Jul 14, 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.
Physical Performance
Unlocking the mystery of superhuman strength by Scott Eden (ESPN)
An investigation of the extreme increases in physical performance human beings are capable of when adrenaline and survival instincts converge during life-or-death situations. [Link]
‘These kids are ticking time bombs’: The threat of youth basketball by Baxter Holmes (ESPN)
Extreme specialization, high workout loads, and little downtime are breaking young bodies before they can perform at an elite level in the NBA. [Link; auto-playing video]
Weird Sports
Redskins’ Norman runs with bulls in Pamplona (ESPN)
Seeing an NFL cornerback leap over a bull is worth the price of admission. Norman is a regular visitor to Pamplona in the offseason, wowing Spanish crowds with his athleticism. [Link; auto-playing video]
The AHL App Melted Down And Demanded $6,000 From A Guy Named Stewart by Laren Theisen (Deadspin)
An all-timer app blow up led to a series of totally ridiculous notifications sent to AHL fans via the hockey league’s app. [Link]
Investing
Fund Blowups Rekindle Doubts About ETF Liquidity in Crisis Times by Rachel Evans and Emily Barrett (Bloomberg)
The latest terror to grip markets is the idea that investors who use ETFs as cash substitutes won’t be able to liquidate in a large price shock. [Link; soft paywall]
Sub-Zero Yields Start Taking Hold in Europe’s Junk-Bond Market by Laura Benitez and Tasos Vossos (Bloomberg)
With benchmark rates deep in negative territory, short-term junk debt is trading at negative yields in Europe as it approaches maturity. [Link; soft paywall]
As Stocks Surge to Records, Nervous Investors Buy Bonds, Too by Daniel Kruger (WSJ)
Bond funds have seen massive inflows as individual investors load up on Treasuries and other low risk securities despite an equity market at record highs. [Link; paywall]
Economic Research
Study: The value of data in Canada: Experimental estimates (StatsCan)
A new analysis by Canada’s statistics agency has identified the scale of nonresidential fixed investment in data products. The agency estimates somewhere between 105bn CAD and 150bn CAD in data alone, with billions more invested in databases and data science. [Link]
From Policy Rates to Market Rates—Untangling the U.S. Dollar Funding Market by Gara Afonso, Fabiola Ravazzolo, and Alessandro Zori (NY Fed)
An extremely helpful background brief on the structure and flow of US money markets, complete with an interactive infographic. [Link]
Confederate Streets and Black-White Labor Market Differentials by Jhacova Williams (Google Docs)
A working paper from Clemson University’s Williams uses a novel identification technique to identify racial animus. Areas that honor Confederate Generals with street names have higher labor market inequality between blacks and whites, robust across a number of controlling factors. [Link; 37 page PDF]
Russia
Revealed: The Explosive Secret Recording That Shows How Russia Tried To Funnel Millions To The “European Trump” by Alberto Nardelli (BuzzFeed News)
Audio recordings reveal that top officials from Italy’s Lega Nord party met with Russian state actors who proposed a funding scheme that would have violated Italian law. [Link]
Crew of Russian Nuclear Sub Prevented ‘Planetary Catastrophe,’ Officer Says by Henry Meyer and Stepan Kravchenko (Bloomberg)
A fire onboard a Russian submarine nearly created a massive nuclear accident that would have poisoned oceans for generations. [Link; soft paywall, auto-playing video]
Corporate Finance
Buybacks: An Inside View (Sullimar Investment Group)
A $1bn buyback funded with a revolving credit facility saved Delta (DAL) more in dividend payments than it cost in interest payments. [Link]
This Warby Parker Co-Founder’s Next Startup Set Out to Beat a Razor Giant. 6 Years Later, He Sold Harry’s for $1.3 Billion by Tom Foster (Inc.)
