my weekend morning train WFH wrote:

• ‘It’s all crazy’: Tech startups reach new heights of bubble How crazy is the money sloshing around in startup land right now? It’s crazy that more than 900 tech startups are worth more than $1 billion. In 2015, 80 seemed like a lot. It’s crazy that hot startups no longer have to pitch investors for money. Investors are the ones who market them. It’s crazy that founders can start raising capital on Friday afternoon and close on Sunday night. It’s so crazy that even the sports metaphor falls short. There’s more money and more behavior; investors insist it’s rational. (New York Times)

• Stories from Crypto: Billionaire Meme Feud Threatens Industry Solidarity The “web3” controversy in the cryptocurrency industry was brought to light in a Twitter spat between Jack Dorsey and Marc Andreessen. That’s all there is to it. (New York Times) see also The Wild Journey of Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather and Crypto Tokens Lawsuit reveals booming celebrity endorsement business (Financial Times)

• How Often Should You Expect a Stock Market Correction? Since 1950, the S&P 500 has lost an average of 13.6% in a calendar year. During those 72 years, there have been 36 double-digit corrections, 10 bear markets, and 6 crashes. This means that on average the S&P 500 experiences a correction every 2 years (10%+), a bear market every 7 years (20%+), and a crash every 12 years (30%+) (wealth of common sense)

• Bruce Springsteen, John Legend and Bob Dylan suddenly started selling their catalogs.This is why: Why not sell it? Rather than leaving “complex musical rights” to their families, artists could “leave them substantial, investable financial assets”, or “a lot of money.” (Washington post)

• The extremely long, slow “death” of coal Dirtiest energy sources surge in 2021. Even in the United States, where building new coal power infrastructure is largely economically impossible, it will be difficult to reduce fossil fuel use. (grid)

• How potato chips took over America A finicky tycoon, a grumpy cook, and the strange roots of our loathing favorite comfort food: When Covid-19 forced people to stay home, many of us found solace in a snack: potato chips. From 2019 to 2020, sales of these crispy snacks increased by about $350 million. When potato chip prices drop, Americans seem to gobble them up. (Smithsonian Magazine)

• Why we are in the ‘artificial island age’: We are building more islands than ever before. In the latest edition of our photography series Anthropo-Scene, we explore the surprising results of human attempts to colonize the world’s lakes and oceans with new lands. (BBC)

• How does ID.me connect you and your identity? Veteran Blackhall’s cybersecurity firm has become the government’s digital gatekeeper. Its unsubstantiated estimates — $400 billion in pandemic unemployment fraud — are also very good for its business. (Work Week)

• Greetings from the memory hole of the pandemic, the past two years have been a big blur Some people forget their birthdays. Others lost more. (Washington post)

• A Rio Grande Valley woman just broke the U.S. record for most bird sightings in a year Tiffany Kersten saw 726 species in 48 states, setting an incredible new record for what the Birdman calls the Great Year. (Texas Monthly)

Be sure to check out our Master of Business interview Portfolio Manager this weekend with Tina Vandersteel, Head of GMO’s Emerging Countries Debt Team GMOsforeign currency and local currency debt portfolio. Before joining GMO in 2004, she worked in fixed income research at JP Morgan, developing quantitative arbitrage strategies for emerging debt and high yield bonds.

a whimper, a bang

source: bps and fragmentation

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