Bits & Pieces
Edition #278 | 08/05/2026
Most traded | Markets & Macro | Lufthansa | Chart of the Week | Renewable energy ETFs
After a brief hiatus, the "Bits & Pieces" is finally landing in your inbox once again. Speaking of landing: although Fraport opened Terminal 3 at Frankfurt Airport at the end of April, there was unfortunately nothing to celebrate in this week's Q1 figures. Lufthansa, however, enjoyed a much stronger tailwind and surprised the market with solid results. Also on board: exciting tech earnings and a look at which sector is riding the coattails of the industry giants to secure substantial profits.
Bought
Note: The data refers to the ratio of purchases and sales of the 100 most traded stocks in the Scalable broker between 01/05/2026 and 07/05/2026.
Super Micro Computer builds servers, storage systems and IT infrastructure. Once considered an AI high-flyer, the company later took a nosedive. However, shares skyrocketed on Wednesday, driven by unexpectedly high profits. While revenue faltered, this was largely blamed on supply chain bottlenecks.
More pumping, less talking
At least one success for Donald Trump: the oil cartel OPEC+, which the US – the world's largest oil producer – is not a part of, has been significantly weakened. The United Arab Emirates has not been a member since the beginning of May. The Emirates can produce their oil very cheaply and therefore no longer want to align their production volumes with OPEC decisions. Saudi Arabia, Russia and co. need significantly higher oil prices to remain profitable.
Currently, however, the oil price is driven less by production volumes and more by the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. Earlier this week, an agreement between Washington and Tehran seemed imminent and chances for peace increased. Late on Thursday, however, isolated fighting broke out again. Trump referred to it as a "love tap", stating that the ceasefire remains in place. Meanwhile, different headlines dominated Wall Street.
- Apple is looking for new contract manufacturers for its chips. Currently, these are produced almost exclusively by TSMC. Deals with Samsung and Intel could reduce reliance on the Taiwanese high-tech group. Fuelled by such news, Samsung has now become the second Asian company – after TSMC – to surpass a $1 trillion market value.
- Driven by the AI boom, AMD and Arm have posted exceptionally strong quarterly figures. The share prices of both chip designers saw significant gains. Over a five-year period, AMD is now up more than 400%, while Arm has climbed around 250% since its IPO in 2023. Industry leader NVIDIA will release its figures on 20 May.
- Palantir smashed expectations on Monday: both government and commercial business significantly exceeded estimates. Profits quadrupled compared to the same period last year. Given the big data company's currently sky-high valuation, however, even this wasn't enough to keep the price in the green. The shares fell.
20,000 flights cancelled – and the stock market cheers
Closed airspaces, diverted flights and stranded passengers in the desert sand. Aircraft from Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad have frequently been grounded or forced to take massive detours recently due to the war in Iran. But bad news for the competition doesn't automatically equate to good news for Deutsche Lufthansa.
While the German carrier managed to poach some short-term revenue from Middle Eastern airlines during the first and seasonally weakest financial quarter, competitors are bouncing back thanks to a (fragile) ceasefire. Furthermore, European airlines are suffering heavily from currently high fuel prices. In peacetime, around three-quarters of European jet fuel imports come from refineries in the Middle East. Alternatives are expensive. For the full year 2026, Lufthansa is therefore anticipating additional costs of €1.7bn. The following measures are intended to help:
- Cancelled: Lufthansa scrapped over 20,000 unprofitable flights to protect its margins and save on fuel costs for the upcoming travel season.
- Jet fuel hedging: Lufthansa has already secured 80% of its expected requirements to prevent any further upward price spikes.
Despite the geopolitical crisis atmosphere and the looming threat of strikes, Lufthansa shares took off following the Q1 figures on Wednesday morning. Why?
- Reduced losses: At €612m, the adjusted operating loss was lower than expected – and 15% below the previous year's level.