Jeff Raider is a co-founder of iconic eyeglass brand Warby Parker as well as the massively successful razor company Harry’s, which was bought out by Schick’s parent company for $1.4bn. [Link; auto-playing video]
Walmart Got a $10 Billion Surprise After Buying Flipkart by Saritha Rai (Bloomberg)
Wal-Mart bought control of India’s leading e-commerce player last year, including an interest in a payments subsidiary which could lead to a $10bn windfall for the American retailer. [Link; soft paywall, auto-playing video]
Long Reads
The Young And The Reckless by Brenden Koerenr (Wired)
An incredible story about a Canadian teenager who ran a business selling level ups on Xbox games that eventually spiraled completely out of control. [Link; soft paywall]
Irony, Thy Name Is Gravy
Boston Market No Longer Has A Boston Location by Cameron Spearance (BisNow)
With 10% of the chain’s locations closing, there are now zero Boston Market locations inside the city of Boston. [Link]
Labor Markets
Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force by Ben Casselman and Adam Satariano (NYT)
The e-commerce giant needs a more intensively trained workforce to operate higher value-add roles, so it’s investing $700mm in re-training a third of its workforce to raise productivity. [Link]
History
Understanding the Burr-Hamilton Duel by Joanne B. Freeman (Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
On the 215th anniversary of the most pivotal duel in American history, take some time to get reacquainted with the killing that altered American history. [Link]
The Story of Humans and Neanderthals in Europe Is Being Rewritten by Ed Yong (The Atlantic)
A homo sapiens skull found in a Greek cave is the oldest one discovered outside of Africa, casting doubt on longstanding theories about the spread of our species from its original home. [Link]
Pictures
It Looks Like a Lake Made for Instagram. It’s a Dump for Chemical Waste. by Andrew E. Kramer (NYT)
A brilliant blue lake in Siberia has become a magnet for Russian social media influencers, but its striking color is actually caused by pollution from a nearby power plant; if this isn’t a perfect metaphor for influencer culture, we’re not sure what is. [Link; soft paywall]
What Do People In Solitary Confinement Want To See? by Doreen St. Félix (The NYer)
There is almost nothing more psychologically painful than being cut off from all human contact, as prisoners in solitary confinement are. A new project seeks to connect them with pictures, letting them connect with a world beyond their confinement. [Link; soft paywall]
Read Bespoke’s most actionable market research by joining Bespoke Premium today! Get started here.
Have a great weekend!
May 19, 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.
Driving
Smartphones are driving Americans to distraction (The Economist)
After sharp declines from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, road deaths have started to rise again with smartphones and the distracted driving they create a prime culprit. [Link; soft paywall]
New Research Confirms That Ride-Hailing Companies Are Causing a Tonne of Traffic Congestion by Bryan Menegus (Gizmodo)
Ostensibly, ride-sharing could reduce the number of cars on the road by improving utilization rates, but the new demand for transportation they create could also be driving an increase in the number of vehicles on the road. New research suggests it’s the latter. [Link]
Tech Tracker: Burger King to deliver to L.A. motorists stuck in traffic by Nancy Luna (Nation’s Restaurant News)
Hungry but stuck in traffic? Burger King initially tested delivery of fast food to drivers stuck in traffic via motorcycle in Mexico City, and is now bringing the service to Los Angelenos. [Link]
Malfeasance
The Spectacular Implosion of Dr. Cho’s ‘Nefarious Network’ by Sheridan Prasso and Benjamin Robertson (Bloomberg)
A shadowy network of entities controlled by a Hong Kong doctor has come crashing down, giving rare insight into the hidden world of stock manipulation in the city’s equity markets. [Link; soft paywall]
