Apr 12, 2020
Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.
While you’re here, join Bespoke Premium for 3 months for just $95 with our 2020 Annual Outlook special offer.
Natural World
A Google Plan to Wipe Out Mosquitoes Appears to Be Working by Kristen V Brown (Bloomberg/MSN)
In order to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, the Google project has developed a bacterial strain that renders mosquito eggs inert after mating. File under “what could possibly go wrong”. [Link]
400-year-old Greenland shark ‘longest-living vertebrate’ by Rebecca Morelle (BBC)
Radiocarbon dating found a Greenland shark that was swimming during the English Civil War. The species doesn’t reach sexual maturity until it has been swimming for 150 years. [Link]
Great Barrier Reef suffers its most widespread mass bleaching event on record by Maddie Stone (WaPo)
Warm waters lead coral to eject the microbial life they host, “bleaching” the coral. While bleaching does not mean death for reefs, repeated or extended bleaching events can destroy coral permanently. [Link; soft paywall]
Pollution Recedes Amid Lockdown, And A View Of The Himalayas Emerges For The First Time In 30 Years by Marley Coyne (Forbes)
Restrictions on all manner of transportation and other activities have led to massive air quality improvements in Northern India, revealing a view of the Himalayan Mountains. [Link]
COVID Containment
Veterinary scientist hailed for Faroe Islands’ lack of Covid-19 deaths by Daniel Boffey (The Guardian)
The tiny Faroe Islands nation has avoided deaths from coronavirus by introducing a mass testing regime early using a facility designed to diagnose salmon viral infections. [Link]
Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ Slams Virus Lockdowns in Tweetstorm by Reed Stevenson (Bloomberg)
In a classic case of “don’t meet your heroes”, the hedge fund investor has taken to Twitter on a crusade to get rid of the social distancing measures which have saved lives around the world. [Link; paywall, auto-playing video]
How the 1957 Flu Pandemic Was Stopped Early In Its Path by Becky Little (History)
A doctor at Walter Reed spotted headlines related to a flu outbreak in Hong Kong, and quickly requisitioned samples before formulating a vaccine then forcing it in to production. [Link]
Recession Effects
Quantifying the Adpocalypse by Value Mule (Medium)
Some interesting figures on the huge blow to ad spending that the recent decline in economic activity, with implications for the broader economic outlook as well. [Link]
The most exposed workers in the coronavirus recession are also key consumers: Making sure they get help is key to fighting the recession by Christina Patterson (Equitable Growth)
The demographic groups who are most likely to lose income during recessions are also the groups most likely to spend (rather than save) additional income. In short, making sure these groups don’t lose income is a powerful tool for keeping consumer spending up. [Link]
Essential Services
New York’s Kings of Clean by Tunk Varadarajan (WSJ)
The physically challenging and critically important work of municipal sanitation workers is coming into new light during a period of extreme stress and dislocation thanks to the coronavirus. [Link; paywall]
Grocery Revolution
‘I Just Need the Comfort’: Processed Foods Make a Pandemic Comeback by Julie Creswell (NYT)
Comfort foods like Chef Boyardee, Spaghetti-Os, lasagna, ice cream, Hamburger Helper, and Yoplait are getting huge demand bumps after years of declining sales. [Link; paywall]
A student created a computer program that tells you when an Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods delivery slot opens up by Todd Haselton (CNBC)
Amazon and other food delivery services often offer no space for pickups, but a quick script written by a Georgetown student allows users to book a delivery slot by constantly watching the sites. [Link]
High Yield
Billionaire Fertitta Offers Record 15% Loan Rate to Save Empire by Davide Scigliuzzo and Jeannine Amodeo (Bloomberg)
The owner of Golden Nugget casinos and Landry’s restaurants is paying a 15% coupon to sustain its business with a $250mm leveraged loan. [Link; soft paywall]
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Have a great weekend!
Mar 1, 2020
Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.
While you’re here, join Bespoke Premium for 3 months for just $95 with our 2020 Annual Outlook special offer.
