Week 2 is in the 📚! Great job, let’s keep chugging along.
📰What was in the News?
🕹Gamestop rips ahead: Of course, I couldn’t neglect the biggest finance story of the week, and arguably the biggest news story in the world. The little guy (WSB) vs. the big guy (Melvin Capital) is taking place in real time. Jack went over a short squeeze yesterday and how $GME is rising so rapidly, and can continue to rip if short sellers shorts expire (short interest is still well over 100%). Yesterday, brokers such as Robinhood and TD Ameritrade slowed momentum by halting trades in companies like Gamestop, AMC, and Nokia. Is halting trading ethical? Is WSB the good guy or the bad guy? Who knows, but it will be interesting to see if Gamestop goes to the 🌕 or ends in 😭. Here’s a great twitter thread on this.
🐻Broader market sells off on Wednesday and Friday, with S&P dropping >2% on both days. Beta is high, fear is high, and with earnings season here, who knows what the next few weeks will bring.
🈸College Applications raining in: With applications dropping 13% last year due to pandemic uncertainty, pent up demand and a relaxing of standard testing requirements, students are more willing to take shots. Harvard’s applications are up 42% and NYU is up 20%, while the common app has seen a 10% increase.
📄Earnings Report Szn:
Apple reported its highest revenue figure ever, at $111.4 billion, however the stock slid 1%
Tesla missed EPS by 23 cents and shares traded down by 4%; analysts don’t seem too concerned however
Microsoft reported 17% revenue growth!!! For a company doing over 40 billion in revenue that is pretty insane. Shares fell relatively flat following the report, meaning most of the good news was already baked in, and guidance was, ehhhh
🤝Meeting Recap
Loved going over the Chamath SPACs and why each one makes a good vs. poor investment. Seemed like IPOE or SoFi was the main vote getter with Metromile garnering the most hate.
Hope the quick multiple lesson was helpful for everyone. Let me know if you would like to see more of these type of lessons.\
If you still don’t know what a short squeeze is after Jack’s lesson and the link to the twitter thread above, idk what to say, other than, here is as simple as a definition as I can give.
✨Highlights of the Week:
Frankie Pavone and Edward Jordan: Great job speaking up and providing your opinions - Edward, loved how you called out, Clover Health and their “tech”. Frankie, great analysis of SoFi and why the current market environment, low interest rates emphasized, are tailwinds for this company. Today the stock popped more than 20%!!!!
Emily Walker: Shout out for getting over the 😷COVID, starting to organize Merch (if you haven’t filled out, do so here), and your analysis on OPENDoor and why their margins could slow them down vs other i-buying competitors.
Joe Hopkins: Thank you for bringing up the Alexi Nalvany arrest and providing an opinion on the Metromile IPO. Thought you made some great points here, especially the fact that Metromile could be upended by Auto OEMs handling this in house. (Shout out to Taylan also here)
🔮What to Look forward to :
Our speaker next week is, Chris Clifford. He is a Partner at Transcend Digital, a software development company, and Building Blocks Ventures, a venture studio, as well as an LMU alum. He will discuss his entrepreneurial path, the important of finance, and venture investing.
Those of you looking to do project management work for seed funds/startups, and be apart of the Venture Group, will meet next week and discuss the project(s) we will be doing
We changed the org. structure a little bit. Rather than Equities and Early Stage we are switching to “Investment Banking and Venture”. This may be sort of confusing, but both of these arms will function the same - just different names.
Earnings next week include: EA, Exxon Mobile, Chipotle, Pfizer, Apollo, Spirit Airlines, Pinterest, and Proofpoint
Quote of the week:
“A person with great judgement and average intelligence will usually beat someone with great intelligence and average judgment.
Judgment is knowing what room to be in."
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits
I’m biased, but I think you should be in this room