Boeing MAX: A Tale of Two Crashes by Mariano Zafra, Robert Wall, Elliot Bentley, and Merrill Sherman (WSJ)
A remarkable and beautifully executed visualization of the crashes caused by faulty software included in the Boeing 737-MAX planes which killed hundreds of people. [Link; paywall]
Weird History
‘Kisse myne arse’: Doctor’s notes reveal bizarre medical cases from 400 years ago by Leslie Katz (CNET)
Doctors’ notes from 17th century England were recently digitized and put online for the review of the public and are full of amusing anecdotes from the various patients. [Link]
Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island by Matthew Bremner (The Guardian)
The story of a drug smuggling operation gone awry and the sudden arrival of a tidal wave of pure cocaine in a small island in the Azores, and how it wreaked havoc on the locals. [Link]
Social Studies
When Mike Bezos came to America by Neal Karlinsky (Amazon)
How the father of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ended up in the United States after the Cuban Revolution. [Link]
SAT to Give Students ‘Adversity Score’ to Capture Social and Economic Background by Douglas Belkin (WSJ)
The SAT is a gateway to elite educational institutions in the United States, and its administrator (the College Board) is trying to level its playing field and remove the effects of bias from results. [Link; paywall]
‘I Don’t Want to See Him Fail’: A Firm Takes a Chance on Ex-Inmates by Ruth Simon (WSJ)
A tight labor market is creating opportunity for released inmates, but those opportunities create difficult situations for employers who are invested in both human beings they employee and the businesses they run. [Link; paywall]
Marketing
The Best Ideas Are the Ones That Make the Least Sense by Rory Sutherland (Entrepreneur)
A catalogue of some of the most ridiculous – but profitable – exercises in marketing that consumers have ever been offered. [Link]
NBA Is the Real Loser After Failing to Send Zion to New York or L.A. by Scott Soshnick (Bloomberg)
Huge media markets in New York and Los Angeles had a shot to land the unique talent of Duke freshman Zion Williamson, but the out-of-the-way New Orleans Pelicans were the ones to land the number one pick. [Link; soft paywall]
Climate Change
Louisiana Unveils Ambitious Plan to Help People Get Out of the Way of Climate Change by Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul (Bloomberg)
Southern Louisiana is sinking, forcing the state to plan for a future where the sea gradually forces residents out of its path. [Link; soft paywall]
Economic Research
Multinationals, Offshoring and the Decline of U.S. Manufacturing by Christoph E. Boehm, Aaron Flaaen, and Nitya Pandalai-Nayar (NBER)
A new set of research suggests that multinational firms have been an especially potent force for job losses via offshoring in the US manufacturing sector. [Link]
Uber
How the Promise of a $120 Billion Uber I.P.O. Evaporated by Mike Isaac, Michael J. d la Merced, and Andrew Ross Sorkin (NYT)
An inside line on how Uber went from an estimated $120bn worth to a bit more than half of that in public markets post-IPO. [Link; soft paywall]
Uber CEO to employees: Our stock could still be the next Facebook or Amazon by Brian Sozzi (Yahoo!)
After the largest decline in dollar value for any IPO in the US since the 1970s, Uber management sought to shore up internal morale with a letter begging employees to keep the faith. [Link; auto-playing video]
Podcasting
Podcast Growth Is Popping in the U.S., Survey Shows by Jaclyn Peiser (NYT)
Edison Research reported that one in three people in the United States listen to a podcast at least once per month, strong growth versus one in four last year as the audio format gains steam. [Link; soft paywall]
Read Bespoke’s most actionable market research by joining Bespoke Premium today! Get started here.
Have a great weekend!
May 12, 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.