- Optimism: Despite numerous risks, profit targets were reaffirmed. Operating profit for the full year 2026 is expected to be significantly higher than the previous year's figure of just under €2bn.
Quality over quantity?
Changes in daily active people by quarter
Source: Meta, 2026
A first for Meta, but for once, a bad one: for the first time since it began tracking "Daily Active People" (DAP) in 2019, the tech company recorded a decline in user numbers in Q1. With a total of over 3.5 billion people using Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook every day, a drop of 20 million might seem like a drop in the ocean, but the market punished Meta for it. During the earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg attempted damage control, blaming internet outages in Iran and blockages in Russia.
This downward trend is likely to intensify next quarter – and Meta is consciously accepting this. From June, a new AI-powered age verification system will be rolled out in the EU and Brazil to better protect children and teenagers on Instagram and Threads. Accounts belonging to children under the age of 13 will be deleted, while teenagers' profiles will be moved to a protected environment. This measure is already active in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.
Why might the Meta rally continue regardless? Because the financial figures are impressive: revenue grew by 33% year-on-year to $56.3bn. Zuckerberg responded to the stock market's concerns in the earnings call with his standard mantra: product quality is always the priority, with the question of monetisation only following at the end. The balance sheet shows that this approach is paying off so far – even if pure user numbers are currently seeing a slight dip.
Breaking free from dependency
When oil tankers pile up in the Strait of Hormuz and geopolitical crises dominate the news, one thing quickly becomes clear: our vulnerability to fossil fuels is immense. Energy security is thus becoming an investment case: more renewables mean less reliance on imports. Furthermore, the energy appetite of AI data centres has turbocharged the sector. New deals with hyperscalers ensure that the decentralised power generation specialist Bloom Energy, for example, is currently the absolute heavyweight in the iShares Global Clean Energy Transition with an allocation of around 14%.
Tech giants urgently need self-sufficient, decentralised power sources beyond fossil fuels for their AI data centres. This is also reflected in the market dynamics:
- Tailwind for renewables: according to Morningstar, around $3bn flowed into renewable funds in April – the highest amount since 2021. It is not just power providers that are benefiting, but also infrastructure suppliers such as Siemens Energy and GE Vernova.
- Performance is catching up: clean energy ETFs have been significantly stronger than energy ETFs featuring oil and gas companies over the last 12 months.
Conclusion: renewable energy accounts for less than 2% of the MSCI World ACWI global index. The energy transition is therefore typically played via satellite ETFs:
The future of banking
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose value is firmly pegged to a traditional currency like the US dollar. Unlike classic and often highly volatile crypto assets like Bitcoin, stablecoins only fluctuate as much as their traditional counterpart. This makes them – as the name suggests – relatively stable. They are frequently referred to as the digital money of the future. In his annual letter to investors, for example, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink emphasised that the "tokenisation of assets" and stablecoins have the potential to transform capital markets in the same way the internet transformed commerce.
If you would rather back the underlying technological infrastructure than the digital coins themselves, take a look at the Virtune Stablecoin Index ETP. It invests in cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, XRP or Solana, which form the basis for the global stablecoin ecosystem and its associated payment and settlement systems. These so-called "rails" could serve as the technological foundation for the future digital financial system. To ensure a balanced representation of the constituents, weightings are based on the square root of the market capitalisation and regularly rebalanced. This gives smaller components like Stellar a meaningful weighting, while large cryptocurrencies like Ethereum remain prominently represented. With this ETP, you are therefore not investing in stablecoins, but potentially in the infrastructure of the future.
More flexibility for your goals
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- No hidden additional costs. Overdraft and default interest may only apply if the credit line is exceeded.
- Full control and management directly in the app.
- Fair interest rates that you control: benefit from a variable borrowing rate (p.a.) of 4.24% with FREE or 3.24% with PRIME+.
Early start calculator
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Editorial deadline: Thursday, 7 a.m.
Sources: Scalable and dpa-AFX