Macro

The container ship Dali, chartered by Maersk, lost power and brought down Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge on 2024-03-26, killing six road workers and walling off the Port of Baltimore — the top US port for autos and a major hub for farm equipment, coal and sugar. Cargo was rerouted to other East Coast ports for weeks, hitting regional logistics and port jobs, though national supply chains largely absorbed the shock.

Industrial sector sentiment turned mildly positive this month despite the disruption from Baltimore’s Key Bridge collapse, which initially raised concerns over port operations and supply chain delays. The swift federal response and rerouting of cargo through alternative ports limited broader economic fallout, allowing logistics and manufacturing activity to stabilize quickly. Resilience in supply chain adaptability and minimal long-term impact supported a modestly bullish read.

Housing stayed frozen as mortgage rates lingered at 6.5-7.5% and sales hit multi-decade lows, while office CRE distress deepened against a wall of maturities; home values held on lock-in scarcity, and the Fed's September cut brought modest hope.

A soft-landing year with resilient spending and September Fed cuts, but a bifurcated consumer (strained low-end, softening restaurant traffic) and EV-demand disappointment (BYD outselling Tesla, Hertz dumping EVs) capped the mood; October ports strike briefly snagged goods flow.

AI data-center power-demand narrative, utilities repriced as AI plays

A strong bull market, spot-Bitcoin-ETF approvals (an asset-gathering bonanza), reviving M&A and IPOs, Fed rate cuts, and the private-credit boom made it an excellent year, capped by a post-election bank rally on deregulation hopes and Bitcoin topping $100,000.

Amazon Web Services has acquired Talen Energy’s 960MW Cumulus data center campus in Pennsylvania, powered by the Susquehanna nuclear plant, in a $650 million deal. The transaction includes a long-term power purchase agreement and positions AWS to scale AI and cloud infrastructure with carbon-free energy. The move highlights growing demand for secure, sustainable power in hyperscale computing, boosting valuations for integrated energy-data ventures.

Oil drifted soft and range-bound near $80, but exploding AI data-center power demand, 16-year-high uranium prices, and a wave of hyperscaler nuclear deals turned the electricity side of energy into a powerful new profit engine, lifting owners' mood despite lackluster crude.

GLP-1 leaders (Lilly hitting record value) kept me euphoric early, but managed care melted down under Medicare Advantage rate cuts and rising medical costs, the Change Healthcare cyberattack disrupted the system, and Medicare's first negotiated drug prices bit;

AI-driven ad targeting and record political-ad spending powered a strong year; streaming reached profitability and Meta/Alphabet/Netflix led the sector higher. Steadily positive.

Gold breaks out to record highs on central-bank buying

A euphoric AI-capex supercycle: Nvidia's blowout earnings added record value and it passed Microsoft as the world's most valuable company ($3.3T); a July megacap rotation, the CrowdStrike outage and the Aug 5 carry-trade selloff were brief wobbles.

Early-year uncertainty from the Congressional Ukraine-aid stall gave way to April's $61B supplemental, and Iran-Israel strikes, the Israel-Hezbollah war and China's Taiwan drills sustained record global demand;