

Let's Appreciate
Kyla Scanlon
A podcast about capital appreciation, the stock market, the economy, amongst other things
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 24, 2021 • 21min
Why are Gasoline Prices so High?
What is going on in oil markets??? Full notes: https://horse-quart-a62.notion.site/W... Alex Good (goodalexander: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m70Bc...)

Nov 22, 2021 • 11min
The Economic Importance of the Federal Reserve
Everything you need to know about the Old/New Fed Chair!! Full notes: https://horse-quart-a62.notion.site/F...
00:00 - Intro 00:17 - Who is the new Fed Chair? 00:53 - What does the Fed do? 02:58 - What happened today? 04:51 - Brainard vs Powell 05:32 - why the politics 08:20 - Whats next? 09:51 - What happens if they raise rates? 11:06 - Final Thoughts

Nov 20, 2021 • 20min
Should You Even Invest in the Stock/Crypto Market?
Some thoughts on being bullish humanity. Full piece: https://kyla.substack.com/p/being-bul... Topics covered this week on Everything You Need to Know The Huge Opportunity in DAOs The Infrastructure Bill (and the history of the U.S. Government w Ben Wheeler!) The Most Important Inflation Metric That You’ve Never Heard Of What Could Crash the Housing Market A New Fed Chair!!!! There will be a new Fed Chair soon. Either Jerome Powell or Lael Brainard. So what’s the difference? Tbh, it won’t be huge - Brainard is very concerned about labor markets, and has warned against raising rates too fast in a reactive response to inflation. Brainard (if chosen) will also likely be harsher on banks, embrace CBDCs, and give more attention to climate change. The market currently sees her as more dovish (she won’t taper as quickly because of her views on labor markets) which could lead to market reacting upon the news if she is chosen However, continuity during a crisis is always a good thing - which begs the question, are we out of a crisis? There is a lot more coming. What’s Going on With the Labor Market Joseph Politano, an analyst at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, runs Apricitas, an excellent blog on the economy and recently published a piece “Americans are Quitting Their Jobs: Here's Why That's a Good Thing.” https://apricitas.substack.com/p/amer... Governance vs Government This is where the narrative of crypto is interesting - for however you feel about it, the core thesis (theoretically) is to allow as many people in as possible so they can build as many things as possible. Constitution DAO This was a group of people that wanted to buy the Constitution. They organized a DAO, accepted donations in ETH, USD, etc and got ~15-20k people to donate - and roughly 20% of those donations were new addresses. They lost because they couldn’t cover extraneous fees. It was the perfect contrast between old-world style and new-world speed. There were just a number of barriers facing them to finalize the transaction. So they lost. I don’t know if the goal was a good or bad thing, but the thing itself was an introduction to possibility. To what can be achieved through an interesting style of collaboration (whatever the end goal was). I think most of us know that crowdfunding could have achieved a similar objective, but still - this onboarded thousands of people into crypto, and perhaps woke several thousands more up to possibility. I don’t know. It was cool. It was hope, to a certain degree. I think Ken Griffin will take great care of the constitution, just interesting. Final Thoughts: We have to take care of the physical and the digital - invest in the workers who make our world here on Earth an actual reality. With that being said, there is room to reinvent the way that people think about their ownership and autonomy. Perhaps its just changing hope - rather than hoping for a lottery ticket, there is hope more bullish bets on humanity - for the potentially endless opportunities of a better future. I don’t know. It would be cool though.

Nov 18, 2021 • 13min
What Could Crash the Housing Market?
Everything you need to know about the Housing Market! full notes: https://horse-quart-a62.notion.site/H... Current state of the housing market MONTHLY NEW RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION, OCTOBER 2021: Housing starts slipped 0.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.520 million units last month. Permits for future homebuilding increased 4.0% to a rate of 1.650 million units in October. Starts have declined from the 1.725 million unit-pace scaled in March, which was more than a 14-1/2-year high. There is a huge backlog of houses authorized for construction but not yet started. Single-family housing starts, which account for the largest share of the housing market, dropped 3.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.039 million units last month. The fourth-straight monthly decline pushed starts to the lowest level since August 2020. U.S. single-family homebuilding tumbled in October while the number of houses authorized for construction but not yet started jumped to a 15-year high. Zoning problems, higher land costs, a lack of labor, and inflation has inflated the cost of raw building materials As Ali Wolf writes “Every top market is considered seriously undersupplied as developmental delays hold back more vacant developed lots from hitting the market and builders scoop up available lots as quickly as possible” There are not enough homes - not enough resale inventory and not enough new ones being built. What is driving what we are seeing? Low mortgage rates: 60% are below 4% - thats LOW! Also homes are expensive - 79% of all homes sold are more than $300k There is also supply chain pressure What does into housing? Raw materials: and there is a shortage in absolutely everything. See here for a full breakdown: https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/new...Labor: They are aging out and there is a lot of competition in the space. There is also pressure from money entering the market from crypto and stock market gains (which is neither good or bad, just a pressure). Build to Rent "Investors are now working with developers directly to produce build-for-rent homes that have a physical appearance closer to a suburban neighborhood, but are marketed to renters rather than owners." One in 20 new homes comes into being expressly for the purpose of rental living--almost double the historical share of new homes built for rent. The number of single-family built-for-rent (SFBFR) construction starts reached its highest quarterly volume on record during the third quarter of 2021. Build-for-rent operators snapping up 15% of raw land in Florida & outbidding home builders on deals across many markets Essentially, there are not enough homes - and its very expensive to build homes due to a combo supply chain crisis and labor/wage crunch. But build to rent is also creating headaches too.

