My morning train WFH reads:
• Streaming TV Costs Add Up as Americans Add More Services U.S. consumers turned to Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and others like never before during the height of the pandemic, stuck indoors and starving for novelty (and something to distract their kids). Several services, including Peacock and Discovery+, launched in the middle of it all. People are subscribing to more services than they were a year ago—and their budgets have gone up, too. (Bloomberg) See also Why Amazon is paying nearly $9 billion for MGM and James Bond Amazon isn’t competing with Netflix, but it is spending billions trying to figure out Hollywood. Maybe 007 can help. (Vox)
• Meet Your Next Angel Investor. They’re 19 A growing cohort of Gen Z investors who are beginning to make their mark on the startup ecosystem. Like-minded young people congregate on TikTok and Twitter, where talk of startups can lead to valuable connections and deal flow. A Slack group called Gen Z VC has more than 7,000 members, many of them still in their teens. (Wired)
• Is There Really A Truck Driver Shortage? The real problem is not a shortage but retention. According to ATA’s statistics, the average annual turnover rate for long-haul truckers at big trucking companies has been greater than 90% for decades. If a company has 10 truckers, nine will be gone within a year because so many new drivers leave within a few months. (NPR)
• 4 Lessons From the Crypto Crash You have to stay in the game to survive as an investor. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• The pandemic saved the fast food industry Burger King and McDonald’s deliver low-contact, standardized food. Fine dining is taking notes. (Experience)
• The Global House Price Boom Could Haunt the Recovery From Covid-19 House prices around the world have rallied through the economic turmoil. Growing leverage and decreasing affordability raise both financial and political risks (Wall Street Journal)
• The Super Rich Are Choosing Singapore as the World’s Safest Haven Money is sloshing around Singapore like never before. Family offices, Bentley sales and real estate prices are booming. (Wealth)
• Bosses Still Aren’t Sure Remote Workers Have ‘Hustle’ Post-pandemic, more employees will work remotely than did before Covid-19. Yet the views of some managers suggest the culture of office face time remains alive and well (Wall Street Journal)
• The Spacefaring Paradox: Deep-space human travel is a lose-lose proposition. If the dream of space travel involves new horizons and feelings of unbound freedom—to explore, to discover, to spread humanity—a nightmare lurks just around the corner of consciousness. There will be no real “arrival” on this fantasy trip: It’s enclosures and pressurized chambers all the way down. When it comes to human space travel, the destination really is the journey. And the journey will be long, and claustrophobic. (Slate)
• A hundred bucks or a chance at $1 million: What’s the better vaccine incentive? A fascinating psychological experiment: Ohio will use a lottery to persuade more people to get vaccinated in the struggle to reach the vaccine hesitant. 5 people will take home $1 million over five consecutive weeks; 5 vaccinated Ohioans under the age of 18 will get a four-year college scholarship, doled out in a parallel drawing. (Washington Post)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Carson Block of Muddy Waters. The firm is known for its scathing in-depth research reports and shorts of various companies, several of which have collapsed.
Will Covid-19’s Corporate Winners Now Lose, and Vice Versa?
Source: Wall Street Journal
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