Endless Scroll!!!
Daily Data: BNPL, Unsold Cars, Canada v. US, Dedollarization, Spending Puzzle, Grocers in the Green, Burns and Wounds
It’s an endless scroll day, where Random Walk collects all the various data missives that are worth noting, but not for any one particular reason.
There is method. This is madness.
BNPL is hot hot hot
De-dollarization has a ways to go
Canada and the US are not the same
Inflation explained in just two charts
Grocers (finally) in the Green
An earnings v. spending mystery
Burns and Wounds, or why we can’t have nice things, healthcare edition
If you’ve always wanted an Alpha Romeo, now is the time
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Endless Scroll
You know the drill.
Assorted thises and thats, bringing the Random in Random Walk.
BNPL is hot hot hot
BNPL continues to grow, with yoy transaction count up by nearly 40%
Sezzle led the way, but Sezzle is tiny.
Really Affirm did the heavy lifting with a 46% yoy increase in trailing 4-week transaction volume.
I guess maybe investors noticed:
An ~8% return over a coupla days ain’t bad.
Random Walk has been fascinated by BNPL for a while. BNPL contains multitudes.
BNPL is favored by lower-income consumers, who are either under-banked beneficiaries of financial inclusion (such that BNPL is a tailwind for all kinds of consumer spending), and/or hapless victims of predation, depending on how things go, of course. It’s a relative black box, so it leaves plenty of room for the imagination.
As it happens, the industry (but Affirm especially) has done remarkably well managing credit risk, thus far.
Are they skillful lenders in a slowdown, or is it a ticking time bomb? Probably a bit of both, but in Affirm’s case, I’m inclined to think the former.
De-dollarization has aways to go
We know that both gold and BTC have both had pretty good runs of late, but is ‘de-dollarization’ (i.e. a shift away from the dollar as global reserve currency) actually happening?
The answer is “yes, yes it is, but it’s got an awfully long way to go.”
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