Nov 9, 2021 Sign Up

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"If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all." – Anna Quindlen

Good morning! As expected, Tesla shares fell ~5% Monday after Musk promised Twitter he would sell 10% of his stock. US finally lifted  the travel ban on 33 countries and a flurry of vaccinated travelers are expected to arrive in coming weeks. Delta saw a 450% increase in international bookings over the past six weeks. In honor of Thanksgiving, Instacart did a survey of the most disliked Thanksgiving dishes. The top 3 disliked dishes were: (1) Candied yams: 27% (2) Green bean casserole: 25% (3) Cranberry sauce: 24%. 

Check out today's sponsor where you can trade your opinions e.g. October's inflation rate. 

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1. Story of the Day: Financial Advisors are Boomer AF?

A combination of the pandemic and booming cryptocurrencies is reshaping the investing landscape in America. Younger investors are preferring to manage their own money than turn to financial advisors like their parents have.

Platforms like Robinhood exploded during the pandemic when people had nothing better to do than sit at home and pump their stimmys into meme stocks like GameStop. Robinhood has over 22 million users (per S-1) and despite all the notoriety surrounding it, is quick and easy to use.

Many young investors also want to invest in cryptocurrencies and tech startups that mainstream advisors do not offer. Cryptocurrencies have exploded over the last year. Bitcoin is up 4x, Ethereum is up 10x and other altcoins (Shiba/Solana/Doge etc.) many multiples of that. The traditional investing portfolio (stocks and bonds) is "boomer af" according to many millennials.

About 70% of households with a net worth of $500,000 or more headed by a person under 45 had an investing style that was either strongly or mostly self-directed in 2019, up from 57% in 2010, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by research firm Aite-Novarica Group.

Big firms are not giving up and betting that young people will hire financial advisors when they are older: "When you start to go from the wealth accumulation phase to the retirement phase, the world gets much more complicated, people don’t think they need advice until they need advice," said Jed Finn of Morgan Stanley.

Short Squeez Takeaway: Gone are the days when people were happy with 10% annual returns. Young investors want to get rich quick and make multiples of money in a year, and are also willing to invest in riskier assets. In a world full of stories of people becoming overnight millionaires by investing in an ape NFT or a dog cryptocurrency, financial advisors might have a hard time wooing these degenerate traders.

Source: WSJ

2. Markets Rundown

• US stocks rose Monday on the heels of House of Reps passing a more than $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Autolus Therapeutics ($AUTL) +25% after Blackstone said it would invest up to $250 million in Autolus.
• (+) Coty ($COTY) 15% after reporting better-than-expected quarterly results
• (–) Live Nation ($LYV) -5% after at least eight people died and dozens were injured at a Travis Scott concert over the weekend

3. Top Reads

A Message from Kalshi: The Place Where You can Trade Your Opinions

Inflation rates are riding high and millions of traders are looking for ways to hedge their exposure. Debate is running rampant about what future inflation rates will be and the effects they will have on markets.

Luckily the first regulated Events exchange is offering markets where you can directly hedge against inflation without worrying about other market forces interfering. All it takes is buying “Yes” or “No” positions on markets such as “Will the CPI rise more than 0.4% in October?”

Assume you’d like to purchase Yes contracts from the CPIR1 market. Here is what your purchasing power will look like if you hold the contracts at one of these targets versus only holding cash:

When inflation rates are higher than your inflation risk tolerance, your portfolio outgains what it would have been without Kalshi contracts, all while only being exposed to inflation -- no other factors. You’re now insured on the bad outcome!

Learn more about how to buy insurance for inflation using event contracts here.

Medium of the Day: The Daily Upside Newsletter

One thing's certain - if you are reading Short Squeez, you value getting crisp analysis with an unbiased view. The Daily Upside, founded by a team of former scholars, journalists, and investment bankers, is Short Squeez but for business news. Packed with equal doses of charm and insight, they bring you premium investing news that's actually useful and written without the mainstream jargon you are used to. It's why we subscribe to The Daily Upside. And why you should, too. Plus, it's free.

4. Book of the Day: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don't know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of "when" decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork.

Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. How can we use the hidden patterns of the day to build the ideal schedule? Why do certain breaks dramatically improve student test scores? How can we turn a stumbling beginning into a fresh start? Why should we avoid going to the hospital in the afternoon? Why is singing in time with other people as good for you as exercise? And what is the ideal time to quit a job, switch careers, or get married?

In When, Pink distills cutting-edge research and data on timing and synthesizes them into a fascinating, readable narrative packed with irresistible stories and practical takeaways that give readers compelling insights into how we can live richer, more engaged lives.

5. Short Squeez Picks

6. Daily Visual: Best Selling Video Game Franchises
Video game franchises with the most worldwide sales as of 2021

Source: Statista

7.  Daily Acumen: Entrepreneurship is not a job

"You don’t apply. You don’t get a salary. No one picks you.

Bragging about how much money you’ve raised or what your valuation is a form of job thinking.

Entrepreneurship is a chance to trade a solution to someone who has a problem that needs solving.

Solve more problems, solve bigger problems, solve problems more widely and you’re an entrepreneur.

It’s tempting to industrialize this work, to make it something with rules and bosses and processes. But that’s not the heart of it.

The work is to solve problems in a way that you’re proud of."

Source: Seth's Blog

8. Memes of the Day

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