Nov 12, 2021 Sign Up

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"Our favorite holding period is forever." – Warren Buffett

Good morning! Looks like MoviePass is coming back from the dead with a new business model. The too-good-to-be-true service offered customers unlimited movies a month for $10 (while paying the cinemas the full amount lmao) so naturally went bankrupt. (it was fun while it lasted tho) Rivian (AMZN backed car-maker) stock was up another 22% on its second day of trading, giving it a valuation of $105 billion and surpassing GM's market cap. This makes sense cause GM has $122 billion in 2020 revenues while Rivian plans on bringing a grand total of $1 million in 3Q...

As promised, please find the Short Squeez financial modeling course here, updated with the 5th and last module. To help you celebrate the end of the modeling course, here are some sample modeling tests for you to start practicing your newly learned skills.

In other announcements, we are launching a Career Portal for all Short Squeez readers, which will feature the best jobs in finance and crypto. If you are looking to hire candidates and want to post a job on the career portal, please reach out to us by replying to this email.

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1. Story of the Day: NY is Back From the Dead

The "NY is dead" gang is eating up their words and returning to the city. But bad news awaits them as rent prices are going absolutely wild in New York and other metropolitan cities in America. Why? Everyone is coming back at the same time with employers calling them back and schools re-opening. They are arriving to find bidding wars and skyrocketing prices in their former neighborhoods.

In Manhattan, the median monthly rent for a 1-bedroom apartment was $3,400 in October, up 11% from last year, while a 2-bedroom was $5,158, up 20% from a year ago.

Doorman buildings are especially in high demand. The median rent for apartments in doorman buildings, was $4,263, up 25% from last year and also 8% above their pre-pandemic levels from two years ago. 

The sales market is showing a similar pattern. In Q2'21 home sales in LA more than doubled from the same period of last year, reaching the highest total tracked since 2004, while the median sales price rose annually for the ninth consecutive quarter. In Manhattan, the third quarter saw 4,523 home sales, the highest number in more than 30 years.

Sam Moritz, who was interviewed by WSJ, gave up his Bushwick apartment in September '20 and relocated to Salt Lake City. "Things were going really well, I had built a whole life for myself,” he said. He tried skiing and hated it and also did not appreciate how small the city was. “It’s a very small, sleepy city, I was used to the excitement of New York.”

Short Squeez Takeaway: Lesson of the day is that you should not have left your 2 square-inch apartment in Manhattan because you probably can't afford those 2 square-inches anymore. For anyone looking to rent, there is hope. The rental market tends to slow down across the country as winter sets in so maybe try returning from your cabin in Wyoming then.

Source: WSJ, CNN

2. Markets Rundown

• Stocks ended mostly higher Thursday, with tech and other growth-oriented shares bouncing after a selloff sparked by inflation concerns.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) AppLovin ($APP) +20% after reporting third-quarter revenue of $727 million, beating estimates.
• (+) Affirm ($AFRM) +14% after announcing an expansion of its partnership with Amazon and reporting a quarterly revenue beat.
• (–) Bumble ($BMBL) -19% after reporting a net loss of $10.7 million for the third quarter when analysts expected the company to break even.

3. Top Reads

A Message Alternative Assets: Explore unique investment ideas

As a Short Squeez reader, you already understand that investment options are all around us. But if you're only thinking about stocks & crypto, you're missing out on some major opportunities.

Alternative Assets is a newsletter that demystifies the world of options that don't get talked about as much.

Check out Alternative Assets →

4. Book of the Day: Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us

Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they just bad people? Are tyrants made or born? If you were suddenly thrust into a position of power, would you be able to resist the temptation to line your pockets or seek revenge against your enemies?

Based on deep, unprecedented research from around the world, Corruptible will challenge your most basic assumptions about becoming a leader and what might happen to your head when you get there. It also provides a roadmap to avoiding classic temptations, suggesting a series of reforms that would facilitate better people finding a path to power—and ensuring that power purifies rather than corrupts.

5. Short Squeez Picks

• Louis C.K. argues why naps are better than sex [video]
• The meaning of life is absurd
  
• If humans were to disappear from Earth, what will dogs become?
  

6. Daily Visual: Depression Impact of Covid-19
Estimated relevance of depression symptoms among adults (in %)

Source: Statista

7.  Daily Acumen: Responding to risk

“No one knows how they’ll respond to risk and setback until they’re in the moment of terror. Varlam Shalamov was a poet who spent 15 years imprisoned in the Gulag. He once wrote how quickly normal people can crack under stress and uncertainty. 

Take a good, honest, loving person and strip them of basic necessities and you’ll soon get an unrecognizable monster who’ll do anything to survive. Under high stress, “A man becomes a beast in three weeks,” Shalamov wrote.”

Source: Collaborative Fund

8. Memes of the Day

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