Bitcoin, Covid, Big Oil, the Environment and Trump

The weekend news drop and some long form articles for this snowy day

• Why you can't find a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X game console Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox Series X are two of the most powerful game consoles ever built. They are also nearly impossible to get your hands on. (Yahoo Finance)

• Rise and fall of the house of Bitcoin A Buenos Aires hacker haven produced some of Argentina’s most valuable crypto companies. Then it suddenly disappeared. (Rest of World)

• The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin Billionaire Arthur Hayes The BitMEX cofounder created a cryptocurrency exchange that has traded trillions. Now he’s wanted by U.S. authorities, and insiders wonder whether he and his partners are villains—or victims of a two-tiered justice system that favors big banks over brash outsiders. (Vanity Fair)

• Apple Is the $2.3 Trillion Fortress That Tim Cook Built Trade war? Pfft. Trump? Please. Antitrust? Zuck’s prob. (Ditto privacy.) Revenue? Endless. Tim Cook has been counterpunching, broadening his influence over the mobile phone industry while marketing Apple’s commitment to privacy as the antidote to the practices of social media companies. (Businessweek)

• Michael Hintze explains himself: Famed Hedge Fund Firm CQS Is Surviving — But Not Because of Its Hedge Funds A near-forensic appraisal of the entire firm’s operations meticulously combing through individual positions in every portfolio and reexamining all aspects of day-to-day decision-making. Ultimately, CQS reorganized teams, revamped portfolios, and put in place a new board executive committee and a senior partners’ group. (Institutional Investor)

• Covid Brought Booze to Your Door—and Made Delivery Worth Billions Prohibition-era regulations stifled liquor e-commerce in the U.S. for decades. Pandemic lockdowns sparked demand almost overnight. (Businessweek)

• The Thirty Tyrants: The deal that the American elite chose to make with China has a precedent in the history of Athens and Sparta The poisoned embrace between American elites and China began nearly 50 years ago when Henry Kissinger saw that opening relations between the two then-enemies would expose the growing rift between China and the more threatening Soviet Union. At the heart of the fallout between the two communist giants was the Soviet leadership’s rejection of Stalin, which the Chinese would see as the beginning of the end of the Soviet communist system—and thus it was a mistake they wouldn’t make. (Tablet)

• Stories of Slavery, From Those Who Survived It The Federal Writers’ Project narratives provide an all-too-rare link to our past. (Atlantic)

• How the Fossil Fuel Industry Convinced Americans to Love Gas Stoves And why they’re scared we might break up with their favorite appliance. (Mother Jones)

• Big Oil Gets to Teach Climate Science in American Classrooms Fossil fuel companies are spending big money to make sure their message reaches kids. Science teachers are doing their best to make sure they learn the facts. (Bloomberg)

• Trump Led An “All-Out Assault” On The EPA. Now Biden Has To Rebuild It. Under Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency knelt to the country’s biggest polluters and lost more than 800 employees. Staffers say they want accountability. (Buzzfeed)

• Lie After Lie: Listen to How Trump Built His Alternate Reality A 38-minute video shows how Donald J. Trump’s persistent repetition of lies and calls to action over two months created an alternate reality that he won re-election. Mr. Trump’s words, which were echoed and amplified by the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, are a central focus of his second impeachment trial. (New York Times)

• The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing. The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence. Instead, an eerie quiet descended… (Time)

Tanner Van Vark TVV Part The REAL team provides backup while Tanner skirts impossible angles, plays Twister on hubbas and redefines the wallride game. Is it SOTY season already?

