Are these the sellside’s best-ever puns?
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Over the summer, we shamelessly begged readers for financial notes puns.
As we wrote then:
We know you (readers) like puns, you know we (“journalists”) like puns, but there’s a third group in this happy financial throuple: research producers.
The analysts, economists, commentators, cheerleaders and doom-mongers whose notes flood our inboxes each day are often partial to some skilful wordplay.
Begging bowl set up, we sat back and waited for the content come to us.
And a lot did. One discovery is that a lot of you — beloved readers, treasured readers, our wonderful readers — really don’t seem to know the difference between a pun and a joke. Also, you — dear, sweet readers, good-looking, choiceful readers — chose to basically ignore the premise and send us puns (/jokes) from everywhere, not just the sellside.
Despite these huge barriers to our efforts to do zero-effort “journalism”, we persisted. Here, in no particular order, are some of the best financial research puns. We’ve explained jokes when it seems necessary, and credited submissions when it seems flattering to do so (including when it’s the analyst promoting their own wares).
HSBC:
Barclays:
JPMorgan:
(all h/t James Klikis)
John Young writes:
In 30 years of reading and making up my own, none has ever come close to Paul McNamara (he of Twitter (Now Musk-X) and GAM (Mondays through to Fridays) fame on a piece he wrote on Korea in 1999ish titled:
“How I stopped worrying and learned to love the Won”
He knows I’m a fan.
Concerning Rockwool, a company which melts rocks:
(h/t Fin Williams)
Deutsche Bank’s Sanjay Raja and Shreyas Gopal like a pun.
On the BoE at Christmas:
On the BoE not at Christmas:
On a rise in UK services exports to the US:
Via the original piece’s comment section:
To be fair, with a Hold recommendation. A Harry Wallop Times column from 2022 picks up the story:
The acronym at first went unnoticed, but when Maxwell finally deciphered the insult “he went ballistic. He harassed the board of UBS and insisted I was sacked,” Terrington recalled when I called him up this week to discuss it. Terrington jumped before he was pushed.
Is this a pun? No, as other commenters pointed out.
Do we care enough to therefore exclude it? Also no.
This one, also from the comments, is great (though we don’t think Risk Magazine counts a financial research no matter how hard MainFT’s Costas Mourselas worked when he was there):
Kit Juckes, ‘chief’ FX strategist as SocGen, doesn’t normally do puns so much as wordplay, but this is an very honourable exception:
Speaking of wordplay, Barclays’ daily notes get some points for sheer effort. Some recent extracts…
6th August 2024:
Markets Avengered themselves today, snapping their recent losing streak as the Hulk of sectors in the FTSE 350 closed in positive territory, led higher by Industrials and Consumer Staples. Whilst the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 ultimately closed +0.23% and +0.65% respectively, today’s session felt like a Multiverse of Madness as both indices fluctuated between either side of the breakeven line. The broader risk-on mood seen in Asia overnight facilitated strength domestically at the open, with growth in UK July retail sales (0.5% y/y, prev. -0.2% y/y) and better-than-expected UK construction PMI for June further bolstering sentiment (55.3, cons. 51.5, prev. 52.2). Such strength was short-lived however, with equities drifting Far From Home, as eurozone June retail sales missed to the downside, printing at -0.3% y/y (cons. 0.6% y/y). Volumes across the LSE eased thereafter, declining in line with the broader market performance.
5th July 2024:
On the flipside, there were also some declining share pRices today, with a number of the large cap sectors under pressure as investors favoured the small and mid caps. The banks were lower on concerns Labour would review the way the Bank of England pays interest to lenders, with HSBC, Standard Chartered and Barclays all having their shares Palmered off by investors. Bukayo-ing the trend were Lloyds Bank who closed up 1.75% on the back of analyst upgrade. Also suffering were Energy stocks given Labour’s well known views on North Sea tax, which is proving to be no flash (Gordon) in the pan. Even within the sector today there was also some stock specific news, with Shell Trippier-ing over their own shoelaces and announcing a $1bn writedown on their biofuels plant and leaving the share down 1.3%.
(h/t Ben Green)
Nick Lawson writes:
We love a pun at Ocean Wall and our uranium weekly is called ‘ion U’
We feel are best ever was this note on lithium carbonate titled “charged with a-salt n’ battery”
Surely that wins a prize?
We’ll let a reference slide. Bank of America’s China research team has for some time titled its midday update email “Shanghai Noon”.
(h/t Gwilym Satchell)
A decent scattergun effort by RaboBank’s Michael Every ahead of last month’s close Fed decision:
Saeed Amen offers some gems from his time at Nomura (our selections):
— Aussie rules - investing the impact of US and Australian data releases on AUDUSD
— A sterling motor - examining the impact of data releases on GBPUSD and EURGBP
— RoC and roll music
— Forecast no shadow - An index for uncertainty in data forecasts
— A few good JPY - Intermarket relationships in USDJPY from a quant perspective
…and some recent efforts for Turnleaf Analytics:
EM-bracing inflation
The loco-modities*
(*Saeed adds: “None of the juniors got the reference for this one!”)
Barry Ritholz writes:
I recall falling off of my chair when this landed in my inbox...
More sordid alignment than pun, but we’ll take it.
(bonus h/t to Kenneth Morton, who also mentioned this one)
Mark Martin writes:
A colleague of mine came up with “2P or not 2P? Gas is the question.” in relation to an oil and gas E&P company with hard to monetise “proven and probable” (=“2P”). The problem was the gas could only be classed as “proven” if a gas treatment unit was constructed.
He adds:
Only funny to oil & gas analysts really.
Via Morgan Stanley’s coverage of unicorns losing that status…
(h/t Ed Price)
This section is dedicated to Imogen Bachra, who writes NatWest’s “The week in gilts” notes. Some examples:
And a mini-Budget aftermath offering from NatWest colleague Ross Walker:
Emil Jonsson (of DNB’s markets team) insists we get high off of his supply:
Resurs Bank
— High-interest consumer lender getting bought out from the stock market.
— Hence, “Roll credits”.
Kai Korschelt from Canaccord Genuity humbly offers:
And finally, Calvin Quek writes:
I recall this headline from about 10 years ago(?) when low oil prices were causing economic troubles.
“This is the winter of our discount Brent”
We’re sure there’s much more out there, so do get in touch at the usual place if you’ve seen a good sellside pun that ought to be here.
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