10k Words | October 2022
Apparently, Confucius did not say “One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words” after all. It was an advertisement in a 1920s trade journal for the use of images in advertisements on the sides of streetcars. Even without the credibility of Confucius behind it, we think this saying has merit. Each month we share a few charts or images we consider noteworthy.
We are in to the home stretch for CY2022, the December quarter, and can paint a fairly dire picture of how investment and capital markets have faired. Global M&A activity is down 33%, while equity capital raised is down 65% according to dealogic data. Acquisitions of VC-backed businesses have dived in number, as Pitchbook charts. Gavekal shows the drawdown in dollars across equity and debt markets in 2022 dwarfs the GFC. And yet despite the declines, fund managers' equity allocations have been slashed according to both Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. In Australia, economists' inflation expectations have inched higher according to Bloomberg, while consumer sentiment has plunged based on the ANZ-Roy Morgan survey. Meanwhile, HFI Research chart's the decline in hydrocarbons in storage in the US in 2022 tracking well below prior years. EIA's own chart tells a similar story relative to the 5-year range.