My mid-week morning train WFH reads:
• Buyout Deadlines: Hundreds of SPACs Face Shutdowns if They Can’t Deliver The mauled blank check funds have a ticking clock: Deliver promised acquisitions or be liquidated. (Chief Investment Officer)
• Why Realtors Have Embraced Brutal Honesty. ‘Smells Like a Farmtown.’ Lots of Americans have relocated during the Covid-19 pandemic, sometimes sight unseen. Real-estate agents are doing some truth-telling in advance. (Wall Street Journal) see also Is the ‘American Dream’ of Homeownership a False Promise? In “Owned: A Tale of Two Americas,” director Giorgio Angelini traces the origins of a discriminatory housing market. (Bloomberg)
• Beware the FOMO Bullies of Technology Are we living through a replay of the ’90s, when most people just didn’t get “this internet thing”? (The Atlantic)
• Two Years Into Pandemic, Shoppers Are Still Hoarding Bulk-buying habit is expected to stick as people eat more at home, supply remains uncertain and inflation rears up. Retailers and producers are shifting operations as a result. (Wall Street Journal)
• Why is Jeff Bezos such a terrible dresser? The problem is his desire to make his clothes stand out, when he should be striding the other way (Financial Times)
• Spotify Has Convinced Everyone to Debate the Wrong Issue It sounds like you’re saying they’re hiding behind the content moderation debate, when they bought Rogan’s show, they knew exactly what they were buying. (Slate)
• Why This Could Be a Critical Year for Electric Cars Booming in a depressed market, battery-powered vehicles are a plus for the climate but pose a big threat to carmakers and parts suppliers that are slow to change. (New York Times) see also The Nuclear Industry Argues Regulators Don’t Understand New Small Reactors Advocates say the plants offer a climate fix, but opponents decry them as dangerous. (Businessweek)
• Assessing the Military Strength of Russia and Ukraine: Russia may not the hold the military advantage media reports indicate. Much of today’s hand-wringing stems from an outdated understanding of what happened in Ukraine in 2014 and what’s happened since. (The Dispatch)
• SpaceX has so many Starlink satellites they’re increasingly photobombing astronomers’ images: There has been a huge increase in the number of astronomers’ images corrupted by streaks of reflected sunlight caused by SpaceX’s satellites. According to a new study, published by the Astrophysical Journal Letters, SpaceX launched 150 Starlink satellites in the last month, with more than 1,900 satellites now launched. (Business Insider)
• Christopher Walken Shares the Secrets of Acting Like Christopher Walken Christopher Walken is seemingly incapable of being boring. “Somebody said to me once that I was foreign,” says Walken, Queens-born, and a professional entertainer since he was a child. “And I think, Yes, I come from the country of show business.” He pauses, for a long moment, before alighting on the truth: “There aren’t many people like me.” (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Rebecca Patterson, Director of Investment Research at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, where she is also a member of the firm’s investment committee. Previously, she was Chief Investment Officer at Bessemer Trust, managing $85 billion of client assets.
A Sure-Fire Sign It’s Time to Buy Stocks VIX buy signal has proven 100% accurate outside of recessions
Source: Bloomberg
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