Stock & Bond Correlation

November 20, 2022

“The reason that ‘guru’ is such a popular word is because ‘charlatan’ is so hard to spell.”

– William Bernstein

RESEARCH

McKinsey on the North American asset management industry, trends, and some thoughts on how the industry may position itself going forward.

 Matt Levine with his take on the FTX balance sheet, and a number of tidbits from the last week. Link

 A Vox reporter published DM’s from SBF that reveal his thoughts on regulators, ethics, and what’s next for both him and FTX.  It is … something.  Link

 Bloomberg found the most wildest parts of the FTX bankruptcy filing. John Ray is the current CEO and chief restructuring officer for FTX, and previously oversaw the estate of Enron.  He said, “never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here [at FTX].” There’s a lot more. Link

 Michael Lewis has reportedly been following SBF for 6 months to write about him in his next book. Link

 More great reporting by Reuters on SBF’s attempt to raise money and save FTX. Link

“About $10 billion in client deposits remained, with a $1.5 billion surplus to cover any further withdrawals, according to a screenshot of the database seen by Reuters. In reality, those funds were gone.”

SPONSORED BY ACRETRADERAn Investment That’s Historically Beaten Inflation

With the CPI coming in at 7.7% in October, inflation may have eased slightly, but it’s still way beyond the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

While farmland historically does not show much of a correlation with stocks or bonds, it has shown a positive correlation with inflation since 1969. Not only that—farmland shows a positive spread to inflation.1

As a real asset with a direct relationship with commodities and food prices, farmland tends to hold value and even appreciate when inflation climbs.1

Research from Nuveen, the $1.3 trillion investment manager of TIAA, has shown that adding 2-5% of a portfolio to farmland and/or timberland can improve a portfolio’s overall returns and at the same time reduce risk.2

AcreTrader makes it simple to invest in professionally reviewed farmland and timberland online. In the past couple of months they’ve reported on their first five fully realized deal cycles, and now have offering hitting the platform each week.

Visit AcreTrader.com/Meb to see if farmland could be the diversification your portfolio needs right now.

1Source: (2020, October). TIAA. The relationship between inflation and farmland returns.2Source: (2021, May). Nuveen. Resiliency and diversification from uncorrelated market exposure.Index performance is presented for illustrative purposes only. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) published the NCREIF Farmland Index, a quarterly time series composite return measure of investment performance of a large pool of individual farmland properties acquired in the private market for investment purposes only. Investments cannot be made in an index. Unmanaged index returns do not reflect any fees, trading costs or other expenses.

FACTS & FIGURES

Tracker for tech layoffs. Link

US stocks now comprise around 70% of the MSCI World Index, up from 50% in 2009 and only 35% in 1995. Link

Since Amazon’s IPO in May of 1997, the stock has rallied ~100,000% (depending on where you bought into it on that first day). During that same time, Monster is up around 333,000%. Link

Alpine Macro putting 2022 stock and bond returns into historical perspective.

Fintech companies with a smaller market cap than total capital raised in the private markets

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Source: Coatue, Rex Salisbury; As of 10/28/22

“The trailing 6-month correlation of daily returns of the S&P 500 and the S&P U.S. Treasury Bond Current 10-Year Index has reached 0.3, the highest level in decades.” – S&P Dow Jones Indices (source)

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Goldman Sachs on the skepticism around energy stocks

PODCASTS

Empty Rooms: Investing in Africa[11/7/22 – 65 minutes]Apple | Spotify | Google

Guests Colin Smith and Farouk Miah are founders of All Africa Partners, a concentrated, public equity fund focused on Africa. They discuss the opportunity set, portfolio construction, and the nuances of investing in the region (particularly around currencies).

From The Episode:“Africa is the 8th largest equivalent economy in the world w/ 1.5b people & a 0% index weight. There is a big difference b/w 0% & 0.1% allocation. 0% means out of sight, out of mind, 0.1% means at least it’s on the agenda.”

Spencer & Anderson share why they’ve been skeptical of SBF and his legislative push to build a regulatory moat around his business empire. They dive deep into why, and what they see as the path forward for crypto from here.

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