2022

Lots of speculation in July.  Oil experts go out on a limb making price predictions.  Political mayhem.  Gopher conspiracy unmasked. Economy June inflation comes in at 9.1% vs 8.8% expected. Yikes. Nord Stream 1 shut for regular maintenance. Will it come back online? Yep.  Back online. Euro/Dollar parity                 Yield curve inverted (2s/10s) ECB raises rates by 50 bps (raising rates to 0.00%), creates “Transmission Protection Instrument”. Some are calling TPI “To Protect Italy”. McDonald’s raises price of cheeseburger in UK for first time in 14 years Politics UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigns Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Assassinated Potpouri The gophers have been farming this entire time Nobody panic – Duck & Cover updated for 2022 – It’s probably fine. Heat waves in US and Europe Hershey’s won’t be able to meet demand for Halloween candy

Back to our regularly scheduled worrying.  Spoiler alert, but this is our third straight month without animal-related mayhem. Markets AMAZON STOCK DROPS BY 95%!!!  Ok, it was a 20 for 1 stock split, but the professional clickbait artists couldn’t help themselves on that one. Regulators are coming for ESG Meanwhile, HSBC Global Head of Responsible Investments got suspended for pulling back the curtain: http://https://youtu.be/bfNamRmje-s He absolutely burns it to the ground.  This is a blog post for another day as I do have strong feelings on this.  In short, Wall Street is charging 15x for “ESG” that isn’t really all that different from traditional indexing.  At the same time, the worm is turning as ESG returns get clobbered. It is officially a bear market. The Fed hikes another 75 bps. The ECB plans to tighten for the first time in a decade. Inflation is 8.6%.  Transitory has become a dirty…

The big stories for the month were Ukraine and inflation.  There were several potential headline-grabbers relegated below the fold during the month.  Let’s get to it. War Massive sanctions, asset freezes, and divestiture of Russian stocks. Germany meme: “So the world wants Germany to raise a huge army, march through Poland, and maybe fight the Russians?  Are you sure?” Russians seize Ukrainian nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest. Cascading press releases of companies cutting ties with Russia in one way or another. Russian stocks and ETFs holding Russian stocks halted. Ukraine/Russia is a rare case of war between two countries with McDonalds Russia is firing on civilians Potential ceasefire on 3/16 doesn’t happen Inflation Babysitting rates skyrocket Oil hits $130 – gasoline prices rise Nickel hits $100,000 per metric ton on LME, blowing up WisdomTree’s 3x inverse nickel ETF – If you have a $100 margin call, it’s your problem.  If…

What the Media Was Worried About – February 2022 The big story for February 2022 was the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  The Russian buildup was loudly called out by US/NATO intelligence.  The world saw it happening, warned Russia not to do it, but Russia eventually did it anyway.  The Pandemic has quietly ended.  There was no celebration, just a shift in the CDC’s focus from cases to hospitalizations due to COVID.  Would this have been a bigger deal without the Ukraine conflict?  Investing’s top story was that a Federal Reserve president roiled markets by saying what everything thinks the Fed should do, but nobody says it because it would roil the markets if said out loud.  Oops.  In other news, SNOWMAGEDDON came and went.  Newspersons have taken to calling these storms ‘WINTER STORM BOMB CYCLONES’ now because it sounds way more gnarly than saying an area will get a foot…

I read something a couple years ago that went like this: “If you want to know how important the news is, read the headlines from two weeks ago.”  I wanted to see how that rule of thumb really held up so I made a list of items the media was worried about every month for a year.  I either chose the exact right or exact wrong time.  It was 2020.   Coronavirus went from lower case to upper case and back within the first six months of 2020 as the nation became aware of it and then adapted.  World War III, President Bernie, UFOs are real, MURDER HORNETS, Davey Daytrader, Plague Squirrels, No really – UFOs are real, 17 year old hacks Twitter’s biggest accounts, fire tornados out west, vinyl music sales surpass CDs for the first time since 1986, Metal Monolith in Utah desert, Bitcoin $29,000.  All these things were…