Nov 11, 2021 Sign Up

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"Writing that lacks simplicity reveals thinking that lacks understanding."

Good morning! Another day, another wild inflation report. Consumer Price Index jumped 6.2% year-over-year in October, with fuel oil the biggest contributor at a 59.1% increase. Amazon-backed Rivian had a yuge first day of trading, jumping ~30% from its IPO price, giving it a valuation of $90 billion (wild for a company that makes about zero dollars in revenue). In crypto land, Twitter is launching a new team focused on cryptocurrency, which should come as no surprise to anyone that follows CEO, Jack Dorsey.

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1. Story of the Day: DJ Khaled Goes BIGGG

DJ Khaled, who spends about half his life on Snapchat, is backing the world's most ambitious restaurant launch. He has partnered with ghost kitchen operator, Reef Technology to create Another Wing, which will launch simultaneously with 150+ kitchens in 5 countries: US, UK, Canada, France, and the UAE.

The food menu is a list of Khaled's favorite foods cause why not. The dishes include include jerk chicken, fried snapper, Middle Eastern rice dish lamb maqluba and wings, of course. The wings are named after things Khaled says on repeat – Honey! Honey! Hot Honey Sriracha, Un Un Un Believable Buffalo, You Loyal! Lemon Pepper, They Don’t Want You to Win Truffalo.

Chicken wings are universally adored and an attractive proposition for virtual brands. It’s Just Wings, the delivery-only concept of Chili’s, was doing $3 million in weekly sales soon after launching in June 2020.

The other half of his life, DJ Khaled spends jet skiing, so naturally Another Wing is also offering delivery by sea, with jet ski’s offering boatside delivery.

Short Squeez Takeaway: Reef is a big player in the ghost kitchen market and has partnered with high profile names such as Wendy's for whom it's building 700 ghost kitchens. Reef has raised more than $756 million, including an investment from SoftBank. More investment and more celebrity orders might be coming its way soon.

Source: Bloomberg

2. Markets Rundown

• US stocks skidded lower Wednesday, as inflation rose in October to the highest level since 1990, driven by supply-chain disruptions in the wake of the pandemic and strong consumer demand.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) DoorDash ($DASH) +8% after the company announced it would acquire Wolt for $8.1 billion.
• (+) Mastercard ($MA) +4% after disclosing new performance objectives for 2022-2024 at its Investor Day Wednesday showing faster earnings and revenue growth.
• (–) Poshmark ($POSH) -29% after reporting a loss of 9 cents per share, versus analyst estimates of 7 cents per share.

3. Top Reads

A Message from Polymarket? ETH to $5k?

The price of Ethereum has been on a tear since trading at $1,800 only a few months ago in July. Ethereum is currently at $4,601, which is over a 30% percent increase in price compared to last month. 

Major crypto and financial analysts believe that the price will keep rising. For example, in a recent note, analysts at Goldman Sachs said that they expect the price to soar by about 80% by the end of the year. Analysts at JP Morgan said that as the prices of cryptocurrencies continue to rise, Ether could be a better bet than Bitcoin.

Will Ethereum reach $5,000 by November 17th?

Polymarket traders are currently forecasting a 58% probability that Ethereum will hit the $5k mark within a week's time. Will there be another crypto crash or will Ethereum continue its rally?

Trade now or follow the odds on Polymarket. Use code “OWS” to get reimbursed up to $100 on your first day of trading!

4. Book of the Day: The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious.

In the first major biography of Thiel, Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of the innovator's singular life and worldview, from his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents and years at Stanford as a burgeoning conservative thought leader to his founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investment in Facebook and SpaceX, and relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt. The Contrarian illuminates the extent to which Thiel has sought to export his values to the corridors of power beyond Silicon Valley, including funding the lawsuit that destroyed the blog Gawker.

5. Short Squeez Picks

• If you are looking to invest in VC, check out Sweater Ventures, the first VC for the retail investor
• World's most expensive houseplants
• Near infinite economic growth - in the metaverse
  

6. Daily Visual: Facebook's Teen Exodus
Share of teenagers saying they use Facebook

Source: Statista

7.  Daily Acumen: Optimism vs Hope

“People tend to use hope and optimism as synonyms, but that isn’t accurate. In a 2004 paper in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, two psychologists used survey data to parse the two concepts.

They determined that hope focuses more directly on the personal attainment of specific goals, whereas optimism focuses more broadly on the expected quality of future outcomes in general.

In other words, optimism is the belief that things will turn out all right; hope makes no such assumption but is a conviction that one can act to make things better in some way.”

Source: The Atlantic

8. Memes of the Day

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