What we’re reading (10/25)
“Quibi Is Hollywood’s Biggest Short-Form Failure—But Not It’s First” (Wall Street Journal). “The demise of the mobile-streaming platform Quibi a mere six months after it went live is the latest example of Hollywood’s struggles in making a business out of short-form content. Quibi may be the best-known and best-funded attempt to crack the short-form riddle, but it is far from the only one. The media industry is littered with the carcasses of short-form streaming platforms.”
“Rising Rates Seem To Signal A Recovery Is Near, But Investors Wonder Whether They Can Be Believed” (CNBC). “Bonds, it would seem, are speaking the bulls’ language. Treasury yields rolled to a four-month high last week, the 10-year note reaching 0.84%, as U.S. economic data continue to arrive generally better than expected and the markets anticipate further fiscal-support worth trillions either sooner or later, under this administration or the next…[s]till, it’s worth considering other drivers of the backup in yields and related equity reactions.”
“Influencers’ Next Frontier: Their Own Live Shopping Channels” (The Verge). “2020 has been the year of live shopping for US tech companies. Amazon launched Amazon Live for influencers in July, and Instagram and Facebook launched live shopping features in August. Google’s R&D division, Area 21, also launched Shoploop, which isn’t live but offers shoppable stories, and smaller startups continued their efforts to make live shopping not just a thing, but the future of retail. On every platform, it ends up looking like a modern twist on QVC — but with influencers instead of celebrities, and those influencers getting a cut of the sales.”
“Minimum Wage Laws During A Pandemic” (Marginal Revolution). A bit of a counterpoint to the article I posted yesterday arguing for a $15/hour minimum wage. According to Prof. Tyler Cowen at GMU: “Put in whatever exotic assumptions you wish, a basic model will spit out a lower optimal minimum wage for 2020-21, again for small business at the very least. This is the advice that leading Democratic economists should be offering to Biden.”
“Convicted User of Material Non-Public Information Pretty Pissed About Other Use Of Material Non-Public Information” (Dealbreaker). “Some years ago, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal published some fun little stories about passing some tidbits of material non-public information on the greens and fairways. These were especially fun because the beneficiaries of these tips were Phil Mickelson and a professional gambler named Billy Walters, and even more so because the alleged tipper may have been none other than Carl Icahn. These reports did not make Icahn very happy. But they arguably made Walters even more unhappy, because while Icahn was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, Walters went to trial and then jail for it, a series of events set in train by those articles, which were themselves set in train by a chatty FBI agent. And as far as Billy Walters is concerned, that means he shouldn’t be a convicted insider-trader anymore.”
