La mia intervista settimanale del martedì mattina con Manuela Donghi a LeFonti TV. Come sempre in questo periodo, le questioni economiche concernenti e susseguenti la pandemia di Coronavirus hanno tenuto banco, ma c’è stato anche un bel po’ di tempo per dire anche qualcosa di asset allocation e pensioni integrative.
Mese: aprile 2020
I rompiballe puntata 4. Approfondiamo il MES. Bugie e verità
Un’altra puntata densa di approfondimenti della serie che ho deciso di fare con Michelanglo Massara. Questa volta abbiamo sviscerato il MES, sbugiardando chi dice cosa e caso, credendo di parlare ad analfabeti (dis)funzionali. Ma con noi casca male…
I Rompiballe puntata 3. Petrolio a prezzi negativi. Perché? Un approfondimento
Io e Michelangelo Massara ci siamo ritrovati per parlare diffusamente del problema economico/finanziario del momento, ossia la caduta del petrolio. #davedere #mustwatch
Bespoke Brunch Reads: 4/26/20
Good Morning,
Below is our Bespoke Brunch Reads linkfest featuring some of our favorite articles over the past week. To read Bespoke’s in-house research, try THREE MONTHS OF BESPOKE PREMIUM FOR JUST $49. You can cancel at any time at no additional charge.
Investing
Stock Investments Lose Some Luster After COVID-19 Sell-Off by Justin McCarthy (Gallup)
Gallup surveys show a sharp decline in the share of Americans who view stocks as the best long-term investment, while more than one-third (the highest in years) view real estate that way. [Link]
AIMCo’s $3 Billion Volatility Trading Blunder by Leanna Orr (Institutional Investor)
Alberta Investment Management Corp, the pension and sovereign wealth manager for Alberta’s huge provincial public asset pile, has been burned by volatility trades that stemmed from the market blow-up this spring. [Link]
Commodity Contango
Oil world zeroes in on Cushing, Oklahoma by Gregory Meyer (FT)
With the emergence of negative commodity prices, global futures markets are focused on Cushing, Oklahoma, a town with a tiny population and enormous role in global crude flows. [Link; paywall]
Farmers Are Starting to Destroy Their Pigs After Factories Close by Jen Skerritt, Michael Hirtzer, and Isis Almeida (Blooomberg)
Pig farmers from Quebec to Minnesota are euthanizing hogs in order to avoid paying for their upkeep as slaughterhouse capacity has been shuttered thanks to COVID-19 outbreaks in a few of the facilities. [Link; soft paywall]
State Lines
Escape from New York City by Anne Kadet (WSJ)
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a flight out of the most dense urban area in the country, which has been hardest-hit by the pandemic. [Link; paywall]
Sports
The NCAA saved money in case of a canceled March Madness. Then it spent it. by Will Hobson (WaPo)
A rainy day fund designed to keep college sports’ finances in order in case its hallmark tournament was cancelled got cashed out just a few years ago. [Link]
Social distancing takes a hit as Taiwan baseball teams brawl (AFP/Yahoo)
Given the success Taiwan has had containing its outbreak of COVID-19, the island has been able to keep baseball games going, but onfield brawls aren’t consistent with the need for social distancing. [Link]
COVID-nomics
Global Economic Effects of COVID-19 (Congressional Research Service)
The CRS produces deeply researched and highly informed analysis for Congressional staffs at their request. This late April report details the likely impact of COVID across the global economy. [Link; 75 page PDF]
Wealth, Race, and Consumption Smoothing of Typical Income Shocks by Peter Ganong, Damon Jones, Pascal Noel, Diana Farrell, Fiona Greig, and Chris Wheat (University of Chicago Booth School of Business)
An analysis identifying worker-level consumption elasticity with respect to income shocks. While all households reduce spending 0.23% for every 1% decline in income, lower-income households reduce it by almost 0.4% for every 1% drop. [Link; 84 page PDF]
Viral Update
COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020 by Jianyun Lu1, Jieni Gu, Kuibiao Li, Conghui Xu, Wenzhe Su, Zhisheng Lai, Deqian Zhou, Chao Yu, Bin Xu, and Zhicong Yang (CDC)
The flow of air within enclosed spaces appears to be an extremely important factor in mass-spreading events, or spreading events which take place on a somewhat smaller scale like this study of a restaurant in Guangzhou. [Link]
“Human challenge trials,” where healthy volunteers would be exposed to Covid-19, explained by Dylan Matthews (Vox)
Healthy patients who haven’t been exposed to coronavirus may need to be exposed to the virus after receiving potentially useful vaccines as part of a “challenge trial” though the ethics of putting volunteers at risk are dicey ground. [Link]
