#15 Daily Financial News Round Up - Nov 15,2021
Market Snapshot
Dow Jones is up by 0.20%, S&P500 is up by 0.21%, and Nasdaq Composite is up by 0.25%.
How’s crypto-market?
Bitcoin is up by 1.05%. It’s mostly green in the Cryptomarkets. XRP, Tron and Solana are the top three cryptocurrencies in the last 24 hours this week.
What news caught my attention?
MBA starting base salaries increased by $5000 on average in the tight labour market. The skills attained by MBA graduates are what the companies are after. Companies are willing to pay higher money to attract these high-skilled MBA graduate students. Good sign for B-school professors.
Investors were hoping to invest in new municipal bonds but were disappointed as the proposed new infrastructure bill does not include the municipal bond market. Disappointment of investors reflects in the form of increased prices and decreased yields. Past infrastructure projects were developed by municipalities who borrowed from Congress at subsidized rates. Tax-exempt borrowing by municipals helped the Federal government get additional revenue. At the same time, there was increased accountability on the infrastructure development as the ownership was at the municipal level. The new bill eliminates the intermittent financing step as Congress intends to pay for the infrastructure projects directly. With this new approach, Congress is losing out on the additional source of revenue that the past financing of municipal bond markets provided.
New international student enrollments are up by 68%. The increase reverses the Pandemic decline, which was a grave concern for Universities during 2020. Why? The revenue that international students bring in is a huge chunk of most Universities’ revenue sources. The trend reversal provides some relief.
High inflation pushes investors towards safe assets. Gold is one such asset, and gold is currently seeing a five-month high.
My Takeaways:
In the recent past, there was a decline in demand for B-school programs. As an aspiring B-school professor, this caused me huge concern. With increasing MBA salaries and on-trend (increased) international student enrollment, B-schools and the survival of MBA programs provide no reason for (for the near future ;)).
Everyone - consumers and investors - are feeling the impacts of high inflation. Consumers feel it in the form of less buying power. Investors feel it in the form of declining yields. At one end of the spectrum, some investors are parking their money in safe assets such as gold. On the other end of the spectrum, some investors are looking towards riskier assets such as cryptocurrencies. Strange are the ways of investors when faced with inflation!