People have been pondering if Musk is the new biggest Republican media mogul
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De Santis will announce presidential run on Twitter. (Ted Cruz was the first to do so years ago.)
Twitter had talked about possible bankruptcy. It fired 80% of staff. It still runs. But now we're not talking about that, but instead talking about its relevence. This may have been more Musk's plan, his platform for relevence, whether to dictate or participate in talking about what's going on.DeSantis throwing in his lot with "non-conventional media." Does this seem strange, considering presidents (Trump) have been banned from social media in the past? Maybe it doesn't matter. If they get banned, they will get TV press on that story. -
Japanese companies seeing interest from foreign investors for first time in a long time. Fundamentals are there, but there is also good performance and low valuations. A lot has to do with people just don't/didn't understand the companies.
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Ford will use Tesla charging unit, doubling the charging stations its customers have access to.
(There is no standard charge technology. Biden was pushing for the other commonly used one, which other big auto makers are using. But now Ford and Telsa might swing things the other way. -
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No one knows how to value NVDA now. It had been up from its lows over 100% already, and today they guided higher and after hours it went up 25% or 30%. All their competitors didn't impress with their reports, but NVDA showed it has ‘all the picks and shovels’ in this current AI goldrush.
People had rated it around or below where it was before the report, and didn't know whether they would have to downgrade or raise their forecast.
It opened at like 27% up and went to like 25% up. Everyone talking about their quarter. -
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“AI washing” - like “greenwashing” - sounds good, and it will make your stock go up, but is it actually really?
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Small and medium sized businesses who aren't eligible (often) to meet the lending requirements at the banks. Because the businesses are more complicated, they don't have the rigorous reporting that a larger public company might have.
The work that goes into making these loans is considerable, more complex, you have to get collateral, even private personal collateral. More personalized lending. -
AI companies that will be valuable will be those that have a valuable dataset (the AI itself less so).
Bigger, existing companies who already understand well their domain, will be advantaged compared with smaller startup companies. The enterprise will eat their lunch.
These datasets, the companies didn't appraise them as highly before this tool came to show how well it could use these big datasets.
People are now locking down their datasets (Google Analytics?). Before, they would make them public, allow Google Search to use them because that meant traffic for them.So far, even according to the Databricks CEO, chatbots seem the #1 use. Also analyzing customer data (medical records, ‘anonymously’) to find patterns. In insurance, there a long piles of papers to sign, but how does that apply to a particular case, and that can be asked. Also in finding sentiment about a product. -
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China bans Micron chips from Taiwan (for government purposes)META fined record-breaking $1.3b for not complying with EU data privacy laws (Facebook continued to transfer data from European accounts to US servers). META seemed unaffected or barely.META made a $39b in 2021 and $23b in 2022 profit (revenue for 2022 was like $115b). They had been investing in metaverse also.Accepting basically any cargo. Might get ‘worse’ than GFC. Boom-bust cycle, pricing had gone up a lot. Capacity has gone up also. It's easy to start a trucking company. There's no moat. It's very accessible.
Freight market might be 6-month forcast of broader market. (So slowing more than what is recognized.) People are not buying as many goods, anecdotally.
Banks control new entrants into economy (new businesses). Banks slowing lending might not be good for broad economy, but might be good for trucking economy. -
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"Why would a politician use very scarce tax dollars to go rebuy oil, send the price up, increase inflationary pressures on the Fed ... There's a very strong correlation between gasoline price and presidential approval ratings. ... We do not expect any politician to refill that reserve ever." - Eric NuttallOthers expect US will begin to refill the SPR soon, given the strike price (they buy at a fixed price).Biden used the strategic reserve of gas (which was supposed to be for emergencies) for political reasons, to get the price at the pump down. - Rafi TahmazianPutin cut off gas to Europe. They panicked (logically) and bought gas from everywhere they could for exorbitant prices. And they had a warm winter and didn't need it so much.China shut down and this cut 1.3m bpd from demand (3%).Things that cooled the energy market. It cooled inflation. A softer landing.
