Spy had to visit his doctor over the Christmas break for a long-standing ailment. The experienced, and Spy must confess, rather kindly and well-meaning Dr. Heng informed Spy that “a prolonged period of abstinence from alcohol would be most appropriate for your age and lifestyle. It is time to cut back.” And so, after much hand wringing, the inevitable has happened. Spy has found himself a new doctor. With the world set for a period of rather exciting geopolitical tumult, no doubt some extreme market volatility and concomitant corporate shenanigans, this was no time to give up on mankind’s favourite nerve-soother and adopt mineral water. Spy shall be taking on 2025 and the impending Year of the Snake as he has the last 15 years, with something strong from the various exotic booze cabinets of the world. Cheers to a successful year ahead.
One of the big beasts of alternatives distribution in Asia is looking for a new head. Citi Global Wealth has just put out a job opening for head of alternative investment specialists Apac to be based in Singapore or Hong Kong. In Citi’s words, the person “will be responsible for managing a team of professionals across Hong Kong and Singapore, responsible for driving education, training, and marketing of alternative investment products across all the client segments of Citi Wealth in Asia.” The job involves, developing and managing the pipeline for new product launches and managing the relationships with fund managers with respect to Citi’s Asia’s business. One of those juicy opportunities that does not come along very often, reckons Spy.
With Bitcoin bouncing around $100,000, Spy was not too surprised to read that an ETF has just been launched that promises to protect investors on the downside. What did catch Spy’s eye was the grandiose claim from specialist manager, Calamos, that they are offering 100% protection. According to the firm, Calamos’s structured protection ETFs use flexible exchange-traded options in the strategy. These are customisable options, which if used correctly, can supposedly guarantee to provide 100% downside protection. The 100% downside protection is, of course, achieved by limiting potential upside returns. There’s the kicker and Spy remains a little sceptical on that 100%. Definitely worth reading the small print with a dose of salt. The Calamos Bitcoin Structured Alt Protection ETF will start trading on the Cboe BZX Exchange on 22 January.
It was the funeral of former US President, Jimmy Carter, yesterday, and the stock market closed early as a sign of respect. Spy deeply appreciated this by an active X commentator who calls himself Stef: “If I were a former president, now looking down on America after passing away, I think I’d be pretty frustrated to see the stock market closed in my honour. What I’d really want is an epic opening bell ceremony, maybe a classic guitarist to play a few jams right before the open in the middle of the NYSE, then with millions of traders hitting the bid and ask at 9:30 AM ET celebrating their favourite or most hated companies and the beauty of free market speculation with the utmost ferocity.” Spy could not have put it better himself.
The greatest form of imitation is flattery, as the saying goes. Spy notes that China only allowed American-style class action lawsuits to be filed in 2020 with a change of local securities law. These suits, in a financial context, are usually against companies that did not disclose relevant information accurately or in a timely fashion, that led to shareholder losses when share prices tumbled. According to Caixin, Chinese investors are no longer holding back; apparently the number of suits filed for corporate malfeasance has jumped in the last few months as aggrieved investors seek redress. Spy can only see this is as a long-term positive for the Chinese stocks markets in general.
In the high-tech world of “find the next BIG thing”, quantum computers have been getting plenty of speculative attention, until this week that is. Quantum computing stocks got hammered because the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, said, very simply, “If you said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side. If you said 30, it is probably on the late side. But if you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.” Twenty years is a long time to be long, especially waiting for any of those dream makers to actually make a profit.
It is only the second week of the year and already we have US President-Elect Trump wanting to invade Greenland, catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, a lingering presidential crisis in South Korea, Great Britain’s amateur-hour chancellor wanting to cause a run on the gilt market, the yuan tumbling to a 16 month low, Singapore building a new economic zone with Malaysia, a Thailand kidnap drama and much more. Perhaps Billy Joel was right, we didn’t start the fire, the world has always been burning.
Spy was struck by a rather daunting thought yesterday. We are already 25% of the way through the 21st century. As Ferris Bueller might have put it, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Spy’s quote of the week, or possibly the year, comes from legendary trader, Stanley Druckenmiller, “It’s not about how often you’re right or wrong; it’s about how much you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.”
One of Spy’s trusty photographers in Singapore managed to snap this T. Rowe Price bus doing the rounds. Spy does not disagree: it is a changing world, indeed.
