To The Moon

This weekend, digital asset traders far and wide saw BTC head back to the moon after a quiet week and relatively quiet month [The Daily Peel... ](=) November 27, 2023 | Peel #593 In this issue of the peel: - Adobe estimates that $31.8bn will be spent on the four days beginning Black Friday until Cyber Monday in our glorious spending szn. - iRobot and Fisker had a ripe day, whereas Nvidia and Solar stocks suffered a share price decline. - This weekend, digital asset traders far and wide saw BTC head back to the moon after a quiet week and relatively quiet month compared to Uptober. Market Snapshot Happy Monday, apes. Hope you and your wallet are enjoying this glorious holiday weekend full of snacks, stuffing, and, most of all, spending. Friday may have only been a half day to make sure traders had enough time to take advantage of those sick holiday deals, but we still had a whole lot of fun. During Friday’s session of almost universally hungover trading strategies, equity markets still managed to move higher… mostly. All the major U.S. indices were green, except the Nasdaq, falling a minimal 0.11% on the day thanks in most part to two big haters in Apple and Nvidia. Small caps surged, with the Russell 2k leading on a 0.76% up day. Our apes over at WSO Alpha managed to not lose money once again, which is very surprising, to say the least. If you wanna stay tuned for all the action, be sure to go join the rest of the ape army and ride these 0.18% days like the one we got on Friday. Hope to see you there. Treasuries, however, you definitely don’t have to pay attention to because, obviously, that’s super boring. We’ll keep you updated anyway, and on Friday, yields mostly moved higher for no apparent reason. The 10-year is dancing around the 4.50% mark while the 2-year finds itself doing the same in the neighborhood of 4.95%. Yield curve inversions stay winning, in other words. Let’s get into it. Make Money in Real Estate Like the 1% [image]( Passive income is all the rage on TikTok these days. This magical stream of money that builds while you sleep, day after day, seems too good to be true. Passive income can come from a bunch of different places, but real estate might be the king of them all. Returns tend to be stable, and in the right market, can provide equity growth along with checks coming in every month. Breaking into the industry is the tough part—unless you rub elbows with the 1% of the 1%, you’ll need a broad toolkit to prove you have what it takes. That’s where WSO’s Real Estate Modeling course comes in. Whether you’re looking to manage office buildings or oversee a residential portfolio, we’ll teach you the tricks of the trade. Packed video lessons range from the basics of multifamily modeling to the nitty-gritty of GP vs LP equity. [Sign up today]( and get in on the greatest wealth building machine of all time. Macro Monkey Says Last Week’s Real Holiday By now, we all know that earnings szn is far and away the most wonderful time of year. But, in case you forgot like I did, there are some other actual holidays we have to discuss as well. I’m sure the sweaty palms and heart palpitations you experienced all day Thursday and after 1 pm ET on Friday gave you plenty of reminders that it was a special day as markets weren’t open when they normally would’ve been, but your gambling addiction aside, those aren’t the holidays we care about. Obviously, the real holidays were Friday and, arguably even more so, today as well. Hope you had a great Black Friday, but apes, welcome to Cyber Monday. As a nation of credit card swipers and dollar bill burners, it’s only natural that the most important holidays track our favorite pastime—spending money. The good, or maybe hopeful, part about these holidays is that we’re (at least supposed to be) buying sh*t for other people for once. Now, keep in mind that the peak of this 4-day holiday period is still here. Cyber Monday is actively going on, and in 2022, peak spending per minute took place from 8-9 pm Pacific Standard Time—a.k.a. 11 pm—midnight here on the East Coast. Those big spenders out in California, along with all the guilty pleasure purchases on the East Coast made in those hours, are the make-or-break hour for many retailers. "In summary, you apes brought it with the donations to this glorious charity we call 'the economy.'" But regardless of how many OnlyFans subscriptions the apes on the East Coast rack up during those “you up?” hours of the night, we have some preliminary data on Black Friday we need to discuss. In summary, you apes brought it with the donations to this glorious charity we call “the economy.” Adobe, Mastercard, and others all collect hella data on the day’s spending, and when it’s this early, there’s bound to be some conflicting reporting. We’re going off of Adobe data because 1) f*ck it, why not, and 2) Mastercard may have