Cela's Weekly Insights | 26. June 2022

Welcome back!

There are only a few days left until the second quarter of 2022 comes to an end. The stock market rallied on Friday; however, the S&P 500 is still down 17.93% year-to-date. The good news: we have the entire second half of the year to make up for all the losses. I found an interesting chart from Edward Jones that shows the average return of stocks (S&P 500), bonds (Bloomberg Barclays U.S. aggregate bond index) and commodities (Bloomberg Commodities index) in the first six months of any year since 1975. I guess there’s no need to state the obvious, but this year has not been normal by any means.?

(US) Stocks, Bonds & Commodities | Average return in first 6-months of any year since 1975 vs. 2022 first-half return

Let's take a closer look at this week's market performance. It seems like things might be turning around. Investors have become immune to the harsher, hawkish tone of Central Banks and, therefore, are more inclined to take "risks" because of favorable buying opportunities. You can see that the appetite for risk has gone up significantly from last week. CNN's Fear & Greed index (see below) is up two-fold from last week's reading of 14.

CNN Fear & Greed Index | 24. June 2022

Market Performance | 17. June 2022 - 24. June 2022

US-indices made significant gains. The NASDAQ 100 finished the week 7.45% higher followed by the S&P 500 with a weekly performance of +6.45%. Here in Germany the leading index DAX 40 didn't even budge - probably because everyone was too busy at FONDSKONGRESS. Here are the pictures to prove it. Oh, and by the way, I couldn't find a single picture of my team and I. No worries I took plenty of pictures for you guys and here are some of my favorites:

Besides seeing many familiar faces, there were also a lot of interesting presentations at FONDSKONGRESS. The most exciting in my opinion was Frank Fischer's presentation where he not only explained his modern value approach but also talked about why he believed that we would likely see a summer rally on the markets: Quite a few indicators suggest that markets are oversold and there is plenty of cash on the sidelines waiting to be deployed back into the stock market. In case you missed his presentation, no worries, I got you! I recorded the whole thing, and you can watch it here: Frank Fischer @FONDSKONGRESS 2022.

Metaverse is closer than we think ??

Everyone is talking about Metaverse. Some fear it and some want to embrace it. I want to embrace it! On Thursday I did a short interview with Stefan Ri?e and Daniel Saurenz on whether "Brands" and Value-Investing" go hand in hand. As you can tell by the picture above we went all the way to Hollywood and visited Steven Spielberg's studio for this very important interview. I kid of course- Steven Spielberg couldn't fit me in his schedule on Thursday. He said Friday, but then I didn't have time. ??

Okay, jokes aside. The entire Video was taken in Frankfurt at PODIUM Redneragentur and you can see the final results below. In a matter of seconds, we went from green screen to virtual stock exchange somewhere in the Metaverse. We could have easily done the whole interview from the North Pole or Rio de Janeiro.

Obviously, we're in the very early stages of Metaverse. I believe that just like Apple revolutionized the way we go about life nowadays, so will Metaverse. We should embrace it and find ways to put it to good use i.e., in learning, communication, and medicine.

That's all for today. If you've made it this far, thanks for tuning in ??.

Cheerio!

Endrit Cela The Investment Fella - #ECB #mm ??