Stocks Down as Rates Rise
Stocks ended the week green on Friday, but that wasn’t enough to wipe out any early losses. As the Fed rolled out the latest round of interest rate hikes, all major indexes ended red for the week. The Dow dropped 1.4%, while the S&P and Nasdaq each dropped 3.35% and 5.65% respectively.
Jobs Growth
The labor market added 261,000 jobs in October, once again coming in higher than expected. The unemployment rate ticked slightly higher, up to 3.7%. This number was worse than estimates predicted. This marked the slowest pace of new job growth since December 2020. This may serve as a sign that the job market is finally beginning to cool off. If we’re able to slow down how new jobs are created, this could have a positive impact on inflation.
Hourly earnings Growth
Health care led job gains, adding 53,000 positions, while professional and technical services contributed 43,000 and manufacturing grew 32,000. Leisure and hospitality also saw large gains, adding 35,000 new jobs. As we’ve noted in the past, this was one of the hardest sectors hit by the pandemic, so it makes sense they’ve been one of the sectors with the strongest job growth. Despite the monthly gains, this was the slowest increase since 2021.
What it Means: Investors have been waiting for any signs that inflation may finally be slowing. Thanks to modest job growth and a rising unemployment rate, we may be close to finally bottoming out. Stocks have been down for most of the year, but this has also made equities more reasonably priced when looking at their evaluations.
Tiger Woods & Rory McIlroy; TMRW Sports
Last August, professional golf legends Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy announced their formation of a joint business venture, known as TMRW Sports. Pronounced as ‘tomorrow’ this project is all funding revolutionary projects, meant to evolve sports and media through technology. The two golf greats have plans to develop unique sports experiences using media and technology.
Proven Investors
Tiger and Rory have both found great success outside of the game of golf. Both are considered avid investors with numerous and varying businesses under their portfolios. For Woods specifically, this will join the TGR Ventures portfolio, which includes other projects like TGR Design, Full Swing Golf, PopStroke, and the Woods Jupiter. And this doesn’t even account for his successes in the video game industry.
For Rory, this joins his Symphony Ventures portfolio, which already included Whoop, Golf Genius, Golf Pass, and many more businesses.
The Future of Golf
TMRW Sports says they’re focused on building pioneering ventures that feature progressive approaches to sports, media & technology. Meanwhile, Tiger was quoted as stating he wants TMRW to build a better, unique future for the next generation of sports fans. He went on to say, “Together, we look to harness technology to bring fresh approaches to the sports that we love”.
Rory was quoted saying “We’re looking to reshape the way that media and technology improve the sports experience. In a world where technology provides us with so many choices, we want to make sports more accessible for as many people as possible..”.
But will any of this look like you may be asking? Shortly after announcing the new company, they laid out plans for their first project, a technology-infused golf league (TGL). This new ‘league’ already has a partnership with the PGA Tour.
The league will host six teams with three PGA Tour players each that will play 15 regular season matches on a virtual course. This will be followed by a playoff tournament to crown the first-ever virtual golf champions. The league will have 18-hole matches that will be broadcast every Monday starting in January 2024. The teams will use simulators for long shots, and take live shots for shorter ones. The entire match will last 2 hours to virtually play 18 holes.
Legendary Investors
While the entire business plan for TMRW Sports remains a bit ambiguous, that hasn’t stopped other legendary investors from handing Tiger and Rory investment capital. The following list of impressive athletes makes up TMRW’s current shareholder list: Josh Allen, Larry Fitzgerald, Tony Romo, Steph Curry, Chris Paul, Alex Morgan, Trea Turner, Sidney Crosby, Andy Murray, Serena Williams, and many, many more. Their investors come from a wide background of sports, which seems to align with the mission of TMRW.
What it Means: Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy are trying to modernize not just golf, but a wide variety of sports. Right now we may not know all of their plans long-term, but they’ve already got an impressive array of investors supporting the project. It seems like a tech-focused golf league will be just the beginning. We’ll keep watching for any new updates from TMRW Sports.
Google Meets Crypto
Google recently announced a joint venture with Coinbase, the largest crypto trading exchange. A few days later, Google cloud introduced its first Ethereum blockchain engine, representing the tech giant’s first foray into crypto.
Over the last few quarters, Google has been pivoting to a broader strategy with a wider range of financial services, and this seems to now include crypto. Some of the crypto-related changes coming to google include:
- Google Cloud will let customers pay for services via Coinbase and crypto assets
- Coinbase customers will now have access to Google’s blockchain data
- Google will use Coinbase Prime for custody services
- Coinbase will use Google Cloud for exchange and data services
Google went on to state, as crypto becomes more mainstream, companies will need scalable, secure, and sustainable infrastructure.
Few things energize retail investors more than when a new major brand adopts crypto. With Google seemingly finally embracing crypto, this should be seen as another sign of future legitimacy for the digital asset.