Adam Curtis - Emotional History, the Audi E-Tron, and Mountain Biking

Friday news drop

• Can't Get You Out Of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World The New six-film series from Adam Curtis the producer of Century of Self and Power of Nightmares premiered on BBC iPlayer on February 11th, 2021. This new series of films tells the story of how we got to the strange days we are now experiencing. And why both those in power - and we - find it so difficult to move on. Video review at the (Gardian) and video streaming on (Thought Maybe)

• 2022 Audi E-Tron GT First Look: Bigger Muscles on the Juice Audi’s all-electric grand tourer translates the concept’s appeal into a serious driving machine. (Motor Trend)

• How Covid led to a $60 billion global chip shortage for the auto industry Automakers are expected to lose billions of dollars in earnings this year due to a shortage of highly important semiconductor chips. Consulting firm AlixPartners expects that the shortage will cut $60.6 billion in revenue from the global automotive industry this year. Semiconductor chips are used in new vehicles for areas including infotainment systems, power steering and brakes. (CNBC)

• Posthaste: Why the Fed may hit the brakes before the Bank of Canada — and what it means to the loonie 'Look for the Fed to shift its guidance by the end of this year' (Financial Post)

• Markets Are Always Changing “As soon as you figure out the key to the market, they change the locks.” (The Irrelevant Investor)

• Is This 1929 or 1998? Equity valuations in the US are quite high. How high? Going back to 1871, the only periods in history with a CAPE above 39 are as follows… September 1929 March 1998 to January 2001 Today (Compound)

• Reddit Is America’s Unofficial Unemployment Hotline As unemployment claims shot up early in the pandemic, so did posts on r/Unemployment, one of the many topic-based forums on the site known as subreddits. In January, nearly 10 months after the first lockdowns, the forum had one of its busiest weeks ever, driven by delays in payments and uncertainty around legislation signed late last year. (New York Times)

• Convicting Donald Trump is a good start, but America’s problems run deeper than one man A couple of days after the Capitol Hill riot, it was announced that outgoing United States President Donald Trump would not be attending his successor’s inauguration. Then-president elect Joe Biden described it as, “one of the few things he and I have ever agreed on. It’s a good thing him not showing up.” (Globe and Mail)

• It’s Not Only Trump on Trial The Senate must pass judgment on his methods—and on all who aspire to adopt his methods as their own in the political contests ahead. (Atlantic)

• All The Ways That Tom Brady Is Football’s GOAT As the NFL’s all-time leader in QB wins, touchdown passes, championships won and Super Bowl MVPs, Brady has long since erased any doubt that he is the greatest in history at football’s most important position. All we can do now is rattle off the many different dimensions by which Brady is, in fact, the best ever. (FiveThirtyEight)

An old friend (Dylan Korba) was filming for this video when I was up in Whistler last year. It was nice to get out on a ride and reminisce about the old trials days even if the uphill climb nearly killed me. Korba is now an Architect living in Pemberton and working in Whistler.

Net-Zero Carbon, Brookfield, Family Wealth, Crypto and Surfing

Sometimes I feel ridiculous driving around checking waves… Checking the swell forecast, the wind, the tide, and the current. Rubbing elbows with groms, asking how the bitcoin trading is going. They’ll say ‘awwww man not so hot’ and I’ll laugh at their misfortune. Some day I’ll have to hang it up. Stop forcing my fossilized body to pump and thrash and relax into a more soulful manner of riding waves. Maybe buy an old wood paneled station wagon, hang up the thruster and glide in from out the back on a 7’6 single fin. I’ll put my arms in the air when I reach the crest of every gently peeling wave. But not today…

Thursday news drop

• Brookfield Pursues $7.5 Billion Fund Devoted to ‘Net-Zero’ Shift Brookfield Asset Management Inc. plans to raise at least $7.5 billion for a new climate-focused fund, as the Canadian investment firm builds out an ESG business led by former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney. (Financial Post)

• The Hidden Margin Of Safety At Brookfield Asset Management Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) is a world-class alternative asset manager with a storied history and promising growth runway. (Seeking Alpha)

• Canadians’ wealth is tied to their parents’ more than ever, StatCan finds A new study has found that the likelihood of Canadians staying within the same income and wealth class as their parents has increased significantly. (Global)

