Morning Market Download from Invincible Money

Personal finance + economics + markets

Staying on top of the markets, economics and the global issues that affect your money takes a lot of time and effort. We distill it down to a quick 5 minute read to help you make better money decisions.

EconomyInflation up only 0.1% in March, 5% from a year ago as economy slows. Both numbers were 0.1% lower than expectations. The core CPI (CPI excluding food and energy) increased 0.4% and 5.6% annually, as expected.

While inflation is still way above the 2% target, it appears to be slowing as last month was the smallest since June 2021.

“As the economy slows, consumer prices will decelerate further and should bring inflation closer to the Fed’s long-run target of 2%,” the chief U.S. economist at LPL Financial said. “Markets will likely react favorably to this report as investors gain more confidence that the next Fed meeting may be the last meeting when the Committee raises the fed funds target rate.”

NewsBarry Diller, the IAC CEO and media mogul, said that publishers should sue over their content being used in Generative AI. One of the debates coming out of all the recent advances in AI is that the AIs uses content from all around the web to generate videos, text and images. However, they usually don't attribute credit and don't pay for the use of that content, which they don't own. It will surely be the next fight in Intellectual Property and fair use.

Saudi Arabia is buying Russian oil at record levels not using the U.S. dollar to avoid sanctions.

StocksThe market was flat on the release of CPI numbers for March inasmuch as they were mostly in line with expectations.

CryptoEthereum's Shanghai upgrade happened yesterday.

In an interview on CNBC, Anthony Pompliano was asked if Bitcoin can repeat its amazing quarter in Q2 (BTC is up 80% in Q1). His answer was that Bitcoin is an asset for long-term investors and now 50% of people have put 1-10% of their portfolios in BTC as a hedge against the financial system's problems.

Personal FinanceIn a recent video I talked about 35 ways to cut down on your expenses. One of them was to reduce the number of subscriptions. According to the Wall Street Journal, people are feeling they have too many subscriptions and are doing just that. For the past 2 quarters cancellations have outpaced new subscriptions. Cancellations for Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max are up 49%.

The financial planner who established the now well known 4% rule for safe withdrawl from a portfolio recently said on a podcast that his own portfolio is currently 95% CDs.

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Legal StuffNothing in this newsletter is financial advice. Always do your own research and think for yourself.