Outrageous Predictions
A Fortune 500 company names an AI model as CEO
Charu Chanana
Chief Investment Strategist
Summary: Today, putting Friday's big market sell-off in perspective as an overdue development after the huge recent ramp in high momentum stocks. Broader risk sentiment remains fairly calm, though there is a bit of stress from geopolitics and higher oil prices, as well as on crypto and from a stronger US dollar and higher US treasury yields. Lots to focus on this week and next with the incoming very high stakes SpaceX IPO and the first Fed meeting led by Fed Chair Warsh next week. This and more on today's pod, which is hosted by Saxo Global Head of Macro Strategy John J. Hardy.
From hot Pacific tropics to cold blobs off Greenland. Climate concerns are manyfold.
First, while most the climate concern of late is linked to the potential for a “godzilla El Niño” weather pattern in the equatorial waters of the Pacific that may create havoc for many regions of the world, Craig Tindale weighs in on the “cold blob” in the North Atlantic and whether this is a sign of a concerning weakening of the AMOC ocean current, the current that keeps Europe warmer than it otherwise would be given its latitude. Tindale makes a general comment that many climate systems operate with tipping points and feedback loops, not simply moving slowly in one direction, for example towards slow warming due to CO2 emissions, etc.
A great global macro and energy two-fer from Macrovoices
Michael Every does an excellent job on the most recent Macrovoices podcast of framing how different the Kevin Warsh Fed could and should prove relative to the Federal Reserve regime of the past, as an adjunct to the economic statecraft of the Trump administration and its need to keep the treasury market orderly, more than as a Keynesian gas pedal for the general economy or financial markets. Later in the same podcast, you get a great discussion of why crude oil prices didn’t blow up further since the outbreak of the Iran war and why the supply situation is more dire than ever, especially if things don’t clear up soon in the Persian Gulf.
There are many takes on the SpaceX IPO, good, bad and ugly.
You get everything from Elon Musk re-posting boosters saying that the company could be worth USD 20-30 trillion to somewhat less positive takes fretting the Starship program, whether orbiting data centers are pie-in-the-sky and more, especially whether the moves to fast-track the company for index inclusion is a cynical ploy meant to plug it into huge passive flows. That article links to an excellent podcast discussion on whether the SpaceX IPO can even be pulled off as it will demand record retail participation and also discusses the high likelihood that Tesla and SpaceX eventually merge. The WSJ, meanwhile, looks at SpaceX growing business with the US government, not only due to its prowess in launching payloads rapidly, but also on deploying satellites for potential applications in detecting airborne and ground-based movements.
Crypto insecurity on a whole new level - as in the threat of a physical bop on the head, or “wrench”.
Cory Doctorow points out in a post, among many other things, how crypto isn’t only insecure due to the risk of hacking, but even for those that keep their crypto “secure” in wallets, there is a risk for large holders that sophisticated thugs can triangulate their way to your identity and confront you in a very physical, armed robbery sense to relieve you of your crypto wealth. Is this behind some of the crypto weakness of late?
The Korean KOSPI index is a market-capital weighted index of all Korean stocks increasingly dominated in recent months by the two memory-making giants Samsung and SK Hynix. It has approximately quadrupled from the Trump “Liberation Day” tariff announcement lows of April of last year. I noted in the podcast today that the technical damage on the chart is more significant here than in many other markets. Given that memory stocks have been the hottest of the hot stocks on unprecedented ramping in profitability for memory modules due as they are the most painful hardware bottleneck in the AI hardware stock, the KOSPI is worth watching as a possible leading indicator. The steep sell-off has mostly rejected the last major prior rally wave from the 7,054 base and has dived deep through the prior major high in the 8,000 area, a significant concern and suggesting a distributive top as a base case scenario and something worse if the selling accelerates further from here through the 7,000 area, or even worse, the prior major 6,347 high.