ChartScapes - April 2022

The Origins

Last couple of years in the financial markets have been phenomenal. We had a pandemic, a war, supply chain breakdowns, free money from Central banks and then inflation terrors and now, a glaring recession!

If this doesn’t leave a mark on history books - I don’t know what will.

These events have been - well, eventful - and they inspired me to create this ChartScapes Series. Each ChartScape is a surreal landscape with a hidden (financial) chart.

Here are a few of those financial market moments that I have memorialised through this Series… can you spot those charts in the silhouettes?

Remember, April 2020 - the FIRST TIME EVER in history when oil price turned negative?

Or March 2020 - When we thought the world would end?! But it eventually turned out to be a great “Buy the Dip” opportunity for equity markets. A great reminder yet again - to literally put on the wall - to buy when there’s maximum fear.

Then came Ever Given in March 2021 - the ship that gave birth to a zillion memes! In all seriousness, we saw a traffic jam in the Suez Canal which costed an estimated US$ ~10 billion per day to global economy!

Not just the stocks, but even the Crypto markets had some glorious moments. Bitcoin and Ethereum touched all time highs! In Feb, 2021, Bitcoin market cap surpassed the combined market values of JP Morgan, Citibank and Bank of America! The crypto world, that was considered not too long ago as the “Wild West” is now as mainstream as it can be - with +100M people globally now owning the asset.

Single stocks also made history! Oct 25 2021- Tesla’s market cap surpassed that of the next 6 largest auto markers including Ford, GM, Toyota. And who could forget the GameStop rally - the Reddit army led movement to “kill the suits” on Wall Street :)

2022 now marks a new era that we are entering for the markets. One that ends the easy money printing by Central banks. And one that’s led by inflation which clearly isn’t transitory!