🍋 Musk Unveils Humanoid Plans


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Aug 20, 2021 Sign Up

"My heart is Democratic but my brain is kind of Republican." – Jamie Dimon

Good morning & Happy Friday! Yesterday, OnlyFans, the online creator platform known for its adult content, announced that it would ban sexually explicit content (basically its business model) beginning October, after struggling to find outside investors. While it was a bad day for OnlyFans, it was a great day for FinTwit and the memes flowed. In crypto land, Coinbase announced that it will add $500M of crypto to its balance sheet, and aims to invest 10% of profit in crypto going forward.

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1. Story of the Day: Musk Unveils Humanoid Plans

Elon Musk announced yesterday that Telsa is building a humanoid robot called Tesla Bot. The robot is named "Optimus" and is based on the same chips and sensors that Telsa's cars use for self-driving features. "It should be able to, you know, please go to the store and get me the following groceries, that kind of thing," Musk said.

The robot stands at five foot eight inches tall, and has a screen where the head is for useful information. Tesla is designing it so that humans will be able to run away from the robot or overpower it. It will be able to carry 45 pounds, lift 150 pounds, weighs 125 pounds and can run 5 miles per hour.

The Tesla Bot is an example of Musk’s showmanship, in which he announces that Tesla is working on exciting products to energize employees, customers, and investors. Often, those announcements don’t happen on the timeline predicted. e.g. in 2019 he said they would have 1 million autonomous “robotaxis” on the road in 2020, which are nowhere to be seen.

Short Squeez Takeaway: If the robot does end up working and performing tasks humans don't want to do (pretty much everything humans do these days), get ready to see a dystopian world where the humanoids are all around us. Once these robots learn excel modeling and get efficient at pls fix-ing, investment banking analysts might have to look for another job.

Source: CNBC

2. Markets Rundown

Tech shares led a bounce for major US stock indexes Thursday, though stocks more sensitive to the economic cycle remained under pressure on worries of Delta variant's impact on economic growth.

Movers & Shakers

(+) Macy's ($M) +20% after delivering better than expected earnings and announcing plans to resume its dividend.
(+) Krispy Kreme ($DNUT) +14% on strong Q2 earnings.
(–) Alcoa ($AA) -11% on fears of decelerating growth in China, putting metal prices under pressure.

3. Top Reads

The pandemic has been a disaster for Americans with diabetes (Reuters)
A shocking amount of medical treatments in the US are unnecessary (Atlantic)
The business of Hollywood is still grappling with the death of box office receipts and the rise of streaming (Variety)
Why it's so hard to be rational (NewYorker)
The pandemic caused people to rethink the role of work in their lives (CalNewport)
Companies are sitting on a record amount of cash (Axios)
On the power of telegraphing your investment strategy to the world (AVC)
A lot of Americans were pushed reluctantly into retirement early by the pandemic (NYT)
Why we should be teaching personal finance in schools (TonyIsola)

4. Book of the Day: Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man in history, worth the equivalent of $250 billion. He left most of it to his heirs. Less than 50 years after his death it was virtually all gone, blown away in a generational contest among heirs to see who could live the most outrageous life – lives that almost all ended in misery and disappointment. This book is full of many lessons about what money can and cannot do for people.

“The Vanderbilts lived in a day when flaunting one’s money was not only accepted but celebrated. What may have started as playacting, as dressing up as dukes and princesses for fancy dress balls in fairytale palaces, soon developed into a firm conviction that they were indeed the new American nobility.”

5. Daily Visual: When Europeans Fly the Nest
Average age people leave their parental household

Source: Statista

6. Daily Acumen: Some Rules

The person who tells the most compelling story wins. Not the best idea. Just the story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads.

Tell people what they want to hear and you can be wrong indefinitely without penalty.

The world is governed by probability, but people think in black and white, right or wrong – did it happen or did it not? – because it’s easier.

Don’t expect balance from very talented people. People who are exceptionally good at one thing tend to be exceptionally bad at another, due to overconfidence and mental bandwidth taken up by the exceptional skill.

Progress happens too slowly to notice, setbacks happen too fast to ignore. There are lots of overnight tragedies, but no overnight miracles. Growth is driven by compounding, which always takes time. Destruction is driven by single points of failure, which can happen in seconds, and loss of confidence, which can happen in an instant.

Source: Morgan Housel

7. Memes of the Day

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