iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Today's the day: the Land Trap is now OUT in the US! Just two days to wait until the UK release. Pre-orders landing imminently. If you're interested in why land is so vital in finance everywhere, the rise and fall of Georgism, and how land shaped Japan, China and Singapore, this is the book for you

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Very excited to see the first major review of my book, which now comes out in less than three weeks, by @martinsandbu.ft.com in the Financial Times! www.ft.com/content/cb90...

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

Just finished the final touches on the audiobook.Less than three weeks to go now, getting very exciting! If you're interested, the best thing you can possibly do now is pre-order! Available all over the place - Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Guardian Bookshop and many other bookshops.

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Audiobook recording is WRAPPED! You can preorder here, or get yourself a print copy! Or ideally, both! Available at a bunch of other places too. www.amazon.com/Land-Trap-Hi...

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

BIG NEWS: My book, The Land Trap, is coming out on Nov 4! I've been fascinated by this topic for years. The book tells the story of why land still occupies such a huge role in finance, economics and politics globally, and why that's a source of huge risk. You can preorder NOW!

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Fun story this week. I interviewed Jamie Dimon and the each of the heads of the bank's major businesses (his potential successors) about JP Morgan's astonishing expansion, what could threaten the biggest bank in American history, and what's coming next. www.economist.com/finance-and-...

economist.com

Will Jamie Dimon build the first trillion-dollar bank?

We interview JPMorgan Chase’s boss, and his lieutenants

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

My piece this week: for a long time, private markets firms have dreamed of "democratising" their asset class. They're not dreaming anymore - the moment of truth has arrived www.economist.com/finance-and-....

economist.com

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Transpacific trade is already seizing up because of the tariffs. Three weeks ago, about 60,000 TEU (a measure of container volume) were scheduled to be "blanked" from April 16-May 10 (cancelled voyages/stops at a port). Now the figure is *367,800* www.sea-intelligence.com/press-room/3...

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

The media monoculture breaking down is so fun. This guy is visiting China, I had never previously heard of him, but as far as I can tell it's perhaps the third biggest global news story happening in the last week.

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Reposted by Mike Bird

James Mackintosh @jmackin2.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Actually can take it back further: only 3 occasions since 1964 with larger 2-day sellouts in S&P 500

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

It's important to remember that for younger investors, a selloff can represent a great entry opportunity! Unless it represents a change in the value of discounted future cash flows.

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

There are now only two occasions in recent financial history where the S&P 500 sold off more sharply in two days than it has since the US tariff announcements - the peak of Covid panic in March 2020, and a cluster of occasions during the very worst moments of the global financial crisis in 2008

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

My piece today: Trump's tariff bazooka is the biggest threat yet to 15yrs of US equity exceptionalism. It's not just the mindless economic hit. Amateurish execution undermines the widespread belief in pro-market US governance www.economist.com/finance-and-...

economist.com

What America’s stockmarket plunge means

Farewell to 15 years of exceptionalism?

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Some of the US stocks with the biggest international trade/production exposures have just been absolutely battered since mid-February. Best Buy, Dell and Nike down between 26% and 36%.

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Capital Economics: if today's announcements are implemented, the effective US tariff rate will shoot straight past the Smoot-Hawley levels of the 1930s. "The effective tariff rate on all imports will rise from 2.3% last year to around 26%, leaving it at a 131-year high"

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

What's a historical example of an economic policy as significant as the tariffs being discussed, where we knew similarly little about the scale of the announcement right beforehand? The Covid + 2008 crisis responses seem different because they were triggered by exogenous events.

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

There's something darkly funny in looking at these trends and remembering the RW mockery of the shifting "current thing" and NPCs who can't think for themselves

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Bit embarrassing to admit they missed this one

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

It is fascinating that the entirety of the recent US stock selloff is accounted for by valuation re-rating. For all the reduced confidence, tariff threats etc, earnings estimates are still at an all-time-high.

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Even if the Chinese economy rebounds (a big if), and its tech crackdown comes to a clear end, politics now makes it hard for Wall Street to turn really bullish. Investors in Dubai, Singapore and Zurich will not feel the same compunctions. My column this week. www.economist.com/finance-and-...

economist.com

Can foreign investors learn to love China again?

Wall Street still needs more to coax it back. But non-American firms may be ready to return

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

I think when you already have slightly cartoonish facial furniture, these things work even better

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

To put the recent rally in Chinese tech stocks in context, they're still much cheaper by forward PE (red line) than US tech stocks (green line), but also cheaper than *the US market overall*. The drop from a PE of 70 at the peak of the 2020-early '21 mania is insane.