• 45% of all TSX trades were from retail investors in January, CEO says Last year the ratio was barely one third, but now it is up to almost half (CBC)

• Crypto Boom Is ‘Speculative Mania,’ Bank of Canada Deputy Says A top Bank of Canada official called the recent spike in cryptocurrency prices “speculative mania,” and said such assets don’t have the qualities to become the money of the future. (Bloomberg)

• Feds promise billions in new funds to build, expand public transit systems The federal Liberal government is promising cash-strapped cities billions of dollars in permanent funding for their public-transit systems — though most of the money won’t start flowing until later in the decade. (On Site)

Chapter 11 TV - Featuring Dane Reynolds, Matt McCabe, and Chad Compton

Golf, TikTok, Mining, Investing and Electric Cars

Wednesday news drop

• It’s time for two sets of golf rules When was the last time you played golf with a pal who hit the ball so absurdly far that he or she brought the golf course you were tackling to its knees? Simultaneously, consider this: How often does that happen on the PGA Tour? (Toronto Star)

• Everybody Hates Millennials: Gen Z and the TikTok Generation Wars The video-based platform may not have created generational animosity, but it’s happy to fan the flames (Walrus)

• What If We Never Reach Herd Immunity? Hitting the threshold might actually be impossible. But vaccines can still help end the pandemic. (Atlantic)

• Critics Skeptical as Alberta Reverses Course on Open-pit Coal Mines Five days after Kenney defended the province’s mining push, the government says it was all a big mistake. (Tyee)

• Wall Street’s Most Reviled Investors Worry About Their Fate Short sellers — self-described financial detectives who make money when companies fail — were already worried about their success and safety. Then GameStop happened. (New York Times)

• GM's electric vehicle plan could shake up the energy sector — but how soon? 'The future of transportation, starting now, is electric,' says environmentalist working with automaker (CBC)

• Norway’s Electric Car Triumph Started With an ’80s Pop Star How a rule-breaking joyride by an MTV icon helped make Norway the world’s EV capital. (Reasons To Be Cheerful)

• Is the Bank of Canada’s new boss living up to his climate change credentials? When Tiff Macklem took over as Bank of Canada governor in June he brought the requisite credentials in government and academia, including a past stint as deputy governor of the central bank. But more important to some are his ‘green’ credentials, particularly his chairing of the federal Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance, which in 2019 recommended Canadian financial institutions revamp their business practices to address the challenges of climate change. (Globe and Mail)

• Americans take to ‘buy now, pay later’ shopping during pandemic, but can they afford it? It is unclear how buy now, pay later fits into U.S. regulations – the companies that offer these services do not have bank charters, some do not charge interest and laws vary by state. Some experts expect the sector to come under more scrutiny during the new administration. (Reuters)

Marvel Universe, Retail Investing and Investment Apps

Tuesday news drop

• Who Really Created the Marvel Universe? Stan Lee presided over a world of superheroes, but his collaborators and readers sustained his vision—and his characters outlasted it. (New Yorker)

• A Record Number of New Retail Investors Signed Up in 2020 They’re younger, more diverse, and they go to their friends and family for investment advice, a new report confirms. (CIO)

• Some Friendly Reminders About Day Trading There will always be winners and losers in the stock market, even for those who aren’t day-trading. This is simply the zero-sum nature of transacting in a market like this. For every buyer, there has to be a seller and vice versa. But day-traders face a much higher hurdle rate than long-term investors for a couple of reasons: (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Family of novice investor who killed himself sue Robinhood Robinhood has drawn criticism in its drive to bring more regular people into investing (Investment Executive)

• Why people love to hate Robinhood Robinhood is loved not only by the trading newbies who are downloading the app at a record pace, but also by Wall Street investors who have recently sunk $3.4 billion into the company. The online brokerage has also been relentlessly attacked, however, by everybody from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Ted Cruz and Mark Cuban. (Axios)

