🗞️ Links & Thinks from 2023.03.22
Spirited Animals
Gen Z cares not for your inflation. They're letting the spending party roll and loving ecomm:
with 32% of shopping online at least once daily
The housing market is looking up, February reversed a year-long skid with some strong growth over January. And prices finally started coming down (good for buyers, maybe less good for owners and sellers), but we're only talking a $700 drop in median prices. The March numbers will be interesting to see now.
Let's talk about Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) again:
SVB’s troubles stemmed from its investments in long-term government bonds, which dropped in value as interest rates rose. However, the bank’s fundamentals were not that dire. If no one had panicked, SVB could probably have paid off all its depositors in the ordinary course of business. The problem happened because some investors saw information they thought others might interpret negatively, prompting them to withdraw their funds. This led others to believe the information was indeed bad, validating the initial belief and causing a massive $42 billion withdrawal in a single day.
Remember, the CEO literally said "we're fine, unless everyone tries to take their money out, then we might be not fine" (paraphrased). No better way to keep people from panicking than saying "don't panic." Finance is ruled by algorithms and animal spirits.
fundamentals aren’t driving the boat; the boat is being driven by sunspots, memes, and vibes.
Which also means your outlook may be determined by your feeds and filter bubbles.
And speaking of vibes:
the number of consumers pointing to corporate greed as the cause rose 8% from a year ago
Bots & Spiders & Crawlers, Oh My!
Research from cybersecurity company CHEQ shows that more than 40% of all traffic online is invalid.
Well, that's good news. Unsurprisingly, "22.1% of direct traffic was fake." Direct is the mystery grab bag traffic channel, why not add a heaping sprinkle of fake on top?
Gambling sites really skew that 40% number up top, all other industries are 20% or less. Data centers are responsible for most of the fake traffic, click hijacking is the fastest growing type, and automation tools are the top "threat."
Do As We Say, Not As We Do?
From The Daily Upside:
As state and local governments move to ban TikTok from employee devices, a team of internet researchers at Feroot Security have discovered an alarming, if hilarious, self-own: TikTok’s web-activity tracking pixels are present in as many as 30 state government websites, effectively making them inadvertent agents in the Chinese company’s data collection practices.