Twitter is Dead and US Jobs are Booming!

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Market News and Short-Term Predictions

The memes write themselves on the latest news from Meta. Zuck has gone ahead and launched threads which is essentially a Twitter copycat. While everyone thought Zuck and Elon were going to get into a physical cage fight, it turns out the gloves are coming off early as Meta is trying to claim their spot in the micro-blogging space.

And Elon has already fired back by suing Meta for alleging Meta hired ‘Dozens’ of Twitter employees to launch Threads. I'm not sure if there are grounds, but I'm sure this will all be fought in legal courts for years to come. Regardless, I doubt the drama between platforms will end as users will compare the two over the coming months.

No one should be surprised by this move, as this isn't the first time Meta has pulled this move. Remember Lasso? Yeah me neither :) Below is a list of all the copycat apps that Meta has launched and shut down.

I'm secretly hoping threads have more staying power though because I already have more followers on threads than I do on Twitter! Granted they have already gained 30 million followers and continue to surge as the number 1 downloaded app. But we do have to remember they have Instagram which has billions of users getting funneled over, so they have a little help :)

Now for the million-dollar question. Will it help meta stock? I don't think it will have any impact in the short term, because Zuck says they don't monetize until an app hits 1 billion users. I think not monetizing is smart, they need an engaged userbase before hurting the brand with ads!

When it comes to macro news, US companies added almost half a million jobs last month, the most in over a year, according to data from ADP Research Institute in collaboration with Stanford Digital Economy Lab. With the estimate being closer to 220k, the numbers came in more than double the projection. That is signaling a hot job market in the US.

If you don't know already, the ADP National Employment Report is a monthly report of economic data that tracks the level of nonfarm private employment in the U.S. It is published by Automatic Data Processing, a company that handles payroll for about a fifth of all privately-employed individuals in the U.S. Below is an infographic breaking down the breakdown of hires across industries.

While this news would normally be perceived as good, the market pulled back a bit today on the idea that stronger jobs mean inflation is more likely to be sticky. That means rate hikes could still be on the table which would hurt valuations. The bond market agreed as 10-year treasury yields spiked above 4% again and pushed towards YTD highs.

I don't think this is that bearish of news though, and the markets seemed to have filled the gap that was hanging out there around $437 on SPY. Regardless of the news, the SPY again was a little overheated with an RSI of 70 so a pullback is expected.

Lessons to Be Learned

It hit me today that on a monthly basis, I get paid to hold cash in my fidelity long-term stock portfolio. Which is great!

But then I thought, how much am I getting paid in my tastytrade options trading account? Turns out it was $0.

You don't receive returns on cash that is sitting in your tastytrade account. With the money market paying over 4% and my style of trading, I'm most likely leaving $600+ a year in returns due to the difference in platforms. I don't know about you, but that amount is worth it for me to start transitioning the options portfolio into a new brokerage account over on Fidelity over the coming months as positions wind down.

I'll most likely still be using tastytrade as a screener for IVR/liquidity across stocks.

I do have to hand it to them as well for having a lower commission rate vs. fidelity of $0.50/contract vs. $0.65/contract. But again, that difference in commission would only make up for it if I traded a massive amount of contracts. With my strategy mostly selling single contract puts/calls, it makes sense to make the move over.

Portfolio Update

Options Trading Portfolio

Closing Trades

No closing trades this week.

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