• How to Win at the Stock Market by Being Lazy The drama of GameStop is misleading; the surer path to wealth is extremely boring (New York Times)

• More Than Two Dozen Funds Returned More Than 100% Last Year. Here’s Why That’s Not Good News. The top performers of 2020 are mostly concentrated growth funds from a handful of firms. While doubling your money is a win for current investors, these outsize gains pose problems for potential investors trying to evaluate these funds. (Barron’s)

• Silicon Valley Won’t Last Forever, and Texas Knows It The birthplace of Dell and TI has been quietly building its tech industry since the 1930s. Now it has the chance to move into the spotlight. (Bloomberg)

• Riding out the pandemic on Lake Ontario Surfers brave frigid waters to wash COVID stress away (CBC)

Super Bowl, Investing, GameStop, Jeff Bezos and Unemployment

Monday morning articles to read

• The Winners and Losers of Super Bowl LV Tom Brady keeps winning just to prove he can, and though Patrick Mahomes lost, he made highlight-worthy throws to the very end. Plus: taunting, a failed big-man reception, and more. (The Ringer)

• The Weeknd’s Super Bowl 2021 Halftime Show Broke Longstanding Traditions Despite speculation that he might be joined by other artists, the spotlight was focused firmly on the 30-year-old chart-topper and an array of backup dancers and singers (Vanity Fair)

• They Stormed the Capitol. Their Apps Tracked Them. Times Opinion was able to identify individuals from a trove of leaked smartphone location data. (New York Times)

• Wealthsimple’s membership has exploded in recent days — and its founder is alarmed Michael Katchen has one word to describe his approach to personal investing: “boring.” That’s why the CEO of Wealthsimple, the Toronto-based financial management system for young people new to investing, watched the recent trading frenzy in the stock market with some alarm. This approach, buying and selling shares of somewhat random stocks in the hopes it might sink a few hedge funds, was anything but boring. (Toronto Star)

• The GameStop Phenomenon Is Hardly New. Here’s How a Similar Squeeze Played Out in 1923. Long before GameStop, there was Piggly Wiggly.In 1923, the supermarket company—which still does business in the South and Midwest—was at the center of a short squeeze/market morality play that echoes the recent frenzy around GameStop. (Barron’s)

• J.P. Morgan Won Active Management in 2020. Here’s How They Did It. “We took the playbook out and we executed against it,” Gatch, who took over as CEO in August 2019, told Institutional Investor during a Zoom call from his New York apartment. “We had no idea it was going to be a pandemic, but we knew that a crisis was coming,” he said, in his first media interview about about its performance last year. (Institutional Investor)

• Jeff Bezos Doesn’t Have Time to Be CEO of Amazon “I’ll do hobbies. I’ll see movies. I’m talking about work. I’m not going to work on something that I don’t think is improving civilization. I think The Washington Post does that, I think Amazon does that, and I think Blue Origin does that. And I’m not going to put productive energy into anything that doesn’t improve civilization. Why would I? What would I be trying to do?” The shelf life of a tech executive, innovation in the Covid era. (Wired)

• America’s deeply unequal economic recovery, explained in 7 charts The pandemic has made employment disparities in America more evident than ever (Vox)

NBA All-Star Game, Covid, and AirBnB in Victoria

• Did the NBA All-Star Game Just Get Blocked by James? It’s one thing when fans voice concern about staging All-Star Weekend amid a pandemic, it’s another when those doubts are coming from the face of the league (Ringer)

• The Egghead Gap: Science and technology support innovation, economic growth, and military might, making them central pillars of geopolitical competition. For the last three decades, the United States has been mostly unchallenged in its role as the world’s leader in scientific and technological research. But in recent years the country has come to face an explicit challenger in China. As the United States seeks to shore up weaknesses and ensure leadership for this century, we must recognize the key role that global talent plays in driving progress on the frontier, our country’s long history of recruiting this talent, and how to fully leverage this advantage with a more proactive approach. (New Atlantis)

