Happy Earth Day! My morning train WFH reads:
• The erosion of personal ownership Everything from your fridge to your tractor can change without your permission. (Vox)
• Hedge Fund Giant Warns of SPAC Blowup After Betting $1 Billion The life cycle of SPACs is riddled with “perverse incentives” for investors, sponsors and the companies using the shortcut route to come to market. “The SPAC phenomenon will end badly and leave many casualties.” (Bloomberg) see also SPACs Investors have earned 9.3% in SPAC IPOs; returns for investors in merged companies are more complex. Depending on weighting methods, they have earned -4.0% to -15.6% in the first year on common shares but 15.6% to 44.3% on warrants. Sponsors transfer more than 30% of their compensation to other investors as inducements to complete mergers. SPACs are evolving towards a more sustainable equilibrium. (Warrington.UFL)
• Kobe Bryant’s Nike Contract Expired. The Implications Are Complex. The end of the deal has no analogue in basketball or sneaker history, opening a hole in the market as Bryant’s shoes have been used heavily by N.B.A. athletes and have seen high demand among the public since his death. (New York Times)
• Greenlight’s Complicated History with Short Selling The strategy that initially put David Einhorn on the hedge fund map has become a major source of losses for the firm. (Institutional Investor)
• Choosing Consultants: What Should You Measure? Sizing up the people you’ll work with to expand your investment capabilities is no easy task. (Chief Investment Officer)
• Who Is Pak? The Artist’s Fans Couldn’t Care Less Sotheby’s plucked the anonymous artist out of a new NFT canon cropping up online. But the artist’s social-media avatar is a zero, nickname is “The Nothing”: “I like being gray.” (Wall Street Journal)
• How Capitalism Drives Cancel Culture Beware splashy corporate gestures when they leave existing power structures intact. (The Atlantic)
• What Makes a Happy Country? Finland, for the fourth consecutive year, topped a list of countries evaluated on the well-being of their inhabitants. “Really?” Finns ask. (New York Times)
• Seth Rogen and the Secret to Happiness How the comedian (and director, writer, ceramist and weed entrepreneur) has made a career out of mining the pitfalls and possibilities of adolescence. (New York Times)
• This Is the Hottest That Stephen Curry Has Ever Been Five years after he revolutionized basketball, the NBA’s best shooter is still getting better (Wall Street Journal) see also The New York Knicks Are Pretty Good. This Is Huge News. A long-forlorn NBA franchise revives under a defense-first head coach. Can its loyal but aggrieved fan base start dreaming about a playoff run?(Wall Street Journal)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Jack Brennan, former CEO and Chairman of the Vanguard Group. When Vanguard founder and investment legend John Bogle decided to step down as CEO, Brennan was his hand-picked successor for the job, and ran the firm from 1996-2008.
There are 45 cryptocurrencies with a market cap greater than $1 billion
Source: Irrelevant Investor
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