“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
Chart of the Day
Good morning!
The Saudi government has long sought to diversify away from energy and into other areas, such as copper and lithium. Now, it seems like the Saudi Public Investment Fund (through its wholly owned mobile-game company, Scopely) is diversifying into Pokemon, seeking to truly “catch them all” by buying the gaming operations of Niantic, the creators of the Pokemon Go mobile game, for $3.5 billion. (The deal is pending regulatory approval.)
That’s just part of the story. The transaction would also give Scopely (and thus, the Saudi government) a $50 million stake in a new spinoff company, Niantic Spatial. That might someday be more valuable as the gaming rights themselves.
Pokemon Go was one of the earliest mainstream augmented-reality (AR) applications, in which players tried to locate and “catch” Pokemon that would show up superimposed on their phone-camera viewfinders as they walked around in the real world (though not always in a safe or appropriate manner). At its peak, the game had more than 200 million monthly active users, and as recently as December 2024, that figure was still more than 90 million. But the real prize isn’t (just) the $6 billion in revenues that Niantic has reaped as a result. It’s the location data.
That location data was and continues to be generated by millions of active users as they play the game, walking around with cameras and geolocation tracking features turned on. Niantic has used it to verify and refine existing mapping data while simultaneously collecting visual images of the real world over time. It has further enabled the company to build detailed 3D models of much of the real world – identifying heatmaps of human activity and what various places look like at different times of day, throughout the seasons, and in differing weather conditions. The resulting platform, which the company claims to have “centimeter-level precision,” has already been licensed for marketing purposes by the likes of Coachella, Universal Pictures, the PGA, and the NBA, as well as other mobile game developers.
But Niantic Spatial believes it could be key to building a large geospatial model (LGM) that vastly expands the capabilities of their textual large-language-model (LLM) counterparts – in other words, to take AI to the proverbial next level. Just as generative LLM models can use existing content to answer and extrapolate answers to questions, an LGM can be used to teach an AI to extrapolate information about the physical features of the real world even without having previously scanned it.
This could have numerous potential uses – among them urban planning, wearables, commodities trading, tourism, climate-change modeling, and disaster-response planning. It is also likely to be key for developing autonomous robots and machines that can navigate the real world with safety and precision. It has plenty of potential military applications as well.
News of the acquisition of Niantic might have focused on Pikachu. But the Saudis might have just secured access to something much more important.
Catch Up With Fundstrat
We are a little over two weeks away from the April 2 tariff deadline, and the temptation to throw in the towel is understandable. But there are five reasons why we think it’s not a good time to be selling stocks.
TECHNICAL
In our view, it’s right to be long for arguably a push-up into summer 2025 at a minimum. Even if some backing and filling do happen over the next week, it’s thought to prove temporary and create an excellent risk/reward situation for US Stocks.
CRYPTO
In our view, the price action of the past few days can largely be characterized as investors sitting on their hands ahead of today’s FOMC meeting, after which we could get some new data to inform how crypto will perform the rest of this quarter and into the next.
News We’re Following
Breaking News
- Putin spurns a Ukraine ceasefire but Trump calls talk a win BBG
- NASA astronauts return in SpaceX capsule, splashing down on Earth after 9 months NYT