• Cabin pressure: the turbulent history of flight attendants Flight attendants are the face of the airline — and now, they’re pleading with passengers to wear masks. The airline industry has always had its ups and downs, from recessions to gas prices to coronavirus. But when things get unstable, flight attendants are the first to feel the pain. (The Verge)

• How Europe fell behind on vaccines The EU secured some of the lowest prices in the world. At what cost? (Politico)

• The Coming Alzheimer’s Crisis—and What to Do About It The hours to come would pit the insurgent conspiracists against a handful of White House lawyers and advisers determined to keep the president from giving in to temptation to invoke emergency national security powers, seize voting machines and disable the primary levers of American democracy. (Barron’s)

• After Record Turnout, Republicans Are Trying to Make It Harder to Vote The presidential election results are settled. But the battle over new voting rules, especially for mail-in ballots, has just begun (New York Times)

• Off the rails: Inside the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency White House staff had spent weeks poring over the evidence underlying hundreds of affidavits and other claims of fraud promoted by Trump allies like Powell. The team had done the due diligence and knew the specific details of what was being alleged better than anybody. Time and time again, they found, Powell’s allegations fell apart under basic scrutiny. (Axios)

• Spurred By The Capitol Riot, Thousands Of Republicans Drop Out Of GOP The number of people changing parties spiked immediately after the Capitol breach. The same phenomenon is playing out nationwide. News outlets documented about 6,000 defections from the party in North Carolina, 10,000 in Pennsylvania and 5,000 in Arizona. (NPR)

• Victoria Airbnbs are disappearing through the pandemic, returning rentals to the market How the pandemic did what regulators couldn’t, and how that’s played out in the rental market (Capital)

Frontline - China’s COVID Secrets

Superbowl, Tax Cuts, Investing and Gamestop

Friday news drop

• Super Bowl LV Prediction: Why the Chiefs Will Beat the Buccaneers No one has won more Super Bowls than Tom Brady, but in a high-scoring game, Patrick Mahomes has a slight advantage. (New York Times)

• Why the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will win Super Bowl LV Ahead of Super Bowl LV between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Sportsnet writers will break down why each team can win the Lombardi Trophy on Sunday. (Sportsnet)

• The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record Our climate models could be missing something big. (Atlantic)

• A call to arms Inside Canada’s impossibly high-stakes rush to lock down tens of millions of doses of the most sought-after product on Earth (Mclean’s)

• Study: 50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down London School of Economics and King’s College study examined 18 developed countries over a 50-year period from 1965 to 2015. The study compared countries that passed tax cuts in a specific year, such as the U.S. in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy, with those that didn’t. The economic outcomes including per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn’t. (CBS News)

• The Best Way to Manage Sequence of Return Risk For retirees, it’s important to remember it’s not the overall returns that matters as it is the order in which you receive those returns. The problem facing investors is no one knows in advance whether they’ll have good luck or bad luck on the timing of their retirement. A bear market at the outset could severely dampen your ability to spend while a bull market could actually improve your standing. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Stonks Are Bonkers, and Other Lessons From the Reddit Rebellion A tendies-fueled fever upended finance, albeit briefly, and left normies hugging index funds. The serious money is still going long. (Businessweek)

• Who’s Winning the GameStop Game? Hedge funds, Roaring Kitty, a price update and Robinhood skill (Bloomberg)

Fred VanVleet, Hedge Funds, and Supertowers

Thursday articles to read

• No One Dared to Dream This Big for Fred VanVleet The Raptors’ star—yes, star—point guard achieved new heights yet again Tuesday, scoring a career-high 54 points and adding yet another hard-to-believe chapter to a storybook career (Ringer)

