No Rent Hikes in L.A. This Year

MARKET MOVERS

• High-profile hedge funds jump on the EV bandwagon, loading up on Rivian shares. Rivian attracted sizeable investments from a number of hedge funds. Laffont’s Coatue Management scooped up nearly $3.7 billion worth of shares, while Daniel Sundheim’s D1 Capital Partners invested $1.6 billion. Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global Investors bought more than $300 million.
  
  
• Big Oil is on course for near-record $38bn in share buybacks. The seven supermajors including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron are poised to return $38bn to shareholders through buyback programs this year, according to Bernstein Research. Investment bank RBC Capital Markets put the total figure higher, at $41bn. Read more here.

• Exodus from bond funds is mitigating the stock market’s swoon. Investors pulled nearly $160 billion from money-market funds and $17.5 billion from bond mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the first seven weeks of the year, according to Refinitiv Lipper. The exodus is already on pace to be the biggest in at least seven years. This comes amid worries about surging inflation and the Fed’s plan to begin raising interest rates. Read more here.

• Landlords in Los Angeles are barred from raising rent for more than 650,000 rent-stabilized units across the city until 2023. That number represents almost 75% of the city's apartment rental inventory. Barring rent hikes should help tenants recover from the financial blow of the pandemic.  We could see similar rules from other cities as the ongoing saga plays out.

• Global gaming sales are larger than the revenue of the global movie and North American sports industries combined. According to MarketWatch, global gaming sales rose 20% nearly $180B in 2020 which means it's bigger now. The pandemic spurred this growth and started with mobile games and got a lot of people into gaming and eventually transitioned to consoles and desktops. Source(4:02)
  

WHAT TO WATCH

• The next bitcoin bull run won’t happen until late 2024 or the beginning of 2025 if past price cycles are any indication, according to Du Jun, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Huobi. He told CNBC that bitcoin bull markets are closely tied to a process called halving, which occurs every few years. The next halving event takes place in 2024 when Du thinks there could be another bull market on bitcoin.
  
  
• FTX enters gaming by launching its own gaming unit. It's aimed at encouraging more game publishers to embrace cryptocurrencies, blockchain networks, and NFTs. It will debut with a “crypto-as-a-service” platform through which gaming companies can launch tokens and offer support for NFTs. The unit began hiring a fully-remote team this month, seeking software engineers with experience coding in the game engine Unity.

• If Russia invades Ukraine the data says you should buy the dip. If they do not, there is likely a relief rally, says BowTied Bull. If there is a war or there is a sudden switch in interest rate changes, the volatility will be large. This and some of the extra cash you have sitting around should be ready to buy at a moment's notice: Next 1-2 months. If nothing happens, just add it back to your normal dollar cost average. Read more here.

• SpaceX is taking the lead in Space Tourism. CEO Jared Isaacman and SpaceX revealed three new private space missions, which they are calling Polaris. It could involve the first crewed, orbital flight for SpaceX’s long-in-development Starship — a vital step for the rocket to become a viable means of transporting humans to more distant points in space, like the Moon or Mars.

• Bitcoin bill introduced to allow Californians to pay state services with crypto. On Saturday, California State Sen. Sydney Kamlager introduced a bill that seeks to allow Golden State residents to pay for state services using cryptocurrency. Over the weekend, a separate initiative by political advisors also launched to make Bitcoin legal tender within California. These efforts mark the latest push by states to adopt Bitcoin in some way.