Two of China’s largest fund management firms have recently been reported to be filing applications for spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), according to regional sources on Monday. Harvest Global Investments and Southern Fund are seeking approval from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), aiming to obtain authorization to introduce spot bitcoin ETFs. China’s Investment […]
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Hunter Howell, 22 years old and freshly graduated with a degree in business administration from Elmhurst University in the Chicago suburbs, has submitted over 1,700 job applications. But in his 10 months of job hunting, he’s gotten only one offer.
“The initial feeling was like, What the hell is going on? What the hell is wrong with me? What am I doing wrong?” Howell told Fortune.
Howell aired his frustrations on TikTok, where a video of him explaining his job hunting woes racked up over 700,000 views.
@hunter.howell9
“If you live in the United States right now, you understand that we’re going through a job market disaster,” Howell says.
Howell explains that as of mid-March, he had sent in 1,600 applications but only received three offers for contractor positions and only one full-time offer: a salaried position selling phones at Costco, which would pay out $41,000 per year.
Howell says he’s applied to jobs across the board, from marketing and management to retail and fast food. Since posting his viral TikTok on March 22, he’s applied to over a hundred more jobs—north of 1,700 in total—and still has had no luck.
Howell says he feels employers are “playing games” with him and other young applicants. After scoring an initial interview with a prospective employer, he says, he will often spend weeks in various interview processes. He has received rejections after four interviews—or simply never heard back from hiring managers at all.
A self-admitted “potty mouth,” Howell had some choice words for companies he felt were stringing him along.
“If you’re a hiring manager or you’re in hiring practices, f-ck you,” Howell says in his TikTok, holding up his middle finger.
Underneath Howell’s frustration is real confusion. He said he wondered if there was something wrong with him or his approach to applying to jobs, despite starting his job search months before his December graduation and taking advice from friends and family.
“I have a degree, no criminal records, work experience, references, a tailored résumé,” Howell told Fortune. “It is so baffling. It’s a mystery.”
But even stranger to Howell than his inability to land a good job was the response he received from his post: The TikTok meant to explicitly scorn hiring managers across industries actually drew them to Howell.
“I’ve gotten a ton of [direct messages] from people like, ‘Hey, like, I’m so-and-so with this company. We’re hiring for this role. We want to onboard you,’” Howell said. “And I’m like, Wait, what?”
Howell says he followed up with the hiring managers in his DMs, but he’s still had little luck finding reliable job leads. He chalks the attention up to the virality of the video—or just companies just trying to get good PR or save face. While the popularity of his TikTok hasn’t landed Howell a job yet, he has found solace in his comments section, where dozens of young people shared his distress.
“A lot of people my comments are saying, ‘Yeah, this has happened to me. You’re not alone. Keep going,” Howell said.
Howell is one of many members of Gen Z using TikTok to share their job-hunting dejection and rejections. Among other frustrated Zoomers is Lohanny Santos, a 26-year-old with two degrees and able to speak three languages who still couldn’t land a job after going door-to-door handing out resumes to find work.
“It’s honestly a little bit embarrassing because I’m literally applying for, like, minimum-wage jobs,” Santos said in a January TikTok viewed over 25.6 million times. “And some of them are being like, ‘We’re not hiring’ and it’s like, ‘What?’ This is not what I expected.”
These stories of frustration paint a picture of young people’s attitudes toward trying to enter the workforce. Rates of positive outlooks on the job market among entry-level workers dropped to 46.1%, the lowes since 2016, according to Glassdoor’s Employee Confidence Index released on Tuesday. According to a May 2023 McKinsey & Company survey of 1,952 respondents, 74% of Gen Zers worried about job security even after finding a job.
“It’s very disincentivizing to Gen Z as a total, as a young generation,” Howell said. “It’s very demoralizing.”
Gen Z’s pessimism toward finding work is justifiable: The job hunt has become ruthless, according to ZipRecruiter’s most recent quarterly Survey of New Hires. Across 1,500 respondents, 46% said they found a job in under a month, down 60% from the previous quarter. Only a little over half said they viewed the job-search experience as positive, a 10% month-over-month dip.
But the collective difficulty of looking for a job doesn’t tell the full story. The number of job openings in the U.S. has remained historically high, according to the Labor Department’s Tuesday report, which indicated there were 8.76 million job vacancies in February, a slight uptick from 8.75 million in January. However, the unemployment rate of 3.8% has also reached its highest level in about two years, with young people usually bearing the brunt of any bad job-market news.
Until he lands that still elusive job, Howell says, he still finds comfort in knowing that if he still can’t jump-start his career, at least it’s maybe not entirely his fault.
“Selfishly, it feels good to know that I’m not the only one, I guess, going through this crisis,” he said.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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Bitwise Asset Management announced the launch of two Ethereum-themed exchange-traded funds (ETFs), joining the growing list of asset managers looking to create Ethereum-based futures products after the SEC greenlit them.
The two funds will be called the Bitwise Ethereum Strategy ETF (AETH) and the Bitwise Bitcoin and Ether Equal Weight Strategy ETF (BTOP). Bitwise said the launch of these ETFs will facilitate investor access to Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Ether futures and further expand regulated and trusted investment avenues in the crypto sector.
Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan noted the extensive portfolio opportunity Ethereum offers compared to Bitcoin, describing it as a blend of alternative and conventional growth investment. He added:
“Some investors view Ethereum as an alternative, while others perceive it as a conventional growth investment, encompassing attributes of both.”
The launch comes as Ethereum continues to establish itself as a nexus of innovation and growth. It brings forth an ecosystem thriving with applications and developments, capturing the attention of millions of users and leading brands.
Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley highlighted Ethereum’s dynamic growth and the momentum it’s gaining and said the ETFs are intended to be a gateway for investors to participate in Ethereum’s expanding landscape through regulated avenues that inspire confidence.
The commencement of trading for Bitwise’s ETFs is part of a larger trend, with numerous companies, including Invesco and Valkyrie, exploring Ethereum ETF offerings while awaiting approval for spot Bitcoin ETFs.
The decisions by the U.S. SEC on these applications are highly anticipated, with outcomes potentially being influenced by related developments such as the Grayscale lawsuit.
The crypto community is keenly observing what the SEC does, as approval decisions by the watchdog are poised to shape the trajectory of crypto investments in the U.S. for years to come.
Notably, Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart revealed that nine Ethereum Futures ETFs, including Bitwise’s, are set to receive expedited approval from the SEC for their launch on Monday, October 2, 2023.
The post Bitwise joins growing list of Ethereum ETF managers appeared first on CryptoSlate.
(Bloomberg) — The relentless selloff in Chinese stocks has made the market the worst performer in the world over the past three years. And that is exactly the reason some funds are looking to unearth pockets of value.
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They see a contrarian signal in the extreme pessimism toward Chinese assets in recent months amid an economic slowdown, unpredictable government crackdowns and rolling property woes. Global funds as a whole have slashed their China stock positioning to the lowest since October, which to some means more room for potential buying.
“China has a growth problem today, but not a systemic crisis,” said John Lin, Singapore-based chief investment officer for China equities at AllianceBernstein, which oversees $694 billion globally. “The way you make money is you have to go company by company. There’s a lot of nice cashflow companies, nice dividend-yield companies that are still under-appreciated.”
The MSCI China Index has tumbled 55% from a high set in February 2021, while a gauge of mainland firms traded in Hong Kong has slumped 50% and is the worst performer of 92 global indexes compiled by Bloomberg over the past three years.
One of the major drivers of the downtrend has been selling by global funds. After making net purchases earlier this year, offshore money managers offloaded a record $12 billion of mainland shares in August via trading links with Hong Kong, and have sold another $3.2 billion this month.
That bearish positioning opens up the prospect of a rebound, while signs of stabilization in parts of the economy mean it makes sense to look for value now, bulls say.
A Shares
AllianceBernstein’s Lin says he favors firms in China’s local share market, which is primarily traded by domestic investors.
“We like A shares because they are more domestic oriented, and therefore are less susceptible to capital flows based on geopolitical tensions,” he said. “You can find a lot of interesting stocks that have their own idiosyncratic dynamics.”
Some of the most attractive firms are industrial-cyclical stocks such as bus-makers and diesel-engine makers that export to places like Asean, central Asia and Middle East, and also have a presence in the domestic market so they will participate in the eventual local economic recovery, he said.
Health Care
For Amundi SA, China’s health-care stocks are where it sees value.
Medical shares have been beaten down amid an anti-corruption clampdown but the sector has probably already reached a bottom with all the bad news in the price, said Nicholas McConway, head of Asia ex-Japan equities at Europe’s largest money manager in London.
McConway is focusing on companies that are self-funded with robust drug pipelines. The prospect that global central banks are nearing an end to interest-rate hikes may also favor these companies as they can take years to turn profitable so tend to perform better in a lower-rate environment, he said.
Pharma
Guinness Global Investors favors pharmaceutical names that are transitioning from generic drugs to developing new products themselves or acquiring them through mergers and acquisitions.
Examples include CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd., Sino Biopharmaceutical Ltd. and China Medical System Holdings Ltd., said Sharukh Malik, a fund manager at Guinness Global in London who has spent the last eight years investing in Asian stocks.
“We estimate that for these three companies, valuations are now low enough that investors are paying nothing for the cashflows from future growth capex,” he said. “If we think these companies will eventually successfully make novel drugs themselves, the risk reward ratio is very favorable for us.”
Tech Giants
Some of the largest firms in the beaten-up technology sector now look attractive, according to Mondrian Investment Partners, which manages $45.6 billion in assets.
Tech has seen some of the biggest losses over the past three years due to a government crackdown after authorities blocked a planned $37 billion initial public offering by Ant Group in late 2020. The sector was a relative bright spot in second-quarter earnings, which has led to analyst estimate upgrades.
Mondrian Investment has been adding to positions in e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as its stock price failed to capture the potential payouts that will be distributed to shareholders during its six-way split, said Ginny Chong, head of Chinese equities in London with over 20 years of experience in emerging markets.
She has also been also adding shares of Tencent Holdings Ltd., and sees Baidu Inc. as undervalued.
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Cut Off From Headquarters: Global Fund Managers Are Stuck in China’s Black Box
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