reason to be just a *tad* biased towards their own customers. Gut feelings FTW. According to Adobe, some of the most important data include: - Total U.S. retail sales increased 2.5% nominally from last year - Total U.S. online sales reached a record $9.8bn, a 7.5% spike from 2022 - Global online sales totaled $70.9bn, an 8% jump from last year - 54% of total online Black Friday sales were made from mobile devices, marking the first year in which that became a majority of e-commerce sales - $10bn more is expected to have been spent this weekend, and another $12bn is expected on Monday, both from the U.S. alone Crazy. That’s an estimated $31.8bn spent in just 4-days, meaning that implies an average bill of $9.23 per American, which really is not a lot at all if you think about it. But, given that over 1/5th of our 340 million people are too young to even open credit cards, and a myriad of other factors, this is basically meaningless for now. We’ll know over the coming days what the average, median, and other stats are for our glorious weekend of spending, but once again apes, we’ll have to stay tuned for that one. From a macro point of view, the performance of Uncle Sam’s credit card wasn’t bad, but it was far from the surge in consumer spending retailers were hoping to see. "Retailers rely on the fourth quarter for a sizable bulk of their revenue ..." Retailers rely on the fourth quarter for a sizable bulk of their revenue as this is the one few-week period in which we prioritize buying sh*t for people other than ourselves. And more broadly, the spending done in Q4 is a huge part of the annual consumer spending that drives 65-70% of U.S. GDP in any given year. Essentially, a bad Q4 is almost definitely gonna be a bad year too. And this weekend, where we kickstart the spending szn, is a nice little microcosm for how that ever-important Q4 spending will go. At this point, all signs point to a lukewarm Q4 that will likely resemble a nominal increase and a slight but painful real-dollar decrease from 2022. That by no means implies the end of the world, and in fact, might even be good for markets as JPow and the FOMC gang might give us some damn breathing room on these f*cking interest rates we haven’t been able to shut up about for over 2-years. But hey, Cyber Monday has barely even begun, so we apes do have a chance to boost those macro numbers and, hopefully, our stock portfolios with it. Get out there and spend as much of your and, even better, your parent’s money as possible this holiday weekend. Our economy needs you. What's Ripe iRobot (IRBT) ↑ 39.08% ↑ - The robots have already taken over, and they started in the smartest way possible: mapping out the layout of our homes while scaring the sh*t out of our dogs in the form of Roomba “vacuum cleaners.” - Can’t trust ‘em, but Amazon sure wants you to, as they've been attempting to purchase the Roomba-maker iRobot for about a year now. For some reason, this relatively tiny $1.4bn acquisition has triggered more of an antitrust review than damn Salesforce buying Slack. - But that changed on Friday. Despite the half day here in the U.S., EU regulators were still working round the clock to signal full approval for the deal to come soon. Naturally, iRobot boomed while Amazon was mostly flat. Fisker (FSR) ↑ 5.19% ↑ - It turns out that being absolute trash for long enough and making sure that the bar is as low as it can possibly get might be a legitimate business strategy. Just ask Fisker. - Shares have tanked over 67% YTD—even after Friday’s half-day-of-gains- largely in tandem with the rest of the EV and broader clean energy market. High rates have murdered demand for their products as they tend to rely on credit, meaning those payments have risen even more than the Magnificent 7. - Yesterday, shares popped, thanks to the absolute bare minimum. Fisker actually managed to file their quarterly report—something all publicly traded companies are required to do—after having delayed the filing thanks to “material weakness internal controls.” - Now, try not to fall asleep here, but that weakness in controls seems to be a $20mn charge booked as an operating expense that should have been considered in COGS. Now that investors know that the warning was complete nonsense, shares moved higher. What's Rotten Nvidia (NVDA) ↓ 1.93% ↓ - The mature, wise, and highly intelligent legend of investing that is DDTG Global’s Dave Portnoy once famously stated, “Stocks only go up.” Looking at Nvidia, that’s been way too true this year… until Friday. - Shares fell nearly 2% on this half-day once again, thanks to a not-totally-savory relationship with China. - It’s another instance of U.S. export controls bag-blocking Nvidia. The firm announced that a line of chips specially made to send to China while avoiding U.S. export restrictions would be delayed until next year. - Essentially, Nvidia