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Visa (NYSE: V) operates the world’s biggest payment network, authorizing and facilitating payments between credit and debit card issuers and a merchant’s bank. If you use a Visa card to make a payment, Visa connects your bank to the merchant bank and processes the transaction.

Netflix is a well-known business and most people have a fairly good idea of its business model. To give you a quick summary though, the platform provides a movie and TV streaming service to consumers for a monthly subscription fee.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) will be reporting 2nd quarter financial results on Tuesday after the market closes. The company has seen a marked slowdown in revenue and earnings growth which culminated in quarterly earnings declining year-on-year for the quarter that ended September 2022. The consensus estimate for EPS for the quarter ending December is $2.32. This would reflect a decline of 6.5% from the $2.48 reported a year earlier and a small sequential decline from the first quarter.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) reported an excellent set of fourth-quarter results, which resulted in the stock rallying as much as 9% on Thursday. Sales were lower than expected, but still 26.7% higher than a year ago. Earning per share rose 58% to $1.82 which was 7 cents ahead of consensus estimates.

The amount Avatar ultimately brings in could have a very meaningful impact on Disney's EPS for the current quarter, and the stock price is likely to be very sensitive to the success of the movie over the next few weeks.

We had a look at companies in the US consumer cyclical sector to see which ones stood out in each industry. We looked specifically at gross margins (revenue - the cost of goods sold) and operating margins which reflect the effect of other operating expenses on the bottom line. If a company can maintain or improve its margins in an inflationary environment it may have pricing power - i.e. the ability to raise prices without losing sales to competitors. This is a distinct competitive advantage.

OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, has captured the world’s attention since being released two weeks ago. The chatbot uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 model to answer questions and perform tasks using natural language. The platform gained a million users within five days of its launch, no doubt aided by users sharing their interactions with the chatbot on social media platforms. Is it a threat to Alphabet's search business?

Beyond Meat’s (Nasdaq: BYND) share price rose 14% in the last two sessions while the rest of the market fell. It’s also up nearly 30% since late November. With no notable news flow, It seems the stock, which has a short float of about 42%, has been caught up in a short squeeze.

The market is punishing Crowdtrike (Nasdaq:CRWD) after the company reported slightly better-than-expected third-quarter numbers, but issued cautious guidance. Revenue and EPS were both slightly better than expected, but also reflected rapidly decelerating revenue growth. The bearish aspect of the results was the commentary. CEO George Kurtz said that customers were taking longer to close deals and adding extra layers of required approvals.