🍋 The Gift that Keeps on Taking

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“If you raise the [price of the] effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out." — Jim Sinegal (ex CEO of Costco)

Good Morning! The auto market is on fire! Literally.... Customers for recalled Kia and Hyundais have been told their car could catch on fire at any point, even when it's not on, so they should park them outside. Peloton's first company "All Hands Meeting" with new CEO Barry McCarthy went just as unsmoothly as everything else has over the last year. Reportedly angry ex-employees Zoom-bombed the meeting with comments such as: "I'm selling all my Peloton apparel to pay my bills!!!" and "This is awfully tone-deaf." New Yorkers rejoice as the state lifts the indoor mask mandate today. SpaceX recently launched 40 satellites, and thanks to a solar storm, they're going to fall right back to earth. Let's hope the Tesla self-park feature is turned on.

Today's sponsor, Polymarket, allows you to trade on real-life events including if a Bored Ape will appear at Superbowl.

1. Story of the Day: The Gift That Keeps on Taking

Every year, thousands of people join the National Health Service Corps. These frontline workers agree to work where there aren't enough medical providers, and in return, get help in paying back their student loans.

That deal has faced some trouble thanks to the pandemic and job disruptions. These healthcare workers have had a lot on their plates, including layoffs which unfortunately put them in breach of their contracts with the Corps. The consequences of this include heavy penalties, which can become even costlier than repaying the aid they received.

One victim of this turn of events is Brandi Barrick. Barrick was accepted into the program and received $25,000 in debt relief. In just over six months from her acceptance in August 2019, Barrick was out of work since the clinic where she worked was struggling with revenues as they saw a large drop in elective procedures.

She was notified that if she didn't find another qualifying job in 90 days, she'd owe the government $85,557. The tab is made up of a portion of her loan aid, plus penalties of $7,500 for every month unfulfilled of her two year contract, and interest at over 9%. That doesn't even include other outstanding student debt she has.

With 2.7% fewer US healthcare jobs than pre-pandemic, finding a new qualifying job is even harder than before. Even though hospitals have been battling staff shortages and overworked employees for two years, it's not easy to hire or get hired right now. Some jobs qualify under one program, but not another, leaving job seekers out of luck, with a large bill in their hand. Almost like when your friends agree to split bottle service with you, but end up leaving the table before throwing their cards in.

Short Squeez Takeaway: Hopefully with life slowly returning to normal, healthcare workers will be able to return to qualifying jobs and minimize the amount of time that's unfulfilled on their contracts. Other than that, it doesn't seem like much can be done as the power to change the law lies with Congress. The director of the Corps, Luis Padilla, said about the contracts, "I don't know why they don't read every word. But did I read every word of my mortgage agreement? Probably not." (wait what?) One person in-between a rock and a hard place is even considering having surgery for a hand condition so that she can apply for a medical suspension on repayments and buy some time.... We hope that other options can resolve the problem, and sooner rather than later.

Source: WSJ

2. Markets Rundown

Stocks and cryptos rose continuing a recent trend, possibly thanks to easing pressure on the tech sector.

Movers & Shakers

  • (+) Omnicom ($OMC) +14% as they beat expected earnings and got positive feedback from analysts.

  • (+) Chipotle ($CMG) +10% thanks to meeting revenue expectations and beating expected earnings.

  • (–) CVS ($CVS) -6% despite topping expectations in Q4 report.

3. Top Reads

  • Will inflation data stop recent stock bounce? (MW)

  • More countries reopen to travelers, signaling a big shift in pandemic thinking (CNBC)

  • Disney booms back to where it started (WSJ)

  • New record! Not in the Olympics though.... in credit card debt (Fox)

  • Should you still pay for Amazon Prime? (WSJ)

  • How the women conned by Netflix's 'Tinder Swindler' are fighting back (BB)

  • Higher risks for first time home buyers (WSJ)

  • Funds are not on your side (WCI)

  • Beer industry needs more competition (Axios)

A Message from Polymarket: BAYC at the Superbowl?

2021 was the year that NFTs entered the mainstream, and, out of all of them, none stole the spotlight like Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). It emerged in the middle of the NFT craze and quickly became the biggest, most sought after project. Currently, the floor price of one Bored Ape JPEG stands at 92 ETH. 

In a tweet from popular Twitter user and Bored Ape collector Peltzm, they suggested that we are about to see BAYC at the NFL Super Bowl. On the other hand, BAYC co-founder @CryptoGarga reportedly said on Discord that “the Super Bowl speculation is getting out of hand.”

Bored Apes have been increasing in popularity amongst musical artists. For example, artists like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar all have apes. And all four of these Universal Music artists are performing at the Super Bowl halftime show.

Will a Bored Ape appear during a SuperBowl LVI Commercial or Halftime Show?*

Polymarket traders are currently forecasting a 38% probability that we will see a Bored Ape at the Superbowl. What do y’all think? Follow the odds now on Polymarket!

4. Book of the Day: Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. The Sackler name has adorned the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. 

They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis. 

Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world’s great fortunes.

“A 2016 study found that purchasing even a single meal with a value of $20 for a physician can be enough to change the way that they prescribe. The Sacklers didn’t need studies to tell them this.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

  • Building a Gorilla business Podcast

  • A podcast about how to invest and spend for happiness

  • How to work from anywhere in the world

Medium of the Day: Navigator Newsletter

Take a trip through the news in just 5 minutes.

It is more important than ever to stay up-to-date with the latest travel news. This daily newsletter highlights the news that matters most to help you be more informed on what's happening in the world. 

6. Daily Visual: Forget Super Bowl Ads... Check Out TikTok

Number of TikTok followers broken down by industry and company

Source: Axios

7. Daily Acumen: Information vs Influence

Investing is an inherently social exercise. As a result, prices can go from being a source of information to a source of influence. This has happened many times in the history of markets. Take the dot-com boom as an example. As internet stocks rose, investors who owned the shares got rich on paper.

This exerted influence on those who did not own the shares and many of them ended up suspending belief and buying as well. This fed the process. The rapid rise of the dot-com sector was less about grounded expectations about how the Internet would change business and more about just getting on board.

Great investors don’t get sucked into the vortex of influence. This requires the trait of not caring what others think of you, which is not natural for humans. Indeed, many successful investors have a skill that is very valuable in investing but not so valuable in life: a blatant disregard for the views of others.

Success entails considering various points of view but ultimately shaping a thesis that is thoughtful and away from the consensus. The crowd is often right, but when it is wrong, you need the psychological fortitude to go against the grain.

8. Crypto Corner

  • First crypto Super Bowl

  • Ne-Yo trying to stay... err... become relevant again through NFTs

  • Coinbase takes another crack at getting into politics

  • MLB team partners with DAO 

  • How blockchain is helping fight COVID

  • JP Morgan says $38k is "fair value" for Bitcoin

9. Memes of the Day

 

 

*Trading is not available to people or companies who are residents of, or are located, incorporated or have a registered agent in, the United States or a restricted territory.

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