YOUR QUIVER | March 6, 2023

Today's Rundown

CIO | Nadine Terman @SolsteinCapital details what she's seeing in global financial markets.

The Week Ahead

Key labor stats (mentioned in pic below) will shine a light on whether Jan’s strength was a blip or a trend. Also, put on your seatbelt for Powell’s semi-annual testimony to Congress.

China's Target

China provided a growth rate target of 5% over the weekend, which everyone on the planet seems to think is a conservative number given their overall goals. But that will give them room to stimulate or not. They also talked about creating jobs, onshoring key manufacturing and other initiatives that were not a surprise.

Ca-Caw!

ECB hawk Holzmann says he is supportive of 50bps hikes at every meeting through July. Imagine Powell giving that message… EZ investor confidence fell to -11.1 from -8 in Feb per Sentex, which was the wrong way consensus thought things would be turning.

Tech Conundrum

Bernstein has a good piece out this morning analyzing periods of outsized growth for various sectors or stock profiles and then comparing them to tech’s outperformance (and now 1+ year underperformance). With tech growing from 11% to 30% today of total market cap, they argue there could be continued underperformance. 

Ouch

After roughly 2 decades of being a shareholder in Credit Suisse, Harris Associates’ Hero completely exited the position, noting that he has opportunities to invest in financials generating cash versus losing it.

China's Internal Wars

It appears that after a multi-year crackdown on the private sector, China's president Xi Jinping is attempting to save face and persuade China's entrepreneurs that they can safely get back to founding tech and other startups/rebuilding the country's economy. Hard to believe after one of China's top bankers, Bao Fan, suspiciously disappeared, while his firm issued a statement that he is "cooperating in an unspecified investigation," per BBG.  

Tik-Tok-Tow Away

It looks like this week, the US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, plans to introduce a bill to allow the US to start systematically banning Chinese tech services, inclusive of TikTok. Warner is cautioning the threat that the app (and others) present to the US in defensive terms as well as competition on a tech basis. China aside, perhaps he has family members who have tried some of the dangerous challenges/trends on TikTok as of late.