10 Weekend Reads

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of coffee, grab a seat by the fire, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• How Stockpickers Finally Beat the Index Funds: With less riding on slumping tech stocks such as Amazon, Tesla and Microsoft, many active fund managers finally surpassed their benchmarks in 2022. (Bloomberg)

• An alleged $500 million Ponzi scheme preyed on Mormons. It ended with FBI gunfire. In Las Vegas, a lawyer with huge gambling debts is accused of a financial fraud that left hundreds of victims in its wake. (Washington Post) see also 50% Risk-free Annual Returns: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. (The Big Picture)

• Jim Cramer versus the world: How the Mad Money host went from stock-picking star to the ‘anti-Midas’ (The Spectator)

• America’s Fever of Workaholism Is Finally Breaking: For the first time in 50 years, the rich are buying more free time. (The Atlantic)

• Dissecting Elon Musk’s Tweets: Memes, Rants, Private Parts and an Echo Chamber: What Mr. Musk says on Twitter has a huge reach, now more than ever: His audience is one of the largest, with nearly 128 million accounts following him. It is where he solicits advice, conducts polls, condemns censorship and announces sweeping policy changes on the platform. As a power user who now controls the company — he recently called himself the “chief twit” — Mr. Musk has vowed to remake the social network in his vision. (New York Times)

• Forget Pandemic Puppies. Meet the Inflation Chicken. People are snapping up chickens that are “heavy layers” in response to egg inflation. The chick situation holds lessons about the broader economy. (New York Times)

• The link between our food, gut microbiome and depression: A new study takes an important step forward in understanding the relationship of gut bacteria to what we eat and how we feel. (Washington Post) see also The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think: Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease. (Quanta Magazine)

• A conservative judge helped stop Trump on Jan. 6. He wants to finish the job. Michael Luttig, one of the most celebrated legal minds of his generation, never ascended to the Supreme Court. But many think the retired jurist played a far more consequential role for the nation. Now he envisions ‘the beginning of the end of Donald Trump.’ (Washington Post)

• A Puzzling Inheritance: Why, in a world where wealth matters more than ever, we want to tax it less (Political Calculus)

• Golf’s Existential Crisis Is Coming to Netflix: When it greenlit its new golf series Full Swing, Netflix was hoping to build something like the next Drive to Survive—then a controversial new Saudi league took aim at the PGA Tour and the fight for the soul of the game commenced. It’s a good thing cameras were rolling. (GQ)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with William Cohan, M&A investment banker at Lazard Frères, Merrill Lynch, and JP Morgan Chase. He is also an accomplished author, was a columnist for Vanity Fair’s Hive, and a founder of Puck. He is also a NYT bestselling author of multiple books on Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, and Lazard Frères. His latest book on GE is titled: “Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon.”

TikTok Hit One Billion Users In Record Time

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