Controversial idea to speed coronavirus vaccine gains ground by Peter Sullivan (The Hill)
Members of Congress are signing up to the idea that challenge trials may be a useful way to fight COVID-19 and identify the best vaccines. [Link]
Front Line Stories
A New Doctor Faces The Coronavirus In Queens by Rivka Galchen (The New Yorker)
An emergency room doctor at Elmhurst Hospital, a ground zero for the Queens COVID outbreak, shares what the experience has been like and who it has hit the hardest. [Link]
Emergency room doctors facing pay cuts and understaffing during pandemic by Nikki Battiste (CBS Evening News)
ER doctors are taking 40% pay cuts and bearing the brunt of the financial impact. The reason? ER visits across the country are down sharply. [Link; auto-playing video]
Viral Travels
‘We Needed to Go’: Rich Americans Activate Pandemic Escape Plans by Olivia Carville (Bloomberg)
The combination of wealth and paranoia is being perfectly met by New Zealand, which is a hotbed for survival bunkers which are popular with the wealthiest tier of Americans fleeing the Coronavirus. [Link; soft paywall, auto-playing video]
Empty resorts spell long crisis for Caribbean as coronavirus hits (Reuters)
With international travel essentially zeroed out amidst the shutdown of borders, there have been virtually no visitors to Caribbean locales that usually host a bustling trade in tourism. [Link]
Social Shifts
‘Staying Nimble’: How Small Businesses Can, and Do, Shift Gears by Amy Haimerl (NYT)
Plunging demand for sit-down restaurants has opened up niches for alternative forms of small business, even if the overall market has shrunk considerably. [Link; soft paywall]
Three Hours Longer, the Pandemic Workday Has Obliterated Work-Life Balance by Michelle F. Davis and Jeff Green (Bloomberg)
After six weeks of working from home, white-collar workers around the country are getting tired of longer work hours, less continuity, and the burdens of childcare. [Link; soft paywall, auto-playing video]
Become a Bespoke Premium member today with a 3-month trial for just $49. Once the trial period ends, the subscription cost is $79/month, but you can cancel at any time and have no obligation to continue. With this service, you’ll receive our most actionable daily research notes plus access to helpful investor tools and custom portfolios.
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Have a great Sunday!
Advisory Update con Alessandro Ruocco e Michelangelo Massara martedì 31 marzo 2020
Bespoke Brunch Reads: 4/5/20
Good Morning,
Below is our Bespoke Brunch Reads linkfest featuring some of our favorite articles over the past week. To read Bespoke’s in-house research, try THREE MONTHS OF BESPOKE PREMIUM FOR JUST $49. You can cancel at any time at no additional charge.
Small Business
Poll: Almost one in four small businesses are two months or less away from closing permanently by Alex Gangitano (The Hill)
A US Chamber of Commerce/MetLife pole showed large swathes of the small business landscape could disappear in short order. [Link]
Banks stand to make billions from US small business rescue by Brendan Greeley & Robert Armstrong (FT)
With a cash payment as incentive to originate and service loans, banks stand to gain billions of revenue from helping small businesses access the $350bn in small business funding included in the CARES Act. [Link; paywall]
Private Equity Frets That It’s a Loser in $2 Trillion Virus Bill by Robert Schmidt & Heather Perlberg (Bloomberg)
Private equity firms are worried that firms they own may not be eligible for small business loans because of the definition of “small business” in the bill. [Link; soft paywall]
Investing
How to safely take money from your retirement account now by Josh Brown (The Reformed Broker)
A series of helpful Q&As regarding the tax consequences of using retirement funds to get through the current COVID-19 crisis. [Link]
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bear Market by Spencer Jakab (WSJ)
Why waiting for clear signal that the worst pain is over makes it more likely that you’ll miss all of the upside during bull markets which follow big down-drafts. [Link; paywall]
National Response
National coronavirus response: A road map to reopening by Scott Gottlieb (AEI)
Mass testing, expanded surveillance, improvements in the supply chain, and new options for treatment are necessary steps for the US and other countries to deal with COVID-19. [Link]
Mass testing, empty ICUs: Germany scores early against virus by Frank Jordans (AP)
German scientists and public health officials were far ahead of the rest of Europe in designing and implementing testing. [Link]
Social Distancing
