What we’re reading (2/11)
“AQR Continues To Shine” (Institutional Investor). “AQR continued to roll in January, fresh of its best year ever for several of its strategies. The quant-driven firm’s Absolute Return strategy — AQR’s broadest and longest-running multistrategy offering, launched in 1998 — gained a net 2.2 percent in January[.]”
“Beat It (Or Don’t): An Update To A Chilly Earnings Season” (Charles Schwab). “With fourth-quarter earnings season now in full swing (half of S&P 500 members have reported results at the time of this report's publishing), it's worth taking stock of the outcome thus far. Overall, results continue to skew less impressive, with downward momentum building for the blended growth rate, beat rate, and percentage by which companies are beating estimates. Profits haven't been apocalyptic by any means, but it's worth noting that the bar has been lowered significantly of late—thus making ‘beats’ seem less severe and ‘misses’ that much gloomier.”
“Louis Vuitton’s Formula For World Domination” (Wall Street Journal). “Even as it took steps to broaden its appeal, the brand put in place measures to manage the risks associated with becoming too widespread and easy to get. Its number of stores has changed little over the past 10 years, closing some as it opens others. Vuitton doesn’t sell through wholesalers and it doesn’t license its designs. There are no end-of-season sales.”
“The S.E.C. Signals A Crackdown On Another Crypto Practice” (New York Times). “The S.E.C.’s decision to charge the crypto exchange Kraken with securities violations over a popular way for the industry to make money sent more chills down the spines of executives across the sector. At 7:40 a.m. Eastern, the price of Bitcoin traded at $21,757, down nearly 3.9 percent in the past 24 hours. Crypto companies — and skeptics of the agency’s approach to regulation — now worry what new limits the agency will seek to impose on the industry.”
“Google Just Told Laid Off Workers That It Miscalculated The Amount Of Stock They’ll Get In Their Severance. And Some Employees Will Get Less Than Expected.” (Insider). “‘First we want to apologize for an inaccurate calculation that appeared in the initial notification email. The severance package that we explained in the support site, detailed documentation and publicly was correct, but it was inaccurately reflected in the email we sent,’ the email, which Insider obtained a copy of, reads.”
