In what seems the blink of an eye to Spy, another year comes to an end. We are indeed, depending on your point of view, blessed or cursed, to live in “interesting times”. Extraordinary change has taken place in 2021, not least of all in our own industry. The wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, trading and hustling, lockdowns and openings, bankruptcies and successes, the shouting and raging, the squabbling and bickering, the vaxing or anti-vaxing and so much more, have woven a fascinating tapestry for historians to muse over for decades to come.
For Spy and our team, this is the last issue of the year. Thank you for sharing it with us and for all of your support. We hope you have a very happy Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. Settle back and enjoy something a little more unusual as Spy presents, 2021 in verse.
The year of two thousand and twenty-one
Had only just woken and begun
Before Spy knew it, the markets soared
And buyers, yelled, “We want more”
While Trump was making a welcome exit
Biden came to replace the bandit
Late night Twitter ceased to be as much fun
Jack Dorsey took away Trump’s loaded gun
The vaccine arrived to excited fanfare
With pundits yelling from every armchair
“It’s good for you”; “No it blooming ain’t”
To divine the truth would require a saint
ETFs arrived in a screaming torrent
The new funds wore every garment
Recovery, travel, cinemas, too
A fund was launched in every hue
Meanwhile, Evergrande did default
Alas, no money was left in the vault
Other Chinese properties failed
Investors’ hearts and nerves quailed
China said, “Crypto mining: no, no more”
The coins crashed hard, traders swore
Fear not, ye young resilient buyers
Bitcoin rose again from the fires
The supply crunch came out of the blue
With chips and everything else brand new
Hard to get; price inflation roared
Everyday things we can’t afford
Elon’s wealth went through the roof
Adding to some strange universal truth
To make a fortune requires not profits
Only an army of loyal Reddit poppets
In Singapore, so squeaky clean
It does appear a fraud so keen
Ng Yu Zhi stands so accused
Of others’ money he has abused
Blackrock’s assets neared 10 trillion
Larry Fink, muttered, thanks a billion
Assets soared around the world
The rich’s riches swirled and swirled
Franklin Templeton did some M&A
T. Rowe Price joined the frenzied fray
Vanguard also did some acquiring
PGIM added to the crazy buying
And so our year is almost done
Brief history written in a pun
What fate in store in Twenty-Two?
One hopes, good tidings, for Spy and you.
And so dear readers, the year is up. May the wine flow, the cocktails shake, the dim sum platters heave with the finest goodies and joy spread as fast as a dodgy conspiracy theory left to late night Weibo chatterers who have drunk too much Moutai.
Until next year…
