3 November 2021
Renault keys
I did an odd thing last week. I purchased a car on the internet. It was delivered to me, on a flatbed trailer, by a guy from the dealership without my having ever seen the car in person.
I’ve bought a lot of things on the internet, but never a car, second-hand or otherwise.
The transaction worked fine, but I discovered that there was only one key which was in a poor state.
To duplicate the key, Renault charge approximately £350.
The device is a tiny circuit board with a few contacts, some sort of NFC emitter and some sort of wireless connectivity.
It must cost less than a pound to manufacture.
Coal
Not all coal is created equal. Coal to manufacture steel, metallurgical coal, aka coking coal, is different from thermal coal. Not that Boris understands this, but who is surprised? The point is that there is no practical way to make steel without met coal and those established companies that mine it are probably going to do well. Generally, well capitalized firms in the energy firms are set to clean up, in my opinion, because what bank wants to be pilloried for underwriting an issue of shares for a dirty coal company?
The following stocks might be worth a look. Do your own research!
AMR:NYQ
ACC1:DEU
CRN:ASX
METC:NSQ
HCC:NYQ
Education, Education, Education.
I don’t know what happened to Chegg, but it was down 49% the other day. Pearson seems to be suing it. To my mind, anything in the education sector should be avoided.
TSLA
I can’t bear to write about Tesla, but I can’t help commenting that after Musk said it was going to sell 100K cars to Hertz, it turns out that no contract has been signed. Given that this had a massive impact on the stock price, one would have thought that someone should go to jail, but given Musk’s control over the SEC we can be fairly sure it won’t be prince of Ponzis.
Bonds and tapering
The Fed is going to shave $10 B off its monthly QE. Bonds fell, but not by much. I think they will go eventually, and especially at the long end, but it’s far too early to say now because:
- the Fed can do yield curve control, as it did in the 40s,
- it can over tighten, crash the stock market, crush inflation, and send long-dated bonds too the mooon,
- it might be credit to be hit first, because, well, history,
- it might be emerging market dollar debt: always flakey,
- it might be European debt. The year bunds have a yield that is barely below zero!
Meta – WTF?
Meta, the FAANG stock formerly known as Facebook, has entered the matrix, uh, metaverse. Does this mean that Zuck has lost it? Probably best not to bet against him.
DSV
I read something about this stock earlier. It has had a stonking run. It’s a Danish logistics company. The best stocks tend to be in the most boring sectors.
Wrap
I haven’t done one of these for a while. Stocks, currencies, rates, bonds, credit all have no clear trend. I haven’t a clue what’s happening. My gut is that we’re in for a crash, with maybe a 5% probability. The problem is that puts are dear. Until they aren’t.
Image of the day
https://twitter.com/Futura_Noir/status/1455411116532768772?s=20
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