What we’re reading (11/25)
“Thanksgiving Feasts Return In Force But At A More Expensive Price” (Financial Times). “Led by jumps in prices for wheat, turkey, potatoes and corn, the prices of food commodities typically included in a Thanksgiving dinner were on average 25 per cent higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019, a Financial Times analysis shows. The cost of travelling to see family and friends is also higher, with the US price of petrol up more than 50 per cent since the start of the year.”
“What Inflation? Small Investors Keep Piling Into Flashy Growth Stocks” (Wall Street Journal). “Growth stocks are typically companies—often tech firms—that are expected to deliver faster-than-average profit growth in the future. They tend to flourish in a low-rate environment, including over the past year and a half. Investors are typically willing to pay higher prices for such companies when they don’t see many alternatives for making sizable profits.”
“The Reddit Reckoning Had Short-Sellers Scrambling. Now They're Back With A Vengence: ‘I Gave These Meme Guys, These Reddit Guys Too Much Credit’“ (Insider). “[I]t turns out the demise of short-sellers has been greatly exaggerated. The real story of short-sellers in 2021 is a more complicated picture of diverging fortunes…[t]otal activist short campaigns have declined this year, but shares of their targets are down an impressive 25% on average for the first three quarters of 2021, according to research from the data and analytics company Breakout Point.”
“Adventure Capitalism” (The Economist). “Now capitalism’s dream machine is itself being scaled up and transformed, as an unprecedented $450bn of fresh cash floods into the vc scene. This turbocharging of the venture world brings significant risks, from egomaniacal founders torching cash to pension pots being squandered on overvalued startups. But in the long run it also promises to make the industry more global, to funnel risk capital into a wider range of industries, and to make vc more accessible to ordinary investors. A larger pool of capital chasing a bigger universe of ideas will boost competition, and is likely to boost innovation, leading to a more dynamic form of capitalism.”
“When People Thought The First Thanksgiving Was Too Woke” (Politico). “Reflecting the sharp polarization in national politics [in 1863], many Democrats and peace proponents refused to acknowledge the president’s [Lincoln’s] proclamation of the new holiday, and some even denounced it as an attempt to impose a particular brand of New England fanaticism on the whole country. Lincoln’s proclamation unleashed the social resentments of many voters who resisted the growing influence of evangelical churches and the concurrent growth of social reform movements — from abolitionism and temperance to Sabbatarianism and women’s rights.”
