Sep 14, 2021 Sign Up

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"I have no sense of humor about losing." ― Rafael Nadal

Good morning! Apple is set to announce new iPhones, Apple Watch and AirPods today in the company’s 7th virtual launch in a row due to the pandemic. Fox  announced on Monday that it had bought the celebrity gossip brand TMZ from AT&T’s WarnerMedia. TMZ was valued under $50 million, according to reports.

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1. Story of the Day: Mailchimp Goes for $12 Billion

Yesterday, TurboTax maker Intuit announced a deal to buy email-marketing pioneer Mailchimp for an amount that is absolutely bananas: $12 billion.

Mailchimp, founded in 2001, is based in Atlanta and still founder-owned. It began as a web-design agency and ran an email-marketing service on the side that later became its focus. Today, it also provides other digital-ad services and CRM tools. It had about $800 million in annual revenue last year, a 20% rise from the year earlier.

Intuit, which is known for financial service offerings like TurboTax and Credit Karma, said it will use the acquisition to accelerate growth among small business clients. It marks the company’s largest acquisition to date. Last year, the company purchased Credit Karma for more than $8 billion.

Short Squeez Takeaway: The reason the valuation of $12 billion comes as a surprise is because Mailchimp is completely bootstrapped and hasn't ever raised outside capital, which sets valuation marks. It has been profitable from day one, a notable contrast to literally every start-up ever, especially SaaS start-ups. Kudos to founders Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius.

Source: CNBC, Fox, WSJ

2. Markets Rundown

• S&P 500 booked its first positive close in six sessions Monday, with the blue-chip index scoring its best daily gain in about five weeks.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) iRhythm Technologies ($IRTC) +35% as investors cheered appointment of DexCom's former COO to the lead role at iRhythm.
• (+) Marathon Oil ($MRO) +7% amid an advance in oil prices.
• (–) Twitter ($TWTR) -3% after Goldman Sachs initiated coverage with a sell rating.

3. Top Reads

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4. Book of the Day: The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response to the outbreak of COVID-19.

The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.

Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.

5. Daily Visual: Food Delivery Stocks
Year on Year Revenue Increase Q2'20 - Q2'21

Source: Finex Investing

6.  Daily Acumen: Speculation is the New Luxury Good

A luxury good is one where the price paid is much higher than the apparent utility it offers. We pay extra precisely because it’s not a good value. The utility lies in how we and our peers think about it. The scarcity and bling of a luxury good are used to increase our status (in our own eyes and those in our cohort).

And so, a top-end Mercedes isn’t much better at being a car than a Hyundai is, it simply costs more. As engineering has improved and knock-offs have increased, though, the two-hundred-year tradition of physical luxury goods is fading away.

One thing that’s taking its place is speculation. An NFT has zero utility. It’s simply an entry in the blockchain that shows ownership of something that anyone could see for free.

But that in itself is a sort of luxury. There are now hundreds of digital NFTs worth more than a million dollars each. Just like Reddit stocks, they change in value dramatically, they come with a story and they’re fun to talk about with your friends and peers.

Speculation is a great hobby if you can afford it, but it shouldn’t be confused with investment.

Source: Seth's Blog

7. Memes of the Day

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