Promoting Useful Knowledge

  Weeks like this past one are the reason I’m happy I switched from a Marine Biology/Secondary Education major to Finance. You CANNOT make this stuff up. This week's title comes from the Billy Joel song 'We didn't start the Fire', but when I first saw the news about the Suez Canal blockage, I immediately thought about the Austin Powers scene when he tries the k-turn . Well, the internet never disappoints in a situation like this. There were a ton of informative links and Tweets, which are great for understanding how bad this situation is for international trade, but I spent way too many hours looking through the funny ones. Here are some of my more work appropriate ones. You really should go through the ‘Guy with the Digger’ account on Twitter, who created that is very funny.   In markets, we had a bit of volatility, but late Friday US equities caught a bid. In the last two hours, the SPX was up 1.5%, the Russell 2000 and NASDAQ 100 were up about 2%. That seems to have...

  Coming into the week most were focused on the Fed. As expected, they did not raise their target rate and also said they do not expect to until 2023. A couple of other things they mentioned were a confirmed their $120B monthly purchases of bonds and forecasting a 6.5% GDP growth rate. Markets seemed to take it well. There was some volatility on Wednesday afternoon, but I’m not sure whether that was the Fed’s doing or if people started their St. Patrick’s Day celebrations early. Equities moved higher, bonds continued their selloff, and the Dollar dipped, but it wasn’t much or held for long. The main message from the Fed and the bulls had me thinking. Essentially, the Fed is saying.... However, with US rates on the rise and traders pricing in higher inflation, some might agree with Public Enemy, “Don’t believe the hype”. Check out the LinkedIn post below that shows the transformation of the US Breakeven rates. Directly below, you can see the slow rise of US inflation expectations ov...

  Why do I have two pictures of The Hulk? Well, in the 'Best of' below Brent Kochuba is going to walk us through how crazy gamma got (Hulk on the left in Thor: Ragnarok) and how dealers have learned to harness it (Hulk on the right in Avengers: End Game). If you're an Avengers fan, you know Banner's secret is that he's always angry.  It’s all about harnessing the Gamma as Dr. Banner finally learned to do.   There’s also a few arguing against inflation. I also found a group of articles discussing EVs. Green Energy and ESG as a possible bubble. I liked the info Goldman Sachs shared about Hedge Funds in their weekly podcast. Off that, there’s also a little section around market structure and volumes. Do not miss the Pzena discussion with Joel Greenblatt either. Last week was a bit of a roller coaster for markets. Equities were up and down nearly every day. Bond yields were on the move higher again after a slight dip to start the week, but at least we also had a decent ...