| |  | TOGETHER WITH |  | | Good morning and Happy Cyprus National Day. That’s right, Cyprus is the only country in the world where April Fool’s Day falls on a public holiday. This is not a joke but a verifiable fact to start your day and remind you to question everything for the next 24 hours. | | | • | | Stock markets had their first negative quarter since the pandemic started. | | • | | Jeff Bezos and Asia’s richest man will duke it out over cricket streaming rights. | | • | | Russian tech workers are emigrating en masse. | | | | |  | Markets | Wall Street Posted Its First Losing Quarter in Two Years | | “... So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.” So wrote the poet Robert Frost in Q4 1923, and so said the stock market in Q1 2022.
For the first time in two years, the S&P 500 wrapped up a losing quarter on Thursday. Set against piping hot inflation, rusty supply chains, rising interest rates, the theater of war, and a two-year-old pandemic, most analysts are looking forward with caution. | Must What Goes Up Come Down? | The reasons markets are down can be seen anywhere these days. Go to a McDonald’s and pay 6% more for a Big Mac than a year ago. Ride the subway and see people sporting N95 masks. Fill up at the pump and feel like you just got robbed. Turn on CNN and see war on the news ticker, assuming they’re finished litigating the Will Smith debacle. Try to buy a PlayStation 5 or get a mortgage rate below 4% (good luck!). The important question is whether all the macroeconomic hurdles staring markets in the face foreshadow more choppy waters ahead, or if a rally in the second half of March means otherwise: | • | | The Dow and S&P 500 fell about 3% and the Nasdaq more than 7% in the first three months of 2022. It was their first negative quarter since Q1 2020, when the Covid pandemic began in the US. | | • | | But the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished March up 5% each, and the Dow rose 4%. Yet the S&P 500 has fallen 35 days this year, the most in any first quarter since 1984, according to Bloomberg data. | | | | The Hot Takes: “We think from here investors are going to, at some point, realize, wait a second, growth is slowing and interest rates are rising and inflation is still high,” Erik Knutzen, managing director at Neuberger Berman, told CNBC. “This is still a challenging set-up for equities,” he asserted.
Cliff Asness, CIO of investment fund AQR Capital Management, tweeted that the numbers are overblown: “Lots of articles on how the ‘S&P is heading for its worst quarter in two years’ where they make that sound like an important thing. That’s the worst of [eight quarters], a tiny sample, and the S&P is only down 3.52%.”
No Shelter: The bond market, traditionally seen as a safe haven when stocks are dicey, has not lived up to that reputation. The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate bond index — which tracks US Treasuries and high-rated corporate bonds — reported a negative 6% return this quarter, the worst since 1980.
Someone Has to Make Money: At least somebody is making good off that feeling of getting robbed at the pump. The S&P GSCI, which tracks commodities futures including oil, rose 34% in the first quarter, the biggest boost since 1990. | | | | | | Streaming | Bezos and Asia’s Richest Man Will Go Toe-to-Toe in a Televised Cricket Auction |  | | Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries and Asia’s richest man, and Jeff Bezos, chairman of Amazon and the world’s second-richest man, are about to go head-to-head in a spectacle like no other.
