🍋 Is Wall Street Staying Home?

Looks like half of Wall Street is still working from home based on the “Pret Index.” Subway menu is getting a revamp after what seems like an eternity. Bridgewater is up 32% YTD. Oil fell below $100/barrel and cryptogeddon’s latest victim, Vauld is being acquired by Nexo.

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Short Squeez
July 06, 2022

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"The psychologist far more than the economist may be of help in deciding when to buy." — Phil Fisher

Good Morning! Subway will give away up to a million free 6-inch sandwiches in honor of its "Subway Series" menu launch, the "most significant menu update in its near 60-year history." Ray Dalio's Bridgewater is making dough while the market is crashing. The hedge fund's flagship Pure Alpha II macro strategy was up 4.8% last month and 32% YTD.

Heading lower are oil prices, with WTI Crude closing below 100/barrel for the first time since May, thanks to slowing demand and fears of a recession. Cryptogeddon's latest victim, Vauld, which recently halted withdrawals, is nearing a deal to be acquired by crypto lender, Nexo.

With stocks & crypto more wobbly than 57-year-old couples at Margaritaville, check out today's sponsor, FranShares, that gives you access to investing in franchises.

1. Story of the Day: Is Wall Street Staying Home?

The Pret Index is indicating that half of Wall Street is still working from home. As economists and investors do, like with the Big Mac Index, they're explaining office traffic in terms we can all understand: food terms.

Locations of Pret A Manger near Wall Street still have sales of roughly 50% of pre-pandemic levels. This could mean that thousands of bankers, traders, and money managers are avoiding the office, potentially because of increasing Covid cases in NYC.

Omicron subvariants are still out and about in the city, putting a wrench in banks' plans to get workers back in the office. In London's City and Canary Wharf districts, Pret sales are basically back to normal, so it's clear that folks on the Street don't have the appetite to head back into town.

Maybe Wall Street workers aren't at home, but on the road instead. Café sales at airports are 40% above pre-pandemic levels, as there has been a huge rebound in travel, even though airlines are cutting flights for various reasons.

Short Squeez Takeaway: The Pret Index is an interesting approach to figuring out where financiers (sticking with the French theme here) are working from. Maybe with deal flow down, workers are finding it easier to evade the office. My conspiracy theory though is that all these bankers learned how to bake bread during COVID (just like everyone else on the planet), and are now bringing delicious sandwiches from home and skipping Pret altogether.

2. Markets Rundown

The short week starts green as rays of optimism shine through the looming cloud of inflation and a recession. Crypto looks like its found some footing as well.

Movers & Shakers

  • (+) Crocs ($CROX) +12% because Loop Capital upgraded the footwear company to sports mode! I mean... to buy, from hold.

  • (–) Stellantis ($STLA) -6% after a Union workers report said Italy-based production could come up short 220,000 vehicles thanks to the global chip shortage.

  • (–) Conocophillips ($COP) -7% as the energy sector follows oil prices lower.

Private Dealmaking

  • Eurazeo lead a $167 million fundraising round backing Electra, a company specializing in EV infrastructure

  • GoCardless, an account-to-account payment system valued at $2.1 billion, acquired banking start-up Nordigen

  • Northvolt, a Swedish maker of lithium-ion batteries, raised $1.1 billion in financing

  • Cybersecurity startup Watchtowr secured $10.3 million in Pre-Series A funding

  • Triton Partners bought O’Connor Utilities, a utility services group, for over $475 million

3. Top Reads

  • How Wall Street escaped the crypto meltdown (NYT)

  • Some workers are re-creating home environments in the office (USAT)

  • Sanctions threaten Russian oil fields (WSJ)

  • Citi says oil could fall to $65. Here’s what that would mean for our stocks (CNBC)

  • Venture capital sees a slowdown (YF)

  • How a ‘typical nerd’ became a leading luxury-fashion seller (WSJ)

  • Air travel hits pandemic record despite airline chaos (Axios)

  • Washington leaders agree Social Security needs to be fixed (CNBC)

  • Short sellers pull back on their bets against the stock market (WSJ)

A Message from FranShares: Franchises Are Hotter Than Ever – And For Good Reason

With stocks & crypto more wobbly than 57-year-old couples at Margaritaville, franchises are the new frontier.

Last fall, Los Angeles Lakers superstar Lebron James passed $1 billion in career earnings, but only $330 million of that came from his NBA salary. The rest? His endorsements, media company, and investments. One of James’ biggest investments? Franchises.

Lebron owns 19 Blaze Pizza franchises across the country. The industrial logic of franchises is crystal clear — skip the whole “product-market fit” question and get to the “making money” part. Plus, you don’t have to try to day trade WWIII and inflation headlines to generate profits.

The only issue? With an average startup cost between $100k-$30k, franchises require some serious commitment to get involved with – until now.

Thanks to FranShares, investing in the franchise game is now accessible to savvy investors everywhere.

Want to invest like Lebron? Get started today.

4. Book of the Day: Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life

The path to personal and professional fulfillment is rarely straight. Ask anyone who has achieved his or her biggest goals or whose relationships thrive and you’ll hear stories of many unexpected detours along the way. What separates those who master these challenges and those who get derailed? The answer is agility—emotional agility.

Emotional agility is a revolutionary, science-based approach that allows us to navigate life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. Renowned psychologist Susan David developed this concept after studying emotions, happiness, and achievement for more than twenty years.

She found that no matter how intelligent or creative people are, or what type of personality they have, it is how they navigate their inner world—their thoughts, feelings, and self-talk—that ultimately determines how successful they will become.

The way we respond to these internal experiences drives our actions, careers, relationships, happiness, health—everything that matters in our lives. As humans, we are all prone to common hooks—things like self-doubt, shame, sadness, fear, or anger—that can too easily steer us in the wrong direction.

Emotionally agile people are not immune to stresses and setbacks. The key difference is that they know how to adapt, aligning their actions with their values and making small but powerful changes that lead to a lifetime of growth. Emotional agility is not about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts; it’s about holding them loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them to bring the best of yourself forward.

Drawing on her deep research, decades of international consulting, and her own experience overcoming adversity after losing her father at a young age, David shows how anyone can thrive in an uncertain world by becoming more emotionally agile.

To guide us, she shares four key concepts that allow us to acknowledge uncomfortable experiences while simultaneously detaching from them, thereby allowing us to embrace our core values and adjust our actions so they can move us where we truly want to go.

Written with authority, wit, and empathy, Emotional Agility serves as a road map for real behavioral change—a new way of acting that will help you reach your full potential, whoever you are and whatever you face.

“Life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

6. Daily Visual: World's Leading Natural Gas Producers

% of world production

Source: IIB

7. Daily Acumen: The Kid and the Elephant

Most people don’t have a clear sense of purpose. If you feel the same, don’t worry, you’re part of the crowd.

But there is an opportunity to get more in tune.

Imagine a little kid riding an elephant through the jungle. If the elephant chooses to walk in another direction, is there anything the little kid can do to stop it?

From a pure physics standpoint, the answer is clearly no but the elephant chooses to go where the kid wants him to even though the elephant is really in control.

In life, the kid is your thoughts and the elephant is your heart. Many of us are always in our thoughts and not always in tune with what’s going on in our heart.

Make sure you stay in tune with what the “elephant” wants.

8. Crypto Corner by Bonkalytics.com

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

9. Memes of the Day

 

 

 

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