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🍋 Zero Hedge More Than Zero Ties to Russia?

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Short Squeez
February 16, 2022

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"We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally." — Susan Cain

Good Morning! Zuck rebranded Facebook to Meta last year and has now rebranded his employees to "Metamates." (missed a golden opportunity to call everyone metas) Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic want you to look at space, instead of Tulum, for your next vacation, with reservations opening today, starting at a meagre $450,000 for a single seat. Canadians unite with Justin Bieber and Tim Horton's collab boosting sales of the breakfast joint 10%. If your Valentine's Day went poorly, you might want to check out "The Right Stuff," a conservative dating app backed by Peter Thiel, who is injecting $1.5 million in its seed round. Super Bowl viewership bounced back this year with 112.3 million tuning in, up about 14% from last year's 96.4 million.

As promised, please find the results of the Wall Street compensation survey here. 

If you found the compensation deck useful (or not), please give us feedback (or testimonials if y'all feeling generous) here.

For those looking to invest their bonus checks, check out today's sponsor Masterworks, which allows you to invest in blue-chip art.

1. Story of the Day: Zero Hedge More Than Zero Ties to Russia?

Some of you might be familiar with Zero Hedge, a conservative finance news website that gets tons of views in the states (~40 million views/month), and even invites readers to participate in events like stock pitches. Well, US intelligence officials are accusing the site of sharing Russian propaganda.

According to the US officials, Zero Hedge posted articles that were actually created by the Kremlin in Moscow. The articles were then shared further by people who didn't know their Russian origins. Officials have not made any claims that Zero Hedge knew about any connection to spy agencies, and did not claim the site has direct ties to Russia. They did accuse five other media outlets of being influenced by Russian spies publishing pieces that target Ukraine.

Naturally, Zero Hedge has said the claims are false and that they try to "publish a wide spectrum of views that cover both sides of a given story." The site went on to say in its response that it "has never worked, collaborated, or cooperated with Russia. Nor are there any links to spy agencies."

Zero Hedge has been a loud critic of Biden and said this was government officials' play to try and distract from the site's "views of the current dismal US economic situation."

Zero Hedge uses anonymous writers and says its goal is "to liberate oppressed knowledge." Many articles are published under the name Tyler Durden, from the movie "Fight Club." Zero Hedge has also been accused of spreading conspiracy theories like China engineering Covid as a bioweapon.

Whatever the truth may be, doesn't seem like Zero Hedge will be losing any readership, since most of their readers are skeptical of the government anyway.

Short Squeez Takeaway: Being one of Zero Hedge's 1.2 million twitter followers is probably the closest you're ever going to get to Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan style espionage against the Kremlin. In what seems to be a big game of "Pass the Blame," nobody is going to come out and admit they're in the wrong. Zero Hedge will never admit they were connected to the Kremlin, Putin will never admit he was trying to influence American media, and President Biden will never admit he's trying to take down a site for no other reason than the fact that they're critical of him. One good thing to come out of it, is now you know a little bit more about Zero Hedge's thoughts on geopolitical situations, and can add some key language next time you participate in one of their stock pitches.

Source: Bloomberg

2. Markets Rundown

All major indexes were higher, probably due to news from Russia saying they're moving troops away from the Ukrainian border.

Movers & Shakers

  • (+) Tower Semiconductor ($TSEM) +42% upon news that Intel will buy them in a $6 billion deal.

  • (+) Virgin Galactic ($SPCE) +32% after announcing ticket sales for space flights will open Wednesday.

  • (–) Larimar Therapeutics ($LRMR) -52% since the USFDA extended a hold on its lead compound.

3. Top Reads

  • Top 10 most competitive housing markets (Bloomberg)

  • Citigroup's Fraser got a 32% pay bump (Fox Business)

  • Airbnb beats on earnings and gives strong guidance (CNBC)

  • Sometimes renting is harder than buying (Bloomberg)

  • "This is my Quant." An update on Chinese quant funds (WSJ)

  • Sell side analysts starting to use ESG news (Klement on Investing)

  • How do you show better performance? Change your benchmark (Evidence Investor)

  • Private markets information and their public market connections (II)

  • Elon Musk donates $6 billion, but not before hiring a poker star (Bloomberg)

A Message from Masterworks: Holy Trinity of Financial Institutions Agree—  You Shouldn’t Ignore This Unusual Asset Class

You can’t get anyone to agree on anything these days. So when UBS, Deloitte, and Citi all say the same thing, we listen. Recently, they all published reports advocating for an unusual asset class. It has nothing to do with NFTs, Bitcoin, or anything you’d expect. 

Shockingly, they all believe blue-chip art is an investable financial asset.

Here are a few likely Reasons Why:

  1. Lowest correlation to equities according to Citi

  2. Outpaced hedges like Gold and Real Estate by 4x when inflation was 3%

  3. Blue-chip art prices appreciated 13.6% annualized from 1995-2021

Historically, only the wealthiest individuals could access this asset. That is until Masterworks made blue-chip art investible on their revolutionary platform. By securitizing works by artists like Warhol, Banksy, and Monet, everyone can be a bona fide art investor.

To date, Masterworks has over 344,000 users. 

*See important disclosures

4. Book of the Day: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development to health care to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this insidious bias, in time, in money, and often with their lives.

Cities prioritize men’s needs when designing public transportation, roads, and even snow removal, neglecting to consider women’s safety or unique responsibilities and travel patterns. And in medical research, women have largely been excluded from studies and textbooks, leaving them chronically misunderstood, mistreated, and misdiagnosed.

Built on hundreds of studies in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, highly readable exposé that will change the way you look at the world.

“There is no such thing as a woman who doesn’t work. There is only a woman who isn’t paid for her work.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

6. Daily Visual: PPI at All Time High

Year over year percent change of PPI from Jan 2011 to Jan 2022

Source: Axios

7. Daily Acumen: Mr. Market

Some investors mistakenly look to Mr. Market for investment guidance. They observe him setting a lower price for a security and, unmindful of his irrationality, rush to sell their holdings, ignoring their own assessment of underlying value. Other times they see him raising prices and, trusting his lead, buy in at the higher figure as if he knew more than they.

The reality is that Mr. Market knows nothing, being the product of the collective action of thousands of buyers and sellers who themselves are not always motivated by investment fundamentals.

Emotional investors and speculators inevitably lose money; investors who take advantage of Mr. Market's periodic irrationality, by contrast, have a good chance of enjoying long-term success.

8. Crypto Corner

9. Memes of the Day

 

 

 

 

 *This is a sponsored post.

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