Aug 4, 2021 Sign Up

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"Dreamers are mocked as impractical. The truth is they are the most practical, as their innovations lead to progress and a better way of life for all of us." ― Robin Sharma

Good morning! Feliz EBITDA to Lyft as it delivered its first ever profit in Q2 ahead of schedule. In crypto land, new SEC boss, Gary Gensler, called for more crypto oversight to protect investors. In virus news, NYC mayor, Bill de Blasio announced the "Key to NYC Pass" a required proof of vaccination for people to enter indoor restaurants, gyms and entertainment venues.

If you still have not subscribed to Short Squeez yet, now is the time and this is the link.

1. Story of the Day: Dating Apps Hit Peak

Hot summer szn is in full swing and people are swiping, aggressively. Engagement on dating apps hit a record in July in America. Daily active users on the most popular dating apps, including Tinder and Bumble, topped 15 million users.

Dating apps struggled early on the pandemic when restaurants and bars were closed and potential lovers couldn't meet in-person. After a few months, people slowly made their way back to dating apps. Tinder and Bumble adapted by shifting part of their focus to helping people find friendships (not just lovers) and developing new video features and speed-dating games to keep users engaged. Users can also add a vaccination status to their profiles.

Despite life going back to somewhat normal in major US cities, Americans are sticking to meeting people online. "It's hard to meet people in real life when you are working 95 hour weeks. I try to get 15 minutes of swiping before I go to bed," reported an unnamed (& tired) investment banking analyst.

Short Squeez Takeaway: The delta variant could pose another setback to people's dating and the businesses that profit from them. So if you are single and still looking for love, you might want to start swiping even more aggressively.

2. Markets Rundown

• S&P 500 notched another record, as investors assessed earnings reports and grappled with concerns over how the global economy will withstand the delta variant as well as Chinese regulatory action against tech stocks.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Robinhood ($HOOD) +24% after retail investors pumped up the stock (the platform that enabled the meme stock revolution is officially a meme stock itself)
• (+) Moderna ($MRNA) +12% after raising prices for the Covid-19 vaccines in its latest supply contract.
• (–) IPG Photonics ($IPGP) -18% after the company missed analyst estimates for Q2.

3. Top Reads

A Message from Masterworks

If you’ve got a stock portfolio (and we're betting you do), listen up. You need an asset that's not going to get destroyed by the Fed's endless money printing and Biden's $6 trillion stimulus plan. In this search for alternative investments, we came across Masterworks.

Masterworks lets you invest in multi-million dollar paintings by artists like Warhol and Banksy that their team hand-picks based on a proprietary database of auction data. We're intrigued by art as an investment because its supply is not only fixed, it can even decline. It's not like the Fed can print more Picassos, so it can be a great hedge against inflation and store of value.

Contemporary art prices also outperformed traditional inflation hedges like gold and real estate by more than 2x, while crushing S&P 500 returns by 174% from 1995-2020.

We’ve teamed up with Masterworks to let y'all skip the waitlist and join 185,000 other members by using this private link.

4. Book of the Day: Decoding Greatness: How the Best in the World Reverse Engineer Success

For generations, we’ve been taught there are two ways to succeed—either from talent or practice. In Decoding Greatness, award-winning social psychologist Ron Friedman illuminates a powerful third path - one that has quietly launched icons in a wide range of fields, from artists, writers and chefs, to athletes, inventors and entrepreneurs: reverse engineering.

To reverse engineer is to look beyond what is evident on the surface and find a hidden structure. It’s the ability to taste an intoxicating dish and deduce its recipe or listen to a beautiful song and discern its chord progression.

You’ll learn how to take apart models you admire, pinpoint precisely what makes them work, and apply that knowledge to develop novel ideas, methods, and products that are uniquely your own. Along the way, you’ll meet the culinary detective who exposes top-secret recipes, the burglar who can visit a bank and recreate its blueprints, and the celebrated artist who reverse engineered his way to the top of his profession without any formal education.

5. Daily Visual: Global Investment in Renewable Energy

Source: Axios

6.  Daily Acumen: A Beautiful Mind

John Nash is one of the smartest mathematicians to ever live, winning the Nobel Prize. He was also schizophrenic, and spent most of his life convinced that aliens were sending him coded messages.

In her book A Beautiful Mind, Silvia Nasar recounts a conversation between Nash and Harvard professor George Mackey:

“How could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof, how could you believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world?” Mackey asked.

“Because,” Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, “the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So, I took them seriously.”

This is a good example of a theory about very talented people: No one should be shocked when people who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you don’t like. Unique minds have to be accepted as a full package.

7. Memes of the Day

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