The most interesting tweets I've seen recently; Tech versus energy; Three-year bond market drawdown; Fed rate actions; Silly stocks; Unicorns; Tesla; China; Steve Jobs on money; Happiness
My analyst Kevin DeCamp continues to follow Twitter/X for me and sends me interesting tweets every day. In today's e-mail, I'll share the most interesting ones I've seen recently...
1) This tweet captures the massive reversal of the tech and energy sectors this year versus last – and makes me even more bullish on energy:
2) Wow, I knew things have been bad for bond investors, but had no idea how bad and for how long:
3) I mostly agree with investor expectations regarding the U.S. Federal Reserve's actions, though I wouldn't be surprised to see the first rate cut by the December or January meetings:
4) Picking up where I left off yesterday, commenting about the foolishness among a new class of meme stocks, my colleague Herb Greenberg wrote about Tupperware Brands (TUP) and trucking company Yellow (YELL) in yesterday's Empire Financial Daily. Excerpt:
As I said on CNBC last week and even last night and I'll say again: What we're seeing is either illegal insider trading (doubtful) or short covering that's feeding on itself (probably) and/or hype feeding on hype (most likely) on the fear of missing out on this "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." (That last part was sarcasm.)...
My friend Matt Malgari of Kailash Concepts put it best in a note last week about this market, when he said...
Today, like in 2001, investors are betting on overpriced quality and speculative garbage due to a predictable combination of behavioral errors.
This time will be no different.
5) For more on silly stocks, someone tweeted this list of 29 stocks in the Russell 3000 Index that gained at least 50% last month:
6) While things are silly in pockets of the public markets, some sensibility is returning to the private markets... though this may simply reflect a lag effect after the carnage last year:
7) Some folks who don't read me very carefully think I'm a Tesla (TSLA) short seller and/or Elon Musk-hater.
Neither is true – I criticize him when warranted (sadly, more often in the past couple of years), but I also praise him as well. For example, what Musk has built at Tesla and how it has completely shaken up one of the world's largest industries is truly astounding, as this tweet shows:
8) Like Tesla and Musk, I have a balanced view of China.
In yesterday's e-mail, I shared a Wall Street Journal article about the country's current economic difficulties, which is resulting in poor job prospects for its youth: How Bad Is China's Economy? Millions of Young People Are Unemployed and Disillusioned.
That said, China's economic rise over the last half century, captured in this chart, is simply mind-boggling:
9) These are some wise words from Steve Jobs:
10) Last but not least, these charts on happiness are quite interesting. The overall decline in Americans' happiness, especially among women, is troubling...
Here's the abstract of the 44-page paper, "The Socio Political Demography of Happiness":
Since 1972 the General Social Survey (GSS) has asked a representative sample of U.S. adults: " you... very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?"
Overall, the population is reasonably happy even after a mild recent decline. I focus on differences along standard socio-demographic dimensions: age, race, gender, education, marital status, income, and geography. I also explore political and social differences.
Being married is the most important differentiator with a 30-percentage point happy-unhappy gap over the unmarried. Income is also important, but Easterlin's (1974) paradox applies: the rich are much happier than the poor at any moment, but income growth doesn't matter.
Education and racial differences are also consequential, though the black-white gap has narrowed substantially.
Geographic, gender, and age differences have been relatively unimportant, though old-age unhappiness may be emerging.
Conservatives are distinctly happier than liberals as are people who trust others or the Federal government.
All above differences survive control for other differences.
Best regards,
Whitney
P.S. I welcome your feedback at WTDfeedback@empirefinancialresearch.com.