Thursday 14, April 2022

Twitter ramp

1/ From a friend:

“I just heard @elonmusk on the radio.

“He is saying he wants 2,000 of $TWTR shareholders to stay in the company & to roll into the private company.

“This is impossible and not doable legally…

— Montana Skeptic (@montana_skeptic) April 14, 2022

Elon Musk is a criminal psychopath. How people can look up to him is a mystery to me. At some point Tesla will implode, but this may be in the long run, and I’m too old to worry about the long run.

Montana Skeptic is worth following. I admire him, but I wouldn’t want to be him.

For a funnier take on this, I present:

Elon Musk is Making My Job at Twitter Unsafe!!! pic.twitter.com/YZQqgRc2K7

— Danny Polishchuk (@Dannyjokes) April 14, 2022

Image of the day

Erwin Blumenfeld pic.twitter.com/7FR0a2joua

— Daniel Brami (@Daniel_Red_Eire) April 14, 2022

Wrap

The inflation, risk-off narrative still holds. Shorter dated bonds have rallied, suggesting that the markets are losing confidence that the Fed will follow through with rate hikes. Longer dated bonds, conversely are falling, i.e. we’re starting to see steepening. Equity markets are beginning to be spooked. As someone pointed out on Twitter (sorry, whoever you are: I lost the tweet), why would anyone buy the SPX on a 4% earnings yield, when they can buy investment grade corporate debt at a yield of ~100bp less? (I may have got the yields wrong … sorry again.)

On the FX side, the Yen continues to sag. It has gone from ~¥115 to the $ to ~¥125 in a month. Japan is the only country with a central bank that isn’t going to hike.

Thought for the day

Keeping in touch with very old (i.e. longstanding) friends is worth it, because they are more likely to tell you the truth. With new friends, we’re much more likely to say what we think the other person wants to hear, because we all want to be lovable. With an old friend, presumably we’ve cleared that hurdle.