Dark Underbellies
‘I’d Have These Extremely Graphic Dreams’: What It’s Like To Work On Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat 11 by Joshua Rivera (Kotaku)
There’s a psychic toll for workers that are charged with sculpting the vivid, over-the-top violence of modern videogames, combining meticulous hyperrealism with obscene displays. [Link]
Young Real Estate Flippers Get Their First Taste of Losing by Prashant Gopal (Bloomberg)
After riding a wave of surging real estate prices that have rewarded rapid buying and selling of properties after superficial upgrades, younger flippers are running into softening demand in markets with extreme price levels and slowing volumes. [Link; soft paywall]
Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T Hit With Class Action Lawsuit Over Selling Customers’ Location Data by Joseph Cox (Vice)
Groups of consumers are filing suit with major telecoms operators, claiming that sales of their location data to bounty hunters violated their rights as customers. [Link]
New Frontiers
They Got Rich Off Uber and Lyft. Then They Moved to Low-Tax States. by Kate Conger (NYT)
Young employees of major tech unicorns have hit bids on their equity stakes and headed for other states with lower tax rates, property prices, and stress levels. [Link; soft paywall]
Nashville Wants to Be the Next Austin, But Tennessee Won’t Make It Easy by Erik Larson (Bloomberg)
The latest in a string of examples (others include Georgia’s recent abortion law or North Carolina’s fight over trans peoples’ access to bathrooms) that pit state-level attitudes towards social issues against cities eager to access business and consumer demand with different perspectives, opening up questions of state versus municipal rights. [Link]
Disruption
From lab to table: Will cell-cultured meat win over Americans? by Laura Reiley (WaPo)
Following the IPO of one of the largest meat substitute companies, consumers are getting more and more access to meat substitutes, with lab-grown alternatives also on the horizon. [Link; soft paywall]
Why Every Company Needs to Think Like an Entertainment Company by Mark Purdy and Gene Reznik (Harvard Business Review)
As the attention economy builds steam, more and more companies are forced to think about their business as the provision of media to consumers, forcing them to compete with a different set of products than the ones they offer. [Link]
The End of App Stores Is Rapidly Approaching by Owen Williams (Medium)
Applications are using native browser frameworks to create the kind of experience an installed application offers, without forcing users to navigate through a gated portal like app stores. [Link]
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’ bids to build US military rockets could reshape national security by Tim Fernholz (Quartz)
The three-way race to sell orbital launches to the US military (between SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the United Launch Alliance) is creating a unique expansion of capacity, reducing cost and also forcing the companies to push the envelope as they compete for both military and civilian customers. [Link]
In the Age of Analytics, Scouts Are Looking for Life After Baseball by Stephanie Apstein (Sports Illustrated)
With the sport increasingly reliant on analytics to identify talent, the old-fashioned qualitative judgment of baseball scouts is getting less and less respect. [Link]
Radical Desalination Approach May Disrupt the Water Industry by Holly Evarts (Columbia University School of Engineering)
A new approach for dealing with hypersalinated brines (water from industrial processes that are a growing environmental risk) may create new sources of fresh water. [Link]
An AI System Spontaneously Develops Baby-Like Ability to Gauge Big and Small by Dana G. Smith (Scientific American)
A neural network that wasn’t trained to count has been shown able to distinguish between numbers of things, a potential advance in “AI” techniques. [Link]
NBCU has announced the launch of shoppable ads on linear TV by Mariel Soto Reyes (Business Insider)
New ads on NBC channels will allow watchers to directly access the product for sale using QR codes displayed during the commercial. [Link]
Economic Research
Who Pays for the Minimum Wage? by Péter Harasztosi and Attila Lindner (AEA)
Minimum wage changes in Hungary present a chance to examine the effects of minimum wage increases. The authors estimate 75% of the increase is paid for by consumers, increasing substitution of labor for capital, and job-losses are concentrated in industries with higher price elasticity. [Link]
