Peter Atwater
@Peter_Atwater
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President of Financial Insyghts. Adjunct Professor William & Mary. Author of "The Confidence Map" out July 25, 2023. Lover of very bad puns.
Joined June 2012
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What's my upcoming book, "The Confidence Map" about?
It's about the unappreciated impact of our feelings of certainty and control on what we do - why confidence is the real "invisible hand" in the markets, in the economy, and in our individual lives.
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It never ceases to amaze me how when a stock is up 400% in a year, everyone desperately wants to buy it, and then, when it is on-sale 80%, no one wants to touch it.
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It is fascinating that a 50% price drop in what was supposed to be the safest asset in investors' portfolios hasn't generated any real emotion.
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WireCard: Fake revenue
Nikola: Fake truck
Lordstown Motors: Fake orders
Blade: Fake spokesman
One is an event; two is a pattern; three is a trend; and four is just the tip of the iceberg.
We need to call it what it is: a golden age of illusion.
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There are only two moments when you sell $4 billion of stock in four days: when you have to and when you are stupid not to...
Bezos Sells $4 Billion of Amazon Stock in Four Trading Days
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When financial historians write about the past forty year investment cycle, I suspect many will conclude that much of private equity was nothing more than a very leveraged play on falling interest rates.
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Sadly, it appears that Kodak's core business skill was entering new markets late.
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"When I see a bubble forming, I rush in to buy, adding fuel to the fire."
- George Soros 2009
- Every Retail Investor 2021
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Tesla, Apple and Zoom
Finally a worthy acronym.
TAZmania.
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It is funny how clearly CEOs can see the future once they've bought or unloaded stock.
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Robinhood traders buying out of the money weekly call options on an exchange traded fund backed by futures contracts in a virtual currency.
Well done team. Well done.
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FWIW - It's not a "tech sell-off." It is a massive repricing of abstraction. We had a bubble in dreams.
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All the attention is on gas prices, but charts like this are what policymakers and investors should really be focused on.
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FWIW - Tesla's entry into the S&P500 is the biggest "Trojan Horse" moment in financial market history.
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The party is always wildest right before the neighbors call the police.
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At the top of every bubble, everyone is convinced it's not yet a bubble.
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It's funny how you never see the story "How More Than $1 Trillion of Crypto Appeared in Just Three Months" on the way up.
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The novice and naive are always the last to the party...
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FWIW - The danger for Mr. Musk isn’t just that the crowd will turn against him, but they will do it with blistering speed and from every angle. When he goes, so, likely, will SpaceX, Tesla, cryptocurrencies, SPACs, EVs… He is the Kevin Bacon of this cycle.
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I realize I am a broken record on this, but there was no hidden gun at WeWork. Everything was fully out in the open. Thanks to the magical thinking of crowded overconfidence, pure fantasy was overlooked.
The pendulum swing will be vicious.
The Age of Illusion is over.
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We've gone from maternity leave to paternity leave to eternity leave as employees are simply choosing not to come back to work at all.
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What people remember from the late 1970s gas crisis isn't the price of gas but the fear they felt sitting in line praying there would be any gas left when they finally got to the pump.
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Tesla buying Bitcoin would appear to be the AOL-AOL merger of this cycle.
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If you have been so fortunate as to have been on the arm of the K-Shaped Recovery this year, I hope you will consider contributing to a charity in your community that helps those whose lives have been upended by the pandemic. Foodbanks, especially, are being hit very hard.
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Bull markets begin with the feeling that the market can only go lower.
Bear markets begin with the feeling that the market can only go higher.
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Should the protests widen to include wealth and income inequality, the Federal Reserve runs the risk of becoming as symbolic of oppression as a Confederate statue.
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First it was $2 trillion then $1.3 trillion then $908 billion. Now it's $748 billion. At this pace those businesses and individuals updended most by the pandemic will get a $25 gift card to Arby's some time next July.
It is a shameful and cruel betrayal. We're better than this
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Extreme central banking didn't lift all ships, just the largest of yachts.
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To paraphrase Mike Tyson, everyone has an ESG plan until they are punched in the face by higher oil prices.
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LOL - The market narrative cupboard must have been bare this morning.
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Maybe it is just me, but I can't wait for the investigative reporters to get behind the causes of the early 2019 equity rally. Inflows it ain't.
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Crowds are only capable of System 1 thinking. In fact, popularity requires it.
h/t
@ritholtz
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Fraud is not uncovered by auditors; it is revealed by the increased scrutiny that naturally accompanies falling confidence.
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Everything that investors learned about Facebook this week was already known. It was just disbelieved, until it was undeniably true.
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To the folks who had "Janet Yellen is monitoring GameStop" on their 2021 Bingo card, my heartiest congratulations.
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There is nothing quite as seductive as vertical movements in price. They are the lanterns that draw every last moth.
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FWIW - The current Robinhood phenomenon is a much better fit with the home flipping craze of 2005 than the 1999 peak.
At its core, today's speculative craze is based on the belief that prices always rise, not that the future will be blisteringly bright.
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What was lost at Facebook this week wasn't just $100+ billion in market cap but its narrative. The stock now needs a new story.
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Folks say it can't be a bubble because there's too little margin debt.
Who needs margin debt when you can trade 0DTEs and hyper-leveraged ETFs?