Anatomy of an Outbreak: How Coronavirus Swept Through JPMorgan’s Trading Floor by Rob Copeland & David Benoit (WSJ)
A sick employee made it in to the office to support huge trading volumes on March 9th, but appears to have spread COVID-19 to about 20 coworkers. [Link; paywall]
Social Distancing in New York City by Michiel Bakker, Alex Berke, Matt Groh, Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, & Esteban Moro (Medium)
An impressive summary of how the New York region is responding to stay-at-home orders and efforts to restrict movement. [Link]
What Social Distancing Looked Like in 1666 by Annalee Newitz (NYT)
The Black Death, caused by the bacteria yrsinia pestis, is one of the original examples of mass pandemics. [Link; soft paywall]
Economic Fallout
Stabilizing State and Local Budgets through the Pandemic and Beyond by Alexander Williams (Levy Economics Institute of Bard College)
The author proposes an automatic stabilizer program that provides unrestricted grants to state governments from the federal government using a formula based on unemployment rate changes. [Link; 4 page PDF]
The coronavirus economic crisis is here. Unemployment office workers are on the front lines. by April Glaser (NBC)
As 10 million workers in two weeks slam the unemployment insurance system, workers are on the front lines of the response underway to prevent the worst economic fallout. [Link]
Rent
This Brooklyn Landlord Just Canceled Rent for Hundreds of Tenants by Matthew Haag (NYT)
A landlord with 18 buildings hosting between 200 and 300 tenants cancelled rent for April, a piece of generosity that tenants say isn’t out of character. [Link; soft paywall]
Kids
Remote learning is turning out to be a burden for parents by Karol Markowicz (NYP)
While the technological underpinnings of distance learning are sound, the expectations and push-and-pull between students, teachers, and parents is starting to grate. [Link]
Toy sales surge as coronavirus pandemic keeps kids home by Lisa Fickenscher (NYP)
In order to entertain children, parents are shelling out cash for anything that can hold their attention for a couple of hours. [Link]
Changing Demand
What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About the Toilet Paper Shortage by Will Oremus (Marker)
Could people be buying more toilet paper than usual simply because they are spending more time at home and therefore can’t use toilet paper supplied to public facilities? [Link]
Booze buying surges; senators push airlines for cash refunds (AP)
A rundown on some of the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which includes a staggering 55% increase in alcohol sales for the week as Americans turn to tipple during this time of stress. [Link]
While Many Restaurants Struggle, Here’s How One Is Thriving by Joe Ray (Wired)
Restaurateur Eric Rivera has shifted his Puerto Rican-influenced Seattle eatery Addo into the COVID world, which includes a unique range of delivery offerings and gives customers the ability to offer meals to the homeless via “pay it forward” bowls. [Link]
Military Matters
China seizes Covid-19 advantage in South China Sea by Richard Javad Heydarian (Asia Times)
With the rest of the world focused on dealing with viral outbreaks, China has ramped up activity in the contested waters it claims against a number of other countries. [Link]
China Concealed Extent of Virus Outbreak, U.S. Intelligence Says by Nick Wadhams & Jennifer Jacobs (Bloomberg)
Classified US intelligence estimates show that Chinese case counts and deaths are far above official numbers reported to the outside world, based on anecdotal reports and other data sources. [Link; auto-playing video, soft paywall]
Air Force Academy relaxes social-distancing rules after cadet suicides by Yaron Steinbuch (NYP)
Stress is running high for cadets that have to cope with lockdown conditions which may have led to multiple suicides on campus. [Link]
Weird Science
Key ingredient in coronavirus tests comes from Yellowstone’s lakes by Maya Wei-Haas (National Geographic)
A thermal pool in Yellowstone National Park yielded an unusual microbe which produces enzymes that is today a key input to PCR tests necessary for COVID-19 detection. [Link]
Become a Bespoke Premium member today with a 3-month trial for just $49. Once the trial period ends, the subscription cost is $79/month, but you can cancel at any time and have no obligation to continue. With this service, you’ll receive our most actionable daily research notes plus access to helpful investor tools and custom portfolios.
CLICK HERE FOR YOUR THREE MONTH $49 PREMIUM TRIAL
Have a great Sunday!
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