Market partying like it is late 2021, but one asset class is on tilt.

Listen to the full episode now or follow the Saxo Market Call on your favorite podcast app.

Today’s Links

FTAlphaville offers a stub article noting that OpenAI is operating as one enormous “money furnace”. All that money it is burning is also driving profits for other company (ahem, cloud revenues Microsoft and GPU revenues, Nvidia.)

Is this an important source of the seeming forever ramp in gold and in US equities? (Chinese surpluses - where are these being funnelled?)

CrazyStupidTech interviews iRobot founder on what is actually important in robotics and how it is being applied now, versus all the humanoid robot hype.

And here is takedown of HSBC’s claim that they had used IBM’s quantum chip for something useful we ourselves highlighted on the Saxo Market Call.

Finally, since we’re in a takedown mood over the last couple of days, here’s a broad takedown of all things crypto - is it really the “Gaslit asset class”? Yikes.

Chart of the Day - Ever heard of Blue Owl? (OWL)

A good friend of mine clued me in on the recent decline in all of the major US private equity names, all of which are down quite heavily over the last 6-7 trading days, with no major news to guide us. These PE stocks stick out like a sore thumb when the backdrop is about as go-go a speculative frenzy we have seen in market history. One of the ugliest charts in the short list of PE names (besides Carlyle Group, Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, Ares, TPG) is Blue Owl, a company I have never heard of, but one whose stock is in steep retreat and even possibly setting up a head-and-shoulders formation here. This cozy little outfit has USD 273 billion in AUM, chiefly loans to middle-market US companies, direct ownership stakes in companies (a-la traditional PE) and even investments in real estate. It has a market cap of USD 25 billion. Its debt trades on the very low end of investment grade - so it’s 2032 bonds trade with a yield around 5.1% about 130 basis points richer than US treasury yields with a similar maturity.