Happy perihelion day! Kick off the day where the Earth’s orbit is nearest to the Sun with our morning train reads:
• Rookie Traders Are Calling It Quits, and Their Families Are Thrilled: Many who picked up investing during the pandemic are cooling on the hobby (Wall Street Journal)
• Eyeliner Out of Stock? Blame TikTok: Items going viral on social media sites are selling out, posing new supply-chain challenges. (Wall Street Journal) see also How TikTok Became a Diplomatic Crisis: A Chinese app conquered the planet — and now the U.S. is threatening to shut it down. Can the world’s biggest virality machine survive? (New York Times)
• Who spends the most time (and money) on pets? While almost every age group has seen substantial gains in pet ownership over the past two decades, time-use data show millennials really stand out. Folks of retirement age had a pet boom in the wake of the Great Recession, but pet ownership among people at peak earning age (think 40s and early 50s) hasn’t changed much. Younger folks, however — especially since the pandemic — have gone whole-hog for hogs. (Washington Post)
• Here’s (Almost) Everything Wall Street Expects in 2023: To kickstart the new year, Bloomberg News has gathered more than 500 calls from Wall Street’s army of strategists to paint the investing landscape ahead. And upbeat forecasts are hard to find, threatening fresh pain for investors who’ve just endured the great crash of 2022. (Bloomberg)
• Venture capital’s reckoning looms closer: Valuations on holdings will have to converge sooner rather than later with listed tech sector. (Financial Times)
• Institutional Failure: A Future of Finance Worldview: The human species has gotten good at solving big problems. Whether it’s taking down a woolly mammoth by working as a group or giving commands to a robot exploring a foreign world, scientists refer to this capability as “collective intelligence” or “distributed cognition.” (ETF Trends)
• Throw Out Your New Year’s Resolutions. Try These Antiresolutions Instead. Some aspects of sleep, weight, friendships and fitness aren’t worth worrying about https://www.wsj.com/articles/throw-out-your-new-years-resolutions-try-these-antiresolutions-instead-11672705706
• The Real Santos Shocker: Robert Zimmerman, the Democrat who lost to Santos, was a veritable oppo expert in a past life. So how come he failed to deliver the Santos bombshell himself? (Puck)
• The 23 Best Places to Go in the U.S. in 2023: From the American West to vibrant islands in the Caribbean. (Condé Nast Traveler)
• Hip-Hop’s Breakout Stars Include Two Rappers in Their 70s: British duo Pete & Bas upend expectations. ‘Breaker breaker, Pete’s in the pub with a baked potato, pint in his hand and a Sunday paper.’ (Wall Street Journal)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with John Mack, former CEO of Morgan Stanley. He was the architect of the firm’s merger with Dean Witter and then returned as CEO to lead the firm through the financial crisis. He is the author of a new autobiography, “Up Close and All In: Life Lessons from a Wall Street Warrior.”
The U.S. Stock Market: Best and Worst Performing Sectors in 2022
Source: Visual Capitalist
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