Nov 17, 2021 • 14min
The Most Important Inflation Metric That You've Never Heard Of
Everything you need to know about the Baltic Dry Index!
What is the BDI? BDI is simply daily dry bulk shipping rates— which reflect the supply/demand of dry bulk vessels. It's an index which measures the average cost of leasing ships to transport ‘dry bulk’ cargo (I.e. coal, iron ore, grains, etc). It measures costs of transporting various important raw materials by sea (e.g. coal, iron ore, grain) - It takes into account shipping routes, timing of delivery, ship capacity, and is a widely used benchmark in shipping.
What are the ships? Capesize: the largest ships in the BDI with 100,000 deadweight tonnage (DWT) or greater. The average size of a Capesize ship is 156,000 DWT Panamax: have a 60,000 to 80,000 DWT capacity, and they're used mostly to transport coal, grains, and minor bulk products such as sugar and cement. Supramax/handysize: These ships have a carrying capacity of 45,000 to 59,999 DWT.
Major dry bulk commodities include iron ore, coal, and grain - two-thirds of global dry bulk trade. Minor bulks include steel products, sugars, cement The BDI is good to pay attention to, but its not the whole inflation story. Its a divergence between things - so its expensive to be a human still, but its good to have pressure easing in some areas

Nov 16, 2021 • 47min
The Infrastructure Bill - Is it Actually Good?
Everything you need to know about the Infrastructure Bill! **NOTE: I know there are concerns about the misallocation of capital, and that this is a contentious topic. This is a high level overview of what it COULD be - and the importance of infrastructure in physical society** President Joe Biden signed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law Monday $550b in new infrastructure investment over 5 years -he $1.2 trillion figure comes from including additional funding normally allocated each year for highways and other infrastructure projects. * ensure safe travel * efficient transport of goods and services Ben and I speak at 13:31 about the economy, politics, and more. notes: https://horse-quart-a62.notion.site/T...
00:00 - Intro 01:02 - Infrastructure Bill 01:45 - An Overview 05:49 - A Kyla Aside 06:52 - Back to Business 07:26 - Labor/wage Shortage 07:42 - High level thoughts 08:24 - Spending 08:51 - How pay for? 10:39 - Crypto 11:28 - Final Thoughts 13:31 - Full Interview 14:35 - Set Up of the Senate 16:20 - What about the labor market? 18:01 - How to fix the labor market? 20:24 - Structure of the Senate 25:03 - Uncapping the House 28:14 - Attachment to Founders 30:58 - Consolidation of Power 32:50 - Short-termisim in the Political System 34:46 - Solution to Lobbying 35:41 - Puerto Rico and DC 36:33 - Breakdown of Policy 42:01 - Off-brand Story 43:05 - Best parts 44:33 - Flaws 46:32 - Bye Ben

Nov 15, 2021 • 17min
The Huge Opportunity of DAOs
Everything you need to know about DAOs! DAO are “a group organized around a mission that coordinates through a shared set of rules enforced on a blockchain”. At the most basic level, they use collective participation to fund things and get things done. I go on a bit of a tangent at 11:43, which you can skip if you want. Airdropping a token to everyone in the US is far from feasible, but just wanted to take some time to talk about what *could* be possible. Constitution DAO: https://www.constitutiondao.com **NOTE: This was absolutely not an ad, nor was I sponsored! Just sharing some info** notes: https://horse-quart-a62.notion.site/D... Bankless podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0l2m... Episode with Cooper: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7g6X... Linda's excellent piece: https://linda.mirror.xyz/Vh8K4leCGEO0...
00:00 - Intro 00:33 - What is a DAO? 04:14 - What do DAOs do? 06:08 - How do DAOs operate? 08:53 - Examples of DAOs 10:19 - Constitution DAO 11:43 - Kyla’s Opinion 12:53 - Trad vs DAO 13:56 - Bull and Bear Case 16:01 - Summary

Nov 12, 2021 • 18min
Why the Stock Market (and Crypto) Won't Go Up Forever
Full piece: https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-diver... Will the money that is generated by the meme cycle result in innovations that we never could have dreamed of? Or will there be a total collapse in faith because of the huge misalignment between expectations and calculated reality? “Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.” ― Luigi Pirandello For as long as this absurdness can persist, I suppose. And perhaps none of it really needs to make sense at all. 00:00 - Intro 01:09 - Coin called gm 04:13 - Governance structures 06:03 - Scapegoats 07:25 - Curve Finance 08:11 - Rivian 09:03 - Spicy VC 11:29 - Divergence in Expectations 15:16 - Final Thoughts

Nov 12, 2021 • 23min
Will Inflation Destroy Everything?
Everything you need to know about inflation! I'm going to talk about what inflation is, what causes it, the different types of flations, the responses, the impact of inflation, as well as investing ideas for inflationary environments Notes: https://horse-quart-a62.notion.site/I... 00:00 - Intro 00:48 - What is inflation? 02:41 - Measures of inflation 06:32 - Causes of Inflation 08:49 - Factors of Inflation 11:51 - Influences of inflation 12:49 - Different types of inflation 14:56 - Inflation Responses 17:13 - Inflation Impact 18:29 - How to Invest 19:22 - Final Thoughts

Nov 10, 2021 • 12min
How Does the Internet Work?
Everything You Need to Know About Digital Infrastructure! Full piece here: https://kyla.substack.com This piece is sponsored by @iodigitalindex’s BYTE ETF Index. All research and views are my own, and none of this is investment advice. Interested in learning more about BYTE? Click here (I do not receive commissions on this link, just a way for you to learn more!) https://iodigitalindex.com 00:00 - Intro 00:58 - Brief Recap on the Metaverse 02:12 - Facebook's Role 03:02 - Digital Infrastructure 04:48 - Data Centers 06:18 - Cell Towers 07:53 - Semiconductors 08:56 - The Stack 10:36 - Final Thoughts