1. Stocks and Bonds Power Thru Post Rate Hikes
Capital Group
2. META Spending $40B on AI Capex
Traded right to support …-21% from highs…
3. Private Equity Buying Corporate Pensions
Semafor
Private equity’s latest trade: The financial futures of millions of retiree-Liz Hoffman
A brisk new trade in the financial futures of millions of retirees is unnerving some US workers, regulators, and politicians who worry that private equity firms will invest corporate pensions recklessly.
Recent lawsuits challenging AT&T, Lockheed, and Alcoa’s plans to turn their pensions over to Athene, which is owned by Apollo, casts a broader spotlight on private equity’s push into new corners of finance. Sen. Sherrod Brown has held hearings, cheered on by the Teamsters, and the Labor Department is weighing whether to require companies to at least consider whether an insurance business is owned by private equity before turning over their pensions.
Companies like AT&T and IBM don’t want to be in the retirement business. So they’ve been offloading their pension plans to insurance companies. The 773 deals last year broke 2022’s record of 568, according to Aon, which advises corporate pensions.
https://www.semafor.com/article/04/25/2024/private-equitys-latest-trade-corporate-pensions
4. Last Year Pundits Calling for Sell Off in U.S. Dollar ….Every Major Currency Down vs. U.S. Dollar
Jack Ablin-Cresset
https://cressetcapital.com/about/team/jack-ablin/
5. Covid Stock Teladoc Health…$300 Covid Highs to $13 Pre-Market
6. Intel Chart ..$32 Pre-Market..Next Support is 2022 Levels
7. Energy Sector is Just 4% of S&P
All-Star Charts
https://allstarcharts.com/its-the-lack-of-exposure/
Found at Abnormal Returns blog www.abnormalreturns.com
8. Communism Sucks
Journal story from earlier in the week, citizens can’t sell their homes, but if they could exit….It would move to U.S. treasuries bonds and dollar
WSJ Cao Li —Zhao has moved away from the village, heading to the nearby city of Changchun, where there are more job opportunities. She said her property portfolio could be worth as much as $500,000, if only she could find a buyer. And when she does sell, she has no plans to put the money back into China’s shaky property market.
“How great it would be if I could sell them and use the proceeds to buy dollars, U.S. Treasury bonds, or bitcoin,” she said. FXI China ETF held 2022 low for now
9. Top Ranked Housing Markets
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/rockford-illinois-housing-market-rankings-realtor-d304570c
10. Focus- James Clear
I.“If you feel resistance before you begin, it’s usually procrastination and you need to get started. If you feel resistance after you begin, it’s usually feedback and you need to make adjustments.”
II. “Focus is how you knit the hours of the day together. With focus, the day becomes a beautiful tapestry. Without focus, you end up holding a bundle of loose string.”
III. “Anytime in my life when I have managed to go from a vision to a reality, the vision has not been a plan but a practice.
In other words, what matters is not having a vision, but rather making a habit of returning to and revising the vision. For the big things in my life, I’m always coming back to them week after week—sometimes day after day. As new information arrives, the vision gets updated. The dream becomes more crystallized over time. It’s a habit of thinking about where you want to go with an ever-increasing degree of clarity.
You do not need a vision, you need the practice of envisioning.”
https://jamesclear.com/
