'It's refreshing': Wall Street analysts show they're Taylor Swift superfans too by riffing on her songs in their usually wonky research notes
On Thursday, a research note from BTIG landed in inboxes with the title “Now We Got Bad Blood.” The day before, one from Goldman Sachs’s David Kostin led with “All You Had To Do Was Stay.”
For the uninitiated, the titles are plays on Taylor Swift songs. And they’re not the only such references on Wall Street: The chart-topping singer’s megawatt appeal is turning a slew of sell-siders into superfan “Swifties.”
“Wall Street has been stodgy for so long, it’s refreshing,” said Callie Cox at eToro, who considers herself a Swiftie. The US investment analyst has tickets to see Swift in concert in Madrid next year.
Swift’s reign at the pinnacle of pop culture has been one of this year’s biggest stories, not just in the music world. Her record-breaking cross-country Eras tour has been credited with boosting the US economy this year. Her songs — new and old — are getting millions of streams; a film based on her tour crossed $200 million at the global box office; and her mere presence at a football game starring her purported boyfriend Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs boosted NFL ratings and sales of his jersey.
Steve Sosnick was out to dinner with five friends this week, and Swift’s name came up more than once. “One guy scoffed at her, and the two who’ve taken daughters to see her shot him down,” said the chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. “She’s an economic force — ask Jay Powell — and a true phenomenon. I wonder if this was what Beatlemania was like.”
For Swift, 2023 has been a defining year. Bloomberg Economics estimates that the megastar — along with a tour from Beyoncé and the “Barbenheimer” films — may have contributed up to $8.5 billion to US growth in the third quarter. Talk of her GDP-boosting abilities even brought about a mention in the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s June Beige Book, which said she helped spur growth in the city’s economy. Bloomberg now estimates that Swift’s stardom has catapulted her into the billionaire ranks.
Thomas Simons at Jefferies published a note earlier this week following the release of October inflation statistics, which undershot forecasts. That, too, could be tied back to the 12-time Grammy winner, he said. “At the risk of attributing yet another economic data release to Taylor Swift, it is likely that the end of her recent concert tour is allowing prices to settle back down into a lower trajectory,” Simons wrote.
Over at StoneX, Vincent Deluard says that slowing credit-card spending trends and recent negative company earnings guidance “suggest that the usually resilient US consumer is experiencing a post-Swift hangover.” A note this week from the director of global macro strategy — titled “From the Taylor Swift Hangover to QE 2026: a Macro Roadmap” — came with lyrics from two of her lesser-known songs, “Dress” and “Death By a Thousand Cuts.”
It’s not usual for analysts and strategists to try to come up with catchy titles for research pieces, says Sosnick. But there is such a thing as overkill. If “analysts are invoking her name and lyrics to get their pieces to stand out from the deluge of daily reports, then it’s kind of lame,” he said.
