Friday Finances – With the FatNarwhal Issue Two

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By: Michael Anthony Incorvaia

It’s Friday, which means Friday Finances (brought to you by FatNarwhal). Here is a catch-up on all the major events that happened this week. Including CPI data, the big dip on Tuesday, a major merger with Ethereum, and FedEx earnings.

The inflation data came in this week higher than much anticipated, which led to a remarkable decrease at the end of the day on Tuesday with the Dow dropping 1300 points. The month of August showed inflation data coming in at 8.3 % year over year, which is .2% less than the 8.5% that July was at. This was disappointing because many expected the inflation data for August to come in at 8.1%. This led all major indexes to drop, and the yield for the 10-year U.S. treasury note increased to 3.422%. All of this happened because the prices for goods and services continued to remain significantly high even with all the work that the Fed did. This showed that prices were stickier than expected and inflation isn’t going anywhere even with all the rate hikes. The CPI data showed that we are entering deeper waters for a significant amount of time.

There is no question that Bitcoin and Ethereum are both following along with the economy at the moment. Even with the successful merger this week that showed Ethereum is going from a proof-of-stake (PoS) system to a new proof-of-work (PoW). But the dilemma is that cryptocurrency has two major problems 1. Regulation, and 2. The economy. There are a lot of articles on the regulation with many of the regulation stuff still being fluid at the time, but the economy part is simpler. This is because Bitcoin and Ethereum are still widely seen from the public’s perspective as both an asset and as a very very risky asset, not a currency. This creates a problem because with high inflation and people having less disposable income in the time of a recession, this makes the average investor less likely to take a chance on a speculative asset like Ethereum or Bitcoin. This means that Cryptocurrency hit a wall where they are not going to move like it used to because from the looks of it this economic recession isn’t going to be a quick fix. But what I do see in cryptocurrencies’ future is their expansion of new use cases that can be put on a public scale.

For FedEx’s fiscal first-quarter earnings they reported $3.44 a share from 23.2 billion in sales, compared to the expected $5.10 per share earnings from 23.5 billion in sales. FedEx also reported that they are closing more than ninety office locations and are overall reducing costs in a multitude of areas like hiring. All of this led FedEx stock to tumble over 21% on Friday and showed many fragile areas of the economy that are getting hit significantly hard that many did not account for well. FedEx is showing us that there are still many problems currently within the economy that will take time to recover.

If you made it this far you have caught up on some of the big events that happened this week in the markets and now, it’s your decision where to go from here. And remember we are just Modern Narwhals, who do Modern Finances.

FATNARWHAL CO.