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn. Our top story so far, Amazon appears to have lost the right to sell Nintendo products on its U.S. website amid a conflict over third-party sales on Amazon's Marketplace.
Bloomberg reports that the dispute stems from merchants buying Nintendo products in bulk in Southeast Asia and selling them at discounted prices on Amazon's marketplace. As a result, Nintendo products listed as "sold by Amazon" began disappearing from the site despite efforts by Amazon to appease Nintendo with assurances that only authentic products from the Japanese company would be sold by Amazon directly.
Both Nintendo and Amazon denied any conflict, Bloomberg said. However, when Nintendo released the Switch 2 this month, the company only stocked the console at Target, Walmart, and Best Buy. It wasn't offered on Amazon in the U.S., although the company can still sell the console in Canada, Japan, and the U.K. Looking to global trade, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said late Sunday that trade talks with the U.S. have resumed after Canada rescinded its plan to tax U.S. tech firms just one day before the first tax payments were due.
The move comes after President Trump announced on Friday that he was ending all trade discussions with Canada, effective immediately, due to the tax which he called a direct and blatant attack on our country. Calling Canada a very difficult country to trade with, Trump said he would decide a tariff rate for Canada within the next week.
Canada's digital services tax required large foreign and domestic businesses to pay a tax on revenue earned from online users in Canada. The tax was due to hit companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber, and Airbnb with a 3% levy on revenue from Canadian users.
Among active stocks, Apple's smart glasses are set to drive the next wave in consumer electronics, while the company is not expected to launch any new head-mounted devices in 2026, according to highly-followed TF International Securities analyst Min-Chi Kuo. Before Apple launches display-enabled smart glasses, several brands are expected to release similar products to establish early market presence. But due to the ongoing technological and design improvements needed, these products will likely remain niche offerings over the next two years.
The Oracle is rallying after CEO Safra Katz touted a strong start to fiscal 2026, adding multi-cloud database revenue continues to grow at over 100%. In addition, Stifel analyst Brad Reback upgraded Oracle shares to buy from hold and said the acceleration in its cloud business looks sustainable. Reback also raised its price target to $2.50 from $1.80. And Stanley Black & Decker has tapped Christopher Nelson as its next president and chief executive officer, effective October 1st.
Nelson currently serves as Stanley's COO and President of the Tools and Outdoor Business. He will succeed Donald Allen Jr., who has served as CEO since July 2022.
In other news of note, Warner Bros.' much-anticipated F1 the Movie raced to the top of the North American box office this weekend, delivering a $55.6 million opening, according to studio estimates compiled by Comscore. The racing drama from Apple Original Films and the makers of Top Gun Maverick roared ahead of the competition, marking one of the strongest debuts for an original sports film in recent years.
Universal's How to Train Your Dragon held onto the number two spot with $19.4 million in its third weekend, pushing its domestic total past $200 million. Meanwhile, Disney's Elio took third place with $10.7 million despite a steep 49% decline from its debut frame.
Universal's Megan 2.0, the latest installment in the AI horror franchise, launched with $10.2 million, slightly trailing expectations. Sony's 28 Years Later, the sequel to the apocalyptic hits, rounded out the top five at $9.7 million, down 68% in its second week. And in the Wall Street Research corner, Morgan Stanley says there's little evidence to suggest that foreign investors have been reallocating away from U.S. stocks.
Strategist Vishwanath Torapattur says it's worth highlighting that the decline in portfolio weights for U.S. equities has been in line with changes in equity benchmark weights as the market correction shrank the market cap of U.S. equities as a share of the Global Equity Benchmark Index.
Weekly data across global equity ETFs and mutual funds from Lipper show that international investors have been net buyers through the weeks after Liberation Day and most of May, but the pace of buying has slowed year-to-date versus 2024, although it remains much higher than during the same period in 2021 to 2023, he said. While debate rages on whether U.S. government bonds remain safe havens, we did not find evidence pointing to a significant flow out of U.S. bonds.
That's all for today's Wall Street Lunch. Look for links for stories in the show notes section. Don't forget, these episodes will be up with transcriptions at SeekingAlpha.com slash WSP. And for a wealth of coverage on stocks and ETFs, go to SeekingAlpha.com slash subscriptions.