TikTok Ban, Inflation Infatuation and Chances of a Soft Landing
TikTok Ban, Inflation Infatuation and Chances of a Soft Landing
Vonetta Logan's weekly recap of the big business, news, markets, political, cultural and viral trending stories featured this week on Daily Dose
What’s up tastynation! Welcome to this week’s edition of Weekly Dose! Each week, I recap the top stories that I covered on Daily Dose. If you missed any eps of Daily Dose you can catch up on them here.
It was our first full week in the brand-new tasty studios! It's a very cool space, and if you ever get the chance, you should def stop by and take a tour. I am just thankful that the ladies' restroom in the new space doesn't have a ceiling that dangles precariously above you as you do your lady business. Definite upgrade.
Let’s get to this week’s recap.
Inflation infatuation
Stocks eagerly anticipated the announcement of inflation numbers this week. But with the S&P already up almost 7% to start 2024, you would think there would be muted exuberance as we cautiously move forward.
To that, magazine publishers said “eff it," full steam ahead, and printed some pretty salacious covers. Barron’s released its “Bet on the Bull” cover last weekend. Does this call the top? Is there a cover curse?
Before CPI was even released, JP Morgan (JPM) boss Jamie Dimon urged the Fed to wait until June before it cuts rates. Um, okay duly noted.
Not to be left out, Citadel boss Ken Griffin also urged the Fed not to cut rates too quickly. It’s nice to know that even though he’s a very powerful man, Fed Chair Jerome Powell still gets mansplained how to do his job. **SAME**
Finally the CPI number came in, and it was a wee bit spicy. Consumer prices increased solidly in February amid higher costs for gasoline and shelter, suggesting some stickiness in inflation that further diminishes the chances of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut before June.
Bonds got wonky this week and the inverted yield trade may not mean what it used to.
Almost half of CFOs expect a soft landing
It turns out the nation’s CFOs are bullish on the Dow and dovish on the Fed.
According to a new survey, the percentage of CFOs who think the Fed will be able to achieve a soft landing has reached a five-quarter high, at 48%.
That is great news for them, but it seems retail investors are still a bit wary, as there is a record $6 trillion in cash just parked on the sidelines.
Where are these sidelines? Can we go there and just pick up cash like when an armored truck crashes on the highway? Well to end the week, it was triple witching and for the first time since 2021, option trades exceeded stocks.
Tik Tok d’oh!
Things in Congress got contentious this week, as an overwhelming majority of House congressional members voted in favor of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. That bill that calls for China tech giant ByteDance to divest TikTok. If it doesn't popular social video app will effectively be banned in the U.S.
I like to refer to the bill by its shorter name, fakakta. I haven’t seen a group of confused boomers this large since flatscreen TVs got rolled out and your parents couldn’t figure out how to turn off the “soap opera” effect.
It does appear that the anti-TikTok bill will stay in the Senate for a while, as senators take time to learn what the bill entails and what their Wi-Fi password is.
If the ban moves forward, it could pose bottom-line risks for Chinese commerce behemoths like Shein and Temu (PDD). Products from both brands are heavily featured on TikTok.
In fact, TikTok shop creators can earn some serious cash. This lady is the all-time GOAT of online sales, earning $14 million in just ONE week. Respect.
Is there a savior on the horizon? In the Temu version of Ocean's Eleven, former treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin said he's putting together an all-star team of investors to try to buy TikTok.
Also this week, former President Trump pivoted on his beliefs about the short-form video site and is now an avid TikTok fan. He called Meta (META) “the enemy of the people." A famous tech VC threatened Republicans with a funding halt if the anti-TikTok supported the measure.
Some are warning that this bill is so sloppily and vaguely written that it could have a slippery-slope effect and get a lot of other apps banned. It will be interesting to see what happens as both political parties are using the app to garner support for the upcoming election. 2/3rds of people 18-29 get all their news from TikTok. Yeah, that can’t possibly go wrong.
Crypto conundrum
Bitcoin (BTC) started the week off strong. Coming off fresh records from the week prior, after the digital asset hit levels not seen since 2021.
Both bitcoin and ether (ETH) hit fresh highs to start the week. Some experts point to the availability and acceptance of new spot bitcoin ETFs as reason for the surge, others point out the upcoming halving, slated for late April as the catalyst.
Whatever the reason, bitcoin has entered the chat in 2024, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going away any time soon.
Coinbase (COIN) this week announced the sale of $1 billion in convertible notes.
Coinbase will end the week lower than its $268 print that it hit on Monday. Bitcoin holding company, MicroStrategy (MSTR), also announced this week it would purchase 12,000 more BTC to add to its holdings. Shares in the company, which many took to be a joke, are up 150% year-to-date. I mean, it's called MicroStrategy because it literally has only one strategy. Buy Bitcoin. ???. Profit.
Greyscale (GBTC) announced it planned a spinoff of its spot bitcoin ETF. It should be noted that Greyscale probably has the worst-performing ETF out of the new spate of ETFs.
Listen, doing a spinoff or “having a baby” isn’t going to save your relationship. It may feel like it’s bringing you and traders closer together, but in the end, the spinoff is going to suffer.
El Salvador will transfer "a big chunk" of its bitcoin assets to an offline device that will be stored in a physical vault within the Central American country's territory, President Nayib Bukele said on Thursday. This storage meth is commonly referred to as a cold wallet.
I used to have a hot wallet, but it hasn’t seen any action in a while, so I guess it's a cold wallet too now.
And finally, in my favorite crypto story of the week, a group of crypto bros have pooled their stimmies together to purchase an ad on the Las Vegas Sphere for Dogwifhat (WIF) coin. The so-called memecoin based on the Solana blockchain has become a viral success during crypto’s bull run.
Random chicanery
These are my favorite funny stories of the week
That’s it for this week! See ya next week!
Vonetta Logan has more than a decade of markets experience and has been a trader for five years. She is an on-air personality, creative writer and news correspondent at tastylive. Vonetta appears Monday-Friday on Daily Dose and contributes to Luckbox Magazine. @vonettalogan
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