Second Chance: Life without Student Debt by Marco Di Maggio, Ankit Kalda, and Vincent Yao (NBER)
The largest private owner of student debt wasn’t able to prove chain of title on thousands of its loans. As a result, some borrowers that sued got debt relief. By comparing outcomes for borrowers who had their loan cancelled and borrowers who didn’t, the authors identify a perfect natural experiment which is unusual. The impact: higher geographical mobility and higher rates of job change, leading those who received debt relief to pursue better opportunities and see income increase by more than $4000 (~two months salary) over three years. [Link]
China
CBS Censors a ‘Good Fight’ Segment. Its Topic Was Chinese Censorship. by Julia Jacobs (NYT)
Producers for an American-aired CBS program cut a segment dealing with Chinese censorship, a sign of the increasing reach of Chinese interests around the global economy. [Link; soft paywall]
Revealed: new evidence of China’s mission to raze the mosques of Xinjiang by Lily Kuo (The Guardian)
As part of its effort to erase the identity of the Uighur in its Xinjiang province, China’s government is now destroying mosques and other holy sites that are sacred to the Islamic minority. [Link]
Fed up Canada tells U.S. to help with China crisis or forget about favors by David Ljunggren (Reuters)
Canada’s role in the ongoing dispute between the US and China (via extradition over a Huawei executive detained in Vancouver) is leading to fractures in the longstanding geopolitical alliance. [Link]
Investing
A Quirk of the Calendar Is Messing With Stocks by Jeff Sommer (NYT)
Recent long-term equity market return improvements (typically over a 10 year window) have been driven by huge losses from 2007 – 2009 falling out of the reference window. [Link]
BlackRock Strategist Says Yield Curve Is Losing Predictive Power by Esteban Duarte (Bloomberg)
“It’s different this time” are a famous quartet of words prognosticators tend to forget, but Blackrock strategist Gargi Chaudhuri is comfortable uttering them in response to concerns over the shape of the yield curve. [Link; soft paywall]
Investors pull billions from quant king AQR as performance slumps by Tom Teodurczuk (Financial News)
Giant quantitative hedge fund AQR has seen its assets slump thanks to significant underperformance across its numerous strategies. [Link]
Money Woes
Stop Wasting Money on Unnecessary Monthly Subscriptions by Joanna Stern (WSJ)
Subscription-based business models have proliferated, but customers are often stuck with a litany of monthly payments for services they don’t want or need. [Link; paywall]
Parents are going into debt over their kids’ extracurricular activities (NYP/Marketwatch)
With a need to fill children’s free time, a recent survey revealed that parents’ expectations children will earn money from an activity are willing to fund the cost of extracurriculars with debt. [Link]
Too Much of A Good Thing
It’s Time to Break Up Facebook by Chris Hughes (NYT)
One of the co-founders of Facebook is taking a page from the Progressive Era, calling for a breakup of the giant enterprise that he thinks is doing harm to society thanks to its scale. [Link; soft paywall]
How TED (And Its Copycats) Gutted the Market for Ideas by Nilofer Merchant (Barron’s)
Live speakers at conferences and events are increasingly being asked to forego fees for their time and effort, with hosts demanding that they accept the benefits of exposure instead. [Link; paywall]
Batteries
A war is brewing over lithium mining at the edge of Death Valley by Louis Sahagun (LAT)
The massive volumes of lithium required to supply the modern battery industry has sparked a hunt for supplies of lithium, the relatively rare mineral found in salt deposits around the world. [Link; soft paywall]
Cardboard Re-Imagined
The hot new product Amazon and Target are obsessing over? Boxes by Mark Wilson (Fast Company)
How marketers at major e-commerce players are turning an item of expense into an opportunity using a bit of ink and some creativity. [Link]
Dogs
Why is this interesting? – The Dog Edition by W. David Marx (Why is this interesting?)
A short history of how human beings have guided the development of dog breeds as a function of our own culture. [Link]
Read Bespoke’s most actionable market research by joining Bespoke Premium today! Get started here.
Have a great weekend!
Feb 17, 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.
