NYC Residential Sales Tumble 25% As COVID-19 Chaos Strikes In H1

From Zero Hedge:

NYC is slowly emerging from its COVID-19-induced shock, and as politicians clash over what NYC's classrooms will look like next fall (or whether they will reopen at all), thousands of New Yorkers are trying to ditch their city digs and move on out to the suburbs.

Various real estate brokers and market analysts compile data on all aspects of the NYC real estate market. And a recently released survey by Property Shark found that, YoY, sales volume in the city declined by 25%.

But the details of the report are more interesting. As one might expect given its cosmopolitan reputation, Manhattan was the hardest hit of all 5 boroughs. Queens saw its median sales price climb by 10%, while Brooklyn sales activity saw the smallest contraction.

As more signs of life begin to emerge, here's the rest of the report, courtesy of PropertyShark.

With NYC now in Phase Three of reopening and the rest of the state in Phase Four, the residential market’s performance is of heightened interest, after a tumultuous first half of the year.

The year started off promising increased sales activity, only for projections and expectations to be shattered by the uncertainty and upheaval of March, followed by an April marked by historical lows in sales activity and the strongest pricing trends of 2020 by that point.

As the curve flattened and the general public started becoming accustomed to the new normal, the state started slowly reopening and brought a tentative return of transactional activity in May. June, however, presented a whole new picture with strengthening sales trends and the first significant year-over-year price drop, despite recording the highest median sale price this year at $717,733.

Transactional activity, of course, has trended negative since the start of the crisis. Marched kicked off with sales activity in its first week 15% higher than the same period last year, only to see it drop 36% year-over-year by the end of the month.  Sales activity bottomed out in April at 61% below April 2019, with a mere 1,549 deals recorded in the four boroughs in the entire month.

May, however, brought a tentative return of transactional activity, with a total of 1,337 sales recorded. While that figure may have been lower than April’s 1,549 deals, year-over-year, May marked a 52% drop in sales activity, as opposed to April’s 61%. June saw sales trends strengthen further, with its monthly sales activity the highest since the start of the crisis in March, coming in just 41% lower year-over-year.

It must be noted that June 2020 figures are skewed beyond the pandemic’s effects, since sales activity and the median sale price surged artificially in June 2019 as NYC buyers and sellers rushed to close deals before the new mansion tax went into effect in July 2019. All in all, 1,670 residential sales were recorded between June 1 and June 28, 2020. Of this, 476 were recorded in the third week of the month, marking the strongest week of sales since late March.

Overall, May 2020 kept up with that trend too, with the exception of one week, which came in a -3% year-over-year. Despite that, May closed with a median sale price of $705,000, marking a 4% gain over May 2019. Additionally, this also made May the second-most expensive month in NYC up to that point, surpassed only by April’s $712,000 median.

June kicked off with the strongest pricing trends so far this year, posting a median sale price of $743,000, surpassing May figures. That represented a 2% gain over year-ago figures, a notable achievement considering June 2019 featured the strongest pricing trends of H1 2019. The rest of the month however, consistently posted weekly median sale prices lower than their year-ago correspondents – again due to the artificially strengthened pricing trends of 2019.

* * * *

Source: PropertyShark.com

How Do We Change The Leadership Of Our Quasi-Sovereign Big-Tech Neofeudal Nobility?

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

You better bow low and pay up, peasant, or your voice in the digital world will disappear just as quickly as your democracy's control over Big Tech.

Who's the junior partner in global hegemony, Big Tech or the U.S. government? The question would have been laughable just a few years ago, but now it's a viable debate when we ask questions like: which one plays a larger role in your daily life, Big Tech platforms or the government? If controlling the flow of data is now the primary means of production, then who owns control of data flows? As we all know, the answer is Big Tech platforms: Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix et al.

As Mark, Jesse and I discuss in our latest salon, The Rise and Fall of the Neo-Feudal Network State, these platforms have become defacto sovereign states with global hegemony over surveillance, censorship, data collection and behavioral influence--what Jesse calls network states.

Since the leadership of these private-sector sovereign entities is effectively monarchical, it is also effectively neofeudal: these platforms are private, closed source systems, managed by black-box algorithms hidden from users and regulators. This is the acme of neofeudalism: there is no democratic control at all by users or citizens.

Whether Facebook will ever hit upon a more coherent approach to protecting the free expression of the powerless as well as the powerful depends on whether it ever comes to grip with its own role as the largest censor in the history of the world. (emphasis added by CHS)

"Facebook is governing human expression more than any government does or ever has," said Susan Benesch, a faculty associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. "They have taken on the task of defining hate speech and other unacceptable speech, which is a quasi-sovereign power... and we the public have no opportunity to contribute to the decision-making, as would be the case if the decisions were being made by a government."

