#32 Daily Financial News Round Up - Dec 2,2021
Market Snapshot
Dow Jones is down by 1.34%, S&P500 is down by 1.18%, and Nasdaq Composite is down by 1.83%.
How’s crypto-market?
Bitcoin is down by 1.43%. XRP, Solana and Polygon are the top three traded cryptocurrencies in the last 24 hours this week. The top 3 gainers are Terra, Lisk and Cardano. The top 3 losers are Aave, Basic Attention Token (BAT) and Curve DAO Token.
What news caught my attention?
Bond yields indicate the central bank may not raise short-term interest rates above 2%. On the one hand, this can be construed as good news as low-interest rates will incentivize investors to buy/hold riskier assets. On the other hand, low yields might signal the low fundamental health of the economy. A bond’s yield is the discount rate that makes the present value of the bond’s cash flows equal to its price. Hence, bond prices and their yields are considered excellent indicators of the economy as a whole and inflation in particular.
Uncertainty due to the Omicron variant wobbles the stock market, futures market and even the bond markets.
The trend of SPACs continues to make waves. Opal Fuels announced to go public with a $2 billion valuation by merging with a SPAC. Using methane from landfills and dairy farms, Opal Fuels make a diesel-fuel alternative. In 2021, companies valued aggregately worth $575 billion were announced to go public via SPACs.
My Takeaways:
SPACs have been around for a while. But, 2020 and 2021 saw renewed interest to go public via SPAC. The dollar amount and increased ubiquitousness of SPACs deserves research which the topic is undoubtedly getting. A quick search for SPACs in Google Scholar shows 500 papers, while on SSRN, there are 70 papers since 2020 on this topic.
Bond yields spark concern about the underlying market status.