Recessions
The Financial Crisis at 10: Will We Ever Recover? by Regis Barnichon, Christian Matthes, and Alexander Ziegenbein (FRB SF)
A blog post fleshing out the argument that the drop in the trend of GDP growth following the global financial crisis was a permanent effect of the recession. [Link]
Beware of a Recessionary Bias Among Analysts by Tim Duy (Fed Watch)
Following some notably extreme data points this week, economist Tim Duy cautions against cherry-picking data, and instead advocates a more comprehensive analysis which yields very different conclusions. [Link]
Distress Dynamics
Distressed Mergers And Acquisitions (Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz)
A very useful background on the area of distressed M&A, which investors may find useful as a piece of reference material or as an initial foray into the special situations space. [Link; 241 page PDF]
Why Banks Can’t Be a Bridge Over Troubled Markets by Paul J. Davies (WSJ)
Linking capital requirements to VaR calculations which raise the capital cost of inventorying securities during periods of high volatility could have negative side-effects down the line. [Link; paywall]
Criminal “Justice”
The NYPD’s new DNA dragnet: The department is collecting and storing genetic information, with virtually no rules to curb their use by Allison Lewis (NY Daily News)
DNA sampling by police is broadening, and the wide nets being cast by police is generally falling in areas least able to defend themselves from attacks on civil liberties. [Link]
Domineque Ray Died So the Death Penalty Could Live by Matt Ford (The New Republic)
In a shocking move this week condemned from across the political spectrum, the Supreme Court denied an Alabama death row inmate the right to have his imam present during his execution, disregarding basic questions about the state’s motivations and constitutional protections against state sanctioned religion. [Link]
California
California Governor Proposes Digital Dividend Aimed at Big Tech by Kartikay Mehrotra (Bloomberg)
In a major recent policy rollout, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a new tax on large tech companies based in Silicon Valley. [Link; soft paywall, auto-playing video]
America’s Signature Mode of Transportation Is High-Cost Rail by Jacob Bacharach (Hmm Daily)
Newsom was in the news this week, radically scaling back plans for high speed rail in California. That raises a variety of questions related to the utterly ridiculous cost of any large infrastructure project in the United States. [Link]
APNewsBreak: Teach for America slammed over Oakland strike by Sally Ho (AP)
Successful NGO Teach for America suggested that corps members who do not cross picket lines during an Oakland teachers strike would be punished financially. [Link]
International Matters
China’s Demographic Danger Grows as Births Fall Far Below Forecast by Liyan Qi and Fanfan Wang (WSJ)
Recent demographic data has shown that China is aging – and failing to reproduce – a t a drastically worse rate than had been previously estimated. [Link; paywall]
Taiwan insurers skirt restrictions to load up on dollar bonds by Edward White and Robin Wigglesworth (FT)
An explanation of the absolutely ludicrous Taiwanese insurance market, which depends on massive overseas bond holdings which are vulnerable to an appreciation of the Taiwan dollar. [Link; paywall]
The Case for a Significant German Stimulus Is Now Overwhelming by Brad W. Setser (Council on Foreign Relations)
With fiscal surpluses dating back to 2014, slowing growth, a surging household savings rate, and low debt levels, Germany is the poster-child for the sort of economy that ought to be engaging in fiscal stimulus. [Link]
Investing
For Boeing, juggling cash flow often means ‘another “Houdini moment”‘ by Dominic Gates (Chicago Tribune)
With contracts that give it enormous leeway to pull forward or push back cashflow, Boeing (BA) is able to play a delicate financial game and make its operations look healthier – or at the very least, more consistent – than they actually are. [Link]
How a Nasdaq Loophole Fueled One Stock’s Rise of 3,750% by Dave Michaels and Alexander Osipovich (WSJ)
A Nasdaq-listed firm with a massive stock of restricted shares is listed on the large market despite its dubious ability to meet listing requirements. [Link]
Malfeasance
Exclusive: FBI investigating top Vitol executives in Americas – sources by Brad Brooks and Gary McWilliams (Reuters)
One of the largest players in the physical oil trading market has executives under investigation in connection to the massive bribery scandal still unfolding in Brazil. [Link]
