July 26, 2021 Sign Up

by Overheard on Wall Street

"When you focus on the past, that’s your ego. When I focus on the future, that's my pride. I try to focus on the present. That's humility." — Giannis Antetokounmpo

Good morning! Hope y'all had a fantastic weekend. The Olympics kicked off on Friday and the US basketball team suffered its first loss to France after a 17-year invincible run. Cryptocurrencies made a comeback late Sunday night, as Bitcoin pushed to $40k. In virus news, Anthony Fauci declared that masks for vaccinated people are under "active consideration," and a booster vaccine may be needed especially for the most vulnerable. 

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1. Story of the Day: America's Friendship Crisis

Americans have a friendship crisis. People are less likely to have a best friend and have fewer friends than in the past, new research has shown. In 1990, 75% of Americans said they had a "best friend," this year 59% said that. In 1990, 33% of US adults reported having 10 or more close friends, 13% are saying that today.

Americans realize the importance of friendship but they are just not investing the time. People also want fewer and better friends and the pandemic has only reinforced that. The pandemic loneliness did not come from being alone, it came often from a feeling of alienation while in the presence of other people. 

You can be friendly with a lot of people but can only have a few good friends. An occasional lunch or exchange of text is sociability but not social support.

Short Squeez Takeaway: Increasing time spent on phones and screens, even time spent on social media is taking time away from forming real human connections. Social media gives an illusion of having a lot of friends but few are meaningful connections. The friendship draught could likely get worse with more people working remotely and traveling. #The(Lonely)Roaring20s

2. Markets Rundown

• US stocks closed at record levels on Friday after a week that began with heavy selloff, with the bounce attributed to easing worries about the economic impact of the spread of the delta variant and upbeat corporate earnings

Movers & Shakers

• (+) SNAP ($SNAP) +24% as the company continued to ride its strong Q2 earnings beat across the board.
• (+) Veoneer ($VNE) +57% after Canada's Magna International announced that it will acquire its auto parts-making peer in a deal valued at $3.8 billion.
• (–) Boston Beer ($SAM) -26% after slowing hard seltzer market caused the company to whiff on its earnings expectations and slash full-year guidance.

3. Top Reads

4. Book of the Day: The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.

The author (Robin Sharma) introduced The 5am Club concept over twenty years ago, based on a revolutionary morning routine that has helped his clients maximize their productivity, activate their best health and bulletproof their serenity in this age of overwhelming complexity.

Through an amusing story about two struggling strangers who meet an eccentric tycoon who becomes their secret mentor, The 5am Club will walk you through how great geniuses, business titans and the world’s wisest people start their mornings to produce astonishing achievements.

The 5am Club is a work that will transform your life forever.

5. Daily Visual: Why Long-Term Investing Wins

Source: Grit Capital

6.  Daily Acumen: Too Smart

One of the most persistent fallacies is the association of wealth with wisdom. Wealth might be a sign of good decisions, but can those decisions be repeated? And do good decisions in one field translate to wisdom in other areas of life? 

And like wealth, there are situations where people become too smart for their own good, where intelligence is a liability and blocks good decisions. The ability to create complex stories makes it easy to fool people, including yourself.

When you’re blessed with intelligence, you’re cursed with the ability to use it to create intricate stories about why things happened, especially stories justifying why you made a mistake or why you’ll eventually be right in an area you’re wrong.

The big blowups in any field aren’t typically caused by a lack of smarts. The catastrophes are typically caused by extreme intelligence that causes people to believe their own dangerous stories that you can predict with accuracy, use leverage because your prediction must be true, and ignore warning signs that would have been obvious to a normal person who’s less adept at mental gymnastics.

The smarter you become, the more complex your communication and the smaller the audience you may be able to persuade.

Source: Collaborative Fund

7. Memes of the Day

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