More Confusing Economic Woes

Stocks are trading down today for a few reasons: Fed worries, speculation around job numbers, and the Delta variant’s world tour. 👎

Today, the vice-chair of America’s central bank indicated that interest rates might rise as early as 2023, paving the road to cut bond sales later this year.

Unfortunately, investors didn’t take that news very well. That’s because both bonds and stocks have been propped up by the Federal Reserve’s current monetary policy. That is, at least, if you buy into the data. 💁

To make matters worse, investors were given two pieces of conflicting economic data before US payrolls this Friday. The first was ADP’s employment data, which showed we added way fewer jobs last month than we should have. The second was ISM’s service gauge, which topped estimates and indicated that “business activity, new orders, and employment improved.”

To make matters worse, investors now have to consider whether the emergence of the all-new Delta Plus variant is something they should worry about. No, it’s not a streaming service or subscription to a SaaS service—it could be the next BIG variant. Or not. Who knows. There’s, like, six COVID variants now, so every COVID glo up is going to scare investors less and less. 

Worries aside, with our luck stocks will probably trade up tomorrow. 🙄

$VTI traded down 0.45% today.

Robinhood didn’t exactly make a star-studded market debut… but $HOOD could be boasting one of the sickest post-“bad IPO” comebacks we’ve ever seen. 🚀

Robinhood fell from $38 to close at $34.82 on the day of its IPO. Since then, $HOOD has only seen upside. The stock is up 102.1% since last Thursday, its first day listed. Here’s the intraday chart:

Demand for the IPO was mixed at best. This happened because many retail investors felt they were “wronged” by Robinhood’s decision to freeze some stocks’ trading amidst January’s market volatility. Tons of potential $HOOD investors stayed away, concerned about volatility in the stock itself. They got what they were looking for and now they want in. 

Some of that volatility can be attributed to two things: options trading (which started today) and reportedly-high levels of short volume. According to Fintel, $HOOD stock has demonstrated a short volume ratio of greater than 50% every day since its IPO. 😅 The short volume ratio is calculated as the difference between FINRA short volume and FINRA total volume. 

What we’re seeing could be a mix of a short squeeze and options speculation, but that’s hard to know for sure. All we know is Robinhood has ~officially~ achieved stonk status. 

Chinese stocks have contracted aggressively as the country’s government assaults tech, education, and media companies. There has been one pocket of value in China, though—materials. More specifically? The mining industry. 💎

Chinese mining company China Northern Rare Earth Group High-Tech more than doubled in July. Other large mining companies also performed such as Ganfeng Lithium Co (+42.8% this month) and Shenghe Resources Holding (+47.9% this month). These returns helped make the VanEck Vectors Rare Earth/Metals Strategy ETF the hottest ETF of July, returning almost 28%. 🔥

In some continuation of this trend, lithium miners and battery tech companies also saw considerable gains. The Global X Lithium & Battery Tech ETF, which has more than half of its fund’s assets in Chinese companies, was the ETF with the second best returns in July. Some of $LIT‘s largest holdings — like Ganfeng, NAURA Technology, and EVE Energy — posted double-digit gains over the last month. 

These returns look significantly more attractive than those seen from high-flying mega caps like Tencent and Pinduoduo. With that being said, there are still legitimate concerns about where China will point its scrutiny next. 

Do long wallet addresses give you tremendous anxiety? Not anymore!! Now you can create a username just like your Twitter or Instagram handle. 🙌

Circle, the company behind USDC, introduced its latest feature today. USDC users can now send the stablecoin to simple wallet addresses using their own Twitter or Instagram handles. 😁

Circle partnered with blockchain domain provider Unstoppable Domains to create this feature. The idea is to introduce simplicity and accessibility to USDC payments—users can use a .coin domain, and payments are as easy as sending an email. 💌

This isn’t the first time that a company has tried to solve the blockchain’s super long and intimidating addresses. Ethereum Name Service (ENS) provides a similar feature, linking addresses to “domains” on the blockchain. ENS offers a secure way to turn complicated Ethereum addresses into human-readable names. 

It has many of the makings of the early internet, where people had to use IP addresses before domains became commonplace. Hopefully, this ‘IP address’ phase of crypto will be over soon.