The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Rogers News.

The Tokyo Olympics are finally underway, but man, has it been a rocky ride with COVID infections rising, corporations pulling out, the Japanese public unenthusiastic, and even now a bad Holocaust joke in the mix.

Meantime, Robin Hood Markets is about to go public in New York, and it looks like another online

trading disruptor from 20 years ago in ways that are both good and bad.

Listen up.

Welcome to the Viewsroom.

I'm Rob Cox, the editor of Breaking Views, a financial commentary wing of Reuters news, coming to you from Zurich, Switzerland, this week. Well, let the games begin. The Tokyo Olympics are set to kick

off with an opening ceremony on Friday and last for the next couple of weeks. But man, has it been a rocky

road so far. Remember, these are the 2020 games rescheduled once because of COVID a year ago,

and they've been plagued by lots of problems.

Just this week, the organizers fired the opening ceremony director

after reports emerged of a past joke he had made about the Holocaust.

That comes on top of rising infections among athletes

and a decision to close the games to spectators.

None of that sought well with corporations and other

supporters of the games, as Pete Sweeney, our Olympics Maven in Asia and I discuss. It also

generally deflates any enthusiasm there might still have been among the Japanese public for the

games. It now looks like former Prime Minister Shinso Abe, a strong advocate of the games,

won't even be in attendance.

But hey, they'll be surfing and skateboarding, so that's pretty cool.

Meantime, Robin Hood Markets has made playing the stock markets easy.

But pinpointing the digital broker's own value is anything but, says our own John Foley.

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