My morning train WFH reads:
• The pandemic was hard on office suck-ups. Now they’re back and ready to schmooze: In a just world, the shift to remote work over the past two years would reward productivity and expose the slackers. But as corporations have been returning to business as usual, guess who can’t wait to get back to the office? Suck-ups, the co-workers we love to hate. (Washington Post)
• Cash Keeps Flowing Into ESG While Markets Tank Even after the worst April for equities in decades, ESG-labeled funds are drowning in cash. But maybe not for long. (Bloomberg)
• Elon Musk’s China problem. Musk cannot afford to cross Chinese authorities because Tesla relies heavily on China for supplies, production and sales. In 2021, Tesla sold “470,000 cars made at its Shanghai factory” — more than half of the 936,000 vehicles Tesla sold globally. Sales in China account for about one-quarter of Tesla’s revenue. (Popular Information) see also Elon Musk hates government subsidies. His companies love them. A Grid analysis of Musk’s companies shows more than $7 billion in government contracts alone. (Grid)
• NFT Sales Are Flatlining: Is this the beginning of the end of NFTs? (Wall Street Journal)
• Mexico: Rail link worth billions won’t go through Texas after Abbott used trade as ‘political tool’ Instead, the proposed rail line would be routed along the far edge of West Texas up through Santa Teresa, N.M., about 20 miles west of downtown El Paso. (Dallas Morning News)
• Wall Street Isn’t Ready for the Crackdown Coming Its Way Federal investigations into questionable trading practices are on the rise—and the fate of Bill Hwang and his firm, Archegos, may await others in the finance industry. (Businessweek)
• We’re Flushing Some of Our Best COVID Data Down the Toilet: Wastewater testing has been used to track COVID-19 since nearly the beginning of the pandemic, but the idea goes back decades: In the 1940s, U.S. scientists started using it to track and contain polio and other viral disease like typhoid, and it continues to be used to track polio. (Slate)
• After years of progress on gay rights, how did the US become so anti-LGBTQ+? The US has witnessed a pronounced acceleration of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation, fueled chiefly by misinformation about what it means to be trans and hysteria over so-called grooming. (The Guardian)
• Formula One Finally Found a Way to Get Americans to Care The posh, stodgy European sport has been transformed for the U.S. with a hit Netflix series, race car drivers on Twitch, and a Miami-meets-Vegas overhaul—and it’s working. (Businessweek)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Alex Guervich of Hon Te Advisors, a discretionary global macro hedge fund. Previously, Guervich ran JP Morgans’s macro book. In 2020, Hon Te was ranked 2nd in net return, and a top 10 emerging manager. He is the author of The Next Perfect Trade and most recently, The Trades of March 2020.
FOMC decision: Policy, price stability and balance sheet strategy
Source: The Real Economy Blog
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