Wall Street missed the memo

Whether it’s hope, self-delusion or they just didn’t get the memo, the receding stock market tide has left Wall Street analysts sitting on price predictions that seem a better fit for the roulette table. Bear-market casualties from Peloton to Coinbase are forecast by equity handicappers to double. It’s the same story for a large number of pummeled stocks whose suffering hasn’t managed to slow the bulls still running around. In other words, the brutal six-month repricing in markets has been met with a significantly unhurried reappraisal of analyst forecasts, which has left many stocks sporting projections that require a doubling or tripling to achieve. Ed Yardeni, the president of Yardeni Research, put it this way: “When investors own a stock that’s gotten put down by 30% and an analyst tell them that it’s going double a year from now, that doesn’t really have much credibility.” Here’s your markets wrap. —David E. Rovella

Bloomberg is tracking the coronavirus pandemic and the progress of global vaccination efforts.

US Senate Democrats are working on shrinking the tax increases in President Joe Biden’s huge economic plan as part of a bid to reanimate the package. To get it down from the shelf, they have to cut a deal with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who with the help of fellow Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and the Senate’s 50 Republicans has managed to block much of Biden’s domestic legislative agenda. The changes meant to mollify Manchin would apparently benefit corporations and the rich.

Elon Musk, who has been doing a social media impersonation of Donald Trump of late, fired hundreds of mostly hourly Tesla workers just a few days after saying he planned to do the opposite. Musk already revealed plans to fire 10% of Tesla’s salaried employees over the next three months. Tesla stock fell.

In a speech to a Kentucky business lobby on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made no bones about embracing his unprecedented tactic in 2016 of blocking former President Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court vacancy with a moderate judge. Then the Majority Leader, McConnell cited the election eight months away as justification, saying the will of the American people should be expressed first. Four years later, McConnell discarded his new rule in order to push through a far-right nominee just days before the 2020 election. McConnell’s turnabout made possible last week’s rulings by the court’s GOP-appointed supermajority ending federal abortion rights and slashing gun regulations.

Serbians like Vladimir Putin. According to a new poll, a majority would reject membership in the European Union and expressed affinity for Russia and Putin, who is waging a war on Ukraine that’s potentially killed tens of thousands. NATO meanwhile formally invited Finland and Sweden to join the defense alliance and said it would significantly boost troop levels and fighter squadrons while establishing a US Army headquarters in Poland. In Ukraine, Kyiv’s forces are reportedly gaining ground in the south.

Cryptocurrency losses deepened Wednesday with popular Defi tokens such as Solana and Avalanche falling more than sector bellwether Bitcoin. Contagion may be spreading in the wake of the collapse of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.
The market for nonfungible tokens—you know, bored apes and pudgy penguins—has also been plummeting after sales sank sharply and the prices of popular NFTs crashed over the last few weeks.

Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant which has repeatedly been voted the world’s best, lost money for the first time in four years in 2021 even after receiving Covid-19 support from the Danish government. Apparently it can’t turn a profit on a $700 lunch menu.

On a recent afternoon in Venice, a visiting family spread a tablecloth over a historic well to lunch on homemade food amid the Renaissance-era ambience. It was a thrifty alternative to spending money at local eateries. The authorities however were nonplussed and slapped them with a fine. Just as cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona and Prague have learned from the pandemic, Venice is now seeing an opportunity. Its clampdown on the misguided picnic is part of a broader effort to weed out tourists who strain the city’s infrastructure but offer little to the economy.

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