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Shares in Japan Post Holdings priced at the top of their expected range Monday, one of the final puzzle pieces in what should be the world's biggest IPO of 2015.

Japan Post said high demand allowed it to price the shares at 1,400 yen ($11.57) each. The offering is part of a complex stock market debut that will see the Japanese government also sell off the postal operator's insurance and banking subsidiaries.

The combined IPO is set to bring in roughly $12 billion. Japan Post alone raised 693 billion yen ($5.7 billion), more than First Data's (FDC) listing earlier this month.

Domestic investors will be able to buy 80% of the shares while the remaining 20% are earmarked for international investors.

The banking and insurance businesses also attracted strong demand, and were also priced at the top of their expected ranges.

Japan has been trying to privatize this behemoth for roughly a decade but extreme public resistance to the move had prevented the government going ahead.

The sale is part of a wider push by the Japanese government to privatize state-owned companies and get money pulsing through the sluggish economy. Japan has the highest level of government debt in the world.

Japan Post has a high profile among residents who would recognize the red delivery vans and motorcycles that are used across the nation for postal services.

But analysts have expressed skepticism about whether it will be able to grow. It is one of the biggest companies in the world, but has been falling down the Fortune Global 500 ranking.

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ISIS is one of the best-funded militant groups in the world, but it could run into serious problems for the long-term if it doesn't keep seizing more territory.

Much of ISIS' money comes from extortion and pillaging, essentially ripping off the people and institutions in conquered territory, and while the group's tactics might bring it windfalls of cash every time it moves into a new city, funding operations requires a constant flow of cash.

“Confiscation makes up a huge part of ISIS revenue”, said J.M. Berger, a Brookings Institution fellow who co-wrote the recent book "ISIS: The State of Terror”. “Confiscation is different from taxation because it's not sustainable. There's only so much you can confiscate before you need to conquer new territories with new wealth.”

ISIS has took over places like Palmyra, an ancient city in Syria that the group conquered in May, for artifacts it can sell on the black market. The militants also bring in money from robbing banks. This nets the group hundreds of millions of dollars, but it's all one-time hits.

"Pillage is a central contributor for ISIS's wealth, and its dependence on strip-mining its holdings for revenue and equipment could be its biggest structural weakness, as this approach will create diminishing returns if ISIS is held to roughly its current geographic limits," Berger said.

While ISIS aims to take over more territory in the Middle East to grow its so-called Islamic caliphate, which was established after the group took control of Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, in August 2014, the group is struggling to continue making significant gains as it fights government forces and rebel groups in Iraq and Syria.

Moreover, the Iraqi government has reportedly stopped paying the salaries of its employees who work in ISIS-controlled areas in an effort to prevent the militants from taking the money.

Furthermore, people are reportedly struggling to pay the taxes ISIS imposes on the residents of its territory. ISIS has reportedly raised the prices of everyday necessities like gas, water, and electricity, partly in an effort to drive people to become fighters for the group, whose salaries are higher than those of average citizens living under ISIS control.

This approach is a double-edged sword, as ISIS has seen some success with using money to lure in desperate people with few options, the group is struggling to meet some of the other financial obligations of a functioning government.

For example, ISIS has made promises to care for the poor in its caliphate, which it markets as an autonomous state, but the group largely hasn't been able to deliver.

In conclusion, ISIS will have to conquer more territories and more cities in order to keep a flowing income. If it fails to do so, its money will start to diminish as time goes by.  

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Google's new parent company Alphabet is off to an amazing start.

Alphabet posted a shockingly good profit and better-than-expected sales in the third quarter, sending the stock up 10% to an all-time high.

The company's sales rose 13% and profit grew a whopping 45% in the past quarter. Particularly encouraging for Alphabet is the fact that much of the growth is coming from mobile search. This was once a big question mark for Google as advertisers refused to pay the same rates for unproven mobile search ads as they did for tried-and-true desktop advertisements.

Google also called out YouTube for having an impressive past quarter.

"Our ... results show the strength of Google's business, particularly in mobile search," said Ruth Porat, Alphabet's chief financial officer, in a prepared statement. "With six products now having more than 1 billion users globally, we're excited about the opportunities ahead of Google, and across Alphabet."

Also helping Alphabet's stock: The Company announced it was buying back $5 billion worth of its own stock. Investors love when companies do that, because it raises the value of their own holdings.

Porat, a former Wall Street rock star, was brought in earlier this year to make the company more efficient and transparent. She helped lead the company's restructuring to become Alphabet, in which Google spun out its exotic projects like driverless cars and anti-aging research into separate companies. Alphabet (GOOGL, Tech30) is now the parent company of all of those smaller companies, one of which is Google.

Google officially took on its Alphabet structure on Oct. 2, the first day of Google's current fiscal quarter. That means we won't get a first glimpse at how well each of the various Alphabet entities is performing until Alphabet reports its fourth-quarter financial results in January.

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YouTube will begin selling $9.99-a-month subscriptions that will allow U.S. customers to watch almost everything without ads, to download videos for viewing offline and to keep content playing on a smartphone or tablet even when using a different app.

But those widely requested features aren't all that subscribers will get. The service, called YouTube Red, offers access to highly produced original shows and movies that can't be found anywhere else. Google Play streaming music will be included too.

YouTube Red is intended to turn the enormously popular Google-owned company into a profit maker, not a money loser.

