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• FT drops a review of 2022 in 11 charts
• With the stroke of a pen, Big Dawg Biden’s signature has unleashed a fresh, cool $1.7tn in government spending
• Don’t worry! Your money on FTX isn’t gone - it was just put to a much better purpose, like SBF’s venture portfolio, where he picked out gems like Dave ($DAVE), which is only down 96% YTD
• TechCrunch reminds us it wasn’t all bad with “some good news” from 2022…if you can believe that exists…

Messy Macro & Mangled Markets

Okay - a lot happened in macro and markets in 2022. Take a deep breath because, over the next 1,712 words you read, we’re gonna attempt to recap the biggest swings, hits, and (primarily) misses. To quote the intro, let’s get into it.

We came into this year on one hell of a high note. In fact, the S&P actually hit its all-time high on January 3rd, 2022, just below the 4,800 level. I know, all-time highs and 2022 are basically oxymorons now, but there was a time they were as tight as Tom & Gisele (key word being *were*).

Since then, we registered inflation prints that would’ve made even Ronald Reagan throw up. We peaked at a CPI of 9.1% in June of this year, avoiding double-digits, unlike our overseas brethren. June also happened to be the month we thought a summer rally was kicking off. Then, we saw 9.1% and sold harder than they did in Margin Call.

But that still didn’t even trigger the deepest selloff of the year. That honor goes to Tuesday, September 13th, when the S&P shed 4.3% following August’s CPI report, which, like a character taking their glasses off in a rom-com, was way hotter than expected.

And if you happen to be out of the markets that day, your portfolio was saved big time. In fact, just 5 days this year account for ~95% of the market’s overall drop, according to an analysis by Barron’s. The others include:

• Wednesday, May 18th: -4.0% (TGT & WMT miss earnings, spending scare)
• Monday, June 13th: -3.9% (CPI on previous Friday, S&P enters bear market)
• Friday, April 29th: -3.6% (Amazon misses earnings, Big Tech dumps)
• Thursday, May 5th: -3.6% (Powell “assures” no rate hikes > 50 bps)

If you happened to pull your entire portfolio out on those days only, please call me. I have a (now very small) account for you to manage.

Of course, markets weren’t the only thing that was down. Housing sales just this past month hit their lowest level since April 2020. Then, it was a terrifying disease running all over the world. Now, it’s JPow’s rate hikes scaring us into homelessness.

Commodity prices, on the other hand, spent most of the year the opposite of down. Global oil via Brent Crude entered the year at $83 and ran >62% to $135 by early March, only to fall back to Earth by >44% to $75 by the beginning of December. That led to US gas prices hitting an average high of $5.02 in the week of June 14th, just a day after the Bronze Medal winner for worst S&P performance of the year. Yeah…tough week.

Alright, I gotta wrap this up, but you get the point. 2020 and 2021 saw markets and macro do nothing but skyrocket. 2022 showed up at that party and poisoned the keg, killing the vibe for everyone. For some shoutouts, let’s n

Redfin ($RDFN) ↑ 12.70% ↑

• Who’s got diamond hands? After falling ~90% this year, shares in real estate brokerage platform Redfin gained big on otherwise terrible news.
• Unemployment, represented by weekly jobless claims, spiked recently, according to data that dropped yesterday. Unemployment rising, generally speaking, is bad. Shocking, I know, but Redfin traders were loving it.
• And that’s largely because traders, like you and me, are selfish pieces of garbage. Unemployment rising faster than expected tells JPow his rate hikes are working to tighten the labor market. That means the probability of a 50 bps rate hike (or higher) coming in February is less likely.
• And and, that bodes well for housing stocks that are literally begging for lower mortgage rates. Lower rates = more housing activity = more $ for Redfin.

Netflix ($NFLX) ↑ 5.14% ↑

• You like doubles of Jack & Coke; Netflix likes double rating upgrades from formerly ultra-bearish analyst teams. You may subscribe, but you are not the same.
• A leader in yesterday’s big up day, Netflix gained over 5% on a rating flip, straight from sell to buy, from CFRA analyst Kenneth Leon. His take basically comes from a view that Netflix’s advertising spin puts it back in the streaming market’s driver’s seat.