Jul 10, 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 free trial!
Autos
Registrations for electric vehicles soar, signaling increasing mainstream acceptance by Jayme Deerwester (USA Today)
Electric vehicle sales industry-wide were up 60% YoY in Q1 despite an 18% drop in overall registrations. Fully electric vehicles in the US are just below 5% of total passenger sales in the US with roughly 60% of sales driven by Tesla. [Link; auto-playing paywall]
Monthly car payments have crossed a record $700. What that means by Brittany Cronin (NPR)
The combination of car price inflation and more feature-laded vehicles along with soaring interest rates are driving a surge in the monthly payment required to cover a car purchase. [Link]
New York Waterways
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Pods of Dolphins—New York Welcomes New Immigrants by Alyssa Lukpat (WSJ)
As the rivers around New York have gotten cleaner, dolphins have returned to New York harbor in pursuit of a snack. Fins have been spotted from Brooklyn to Harlem, delighting residents. [Link; paywall]
She died in a Manhattan penthouse but was buried on an island for the poor by Mary Jordan (WaPo)
A tiny one mile slice of Long Island Sound is the largest public cemetery in America, serving as the final resting place for more than 1 million souls interred since 1869. [Link; soft paywall]
Real Estate
Roaring US Rental Market Shows Early Signs of Slowing Down by Paulina Cachero (Bloomberg)
High frequency indicators suggest that rents are starting to fall in a range of markets that were absurdly hot during 2020 and 2021, with large drops for 1- and 2-bedroom apartments alike. [Link; soft paywall, auto-playing video]
The Suburban Lawn Will Never Be the Same by Brian Eckhouse and Siobhan Wagner (Bloomberg)
As drought wracks the American West, homeowners have started to replace dead, dried out grass with artificial turf which doesn’t have the same thirst for scarce water that real blades would soak up. [Link]
Crypto
‘It’s Ruined Me’: Voyager Customers Fear Life Savings Gone After Crypto Firm’s Bankruptcy by Maxwell Strachan (Vice)
A crypto brokerage that promised huge yields for deposits of fiat currency has suspended withdrawals and declared bankruptcy, leaving customers holding the bag. [Link]
Sports
World Cup stadiums in Qatar to be alcohol-free – source (i24)
Thirsty footy fans are going to be totally out of luck at the World Cup this fall, with host country Qatar banning alcohol consumption in public…including the stands of matches at the iconic sporting event. [Link]
Fiscal Policy
Was the Paycheck Protection Program Effective? by William R. Emmons and Drew Dahl (FRB St Louis)
As COVID smashed the US economy in 2020, Congress traded off speed for precision. The consequence is that Paycheck Protection Program loan/grants were much less useful in supporting workers than unemployment insurance or economic impact payments. [Link]
Energy Shortage
Germany dims the lights to cope with Russia gas supply crunch by Guy Chazan (FT)
Russia is cutting off natural gas supplies to Germany, and the result is a nationwide energy crisis that is forcing rationing and massive price inflation onto households used to cheap and reliable gas supplies. [Link; paywall]
That’ll Leave A Mark
Markets Had a Terrible First Half of 2022. It Can Get Worse. by James Mackintosh (WSJ)
Stocks collapsed in the first half of the year, but the pessimist’s perspective offers little hope of a major rebound in the second half given how much risk still remains. [Link; paywall]
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Have a great weekend!
Jul 6, 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 assess the pricing of interest rate cuts starting Q2 of next year.
Our Fixed Income Weekly helps investors stay on top of fixed income markets and gain new perspective 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!
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Jul 3, 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 free trial!
Institutional Investors
Hedge funds braced for further stock market turmoil by Laurence Fletcher (FT)
Amidst high volatility and falling prices, fast leveraged money is slashing its exposure to the equity market, with the lowest net exposure since at least 2010 amidst reduced bets on higher stock prices. [Link; soft paywall]
Pension Funds Plunge Into Riskier Bets—Just as Markets Are Struggling by Dion Rabouin and Heather Gillers (WSJ)
Pension funds are starting to lever their portfolios in order to hit return targets that may prove unrealistic, just in time for a historic collapse in asset prices to hit in 2022. [Link; paywall]
Space
Inside SpinLaunch, the Space Industry’s Best Kept Secret by Daniel Oberhaus (Wired)
A new company is testing a frankly wild launch system: spinning a small payload on a centrifuge in a vacuum before releasing it in a massive parabolic arc that lofts the craft near to orbit. [Link; soft paywall]
‘No Aliens, No Spaceships, No Invasion of Earth’: An oral history of Contact, the sci-fi movie that defied Hollywood norms and made it big anyway. by Rachel Handler (NYMag)
A recollection of the unique vision that one of the largest-scale sci-fi movies ever attempted brought to Hollywood, and why it remains a breath of creative fresh air. [Link]
Sports
Thwack. Pop. Whack. Pickleball Noises Turn Neighbors Into Activists. by James Fanelli (WSJ)
Low-impact paddle ball sport pickleball may be easy on the knees and frankly quite a bit of fun, but it’s creating a major conflict for residents near courts: the perforated balls and wooden paddles make for low-speed volleys but make a huge and very annoying amount of noise. [Link]
Manny, Pedro and Papi’s kids are on the same team?! Meet ‘The Sons’ of the Brockton Rox by Joon Lee (ESPN)
The sons of some of Major League Baseball’s best players are sharing uniforms in a murderer’s row of genetic diamond talent about an hour from Fenway Park. [Link]
Energy
For the First Time, US Is Sending More Gas to Europe Than Russia by Anna Shiryaevskaya (Bloomberg)
Huge flows of liquid natural gas from the US to Europe amidst the fall-out of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have led the United States to supplant Russia as the biggest source of natural gas for the continent. [Link; soft paywall]
The Supreme Court’s EPA Ruling Is Going to Be Very, Very Expensive by Robinson Meyer (The Atlantic)
Analysis of the SCOTUS ruling, which taken at face value means that preserved EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions could be much more expensive for industry than what the agency had sought to do. [Link; soft paywall]
Driving
Apple eyes fuel purchases from dashboard as it revs up car software by Stephen Nellis (Reuters)
Updates to Apple’s CarPlay software suite could mean consumers buy their gas through an app before they ever reach a gas station rather than paying at the pump. [Link; auto-playing video]
Uber, Lyft Drivers Switch to Teslas as High Gas Prices Squeeze Profit by Jackie Davalos (Bloomberg)
With fuel prices still near record levels, operating costs of relatively up-scale electric vehicles are so much lower than traditional ICE cars that they more than justify the upfront cost almost immediately. [Link; soft paywall]
Whoops
Japanese Man Lost a USB Drive With Entire City’s Personal Data After a Night Out by Hanako Montgomery (Vice)
The personal data of 465,177 residents of Amagasaki, Japan has been stolen after a contractor put the data on the flash drive then got so drunk he fell asleep on the street. [Link]
Social Media
TikTok Turns On the Money Machine by Zheping Huang (Yahoo!/Bloomberg)
Revenues at algorithmic video short network TikTok are exploding with top line likely to exceed Twitter (TWTR) and Snap (SNAP) combined by the end of the year. [Link]
Education
The Impact of School Facility Investments on Students and Homeowners: Evidence from Los Angeles by Julien Lafortune and David Schönholzer (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics)
Construction of school facilities in Los Angeles over the last few decades generated $1.62 for every $1 spent, with about a quarter of the benefit coming from higher test scores and the rest from other amenities. [Link]
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Have a great weekend!
