Hey, its the Year of the Ox! Finish your week strong with our morning reads:
• GameStop Frenzy Echoes Sharp Moves Long Seen in Cryptocurrency Markets Groups who organize online and target a specific asset are a staple of the crypto world (Wall Street Journal)
• Growing Number of Pension Funds, Endowments, Foundations Adding Bitcoin to Portfolios; The digital asset is gaining more acceptance among institutional investors. The number of pension funds, endowments, and foundations adding Bitcoin to their portfolios has steadily risen over the past couple of years as the digital asset has gained more acceptance as an alternative asset.(CIO)
• Is This 1929 or 1998? Equity valuations in the US are quite high. How high? Going back to 1871, the only periods in history with a CAPE above 39 are as follows… September 1929 March 1998 to January 2001 Today (Compound)
• Where VC Funding Is Surging PitchBook has ranked the top venture capital and private equity firms in the enterprise health and wellness tech sector. (Institutional Investor)
• Reddit Is America’s Unofficial Unemployment Hotline As unemployment claims shot up early in the pandemic, so did posts on r/Unemployment, one of the many topic-based forums on the site known as subreddits. In January, nearly 10 months after the first lockdowns, the forum had one of its busiest weeks ever, driven by delays in payments and uncertainty around legislation signed late last year. (New York Times)
• Substack’s Newsletter Revolution Is Coming to Your Inbox: The debate over the tiny tech startup has reached existential scale in the media industry. (Businessweek)
• Adam Curtis: Social media is a scam Journalist Adam Curtis has consistently exposed stories and truths that lay hidden to others. His BBC blogs feature brilliantly researched articles on (for example) the history of think tanks and their relationship with battery farming and Google. Always entertaining and always a provocative, original voice, he refuses to spout liberal platitudes and makes up his own mind. This bold voice has found him millions of fans across the world, and he is gaining a new audience among the teens and 20-somethings. (Idler)
• Clubhouse, the invite-only audio app, explained The beta version of the audio app is currently invite-only, but its exclusivity has generated a lot of public interest. (Vox)
• Why some scientists believe life may have started on Mars Prominent scientists in different fields say that there are clues that life could have started on the red planet (Salon)
• All The Ways That Tom Brady Is Football’s GOAT As the NFL’s all-time leader in QB wins, touchdown passes, championships won and Super Bowl MVPs, Brady has long since erased any doubt that he is the greatest in history at football’s most important position. All we can do now is rattle off the many different dimensions by which Brady is, in fact, the best ever. (FiveThirtyEight) see also Bruce Arians knew Tom Brady was ‘missing ingredient’ to Buccaneers’ championship “I told Tom, ‘If you come here, we’ll win the Super Bowl. You’re the missing ingredient. We’re a very talented team, but they just don’t know it,’ ” Arians said of the multi-team courting process that captivated the sports world and ended last March with Tampa Bay winning the Brady sweepstakes. (Los Angeles Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Ben Inker, head of Asset Allocation at GMO, which manages about $60 billion in assets. During Dotcom implosion, GMO’s US Aggressive Long/Short Strategy achieved 80+% cumulative net returns for their clients. Inker is widely regarded as founder Jeremy Grantham’s heir apparent.
SPAC Sponsors are an Inside Joke for the Super-Rich
Source: Irrelevant Investor
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