🍋 No BuzzFeed

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"If you're smart you don't need it and if you're dumb you shouldn't be using it."

– (Warren Buffett on leverage use)

Good Morning! Stock market continued its turbulent run yesterday, this time in the right direction – Dow scored its biggest daily point gain in more than a year, as investors cooled fears about the new omicron variant. We'll be keeping an eye on the November inflation report to be released on Friday, which could again send the market back to the Gulag. Elon Musk unveiled the worst haircut in the history of billionaire haircuts (see meme below) and also admitted he is not a fan of the newly passed spending bill: “Honestly, I would just can this whole bill,” said the guy who cut his own hair.

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1. Story of the Day: No BuzzFeed

There wasn’t too much buzz about BuzzFeed’s first day as a public company. Shares closed down 11% after an early surge, putting the company at a $1.1 billion valuation, a steep discount to the $1.7 billion investors thought it was worth in 2016.

BuzzFeed also raised less money than it had expected from the SPAC (890 Fifth Avenue Partners) that put in on the stock market. After investors found out BuzzFeed was the chosen company for the SPAC, more than 90% of the investors redeemed their funds (lmfao - talk about a market signal).

Not long ago, newspapers and magazines were going out of business, and newcomers like BuzzFeed, Vox and Vice Media seemed like the future. That changed quickly as legacy media companies like New York Times and Wall Street Journal bounced back by placing emphasis on digital journalism and subscription-based business models.

Buzzfeed finds itself not only competing with the legacy publications for general readers but also with Facebook and Google for ad dollars.

BuzzFeed has been on an acquisition spree lately (acquiring Complex and HuffPost) and its CEO (Jonah Peretti) hopes the stock sale will help strengthen the company’s position to acquire other digital media companies.

The deal was announced to employees in a highly cringe video. Please watch at your own risk.

Short Squeez Takeaway: BuzzFeed was the first modern digital media company to enter the public markets and its disastrous start is not good news for other digital media companies like Vice, Vox, Bustle and Group Nice that have also considered going public. They’ll all be watching BuzzFeed’s public fate closely as they plan their own moves.

Source: NYT, CNBC

2. Markets Rundown

  • S&P 500 climbed to its highest close in a week, as investors shrugged off fears about the omicron variant and prepared for new inflation data on Friday.

Movers & Shakers

  • (+) Alibaba ($BABA) +10% after announcing a reorganization of its international and domestic e-commerce businesses.

  • (+) Spirit Airlines ($SAVE) +6% after Evercore upgraded Spirit to outperform.

  • (–) Lucid Group ($LCID) -5% after news that the company received a subpoena on Friday from the SEC.

3. Top Reads

  • Amazon is making its own containers and bypassing supply chain chaos (CNBC)

  • The art and science of Spotify Wrapped (Protocol)

  • Have SPACs been cleaned up? (Economist)

  • Movie theaters go out of style (Axios)

  • Boeing, travel stocks surge as investors shrug off omicron concerns (CNBC)

  • Crypto miners are flocking to New York (NYT)

  • The Amazon empire strikes back (Stratechery)

  • The number of immigrant workers with H1-B visas drops the most in a decade (Bloomberg)

  • Risk and return expectations for crypto (AWOCS)

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4. Book of the Day: What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School

Mark H. McCormack, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in American business, is widely credited as the founder of the modern-day sports marketing industry. On a handshake with Arnold Palmer and less than a thousand dollars, he started International Management Group and, over a four-decade period, built the company into a multimillion-dollar enterprise with offices in more than forty countries.

To this day, McCormack’s business classic remains a must-read for executives and managers at every level. Relating his proven method of “applied people sense” in key chapters on sales, negotiation, reading others and yourself, and executive time management, McCormack presents powerful real-world guidance on the secret life of a deal, management philosophies that don’t work (and one that does), the key to running a meeting—and how to attend one, the positive use of negative reinforcement.

“What people say and do in the most innocent situations can speak volumes about their real selves.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

6. Daily Visual: Most Commonly Held Asset by Crypto Funds

Data as of Q3'21 (excl. BTC/ETH)
Source: Messari

7. Daily Acumen: Compounding Magic

The best decisions have little to no immediate payoff. The best choices compound. Most of the benefits come at the end, not the beginning. The more patient you are, the bigger the payoff. 

And it’s not just with money. Knowledge works the same way. Starting at a young age, Warren Buffet has read everything that he could find about business. The filing cabinet of knowledge stored in his brain has helped make him one the most successful investors of our time.

Don’t give up and let compounding do its magic. 

8. Career Portal

If you are looking for a new job, check out our Career Portal, where we curate the the best jobs in finance and crypto for you.

Employers: If you are looking to hire a candidate and want to post a job, just click on "Start hiring" on the top right corner of the Career Portal.

9. Memes of the Day

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