The information in this message does not represent any financial or investment advice. They're just random thoughts in my head.
gm
MACRO - Well, we saw yet another huge beat in payrolls on Friday as the number came in at a whopping 339K compared to expectations of 190k, while last month's figure was also revised upwards to 294k from 253k. It is yet another sign of how strong the US labour market is. I thought we would have seen a bit of a sell-off but markets seemed to like the numbers with many pointing to the fact that the unemployment rate actually rose to 3.7% from 3.4% the month prior and wage inflation coming in lower than expected. SPX closed 1.5% higher while NDQ closed 0.7% higher and this morning futures look like they're mostly unchanged. As expected, interest rates saw a decent sell-off and it took us back out to 4.56% at the 2Y point and 3.75% at the 10Y point. We now have about a week's gap in terms of super important data, until 13th June when we get CPI and 14th June when the FOMC concludes. It looks like current consensus for inflation is 4.2% vs last month's 4.9%...that would be yet another big drop but I would note that it's still a little early for consensus while most banks get their estimates in.
CRYPTO - We saw some crypto strength on Friday in line with stocks, but yet again, it seems to have failed to have held and we're back down to 26.7K on BTC and 1867 on ETH. The crypto frustration continues! Altcoins have also given up recent gains and look to be about 5-10% lower across the board. I think it's safe to say at this point that the memecoin season we were all hoping for never really transpired and it turned out to be a meta. $PEPE is the bellwether there and has now fallen below a $500m market cap having hit as high as $1.5bn, so that's down about 67% from its highs although I would note it's been doing an impressive amount of volume still (top 30 on a daily and weekly basis for a while). It would seem we must all be patient for our bull szn, but I still think we are closer to our days in the sun than people realise.
NFTs - Price action looks mostly in the green this morning actually with many of the pfp stuff up about 5-10%, 0N1 Force outperforming up 24%. Azuki definitely stole the headlines over the weekend as it climbed to a 1Y high in ETH terms to an FP of 17.7ETH floor which honestly is truly a remarkable achievement given the landscape we've had this year. Makes you wonder what that could do in a bull run. Another big thing to watch out for is the next round of 3AC stuff coming to Sotheby's, with the big one being the infamous "Goose" ringer by Dmitri Cherniak for which the "conservative" auction estimate is $2-3m:
https://twitter.com/michaelbouhanna/status/1664332147895705601?s=20
It's obviously at the upper end of the market and not something most of us "normal people" are participating in, but I'm curious to see how well it goes as for me it tells you how much sidelined capital there is ready to buy quality. Going to be at NFC in Lisbon this week - looking forward to seeing people!
GL this week