Comments in bold addressed to audience members
This morning’s forum is brought to you from two locations:
The Boomer is sat in the back of his wine shop, currently infused with the smell of stale wine as I dropped a box of rosé in here yesterday
Meanwhile down there ina different continent altogether, the dark heart of Africa, our very own Marlow and geopolitical Zoomer, Dario
Good morning
A very beautiful place – was extremely wealthy during the best time to be (mid 19th century) so you know our architectural style is on point
Yesterday we ate contraband fish – the only type of fresh fish available in Melilla
Because the border with Morocco is closed for goods
So only well connected restaurants can get the best fresh fish
A very strange and curious city filled with Art Deco and definitely worth a visit
So much bootlegging aside, let’s look at markets
A brief miscellany
Gamestop is going up n up today
It’s the original meme stock
Very much so – it’s the OG Julian
The only tangible news surrounding this share price shift is the expectations that Gamestop’s Q3 2024 earnings MIGHT indicate the company has turned around a profitable quarter
A remarkable turnaround for a once beleaguered vendor
“While there isn’t a specific catalyst related to business fundamentals for this short-term reversal, the most plausible reason is the stock’s extended stay in oversold territory since September. The 14-day Money Flow Index (MFI) has been trading below 20 for the first time since July 2019, signaling an overselling condition. Additionally, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) has been hovering very close to oversold territory since mid-October.”
“Options in GameStop Corp. are seeing wild volume as traders bet that the stock will rally 50% in little over a week.
A Dec. 8 $20 call option changed hands 17,500 times by midday in New York. The vast majority of the positions were newly opened and traded in small blocks throughout the morning — a sign that appetite could be coming from individual retail traders.”
Something that will laed to the Mother Of All Short Squeezes – the MOASS – which is essentially a theory that GME is the biggest hedge against the performance of the American economy
Now – I don’t think this is why the stonk is a ‘meme stock’
I’ve always claimed that meme stonks arent about fundamentals and strategy (like WSB or Superstonk – the subreddits involved – claim) or that it’s about really dumb retail money (like the mainstream)
This is what determines whether a meme stock is a true ‘meme stonk’ – like GME or BBBY rather than a simple pump n dump
We will watch this space!
XAU now over $2040, XBT $38k and UST10YR @ 4.5% just three of the more surprising moves we’ve seen
DXY now down to 102, lighting a fire under EM
A month go, DXY touched 107 but as punters continually bring forward the expected date of the first rat cut
The dollar index slides
This is pretty much a fucntion of rate differentials, though
So once mkts start discounting rate cuts from all the other central banks later in the year, I would expect DXY weakness to be arrested
Bill Ackman is the latest high profile hedgie to call for a rate cut from the fed in 1Q24
Yesterday, gold, oil and bitcoin all very strong but while I like gold (central baks buying) and I like bitcoin (cheaper funding, better r etail sentiment) I’m still not a fan of crude here
I’d be wary of chasing oil given the desperation of oil producing countries generally to open the spigots and sell everything they can
VIX still hovering below 13 is the most crucial indicator of becalmed sentiment
10:48 JR: I saw the film but don’t remember that scene. Was Margot Robbie involved in it?
10:49 JR: But was she in the volatility scene? She’s certainly caused some metaphysical volatility in her time
Happens a lot
And in fact caused the eventual bankruptcy or failure of knight securities about 10 yrs ago
The world’s largest food delivery business,
Meituan MPNGY US
(ordering more hairy crabs and chicken feet, no doubt)
Similar post-Covid patterns to those observed elsewhere and inline with recent consumer data demonstrating punters value the experiential since lockdown. Food delivery is a rubbish business model.
Just like bitcoin is a play on human gullibility
Another sizeable ADR mover yesterday was PDD, the Chinese retailer
Whose online app, Temu, competes favourably against the like of Shein and Amazon with incredibly cheap offers.
And she was exhausted by my questioning yesterday on Shein so today she only offered a one-word judgment on Temu from her student bed at 10am
‘cheap’
“The company said it’s not easy to liquidate its assets, most of which are bonds and equities that are now undervalued. It seems to be telling the public that its net liability may actually be more than 260 billion yuan.”