They launched a bunch of seriously leveraged ETPs today in Europe incl 5x Magnificent 7, 4x Semiconductors, 3x Artificial Intelligence and 2x Super Micro Computer
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With the surgeon general's reversal on masks and egg prices now soaring, I am reminded of this quote from Robert Samuelson's "The Great Inflation and It's Aftermath."
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What's the best predictor of a recession?
Widespread certainty that it can't and won't happen any time soon.
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Investments are funny things. The higher the price, the more people want them.
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My heart is heavy for those whose lives have been upended by the pandemic and who have waited since July for Congress to appreciate and act to address their plight.
It is not stimulus. For those at the bottom, it is sustenance.
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People worry about the markets decoupling from the economy.
Me, I am much more worried about how decoupled the markets have become from society.
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We used to call it coal. Today, we call it a Bitcoin derivative.
Market narratives are quite something.
h/t
@SoberLook
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At current mortgage rates that $36,000 average lumber cost increase adds $150 to a borrower's monthly payment.
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"We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers."
- Daniel Kahneman
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FWIW The latest surge in people talking about "inclusive capitalism" and platforms like Robinhood feels eerily like the term the "democratization of homeownership" that was all rage just as the housing bubble peaked.
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"You cannot have a sustainable economy and political system where you have a small population who believe they are invincible and a growing population who feel defeated... It’s in capitalism’s best interest to close this gap."
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Personally, I am rooting for a Tesla - Berkshire Hathaway merger of equals.
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People forget that New Century filed for bankruptcy in April 2007 months before the major indices peaked.
The worst always leave the party first - often unnoticed while the band is playing loudly to a crowded dance floor.
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Was thinking last night how easy it will be by those in the future to recast "passive investing" as "indiscriminate investing."
"They just bought - without consideration of price, of quality, of anything. They just believed that no matter what, the value would ultimately rise."
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I see we've reached the "just have someone dress up like robot and dance" moment in the "Age of Illusion."
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The world is no more nor no less risky than it was three months ago. What has changed is our perception of the world. Three months ago we woefully underestimated the risks. At the lows, we will woefully overestimate them.
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Tesla's share price is the best real-time sentiment measure of Elon Musk.
And it always has been.
$TSLA was never about cars; it was a means to invest in the wild dreams and audacious ambition of one man.
We don't buy stock in companies; we buy symbols and stories.
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It's like a frat party on fintwit today. Everyone's talking Gammas and Deltas.
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"sports bra turned cryptocurrency company" may be the best five word summary of 2017 out there.
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This morning
@andrewrsorkin
asked me if I were on the Starbucks board would I press for Howard Schultz to return as CEO. I said absolutely not.
An organization that requires a single individual to be successful isn't a corporation; it's a rock band.
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25 years ago today, I married my best friend. Best decision of my life and the beginning of an adventure filled with love, laughter and lots of great memories... And I won the in-law lottery, too!
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What is so striking about the repo market is that here we are three months after things started to boil up and there is still no simplistic, crowd-accepted narrative around the cause.
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What is characterized as genius on the way up has a funny way of being recast as reckless on the way down.
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The greatest risk to the financial markets is not that they awaken to to the economic reality around them, but to the societal reality that is now upon us.
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Ark Investment Management going public via a SPAC denominated in Dogecoin feels like the perfect center square on the 2020 Bingo card.
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This chart from
@johnauthers
' latest missive deserves a spot in the finance hall of fame.
It says everything you need to know about sentiment.
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A year ago, when I first described the latest investment craze as a "flash mob" with money I never imagined how accurate the phrase would become.
It truly has become a parade through the mall. Friday it was GameStop and today it's AMC. So, tomorrow, do they all head to Macy's?
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Late 1999 called. It wants it's "Value Is Dead" headlines back.
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In any other environment what is unfolding with Softbank would be front page news. FWIW - The clear lack of interest in its garage sale of used magic tricks is significant.
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Looking like a very rough week to be an insurance company.
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Stocks have a funny way of behaving like nothing matters until everything does all at once.
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Given the run up in lumber prices, how long before we start to see homes sold for parts?
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Since everyone seems to have an opinion on Zillow today, here's mine.
Zillow getting into the house-flipping business was an eerie rhyme to 2005 when real estate agents were no longer satisfied with 7% commissions.
Everyone wants to be a highly-leveraged principal at the top.
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As launch day comes to a close, I want to thank everyone for their support and encouragement today. It's been a wonderful day.
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Imagine how quickly there would be additional COVID stimulus if DC restaurants came together and paused take-out until Congress acted.
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Based on the extreme stock price divergence between Boeing and GE, I can only assume engine-less planes are in our near-future.
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Once again, it looks like the retail crowd trying to mimic big institutional managers...
Boat falls onto highway in Florida, blocks traffic
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After you read this tweet, read it again. $400 billion in market cap in 165 trading days.
It took Amazon just 165 trading days to grow its market value from $600 billion in January to $1 trillion today.
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FWIW - After looking at this morning's SPAC headlines, it feels like if Martin Shkreli and Elizabeth Holmes teamed up, they could easily launch a $500MM SPAC IPO using the ticker symbol $FOOL.
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Today's garage band name of the day - "Culled For The Dividend" - comes from Exxon-Mobil via Bloomberg.
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With cocoa nearing $12,000 a metric ton, we're getting closer and closer...
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