The former Apple lawyer who was supposed to keep employees from insider trading has been charged with insider trading by Sara Salinas (CNBC)
Three different times during 2015 and 2016, the Apple employee responsible for keeping Apple compliant with securities law traded ahead of earnings. [Link]
Wealth
Wealth concentration near ‘levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties,’ study finds by Christopher Ingraham (Seattle Times)
New research from UC Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman suggests that the 400 richest Americans control more wealth than the bottom 60 percent of the distribution (150mm people), with that massive swathe of the population holding only 2.1% of total wealth. [Link]
Americans’ Confidence in Their Finances Keeps Growing by Jim Norman (Gallup)
The highest percentage of American population expects to be better off over the next year since 1998, with 69% of those Gallup surveyed optimistic. [Link]
Social Media
Writer Sues Twitter Over Ban for Criticizing Transgender People by Georgia Wells (WSJ)
In a novel legal strategy, a Canadian writer is suing Twitter on competition grounds after being banned under the Twitter hateful conduct policy. [Link; paywall]
Money Ball
Machado and Harper haven’t signed because baseball teams are now run like Wall Street ‘quant funds’ by Michael Santoli (CNBC)
A very slow free agent signing season has led analysts to compare the behavior of MLB teams to quants that underweight high-flying and glamorous stocks that garner all the headlines. [Link]
Migration
Americans continue their march to low-tax states by Jonathan Williams (The Hill)
Williams argues that tax rates and low budget deficits are driving the movement of Americans from large population states to booming Sunbelt locales. [Link]
EVs
Electric truck start-up Rivian announces $700 million investment round led by Amazon by Robert Ferris and Paul A. Eisenstein (CNBC)
A small company aiming to fill a high-performance niche in the EV markets with a pickup truck and SUV got a big funding boost from Amazon this week. [Link]
Trade
Measuring Trump’s 2018 Trade Protection: Five Takeaways by Chad P. Bown and Eva (Yiwen) Zhang (PIIE)
In addition to the sheer size and scale of tariffs introduced by the Trump Administration, some products are being hit multiple times. [Link]
Read Bespoke’s most actionable market research by joining Bespoke Premium today! Get started here.
Have a great weekend!
Feb 3, 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.
Health Care
ER doctors agree it’s time to tackle surprise emergency room bills by Sarah Kliff (Vox)
Surprise emergency room bills – the practice of in-network emergency rooms staffed by out-of-network practitioners leading to huge costs for patients not covered by insurance who are trying their best to comply with coverage requirements – is getting attention from both Congress and the private sector. [Link]
Apple & Aetna team up for health-tracking ‘Attain’ program by Mike Wuerthele (Apple Insider)
One of the country’s largest health insurers is partnering with Apple to provide incentives for patients to engage in healthy activity, with rewards that include gift cards and an Apple Watch. [Link]
Failure Of Justice
Taken: How police departments make millions by seizing property by Anna Lee, Nathaniel Cary, and Mike Ellis (The Greenville News)
A massive investigation of the practice of civil asset forfeiture, a practice of seizing property connected to criminal activity. In many cases, including those documented at length by this story, the practice is used to fund police departments regardless of whether the claims of connection to activity are legitimate. [Link]
He was accused of killing a Portland teen. Feds believe the Saudis helped him escape by Shane Dixon Kavanaugh (The Oregonian)
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been implicated in the orchestration of a 21-year-old Saudi student who was awaiting trial for the hit-and-run killing of a Portland woman. [Link]
Media Matters
1 big thing: The future of media is niche by Sara Fischer (Axios)
Loyalty to a specific subject matter and coverage of it appears to be the only way to make money in digital media thanks to distribution costs nearing zero. [Link]
For Bill Simmons’s the Ringer, Podcasting Is the Main Event by Benjamin Mullin and Joe Flint (WSJ)
The Ringer was founded with a focus on podcasting from the very beginning, which may give it room to make up ground on much larger sports properties. [Link; paywall]
Telegraph to Pay Melania Trump ‘Substantial’ Damages for Article by Kelly Gilblom (Bloomberg Quint)
A British newspaper published an article that relied on “a number of false statements” which resulted in the paper paying substantial damages to the First Lady. [Link; soft paywall]