The Pentagon has now failed its sixth independent audit in a row for the sixth consecutive year
“The audit consists of 29 sub-audits of the department’s services. All must pass for the overall audit to receive approval.
To conduct the audit, 1,600 auditors conducted 700 site visits and assessed $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities, the Pentagon said.”
They spend too much on Viagra?
11:00 DGG:
Old systems for tracking funds, a slow bureaucracy, and the sheer size of the U.S. Defense apparatus have kept audits from passing since they began in late 2017.
11:00 JR:
(After the sixth consecutive failure)
And that “we need to be doing better at this and moving faster”
(After the sixth failure for the sixth year in a row)
Speaking of failing attempts
Britain’s CMA has announced a tentative deal by Adobe to purchase cloud-based product design platform Figma for $20bn would “eliminate competition in the software markets for product design, image editing and illustration”
As we approach the final month of the year it seems like investors are trying to compensate for a difficult 2023 with a final feeding frenzy into YE
A JPM Morgan survey of treasury clients shows speculative investors are the longest they’ve ever been
78% were long relative to benchmark,
This compares to 56% just a fortnight back
Equity investors also demonstrating irrational financial exuberance (especially when considering the reason yields are falling is because many think a recession possible)
But BAML recorded inflows of $2.6bn into equities last week and there are still billions tied up in money-mkt funds that will most probably be released into stockmkts sooner or later
So, Dario, commodities are rallying on a weak $ rather than growth expectations and did you see copper jumped yesterday?
First quantum have a 20 year contract with the govt and an option on a 20-year extension.
Or they thought they did
The mine has been unable to operate for a week as the boats blocked the port bringing supplies.
This is 1% of global output
Panama runs a fiscal deficit of 5%.
And this will increase that fiscal deficit by 10%
Do you think this decision is political or environmental, DArio?
A combination of several factors – I think the President has decidedly sided with the protesters because
A) Long running crisis in Panama – especially the brutally stark inequalities that always seem to get worse
b) The lack of rainfall is forcing the operation of the Panma Canal to slow down – as we saw last week, it relies on sweetwater – and this is ascribed to the mining projects int he country by the protesters and environmentalists
c) That there are Panamanian general elections in May
Workers in the Las Bambas mines in Peru, which produce around 2% of global copper supply, have begun an indefinite strike over a profit-sharing dispute
Izzy lol
Worse comes to worse I can jump the fence. Much easier to jump into Morocco than into Melilla
Just to point out at this juncture, in light of DArio’s illegal piscine activities, that T he Blind Spot does not encourage criminality in any shape or form
And given her electric bike looked unstoppable I doubt she halted at any red lights on the way back
Yet more criminality from the blind spot team
Speaking of criminals…
Elon Musk
First shipments of the cybertruck on Thursday apparently
Who do you think is the logical buyer for this ‘vehicle’?
@marksnow -100%
It strikes me as the iPad of cars. Everyone makes fun of it until it becomes the new standards
Ah
I stopped myself
He was born in South Africa
So cant run for president
But that would be the logical conclusion to his career and in fact, he can probably afford to lobby t o have the constitution amended in his favour
Clearly he’s a Caesarian
A flair with the pen but awkward irl
Augustus? Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit
The PIGS
Look at the changes in spreads on peripheral bonds highlighted by Multipolar market.
But
Even if our economies are supposedly growing – a worrying article on Euronews claimed 38% of Europeans no longer eat three meals a day due to their precarious financial situation
The figures being particularly high in greece and moldova
Or maybe they’re just fans of intermittent fasting?
And also if portion sizes are exactly the same as they were a generation ago
Another nifty chart from Bloomberg suggested the S&P7 stocks are as overvalued as ‘nifty fifty’ and tech in 2000
US home prices rose 4% in the last yr. even though bond yields/ mortgage rates are rising it appears no homeowner wants to ever sell at a lower price
(because that’s not how property ownership works, right?)
So as a consquence, there is very little by way of supply
Marksnow – did you see Milei is converting to Judaism?
