🍋 Everyone's Moving South

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Good Morning! 2022 was definitely a year to remember… or maybe a year forget. Yesterday, Deutsche Bank boldly said 2022 was the biggest outlier in market history, with stocks and bonds both plummeting. Fed officials reiterate that they plan on keeping rates high for the foreseeable future, but investors are just happy they're not increasing them as fast as originally planned.

Amazon is giving the boot to 18,000 employees, which is apparently more than anyone anticipated. And Coinbase reached a $100 million settlement with New York regulators over compliance shortcomings. And you finally have a reason not to hate Bing - Microsoft is working to incorporate OpenAI's ChatGPT technology in its Bing search engine.

Today's sponsor, Percent is giving away their highly anticipated report, Private Credit Outlook for 2023 to Short Squeez readers. Download here.

1. Story of the Day: Everyone's Moving South

More Americans than ever are packing up their bags and moving down south. And it’s not just retiring boomers - a record number of millennials moved to the Sun Belt in 2022.

Some call a southern migration a pandemic trend driven by remote work. But while more workers are returning to the office, the migration still persists. So what's the deal?

Well, it turns out that an aging population and skyrocketing housing prices in the Northeast and West are also contributing to the southern migration. Key metro areas in the US Northeast and West are finally reaching the sky-high home prices of the mid-2000s, while many places in the South are still behind. This has allowed many homeowners, especially older ones, to have the home equity to make an interstate move they've been wanting to make for years.

And as millennials and baby boomers enter different phases of life, their needs and wants have changed. Let's face it, New York City and San Francisco are great for young, ambitious go-getters who don't need much space, but for those 30- and 40-somethings with kids, the suburbs of Atlanta and Charlotte offer more space and arguably a better quality of life. And let's not forget about all those cold-weather retirees flocking to Florida for some sunshine and warmth.

Takeaway: It seems that the southern migration isn't just a pandemic trend, it's a lifestyle choice driven by a variety of factors. Who knows, maybe we'll all end up sipping sweet tea on a porch swing in the South before we know it.

2. Markets Rundown

If you want access to Wall Street insider interviews, industry deep-dives, premium research/resources and weekly Knowledge Drop newsletter, check out our Insiders membership.

Stocks closed higher because the Fed's inflation fight points to slower rate hikes.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Coinbase ($COIN) +12% after the company reached a $100 million settlement with New York.

• (+) Wynn Resorts ($WYNN) +6% because the company's exposure to China and Macao provides optimism.

• (–) Microsoft ($MSFT) -4% after a downgrade by UBS over cloud unit growth concerns.

Private Dealmaking

• Advent International bought a stake in Suven Pharmaceuticals for $762 million

• Sheela Foam, an Indian mattress manufacturer, bought rival company Kurlon for $241 million

• Moderna bought OriCiro Genomics, a developer of DNA technologies, for $85 million

• Money View, an Indian fintech startup, raised $75 million

• Liberation Labs, a protein fermentation platform, raised $20 million

• Concretene, a concrete mix startup, raised $9.6 million

A Message from Percent: A Recession Resilient Asset Class - Download Percent’s 2023 Private Credit Market Outlook

Public markets faced a challenging 2022, with the S&P 500 down 20% year over year.

But many of the savviest institutional investors managed through the chaos, allocating capital into private credit or privately negotiated loans.

This high yield asset class has historically been largely uncorrelated with public markets and recession-resilient. Percent has made it available to a wider set of retail accredited investors, with $500 minimums and average durations in months, not years.

Today Percent is giving away their highly anticipated report, Private Credit Outlook for 2023 to Short Squeez readers. Download here.

Top Reads

• Short sellers made $300 billion in 2022 (YF)

• Fund managers’ top picks of 2023 (Reuters)

• Innovating in uncertain times - lessons from 2022 (HBR)

• 2023 is a fresh start for investors - but the issues remain the same (Axios)

• Tech layoffs are happening faster than at any time during the pandemic (WSJ)

• Apple lost $1 trillion in market value in one year (Axios)

• Manhattan apartment sales plunged during Q4 as brokers fear frozen market (CNBC)

• 2023 is the year of salary transparency (Axios)

• Salesforce under its biggest cloud yet (WSJ)

• Twitter eases ban on political ads amid ad business crisis (CNN)

4. Book of the Day: The Outsiders

What makes a successful CEO? Most people call to mind a familiar definition: “a seasoned manager with deep industry expertise.”

Others might point to the qualities of today’s so-called celebrity CEOs—charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style.

But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term.

In this refreshing, counterintuitive book, author Will Thorndike brings to bear the analytical wisdom of a successful career in investing, closely evaluating the performance of companies and their leaders.

You will meet eight individualistic CEOs whose firms’ average returns outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of twenty—in other words, an investment of $10,000 with each of these CEOs, on average, would have been worth over $1.5 million twenty-five years later.

In The Outsiders, you’ll learn the traits and methods—striking for their consistency and relentless rationality—that helped these unique leaders achieve such exceptional performance.

“Success leaves traces.”

*****

Interested but don't have time to read?

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5. Short Squeez Picks

• 5 mental models to develop thick skin

• 3 rare and powerful skills

• The science behind what makes us laugh

• What are age-friendly jobs?

• 10 types of 30-year-old single guys

• Earn More in 2023 - Combat inflation and recession by building your own income streams. Side Hustle Nation has been deconstructing legit ways of making extra money since 2013. Start with your free 5-day $500 Challenge and join 100,000 subscribers who get new money-making ideas weekly.

6. Daily Visual: Job Market Holds Steady

Job Openings Per Unemployed Worker

Source: Axios

7. Daily Acumen

In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel wrote this on the topic of luck vs risk –

Apply this to investing and you would realize that when you judge the financial success of others, and even your own, you must not just look at the returns made but also the risks assumed.

Doing well with money is, after all, less about what you know and more about how you behave. The earlier you understand and appreciate it, the better off your financial return will be over the long run.

Just avoid dying early.

8. Job Board

• Crypto Trading Firm - Cryptocurrency Algorithmic Trader - Remote

• Fireblocks - Sr. Financial Analyst - Boston, MA

• OpenSea - Strategic Finance Analyst - Remote

• U.S. Bank National Association - Wealth Management Advisor - Seattle, WA

• Ethic - Software Engineering Analyst, Trading - New York

• Mattel - VP of Finance - El Segundo, CA

9. Memes of the Day

 Advertise With Us / Merch Store / Private Equity Course

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See you on the Inside.

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