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

"(Two other users subsequently added prayer emoji.)"

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

A happy reminder from Google Photos of my first of three trips into various forms of quarantine in Hong Kong, five years ago today! How the time flies eh

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Henry VIII's 1527 suit of armour next to his 1544 suit of armour in the "Track Your Calories" exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Trump is so powerful that he may even manage to break the overwhelming anti-incumbent trend in global politics, by propelling the Canadian Liberals back into office.

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

After 15yrs of roaring returns, US investors have never been so exposed to a selloff. Stock wealth ran to 170% of disposable income last year, twice the long-term average. But the way they interpret a selloff is now being warped by the country's divisive politics www.economist.com/finance-and-...

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Bank of America records the biggest single drop in allocations to US stocks on record (data goes back to 2001) in its monthly fund manager survey. An astonishing shift - investors went from overweighting US equities in Feb (net +17%) to underweighting heavily in March (net -23%).

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

I hadn't realised just how comic the partisan division in consumer expectations data is over time. It's actually slightly amazing that this can average out to something useful. (University of Michigan index, Red = GOP, Blue = Dems)

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

One thing I find interesting about Tesla is how weird the stock has been relative to other companies in a similar weight class - most megacaps grind upwards, constantly beating expectations, but Tesla basically has two huge jumps that account for almost all the net growth (log scales)

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Presumably the people who think asset prices should be included in measures of inflation must be really happy right now

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Today was the worst day for US stocks, relative to global stocks (ex-US) in nearly two and a half years

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Huge job here for someone - Anthropic is hiring an econ-focused writer to work on @stuartjritchie.bsky.social's team boards.greenhouse.io/anthropic/jo...

boards.greenhouse.io

Editorial, Economic and Societal Impacts

Dublin, IE | London, UK

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

This week, I wrote about the worrying rise in American credit card delinquences, now at a 13yr high. Delinquencies are high but extremely concentrated - among young people, in poor locations, and with bad credit ratings www.economist.com/finance-and-...

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Reposted by Mike Bird

Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

This week, I wrote about the financial disclosures of the Trump II cabinet. Beyond enormous differences in wealth (Scott Bessent's art + antiques are worth at least 5x Marco Rubio's assets), the extent of crypto investment among the new MAGA crowd is eye-opening www.economist.com/finance-and-...

economist.com

How to invest like a MAGA bigwig

Cannabis, crypto or half of North Dakota?

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

economist.com

How to invest like a MAGA bigwig

Cannabis, crypto or half of North Dakota?

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

We're nearly there guys, we are so so close

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Pretty astounding to look at the German election forecasts from our polling gurus. In the central scenario (across 100 simulations), the AfD doubles its share of seats, Social Democrats slip into third place for the first time in postwar German electoral history. www.economist.com/interactive/...

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Probably the best chart for illustrating what's going on right now in markets. Nvidia down by ~18% over three days, dragging tech overall down by ~6%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the People's Index, soldiers on, up ~1%.

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

A few weeks ago I wrote about the potential upsides of a financial bubble, which I've been thinking about a bunch today. Feels like the market today is actually not a bad example of the typology identified in it - there seems to be almost no spillover. www.economist.com/finance-and-...

economist.com

Would an artificial-intelligence bubble be so bad?

A new book by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber argues there are advantages to financial mania

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

In total market cap, the Nvidia selloff today is a little bit bigger than if the entire listed market of Mexico went to zero.

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

If it seems like everyone is suddenly talking about a rapid catch-up by Chiness AI companies, and you're not sure how we got here, this week's brilliantly-timed briefing on the subject is a very good place to start. www.economist.com/briefing/202...

economist.com

China’s AI industry has almost caught up with America’s

And it is more open and more efficient, too

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Reposted by Mike Bird

Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

My latest: the new administration in Washington is often described as "pro-crypto," a massive understatement of the digital asset boosterism which is now beginning. The crypto takeover of American public life and high finance is underway. www.economist.com/finance-and-...

economist.com

Will America’s crypto frenzy end in disaster?

Donald Trump’s team is about to bring digital finance into the mainstream

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

economist.com

Will America’s crypto frenzy end in disaster?

Donald Trump’s team is about to bring digital finance into the mainstream

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Mike Bird @birdyword.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Leaving the Asia finance beat just in time for a BOJ rate hike

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