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"The no pay for Congress during debt default Act," joked about on Bloomberg. ... "Who's the sponsor?"Oh wait, that was realNew bipartisan House bill would block pay for members of Congress if U.S. defaults - YouTube
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Sideways, no trend for entire market. Which companies and which sectors are trending?Jim Bianco thinks inflation will bottom for the year in the next 60 days, because there's a large base effect coming with the inflation numbers. Last year may was .9, June 1.2. When we replace those with .4, we should be in the low 3's for inflation numbers by July (when we get the June number), and then start drifting higher.Most people are employed by companies under 500 employees, and those companies rely on small and medium sized banks. If those banks are impaired in giving them financial services or loans, that is going to chip away at the economy. And those banks are currently unsure about their deposits and their ability to give loans.He expects a post-Pandemic economy, with an inflation rate of 3 or 4%. It has more friction and pricing problems.Walmart revenues are up, but they're customers are also up. More wealthy shoppers are turning to less expensive options because they just can't/don't want to pay for what they get elsewhere.
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One of the only recent headlines I've seen where police appear benevolent to society. They should stick to violent crime and important theft, and they might do a lot better.
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What companies bigger companies want to buy these days are, no question, business services, said Sinha Haldea. Anything where there's an automation mode for something.Also generative old school businesses (generate regular income). Products.
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Vehicle costs $700k, and including transport and installation to site maybe $1m. They want to put 1000 at the 1000 biggest river mouths.Why does it cost so much? Can't they just use a couple existing boats to drag the line across and the other to harvest the waste?A lot of garbage doesn't float, like plastic bags and diapers.Some say politicians don't want to actually reduce pollution, because that decreases the need for spending on pollution.What is the effect of this on the ecosystem? Doesn't it need the non-garbage things washed down to the ocean during rainfalls?Most of the garbage harvested in the 35k tonnes appeared to be sticks and twigs.The river is not a commercially frequented one, so there are questions about how this can be implemented on others that are, like Frisco Bay.
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Bears turning bullishMaybe the old guard of investors is retired, and the new guard looks though everything, since the market goes up 90% of the time. Why play for the 10%?
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Hollywood writers strike have for years been working more and receiving less, so the fight is a warranted one this time, some say.They are just 1 of the 3 unions.Netflix still doesn't have sports. ESPN and DIS do. So not attracting big advertisers in the same way.
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Derisking the Taiwan element.
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Musk thinks China invading Taiwan has a certain inevitability to it. It is China's intent.People talking companies reducing risk (business) in China.Buffet sold 86% of Berkshire's TSMC stake.Could China really physically invade, given the massive costs that would mean? How many years would it take to blow over?
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New house buildsCosts of building are still high, and some areas are not desirable to own in.New listings down 40% some places over last year. People aren't upsizing. Mortgage rate effect also.Detached homes, even luxury homes, are selling quickly, compared with like condos.In a regular housing market, there's no negative amortization like there is now, where the cost doesn't even cover the interest on the mortgage. So it'll be after that plays out that we might see a change (sellers, capitulation).
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MMFs down versus ETFs, because people want to sell their MMFs which is bringing them down relatively.
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Lending (who is doing it?) is being done with high rates of return for the lender.
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He removed a ton of images that were requested to be removed.
A lot of models you don't know what's in their dataset, so they might be 'weird.' His dataset is opensource, so it can be understood."We believe that Open is required for auditable models, for private data, IP-rich data, and there's a business model that's amazing for that." "Especially if you're talking about regulated industry."He said you can have both. Closed models for things that's good for, and Open for private data.In all their models they have invisible watermarking, and they have attribution coming soon."50% of code on GitHub is AI-generated now."He signed the FLI paper with Musk and others. -
Sam Altman testified to Congress todayUnlike what we've seen over the past few years with Tech Giants being called in, and the 'adversarial' style, Altman and Congress seemed birds of a feather in attitude.Congress wants to get ahead of AI, unlike SocialMedia. They don't want to have another one just growing and breaking things (it broke culture, health, truth, politics), and then try to go backwards and reel it in, which they find themselves going against billionaire/trillionaire companies tied to power. Also, they clearly didn't understand Tech when they were dealing with TechGiants in Congressional hearings. They seem more savvy with AI.Even though Altman seems to be amenable and docile, will it matter? There was no suggestion of anything that could actually be done. There were some hypothetical suggestions, but nothing said that seemed like something that could actually be effective. Except maybe one interesting thing raised by the woman on the pane. That anything that's AI must be labelled as AI, so we know we're interacting with it, and that we can't be interacting with an AI posing as a person.
