Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.

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Crypto

What if bitcoin went to zero? (The Economist)

An exploration of a hypothetical decline in bitcoin to $0, with ripple effects not just inside the crypto universe but across the global economy. [Link; registration required]

Tech

Ford slated to spend more on EVs than on internal combustion engine vehicles in 2023 by Jordyn Grzelewski (The Detroit News)

R&D is shifting rapidly away from ICE engines and towards EVs, with the iconic American car and truck brand spending more on electrical vehicle development as soon as 2023. [Link]

Tech Startup Financing Hits Records as Giant Funds Dwarf Venture Capitalists by Heather Somerville (WSJ)

Early rounds of venture funding are no longer the lonely preserve of VCs and angel investors, with other much larger pools of capital that typically stick with more staid investments playing a much larger role in early financing. [Link; paywall]

Apple’s iPhones Will Include New Tools to Flag Child Sexual Abuse by Jack Nicas (NYT)

Changes to iCloud and iMessage will allow Apple to identify illegal child pornographic material (a laudable goal) while also opening up previously ironclad safety and privacy infrastructure to government surveillance. [Link; soft paywall]

A Conspiracy To Kill IE6 (Chris Zacharias)

The story of how a rogue engineering crew inside YouTube destroyed Internet Explorer 6 with a simple banner announcement. [Link]

Poppers

This Man Does Not Make Poppers by David Mack (BuzzFeed)

A series of legal loopholes and decisions to look the other way by regulators have left poppers, a staple of the gay party scene, one of the only party drugs that can be widely purchased. [Link]

COVID

How COVID-19 vaccine supply chains emerged in the midst of a pandemic by Chad P. Bown and Thomas J. Bollyky (PIIE)

A deep investigation into how vaccine production supply chains were developed and scaled, with detailed discussion of government and private sector entities and activity in the process. [Link; 60 page PDF]

Main Street Health July 2021 (Homebase)

With the Delta variant ramping up, employment and open locations have slowed, and there wasn’t any evidence that early halts to unemployment benefits in a range of states had a positive impact on employment at small businesses. [Link; 17 page PDF]

Olympics

When All Else Fails, It’s Time to See the Olympic Body Mechanic by Scott Cacciola (NYT)

US track and field athletes have been turning to one of the best-kept secrets in performance sports, a chiropractor with a very unusual and effective approach to dealing with nagging injuries of all kinds. [Link; soft paywall]

Pricey Travel

Disney Releases Sample 3-Day Itinerary of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Hotel Experience by Shannen Michaelsen (WDWNT)

Two days at the newest and most detailed attraction at Disneyworld are going to run into the thousands of dollars for a family of four, but the action-packed schedule may be well worth it. [Link]

The ‘$27.85 Beer’: High-Flying Prices at Airports Spur Port Authority Concessions Audit Order by Jose Martinez and Aria Velasquez (The City)

Airport vendor prices are famously high, but the gouging underway at LaGuardia and other New York airports is on a truly different level. [Link]

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Have a great weekend!

In today’s Morning Lineup, we noted how the major US equity indices have been a bit sleepy with each one having risen less than 1% over the five days ending yesterday.  As shown below, that lack of volatility actually extends back to the prior week as well.  The S&P 500 (SPY) has generally trended in a sideways range over the past two weeks. That was until today. While yesterday’s move higher brought SPY to the high end of that recent range, the reaction to the strong NFP report is marking a more distinct breakout.

As for just how narrow of a range SPY has traded in, in the charts below we show the distance (in percentage terms) between the intraday high and low over a rolling ten trading day span. While today’s move higher lifted the reading to 1.59%, as of yesterday’s close there was only 1.34% between yesterday’s intraday high and last Tuesday’s intraday low. Going back through the history of SPY, there have only been 146 other days, or just 2% of all days, in which that range was less than 1.5%. In fact, the last time that there was as narrow of a ten-day range as yesterday’s reading was the first trading day of 2018. Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.

In reaction to today’s better than expected Nonfarm Payrolls report, perhaps one of the most notable moves has been in rates. Whereas the S&P 500 is up a modest 0.15%, the iShares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT) is falling 1.5% as of this writing and is on pace for its biggest single-day decline since June 21st.  From a charting perspective, the decline is even more notable. Today’s drop has smashed through the uptrend line that had been in place since the spring. With that line broken, TLT’s 50-DMA is likely to be the next area of support to watch.

As for investment-grade corporate bonds, it is the same story. The iShares Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD) is down 0.73% today for its worst day since March 12th when it fell over 1%. As with TLT, that decline has broken the ETF’s uptrend that has been in place for most of the past year, and the next area of potential support is its moving averages.  More specifically, LQD is closing in on its 200-DMA which recently crossed above the 50-DMA.   Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.