3 highlights in markets this week

March 12 correction: SVB Finance was No. 20, not No. 1, on Forbes list

Larry MacDonald also writes for the Globe and Mail and a Blog about Shopify

Best quote of the week

In an interview, Marc Cohodes, the acerbic chicken famer/short seller who predicted the collapse of FTX and Silvergate Capital Corp., gave us this epiphanic statement about the crypto meltdown:

“The media wants to make it a crypto story, but it’s not. This is a worldwide money laundering story through these two networks with a crypto wrapper.”

Best illustration of the week

This picture illustrates the technique of creating misdirection to set up the punch line. Comics make a living from it. It also illustrates how markets  work – all week the headlines declared that interest rates were going to shoot up and bond prices collapse. Then on Friday, as I was about to hit the sell button on my bonds, rates plunged and bond prices shot up. All it took was a run on the SVB Finance and a softening in U.S. job growth.

Most embarrassing calls of the week:

It’s a tie. Just weeks before SVB Bank imploded, Jim Cramer of CNBC touted SVB Finance stock and Forbes magazine’s February ranking of the best U.S. banks gave the No. 20 spot to SVB.