Patrick Boyle On Finance

Check out Eight Sleep and unlock $200 off using my link: https://www.eightsleep.com/boyle/ 

British stocks closed at an all-time high this week, but as exciting as a new all-time high might sound, the British stock market has been lagging US and European stocks since the Brexit referendum.
A recent report from Goldman Sachs says that the British economy is 5% smaller than it would have been had it remained in Europe.

Saudi Arabia’s plan to build a 170km long, 500m tall, mirrored city in the desert, filled with 9 million people has been curtailed to 2.4km long.

According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia’s government had “scaled back its medium-term ambitions” for Neom, of which The Line is the most significant sub-project.

The Saudi government had hoped to have 9M residents living in The Line by 2030, but this has been scaled back to...

Sales growth of electric vehicles has slowed dramatically this year.  Tesla delivered 20% fewer cars in the first quarter of 2024 than in the prior quarter, and BYD who was previously the world’s biggest EV maker saw sales decline more than 40% over the same period.
BYD’s EV sales were still up 13% when compared to the same quarter a year earlier, while Tesla’s sales were down 9%. Both companies have been slashing prices to sti...

Japan’s central bank raised interest rates last week for the first time in seventeen years, ending the world’s only remaining negative interest rate regime. The Bank of Japan also abandoned its yield curve control policy which has been in place since 2016, which saw it buying Japanese government bonds to keep longer term interest rates from rising.  It has however maintained bond buying at the same pace for now.

Patrick&ap...

After a decade of decline, bankruptcy filings around the world are on the rise.  In the United States, business bankruptcy filings rose more than 40 percent last year and non-business bankruptcy filings rose 16 percent.
Bankruptcies in England and Wales just hit a 30-year high according to the latest figures.
In Japan, corporate bankruptcies involving a total liability of 10 million Yen or more increased year on year by mor...

Elon Musk filed a lawsuit last week against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging the company’s deal with Microsoft compromised the start-up’s original mission.  Musk is seeking disgorgement, additional unspecified damages and specific performance. 

Let’s go through these claims one by one, see what legal experts have been saying about the case. We will also discuss the Open AI memo saying that the claims in this lawsuit...

Office mortgage default rates are rising around the world which could mean problems for the banks, insurance companies and pension funds who lent money to real estate investors.

Let’s discuss the distressed sales of office buildings that have been happening over the last few months, why New York Community Bancorp is down more that 65% year to date, what banking regulators are saying about loan portfolios at large US banks ...

A new Harvard Business School study analyzed the impact of giving AI tools, to white collar workers at Boston Consulting Group.

In the study, management consultants who were told to use Chat GPT when carrying out a set of consulting tasks were far more productive than their colleagues who were not given access the tool. Not only did AI-assisted consultants carry out tasks 25 per cent faster and complete 12 per cent more ta...

As the global fight over manufacturing share and exports heats up, with surplus economies doubling down on exports, and deficit economies discussing protectionist strategies, the policies of the largest global economies are in clear conflict. Are trade wars likely, how do they work, and can the global economy regain balance?

Michael Pettis Books:
The Great Rebalancing: https://amzn.to/4bDIGKf
Trade Wars Are Class W...

Adam Neumann has been trying to buy WeWork - the company he cofounded out of bankruptcy — allegedly with the help of the hedge fund manager Dan Loeb of Third Point.

Neumann’s new real estate company "Flow" has sent a letter to WeWork requesting that they consider its takeover approach. Flow has already raised $350 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, disclosed in the letter that Loeb’s Third...

A Delaware court this week voided Elon Musk’s $55.8 billion dollar pay deal with Tesla. The voiding of these stock options erases about a quarter of Musk’s current wealth.
The judgement came in response to a shareholder lawsuit launched by Richard Tornetta who owned nine shares in the company.  Judge Kathaleen McCormick found Tesla directors, who negotiated the pay package, were "perhaps starry eyed" due to Musk'...

Jesse Lauriston Livermore was a famed American stock trader known for his huge successes and devastating failures in the early 20th century. Starting as a "chalkboard boy" in a Boston brokerage, he became hugely wealthy as a trader first in "bucket shops" and then on the exchange in New York.  Livermore made millions in the Panic of 1907, the roaring 20's and in the 1929 market crash. His experiences are ch...

Big startups are shutting down. More than 3000 private venture backed startups failed in the last year.  Of the startups raising money, 19% were funded at a lower valuation than in prior funding rounds. 38% of VCs disappeared from dealmaking last year and more than a quarter of a million workers at tech companies lost their jobs over the same period. US corporate bankruptcy filings closed out 2023 with the most filings since 2010. ...

How much do you need to earn per year to be in the top 1%?  The answer to this question varies depending on if you are asking about the 1% in a given country or globally?

In today's podcast we discuss how much you have to earn and how wealthy you have to be to be considered in the top one percent.  We discuss the careers and lifestyles of the one percent.  We look at inequality research to understand if inequality is ...

How is China able to sell European drivers so many cheap cars? Customs data shows that Chinese EV shipments to the European Union have increased by 361% since 2021.

All over the world, Chinese automakers are taking market share which is threatening European automakers. 

Patrick's Books:
Statistics For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3eerLA0
Derivatives For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3cj...

Dozy Mmobuosi, the founder and CEO of Tingo Mobile has been accused by US Regulators of running a "staggering fraud."

Tingo Mobile claimed to provide mobile phones to rural farmers in Nigeria and build a fintech super app. It quickly grew into a multibillion-dollar empire with a listing on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange.

Dr Dozy, the London-based tycoon attempted to buy the Premier League football team...

In this week's podcast we look at the biggest financial news stories of the year, bank runs, The Elon Musk - Mark Zuckerberg fight, The Sam Bankman Fried Trial and much more.

Patrick's Books:
Statistics For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3eerLA0
Derivatives For The Trading Floor:  https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF
Corporate Finance:  https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC

Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/Pa...

Higher mortgage rates should be expected to depress the housing market, and the US has just seen one of the steepest rate increases in history.

Would-be homebuyers are facing massive sticker shock, with measures of affordability worsening at the fastest pace on record.  The US real estate market has frozen up with the volume of new sales slowing at a faster pace than even during the aftermath of the global financial crisis...

Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei describes himself as an anarcho- capitalist and says that he will take a chainsaw to the Argentine economy. He has campaigned that he will dollarize the economy and shut down the central bank.  What does this mean, and could it work?

Argentina mostly exports agricultural commodities but used to be one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Decades of economic mismanagement have dest...