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Top 2 companies for engineers wanting to work, once again, Tesla and SpaceX.Tesla gets like 3.5m applications per year (not sure if that's all engineers)
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At some point you're gonna deplete your cash (using credit cards instead), the movement of money out of deposits into MMFs will complete - Tony DwyerWhen there's availability of money you're a permabull, and when there's not, like now, you just wanna stay on the sidelines.
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First of its kind bill, passed in the state.
“to protect individuals from government surveillance in their personal finances through a CBDC." ... “the efforts to impose a central bank digital currency, which would shift purchasing power from consumers to the government.”
“weaponization of the financial system through a CBDC.” -
Apple bigger than entire Russell2000 ($2.7t)
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Binance pulled out of Canada
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"Imagine if SF was a city of 6m people, or 9m people. Think about the glomeration effects. Think about the depth of industry that could be developed. Having a lab and a manufacturing facility and everything be in driving distance, maybe even the same building." - Samo Burja
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People are using the term 'blackwashing' for the new series in which Cleopatra is played by a black woman.Headlines all over. Egypt is apparently suing or something for the misrepresentation. Cleopatra was Macedonian.
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Some are selling below asking, but not many. But it's not like during the pandemic when people were getting above asking price. -
Twitter reportedly blocked content in Turkey before the election.Elon appointed a CEO (female) yesterday for Twitter. He'll be tech overseer or soemthing.https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/13go26v/twitter_blocks_content_in_turkey_one_day_before/
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Authorities saying the banking problem (in Sweden now at SBB after they soldoff at a loss an asset to raise cash) is due to depositors wanting higher yield on their deposits (since MFFs give like 5% apparently in US), and short sellers.However, if banks are selling off assets at losses, which is like the thing they definitely don't want to ever do, is is just a case of shortsellers speculating, or something actually being there?
Why can't banks pay more for deposits (temporarily)? Why are they unable to do this? Funds are available to banks as long as they have collateral. They may have to pay a bit more than they want to to depositors but they don't have to lose them. -
A paper says governments aren't responding to private sector or voter demand with new (anti-globalism) trade restrictions, but are instead driving this trend.The data shows that right after Covid, firms were looking to add new suppliers to diversify supply chains but crucially trying to maintain their relationships with existing suppliers.Is the Global Economy Deglobalizing? And if so, why? And what is next? | NBER
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Signed malware for MSI products."Clearly a screwup from the company."
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Eurodollar U chart"Deflationary money is the interruption in the natural or necessary flow of money in currency through the economy. It's NOT rate hikes."It makes even minimal economic activity that much harder. It can lead to a deflationary economy.A deflationary economy is joblessness going up.
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More people are putting basics like groceries on credit cards.CC rates are higher than ever, 20.5%, in accordance with the FedFunds rate.Groceries are more expensive.
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Blackrock. Asset management. A top 3 holder in 99% of US-listed names. It should, therefore, look like the S&P, but it doesn't. It has departed and is heading down relative to the S&P. Why?Goldman and MorganStanley. Brokerages.
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To insure ALL deposits. Normally FDIC just insures up to $250k. $15.8b is the cost of doing so. -
Carlson has home studios he built during the pandemic, and a loyal audience. Question about how this can be monetized, but seems pretty straightforward if he can get viewers.
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BRK's insurance part is up.Everything in the economy is worth more, and so insurance value is up.
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Banks are loaning less, so family offices are stepping in to do loansDouble digit returns.A whole new class of investors are filling the space.
