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.

A Billionaire Cosplays

Robert Mercer’s Secret Adventure as a New Mexico Cop by Zachary Mider (Bloomberg)

A billionaire former hedge fund manager and political kingmaker spent time as a reserve deputy in New Mexico, which grants him the ability to carry concealed firearms anywhere in the country. [Link]

Digital Security

A Cyberattack Hobbles Atlanta, and Security Experts Shudder by Alan Blinder and Nicole Perlroth (NYT)

The city of Atlanta suffered a massive ransomware attack last week, with almost every digital corridor of local government locked up by a massive virus incursion. [Link; soft paywall]

Facebook Has Had Countless Privacy Scandals. But This One Is Different. by Carlie Warzel (Buzzfeed)

While there are tempting political narratives and blame games to play with the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook privacy scandal, the broader question of how to manage privacy in an era of big data collection where users are the product suggests it might be around a while. [Link]

Remarkable People

Biography (Stephen Wiltshire)

London-based artist Stephen Wiltshire is able to draw entire cityscapes, accurately and freehand, from a single trip up in a helicopter to see the skyline. He is mute and autistic. [Link]

The Former Khmer Rouge Slave Who Blew the Whistle on Wells Fargo by Emily Flitter (NYT)

Duke Tran fled Vietnam as a teenager, ending up a slave to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Eventually, he made his way to the US, becoming a Wells Fargo debt collection associate and enjoying a happy middle class life. Then, he was fired for refusing to lie to customers about their foreclosures. Since, he’s become a millionaire on the back of massive whistleblower awards courtesy of massive fines levied on the bank. [Link; soft paywall]

Politics

Poll: Majority of Americans say they are not seeing change in paychecks due to tax cuts by Rebecca Savransky (The Hill)

While predictable (recent tax cuts were overwhelmingly focused on the upper end of the spectrum with only marginal changes on average for most taxpayers), it’s nonetheless a worrying sign that two months into lower withholding most Americans still haven’t noticed a change in their paycheck thanks to tax cuts. [Link; auto-playing video]

Progress

South Sudan Halts Spread of Crippling Guinea Worms by Donald G. McNeil (NYT)

A global campaign led by former President Jimmy Carter has been working to eradicate Guinea worm for more than 30 years. The disease is a parasite found in ponds; with South Sudan eliminating the disease there were only 15 cases in Chad and 15 in Ethiopia, meaning the end of the parasite is nigh.  [Link; soft paywall]

International Economics

Switzerland: Balance of payments by Nadia Gharbi (Pictet Wealth Management)

An explanation for the persistent and massive current account surplus run by Switzerland, despite a strengthening CHF. [Link; 7 page PDF]

Good Eats

Why Some of Queens’ Best Restaurants Are Leaving for Pricier Boroughs by Katie Honan (Eater NY)

As restaurants in Queens get attention, they leverage greater pricing power in other boroughs to raise prices at new locations, often leaving price-sensitive Queens customers behind. [Link]

Crypto

The Dark Web’s Favorite Currency Is Less Untraceable Than It Seems by Andy Greenberg (Wired)

While Monero was designed to make payment tracing impossible, a new paper suggests that the mixing of payments which is designed to preserve anonymity can still be analyzed to determine where payments come from and go to. [Link]

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Have a great Sunday!

As equity market volatility has picked up, the American Association of Individual Investors’  weekly poll of sentiment has deteriorated.  Back in early January, bears were the second-lowest share of responses in the past decade.  Since then, however, they’ve seen their share of the poll tick up by about 13 percentage points.  While not at a very high level compared to recent years today, they are the highest since August of 2017. At the same time, investors who are indecisive about the market have seen their share of responses plunge.  As shown in the second chart below, investors reporting “Neutral” sentiment are down from 45.2% of responses to 32.7% of responses.

It was a big week for initial jobless claims. Versus economist expectations for 230,000, only 215,000 Americans filed initial claims for jobless benefits during the week of March 23rd.  That’s a new cycle low and the lowest since the week of January 26, 1973.  If claims drop 2,000 per week lower than their current levels, they’ll be back to a spot they haven’t hit in almost 50 years.  Given the huge rise in the number of people employed and the overall population in that time period, we’d say that’s a pretty staggering statistic!

The 4-week moving average of claims is a little bit higher than the current reading, and is still a bit above the record lows for that reading set two weeks ago at 221,500.  To return to that record low, claims would need to come in at 218k next week.

Finally, claims unadjusted for seasonality are down to 192,400. That compares with a recent average of over 310,000 for this week, and is the lowest NSA reading since the early 1970s.

Our amazing new Stock Seasonality Tool lets users track seasonality trends for any stock, ETF, index, or asset class over any time period throughout the year.  With the month of April starting up next week, we wanted to show how the various commodities ETFs have historically performed during the month.

The chart below is a direct snapshot from a search we ran in our Stock Seasonality Tool.  It shows the five best and worst performing commodities ETF during the month of April on a media basis over the last 12 years.  Natural gas has been in a downtrend for years now, but interestingly, UNG has been the best performing commodity ETF in April with a median gain of 3.57%.  Behind UNG is DBC, DJP, MOO, and DBE.  DBC and DJP are two broad commodity ETFs, while MOO tracks agribusiness.

On the downside, there are three commodity ETFs that have posted median declines in April over the last 12 years — Silver (SLV), Coffee (JO), and precious metals (DBP).  Silver (SLV) has been the worst performing commodity ETF in April over the last 12 years with a median decline of 3.05%.

Start a free trial to Bespoke Premium to begin using our Stock Seasonality Tool now.  You can track seasonal trends for all individual stocks and ETFs using the tool, and you can monitor up to five custom portfolios as well.