Reuters (February 9)
“Sanae Takaichi has curb-stomped the competition. Her Liberal Democratic Party took 316 out of 465 seats…delivering the arch-conservative prime minister her country’s first post-war single-party supermajority.” While “investors may hope the ruling party’s historic comeback relieves pressure to cooperate with a fiscally profligate opposition,” that is unlikely. Her desire to revive “the heavily indebted $4 trillion economy” and return to fiscal stimulus will prove costly. Her “desire for a regular army makes expensive militarisation look more certain.” All of these “stated ambitions” augur “more turmoil for markets.”
Tags: Army, Conservative, Curb-stomped, Economy, Expensive, Fiscal stimulus, Hope, Indebted, Investors, Japan, LDP, Militarisation, Prime minister, Supermajority, Takaichi, Turmoil
Reuters (December 5)
“Assets that rise rapidly above their long-term trend are usually set for a fall…. This year, gold has risen more than 60% in dollar terms, its best performance in 46 years. Adjusted for inflation, gold has never been more expensive. Either we are witnessing another bubble or it’s a paradigm shift.” It may be the latter as speculative euphoria has focused on cryptocurrencies while “central bankers have significantly increased their gold holdings.”
Tags: $60, Assets, Bubble, Central bankers, Cryptocurrencies, Dollar, Expensive, Fall, Gold, Holdings, Inflation, Paradigm shift, Performance, Speculative, Trend
Wall Street Journal (October 25)
“Big Tech stocks are extremely expensive but have been for years. If OpenAI quickly comes up with a vital service everyone proves willing to pay big bucks to use, maybe even its price can be justified. After all, the only absolute proof of a bubble comes when it bursts.”
Tags: Big tech, Bubble, Bursts, Expensive, Justified, OpenAI, Pay, Price, Proof, Stocks, Vital service
The Economist (May 4)
“It is easy for investors to lose a fortune in the financial markets—and even easier for governments.” When Japan tried to prop up the yen in 2022, the nation “spent more than $60bn of its foreign-exchange reserves,” but supporting a currency “is expensive and futile.” Since breaking the ¥160/$1 barrier, there are rumors of another intervention. As long as the giant interest rate gap exists with the U.S., Japan would be “wrong to try to prop up the yen.”
Tags: $60bn, ¥160/$1, 2022, Currency, Expensive, Financial markets, Forex, Futile, Governments, Interest rate, Intervention, Investors, Japan, Reserves, Yen
Institutional Investor (March 20)
Across sectors companies are tripping “over themselves to incorporate generative artificial intelligence into their operations. Not to be left out, investment managers too are crowing about their adoption of generative AI, typically in the form of large language models (LLMs).” This, however, “is a complex and expensive project with considerable investment and business risks and ethical considerations.” There should be less concern on “how these models might disrupt the investment management industry” and more focus on building “a methodology to assess the processes and procedures implemented by managers to ensure the ongoing utility and reliability of their LLMs.”
Tags: Adoption, AI, Assess, Complex, Disrupt, Ethical considerations, Expensive, Generative, Investment managers, LLMs, Methodology, Risks, Sectors
Wall Street Journal (February 7)
“Luxury retailers, flush with cash, are spending big on real estate in the world’s most expensive and exclusive shopping corridors” including New York’s Fifth Avenue, Avenue Montaigne in Paris, and London’s New Bond Street. The “shopping spree shows that retailers are using their considerable cash to free themselves from the control of landlords and plant their flags on streets where they want a long-term presence.”
Tags: Avenue Montaigne, Cash, Exclusive, Expensive, Fifth Avenue, Flush, Landlords, London, Luxury retailers, New Bond Street, New York, Paris, Real estate, Shopping corridors
CNN (December 27)
While the economic progress made during 2023 is remarkable, “there’s still a long way to go before inflation is where the Fed wants it,” partly because higher prices have been “pervasive” and “sticky.” They’re not easily reversible. “More than 90% of the items tracked in the Consumer Price Index are more expensive than they were in February 2020, with most price increases landing north of 20% and some (fuel and margarine) approaching 55%.”
Tags: 20%, 2023, CPI, Economic progress, Expensive, Fed, Fuel, Inflation, Margarine, Pervasive, Prices, Remarkable, Sticky
Fortune (December 31)
“Tesla Inc. shares have fallen so far, so fast that some individual investors are piling in.” but the company still faces “mounting challenges” and remains expensive. “Even after this year’s record 65% drop, the electric-car maker’s meteoric surge during 2020 and 2021 has left it with stock-market value of $389 billion, more than Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors Co., Stellantis NV and Ford Motor Co. combined.”
Tags: $389 billion, Electric car, Expensive, Ford, GM, Individual investors, Market value, Mounting challenges, Stellantis, Stock, Surge, Tesla, Toyota
Washington Post (August 17)
“By next year, India will become the most populous nation. This, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s splendidly insouciant visit to Taiwan, will diminish today’s fatalism about China — the fallacious assumption that its trajectory is inevitably upward, so it must be accommodated.” Chinese labor is now “increasingly expensive and decreasingly abundant,” as its population peaks and declines by roughly half.
Tags: Abundant, China, Diminish, Expensive, Fallacious, Fatalism, India, Labor, Peaks, Pelosi, Population, Populous, Taiwan, Trajectory
WARC (August 7)
“Share of search provides a useful metric that any marketer can use as a surprisingly accurate proxy for the important, but often expensive, calculation of a brand’s market share.”
