Nov 6, 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!
Labor Markets
CEO Patrick Collison’s email to Stripe employees by Patrick Collison (Stripe)
Amidst a blizzard of tech layoffs, payments company Stripe unveils a remarkably worker-friendly list of transition policies for fired workers that total about 14% of the labor force. [Link]
A Labor Supply Shock? by Preston Mui (Employ America)
Younger cohorts have almost entirely returned to pre-COVID levels of employment, leaving only the oldest segment of the labor market entirely responsible for the alleged lack of labor supply this year. [Link]
Liminal Spaces
Why One Chinatown Mini-mall Languishes While Another Thrives by Wilfred Chan (Curbed)
Detailed reporting on the magic of cheap rent in Chinatown and the downward spiral of the neighborhood over the past few decades. [Link]
The Eerie Comfort of Liminal Spaces by Jake Pitre (MSN/The Atlantic)
An investigation into why so many people are so enthusiastic for the “strange solace of being on the threshold of monumental change” in picture form. [Link]
Sports
Why is participation in girls’ high school sports — yes, even basketball — waning? by Langston Wertz Jr (Charlotte Observer)
High school sports participation is down sharply, with participation in basketball down 14% over the past decade, to the point that many schools are fielding only a varsity team with no JV squad and no cuts. [Link; soft paywall]
Professional Cornhole Has a Cheating Scandal Called BagGate by John Clarke (WSJ)
The formerly casual pastime has attracted sponsorship dollars and lots of attention, to the point where teams in the national finals were both caught cheating. [Link; paywall]
Traffic James
The Metals for Your EV Are Stuck in a 30-Mile Traffic Jam by Matthew Hill (Bloomberg)
Central African copper mines are tied to the rest of the world with tenuous and often-broken logistics lines that stretch across the southern half of the continent. [Link; soft paywall]
Why Egypt became one of the biggest chokepoints for Internet cables by Matt Burgess (Ars Technica)
Subsea internet cables are critical links for global connectivity with enormous volumes of traffic passing through physical chokepoints like the narrow land route between the Red Sea and Mediterranean. [Link]
China
China’s Local Governments Should Put State Assets to Better Use, Ministry Says by Chen Yikan (Yi Cai Global)
Beijing is starting to push local governments to start selling off assets including houses, land, and cars; other assets like stakes in businesses could also be sold to fund local government deficits. [Link]
Lasers
What it’s like to fire Raytheon’s powerful anti-drone laser by Kelsey D. Atheron (PopSci)
A small four wheeler can hold the 10 kilowatt Raytheon system designed to target and destroy drones on the battlefield. [Link]
Previewing Our Wisconsin Polling Experiment by Nate Cohn (NYT)
In an effort to correct for very low response rates in Wisconsin, the NYT attempted to pay respondents to complete one of its polls this cycle; it’s still not clear yet whether the new approach will prove accurate or not. [Link; soft paywall]
Doom
Hedge-fund giant Elliott warns looming hyperinflation could lead to ‘global societal collapse’ by Anviksha Patel (MarketWatch)
Elliott Management’s strategy is premised on buying assets cheap, so it’s not a surprise that they would be bearish towards overall asset prices. Still, some of the language here is pretty strong stuff. [Link]
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Have a great weekend!
Nov 2, 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 discuss how sensitive the stock market is to near-term rate changes versus terminal rate changes.
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Oct 30, 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!
Energy
Halliburton profit tops Wall Street estimates as oil activity booms by Liz Hampton & Shariq Khan (Reuters)
Oil services company Halliburton announced a very strong third quarter this week, with the CEO characterizing demand as “stronger than I have ever seen at this point in the year”. [Link]
U.S.-Saudi Relations Buckle, Driven by Animosity Between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman by Stephen Kalin, Summer Said, and Dion Nissenbaum (WSJ)
Saudi Arabia’s next king has made a habit of mocking the American President, complicating relations between the former top oil producer and the United States. [Link; paywall]
Perks
Citadel, Blue Owl Expand in Connecticut in Bid to Cut Commutes by Natalie Wong, Hema Parmar, and Lizzie Kane (Bloomberg)
Finance firms are offering more office space close to where their employees live in a bid to bring down the time commitment of commuting and getting more people into the office. [Link; soft paywall]
Content
Pinterest, Headspace offer free mental health resources to content creators: ‘We wanted to inspire the people who do the inspiring’ by Renée Onque (CNBC)
Social media companies dependent on popular content creators are starting to lure talent with some perks that might not make much sense to those of us not struggling under the burden of social media fame. [Link]
YouTube’s richest creator MrBeast is seeking a $1.5 billion valuation in what could be a massive milestone for influencer-led business by Alice Hearing (Fortune)
YouTube’s highest-paid creator is trying to sell a stake in his sprawling content and brand empire valued at $1.5bn, in what could be a landmark in finance for this area of entertainment. [Link]
Education
Students Are Using AI to Write Their Papers, Because Of Course They Are by Claire Woodcock (Vice)
With a relatively simple prompt, AI language tools are able to craft essays that fool professors and earn students the easiest of A’s. [Link]
Pandemics
So far, this flu season is more severe than it has been in 13 years by Lena H. Sun (MSN/WaPo)
Almost 900k flu cases and 360 deaths have piled up already this season, with caseloads highest in the US South and Southeast. This is the worst start to a flue season since 2009 so far. [Link]
COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab by Katherine Eban and Jeff Kao (Vanity Fair)
A report issued by the minority staff of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions released this week argued the COVID-19 pandemic was “more likely than not the result of a research-related incident”. This article investigates that thesis from a non-virological perspective. [Link]
Tech
Amazon readies 172,000-square-foot Kirkland factory to build Kuiper satellites by Alan Boyle (GeekWire)
Amazon is planning to ramp up a global fleet of more than 3,000 satellites that will provide broadband internet. Scaling up production will require a massive Washington facility. [Link]
Intel CEO Calls New U.S. Restrictions on Chip Exports to China Inevitable by Tim Higgins and Asa Fitch (WSJ)
The largest American chip manufacturer viewed a fight over chips as inevitable given the approach that each country has taken to geopolitical conflict and control of high-end semiconductors. [Link; paywall]
Sports
Buffalo Bills unveil first design images of their new $1.4 billion stadium by Jessica Golden (CNBC)
One of the smallest NFL markets will play host to a stadium that will cost taxpayers $850mm. Despite the climate, the final field will remain open to the elements. [Link]
Climate Change
Perfume’s Best Scents Are Being Snuffed Out by Natasha White (Bloomberg)
The feedstock for some of the most iconic scents in the world owe their intensity to the terroir and microclimate of a tiny town in the French Riviera which has been hit hard by drought, raising the specter of a world without Chanel No. 5. [Link; soft paywall]
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Have a great weekend!
Oct 28, 2022
This week’s Bespoke Report newsletter is now available for members.
We’re on pace for the best October on record for the Dow and the strongest month period for that index since the 1970s. But that masks two facts which should give bulls little comfort: rallies are more violent during bear markets and there is no sign the Federal Reserve is ready to call it quits on its tightening cycle. We take a look at earnings, which are deteriorating versus recent earnings seasons including both lower beat rates and more guidance cuts, and the global backdrop including soaring policy rates that have yet to be felt fully by economies around the world. We also review a very busy US economic data week in detail, covering everything from wage growth to manufacturing activity to savings rates. We cover all that and much more in this week’s Bespoke Report.
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