Indeed, despite company executives' paying lip service to the concept of democracy from time to time, Facebook is structurally monarchical.

To the University of Virginia media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan, campaigners against Facebook need to come to grips with the global nature of its threat.

"The US got off easy in 2016-- the same year that Rodrigo Duterte took over the Philippines by riding Facebook to victory, and two years after Narendra Modi took over India by riding Facebook to victory. Much of the world suffers from all of the Facebook maladies much worse than the US."

Vaidhyanathan argued that solutions to Facebook's ills cannot be achieved with oversight from above but will require a more fundamental shift from below. "The root of Facebook is the fact that it is a global intrusive surveillance system that leverages all that behavioral data to target both ads and non-ad content at us."

- Source: 'Too big to fail': why even a historic ad boycott won't change Facebook.

In other words, the lords of Big Tech control the digital means of production, and the peasants and serfs are powerless. That is the perfection of neofeudalism. As Mark and Jesse posit, this has effectively flipped the central states (governments) into the junior partners of the privately owned network state/central state global hegemony.

In response, governments now view the quasi-sovereign Big Tech platforms domiciled in their borders as key allies in the struggle for global hegemony. Hence we are witnessing pushback against Chinese social-media giant TikTok, which as Jesse points out, is indeed a global platform for propaganda just like Facebook, Google, et al.

Recall that propaganda isn't just what you're allowed to see, it's also what you're not allowed to see and also what's being promoted on Page One in your feed and what's been buried on Page 23 (to use an old-media analogy).

Meanwhile, these privately owned quasi-sovereign networks are immensely profitable, as they sell the data they collect to advertisers and marketers, including political campaigns. Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. wield more political power and influence than traditional political advocacy groups because their cash hoards are so stupendous.

The feedback loop is ominous: as government regulators are throttled or marginalized by political pressure bought by privately owned quasi-sovereign Big Tech platforms, the platforms are in effect protected from any democratic control exerted by the citizenry in their nominal "home nation," not to mention the citizenry they influence in other nations.

Unlike the old monopolies like Standard Oil, the quasi-sovereign Big Tech platforms are the media, so there's nothing left to balance their skyrocketing power. As we discuss in the podcast, their control is (in Jesse's term) molecular, so they've effectively dismantled the legacy social-political structures such as working class, middle class, etc.

With mass media replaced by Big Tech's data-flow / behavioral-control molecular media, political coherence has been lost, and so divide-and conquer control mechanisms are now essentially infinite: any group, no matter how coherent, can be splintered into warring fragments by the Big Tech Neofeudal Nobility.

After all, they have the data and they can use it however they want, with no limits or controls by users, citizens or nominally democratic governments.

How do we change the leadership of our Neofeudal Nobility, the privately owned, quasi-sovereign Big Tech platforms? The short answer is: we don't. There is no mechanism left for influencing anything in the monarchies of Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, etc al.

Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss. You better bow low and pay up, peasant, or your voice in the digital world will disappear just as quickly as your democracy's control over Big Tech.

*  *  *

Mobile Trading Surges In India As Retail Joins Stock Market Party

From Zero Hedge:

The rise of mobile daytraders has been a global phenomenon during the pandemic. From the US to Europe to China to India, pajama traders swinging stock and options positions from their smartphones steadily increased as global central banks printed trillions of dollars and ignited a historic rally in world stocks. 

Central bank balance sheets expanded rapidly as pandemic began. 

World stocks drop on the pandemic, but V-shaped recovered as central banks unleashed trillions of dollar into global markets. It was the run-up when retail decided to download mobile apps for trading and join the stock market party. 

More recently, daytraders in China have seen a chaotic melt-up catapult the tech-heavy ChiNext index 40% in the last 30 trading sessions. 

US daytraders using the Robinhood mobile app bored during virus lockdowns with no sports and confined to their homes, panic bought shares of bankrupted companies, outpaced hedge funds in returns over the last several months.   

The rise of daytraders using smartphones has also become popular in India. Mobile trading recently overtook internet-based trading in cash markets. 

Nitin Kamath, founder, and CEO of Zerodha, told BloombergQuint, inexpensive smartphones have made mobile trading more accessible to the masses who don't have access to a desktop computer or traditional stockbroker. 

Official data via the National Stock Exchange of India shows mobile trading turnover in cash markets increased 9-percentage-points to 23% since February, compared against the 4-percentage-point rise to 13% for internet trading during the period. 

