Bespoke Brunch Reads: 5/22/22

May 22, 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!

Sentiment Check

Stock Market Is Top-Heavy, but Carnage Is Widespread by Karen Langley (WSJ)

The drop in stocks this year has been acute among the largest companies, but plenty of stocks beneath the surface are getting punished heavily as well. [Link; paywall]

Wall Street is heading into a summer from hell — and top investors say it’s going to bring a near-biblical reckoning to the market by Linette Lopez (Business Insider)

Always worth noting when adjectives like “biblical” get unleashed to talk about stock market declines; this kind of extreme sentiment is usually something you see closer to bottoms than tops. [Link]

This Could Be a Lost Decade for Stocks by Spencer Jakob (WSJ)

While the near-term headwinds for stocks are well-understood, we are starting to see extrapolations of those headwinds forward over the long-term, another sign of a sentiment extreme that should be of note to contrarians. [Link; paywall]

US CEO Confidence (The Conference Board)

The outlook for chief executives surveyed by The Conference Board and The Business Council has collapsed over the last several quarters, though it remains above the lows from 2019 and 2009. [Link]

Child Rearing

Asia’s advanced economies now have lower birth rates than Japan (The Economist)

Extremely high housing costs have driven down the fertility rate across Asia. Worries about Japan’s low birth rate now look somewhat antiquated given the country has one of the highest birth rates in the region as-of 2020. [Link; soft paywall]

Teen Babysitters Are Charging $30 an Hour Now, Because They Can by Rachel Wolfe (WSJ)

Wage growth is soaring for babysitters as hourly rates roughly double versus pre-pandemic and bargaining power is exerted by the scarce supply of willing sitters. [Link; paywall]

Supply Chains

Giant container ships are ruining everything by Rachel Premack (FreightWaves)

Since the 1980s, ship size has risen by a factor of more than 5 since the early 1980s. Larger ships are a sign of concentrated market power, port congestion, and excess capacity investment during weaker periods of the global shipping industry. [Link]

Critical minerals threaten a decades-long trend of cost declines for clean energy technologies by Tae-Yoon Kim (IEA)

Given the IEA’s history of over-estimating renewables costs and under-estimating renewables installation capacity, this analysis should be taken with a grain of salt. That said, it’s indisputable that many of the inputs for renewable energy supply have gotten significantly more expensive. [Link]

Civil Asset Forfeiture

Michigan Couple Says Town Seized Their Building and Offered To Return It if They Bought Two Cars for Police by C.J. Ciaramella (Reason)

A town in Michigan illegally seized a building, then tried to shake down the owners for two new police vehicles before they would return the stolen property. [Link]

Short-Sightedness

HSBC AM global head of responsible investing: ‘Who cares if Miami is six metres under water in 100 years?’ by James Baxter-Darrington (Investment Week)

The head of HSBC’s asset management division thinks the real problem with climate change is “the amount of work these people make me do”. [Link]

The Fed

Why the Fed matters to regular Americans, in one stunning chart: Morning Brief by Myles Udland (Yahoo! Finance)

The median listed home price’s carrying cost has risen over 40% in the past year as the Federal Reserve’s move into tightening and soaring home prices drive massive increases in mortgage payments for new buyers. [Link; auto-playing video]

Dressing Up

Leave the Sweatshirt at Home. Dining Dress Codes Are Back. by Priya Krishna (NYT)

Restauranteurs are starting to demand more of their patrons, especially when it comes to the attire they don for their dining experience. [Link; soft paywall]

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Have a great weekend!

Bespoke Brunch Reads: 5/15/22

May 15, 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!

Inflation

How the Inflation Rate Is Measured: 477 Government Workers at Grocery Stores by Rachel Wolfe (WSJ)

A look at the small battalion of price-checkers who wander from store to store looking for the prices of goods and services that feed into the consumer price index. [Link; paywall]

The Physical Capacity Shortage View of Inflation by Alex Williams (Employ America)

Recent inflation data suggests that physical limitations are a larger constraint on inflation than availability of labor inputs, with logistics and plant capacity more relevant than the unemployment rate. [Link]

Fuel

Why the Northeast is quietly running out of diesel by Rachek Premack (FreightWaves)

Very low diesel inventories are sparking concerns that the East Coast may run out of diesel fuel, though so far tight supplies haven’t led to actual shortages thus far despite a dearth of supply amidst high prices. [Link]

NYC Billionaire Catsimatidis Warns of Looming East Coast Diesel Rationing by Lucia Kassai (Bloomberg)

The CEO of United Refining Co, an East Coast oil refiner and fuel station operator, tight diesel markets will mean an absolute shortfall of the fuel over the summer. [Link; soft paywall]

Ford F-150 Lightning First Drive: Quiet Storm by Andrew J. Hawkins (The Verge)

Reviews are flowing in from Ford F-150 Lightning media events in Texas held last week, and the results are an interesting insight into the unique offering that doesn’t try and reinvent the wheel, while completely reinventing the fuel source. [Link]

Medical Scans

MIT, Harvard scientists find AI can recognize race from X-rays — and nobody knows how by Hiawatha Bray (Boston Globe)

Machine learning programs can generate some strange results, as in this case where a program designed to read x-ray and CT scans manages to identify the race of the patient at a 90% accuracy. [Link]

Covid shutdowns in China are delaying medical scans in the U.S. by Christopher Rowland (WaPo)

A GE Healthcare factory in China stopped producing contrast media, imperiling the ability of hospitals in the United States to do otherwise routine scans. [Link; soft paywall]

New York

NYC Rent Guidelines Board votes to increase tenants’ rents by up to 6% by Gwynne Hogan and Catalina Gonella (Gothamist)

The oversight board which approves the rate at which stabilized rent apartments can raise prices; they will rise 2% to 4% for one year leases and as much as 6% for 2 year leases. [Link]

Countdown Starts for NYC Businesses Required to Post Salary Ranges on Job Ads by Jeff Green (Bloomberg)

A New York City law will require employers to disclose pay in job postings, joining CO, WA, CT, and four other states in enacting salary transparency rules of one kind or another. [Link; soft paywall]

Acceptance Letters

This Year’s College Admissions Horror Show by Nicole LaPorte (Yahoo!/Town & Country)

Elite high schools promised students – and more relevantly, perhaps, their parents – a path to elite college admission. But changing criteria and a smaller acceptance class this year mean many hopefuls didn’t get their hope-for invitations. [Link]

China

China’s Economic Slowdown Is Rippling All Around the World by Jason Douglas and David Harrison (WSJ)

The massive boom that has pulled hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens into the global middle class has faltered, with companies across the world warning activity is plunging. [Link; paywall]

Labor Markets

Target Workers Are Joining the Union Wave by Bryce Covert (The New Republic)

The 21,000 pit stop on I-81 in southwest Virginia is a strange place for unionization to spread, but Target is facing a unionization vote in the tiny outpost. It would be the first store to unionize nationally, and as many as six other stores are considering similar moves. [Link]

Fiscal Policy

Monthly Budget Review: April 2022 (CBO)

The federal deficit for the October-April fiscal period of 2022 showed an 84% decline in the federal deficit relative to October-April of 2021, one of the largest and fastest declines ever recorded. [Link]

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Have a great weekend!