Markets and economy
- Investors slash US equity holdings by most ever, BofA survey shows FT
- Nvidia’s Huang says AI computing needs to surge 100-fold WSJ
- CoreWeave serves as bellwether for AI in soft IPO market SEM
- RFK Jr.’s prescription for bird flu on farms: let it spread NYT
Business
- Elon Musk has been buying up X shares near his initial purchase price BBG
- Google to pay $28 million to settle claims it favored white and Asian employees – REU
- Amazon undercuts Nvidia with aggressive AI chip discounts INF
- Chip sector supplier raises $3bn in Japan’s biggest IPO since 2018 FT
Politics
- Top US Supreme Court justice rebukes Trump’s call to impeach judge BBC
- Judge finds Musk’s role in dismantling aid agency likely violated Constitution NYT
- Judge orders reinstatement of education grants axed by Trump in DEI sweep CNBC
Overseas
- Turkish police detain Erdoğan’s main political rival FT
- German parliament OKs massive defense, infrastructure spending package SEM
- Heavy rains in Spain force evacuations, put regions under alert BBG
Of Interest
- John Hemingway: Last surviving Battle of Britain pilot dies aged 105 BBC
- Jesse Colin Young, Youngbloods frontman who sang sixties hit ‘Get Together,’ dead at 83 RS
| Overnight |
| S&P Futures +11
point(s) (+0.2%
) Overnight range: -12 to +20 point(s) |
| APAC |
| Nikkei -0.25%
Topix +0.45% China SHCOMP -0.1% Hang Seng +0.12% Korea +0.62% Singapore +0.34% Australia -0.41% India +0.37% Taiwan -1.4% |
| Europe |
| Stoxx 50 +0.08%
Stoxx 600 -0.06% FTSE 100 -0.24% DAX -0.22% CAC 40 +0.19% Italy +0.43% IBEX -0.12% |
| FX |
| Dollar Index (DXY) +0.32%
to 103.57 EUR/USD -0.37% to 1.0904 GBP/USD -0.2% to 1.2975 USD/JPY +0.31% to 149.74 USD/CNY +0.14% to 7.2359 USD/CNH +0.14% to 7.2376 USD/CHF +0.14% to 0.8779 USD/CAD +0.2% to 1.4326 AUD/USD -0.47% to 0.6331 |
| Crypto |
| BTC +1.75%
to 83469.04 ETH +1.88% to 1941.64 XRP +2.41% to 2.3122 Cardano +3.1% to 0.7159 Solana +1.98% to 126.5 Avalanche +0.55% to 19.09 Dogecoin +1.08% to 0.1679 Chainlink +2.88% to 14.04 |
| Commodities and Others |
| VIX -0.41%
to 21.61 WTI Crude -0.82% to 66.35 Brent Crude -0.78% to 70.01 Nat Gas +1.33% to 4.11 RBOB Gas -0.73% to 2.152 Heating Oil -0.11% to 2.192 Gold -0.15% to 3030.25 Silver -0.97% to 33.69 Copper +0.25% to 5.006 |
| US Treasuries |
| 1M -0.8bps
to 4.2891% 3M -0.0bps to 4.2812% 6M -1.3bps to 4.237% 12M -4.2bps to 4.0805% 2Y +0.6bps to 4.0459% 5Y +0.5bps to 4.0788% 7Y +0.3bps to 4.1848% 10Y -0.0bps to 4.283% 20Y -0.6bps to 4.6168% 30Y -0.5bps to 4.5804% |
| UST Term Structure |
| 2Y-3
M Spread narrowed 2.2bps to -26.9
bps 10Y-2 Y Spread narrowed 0.6bps to 23.3 bps 30Y-10 Y Spread narrowed 0.4bps to 29.5 bps |
| Yesterday's Recap |
| SPX -1.07%
SPX Eq Wt -0.52% NASDAQ 100 -1.66% NASDAQ Comp -1.71% Russell Midcap -0.85% R2k -0.89% R1k Value -0.39% R1k Growth -1.73% R2k Value -0.57% R2k Growth -1.2% FANG+ -2.0% Semis -1.55% Software -1.46% Biotech -2.4% Regional Banks -0.28% SPX GICS1 Sorted: Energy +0.22% Healthcare +0.12% Materials -0.09% Fin -0.13% REITs -0.64% Utes -0.66% Indu -0.77% SPX -1.07% Cons Staples -1.3% Tech -1.65% Cons Disc -1.9% Comm Srvcs -2.14% |
| USD HY OaS |
| All Sectors +3.6bp
to 359bp All Sectors ex-Energy +3.1bp to 324bp Cons Disc +5.4bp to 346bp Indu +2.2bp to 269bp Tech +3.7bp to 363bp Comm Srvcs +4.6bp to 553bp Materials +2.5bp to 318bp Energy +1.9bp to 359bp Fin Snr +2.9bp to 307bp Fin Sub +1.7bp to 229bp Cons Staples +3.4bp to 234bp Healthcare -1.3bp to 373bp Utes +5.5bp to 248bp * |
| Date | Time | Description | Estimate | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/19 | 2PM | Mar 19 FOMC Decision | 4.5 | 4.5 |
| 3/19 | 4PM | Jan Net TIC Flows | n/a | 87.144 |
| 3/20 | 10AM | Feb Existing Home Sales | 3.95 | 4.08 |
| 3/20 | 10AM | Feb Existing Home Sales m/m | -3.19 | -4.9 |
| 3/24 | 9:45AM | Mar P S&P Manu PMI | n/a | 52.7 |
| 3/24 | 9:45AM | Mar P S&P Srvcs PMI | n/a | 51.0 |
| 3/25 | 10AM | Mar Conf Board Sentiment | 94.0 | 98.3 |
| 3/25 | 10AM | Feb New Home Sales | 680.0 | 657.0 |
| 3/25 | 10AM | Feb New Home Sales m/m | 3.5 | -10.5 |