Michigan teen who made 700 BuzzFeed quizzes for free: No more by JC Reindl (Detroit Free Press)
After learning that her work was effectively allowing Buzzfeed to lay off paid staff, a Michigan teen who was the fifth-highest driver of traffic to the site has sworn off creating quizzes. [Link]
Environment
Chemours Is Using The U.S. As An Unregulated Dump For Europe’s Toxic GenX Waste by Sharon Lerner (The Intercept)
Chemical giant Chemours is shipping byproducts from the production of a chemical used in Teflon to North Carolina, making NC a dumping ground for toxic waste. [Link]
Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 by Alexander Koch, Chris Brierley, Mark M. Maslin, and Simon L. Lewis (SinceDirect)
Prior to the arrival of Europeans in North America, large scale activity by First Peoples kept growth of forests in check. For more on this subject, we also recommend the excellent history 1491 by Charles C. Mann (Amazon link). After the huge population declines related to disease exchange, enough plant life grew back that plausible estimates show carbon dioxide extraction from the atmosphere may have led to mini-ice ages. [Link]
China
Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere Into the Center of the World Economy? by Ben Mauk (NYT Mag)
A spotlight on one of the largest infrastructure projects in history and the role it may play in the expansion of globalization. [Link; soft paywall]
The People’s Bank Capital of China by Thomas Hale (FTAV)
A look at a new PBoC program which allows for steal recapitalization of banks via the central bank, thanks to a facility which allows funding for holders of perpetual bonds issued by banks. [Link; soft paywall]
The Great Chinese Bank Bailout by Frances Coppola (Forbes)
More on the PBoC’s effort to stimulate demand for – and ultimately subsidize – central bank perpetual bonds which are helping keep the country’s banking system afloat. [Link]
Construction halts on $1-billion mixed-use complex in downtown L.A. by Roger Vincent, Emily Alpert Reyes, and David Zahniser (LAT)
A massive real estate development project in downtown LA is on pause thanks to a lack of funds from the Beijing-based company funding the project. [Link]
Online Activity
A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health by Nicole Karlis (Salon)
A Stanford/NYU study showed that when users of Facebook deactivated their accounts, they spent more time socializing, had less polarized political views, and experienced higher subjective well-being. [Link]
Craigslist Reduced Violence Against Women by Scott Cunningham, Gregory DeAngelo, and John Tripp (Working Paper)
The passage of FOSTA in 2018 eliminated virtually all online forums which had allowed sex workers to screen clients, raising the prospect that a perverse effect of efforts to protect women from sex traffic may make violence against them more prevalent. [Link; 50 page PDF]
Product Innovation
iRobot’s Long-Awaited Terra Robot Does the Lawn Mowing for You by Don Reisinger (Fortune)
The maker of the Roomba has finally rolled out an automated solution to the problem of keeping your grass clipped and presentable. [Link]
Purina Wants to Feed Your Dog Crickets and Fish Heads by Corinne Gretler and Deena Shanker (Bloomberg)
The pet food company wants to use invasive species in pet food to both clean out the interlopers and provide viable protein for pups across the country. [Link; soft paywall]
Transit Tragedy
A Mother’s Fatal Fall on Subway Stairs Rouses New Yorkers to Demand Accessibility by Michael Gold and Emma G. Fitzsimmons (NYT)
A 22-year-old Stamford woman fell when trying to navigate the stairs at Seventh and 53rd with a stroller containing her 1 year old daughter. The daughter survived the fall, her mother did not. [Link; soft paywall]
Crypto
An Interest Rates Primer for Cryptocurrency Folks by Josh Giersch (Josh.sg)
Interest rates implied by the bitcoin futures market are starting to get very attractive indeed, despite the crypto market collapse. [Link]
Investors
The Best Hedge Fund Manager of All Time Is… by Stephen Taub (Institutional Investor)
A London-based firm has ranked hedge funds performance and discovered that after fees the top 20 funds earned $23.2bn for clients last year compared with a $64.2bn loss for the rest of the industry. [Link]
Generation Studies
The Fleecing of Millennials by David Leonhardt (NYT)
A data-driven review of the economic prospects of the largest generation in American history, with some staggering results. [Link; soft paywall]
Read Bespoke’s most actionable market research by joining Bespoke Premium today! Get started here.
Have a great weekend!
