Putin at the door

Tensions rise Silver Banana goes to... [image]() Market Snapshot With returns like these, the bulls can’t help but smile. The Nasdaq rose 3.03% for its best day since March while the S&P climbed 2.07% and the Dow gained 1.40%. Think outside the box! Alternative assets have been killing the stock market and The Alternative Assets Newsletter gives you the critical info you need to get the best results. [Check them out while the opportunities are hot!]() Let’s get into it. Macro Monkey Says Putin at the Door — U.S. President Joe Biden, aka Joey B, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, aka Vladdy P, met for approximately two hours via video call yesterday afternoon in a tense discussion on wtf is going on at the Ukrainian border. The U.S. fears an all out invasion of the NATO partner nation while Russia fears not invading said NATO partner. If it sounds like a you’ve heard this one before, maybe in your history textbooks, trust your instincts. Basically, nothing got done. All the reports seems to indicate there was a lot of “well if you do that, I’m gonna do this” and not a whole lot of actual diplomatic achievement. In case you aren’t following geopolitical issues in Ukraine, allow me to elaborate. For several months now, Russia has been lining troops along their perceived border with Ukraine, amassing roughly 10,000 soldiers so far. Remember the Crimea? It’s that oddly shaped peninsula in southern Ukraine that Russia annexed way back in 2014. Turns out, that was just the start. Putin and his nation believe Ukraine is a rightful piece of the Russian Empire, and by the looks of it now, they want it back. So, given the U.S. and the broader West aren’t super tight with Russia, and given Ukraine is a NATO partner nation, this is not good for us Westerners. Although, to be fair, it’s not great for Russia either if the Ukraine does go full member nation of NATO, as it appears to be gradually moving towards by getting weapons systems from Western nations. So yeah, it’s heated. At yesterday’s meeting, Biden threatened economic sanctions against Russia, among other non-all-out-war options to deter the invasion. Russia, on the other hand, seemed rather undeterred, with Vladdy P standing firm and blaming the build up in tension on the West. Drug Money — Or, more accurately, needing less drug money for those medicines that literally allow you to survive. We’re not getting away from Joey B just yet because on Monday the President drew eyes to a portion of the Build Back Better bill that outlines a plan to make drug prices just a bit less astronomical. The $2tn budget proposal as whole is designed to outline a federal spending plan over the next several years with more of an emphasis on social policies. As part of that, President Biden has determined that prices of medical products are just too damn high. Perhaps the highlighting feature within the goal to drawdown drug prices is the cap on insulin prices. Diabetes effects over 34mm Americans, or just over 10% of our total population. As a result, insulin sales have been an absolute cash cow for big pharma in the past. But now, Biden and his governing brethren wish to limit the maximum cost a U.S. citizen spends on insulin to $35/month if covered by Medicare and private health insurance. According to Barron’s, some citizens pay well over $1,000/month for the drug. Other highlights include a cap on out of pocket health spending for seniors at $2,000/yr through Medicaid price negotiations, coverage of hearing products for those same seniors, and expanded ability for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate prices for 10 new drugs as soon as 2025 and 20 more drugs by 2028. It goes without saying, but big pharma is big mad. In a blog post from The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, they explained how lowering prices would increase burden in access to drugs, which at this point I think is code for “very cool plan, but you see, then we will make less money.” The BEST "Alternative" To Stocks [image]() “What else can I invest in besides stocks?” -You, a smart person There's a whole world of investment options out there guys. If you're only thinking stocks, you're missing out on some great opportunities. There are now markets for video games, sneakers, NFTs, vinyl records... The only problem is, nobody's doing the hard work to actually value this stuff! That’s why we’ve been reading the Alternative Assets Newsletter. They analyze the heck out of these markets each week. This isn't just about information, either. It's about results. They were the first ones to track these new markets, and their recommendations are already crushing the benchmarks. [Sign up for Alternative Assets Here →]() What's Ripe Mega Cap Tech ($AAPL, $MSFT, $AMZN, $TSLA) — If Atlas holds up the sky, big tech names hold up the markets. First off we got Apple, which went on a tear yesterday after analysts suddenly got super bullish on Tim Cook and the gang as a metaverse play, rising 3.5% and inching closer to a $3tn market cap. Tesla saw a boost of 4.2%, likely on positive news for chip supply chains with positive news around Omicron and an overall growth in appetite for tech names once again. Microsoft and Amazon rose 2.7% and 2.8%, respectively. That’s a whole lotta wealth creation right there. Oil (WTI, Brent) — Like a jury after a long deliberation, it looks like the market has finally come to a verdict on the Omicron variant. The result? Not important. No asset shows this better than oil prices which, after briefly touching $85/barrel, fell back to sub $65 only to reach $71.65 yesterday on a 3.1% gain. As for Brent, prices gained 2.7% yesterday. All signs point to high confidence among markets that Omicron won’t have nearly the effect on oil demand that OG COVID did. What's Rotten Comcast ($CMCSA) — Seems fitting that the single most hated company in America took a steep dive on a day when literally every other stock was green. Comcast lost 5.3% when an executive made comments that the firm’s broadband customer growth will not exactly be what was expected during this quarter. Given that Comcast’s other business line is gross, disgusting cable TV, this can’t be a good sign. Buzzfeed ($BZFD) — Yesterday we pondered over what the market may think in terms of valuation of digital first media names, like Buzzfeed. Well, so far, the answer has been a clear “f*ck that!” Shares fell 8.3% yesterday ringing the firm’s all-time (aka 2 days) return to a miserable loss of 28.6%. Now, there is plenty of time for this to turn around. The IPO market of today is wildly more reasonable than the IPO market during ancient history way back in the first half of 2021. Thought Banana: No Laughing Matter — Spotify, like many comedians proclaim, doesn’t take sh*t from anyone...including those same comedians. Heavy beef has emerged between the audio platform and high-profile comedians over matters like copyright and royalties. Spoken Giants is apparently a “global rights administration company” (whatever that means) and is representing the comedians in this dispute, the most notable being Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, and Jim Gaffigan. Releasing their content on streaming platforms opposed to the traditional Seinfeldian model has brought about an eruption in confusion that’s really only proven beneficial for IP lawyers and whatever “rights administration companies” are. Anyway, the beef comes down to this: Spotify pays a fat check for the comedian’s content and from there and pays various royalty structures on top of that. However, apparently Spotify has only been paying the comedians as performers and not writers, which would obviously increase payouts. The real question is how we can build fair business models on top of these new-age streaming services and distributed content channels. Non-fungible tokens make the conversation really interesting, but I’m not nearly high enough to have the NFT chat right now. Wise Investor Says “If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.” — George Soros Happy Investing, Patrick & The Daily Peel Team Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up for the WSO Daily Peel [here](. [ADVERTISE]( // [WSO ALPHA]( // [COURSES](=) // [LEGAL](=) Don't want The Daily Peel? [Unsubscribe here](. Click to [Unsubscribe]( from ALL WSO content Wall Street Oasis (IB Oasis Corp.) 20705 Saint Charles St Saratoga, California 95070 United States