Covid-19
Panic buying strips store shelves as people stockpile amid coronavirus outbreak with one woman turning her basement into a ‘supermarket’ and a man buying a YEAR’S supply of food which includes 192 tins of SPAM by Emily Crane (Daily Mail)
Stockpiling ahead of a nearly-inevitable Covid-19 outbreak inside the US is not yet reaching any kind of fever pitch but some early buyers are looking for canned goods, cough medicines, masks, and thermometers. [Link; auto-playing video]
Amazon bars 1 million products for false coronavirus claims by Jeffrey Dastin (Yahoo!/Reuters)
As snake oil salesmen flock to the online marketplace, Amazon has stepped in and blocked listings for products which claim to be able to kill the Covid-19 virus. [Link]
How One Patient Turned Korea’s Virus Outbreak Into an Epidemic by Heesu Lee and Kyunghee Park (Bloomberg)
A member of a secretive, apocalyptic religious sect helped turbocharge the outbreak of coronavirus in Korea by passing the virus to members of her church and beyond. [Link; soft paywall, auto-playing video]
Why Some COVID-19 Cases Are Worse than Others by Katarina Zimmer (The Scientist)
A very helpful and detailed analysis of factors that make the Covid-2019 outbreak so dangerous to the elderly but of so little concern to younger members of the population. [Link]
Lessons From Singapore
Singapore Emerges as Litmus Test for Coronavirus Containment by Philip Heijmans (Bloomberg)
The city-state’s world-class health care system has been able to cap spread of cases while also delivering a much lower death rate than what’s been observed in Wuhan. [Link; soft paywall, auto-playing video]
Living With Coronavirus Anxiety In Singapore by Megan K. Stack (The NYer)
An investigation of how pandemics change the lives of people and the broader community, regardless of how many are infected by whatever the pathogen is. [Link]
Sentiment
Reddit’s Profane, Greedy Traders Are Shaking Up the Stock Market by Luke Kawa (Bloomberg)
Every bull market inevitably has its small corners of extreme excess, and the huge gains for the stock market at the end of 2019 and start of 2020 are no different: welcome to r/wallstreetbets! [Link; soft paywall]
Bloomberg U.S. Startups Barometer (Bloomberg)
A catalog of the current funding backdrop for Silicon Valley, which has seen a plunge to multi-year lows in deals, deal amounts, first financings and exits that portends poorly for the space. [Link; soft paywall]
Fraaaaaud!
I stumbled across a huge Airbnb scam that’s taking over London by James Temperton (Wired)
While the company claims it’s been able to step up enforcement against malefactors that use its service, recent evidence from the capitol of the UK shows fraud is absolutely rampant on the platform. [Link]
How North Korean Hackers Rob Banks Around the World by Ben Buchanan (Wired)
There’s a long history of North Korean efforts to both fund its economy and attack the American economy via counterfeiting of currency, but the country has now moved into hacking banks instead of simple physical bill printing. [Link]
Millennial Women Made LuLaRoe Billions. Then They Paid The Price. by Stephanie McNeal (BuzzFeed)
The latest multi-level marketing scheme to wreck havoc on victims of its over-promised, under-delivered pitch of financial freedom was targeted at women approaching middle age who wanted to cover student loans and keep heads above water in a challenging post-crisis economy. [Link]
Sports Yarns
That Time Obama Pardoned a Guy Who Stole Charlie Sheen’s Honus Wagner Card by Jon Wertheim (Sports Illustrated)
Kick back, relax, and enjoy this zany tail about one of the most expensive baseball cards in history and one of the stranger pardons that ended up ending the affair. [Link]
Olympian’s cameo caps DeKalb student’s Black History Month report by Marlon A. Walker (AJC)
An assignment to do a project on Afro-Latinos who had made a big impact on society got taken above and beyond: with a visit to Barack Obama Elementary Magnet School of Technology from Olympian and civil rights icon John Carlos. [Link]
Durable Goods
The Case for the $100,000 Mattress by Alicia Brunker (Architectural Digest)
Online mattress sellers are passé, with the $149,000 Savoir mattress (which takes 320 hours of craftsmanship in Sweden to create) the undisputed leader of sleeping luxury. [Link]
Where’s My Cup? Offices Find It’s Not Easy Going Green by Te-Ping Chen (WSJ)
Going green isn’t always easy, though one does wonder how inconvenient keeping track of a water bottle could possibly be. [Link; paywall]
Qui Custodiet?
