Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Daily Economic Update: August 28, 2024

I'm not sure where I stand on PE ownership in sports, I know they are allowed to own non-controlling stakes in many sports, but now it's making headlines in the NFL.  I guess the major concern would be that over a time financialization will trump the quality of the sport and the connection with the fans and community, but it would seem that keeping the quality of the on the field product high is generally well aligned with financial success.  Maybe it doesn't matter anyway as gambling culture already has varying impacts on fan engagement. 

Of course once the mosquitos take over we won't have sports. I'm kidding, but I do keep seeing stories about cities and towns dealing with West Nile and closing parks.

Sorry, back to economics and markets. The Conference Board, Consumer Confidence survey showed an increase in confidence and readings in line with the last two years and don't seem to be too concerned with a recession: "consumers did not change their views about a possible recession: the proportion of consumers predicting a recession was stable and well below the 2023 peak.” 

Stocks were largely flat.   We got a little further steepening of the yield curve with the 2Y at 3.90% and the 10Y at 3.82%. 

Of course there is always something to read about the Fed, here are a few recent reads:
" Many investors and economists are already celebrating the achievement of a soft landing even though U.S. financial history strongly suggests that such celebrations are premature......The question in 2024 is whether the Fed’s pivot to accommodative policy will resemble the premature pivots of the 1960s and 1970s, or whether the Fed truly has threaded the needle and orchestrated an unprecedented soft landing. My hope is that the Fed has deftly combined critical lessons from the past with shrewd analysis of the present and will achieve an unprecedented soft landing. But my belief is that the Fed is merely repeating the mistakes that their predecessors made in the late 1960s and early 1970s." - Mark Higgins on his Substack

 "I am late to this, but a few comments on Chair Powell's speech at the Jackson Hole symposium. First, his speech was an implicit but emphatic declaration that we are not in a fiscal dominance regime.  The Fed is still determining the trend path of the price level.... Powell was very clear in his speech that (1) the unwinding of pandemic disturbances and (2) Fed tightening/credibility is what saved the day on the inflation front. Number (2) is a clear indictment against  the fiscal dominance view....heights of the pandemic when the Fed bought up most of the treasury issuance and kept rates at 0%. What is remarkable to me is that despite the worsening trajectory of expected primary budget deficits over the past few years, all we got at best was this passing moment of fiscal dominance.  - David Beckworth on X

Waller, Bostic, 5Y and NVIDIA on the day ahead.

XTOD:  My version of the article PRIVATE EQUITY OWNERSHIP COMES TO THE NFL:“Flush with ‘dry powder’, another word for few attractive assets to buy after gigantic inflows, investors are now going to pay the ungodly fees for #volatilitylaundering AND for their PE managers to make vanity purchases after a historic run-up in franchise prices, all at worse terms than franchise purchases are usually done at.”  But I’m a known cynic.

XTOD: Super Bowl 2026 gonna be the Apollo Browns vs. the Blackstone Lions

XTOD: The Spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirby has stated that Iran is now preparing for an Attack against Israel, and that the United States will aid in the Defense of Israel if or when the Attack occurs.

XTOD: The facts about Australia's new 'right to disconnect' law for employees http://reut.rs/3XiWtRq

XTOD: You don't need to worry about progressing slowly. You need to worry about climbing the wrong mountain.

https://x.com/CliffordAsness/status/1828423312315211932
https://x.com/litcapital/status/1828474335893258282
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1828497824972947955
https://x.com/Reuters/status/1827816999180792050
https://x.com/JamesClear/status/1828432783322100126

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