Ad revenue isn't enough to meet the enormous expenses of serving billions of videos every day — even when most videos are supplied by users for free. YouTube could generate nearly $950 million annually in new revenue if just 5% of U.S. users signed up for the subscription, UBS analysts estimate.

Red marks the beginning of "a long journey," according to YouTube.

Matthew Glotzbach, the company's vice president of product management, said, "By no means would we expect to jump to tens or hundreds of millions of paying users overnight," but there should be "strong demand" from the start.

Financial analysts who follow Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, say YouTube could become a major profit engine. But rivals, including Facebook, Snapchat and Vimeo, are threatening its potential by stealing away both video makers and viewing time.

Growth of YouTube's net ad revenue in the U.S. is expected to slow rapidly over the next three years, the market research company EMarketer said in August. According to EMarketer's calculations, worldwide net revenue will be $4.3 billion in 2015, up 41% from last year.

Yet to be determined is how the subscription model will affect an expanding generation of YouTube stars, many of whom began by filming videos in their bedrooms and elsewhere, cracking jokes, dancing and talking to the camera about everything from fashion to video games. They uploaded the videos to YouTube, attracting advertising sponsors, and, in a few cases, becoming millionaires in the process.

YouTube often places several ads on the same page as a video, and attracting millions of viewers has meant steady, growing income for video makers, who get 55% of ad revenue.

It's unclear how the commercial-free subscription will affect ad income, though YouTube Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl said the "vast majority" of YouTube's subscription revenue will go to the YouTube Red content creators. Certainly, some creators will lose out on money from heavy viewers who might encounter lots of ads or be willing to pay more than $10 a month for a subscription.

With Red, YouTube also plans to create a new, subscriber-only slate of original shows and movies for its most popular video stars. The selected creators will be gambling that slicker content will broaden their viewership and fatten their paychecks.

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Ferrari opened at $60 per share at its trading debut on Wednesday, 15% above its IPO price of $52.  

The luxury sports car maker had priced its IPO at the higher end of expectations for between $48 to $52. It was indicated to open between $59 to $62 per share.

The stock is trading with the ticker RACE.

The company raised $893 million at its initial public offering, according to Bloomberg.

Ferrari is listed New York Stock Exchange, which currently has several sports cars parked outside its premises. Chairman Sergio Marchionne rang the NYSE's opening bell on Wednesday.

The company was spun off from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which is expected to offer the public over 17 million shares, or about 10%. It will raise at least $4 billion from the Ferrari public offering.

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Ferrari NV (RACE.N) priced its initial public offering at the top of expectations on Tuesday, raising $893 million, as drivers enamored with the luxury sports car maker snapped up its shares alongside institutional investors, defying a choppy market.

Ferrari, controlled by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCA) (FCHA.MI), pulled out all the stops to market itself to some of its cars' owners as well as Wall Street, and also limited the offering to a 9.1 percent stake in the company.

The strategy paid off, as the IPO was priced in New York on Tuesday at $52 per share, the top end of its indicated $48 to $52 per share range, according to people familiar with the matter. The IPO gives Ferrari a market capitalization of around $9.8 billion.

The sources asked not to be identified because the pricing details of the IPO were not yet public. Ferrari did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The proceeds will be used to help fund FCA's ambitious growth plan centered around the revamp of its Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Maserati brands. A successful listing will bolster FCA's finances at a time when its calls for a merger partner have fallen on deaf ears.

The company's listing comes a week after several big IPOs were discounted or delayed. Payment processor First Data Corp (FDC.N) priced this year's biggest public offering below its indicated range, while supermarket operator Albertsons Companies Inc (ABS.N) had to postpone its IPO the night before its shares were expected to start trading. Luxury fashion retailer Neiman Marcus Group Inc has also delayed its IPO to 2016.

Unlike Neiman Marcus, First Data and Albertsons, however, Ferrari is not a big leveraged buyout looking to pay down debt. Fiat Chrysler is taking Ferrari public to sell a tenth of its 90 percent stake in the company. All proceeds from the IPO will go to FCA, according to a regulatory filing.

The luxury car company also approached a different investor mix, attempting to capitalize on the emotional resonance of its brand. It targeted more retail investors than a typical IPO, honing in on high net-worth individuals and Ferrari owners, some of whom said they got letters this summer inviting them to buy company shares once it listed.

"A classic Ferrari is a better investment than the stock, but I still plan on buying shares," David Radeloff, who has owned a number of the cars, said in New York ahead of the offering.

The strategy demonstrates an understanding of what drives many investment decisions, said Meir Statman, professor of finance at Santa Clara University and author of "What Investors Really Want."

"The utilitarian benefits of a Ferrari are no different from those of a Toyota," he said. "Both will take you from home to work and back. But Ferraris yield expressive and emotional benefits that Toyotas cannot match."

"A 70-year old in a Toyota is old, but a 70-year old in a Ferrari is young," he added.

The overall windfall for FCA, including proceeds from the IPO and 2.8 billion euros ($3.2 billion) to be transferred to the parent as part of Ferrari's spin-off, is seen at around $4.2 billion.

Shares in Maranello, Italy-based Ferrari are expected to start trading on Wednesday and list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "RACE."

UBS AG (UBSG.VX) and Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) are lead underwriters of Ferrari's IPO.

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