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Now we watch the delinquency cycle. We've already seen some defaults in auto loans.Real estate to watch.
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US airlines mishandled about 3m bags in 2022Baggage fees is a $30b industry in US.2% of AA's $50b was baggage fees.Southwest doesn't charge for bags. But most companies charge about $30 per.
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Americans asking if they will in 5 years have 4 or 5 'basically government institutions' banks, like Canada or AustraliaThey have thousands of local banks. And they have 4 or 5 giant banks. So why do people go to the small regional banks?Is it just 'romance'? Is it 'nostalgia for pioneer days'?
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When you hike rates, you reduce production.To decrease inflation, you need more inflation, to balance supply and demand. Some say.
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US airlines mishandled about 3m bags in 2022
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Energy companies have been returning capital to shareholders, and some people want them to do even more of that. US has a lot of gas and oil for now, but there should be some more production, but how can energy companies really invest a lot in that if the government is stymieing projects?
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Funny and Interesting HeadlinesThe Biden family has so many whistle blowers we're 'starting to lose track' - GOP rep - FoxNews
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Buffet described the float, the amount of cash that comes in through their insurance business, like we have a bank with no customers, no employees, and nobody can pull their deposits out.
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What gives you opportunities, even in a market where 'everyone is making less' is people doing dumb things (overbuying or overselling)
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Bank clients with lots of Twitter followers may be understood as higher-risk clients.
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Will bank consolidation lead to higher prices? (less competition)
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Fintech has taken the easier part of banking away, possibly.
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Signature Bank was already on the 'red list' for dabbling in crypto and not responding to regulatory requests. 90% of its deposits were not insured.FR was wealthy clientelle. These are the type of depositors who will most quickly withdraw funds in signs of problems. (These deposits are not insured.)Non-sticky or sensitive deposits.Faster growth is difficult for banks.Regional banks, concentration, may be less sticky than more national banks.
Biggest-losing banks in 8-9the decile. Not the smallest banks. Also the fastest-growing recently were more recently the fastest-losing (stickiness?).
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SVB is a start-up bank 10 years ago. It's niche grew during that period.
But it was just SF and just tech, mostly. Those people were a circle of people (virally connected), so they talk and act together. (A broader, more disconnected 'society' rather than 'community' provides stability through disconnection/slow diffusion/disagreement.) Also younger, wealthier (contrast with the responses of older, poorer clientele.)In 2021 deposits doubled (VC was under threat, putting money to side, more down rounds, less willingness to invest in new tech (which was also very overpriced), so they deposited this money instead). I wonder about examples of conversations that took place deciding what to do with that money and why? If the CEO decided to ignore the risk of rising rates (is it possible he didn't have access to knowledge that was a possibility?), what was he thinking was going to be a better attitude with their cash?Future deposits would be even higher?SVB invested (like 60% of their holdings) in longer term bonds to get 1 or 1.5%, which was more than 0 that they would have got from short term bills.They had to sell in 2022 to raise cash, but this plan leaked (most virally connected depositor base) and there was a run (fast because done on their phones). -
Almost always requires a macro crisis for people to know there are bad banks.Recessions test banks because more people default collectively. Banks without buffers can fail. They have to sell assets to get their money back to cover withdrawals.Banks 'should' loan against earning power of assets, but banks frequently instead loan against the 'value' of the assets. Asset classes become overvalued, and the banks loan on that value, and that corrects.
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New refineries in US, is something Kevin O'Leary is pursuingOnes that cost a few billion (under EPA threshold so doesn't have to deal with them). Says he can do it in about 3 states. On a bipartisan basis. The states will contribute towards the feasibility studies, and Oleary will fund the debt and the equities on a sovereign wealth basis.His headline project is for $14b.
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You don't have a totally broad improving economy. You have winners and losers. Tech sector up more that 20%. Banks down, consumer.Some think the strong performing ones will lead, but Carter Worth said that never happens. The weak ones are telling the real story and the strong ones ultimately succumb. (Why?)The market has had a lot thrown at it to the downside (banks, geopolitical), and hasn't really gone down. But it hasn't gone up yet either, and can't without real earnings growth or multiple expansion, Worth said.The market has gone up or down 15% for 2 years.
