Yes, the month of Nov has started. It signals the ending of the year when the festive period of Christmas and a new year is upon us soon. Many will aggressively plan for revenge holiday travelling and gift purchases as we finally get back to normal and leave COVID behind us.
Financial Institutions are also winding down their activities as liquidity dries up and they close their books for the yearend. Banks that are behind their revenue targets by now will aim to cut expenses immediately as a strategy. Citibank just announced Project Bora Bora to cut 10% of headcount. It has been standard practice over the last 2 years for all industries to adopt this move to slash costs by Q4 as a last resort.
On the weather front, we are unsure if the coming winter will be mid or colder than usual as there have been mixed signals globally. Some places have experienced warmer autumns while other cities are cooling down fast. The back-to-back years of the highest summer temperatures in 2022 and 2023 have made experts project that Earth’s warming will permanently increase temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius instead of the previously projected 1.5 degrees. Climate change is genuine and visible now. Surprisingly, the years of COVID lockdowns did not help Mother Earth to repair itself but accelerated the warming trend instead.
The feared prediction of a stock market Oct crash did not happen. It went the opposite way and we saw a strong rally instead. It started with expectations of an earlier rate cut possibility as inflation numbers eased. Oversold conditions, solid earnings and a sharp pullback in interest rate expectations have been the primary drivers.
With a likely stalemate of a US government shutdown in the pipeline and a recent Moody’s US credit ratings downgrade to negative, we may see volatility into this new month as liquidity tightens when banks start to close their books for the year.
Crypto prices are rising again in anticipation of BTC and ETH going mainstream. We have seen BTC jumping from 26k to 37k, a 42% increase within a month. I am still holding on to my crypto portfolio. I will try not to be too greedy like the last time and aim to take some profits off the table while playing within the new higher ranges as volatility spikes.
Hopefully, FTX will also be settled soon for clients (me included) to recover their claims as the judicial manager had managed to have some success crawling back some assets. SBF’s Alameda/FTX investment into the Anthropic AI startup looks promising now as valuation has surged since 2022.
This week at work was mainly to settle human resource issues and finalize the 2024 budget. I managed one exit and negotiated to bring in 2 new members. The exit finally ended 2 weeks of to-and-fro discussions and compromises to craft an amicable and professional breakup solution that was equitable to both sides. The new members were also needed as part of the overall stop-gap solution. This included an internal transfer of a junior staff.
The 2 rounds of budget presentation, proposal and discussion will provide us with at least 12 months of runway for our fund management startup. We will try our best to launch our funds by 3Q’2024. There is a lot of hard work and moving variables we need to get right in order to succeed.
I also had a video call with an undergraduate on Thurs who had reached out to me for career advice. I have been a mentor in the university mentorship program for the past 5 years. I wanted to pay it forward back to my alma mater. The participation also enabled me to interact with students that are around my sons’ age. I wanted to understand their challenges better and try to help them shorten their career learning curves. Since I started full-time work recently, I have decided not to continue in this program. As this undergrad continued to reach out to me, I was more than happy to agree to the call.
A long weekend holiday ahead and I plan to do a few 1+ hour-long runs which I missed doing since I started work 2 months back. I am also excited that my older son will finally start his work career in HK this week after finishing his 10-week orientation program in New York. Everyone is looking forward to the yearend holidays!
Cryptos rising
Budget 2024 week – presentations and round 2
HR matters – managing one exit and bringing another one in, plus a junior internal transfer
NUS undergrad video call
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