My end of week morning train WFH reads:
• Dot-Com Survivors Have Wisdom for the GameStop Crowd In October 1999, five months before the internet bubble burst, I wrote a cover story for Fortune magazine titled “Trader Nation.” It was about how middle-class Americans were embracing the stock market, with some quitting their jobs to become day traders. I thought it would be worth talking to the same people to glean lessons about how living through a stock bubble can affect investors for the rest of their lives. (Bloomberg)
• Why Texas Broke: The Crisis That Sank the State Has No Easy Fix When the cold spell plunged the energy powerhouse into darkness, Texans found profound flaws in their infrastructure. Meaningful change may be a long time coming. (Businessweek)
• How To Make A Million Dollars Day Trading Instead of a “Fun money” speculating account, consider an alternative: “Why not take this money and go to Las Vegas when the Pandemic ends? You would have more fun, maybe get comped a room, drinks, dinners, and entertainment. Your odds of success are at least the same, and I think you could at least enjoy yourself while losing money.” (A Teachable Moment)
• Three r/WallStreetBets GameStop investors explain why they did it, what went wrong, and how much they made There’s no one story of the frenzy of the last few weeks. Some people invested a few bucks as a joke, while others poured in life savings and maxed out credit cards. Some invested after seeing a single Tweet, while others had meticulously followed, analyzed and posted about GameStop for a year. Some thought the whole thing was a joke, while others saw themselves as heroes of an Oscar-winning Wall Street revenge movie. (Business of Business)
• Born to Run: U.S cannabis enters the sweet spot We know four primary metrics support the U.S cannabis growth story, although the fundamentals aren’t as forgiving as they were last year (Cannabis Confidential)
• Where Have All the Houses Gone? The inventory of homes for sale is startlingly low. The pandemic is part of the reason, but it’s not the whole story. (The Upshot)
• Lessons from my 4-Month Social Media Break and Why Digital Detox is Necessary I took a three-month social media break. As a blogger who relies on Instagram and Facebook for both my income and to build a community around my blog, it seemed like a crazy idea. At the same time, like many people in 2020, my screen time was at an all-time high and I felt like I needed something drastic to break my scrolling addiction. I had fears around what temporarily leaving social media would mean, but I had a hunch that the benefits would far outweigh any business repercussions. So I took the leap, said goodbye, deleted Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest (Bearfoot Theory)
• NASA Sent a Secret Message to Mars. Meet the People Who Decoded It. Engineers hinted they had hidden a code in the parachute that landed the Perseverance rover. Within hours, puzzle enthusiasts cracked it. see also (New York Times) NASA’s Perseverance Rover Gives High-Definition Panoramic View of Landing Site “We’re nestled right in a sweet spot, where you can see different features similar in many ways to features found by Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity at their landing sites.” (NASA’s Mars Exploration Program)
• How Covid-19 could make Americans healthier A once-in-a-century pandemic provides a once-in-a-lifetime chance to improve public health. (Politico)
• Britney Spears Was Never in Control Why did I ever believe a teen girl could hold all the power? (The Cut) see also The Lies Hollywood Tells About Little Girls Britney Spears and I learned the same lesson growing up: When you’re young and famous, there is no such thing as control. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jean Hynes, incoming CEO of Wellington Management. The firm has over $1 trillion client assets under management. Hynes also runs the $51B Vanguard Healthcare Fund – the country’s largest health care fund.
An updated look at subscriber totals across the top streamers
Source: Variety
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