Facial-Recognition Company That Works With Law Enforcement Says Entire Client List Was Stolen by Betsy Swan (The Daily Beast)
It’s pretty hard to believe a company that can’t keep its client list locked down deserves to have billions of pictures designed to create a near-panopticon surveillance infrastructure. [Link]
Climate Change
Newly waterproofed Arctic seed vault hits 1m samples by Damian Carrington (The Guardian)
A seed vault buried in Svaldbard has been upgraded to prevent flooding due to warmer temperatures, but now holds over 1mm samples as part of an effort to prevent a catastrophic loss of global biodiversity. [Link]
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Have a great weekend!
Nov 10, 2019
Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.
While you’re here, join Bespoke Premium for 3 months for just $95 with our 2019 Annual Outlook special offer.
Economics
The New View of Government Debt by J.W. Mason (jwmason.org)
A review of changing attitudes towards government debt, with specific arguments about why widening government deficits haven’t led to higher interest rates during recent years. [Link; 20 page PDF]
The Inflation Gap by Annie Lowery (The Atlantic)
In addition to accessing fewer resources, consumers who are at the lowest end of the income scale also face higher prices over time than higher-income consumers. [Link; soft paywall]
Renewables
An Energy Breakthrough Could Store Solar Power for Decades by Adam Popescu (Bloomberg)
A novel molecule designed in Sweden offers a potential way to store energy from the sun for very long periods, and then conveniently release it, which may be more attractive than traditional renewable setups that include photovoltaic solar energy and industrial scale batteries. [Link; soft paywall]
Tesla will unveil its Cybertruck pickup on Nov. 21 in LA, Elon Musk says by Todd Haselton (CNBC)
Harried by upstarts like Rivian and eager to deliver further growth, Tesla is set to introduce its new pickup truck at an event in Los Angeles on November 21st. [Link]
Nuclear fusion is ‘a question of when, not if’ by Matt McGrath (BBC)
Fusion power is famous for always being just twenty years away, and the UK government is keeping up the proud tradition of those sorts of headlines courtesy of a new modest investment in fusion power. [Link]
South Australia’s stunning renewable energy transition, and what comes next by Giles Parkinson (Renew Economy)
A review of the massive shift in electrical sources in South Australia, which feature a massive uptake of renewables, new battery projects, and higher efficiency. The scope and scale of the shift is a very good sign for the ability to substitute low carbon technologies in other utilities around the world. [Link]
Social Media
China’s TikTok Blazes New Ground. That Could Doom It. by Li Yuan (NYT)
Americans – especially teens – have recently flocked to algorithmically-driven video app TikTok, but its Chinese ownership is opening up the service to investigation by the federal government. [Link; soft paywall]
Twitter hates me. The Des Moines Register fired me. Here’s what really happened. by Aaron Calvin (Columbia Journalism Review)
The complicated interplay of digital footprints, virality, and journalistic best practices traced out in this story are worthy of calm consideration and a longer think than knee-jerk outrage, knee-jerk backlash or the outrage, or even knee-jerk outrage about the backlash to the outrage. [Link]
Hot Takes
The World Has Gone Mad and the System Is Broken by Ray Dalio (LinkedIn)
A largely normative assessment about how darn confusing the world is these days, what with negative interest rates and big deficits and all the other strange things. [Link]
It’s Time to Take Down the Mona Lisa by Jason Farago (NYT)
Arguably the world’s most beloved painting, the Mona Lisa often underwhelms visitors to the Louvre, which apparently is a good enough reason to shut it away in a closet somewhere. [Link; soft paywall]
Investing
