Real economy beating expectations yet markets trading in red 🤔

Jun 6, 2022

INVESTMENT CONTEXT

• President Vladimir Putin said that Russia was not blocking Ukrainian wheat from being exported, and that the grain could be dispatched via ports controlled either by Russia or Ukraine. Before the war, Russia and Ukraine accounted for ca. 29% of international annual wheat sales
  
• U.S. economy added 390,000 jobs in May, beating analyst expectations (325,000) and showing resilient real economy in the face of rampant inflation and higher interest rates
  
• Crude oil inventories in the U.S. fell to 414.7 million barrels in the wake of strong demand, yet limiting chances of further releases to cool domestic energy prices
  
• Goldman Sachs COO John Waldron followed JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon saying “This is among if not the most complex, dynamic environment I’ve ever seen in my career". On a similar tone, in a leaked Tesla email, Elon Musk cited having a "super bad feeling" about the economy as the main reason for shedding 10% of the company's workforce
  

PROFZERO'S TAKE

• When good news are met with S&P 500 dropping more than 1.50%, and Nasdaq doing even worse at 2.47% in the red, we know something is off. That's what happens when bears are in control, and policy makers are desperate to understand how far can they move with tightening before the backlash. A remarkably strong U.S. economy just added 390,000 jobs in May, beating analyst expectations and reassuring the Fed it could maintain the trajectory of 50bps rate hikes in July and August. ProfZero clearly welcomes Main Street's resilience and rising wages - yet, as anticipated in Step99 podcast, it cautions against the forward-looking effects of monetary policy vs. the actual state of the economy. As pointed out by The Economist, "A recession in America by 2024 looks likely" - today's strength of the real economy may at best soften its blow
  
• Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser sees "three R" whiplashing EU economy - rates, Russia and recession, this latter happening in Europe ahead of the U.S. because of "the energy side (...) really having an impact". ProfZero has made energy a key theme of this Parlay, with potentially more decisive effects on the real economy than monetary policy. With Brent testing again USD 120/boe and fading cushion inventories from the U.S., it is hard to imagine how the EU will cope with the next cold season without rationing output, hence slashing GDP growth. Regasification plants and last-generation nuclear are definitely tools of the future; but by then, are seaborne imports going to be enough?
  
• Equities are definitely off the lows witnessed in April and early May - perhaps Musk's "super bad feeling" and Mr. Dimon's "hurricane" are rather looming on the real economy? Not an inch less worrying...
  
• BTC once again confidently breaking up the mid-term triangle pattern and trying to regain 32k after trading below 30k on June 4-5 - and yet ProfZero's eyes are set on the lurking death cross on 200MA
  

PROFONE'S TAKE

• After sharing about lithium and nickel, ProfOne completes the overview of rare minerals that are crucial for the production of batteries setting its eyes are on cobalt. Cobalt prices soared from USD 30k/ton in January to USD 52k in May - on top of the 2x surge in 2021 vs. 2020. According to the Cobalt Institute, in the next five years cobalt demand is expected to hit 320k/ton, up from 175k/ton in 2021. ProfOne argues that meeting such demand won’t be operatively easy. For once, cobalt is yet another highly concentrated resource: about 70% of world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where production is dominated by Chinese companies and commodities trader Glencore (GLEN). Adding to it that world's second supplier of cobalt is Russia, the metals puzzle turns out to be a fairly intricate one