November at Lykeion

After six weeks of completely swamped schedules in Lisbon, Rome, Malta, Dubai, and London, Tim and I have finally parted ways right in time for Thanksgiving (and Omicron, for that matter), and shockingly, we don’t hate each other any more than we already did…

It was, as always, a hell of a mediocre ride…  And if there’s one learning from the entire trip, it’s that Aperol Spritz can in fact act as an appropriate alternative to sleep, so long as you never, ever, slow the drip. Because once you do, the party’s over, time to go home.

Onto our content, because that’s what you pay us subscribe for.

Markets

We started the month with Roger’s comments on how misguided Central Banks’ strategy is in using monetary policy to fight inflation driven by supply-chain bottlenecks and labor shortage, something that I feel hasn’t been written enough about.

Interestingly, the Omicron variant (which I think has led to a market overreaction) has seemingly started to shift the outlook for monetary policy, but we’re still trying to figure out if the change is more hawkish or dovish.

• Will Omicron lead to a worsening of supply chain issues, which will further exacerbate inflation and thus justify an acceleration in monetary tightening by the Fed? or

• Will Omicron slow demand to the extent that supply chain issues become less acute, making monetary policy tightening less urgent?

We don’t have the answer (but let us know if you do).

Elsewhere, I closed the month with another Markets Update covering how I’m not that interested in buying the Chinese Tech dip given that, as a foreign investor, I can only access the market almost exclusively through Cayman-based VIE structures (I swear this is more interesting than it sounds…). There are a lot of interesting opportunities in Value stocks, Energy, Crypto, and some specific Growth-ish themes that I like in the long term, making China’s risk-reward profile simply too unattractive for me.

Charts

Tim, yet again, put together a great chart about energy sustainability, this time with the help of Larry McDonald.

It obviously ended up becoming a nuclear energy rant, but can you really blame him?

Crypto

In our monthly Crypto Update, I shamelessly stole a chart from NYDIG to visually answer the question: “Should you buy Bitcoin at All-Time Highs?”

In it, I also wrote a comprehensive update on the Bitcoin ETF landscape… which, while not the most exciting, is good hygiene in case any of your institutional friends ask for it.

Question of the month for our readers: What were you pitching to your family at Thanksgiving? Wrong answers will also be considered.

Shoot me an email at [email protected] - we’ll include the best answer in the next monthly recap, with appropriate credits.

As always, thanks for being part of the journey.