Nov 30, 2022
Bespoke’s Global Macro Dashboard is a high-level summary of 22 major economies from around the world. For each country, we provide charts of local equity market prices, relative performance versus global equities, price to earnings ratios, dividend yields, economic growth, unemployment, retail sales and industrial production growth, inflation, money supply, spot FX performance versus the dollar, policy rate, and ten year local government bond yield interest rates. The report is intended as a tool for both reference and idea generation. It’s clients’ first stop for basic background info on how a given economy is performing, and what issues are driving the narrative for that economy. The dashboard helps you get up to speed on and keep track of the basics for the most important economies around the world, informing starting points for further research and risk management. It’s published the last Wednesday of every month at the Bespoke Institutional membership level.
You can access our Global Macro Dashboard by starting a 14-day free trial to Bespoke Institutional now!
Nov 27, 2022
Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.
While you’re here, join Bespoke Premium with a 30-day trial!
FTX
Congressmembers Tried to Stop the SEC’s Inquiry Into FTX by David Dayen (The American Prospect)
A bipartisan group of House members back in March urged the SEC to lay off FTX earlier this year, about 8 months before the exchange collapsed and dragged billions in customer deposits with it. [Link]
Despite Boasting Of Big Profits, FTX And Alameda Lost $3.7 Billion Before 2022 by Jeff Kauflin (Forbes)
A bankruptcy court filing claims that the trading business which Sam Bankman-Fried funded with the assets of his exchange FTX lost almost $4bn in 2021. [Link]
Social Media
Facebook’s Most Popular Posts Were Trash. Here Is How It Cleaned Up. by Jeff Horowitz (WSJ)
After years of seeing spam posts of one kind or another reach the furthest across the company, Facebook has finally taken real steps to crack down on ways to turn down amplification of those kinds of posts. [Link; paywall]
Tax filing websites have been sending users’ financial information to Facebook by Simon Fondrie-Teitler, Angie Waller, and Colin Lecher (The Verge)
Meta’s Pixel service has been capturing tracking data including names, addresses, income, filing status, refund amounts and more. [Link]
Elon Musk Embraces Twitter’s Radical Fact-Checking Experiment by Carl Miller (Wired)
One novel approach to moderation that new Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been pushing is a feature that adds context and details from other users instead of simply deleting posts. [Link; soft paywall]
Sports
From 1966 to now: the evolution of World Cup football by John Muller (The Athletic)
A data-fueled and very detailed look at the evolution of World Cup tactics from the mid-1960s through today. The only constant in the sport of soccer, it seems, is action and reaction as different tactics are replicated and adjusted. [Link; paywall]
Sports media organizations are doubling down on betting by Max Tani (Semafor)
Evolving norms around sports gambling is creating a complicated dance between media organization management and their writers. [Link]
Heroism
Army Veteran Went Into ‘Combat Mode’ to Disarm the Club Q Gunman by Dave Phillips (NYT)
A profile of the man who saved lives at the Colorado Springs nightclub attacked last week; the man charged the 300 pound rifle-armed murderer without a weapon and ended up completely incapacitating them. [Link; soft paywall]
Batteries
Engineers solve a mystery on the path to smaller, lighter batteries by David L. Chandler (MIT News)
A new solid state lithium battery developed at MIT offers the chance for much higher capacity than the current generation of batteries. Specifically, the researchers identified the cause of dendrites, which disable current versions of solid state batteries. [Link]
ESG
SEC Charges Goldman Sachs Asset Management for Failing to Follow its Policies and Procedures Involving ESG Investments (SEC)
An SEC order reported this week has meant fines for Goldman, which mislead investors in a few funds about ESG selection criteria and procedures related to those criteria. [Link]
Vaccines
I lost my child to flu. Trust me, you need a shot. by Zachary Yaksich (Voices For Vaccines)
A moving call for parents to vaccinate themselves and their children against the seasonal flu, which kills tens of thousands of people per year including the author’s six year old daughter. [Link]
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Have a great weekend!
Nov 23, 2022
Searching for ways to better understand the fixed income space or looking for actionable ideas in this asset class? Bespoke’s Fixed Income Weekly provides an update on rates and credit every Wednesday. We start off with a fresh piece of analysis driven by what’s in the headlines or driving the market in a given week. We then provide charts of how US Treasury futures and rates are trading, before moving on to a summary of recent fixed income ETF performance, short-term interest rates including money market funds, and a trade idea. We summarize changes and recent developments for a variety of yield curves (UST, bund, Eurodollar, US breakeven inflation and Bespoke’s Global Yield Curve) before finishing with a review of recent UST yield curve changes, spread changes for major credit products and international bonds, and 1 year return profiles for a cross section of the fixed income world.
In this week’s report, we take a look at the risk premiums currently reflected in credit spreads.
Our Fixed Income Weekly helps investors stay on top of fixed-income markets and gain new perspectives on the developments in interest rates. You can sign up for a Bespoke research trial below to see this week’s report and everything else Bespoke publishes free for the next two weeks!
