🍋 Housing Winter is Here

Together With

Good Morning! Not for Shakira though, as she has to stand trial for tax fraud in Spain. Also tough, the recent selloff in... everything, has increased odds of a recession to 98%. Good news for FTX US though, as the crypto exchange won bankrupt firm Voyager Digital's assets. (Not) surprisingly, 71% of workers say wages haven't kept up with inflation. That makes it tougher to buy a Big Mac, which inspired the Big Mac Index - which is showing the US currency as measured in burgers looks massively overvalued.

Tired of long hours and those late-night plsfixes? Looking for flexibility and autonomy at work? Check out The Commons Core Sprint, taught by mentors who work at companies like Uber, DoorDash, Netflix and Revolut.

1. Story of the Day: Housing Winter is Here

For the first time since 2012, US home prices have fallen. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, a measure of home prices in 20 large American cities, showed a drop of 0.44% in July, marking the first drop in a decade.

The ten years of price gains were turbocharged by a two-year pandemic-fueled home-buying wave that has come to an end, as the Fed's rate hikes have sent mortgage rates higher than Snoop Dogg on a Saturday night.

This year mortgage rates have doubled, making buying a home unaffordable for many potential customers. As we know from economics 101, a lack of demand means increased supply, and inevitably, lower prices. The cities being hit the hardest were San Francisco, Seattle, and San Diego, posting -3.6%, -2.5%, and -2% month-over-month declines, respectively.

Off the top doesn't directly translate to cheap though. The same index measured a year-over-year move of plus 15.8% in home prices for July. That's the smallest increase since April 2021 though, and the drop from the June number of 18.1% equals the largest deceleration in the index's history.

Short Squeez Takeaway: Even though this drop in prices is coming on the heels of a crazy economic situation, I bet half of you are happy to read that news. Maybe, just maybe, millennials will be able to reasonably afford a house sometime soon. No more trying to awkwardly pay your Mom via Venmo.

2. Markets Rundown

Stocks were sharply higher in the morning, but ultimately finished the day mixed. Crypto also rallied before falling, but still closed the day in the green.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Hertz ($HTZ) +4% after announcing a partnership with BP's electric vehicle charging unit.

• (+) Tesla ($TSLA) +3% following a report that the company is expecting a "very high volume" of deliveries at the end of the quarter.

• (–) Keurig Dr Pepper ($KDP) -4% because Goldman Sachs downgraded the drinks company to neutral from a buy.

Private Dealmaking

• Copec, a Chilean energy company, bought delivery firm Blue Express for $225 million

• Line Man Wongnai, a Thai food delivery app, raised $265 million

• Ceribell, a brain scanner manufacturer, raised $50 million 

• Unravel Data, a data cloud optimization startup, raised $50 million

• Tray.io, a low-code automation startup, raised $40 million

• Sanity Group, a German cannabis startup, raised $37.6 million

3. Top Reads

• 3 charts show we’re not repeating the housing bubble (YF)

• Investors shouldn’t wait for the Fed to rescue the market this time (CNBC)

• How Barbados took advantage of rising yields (Axios)

• The Dow is in a bear market - what does that mean? (Reuters)

• Wall Street’s fear gauge hits highest level since June (CNBC)

• UK authorities try to calm panicked markets (CNN)

• These weird economic times demand investor attention (YF)

• Antitrust regulators lose US sugar case (Axios)

• Zuckerberg has lost half his wealth in 2022, no longer one of top 10 richest Americans (Forbes)

A Message from The Commons: Supercharge Your Career

Tired of long hours and those late-night plsfixes? Looking for flexibility and autonomy at work?

You should consider a Strategy & Operations role in tech and the best place to start is The Commons Core Sprint. It’s a part-time, team based learning experience built for working professionals.

In the 7 week Sprint you’ll learn:

• SQL needed for operations roles in tech

• Data analysis and experimentation

• Ambiguous problem solving

And you’ll get access to:

• Coaching from mentors at companies like Google, Shopify & DoorDash

• A network of 1,000+ ambitious individuals in business + tech

• An exclusive job board and introductions to hiring managers

Get priority access HERE.

4. Book of the Day: Thank You For Being Late

We all sense it―something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You can’t miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once―and it is dizzying.

In Thank You for Being Late, with a new afterword, Thomas L. Friedman exposes the tectonic movements that are reshaping the world today and explains how to get the most out of them and cushion their worst impacts.

His thesis: to understand the twenty-first century, you need to understand that the planet’s three largest forces―Moore’s law (technology), the Market (globalization), and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss) - are accelerating all at once. These accelerations are transforming five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community.

The year 2007 was the major inflection point: the release of the iPhone, together with advances in silicon chips, software, storage, sensors, and networking, created a new technology platform that is reshaping everything from how we hail a taxi to the fate of nations to our most intimate relationships. It is providing vast new opportunities for individuals and small groups to save the world―or to destroy it.

With his trademark vitality, wit, and optimism, Friedman shows that we can overcome the multiple stresses of an age of accelerations―if we slow down, if we dare to be late and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community. Thank You for Being Late is an essential guide to the present and the future.

“No athlete, no scientist, no musician ever got better without focused practice, and there is no program you can download for that. It has to come from within.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

• 13 tips from founders to achieve outlier success

• How to restore your dopamine levels and boost your focus, drive, and motivation

• The rise and fall of the Hype House for young tech founders

• Why we should talk to strangers more

• Science says you’re likely to live longer if you can pass these four simple tests

• 10 power lunch spots in NYC

• Duolingo founder on his Guatemala roots and recipe for success

A Message from Bright Cellars

Discover Wines You Love.

Bright Cellars is the monthly wine club that matches you with wine that you'll love, based on an algorithm that selects wines based on your taste preferences.

Created to not only deliver excellent wine, but to also give the added bonus of learning about your wines and own tastes.

6. Daily Visual: Traffic Returns Bigly

Change in traffic congestion in most populous US cities; Indexed to 2019 traffic levels (100); Measured by amount of time vehicles spend in congestion vs. free-flow conditions in downtown cores

Source: Axios

7. Daily Acumen: How To Tackle a Mountain of Tasks

• Start slow. Give yourself permission to only do a few things, so you can start to make progress.

• Find small wins to start with. These are encouraging, and give you a sense of progress.

• Start to triage. Start looking through the piles of tasks and emails, and see if there’s anything that’s more pressing. Pull those out and put them on a separate list to focus on. You can get to the rest later.

• Get one thing done. Focus on getting one thing done. It could be small, medium, or large, but focus on one thing. I would get an easy thing done, then focus on another. And another. One at a time.

• Find more small wins. Once you start making progress, you’ll enjoy finding the little things you could do to start making the pile smaller and to get more victories under your belt.

8. Crypto Corner

• How will the Ethereum Merge impact Bitcoin?

• How banks are housing digital assets

• Apple’s App Store wants 30% cut on NFT sales

• How reversible transactions could mitigate crypto theft

• Robinhood launches beta no-fee crypto wallets

• Coming court ruling in crypto company vs SEC could have “Ripple” effect

9. Memes of the Day

*****

*****

Want to reach an audience of 150,000+ business leaders, young professionals, and policy influencers? Advertise in Short Squeez.