has been forced to multitask and make a new line of products whose computing power comes just below the threshold of not being allowed to be sent to China. With the delay of that product line getting to customers, obviously, shareholders weren’t too excited. Solar Stocks (TAN) ↓ 1.26% ↓ - Treasury yields have been even bigger bullies to clean energy stocks this year than Scut Farcus was to Ralphie in A Christmas Story. If only these EV names could f*ck up yields like Ralphie did, though. - But instead, all they can do is tumble. Shares sank once again as treasury yields went back to their general trend of the year and continued to storm higher. Since inflation and the labor market have chilled out a little, and the FOMC has thus decided to stop hiking rates, yields have been much more stable. - The spike in yields doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of, y’know, drivers, causes, or logic, but it definitely did happen. You’re welcome for the thorough analysis on this one, but it’s a little beyond these stocks falling thanks to reduced demand as rates move back higher. Thought Banana Going Back to the Moon The United States hasn’t been back to the moon since astronaut Eugene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface at 5:40 am Universal Time (~12:40 am ET) on December 14th, 1972. However, BTC and other digital assets have been there much more recently. The highest price BTC ever reached was $68,789 on November 10th, 2021—just a little over two years ago. On Friday and into this weekend, the coin hit a high of $38,189, meaning we are still ~44% off from those all-time highs. But thankfully, “the moon” in crypto terms can be literally whatever the f*ck you want it to be since none of this has ever been even an attempt to make any sense whatsoever. So f*ck it—this weekend, crypto traders far and wide saw BTC head back to the moon after a quiet week and relatively quiet month compared to Uptober. The surge doesn’t have any major drivers of adoption or legality, but it is likely a continuation of the world’s largest asset managers continuing to get in the game. "... regulators have shown an increased willingness—or, better yet—a reduced hatred towards the idea of allowing spot BTC ETFs ..." Over the past few months, regulators have shown an increased willingness—or, better yet—a reduced hatred towards the idea of allowing spot BTC ETFs to trade on public markets. Big names like BlackRock, Fidelity, and other companies that id**ts on TikTok seem to think control the entire world are hyped on the idea. It’s a new way for them to soak up more assets and charge microscopic management fees while giving the easiest possible access to BTC's actual price movements. In other words, it is a win-win for everyone (allegedly). "... they need to buy a lot of it as demand for these kinds of funds is set to be astronomical." In order to offer a spot BTC ETF—which just means it tracks the current price of the asset and not a future price—these money managers need to buy BTC themselves. Further, they need to buy a lot of it as demand for these kinds of funds is set to be astronomical. In the financial advisor community, having 1% of your assets in “blue chip” cryptos like BTC, ETH, and others has arguably become the standard advice. If all those advisors want all their clients to gain a tiny bit of exposure, Fidelity and others are gonna have—wait, let me do the math—exactly a sh*tton of BTC to buy. Even if it’s only a percentage of clients and assets that get in on the digital asset action, the scale of these managers is more than enough to justify the insane anticipated demand. Naturally, with a secular driver like this fueling the rocket to get BTC back to the moon, some investors are potentially frontrunning the actual start of that process. As always, in digital assets, all we can say is best of luck. But also, this is one you’re definitely gonna want to stay tuned for. The big question: When will these asset managers get SEC approval to offer spot BTC ETFs? What price will BTC be at when that officially starts? How high can this thing go… or how low? Banana Brain Teaser Friday — I will sell you 4 CDs for £15 or 7 CDs for £24. I don't mind whichever, as I make the same profit on either deal. Today I sold 26 CDs. How much profit did I make? Answer £15 Today — If I lost 50% of all my money and then regained 50% but am now $50 off my old total, what was my old total? Shoot us your guesses at vyomesh@wallstreetoasis.com Wise Investor Says “Bitcoin is a hedge against the cashless society and the surveillance state.”—Andreas M. Antonopoulos How would you rate today’s Peel? [All the bananas]() [Decent]() [Rotten AF]() Happy Investing, Patrick & The Daily Peel Team Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up for the WSO Daily Peel [here](. 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