What we’re reading (10/20)
“They Are Basking In America’s Oil Boom—And Preparing For The Big Bust” (Wall Street Journal). “The history of oil is littered with cities that sprang up practically overnight and just as quickly crumbled. Scars from decades-old downturns are still etched into the collective memory of the mostly small towns speckling the Permian Basin that straddles West Texas and New Mexico.”
“Costco Has A Magazine And It’s Thriving” (New York Times). “Each month, 15.4 million copies of Costco Connection are mailed out to members. Another 300,000 are distributed via Costco warehouses. It is now the nation’s third largest magazine.”
“Wall Street’s Scrappy Underdog Has An Ambitious Plan To Make It Big” (Wall Street Journal). “Many investment banks thinned their ranks as dealmaking sputtered in the past few years. Jefferies took the opposite approach. The bank is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to lure top bankers from competitors. The goal: become the world’s fifth-largest investment bank and maintain the spot year after year.”
“Halloween Could Taste Different This Year Thanks To Soaring Cocoa Prices” (CNN Business). “Everybody knows it’s not Halloween without candy, but trick-or-treaters might find less chocolate filling their buckets this year. That’s because cocoa prices have more than doubled since the start of the year and have remained at record highs, according to Wells Fargo data shared with CNN.”
“What It’s Like To Work On A Megayacht” (The Cut). “[N]ot that many celebrities own yachts, actually. Their net worth aren’t high enough. Yacht-owning money is next level. Yachts are so expensive that most of the owners are just businessmen you’ve never heard of. You couldn’t tell them apart from some other grandpa. I definitely had celebrity guests from time to time, but they were always friends of the owner or charter guest.”
