How to Avoid Financial Disasters

  I am genuinely excited about a new presentation I have been working on since the holidays: How to Avoid Financial Disasters. My career in finance has coincided with an amazing string of disasters, ranging from the analyst scandal, IPO spinning, and accounting restatements, to say nothing of Enron, Bernie Madoff, and FTX. The TL:DR version: there...

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10 Thursday AM Reads

My morning train WFH reads: • ChatGPT is everything you wanted Bitcoin to be: ChatGPT was introduced a few months ago and has already spread like wildfire in a way that Bitcoin never has, despite the latter’s explosive rise into the public consciousness as a way to gamble and speculate. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has instantly found use cases, most notably at...

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How Do Active Managers Invest Their Own Money?

  Fascinating discussion this morning from Robin Powell. He points to a research note from Kings College where the authors surveyed active managers about how they were responding to the shift in favor from active to passive fund management over the past decade or two. But they also asked questions about how these managers invested their own monies....

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10 Wednesday AM Reads

My mid-week morning train WFH reads: • NYSE Investigates Technical Issue That Caused Wild Market Open: At least 40 S&P 500 stocks were hit with trading halts. NYSE says it’s investigating issues with the opening auction. (Bloomberg) • For Tech Companies, Years of Easy Money Yield to Hard Times: Rock-bottom rates were the secret engine fueling...

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Transcript: Steven Klinsky

   The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Steven Klinsky, New Mountain Capital, is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ ANNOUNCER: This is Masters in...

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10 Tuesday AM Reads

My Two-for-Tuesday morning train WFH reads: • The Fiscal Arsonists: Please stop playing weird political games with the U.S. fiscal system. (Noahpinion) see also Janet Yellen Dismisses Minting $1 Trillion Coin to Avoid Default: Treasury Secretary says the Federal Reserve would likely not agree to such a scheme. (Wall Street Journal) • Stocks usually...

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Stop Worrying About All Those Tech Layoffs…

    I wanted to drop a quick note about the endless spate of layoff announcements — and why you should (mostly) ignore them. Let’s start with some numbers: Microsoft        22,000            (10%) Amazon          18,000            (1%) Google            12,000            (6.4%) Salesforce       7,000              (10%) Tesla               10,000...

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10 Monday AM Reads

My back-to-work morning train WFH reads: • SBF, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and the Spectacular Hangover: After the Art World’s NFT Gold Rush Auction houses and talent agencies thought the Web3 works were a fast track to billions. If it weren’t for a global crypto meltdown, they might have pulled it off. (Vanity Fair) • The Ultimate Contrarian Indicator...

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David Crosby

    “It’s been a long time comin’ “It’s goin’ to be a long time gone” 1. David Crosby was a difficult man. But he was brilliant. And the special sauce, the man whose magic could be hard to pin down, but without him in the room it didn’t happen. And when he was… Let’s start with James Taylor’s “Mexico.” James was on a losing streak. He...

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2024 Chevy Corvette E-Ray

The Chevrolet division of General Motors dropped a bomb this week: The 2024 Chevy Corvette E-Ray: “Exactly 70 years after the Corvette debuted at Motorama in New York City, Chevrolet has returned to introduce the first-ever electrified Corvette with all-wheel-drive and a powerful 6.2L LT2 Small Block V-8, the 2024 E-Ray.” The specs are mostly bonkers: ...

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