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There was a company(s) that had clauses in their contracts that said 'no class actions' but some smartipants lawyer got together with an app maker to make an app that allowed individuals to easily submit their own individual action, resulting in thousands of actions for the company.
ChatGPT's usage contract has a 'mass filings' subsector that says if a large number (specific) file similar claims, through the same lawyer or office, they'll throw out a certain number. So they detail how they'll deal with that.They also have lots of indemnification in their contract. So if someone sues someone for something the second guy made with chatGPT, chatGPT can call him and say He you agreed to indemnify, defend and hold us harmless. They can hire lawyers and defend themselves and then send you the bill. 'Arising from or relating to' use of the services. So they can defend themselves, and find there was no wrong done, and they can still have the user pay. -
SingleB and higher, almost exclusively, for bonds. - Gundlach, on the 'unusual' current market (he's in Europe, and warming to EM like Asia-X-China and parts of Latam.
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"What good is a debt ceiling that isn't a ceiling? What good is a cap on insurance that isn't really a cap?" - GundlachThey've raised the debt ceiling almost 98 times in its 106 years.It's basically unlimited.
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Gundlach thinks 'they raised rates too slowly. And the fact that they have to leave them high now for a long time ... is not good for the banking system. The short rates are so high above the bank rates.'"People leaving their money in banks when they're getting half what they would with MMFs is nonsensical."
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US weaponizing the reserve currency USD against Russia (this is not Iran or Venezuela. This is Russia.), gave a pretext many were looking for, and galvanized different countries into a solidary movement.Saudis can transact in Yuan and hedge with gold.Or a BRICS basket of currencies.And the USD became too expensive.
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"The Fed needs inflation to inflate away debt." - PiepenburgThey need it higher than the 10year. They want to debase the currency.Wall Street socialism. By the Fed. The 10% get 90% of inflation in risk assets. It gets politicians elected. It's completely distorted capitalism, because we don't have natural supply and demand. Fed directed.
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Talk (blame) of 'the shortsellers' began in earnest todayTheir plan is very clear. Push a bank over the brink. Find another one.Talk of a (temporary) ban on short selling.
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The recession coming might not solve the banking problem, but rather exacerbate (compound) it - MarenziThey have severe pressure in terms of their net interest margins. People pulling out funds, so they have to find other funding, but people are unwilling to put their money there. People want 3, 4, 5% return on their money.One good point. Loan quality has remained high. Defaults are low. That would come under fire in a recession.
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Investors can't buy the dip in bank stocks (speculatively down 30 or 40% for some) because they haven't published their losses to market, so you can't read their book value really.You have to read between the lines, and read the footnotes.Shareholders in the big banks that have gone bankrupt have lost all their investments. So you can see why people might be reluctant to hold stock in others.
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TD pulled back on buying FH."They really have their pick of the bunch. If you're in the market to pick up a regional bank, you should wait."Moral hazard. People waiting for receivership. There's no auction.
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Stock price drops for banks that are similar, perceptually, to those that have already failed this year.Investors are looking for banks that appear most similar. These banks have not announced any problems.
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Judy Blume describes latest wave of book bans and censorship as 'disgusting' and 'fascist' - YouTubeShe criticizes including DeSantis over a bill that would have a list of things that books have to meet in regards to be allowed at schools.A lot of the books in focus are deal with gay subjects. Is it the subject? or the depiction (perhaps too graphic descriptions)?Soft censorship sometimes, ban other times.
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JPM got a great deal, but was it a good deal for the banking sector?The signal was that you shouldn't buy a distressed bank. Don't offer help. Wait for it to go bankrupt and then pick out the parts you want. If BearSterns at $2 was a good deal, this is an even better deal. Some say.
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Politically independent Central Banks are crucial to the good running of the economy. - El-ErianAnd without accountability, you don't get politically independent Central Banks.Transitory inflation call was false. It means not just short -term, but also that people don't change their behavior.
