Thursday 10/11/22

1. In MACRO, ENERGY & CRYPTO NEWS, we look at what’s going on with the US Senate, the UK’s fiscal hole, hopes for Rolls-Royce’s SMRs and the latest twist in the crypto drama
2. In TECH NEWS, Meta makes a massive cull, tech jobs dissipate, Twitter does a U-turn, Mastodon tries to pick up the crumbs and TikTok cuts revenue targets
3. In RETAIL & LEISURE NEWS, Next hoovers up Made.com, M&S gets downbeat and ‘spoons calls time
4. In MISCELLANEOUS NEWS, California resists sports gambling and ITV braces itself for an ads slump
5. AND FINALLY, I bring you some amazing skipping rope inspo…

So the US Senate hangs in the balance, Hunt faces the fiscal hole, Rolls-Royce SMR expectations are outlined and the Binance/FTX drama takes another turn…

📢 Are you a lawyer or wannabe lawyer? Do you want to turbo-boost your understanding of commercial awareness? I’m going to be talking at the Commercial Law Academy’s Commercial Awareness Bootcamp on Saturday 19th November with Jake Schogger. Wherever you are at on your journey, the content on this course is going to help you. We only do this once a year and it only costs £9.99. If you are serious about commercial awareness, you need to do this. Jake’s a Freshfields-qualified lawyer with tons of experience helping people into the legal profession and I’ve been living and breathing commercial awareness for over 20 years! We are both itching to help you! Go HERE to sign up 👍

BTW, did you know that there is a podcast to go with Watson’s Daily? In this podcast, I discuss two stories from the day’s edition in a bit more depth with a Watson’s Daily Ambassador, my mate Ralph (on the Weekly podcast) or a special guest. The idea of this is to help to give you more of an idea of what talking about this stuff could sound like 👍 You can find the podcasts on the buttons below:

US Senate in balance in close midterms election battle (Financial Times, James Politi, Lauren Fedor and Kiran Stacey) gives us an insight into the latest goings-on regarding the US midterm elections and what it means for the control of the Senate. As things stand currently, Biden’s Democrats have actually fared much better than expected, but we’ll just have to wait for more news. If the Democrats manage to make headway it’ll make policies easier for Biden to put through. So far he has been pretty ineffectual because he doesn’t have a majority.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last month or two, you will know that Jeremy Hunt has to plug a gaping hole in our country’s finances. But what exactly is that? What is the UK fiscal hole and what has contributed to it? (Financial Times, Chris Giles) does a decent job of explaining! It seems that definitions vary. At a basic level, a fiscal hole is the gap between where we are expected to be in public finance terms and where we want to be. Hunt wants public debt to shrink as a percentage of GDP and is probably going to give himself five years to hit that target (presumably because it is long enough to be plausible but short enough not to sound like complete fantasy!). In order to plug this hole, it is expected that he will implement a number of tax rises and spending cuts worth

📢📢 Also, It’s Thursday, so it’s time for the one hour weekly Zoom call for SILVER and GOLD subscribers! Click HERE to access the joining details. *** THIS CALL WILL RUN FROM 6PM TILL 7PM ***. As usual, during this call, I will do a round-up of the week’s news and then open it up to questions from you. After that, depending on how much time we have, we will also debate the following:

• What could Mastodon do to take Twitter’s crown?
• How would you regulate crypto?

You can just listen into the debate if you want to, but I thought I’d give you the heads up on topics for if you would like to engage. You will definitely get more out of this call if you take part in the debate, though 😜!

about £55bn a year by 2027-8. He has his work cut out for him because of rising borrowing costs, inflation, support for household energy bills and sluggish economic growth. I think most people will be looking to the forthcoming announcement of the Autumn Statement with a mix of fear and dread.

Rolls-Royce reactors ‘to supply fifth of UK power by 2030’ (Daily Telegraph, Howard Mustoe) highlights the company’s projections that its Small Modular Reactors (SMR) could supply a decent chunk of the UK’s electricity by the end of the decade. It identified four old nuclear reactor sites as places to plonk their “mini-nuke” SMRs as part of a wider plan to build 30. * SO WHAT? * Clearly, Rolls-Royce is going to be talking a good game to push the powers-that-be to approve development asap, but there are a lot of boxes to be ticked before they can actually do anything.

Then in Bitcoin sinks as FTX crisis spurs crypto contagion fears (Financial Times, Joshua Oliver) we see that the repercussions of the whole Binance/FTX drama is having wider repercussions on the crypto industry as bitcoin fell by 11%, hitting lows not seen since late 2020. New concerns emerged that Binance may well abandon its proposed purchase of FTX. Crypto’s latest implosion shows the virtues of UK approach (Financial Times, Helen Thomas) is a bit of an I-told-you-so piece that suggests that our own regulator has been vindicated in dragging its feet in this space while FTX/Binance: crypto’s leading man gets his comeuppance (Financial Times, Lex) reiterates the warning that although wild crypto asset price fluctuations are a nightmare for investors, having no regulatory protection and facing the loss of all their money is actually worse. As I keep saying, I believe that regulation is the way forward and could be the only thing that can convince investors to trust the exchanges again.

Want to engage with myself and the team at Watson’s Daily about these stories? Why not ask us something in the Forum HERE. It’d be great to hear what you think!