Click here and start a 14-day free trial to Bespoke Institutional to see our newest Fixed Income Weekly now!
Nov 20, 2022
Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.
While you’re here, join Bespoke Premium with a 30-day trial!
Tech Wreck
Masayoshi Son owes SoftBank $4.7bn as side deals go sour (National News/Bloomberg)
The Japanese tech investor borrowed heavily from his own company to invest in hyper-aggressive tech funds he operated. The result is billions of losses from the world’s most optimistic buyer of technology companies. [Link]
Elon Musk Fires Twitter Employees Who Criticized Him by Kate Conger, Ryan Mac and Mike Isaac (NYT)
As the intemperate billionaire seeks to put his stamp on the social networking site, staff are being shown the door for any criticism of the boss, on top of other headcount reductions and mass departures of employees uninterested in ultimatums. [Link; soft paywall]
Battery Industrialization
The Battery Supply Chain Is Finally Coming to America by Tom Randall (Bloomberg)
With booming demand for large scale battery packs and fresh industrial policy creating huge incentives to produce batteries inside the US, domestic manufacturing of batteries is finally starting to scale up with downstream benefits for companies that make components in the US. [Link; soft paywall]
Carmakers switch to direct deals with miners to power electric vehicles by Harry Dempsey and Peter Campbell (FT)
In order to make sure they have sufficient supply, auto manufacturers are setting up joint ventures with battery makers and going straight to mines to buy input materials, a sort of vertical integration that harkens back to an earlier period for the global auto industry. [Link; paywall]
World Cup
World Cup Brings Two Million Visitors and an Epic Culture Clash to Qatar by Rory Jones, Stephen Kalin, and Joshua Robinson (WSJ)
Less than a week before the start of the World Cup, Qatar is proving an unreliable and downright uncomfortable host for the World Cup. [Link; paywall]
Qatar World Cup Faces New Edict: Hide the Beer by Tariq Panja (NYT)
Nothing goes together like the beautiful game and beer, but Qatar World Cup organizers are moving the goal as kickoff approaches in a confusing series of decisions that may keep fans from their brews. [Link; soft paywall]
The FTX Collapse
FTX Chapter 11 First Day Affidavit by Jon Wu (ThreadReader)
A step-by-step walk-through of the Chapter 11 filing offered by FTX as the exchange collapsed. The allegations are nothing short of shocking and reveal staggering malfeasance. [Link]
What happened at Alameda Research (milky eggs)
A detailed discussion of the collapse of Alameda Research, the FTX affiliate that was the alleged recipient of funding that blew a massive hole in the balance sheet of the exchange. [Link]
Let crypto burn by Stephen Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz (FTAV)
We don’t necessarily subscribe to this argument, but a thought-provoking call for regulators to let the crypto ecosystem collapse under its own weight and not offer any of the stability or legitimacy that comes from regulation. [Link; registration required]
Innovation
Stagnant Scientific Productivity Holding Back Growth by Greg Ip (WSJ)
The US spends a record share of GDP on research and development, but the long-term benefits of big investment in speculative technology or ideas has been illusory so far. [Link; paywall]
Your Phone Can Determine If a Bridge Is Busted by Matt Simon (Wired)
Phones inside the cars of drivers on the Golden Gate Bridge were used to identify and monitor the “modal frequency” of the bridge, providing a potential source of early warning for bridge collapses. [Link]
Wall Street Weakness
Wall Street Bonuses to Plunge as Much as 45% for Bankers – Study (US News/Reuters)
Crashing deal volumes after a massive run in 2020 and 2021 are going to lead to a famine for deal-driven bonuses at Wall Street investment banks. [Link]
Office Space
EY Future Workplace Index reveals surprisingly rosy attitudes on commercial real estate investment despite economic tightening (PRNewswire)
While the economy appears to be slowing and office demand doesn’t look spectacular, this new survey data shows surprisingly robust demand for office space and real estate more generally. [Link]
How We Spend It
6 Graphs Everyone Needs To See by Sahil Bloom (ThreadReader)
Time spent with friends and family eventually shifts towards time spent with children and coworkers. By the end of life, Americans are spending more than half of their waking hours alone. [Link]
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Have a great weekend!
Nov 18, 2022
This week’s Bespoke Report newsletter is now available for members.
US equity markets pulled back and made a lower high despite cooing doves this week from the Federal Reserve and a plunging dollar. US yield curves inverted further as markets tempered their optimism on China. Earnings season has finally wound up with better-than-expected results, despite a sudden slowdown in guidance which has flipped decisively negative after two years of remarkable optimism from corporate America. Economic data this week was high volume and covered housing, consumer spending, manufacturing, and more. We discuss in detail as well as taking a look at what tech layoffs say about the broader labor market, how consumer discretionary stocks have traded into Thanksgiving, the signals being sent by the US yield curve and fixed income markets more broadly, and runoff in liquidity as the Fed removes reserves from the system as well as raising rates. We cover all that and much more in this week’s Bespoke Report.
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