What we’re reading (11/10)
“Shock Rally Sweeps Markets In Rebuke To Overconfident Bears” (Bloomberg). “Among much else, the session was a stark reminder that timing the market isn’t for the faint of heart -- missing marquee days like Thursday is why individual investors trail indexes when they take matters into their own hands. It was also testament to the power of positioning. A market overrun by sellers is also one where a lot people can change their mind at once, spurring bigger gains than might be warranted by any single economic report.”
“FTX Tapped Into Customer Accounts To Fund Risky Bets, Setting Up Its Downfall” (Wall Street Journal). “FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried said in investor meetings this week that Alameda owes FTX about $10 billion, people familiar with the matter said. FTX extended loans to Alameda using money that customers had deposited on the exchange for trading purposes, a decision that Mr. Bankman-Fried described as a poor judgment call, one of the people said.”
“Redfin, The Online Real Estate Broker, Lays Off 13% Of Its Staff” (New York Times). “The real estate brokerage firm Redfin said on Wednesday that it was laying off 13 percent of its work force, the company’s latest move to cut costs amid a slowing housing market. Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive, sent an email to employees Wednesday morning announcing the latest round of firings and the closure of RedfinNow, the company’s home-flipping service, ahead of the company’s earnings call scheduled for later in the day.”
“Derek Jeter’s New York Castle Is Headed For The Auction Block” (Wall Street Journal). “Known as Tiedemann Castle, the lakefront property is located less than 50 miles from Manhattan in New York’s Orange County. It has been on and off the market since June 2018, when it was first listed for $14.75 million. At the auction slated for Dec. 15, the minimum bid on the property will be just $6.5 million, according to a marketing email from Paramount Realty USA, the company handling the auction.”
“Reports Of Facebook's Immortality Are Greatly Exaggerated” (Reason). “In October 2021, Facebook's parent company rebranded itself as Meta, indicating its intent to branch out into the virtual reality metaverse. Zuckerberg has signaled a willingness to spend $100 billion or more on the project. In the year since, the company lost half a million users in a single quarter and posted its first-ever quarterly revenue decline, and its stock price has lost nearly 75 percent of its value. This week, Meta announced its first-ever round of layoffs, in which it would cut 13 percent of its workforce and implement a hiring freeze, citing increased expenditures and lower revenues. Meanwhile, last month the company excitedly announced that virtual reality users' avatars would now have legs, before later admitting that its technology was not leg-ready quite yet.”
