Token criminal
SBF's crypto shitshow exposed
Good morning, savvy analysts. This is your Stock Market Rundown for October 10th, 2023. Thanks for tuning in for another week of capital-markets comedy. Let’s get started:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: SBF’S DAY IN COURT 🚨
Between damning testimony from former pals and weird courtroom sketches, it was a wild week in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial.
Bankman-Fried, better known to fans and detractors as “SBF”, is facing federal fraud charges for misappropriating billions via his failed crypto exchange, FTX, which careened from spectacular success to catastrophic collapse.
Pleading not guilty, innocent lamb SBF has defended himself by arguing that he might’ve been a tad sloppy in the risk management department, but he never intended to rip anybody off.
Prosecutors say that’s hogwash. SBF used customer deposits as a personal slush fund—buying luxury real estate, propping up his hedge fund, and making lavish donations to burnish his personal brand. His co-founder testified that, even as SBF was tweeting “assets are fine”, he knew there was a multi-billion-dollar shortfall.
The trial is expected to last six weeks. Up next on the stand, the prosecution’s star witness: SBF’s ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison. Will things get personal?
Watching SBF squirm through these proceedings should provide a glimmer of schadenfreude to victims whose life savings were vaporized, even if their shitcoins are gone forever.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Limbo contest on the Lido deck canceled: cruise-ship company Carnival just reported its first quarterly profit since before COVID, but the stock still sunk like an anchor due to a weak forward outlook.
Drill, baby, drill: it’s boom time for rig hand jobs, as the world’s biggest oil companies are stepping up exploration spending on prospects of strong economic returns.
Happy news for house-shoppers: recent data says more homesellers are dropping asking prices to entice reluctant buyers. Soon that four-bedroom suburban palace with a hot tub may be yours.
GMC and Ford are rolling electric models of their pickups off assembly lines, but truck buyers who crave the Minecraft aesthetic of Tesla’s Cybertruck will have to keep waiting—its launch has been delayed yet again.
Household spending growth is outpacing inflation as millennials choose YOLO over their 401K. I appreciate the no-regrets lifestyle, but haven’t these people heard the yield curve is inverted?
That’s it for today, my friends; see you tomorrow morning. Yours in capitalism, The Axe