Welcome to Market Mood, your lighthouse on the stormy seas of stock market news, guiding you towards that real deep ~insight~ baby. It’s poetic really. ⛵🪶

FIRST QUARTER IN REVIEW 🎥

Well well well, here we are… we made it to the last day of Q1 2023. What a 3-month bender it has been. Congratu-f*kn-lations for getting this far. Look at us. 🥂

Call me a naive little boy, but the last few months have been some of the most interesting, weird, hilarious & scary times I can recall since becoming news-aware like 10 years ago. At the very least: ~entertaining~ 🤌

So, to celebrate our day & age, let’s take a little trip down memory lane and review just what the hell has been going on in the world so far this year. 🌎

TOP NEWS TRENDS 📈

To start, we went back through Google Search trends to find the top news topics so far this year. Here’s our hand-picked list of Q1’s trending news stories 👇

As you can see… a pretty dreary. But for me, this is also a really compelling visualization of just how quickly our collective interest & attention shifts from one thing to the next.

Like waves on the sea, what’s substantial one day quickly becomes a thing of the past. In the end, maybe it’s a good thing. Let’s discuss 🧐

1/4: Sam Bankman-Fraud 🤡

peak: January 4th | crypto

The FTX crypto exchange collapsed back in November, losing consumers $8.9B in assets. That’s is when SBF really became a household name; since then, collective search volume for SBF / FTX has decline -85%

1/14: Egg-mageddon 🥚

peak: January 14th | commodities

Remember when everyone was Chicken Little-ing over the price of eggs a few months ago? The price of a dozen eggs reached more than $5 in some parts of the US near the start of the year (+200% YoY). Since then avg. price has fallen back toward $3.50 (which is still high vs. last year). We wrote about it here.

1/20: Tech Bro Layoffs 📦

peak: January 20th | stocks

Layoffs at big-tech companies have been happening sporadically throughout the past 6 months, but most of the action peaked in January, with 108,000+ tech workers losing their jobs in the span of a month (mostly from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft). An impressive visualization of tech layoffs over time here from Trueup.io

2/2: Earnings Szn 📃📞

peak: February 2nd | stocks

Less of an ‘event’ and more of a ‘season’ — Q4 earnings have been trickling along over the past month or so, with a peak in interest on the 1st week of February (that’s when most of big-tech reported). Though there are still a handful of co’s left to report, S&P 500 companies are on pace for the largest earnings decline since 2020.

2/4: China’s Spy Balloon 🎈

peak: February 4th | foreign affairs

This was kind of hilarious, still not sure what to make of it. China lost it’s ‘spy balloon’ over middle America, Biden shot it down on February 4th. This was 24/7 news coverage on Fox News AND CNN for all of like 5 seconds. 😂

2/6: Turkey’s Earthquake ⛰️

peak: February 6th | world news

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake hits the Turkey-Syria region on February 6th followed by a magnitute 7.5 earthquake 9 hours later. Both collectively resulted in more than 50,000 deaths.

2/13: The SuperBowl / Rihanna 🏈

peak: February 13th | US news

The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35 with a total viewership of 113M people, making it the 2nd-most watch SuperBowl ever (following 2015, Patriots-Seahawks). Rihanna gave perhaps the best half-time show performance I’ve ever seen… while pregnant. 🤰🏽

2/14: Lovely Inflation Report 💗

peaks: January 12th, February 14th, March 14th

We saw three Consumer Price Index (inflation) reports throughout Q1, coming out to 6.5% in January’s report, 5.4% in February’s, and 5.0% in March’s — aka inflation is slowing down, but it’s still ~a bit~ higher than the Fed would like it to be.

3/7: Jerome Powell & the Fed 🏦

peak: March 7th | interest rates

To combat inflation, JPow & the FOMC hikes interest rates twice this quarter, first by 0.25% at the end of January, and again by 0.25% in March, pushing the Fed funds rate up to 4.75-5% & punctuating the fastest rate hike trajectory since the 1970’s

3/10: Bank Collapse(s) 🏚️💥

peak: March 10th | stocks

First Silvergate went bankrupt in early March (spurred by its crypto lending involvement), then came the big one: a run on Silicon Valley Bank, causing the 2nd biggest bank failure in US history. Then followed a slew of other banks, including Credit Suisse. Crazy. And if you think it’s all over… I wouldn’t hold your breath.

3/16: March Madness baby 🏀

peak: March 16th | US news

The NCAA Men’s & Women’s collegiate basketball championship tournaments began in mid-March. There were 20M brackets made for the men’s tourney, and all of ‘em were broken by day 2 (the fastest bracket bust ever). The women’s tourney set basically every viewership record in the book, with 4.7B minutes watched.

3/24: Congress vs. TikTok 🎶

peak: March 24th | foreign affairs

Last but not least, the congressional hearing to ban TikTok took place last Thursday, including a 5-hour testimony from TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. This one’s also far from over, and judging by the public’s reaction… it’ll continue to be a big deal. We wrote about it here.

WHAT’S AHEAD 🔭

Other honorable mentions that didn’t make the cut (mainly because they didn’t really have a ‘peak’ in Q1) were: Chat-GPT / AI, The Russia-Ukraine War, & Covid).

Whew… hopefully that gives a little taste of what’s going on these days. Not sure how many of you had bank failures + mega tech layoffs + spy balloons + social media bans + earthquakes on your 2023 bingo cards lol…

If you did, then you might be reading too much George Orwell. Also lmk what you’re expecting to happen throughout the rest of year because I’ve got no damn clue…

NEWS NUGGETS 🥔

Top trending commentary parsed from news

🟢 Disney | 📰 MorningBrew | Disney quietly takes control from FL governing board

“The company quietly entered agreements that rendered the board Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hand-picked to govern the special tax district surrounding Disney World nearly powerless.”

🟢 Inflation | 📰 Barron’s | Market’s rise as inflation shows signs of easing…

“The core personal consumption expenditure prices index – the Fed’s favorite inflation gauge – rose 4.6% year over year in February, slightly below economists’ expectations of 4.7%, furthering the idea that the central bank may keep its accommodative monetary policy stance after its super-sized rate hikes last year plummeted equities”

🔴 Nestle| 📰 TastingTable | Nestle concedes most of its products are incredibly unhealthy

“After including a nutritional profile within the company's 2022 Annual Report, Nestlé revealed in March 2023 that more than 60% of its products, excluding PetCare, fall below the "healthy" criteria established by the Australian Health Star Rating (HSR) for packaged foods and beverages.”

🔴 Trump | 📰 WSJ | Donald Trump Indicted by a NY Grand Jury

“Donald Trump has been indicted for his role in paying hush-money to a porn star, marking the first time a former president has faced criminal charges. Mr. Trump is likely to surrender and appear for his arraignment on Tuesday, his lawyer said.”

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.

SENTIMENT KEY: 🟢=bullish, 🌑=neutral, 🔴=bearish