Inflation, Hedge funds & China pivot - News and my thoughts from last week (28Apr25)
News and my thoughts from last week (28Apr25)
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This is stunning: 44% of Americans now believe they will be WORSE OFF financially in a year (mainly due to tariffs). We've never seen anything like this before. Not even during the Great Recession or the stagflation era (31% thought they would be worse off in a year in April 1980). (Source: Data from the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers) - X user Heather Long
Elon Musk: "The biggest mistake I made is to put too much of a weighting on somebody's talent and not much on their personality; it actually matters whether somebody has a good heart."
Interesting study on whether vaccines cause autism. Looking forward to is findings.
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The cumulative inflation from 2020 is 23.6%. Has income growth caught up?
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Import volumes will start drying up in the first week of May. Companies tied to imports: port operators, truckers, warehouses, forwarders, and railroads will all struggle. Layoffs the following week. POTUS needs to declare victory by mid-next week, or we will be looking at a doomsday scenario for West Coast supply chain workers. The logistics industry employs 8 million people in the US. - X user Craig Fuller
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT IN ‘FINAL STAGES’ OF TALKS WITH CHINA TO REMOVE SANCTIONS - SCMP
HEDGE FUNDS TO UKRAINE: TIME TO PAY UP Ukraine owes $3.2 billion to a group of hedge funds, and talks just collapsed over a $500M payment due next month, with no deal in sight to kick the can down the road. The debt is tied to how fast Ukraine’s economy grows. If it grows more than 3%, investors cash in. That happened barely last year after a 30% crash during the war. Ukraine wants to swap the deal for regular bonds. The funds, led by Aurelius and VR Capital, basically said: Cool, but we still want $400M in cash and new bonds for the rest. Kyiv’s argument? These contracts were made in peacetime. Hedge funds’ reply? Not our problem. Source: Bloomberg
My greater concern is the loss of lives due to some critical products. This can turn bad. Will the business be willing to put people over profits to air freight some of these?
Is Social media socialising?
GOOGLE IS ASKING SOME OF ITS EMPLOYEES TO COME TO THE OFFICE AT LEAST 3 DAYS A WEEK OR LOSE THEIR JOB PER CNBC
It is not about setting tariffs. It is about getting China to the table. If they ignore the USA, all changes would be irrelevant.
BREAKING: China made 5nm chips without EUV. Let that sink in. No ASML. No Nikon. Just brute-force DUV, clever engineering, and sheer industrial will. Moore’s Law didn’t die. It moved to Shanghai.
Chinese data centres refurbing and selling Nvidia RTX 4090D GPUs due to overcapacity — 48GB models sell for up to $5,500. China’s AI rush is leading to billions of dollars in idle infrastructure. The report states that an AI data centre requires a utilisation rate of more than 70% to 75% for it to turn a profit. However, activation rates remain below 20%, meaning a significant amount of capacity is left unused and many GPUs remain idle. - Tom’s Hardware
This can suspend most CAPEX investments till some certainty is established. What the market dislikes is uncertainty.
European Parliament in ‘final stages’ of talks with China to remove sanctions.
Daily ocean container bookings from China to the United States have plummeted by 20% compared to the same period last year. For trucking companies that have long depended on the steady flow of goods from the Port of Los Angeles, this downturn spells trouble. - FreightWaves
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Retail investors' market sentiment is FAR from depressing: A RECORD 279,000 new accounts were added on Interactive Brokers in Q1 2025. Options contract volumes were up 25% year-over-year, futures volumes up 16%, and stock share volumes up 47%. - Finchat.IO
U.S. TO CHINA-BUILT SHIPS: PAY UP—$5.2M PER PORT CALL OR SAIL ELSEWHERE. That oil supertanker made in China? It’ll now cost up to $5.2 million just to drop anchor at a U.S. port. The U.S. is replacing flat port-entry fees with charges based on a ship’s size—bad news for giant tankers, great news (maybe) for American shipyards. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer: “Ships and shipping are vital to American economic security and the free flow of commerce. The Trump administration’s actions will begin to reverse Chinese dominance, address threats to the U.S. supply chain, and send a demand signal for U.S.-built ships.” Oil traders are already swerving Chinese-built tankers like they’ve got barnacles—nobody wants a $5 million pit stop. Source: ZeroHedge
The entire COVID-19 crash of 2020 lasted 1 month and 3 days and wiped $7 trillion from the US Market. $6.5 trillion was wiped from the market this year in April over 2 days alone. The entire world shut down in 2020. The market right now believes the Tariff War is far worse.
China has stopped all liquefied natural gas imports from the U.S.
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