🍋 "I Was Wrong" – Morgan Stanley CEO

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Good Morning! In no surprise to anyone, Elon Musk was named the Time's Person of the Year by Time's Magazine. Meme stocks are tumbling as investors are dumping risky positions to close out the year. GameStop, poster child of the meme stock, tumbled 14% and brought its month-to-date losses to 30%. AMC fell 15%, pushing its monthly decline to over 31%, lowest level since June. Amazon is reconsidering plans to revive a ban on cell phones in its warehouses after six workers died at a facility struck by a tornado last week. With rising healthcare costs Americans are skipping buying Christmas presents to afford healthcare. 11% of Americans skipped buying Christmas presents to afford health care, according to a survey from HealthCareInsider. 

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1. Story of the Day: "I Was Wrong" – Morgan Stanley CEO

Morgan Stanley CEO admitted that he was wrong in pushing his workers back to office earlier in the summer. "I was wrong on this, I thought we would have been out of it past Labor Day and we’re not," he told CNBC.

In June, Gorman ordered his employees back in the office by Labor Day. Gorman, who contracted Covid last year, had been going in the office 4 times a week. “If you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office,” he complained.

He also warned people who had escaped NYC that they won't make NYC salary if they don't come back to work in NYC: "If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York. None of this, 'I’m in Colorado and work in New York and am getting paid like I’m sitting in New York City.'"

Gorman has toned down a bit since the summer and told CNBC: “I think we’ll still be in it through most of next year, everybody’s still finding their way and then you get the omicron variant; who knows, we’ll have pi, we’ll have theta and epsilon, and we’ll eventually run out letters of the alphabet. It’s continuing to be an issue."

More than half of Morgan Stanley employees have returned to office in New York. 95% of total employees have been vaccinated and about 65% of those are back in the office.

Short Squeez Takeaway: Companies across America are giving up on return-to-office dates as new variants keep stymieing reopening plans. Apple, Ford, CNN and Google have all announced postponements, along with Lyft, which said the earliest that workers would be required to return to the office is 2023. Thank You Covid, we are officially at the end for Return-to-Office dates. 

Source: NYT, CNBC

2. Markets Rundown

Stocks declined yesterday ahead of the start of the final gathering of the Fed in 2021 and as investors wrestle with concerns about omicron, as the variant spread in parts of Europe, causing full & partial lockdowns.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Pfizer ($PFE) +5% after a new Israeli study showed its booster shot provides strong protection against severe illness from the omicron variant.

• (+) Harley-Davidson ($HOG) +5%  after the company announced its electric motorcycle unit.

• (–) United Airlines ($UAL) -5% amid omicron variant concerns.

3. Top Reads

• Seeking a common language for self-driving cars (Axios)

• SVB buys Silicon Valley Bank, agrees to acquire research firm MoffettNathanson (CNBC)

• Why are SPAC targets so young? (CB)

• Your rooftop garden could be a solar-powered working farm (Wired)

• Vaping is risky. Why is the FDA authorizing e-cigarettes? (NYT)

• Inflation-adjusted college tuition is finally falling (FSE)

• The cult of Liquid Death

• Buybacks hit record after pulling back in 2020 (WSJ)

• Facing 'the most difficult stretch': Hospitals brace as COVID patients top delta surge (IS)

• Billionaires use hobbies to save on taxes (PP)

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4. Book of the Day: Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption

Ben Mezrich's 2009 bestseller The Accidental Billionaires is the definitive account of Facebook's founding and the basis for the Academy Award–winning film The Social Network. Two of the story's iconic characters are Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss: identical twins, Olympic rowers, and foils to Mark Zuckerberg. Bitcoin Billionaires is the story of the brothers’ redemption and revenge in the wake of their epic legal battle with Facebook. 

Planning to start careers as venture capitalists, the brothers quickly discover that no one will take their money after their fight with Zuckerberg. While nursing their wounds in Ibiza, they accidentally run into an eccentric character who tells them about a brand-new idea: cryptocurrency. Immersing themselves in what is then an obscure and sometimes sinister world, they begin to realize “crypto” is, in their own words, "either the next big thing or total bulls--t." There’s nothing left to do but make a bet. 

From the Silk Road to the halls of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bitcoin Billionaires will take us on a wild and surprising ride while illuminating a tantalizing economic future. On November 26, 2017, the Winklevoss brothers became the first bitcoin billionaires. Here’s the story of how they got there―as only Ben Mezrich could tell it.

“As an entrepreneur, you had one, maybe two, but usually not more than three chances to catch lightning in a bottle; as a venture capitalist, however, you could chase lightning as long as you had cash to invest.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

• Torn Muscle? Hold the Drugs or Surgery—Massage May Be the Best Medicine

• Join the 50k other investors bout to invest in VC with Sweater Ventures, the first VC fund for the retail investor

• Coolest Things from 2021

Medium of the Day: The Average Joe Newsletter

Why did Ethereum outperform Bitcoin by nearly 7x in 2021? Will value stocks outperform growth stocks in 2022? Will small-cap stocks finally catch up?

All important questions you can find the answer to with The Average Joe — a free 3x-weekly newsletter covering stock market and crypto trends, news and opportunities.

Become a better investor with a 5 minutes read that's concise and simple — with a touch of humor.

Subscribe here for free and see why over 25,000 investors start their day off with TAJ.

6. Daily Visual: Africa's Biggest Economies

African Countries with the highest GDP over time in USD billions

Source: Statista

7. Daily Acumen: How to Quit Caffeine without Becoming Miserable

Ease into it on vacation. The fastest way to become miserable is to quit your caffeine addiction at work. The ideal time to lay off caffeine is during vacation. Sleeping in or lying on the beach doesn’t require much concentration. After a week of no caffeine, your body will find it easier to adjust to abstinence.

Keep a running list of all the ways giving up caffeine is improving your life. “Behavior change is often supported by connecting to the bigger values—the things that are important to you—that drive your life,” says Washington-based nutritionist Meghan Cichy. “When our perspective is more positive and connected to our values, it can actually help us to feel less crappy about going through it.”

Find a productive substitute. Maybe not Diet Coke but finding something that will make you feel less deprived as you give up caffeine will help make the transition easier.

Source: Bon Appetit

8. Crypto Corner

• Index Coop DAO raises $2.25M and nears $500 million in managed assets

• A crypto punk sells for 2,500 ETH (~$10 million)

• Crypto hedge fund buys $400 million in ETH

• Music NFT starter pack 

• Twitch co-founder Justin Kan to launch a gaming NFT marketplace

• Nike buys NFT studio

9. Memes of the Day

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