Both men’s companies will face off in a televised bidding war for the multibillion-dollar rights to stream Indian cricket. Given how tense relations are between the two parties, hopefully no one whips out an actual bat. | Opposing Batting Stance | Ambani, worth $100 billion, is a devout vegetarian and teetotaler who says he watches three Bollywood movies a week. Bezos, worth $275 billion, has a whiskey cellar at home and loves Star Trek so much he named his dog after a Kriosian empathic metamorph. Different as they are, Ambani decided in 2019 that he wanted a piece of Bezos’ turf. Reliance, primarily an oil refining business, moved into e-commerce to directly challenge Amazon in India. A legal fight broke out last year when Reliance, India’s top retailer, attempted a $3.4 billion acquisition of the retail division of Future Group, the nation’s second-largest retailer. Amazon had already acquired a $200 million stake in Future Group in 2019 and argued such a deal constitutes a contract violation. Things got so heated in February that Reliance staff literally seized Future stores in a de facto coup. Which sets up the forthcoming auction drama for the streaming rights to the Indian Premier League: | • | | For the first time ever, the wildly popular cricket league is auctioning streaming rights separately from television rights. The catch is the auction will be broadcast live on June 12, with Amazon and Reliance expected to make rapid succession bids that could top $7 billion, according to Bloomberg. | | • | | The winner gets to stream IPL games between 2023 and 2027, and, with them, attract a giant audience: Almost 800 million Indians have internet access to stream sports, and the first 29 matches of IPL’s 2021 season drew a combined 367 million viewers, according to India's Cricket Board secretary Jay Shah. | | | | Royal Rumble: The June auction could go from a tale of the tape to a full-on WWE-style brawl of the business titans. Disney, Sony Pictures, Meta’s Facebook, and Alphabet’s YouTube are all considering bidding, according to Bloomberg. | | | | | | SPONSORED BY OUTER | Mother Nature Is Waiting… | There’s a 93% chance you are reading this edition of The Daily Upside indoors. How do we know that? Because 93% of life is spent indoors. But if your patio, porch, or backyard felt more like a 5-star resort, wouldn’t your family enjoy a lot more time in the great outdoors? Outer is a new furniture brand offering stylish, comfortable, and durable outdoor furnishings with stunning modular designs that are adaptable to any space: | | | | | | | | Labor | Russian Tech Workers Are Leaving For More Stable Pastures | | The costs of Putin’s war are vast and often incalculable, especially in Ukraine. But in Russia, they amount to more than just the sting of heavy Western sanctions. Increasingly, the cost of war includes talent.
Young Russian workers, specifically in the tech field, are fleeing the nation in droves. In short, fears of ongoing political and economic instability have sparked a massive brain drain. | From Russia, With a STEM Degree | | Young workers are fleeing to avoid possible conscription. Meanwhile, tech firms with international customers are relocating to avoid sanctions and the stigma of conducting Russia-related business. The brain drain is not necessarily surprising given the global hunger for tech workers, which Russia produces with almost as much vigor as it does oil and vodka. A 2020 Global Skills Index report found Russians scored highest in technology and data science proficiency.
So where are these workers headed? High-end talent holding fancy European Union visas has fled to Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania. Others have decamped to Armenia, Georgia, and former Soviet republics in Central Asia, where Russians don’t need a visa. In total, an astounding number of tech workers are in mass exodus: | • | | In just five weeks since war broke out, 70,000 computer specialists have emigrated from Russia, according to one estimate cited by the Associated Press. | | • | | Through April, another 100,000 tech workers could leave the country, Sergei Plugotarenko, head of industry lobbying group the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, told a parliamentary committee last week, the AP reported. | | | | To prevent any further outflow, Putin this week signed legislation eliminating all income taxes until 2024 for Russian IT company employees.
Security Concerns: The fleeing workers aren’t necessarily trusted. “The IT sector in Russia is very closely connected to the security services,” Lithuanian political analyst Marius Laurinavicius told the AP. “We risk importing parts of the criminal system of Russia.” Lithuania has since blocked visa applications from Russian firms and startups. | | | | | | Extra Upside | • | | Ease up on the gas pedal: OPEC is insisting on modest oil production increases. | | • | | WWE is going to start making regular fictional TV shows (they will still be about wrestling). | | • | | Are you having a hard time finding other unbiased news sources like The Daily Upside? The Flip Side has a bipartisan team of news junkies that scour over 30 publications every day to find the most informed perspectives from the left and right. They do the research for you and summarize it all in an easy to digest 5-minute email. It's the fastest way to stay informed and get a balanced take on the issues that matter. Subscribe today.* *Partner | | | | | | |  | Just For Fun | | | | | Written by Sean Craig and Brian Boyle. | | No longer want to receive these emails? Unsubscribe here. Copyright © 2022 The Daily Upside, LLC., All rights reserved. 1230 York Avenue, Box 154, New York, NY 10065 | | | | |
