Speculation continues on when the next Fed rate move will be, personally I don’t guess. But it’s possible that the source of an interest rate move may come from global forces rather than internal pressure. This hasn’t stopped top CEOs from sharing their opinion. Predict calamity long enough eventually it might become true

Work from home is still to blame for office vacancies, but I’m increasingly thinking that weak business fundamentals are a contributing factor. We are now higher than in 1986 and 1991. Global oil prices are also seeing weakness, though $80 per barrel is priced into the model and seasonal gasoline demand in the US is within historical trends.

It’s either a stock market bubble or a recession depending on which article you read. Someone pointed out the necessary recovery time for the NASDAQ 100 bought at the peak of the dot com bubble. Sure it took 16 years to recover, but if you held it until today, you’d still be up 276%. Also worth noting that the more diversified S&P 500 only took 7 years to recover.

Fear is ruling the day with folks buying gold from Costco and everyone penning articles about whether we are in a bubble and if it will pop. Sure semiconductors and tech may be VERY overpriced, fundamentals in other sectors could indicate we are on the cusp of a huge expansion in other market areas. Point being diversify and plan for the long-term are a better strategy.

Speaking of semiconductors, it looks like we might be on the verge of a second chip war around purpose-built AI processors. To date Nvidia has leveraged GPU designs but recent announcements by Intel, Meta and Alphabet may create a race to reduce training and inference processing costs. One thing is for certain: current AI processing costs are too high to be sustainable.

Another consideration for AI, EVs and chips is the impact of government incentives, tax breaks and spending programs. These act as fuel for expansion but when they expire it can often cause a rash of business failures. Look no further than the solar industry of the 2000s.

NOTE: Week 15 is a two week combination due to some well deserved time off.

TOPICS

• Fed Rate
• Commercial Real Estate
• Energy
• Stock Market Bubble
• Domestic Recession
• Consumer Credit Crunch
• Labor Market
• Automotive
• Domestic Semiconductor
• Deleverage Globalization
• AI and ML
• EV Battery Technology

A stark reminder of where the “big three” auto makers rank by market cap. If the future of automotive is electric, Tesla obviously has an early advantage. Toyota takes a slightly different track with hybrids. Maybe you’ve never heard of BYD, but the Chinese manufacturer has already seen success with exporting vehicles.

A brief summary of Dot-Com Bubble 2.0: How Did We Get Here? by Prithvi Raj Chauhan posted on Hacker Noon

Overview

The bubble repeated, for different underlying speculative reasons but effectively the same boom-bust cycle. What happens next to employment and the broad economy is likely a replay of the early 2000s.

@Prcwrites does a great job covering the technical aspects, I’d like to add some perspective from the employment.

Below is a list of tools and sites I use for my daily media consumption. This list is not exhaustive and represents the top-tier level of information I consume.

Newsletters

Curated SubStack and equivalents. Most are free but I have upgraded to pay for several very valuable authors. Delivered daily, topics range from tech, economy to local (Charlotte, NC) news

Hey is a great email tool from 37Signals that makes sorting, categorizing, tracking email a breeze. All the newsletters go to “the feed” which is an auto-expiring list of emails that reads more like an endless scrolling timeline or blog. Love this product.

RSS / Newsfeed

I use RSS to track various news sources including tech, business, security, national defense and local sources. Most major publications maintain active RSS feed, though sometimes you need to search for them. Inoreader is my new favorite RSS aggregation tool.

I was a long time user of Feedly but more frequently found features behind the paywall. I also experienced several feeds not updating even though the origin site was posting content. Not sure what is going on there, but either way I need to see the latest content everywhere.