My mid-week morning train WFH reads:
• Hedge Funds Are Hot Again. Good Luck Finding One That’ll Take Your Money A record number of funds are closing to new cash. Investors risk missing out on the top money makers. “The reality is the best performers are dictating terms . . . the easy way of making money by buying two or three multi-manager platforms is closed.” (Bloomberg)
• Fewer Competitors, a SPAC Downturn, and Inflation Fears Are Fueling a Merger Arb Boom George Kellner, founder of one of the longest-running hedge funds, hasn’t been this bullish in decades. (Institutional Investor)
• How Tim Cook has grown the Apple empire in his decade as CEO Ten years into the job, Cook now leads the most valuable company in the world — technology or otherwise — and it remains among the most influential. More than a billion people worldwide use its devices and tens of millions of developers have built businesses on its software platforms. (CNN)
• ‘A true monopoly’: fee fight reveals heft of Wall Street utility Broadridge Fund advocates claim distributor of shareholder materials is charging exorbitant prices (Financial Times)
• The Carrot and the Stick Which incentive is more powerful – The Carrot or The Stick? Any parent of a three-year-old can tell you that both are necessary. The trick is to find the right balance between the two. Too much Stick and the child loses confidence. Too much Carrot and the child learns to skirt the rules. (The Belle Curve)
• Jack Ma’s Costliest Business Lesson: China Has Only One Leader The billionaire entrepreneur matched the heights of America’s tech legends but failed to heed warnings that Chinese leader Xi Jinping still called the shots (Wall Street Journal)
• End of the Line for Uber Uber was never going to be profitable. Never. It lured drivers and riders into cars by subsidizing rides with billions and billions of dollars from the Saudi royal family, keeping up the con-artist’s ever-shifting patter about how all of this would some day stand on its own. Accounting tricks and tech gimmickry don’t matter when the coffers are empty. (Marker)
• The Afghanistan War Was a (Partial) Success: America’s 20-year engagement did not achieve all its aims, but it was well worth the effort—for both countries. (Persuasion)
• How CDC data problems put the U.S. behind on the delta variant Critics say the CDC’s failure to share real-time data led to overly rosy assessments of vaccine effectiveness — and complacency on the part of many Americans (Washington Post)
• From Daniel Craig to Dwayne Johnson, Inside the Biggest Movie Stars’ Salaries The digital revolution may have changed things dramatically, but don’t lose any sleep over the financial statements of your favorite actors. Film stars continue to be paid handsomely for their duties and are often able to earn much more by leaving the big screen behind and diving headfirst into streaming. (Variety)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Fran Kinniry, who is a principal in the Vanguard Investment Strategy Group, and became Global Head of Private Investments at investing giant Vanguard Group in 2019. Kinniry is behind the drive to bring Private Equity investments to Vanguard’s 401k investors.
Which Country is the Cheapest for Starting a Business?
Source: Visual Capitalist
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