401(k) contribution limit increases to $19,500 for 2020; catch-up limit rises to $6,500 (IRS)
Contributions workers can make to retirement plans at work are rising in 2020, per a new release by the IRS. [Link]
‘Infinite leverage’ — some Robinhood users have been trading with unlimited borrowed money by Kate Rooney (CNBC)
Traders who use the Robinhood app were accidentally given access to enormous leverage in the form of options contracts and margin loans. [Link]
Investors reassess the hope-and-hype business model, causing stocks like GrubHub to plunge by Michael Santoli (CNBC)
High growth companies that have surged over the last year or so are being tossed aside as GrubHub, Wayfair, Etsy, and Pinterest plunge 20% or more in response to earnings. [Link]
Record Short VIX Positioning Reflects a Ton of Fear Elsewhere by Luke Kawa (Bloomberg)
While huge speculator shorts in VIX futures contracts may seem like a sign of offsides positioning, weak hands actually hold the other side: long VIX retail funds. [Link; soft paywall]
Medallion
The Making of the World’s Greatest Investor by Gregory Zuckerman (WSJ)
What happens when a mathematician tries his hand at trading currencies? Before fees, 66% returns per year for three decades, and unparalleled result. [Link; paywall]
Simons Questioned by Investors by Susan Pulliam and Jenny Strasburg (WSJ)
Given the plaudits of the prior article, a divergence between the performance of internal versus external funds during the financial crisis is probably worth considering. [Link; paywall]
Nasty Surprises
California hits Philly-area Amazon seller with $1.6 million sales-tax bill by Harold Brubaker (Philadelphia Inquirer)
A Pennsylvania third-party Amazon seller has been presented with a seven figure tax bill by the state of California, presenting a major wrench in both third party sellers’ business model and constitutional issues. [Link]
A ton of people received text messages overnight that were originally sent on Valentine’s Day by Jacob Kastrenakes (The Verge)
Last Valentine’s Day, a huge wave of text messages went undelivered. 9 months later, they’re showing up en masse around the country. [Link]
Throwbacks
Stuck in a loop: remembering the 20th anniversary of Burn All GIFs by Margarita Noriega (Glitch)
An ode to the value of the gif, a flexible and ubiquitous format for expressing references, emotions, and more, centered around the story of how we almost missed on .gif files thanks to a website called Burn All GIFs. [Link]
How Sesame Street changed television and my life by Kathleen Davis (Fast Company)
The central thesis of Sesame Street – that education and entertainment didn’t have to be separate beasts – has led to multiple generations of Sesame Street kids. [Link]
Working Ways
Microsoft experimented with a 4-day workweek, and productivity jumped by 40% by Lisa Eadicicco (Business Insider)
By cutting the workweek by 20%, a Japanese office of Microsoft reported a 40% gain in productivity and therefore a big uptick in output. [Link]
Politics
Democrats Cool on Wall Street Donors, and the Feeling Is Mutual by Joshua Green and Bill Allison (Bloomberg)
Huge online fundraising operations are allowing at least two Democratic candidates to swear off the big checks that have lured Democrats to Wall Street in recent cycles; it shouldn’t be any surprise that talk of wealth taxes is rearing its head at the same time. [Link; soft paywall]
Military Matters
Suicide Has Been Deadlier Than Combat for the Military by Carol Giacomo (NYT)
Each of the past six years have seen more suicides by military personnel than the total number of deaths in multi-decade presences in Afghanistan and Iraq, with more than 45,000 veterans and active-duty service members taking their lives. [Link; soft paywall]
Read Bespoke’s most actionable market research by joining Bespoke Premium today! Get started here.
Have a great weekend!
Sep 22, 2019
Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.
While you’re here, join Bespoke Premium for 3 months for just $95 with our 2019 Annual Outlook special offer.
