🍋 RadioShack Intern Goes Awf

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Good Morning! Or maybe not so good morning... The S&P 500 had its worst half of the year since 1970. In case that didn't phase you, Bitcoin had its worst month on record and the biggest quarterly drop in more than a decade. Crypto saviors FTX are close to a deal to buy BlockFi in a fire sale. FTX is reportedly paying $25 million, a cataclysmic and LUNA-esque drop from its last valuation of $4.8 billion (thoughts & prayers). 4th of July weekend is upon us and this independence day is set to be the second busiest for travel since 2000 with a record number of Americans planning to hit the road.

We hope everyone has a wonderful, bbq-filled long weekend! (with limited pls fixes)

1. Story of the Day: RadioShack Intern Goes Awf

When was the last time you went to a Radio Shack? What... I'm waiting... Despite everyone's lack of customer support, the company's Twitter says. "The Shack is Back." What a tricky advertising move, considering the company has applied for Ch. 11 bankruptcy multiple times, in 2015 and 2017. 

Welcome to the new world, because Radio Shack was acquired by Retail Ecommerce Ventures in 2020 (that buys bankrupt companies including Pier 1 imports and SteinMart) and was reborn as a crypto company. Shocker... 

The "new" RadioShack's crypto is called Radio Shack Swap and uses the token called $RADIO, which you guessed it... is basically worthless.

The marketing strategy here is to tweet out explicit content loaded with profanities to keep RadioShack on top of everyone's mind and spread attention for its crypto platform.

The account is supposedly run by an intern who is pretty good at the job their tasked to do (making stuff go viral, see below):

Short Squeez Takeaway: It's 2022 and we are talking about RadioShack but it's not an electronics retailer, it's a cryptocurrency, that is worthless, and its most valuable employee is an intern who is living rent-free in our minds. It's only been 6 months of 2022 but what a wild ride it's been. Something tells us this is not the last time we'll be mentioning the Shack intern. 

2. Markets Rundown

Stocks were lower after the PCE report showed inflation at highs. "Inflation hedge" crypto followed suit.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Pfizer ($PFE) +3% after BioNTech agreed to provide 105 million COVID vaccines to the US Government.

• (+) Spirit Airlines ($SAVE) +6% because the acquisition battle between JetBlue and Frontier Group has gotten even spicier leading up to a shareholder vote on July 8th.

• (–) Walgreens Boots Alliance ($WBA) -7% after announcing a slowdown in demand for vaccines weighed on profits.

Private Dealmaking

• Kaiko, crypto data firm, has raised $53 million in Series B funding

• Tomorrow Health, home-based care company out of New York, raised $60 million in Series B

• Cordio Medical, an app that can detect the onset of congestive heart failure, raised an $18 million round

• Konnecto, marketing and sales optimization startup, raised a $21 million Series A

• Nautical Commerce, startup that helps small companies build marketplaces, raised a $30 million Series A

• Normalyze, that uses machine learning to help businesses pinpoint security risks in multi-cloud environments, raised a $22 million Series A

3. Top Reads

• Natural gas drops 16%, posts worst month in more than three years (CNBC)

• Here’s why Netflix made you wait a month to watch the rest of Stranger Things (Vox)

• Why some people are driving 7 hours to business meetings (WSJ)

• What past market crashes have looked like (Economist)

• Schwab and Fidelity go crypto? (RB)

• Where did the long tail go? (TG)

• Atlassian billionaire co-CEO Scott Farquhar saved a man’s life (CNBC)

• Grayscale sues SEC over Bitcoin ETF application rejection (CD)

• Bitcoin's fair value is tied to gold and tech stocks (BB)

• Why blood makes up over 2.5% of all US exports (CNBC)

A Message from Polymarket: Q2 Recession

A technical recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative real gross domestic product (GDP) growth and in Q1 of 2022, Americans saw a GDP shrinkage of 1.5%. 

The Atlanta Fed’s ‘GDPNow’ estimate of the GDP in Q2 is currently flirting with negative growth. This suggests that there’s a decent chance we may be in a recession right now; however, economic forecasters are more optimistic that Q1 was just an anomaly and growth will resume in Q2.

Will there be a recession in Q2 of 2022?*

Polymarket traders are currently predicting a 53% probability that Q2 will have negative GDP growth and the economy will officially be in recession. What do y’all think? Follow the odds now on Polymarket!

4. Book of the Day: Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

Toughness has long been held as the key to overcoming a challenge and achieving greatness, whether it is on the sports field, at a boardroom, or at the dining room table. Yet, the prevailing model has promoted a mentality based on fear, false bravado, and hiding any sign of weakness. In other words, the old model of toughness has failed us.

Steve Magness, a performance scientist who coaches Olympic athletes, rebuilds our broken model of resilience with one grounded in the latest science and psychology. In Do Hard Things, Magness teaches us how we can work with our body – how experiencing discomfort, leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take thoughtful action can be the true indications of cultivating inner strength.

Smart and wise all at once, Magness flips the script on what it means to be resilient. Drawing from mindfulness, military case studies, sports psychology, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, he provides a roadmap for navigating life’s challenges and achieving high performance that makes us happier, more successful, and, ultimately, better people.

“A masterclass on how to develop resilience.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

• Dont take medical advice from TikTok

• How Moneyball changed baseball 20 years ago

• A profile of US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and our mental health crisis

• The golden age of the aging actor

6. Daily Visual: Percentage Change of US New Vehicle Sales

Q2'21 to Q2'22

Source: Axios

7. Daily Acumen: Ideas

Focusing Effect: Overemphasizing factors that seem important but exist as part of a complex system. People from the Midwest assume Californians are happier because the weather is better, but they may not be because Californians also deal with traffic, bad bosses, unhappy marriages, etc, which more than offset the happiness boost from sunny skies.

The Middle Ground Fallacy: Falsely assuming that splitting the difference between two polar opposite views is a healthy compromise. If one person says vaccines cause autism and another person says they don’t, it’s not right to compromise and say vaccines sometimes cause autism.

Ostrich Effect: Avoiding negative information that might challenge views that you desperately want to be right.

Founder’s Syndrome: When a CEO is so emotionally invested in a company that they can’t effectively delegate decisions.

In-Group Favoritism: Giving preference to people from your social group regardless of their objective qualifications.

Source: Collaborative Fund

8. Crypto Corner by Bonkalytics.com

• DOJ charges NFT developer with $2.6 million 'rug pull' scam

• NFTs to appear on Facebook, cross-post with Instagram as Meta Web3 expansion continues

• 'Cryptoqueen' Ruja Ignatova makes FBI's Ten Most Wanted list

• Basel Committee wants to limit banks' digital asset exposure to just 1% of equity

• Integrating blockchain-based digital IDs into daily life

• eToro abandons SPAC deal

For more crypto-focused content, sign-up here.

9. Memes of the Day

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*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.