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.
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State & Local
The Circus Came to Town—and Bought the Place by Kirsten Grind (WSJ)
A company that operates lewd performances on the Las Vegas strip has bought an entire town on the edge of the Mojave desert. Plans for the purchase remain foggy at best. [Link; paywall]
U-Haul Growth States of 2022: Texas, Florida Top List Again (U-Haul)
Trucks and trailers in the U-Haul rental fleet are flowing out of California, Illinois, and New York while Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, and the broader Sunbelt receive the lion’s share of flows. [Link]
Scams
Twitch Streamer and NFT Founder DNP3 Admits to Gambling Away Investor Funds by Rosie Perper (Coindesk)
A personality who made his name on Twitch and launched several crypto projects has admitted to literally gambling away customer funds. [Link]
The Lottery Lawyer Won Their Trust, Then Lost Their Mega Millions by Simon van Zuylen-Wood (Bloomberg)
The rise and fall of a Long Island lawyer with an impressively specific practice: catering to the legal needs of lottery winners. [Link; soft paywall]
Retail
Walgreens executive says ‘maybe we cried too much last year’ about theft by Gabrielle Fonrouge (CNBC)
The CFO of Walgreens cited a significant drop in the “shrinkage” rate of lost inventory after a failed effort at hiring security guards and an admission that management may have “cried too much last year”. [Link]
Labor Markets
FTC Proposes Rule to Ban Noncompete Clauses, Which Hurt Workers and Harm Competition (FTC)
The Biden Administration has proposed a new rule that would ban noncompete agreements. The agreements have already been restricted by numerous states and in specific instances through federal regulation. [Link]
Bond Markets
Global negative-yielding debt wiped out by Japan policy shift by Tommy Stubbington (FT)
Rate hikes, guidance changes, and a global bond market selloff have driven the stock of negative yielding debt from a December 2020 peak of more than $18trn to nothing. [Link; paywall]
Supply Chains
Dell looks to phase out ‘made in China’ chips by 2024 by Cheng Ting-Fang (Nikkei Asia)
In an effort to prevent geopolitics from disrupting the flow of chips into PCs, Dell is getting rid of Chinese suppliers for chips entirely. [Link; soft paywall]
Monetary Policy
Why We Missed On Inflation, and Implications for Monetary Policy Going Forward by Neel Kashkari (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)
Kashkari makes the argument that bad forecasting was driven by an under-estimate of how significant shocks can be for inflation. [Link]
EVs
The Secret That Explains the Price of the Cheapest Tesla by Tom Randall (Bloomberg)
Unlike traditional auto OEMs, Tesla regularly changes prices for its various models depending on demand and costs. This article discusses why. [Link; soft paywall]
Sports
Pickleball popularity exploded last year, with more than 36 million playing the sport by Jessica Golden (CNBC)
Enthusiasm is building for the cheap, accessible, and low impact sport of pickleball, which is gaining fans and players at an unprecedented rate across the country. [Link]
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Have a great weekend!