As of June, the mobile share of trading on the National Stock Exchange was about a quarter of all traders. 

Upstox, an Indian discount brokerage firm operated by RKSV Securities India Pvt., which has a mobile app for trading - has seen a rapid increase in users this year: 

"Over the last year, Upstox has on-boarded a large number of digitally savvy traders from non-metro cities," Ravi Kumar, co-founder, said in a statement. "Over 80% of the total customer base acquired by the company is from tier-2 and tier-3 cities like Nashik, Jaipur, Guntur, Patna, Kannur, Tiruvallur & Nainital and among others. Currently, almost 75% of the total customer base is below the age of 35." 

BloombergQuint notes, "as more investors flock to equity markets, shares of listed brokerages surged in the last three months. ICICI Securities, IIFL Securities Ltd., 5paisa Capital Ltd. and Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd. jumped 33-101% during the period." 

NIFTY's rising wedge broke - can't get too excited about this pattern's downside break. 

Retail is going all-in into equity markets during a global pandemic, worldwide recession, and central banks juicing stock markets with trillions of dollars will ultimately end in tears.

We've already outlined Robinhood traders blowing up their accounts by taking out too much leverage. 

• Robinhood Trader's Suicide Is Warning For Millennial Investors
• ‪"Almost $1 Million Disappeared": A Robinhood Horror Story

And how will this all end for inexperienced daytraders using mobile apps to panic buy stocks across the world at record high valuations? Well, Leon Cooperman recently said it 'won't end well'. 

Bill Ackman's New "The Simpsons"-Inspired Investment Raises $4BN In "Largest IPO For A SPV"

From Zero Hedge:

Bill Ackman's "The Simpsons"-inspired "blank check" investing vehicle, known as "Pershing Square Tontine Holdings", is set to raise between $3 billion and $4 billion during its upcoming IPO after Ackman increased the size of the offering by $1 billion.

The deal, which will be the largest-ever IPO by a special purpose vehicle, a legal entity created to fulfill a specific, narrow purpose, will go public by offering 200,000,000 units, each 'unit' including one share of common stock and 1/9th of one redeemable warrant, plus a warrant that comes with special restrictions, at a price of $20.

Typically, a tontine is an investing arrangement where buyers are paid an annuity until they die. As holders die, the annuity paid to everyone else grows, until the last surviving investor receives whatever is left in the pot. It experienced peak popularity in 18th and 19th-Century France.

Ackman's fund won't function like a traditional tontine, but the Ackaman name has allowed him to offer 200 million units for $20 a piece.

As WSJ explained in a piece published on Monday, these "blank-check" companies are essentially big pools of cash that are listed on an exchange. Their sole purpose is typically to acquire a private company. Once that happens, the private firm essentially takes the 'blank check' firm's place on the exchange. The IPO market still hasn't recovered from last year's string of embarrassments (though several companies that debuted in the class of 2019 are now trading far above their offering levels), and the 'blank check' is a backdoor for companies looking to list, but don't feel confident about market conditions for an IPO. So, instead, they can work out a deal with somebody like Ackman, with the idea that he can use his credibility to raise more capital.

The fund hasn't stipulated what sector it's supposed to be targeting, though filings have stated that "mature, VC-backed unicorns" are an area of interest. The fund has also cited large IPO candidates, PE-backed companies in need of capital and private and family owned businesses worth more than $10 billion.

Deals like these have been on the rise lately as investors grow increasingly skittish of IPOs despite the market's recent comeback.

Source: WSJ

According to BBG, the fund could eventually raise as much as $7 billion with additional funds from other Ackman-controlled vehicles.

"We will have the largest amount of committed capital of any blank check company upon the completion of this offering," the company stated in the filing. Reuters reported on the initial confidential filing alerting the SEC to the deal earlier this month. 

As WSJ explained on July 13, it could eventually raise as much as $7 billion, including contributions of between $1 billion to $3 billion from funds associated with Pershing Square.

That's a risky proposition for an investor whose major wins have been huge, and whose failures have been disastrous. Though his lifetime earnings are still respectably in the green, Ackman has taken his share of "L"s, from investments in JC Penney, to Valeant to his infamous campaign against Herbalife, which he eventually abandoned.

While the esoteric nature of Ackman's new vehicle might, at first blush, seem only of interest to hard-core finance nerds, it's worth noting that the concept of a "tontine", the form that Ackman is using for this new vehicle, was made popular by one of the most popular episodes of "The Simpsons": "The Flying Hellfish".