January at Lykeion

Well, I’ll shamelessly call it: this January was our best month of content… ever.

In all fairness, market volatility lends itself nicely to discuss a wide range of topics, and has also led to significant economic losses for Tim’s portfolio - one of the reasons why I think I’ve been sleeping so well at night – but man, we’re definitely getting our shit together… dare I say, maturing?

We’re about to launch a serious referral program. Hopefully, you’ll get involved and reap the benefits. Stay tuned.

MARKETS

This was one of the worst January performances in the history of markets, and our key thoughts on how to navigate the current market set-up have been covered in our Higher Rates, Peak Margins, and How We're Allocating piece.

This is the piece we’d recommend you read if you only had time for one. But for this month in particular, we urge you to make more time available.

Roger wrote a very important Markets Update on the Outlook for 2022 for the US Dollar – THE most important asset in the world. He sees it rising against low-yielding and EM currencies but struggling against commodity currencies. As always, interest rate differentials and commodity price inflation play a key role in determining this view, but that’s why we have Roger on the team – to cover the super technical stuff so the rest of us can stay more high level.

CRYPTO

Yeah, it hurts, we know… but honestly, if you feel desperate after a 50% drop in prices, you’re either over-exposed to the asset class, or simply not built for these markets. Volatility in this space is here to stay, so you’d better get used to it if you want to participate.

As we all know, Bitcoin trades as a risk-on asset and its correlation to equity markets has increased over the past year, so it’s only natural that during a market sell-off you see a sharp continuation of its bear market. But again, we urge you to always take a long-term view and think about conservatively sizing your exposure.

For this month’s Crypto Update, we went through Bitcoin and Web 3.0’s main achievements in 2021, so that you keep front and center how much the space has grown in the last 12-months.

EDITORIAL ON OIL

Jacob’s incredibly insightful Editorial on Asia’s growing interest in the Middle East is one of those examples of how there are way too many, really important, themes that are not being properly covered by traditional financial media… but hey, that’s why you subscribe to Lykeion, isn’t it? It’s definitely not only for the pretty pictures at the end of our updates and the VIX jokes, right? Right?!?

IMPACT UPDATE

We narrowed our coverage of the broader spectrum of Sustainable Finance to mainly focus on Impact. We did that to avoid covering greenwashing bullshit and force us to focus on bringing you, the reader, themes, ideas, assets, and companies that are truly creating a positive impact, whilst still trying to ensure adequate returns to investors. Manuel’s latest Update (our best green piece of content we’ve written to date) helps to contextualize exactly this.

CHARTS

What month would it really be without our signature Charts?

Tim’s not only a great financial analyst (I’ll never admit to that to his face), but this time he also ventured into writing fictional dialogues between Federal Funds Rates and the Market in order to shine a light on how spoiled the market has become since ’08.

Loads of fun and incredibly insightful, but above all, a clear sign telling us it’s time he takes a couple days off [Tim’s Note: I flew to Panama on Monday, so if you don’t hear from me, I’m likely dead in the jungle somewhere. It’s been a hell of a run slanging Charts to you all!].

We’re partnering up with different universities – so if you’re a student and think that Lykeion would help your colleagues, reach out at [email protected].