Nov 2, 2021 Sign Up

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"In the short term you are as good as your intensity. In the long term you are only as good as your consistency." — Shane Parrish

Good morning! Another celebrity is jumping on the crypto bandwagon. Aaron Rodgers announced that he’ll be converting part of his 4-year, $134 million contract into Bitcoin, and also give some of his followers $1 million in BTC. In other weird crypto promotions, Burger King has teamed with Robinhood to give away a "side of crypto," which is a giveaway that runs through Nov. 21 and will give participants a chance to win 1 coin from a pool of 20 Bitcoin, 200 Ethereum and 2 million Dogecoin.

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1. Story of the Day: EV Poppin' Off

Electric vehicles sales still account for a small portion of overall vehicle sales globally, but are heading for the moon. Globally, electric sales more than doubled in September from a year earlier, accounting for 9% of total vehicles sold.

Traditional auto makers and startups are pouring investment into electric vehicles, spurred by tougher emissions standards globally and the soaring valuation of Tesla, which recently became the sixth trillion dollar company, hit another high yesterday and is up more than 50% this past month.

Amazon-backed, Rivian, an electric-vehicle startup is IPO'ing next week at an expected $60 billion valuation. The figure is eye-popping especially as Rivian has only recently started producing any revenue and is more of a cash burning machine than a car company.

From the start of 2020 through this June, Rivian posted an operating loss of roughly $2 billion and lost approx. $750 million last quarter.

A $60 billion valuation would make Rivian more valuable than Honda (~$53 billion valuation) and in a league with Ford ($72 billion).

Short Squeez Takeaway: With climate change getting worse by the day, it is no surprise that EVs are soaring in popularity. A lot of credit also goes to Elon Musk who has made EV cars sexy with all he has done with Tesla, and now investors (especially ESG) are drinking the sustainable Kool-Aid.

Source: WSJ

2. Markets Rundown

• US stocks started November with modest gains, pulling back from intraday records but still logging another round of record finishes.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Franklin Resources ($X) +12% after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings.
• (+) Coinbase ($COIN) +4% after competing exchange Binance temporarily halted all crypto withdrawals due to a large backlog.
• (–) Crowdstrike ($CRWD) -5% after BTIG downgraded the stock to neutral from buy, citing rising competition and potentially slowing growth.

3. Top Reads

A Message from Kalshi: First Regulated Events Exchange

In the latest podcast they were all but convinced that the “Will there be a recession by the end of the year?” market was horribly mispriced.

The way pricing works is quite intuitive. The price of a share ranges from $0.01 - $0.99 where the price represents the probability the event happens. If a market is trading at $0.73 for yes, it means traders think the event will occur with 73% probability. If you think the true chance of the event is different -- then money is on the table!

Trading on Kalshi’s markets allows you to profit off specific market insights you have. You no longer have to worry about predicting events correctly, but getting screwed out of your payday by stock market shockwaves.

Built by fintech veterans, start trading Economics, Politics, COVID, and Sports here.

4. Book of the Day: Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street

Who do you think of when you imagine a hedge fund manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? These tropes capture the public imagination of a successful hedge fund manager. But behind the designer suits, helicopter commutes, and illicit pursuits are the everyday stories of people who work in the hedge fund industry—many of whom don’t realize they fall within the 1 percent that drives the divide between the richest and the rest.

Hedged Out dives into the upper echelons of Wall Street, where elite white masculinity is the standard measure for the capacity to manage risk and insecurity. Facing an unpredictable and risky stock market, hedge fund workers protect their interests by working long hours and building tight-knit networks with people who look and behave like them.

Using ethnographic vignettes and her own industry experience, Neely showcases the voices of managers and other workers to illustrate how this industry of politically mobilized elites excludes people on the basis of race, class, and gender. Neely shows how this system of elite power and privilege not only sustains itself but builds over time as the beneficiaries concentrate their resources.

5. Short Squeez Picks

6. Daily Visual: Cities With the Most Vegan Options Worldwide
Cities with the most vegan restaurants per 100k inhabitants in 2021

Source: Statista

7.  Daily Acumen: Luxury goods

"A luxury good gets its value from its lack of utility and value. A typical consumer would look at what it costs and what it does and say, “that’s ridiculous.”

The owner of a $12,000 Birkin bag might tell you that it’s worth every penny. Obviously, one can carry a wallet and a few other essentials in  a bag that costs less than 1% of what this bag costs, and we can even imagine making something just like a Birkin for a fraction of the price. 

But that would be a copy, not the real thing, and so the story, the narrative, the specialness and most of all, the social element would go out the window. A Birkin bag is at its most valuable when your friends admire you for owning it, not when they admire its ability to carry your stuff."

Source: Seth's Blog

8. Memes of the Day

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