Morning Download from Invincible Money

Personal finance + economics + markets

Finance in 5 minute a day to help you make better money decisions.

Good morning investors! Hello to the 270+ new subscribers last week, especially the Romanians! 🇷🇴

📊 Economy

👽 Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was out over the weekend and earned a “meh” amount of $114M. After other recent Marvel movies like “Eternals”, “Thor” and “Ant Man” have been very lackluster, is Disney’s Marvel franchise wearing out its welcome? Who has time to keep up with the amount of Marvel and Star Wars content Disney is putting out?

Hollywood writer’s strike could last months as both sides (Writers Guild of America (WGA) vs. streamers and networks) are deadlocked. The economy of Southern California could lose $3 B from a 3 month strike and the production of “Stranger Things” has been halted.

• One point of contention is the use of AI in writing. The WGA wants none of it. Good luck with that!

🕑 U.S. President Biden and congressional leaders meet today to discuss the debt ceiling to avert a default. Sec. of the Treasury Yellen said Sunday “there are no good options” to avoid default by early June.

• Biden wants to raise the limit without any conditions.

• Speaker McCarthy said they won’t approve a deal that doesn’t include spending cuts.

🛢️ Oil prices were up 2% yesterday thanks in part to a stronger than expected jobs report for April.

💵 The CPI numbers will be out tomorrow and are expected to show an increase of 5% annually and 0.4% from April to March.

• The CPI has come down from the 9.1% high, but it’s still more than double the 2% Fed target.

📰 News

“Woodstock for Capitalists” was held in Omaha over the weekend where 30,000 followers of Warren Buffett met to hear he and Charlie Munger speak.

Highlights:

• The recent bank crisis has been fueled by a combination of fear, bad regulation and ineffective PR.

• A slowing economy will be a drag on their businesses.

• The “extraordinary period” of excessive spending from the Covid stimulus is over.

• Berkshire will not try to take full control of Occidental Petroleum.

📈 Stocks

🏧 U.S. regional banks were up yesterday, with PacWest up about 100% since last Thursday after stating they would cut their dividend to build capital faster. The CEO said they were sound (of course). The bank is still down 32% over the past 5 days.

🎶 Live Nation [LYV] was up 15% yesterday after posting a record $3.1 B in revenue, up 73% over last year. In addition, a record number of people attended its concerts - 19 million in 45 countries.

• Apparently, the Taylor Swift fiasco, where the company’s website denied millions of fans a chance to buy tickets, didn’t have much affect. Swift still sold more tickets than anyone.

Jenny Craig, the weight loss company, is closing for good and laying off 1,000 people as it closes 500 weight-loss centers.

Carvana is back from the dead, up 24% on Friday, after it said it expects to be back in the black and earning money again.

🔐 Crypto

Binance has resumed Bitcoin withdrawals after pausing a second time.

The memecoin Pepe has shot up 5,000,000% for one trader.

The DOJ is investigating Binance over possible violation of U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Institutions are still interested in crypto. Head of crypto at investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald says institutional interest is maturing and “there’s a lot of excitement in this space right now.” He says those in crypto are looking at new use cases, like tokenizing real world assets.

💵 Personal Finance

One of the best things you can do to improve your financial situation is to create a budget and stick to it. This helps you track your income and expenses, identify areas to cut back on, and save more money. List your income and expenses, subtract expenses from income, and adjust your budget as needed. Regularly track your expenses to ensure you're sticking to your budget.

Consider using a tracking app like Mint.com to make it easier.

💰 Be a Better Investor

🧠 Get Smarter

Improve your credit score. 35% of your score is made up of how much you make your payments on time, so of course make all payments on time.

A lesser known factor is the 30% of your score that is linked to credit availability. Keep your usage below 30%, by either paying down your card or increasing the limit. Example, if your limit is $1,000, don’t ever carry a balance over $300.

You could also get another card for another $1,000 or ask for a credit limit increase of $1,000, so you have $2,000 available, but never use more than $600.

👩🏽‍⚖️ Legal Stuff
Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice. Always do your own research and think for yourself.