Communications were a mistake. The inconsistent message during press conferences caused like 3x volatility in markets.Why did it get inflation so wrong? and why did it stall so late to do something about inflation (the EU and others did that), and why did they not tell the public why they didn't get that right.We give them enormous power. They're the only public agency that doesn't have to go to Congress to make a decision.They can inject $7t if they want. Or if they want to cut interest rates. It's critical they have that autonomy though, El-Erian said, for their acting. -
Russia accuses Ukraine of attempting to kill President Putin with drone attacks on Kremlin - YouTube
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Powell got pranked by Russian pranksters, reportedly, saying they were ZelenskiThey talked for 15 minutes and asked him about his expectations for rates. Two more 25point hikes then hold, probably.
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How many institutions or Central Banks have invested in Bitcoin? Van Eck said none he knows.
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Post Ukraine 2022, people don't trust the US not to take their money through sanctions.De-dolarization movement. They'll use more of the other things. Not a major call but a trend for sure.
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Commercial banks are lending less, said Jan Van Eck. More alternative lending.They're so fragile. It's like, if you need the Central Government to bail you out, is the Central Government going to be a reliable backstop? The government is political about it. Oh we don't like Crypto. Oh you're a crypto bank? Oh Credit Suisse, you've messed up one too many times on your risk management or whatever, and you've upset the Swiss government. I'm not going to bail you out, but I will for UBS.The government has not explained objective criteria, or who they bail out and who they don't.Why is this bank getting a bailout while this other one isn't?Central Banks were created because literally no banks can survive a run on deposits (everyone tries to withdraw on the same day).Should banks be making loans? After GFC and Dodd Frank, we said well Big Banks should not be making risky loans. Now they only loan like 60cents on each dollar or something.
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Palki quit Lion NewsShe said they were doing news curation, and needed to move to do something different and tell the India story in a more compelling fashion.It's true that Lion News on YouTube is valuable more because it gives a non-US-propaganda take on events and doesn't actually present anything of its own, it seems. It also has it's own obviously indulged political biases, but not to the point of being really problematic as long as there are alternative news sources to round things out.
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$13b is what First Republic will cost the FDIC insurance fund (taxpayer?), reportedly.First Republic might have been 'the one JPM wanted all along.'All these banks now have stock prices down 30 or 40%. How can they be looking to make a bunch of loans now?
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Ponzi-like, it said. Fund down 16%.
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Liquidity crisis in banking. Inflation of prices.
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Difficult for banks (who lend to people so are subject to slowdown in spending) in this economy, so benefit goes to non-bank financials (insurance)Mutual funds et all have to have access to financials. If not to banks, where do they go?
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"There's always judgement involved in monetary policy. It's not a precise science."
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May 10 Google product development conferenceSeen recently to have fallen behind MSFT, just because of MSFT's splashy product opening with ChatGPT. Will Sundar be an aggressive downtimes CEO, analysts are asking, as was Nadela and Zuckerberg?Pichai has been seen as cautious, not splashy. Recently he did 60 Minutes and talked about AI dangers. (This could also mean that future understanding once the common reaches the in-circle will turn more towards Google's stance).
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Smaller, low-cost companies had been doing better, but now with inflation costs bigger ones seem to be doing better.
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Hollywood writers went on strikeLast time was 15 years ago. Lots of revenue in Hollywood, but not much profit. They've been spending (investing/losing money) on developing their streaming services).Another thing is that currently one writer might be doing 10 eps of a series. Different from 20 or 30 years ago when it was a team. TV writers traditionally were compensated by the episode, but less so now. Those are things writers on strike also want to change.
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Central Bank of UK said that wages for labor were going to be less than the rising price of things people are buying, so people just have to get used to it and everyone has to 'take their fair share' ie accept that the standard of living was going to declineControversial for someone in such a position to say so. Question of for what then are these institutions?Did Pill mean cyclically, that we'd have a few down quarters and then continue upward? or did he mean that a peak has been reached? How does decreasing populat
