Every morning, we run The Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories in financial media. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.
But for whatever reason these are articles that are representative of some sort of chord that has been struck in Narrative-world.
Artprice100(C): The Art Market’s Blue-chip Artists Yield Nearly as Much as the Top Performing Companies in the American Economy [Morningstar]
Gender Face Swap Filter Is a Windfall for Snapchat [US News & World Report]
As rivals combine, US Foods can’t make a deal [Crain’s Chicago Business]
Back in April I wrote “This Is Water” about how financialization – by which I mean profit margin growth without labor productivity growth – has become the water in which we fish swim. We don’t just take it for granted … it has become completely unnoticeable even as it has transformed our capital markets into a wealth inequality machine.
Today, when I was looking through the most-connected financial media articles to write a Daily Zeitgeist note, I found three unrelated articles, each of which touches an element of financialization.
The first two articles touch on the ephemera, the frothy excess of a world where an essentially unlimited quantity of essentially costless money is available to pursue … whatever.
In this world of foam, only an idiot would actually invest in productive real-world assets. Why? Because in a financialized world the risk-reward-time dynamic of playing a new casino game dwarfs the risk-reward-time dynamic possible anywhere else.
Witness, for example, the ArtPrice 100 (c) index – a securitization of a tracking index for fine art auction sales. To be clear, you’re not actually buying or selling art here. You’re not even buying or selling shares in an ETF that is actually buying or selling art. No, you are making a bet on the “score” of the next fine art auction. It’s not just the functional equivalent of betting the over/under of a sports score with a legal bookie, it IS a bet on the over/under of a sports score with a legal bookie.
And worry not … “Artprice is preparing its blockchain for the Art Market.”
Next, we have the revenue “windfall” that a gender-swapping photo app is providing for Snapchat, now up … [checks notes] …. 190% through six months of 2019 and sporting a $22 billion market cap.
SNAP is a company that will never see a penny in GAAP earnings, of course, but that’s not what will make this stock go up or down. No, this stock will go up or down depending on the “score” of the next earnings announcement, where the game is how many Daily Average Users (DAUs) the company reports and projects for next quarter. Think they’ll top 197 million DAUs this quarter (last quarter was 190 million)? Then BUY! Think they’ll just hit their lowball DAU projections? Then SELL!
The third article has nothing to do with the ephemera and foam of financialized markets. It has everything to do with the barriers to further financialization, which are purely political.
US Foods is the third largest food distribution company in the United States, just behind PFG in annual revenues and less than half the size of the clear market leader, Sysco.
How do these companies drive profit margin and earnings growth? Through investment in more efficient supply chains and transportation networks?
LOL.
No, silly boy, they drive earnings growth through consolidation and the resulting ability to squeeze their suppliers more effectively. Consolidation which has ZERO financial barriers when your cost of capital is near zero and debt markets are tripping over themselves for the chance to throw money at companies like these.
The problem for further consolidation is purely political – will the FTC allow the mergers and acquisitions that the strategic planning groups at these three companies come up with?
The point of this article is that if PFG’s proposed acquisition of Reinhart Foods is given the green light, then a) US Foods drops to third place in the mega-size sweepstakes, and b) there really aren’t any more regional acquisition targets of any size (like Reinhart) for US Foods to go after.
The obvious solution? Cue a potential merger with Sysco to create the behemoth of all behemoths in the food distribution space. The only problem there is that this merger was proposed back in 2013, and it was nixed by the FTC.
Can US Foods get a merger with Sysco through the FTC six years later? I don’t know. But I’d bet a lot of money that they’re going to try.
And in a They’re. Not. Even. Pretending. Anymore. world, especially now that you’ve got Republicans as three out of the five commissioners, reversing the 2013 Obama ratio … I think they’ll get it.
Financialization is not a mean-reverting phenomenon. It’s too good of a gravy train for Wall Street, corporate management and the White House to stop now. So they won’t. Like any self-respecting Great White shark, the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy never stop swimming. They never stop eating.
Want to survive these financialized waters if you’re potential shark food? You’re gonna need a bigger boat.
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