October 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…