• How David Beats Goliath in Real Life The hedge fund industry manages $3 trillion. Private equity and real estate and venture money is even bigger than that. Funds are backed by banks and brokerages which are backed by the Federal Reserve. Get a grip on reality. This complex doesn’t lose an arms race. The money is infinite. You can’t squeeze it. It will crush you. The louder and more bellicose you are on the internet, the tighter it will squeeze back, until your head has literally popped off. On Wall Street, David doesn’t beat Goliath – especially in a battle of brute force and liquidity. (Reformed Broker)

• The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks 432 Park, one of the wealthiest addresses in the world, faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high-rises may share its fate. (New York Times)

• Millennials Are Changing the Luxury Real Estate Market Tech-savvy and environmentally conscious, millennials’ preferences are poised to dramatically reshape the high-end housing market. (Bloomberg)

• The Chrome Update Is Bad for Advertisers but Good for Google Google Chrome is ditching third-party cookies for good. It may rewrite the rules of online advertising and make it far harder to track the web activity of billions of people. But what seems like a big win for privacy may only serve to tighten Google’s grip on the advertising industry and web as a whole. For most people, the change will be invisible but, behind the scenes, Google is planning to put Chrome in control of some of the advertising process. To do this it plans to use browser-based machine learning to log your browsing history and lump people into groups alongside others with similar interests. (Wired)

• San Francisco Giants outfielder Drew Robinson’s remarkable second act He sat on his living room couch, poured himself a whiskey. He was alone, alone until the end. At about 8 p.m., in one uninterrupted motion, he leaned to the side, reached out to the coffee table, lifted the gun, pressed it against his right temple and pulled the trigger. That was supposed to be the end of Drew Robinson’s story. Over the next 20 hours, he would come to realize it was the beginning of another. (ESPN)

Deathwish Uncrossed Full Length Skateboard Video Deathwish destabilizes any sense of sanity with hellacious hill bombs, kinked rail madness and moves so buck they defy definition. The bar has been raised.

The Big Short, Markets, Robinhood, Victoria Housing

Wednesday morning articles to read

• The Big Short War Hedge-fund titan Bill Ackman has vowed to bring down Herbalife, the 33-year-old nutritional-supplement company, which he views as a pyramid scheme. With his massive shorting of Herbalife stock, the price plummeted, prompting two fellow billionaires—Ackman’s former friend Dan Loeb and activist investor Carl Icahn—to take the opposing bet on Herbalife. As the public brawl rivets Wall Street, William D. Cohan learns why, this time, it’s personal. (Vanity Fair)

• When the Electric Car Is King, Less Energy Is More Here’s a surprise: Electrifying U.S. vehicles wipes out the equivalent of our entire current power demand. (Bloomberg)

• Robinhood’s C.E.O. Is in the Hot Seat Vlad Tenev has incited the fury of the trading app’s fans amid a stock market frenzy. His lack of preparedness on nuts-and-bolts issues was part of a pattern, former employees and analysts said. (New York Times)

• Howard Marks: «The Biggest Risk Is Rising Interest Rates» Howard Marks, co-chairman of Oaktree Capital, explains why he thinks high valuations in financial markets should be a reason for concern. The legendary investor argues for a prudent approach and says where he spots opportunities in today’s challenging environment. (The Market)

• Markets Have ALWAYS Been Rigged, Broken & Manipulated When were the markets ever not somehow broken, rigged, manipulated or untethered from fundamentals? When was the glorious period where markets were completely free and devoid of intervention from the forces of either governments, central banks or investors who overstepped the bounds of fair play? (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Rise and fall of the house of Bitcoin A Buenos Aires hacker haven produced some of Argentina’s most valuable crypto companies. Then it suddenly disappeared.(Rest of World)

• The Victoria Real Estate Market starts off with a roar in 2021 January is usually a very quiet month in Victoria real estate. This year started out completely differently. Early listings came back about on pace with last year, but as soon as they hit the market buyers sprang into action and sales roared back as well. The final tally for the month at 646 sales is 57% higher than last January, and second only to January 1990 when we had 686 sales.. (House Hunt Victoria)