Green Energy
Longi brings forward manufacturing capacity plans by a year by Max Hall (PV Magazine)
Chinese solar wafer giant Longi now expects to produce 65 gigawatts worth of wafers by the end of 2020, 12 months faster than had previously been estimated and a sign of how rapidly solar technology is scaling. [Link]
Is this Australia’s first utility to acknowledge death by solar? by Michael Mazengarb (Renew Economy)
The utility owned by Australia’s Northern Territory government reports it faces an “existential risk” thanks to consumer solar energy deployment. The company says the cost of producing solar power is below the marginal cost of producing power from natural gas at the company’s plants. [Link]
This Week In Tech
Google’s quantum bet on the future of AI—and what it means for humanity by Katrina Brooker (Fast Company)
The story of how one of the largest tech companies in the world is deploying billions in pursuit of artificial intelligence which may challenge the human brain’s capacity. [Link]
Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products by Dana Mattioli (WSJ)
Searches for specific products on Amazon have been tweaked to more prominently feature the company’s own-brand products, a practice unlikely to be welcomed by US anti-trust regulators. [Link; paywall]
Politics
American Migration Patterns Should Terrify the GOP by Derek Thompson (The Atlantic)
Hundreds of Americans are flowing out of large, blue states and into the metropolitan areas which dominate traditional red states, potentially accelerating a shift in demographics which is already tilting the tables against a GOP in national contests. [Link]
This drawing explains a surprising amount about your political views by Matt Yglesias (Vox)
An abstract piece of modern art is a better predictive variable for how voters think about the President than other metrics, including the impact of whether or not a voter holds a college degree. [Link]
Labor Markets
The Labor Market Effects of Legal Restrictions on Worker Mobility by Matthew S. Johnson, Kurt Lavetti, Michael Lipsitz (SSRN)
An increase in enforceability of noncompete agreements from the 10th to the 90th percentile lowered annual earnings by 3-4% and resulted in a 9% decline in the likelihood a worker would change jobs. [Link]
Army meets recruiting goal for 2019 after revamping how it attracts prospective soldiers by Corey Dickstein (Stars & Stripes)
After lower its recruiting target, the Army was able to hit its number this year, adding over 68,000 enlistees to active duty this year. [Link]
Food
Pizza Hut debuts a gigantic Cheez-It stuffed with even more cheese by Megan Lavey-Heaton (The Oregonian)
Do you like Cheez-Its? Head over to pizza hut for a bite of a jumbo homage to the snack food stuffed with delicious cheese and even pepperoni. [Link]
Makeup
Wroxeter ‘pendants’ turn out to be Roman make-up tools (BBC)
Roman artefacts uncovered recently in the UK suggest that ancient Roman Britons were fond of makeup, using specialized tools to prepare and apply the cosmetics. [Link]
Scandal
The fake French minister in a silicone mask who stole millions by Hugh Schofield (BBC)
Using a silicon mask and a Skype account, a fraudster was able to convince marks to wire millions of dollars to his accounts, putatively to support anti-terrorism activities. [Link]
Carcinogens Have Infiltrated the Generic Drug Supply in the U.S. by Anna Edney, Susan Berfield, and Evelyn Yu (Bloomberg)
Obscure chemicals that can cause cancer have made their way into the US drug supply, a byproduct of the processes used to make drugs and lax quality assurance. [Link; soft paywall]
Beer Money
‘Beer money’ sign still chugging along for charity by Tom Vanhaaren (ESPN)
A gag sign asking viewers to send a college football fan beer money ended up with tens of thousands in donations via Venmo; the proceeds are being passed on to charity. [Link]
Long Reads
Complication and Complexity: Need They Be Feared? by Dr Ewan Kirk (Cantab Capital)
Fear of the unknown can be paralyzing, but the author argues that complicated and complex are not the same thing; the risks of complexity are emergent, unlike those of complicated systems. [Link]
How Adam Neumann’s Over-the-Top Style Built WeWork. ‘This Is Not the Way Everybody Behaves.’ by Eliot Brown (WSJ)
A large read on the zany founder of WeWork, which pushed off its IPO to October or possibly later this week. [Link; paywall]
Tide’s Going Out
One in Four of New York’s New Luxury Apartments Is Unsold by Stefanos Chen (NYT)
The high end of the New York real estate market is in deep trouble, with more than 4000 apartments among the 16,000 built in new buildings since 2013 unsold. [Link; soft paywall]
Boston Fed’s Rosengren: Lower rates could expose co-working companies like WeWork by Brian Cheung (Yahoo!)
One of the hawkish dissenters from the most recent FOMC meeting thinks that highly speculative business models like WeWork could proliferate further in a world with lower rates. [Link]
Lim Chow Kiat, one of the world’s top investors, rings the alarm, again by David Ramli (Business Standard)
The head of Singapore’s massive sovereign wealth funds is worried about the stability of financial markets, economic growth, and the global political framework that is showing signs of stress. [Link]
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Have a great weekend!
Aug 21, 2019
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