The tech carnage continues, Mastodon tastes Twitter’s crumbs and TikTok cuts revenue forecasts…

Meta cuts 11,000 staff in largest cull in company’s history (Financial Times, Cristina Criddle and Hannah Murphy) highlights what has already been well-flagged – a massive cull of about 13% of Meta’s employees. Zuckerberg blamed slowing revenue growth and a difficult economic environment with its recruitment division being cut particularly deeply (well you don’t need so many people in a hiring freeze, now do you?). The company’s share price rose by 7% as the market absorbed the impact while other cost-cutting measures like slashing budgets and staff perks, potential office closures and desk sharing for remote workers were also outlined. Tech jobs: mass lay-offs herald Great Redistribution of talent (Financial Times, Lex) does give hope to those who were affected, though, as it reminds us that there is still massive demand for tech staff in companies like Boeing, Lockhead Martin, UnitedHealth and Humana – not to mention banks and insurers. Candidates just might have to get their heads around more “conventional” environments…

Elon Musk says Twitter is ditching gray ‘official’ check mark hours after launching it (Wall Street Journal, Joseph De Avila and Alexa Corse) highlights the launch and subsequent withdrawal of a mark that was supposed to verify the authenticity of a user’s account while Elon Musk said “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months”. Great. Fun times ahead 🤦‍♀️

Meanwhile, Meet the German maverick taking on Elon Musk with ‘Twitter killer’ Mastodon (Daily Telegraph, Gareth Corfield) is an

interesting read about Mastodon, a Twitter alternative that is having trouble coping with the influx of disgruntled Twitterers. It was launched in 2016, has similar functions to Twitter (with similar buttons and icons) but is run via different servers that have their own rules and themes. Mastodon now has over a million active monthly users and around 489,000 have signed up since Musk took over Twitter last month. * SO WHAT? * This all sounds interesting, but Mastodon is not coping that well and it is entirely possible that it could go the way of Signal, which saw a huge influx of users when WhatsApp changed its privacy policy on how data is shared with Facebook – but nine months later, we’re still using WhatsApp and Signal remains a niche app. However, it is worth tracking though because it is possible that Twitter could implode.

TikTok slashes global revenue targets by at least $2bn (Financial Times, Cristina Criddle and Patrick McGee) signals an altogether more serious development as TikTok cut its revenue targets for the full year, blaming disappointing sales – although others say it was a result of overspending on salaries and things like social events. * SO WHAT? * Despite all this, TikTok’s growth is still impressive compared to rivals and its turnover increased six-fold in 2021 in Europe while its losses grew. I also think it is fascinating to see the company’s efforts to expand its offering by making efforts to provide more content including gaming and music. Maybe it is a good thing for tech companies to come out with all their bad stuff now as it gets lost among all the other bad news coming from the tech sector these days. When an upturn comes (and it will, although it doesn’t feel like it now!) it will be able to grow more quickly as all the “dead wood” has been cut away.

Want to engage with myself and the team at Watson’s Daily about these stories? Why not ask us something in the Forum HERE. It’d be great to hear what you think!

Next takes a chance, M&S gets downbeat and JD Wetherspoon calls time…

Next buys Made.com for £3.4m out of administration (Daily Telegraph, Hannah Boland) shows that Next bought Made.com out of administration. It bought the brand, domain names and IP but staff were all still let go. Administrators at PwC added that a large proportion of the orders will now no longer be delivered. What an absolute mess.

Meanwhile, M&S faces ‘gathering storm’ as profits plunge by 24% (The Guardian, Sarah Butler) shows that although sales were up in the six months to October, underlying pre-tax profits fell by almost 24% thanks to its Ocado grocery JV suffering. * SO WHAT? * Although M&S is trading well at the moment, it was much more

downbeat about the immediate future. That said, some shoppers are prioritising a family Christmas after two years of Covid disruption. Also, it could be argued that M&S shoppers are generally older and a bit more affluent, so may be better able to weather the cost-of-living crisis.

Then in Wetherspoons axes more pubs as cost of living takes its toll (The Times, Russell Hotten) we see that the company is planning on reducing the size of its estate by 39 pubs due to slowing sales and higher costs. The company announced that its business had traded broadly in line with expectations in a trading statement yesterday, but that business had slowed down in October. Tough times ahead…

Want to engage with myself and the team at Watson’s Daily about these stories? Why not ask us something in the Forum HERE. It’d be great to hear what you think!

Sports gambling gets a knock-back and ITV braces itself…

In a quick scoot around other interesting stories today, Gambling giants the losers after California rejects sports betting (Financial Times, Oliver Barnes and Christopher Grimes) shows that the likes of FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM have taken a knock-back from the state of California as their bid to get a sports gambling ban overturned failed miserably. * SO WHAT? * Given that California has 15 major league sports teams and an economy not far off the size of Germany’s, this is painful. About 35 states have now approved sports betting but the country’s three biggest – California, Florida and Texas – have not played ball. The US has been a major growth area for gambling companies like Flutter Entertainment (which owns FanDuel, for instance), so it’ll be back to the drawing board.

Then in ITV set for ads slump despite World Cup boost (Daily Telegraph, James Warrington) we see that ITV warned about a slowdown in advertising despite the fact that the World Cup tends to be a boon. The company doesn’t think that higher revenues in November/December will fully eclipse the weak performance over the rest of the year. * SO WHAT? * This isn’t great news but there could be some positives to come as the company gets ready to launch its new streaming service ITVX, which will combine ITV Hub and BritBox with a load of new shows. Could this have potential for growth or is it launching at the wrong time??

Want to engage with myself and the team at Watson’s Daily about these stories? Why not ask us something in the Forum HERE. It’d be great to hear what you think!

…in other news…

You may or may not know that I’ve been doing CrossFit for the last year or so (it’s a mixture of weightlifting, gymnastics and HIIT) in a bid to avoid an early grave after spending so much time sat at a desk and blobbing out generally! Anyway, part of this training involves doing double-unders (this is when you are using a skipping rope you jump in the air and allow the rope to rotate around you twice for every jump), which I find a bit of a nightmare. I was looking for videos on tips when I came across this woman – who is AMAZING! I think that her release trick is just incredible! What’s