2022

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Should You Take Money from Investors Who Don't Share Your Values?

This is going to be BIG.

For most founders, fundraising is a struggle. Only a small minority of people are born into the kinds of connections and life paths to provide them instant access to capital. The rest have to work super hard to create access for themselves, build trust and win investors over. That may come with the headwinds of bias working against you—conscious or otherwise.

Investors 167
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Why they clapped for Sam Bankman-Fried

The Reformed Broker

LET’S GIVE A ROUND OF APPLAUSE TO SAM BANKMAN-FRIED pic.twitter.com/HIVB3nTX2V — The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) November 30, 2022 Last night’s interview between the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin and Sam Bankman-Fried ended with the host thanking the accused criminal mastermind for coming, despite the protestations of his lawyers. The audience applauded as the screen went black.

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Supply Chain Is 40% of Inflation

The Big Picture

. There is a new 60/40 in town, and it is the contribution to inflation from consumer demand for goods and the pandemic-broken supply chain. That is according to a study by Julian di Giovanni, who publishes at the NY Fed’s blog Liberty Street Economics. Over the summer, he posed a fascinating question: How Much Did Supply Constraints Boost U.S. Inflation?

Capital 145
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Liverpool FC sale explored by US owners Fenway Sports Group

Financial Times M&A

Move comes months after Chelsea was sold to consortium led by American financier Todd Boehly for £2.

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Binance's Alleged Crypto Audit Failed, Not Even Its Auditor Would Vouch For It

Mish Talk

"CZ" Image likeness courtesy of Coin Telegraph article below. Binance's Proof of Reserves Statement When we say Proof of Reserves, we are specifically referring to those assets that we hold in custody for users. This means that we are showing evidence and proof that Binance has funds that cover all of our users assets 1:1, as well as some reserves. When a user deposits one Bitcoin, Binance's reserves increase by at least one Bitcoin to ensure client funds are fully backed.

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What a Stock Market Bottom Looks Like

A Wealth of Common Sense

There’s an old saying that they don’t ring a bell for you at the top. I know this to be true because investors spent more than 10 years during the bull market of the 2010s calling everything they saw a top. The regime changes are rarely obvious until after the fact. The same is true when trying to call a bottom during a bear market. They don’t announce these things over a PA for everyone to hear.

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Our Plans to Remain an Independent Company

Wealthfront

Today we announced that together with UBS we decided to terminate our pending acquisition and will instead remain an independent company. We are continuing to explore ways to work together in a partnership and UBS has given us $69.7 million in financing at a $1.4 billion valuation. I am incredibly excited about Wealthfront’s path forward […]. The post Our Plans to Remain an Independent Company appeared first on Wealthfront Blog.

Companies 139

More Trending

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Well-exercised writers are better writers

Investment Writing

Have you resolved to exercise more? With that in mind, I’ve updated this list of free and low-cost online exercise classes that I originally created during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I am grateful to my writer friends who suggested these resources to me. My current exercise favorites. My go-to website for low-impact cardio exercise is Team Body Project.

Investing 119
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The Optimal Industry Structure

Fortune Financial

A recurring theme in my articles has been the importance of industry-level economics to the success of an investment; it is not uncommon for all participants in an industry with favorable dynamics to outperform, and, similarly, it is all too common for even the best operators in a poor industry to underperform. However, industry importance is not limited to economics; competitive structure is crucial as well.

Investors 119
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41 Top Influencers for Financial Advisors in 2023

Indigo Marketing Agency

As a financial advisor, your job requires you to stay on top of leading industry information, the evolving ways to connect with clients, and new strategies for managing money. With so much going on, it can be challenging to keep track of everything. That’s why we’ve identified the top 41 financial influencers we believe will greatly impact the industry in 2023.

Education 116
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The Founder and Investor Trust Problem: It's not what you think.

This is going to be BIG.

Whenever I submit a term sheet, I always caveat it by saying the following: “This is the one time we’re completely misaligned. I’m incentivized to buy up as much of the company at as low a price as possible and you’re incentivized to sell as little of the company as possible by raising the price.”. Founders seem to get that. The price negotiation process is pretty straightforward, and once a deal has been agreed upon we move on.

Investors 166
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Twitter is cigarettes

The Reformed Broker

A lot of reporters and public intellectuals were writing their obituaries for Twitter this weekend. First, we saw the revolt of the Blue Checkmarks. Then, the first inklings of an advertiser exodus. The timing of all this – on the eve of a midterm election that will determine whether or not Americans actually care about democracy – could not have been more ominous.

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Can Anyone Catch Nokia?

The Big Picture

Today’s edition of “ Nobody Knows Anything ” is about a once-dominant mobile phone maker. Exactly 15 years ago, Forbes’s new cover story lauded Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia’s CEO. The headline trumpeted: “Nokia, one billion customers – can anyone catch the cell phone king?” It was posted online October 26, 2007 — 15 years ago today.

Companies 145
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Elon Musk proposes buying Twitter for originally agreed $44bn

Financial Times M&A

Tesla chief and social media company were set to take their dispute to trial later this month

Companies 145
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The Philadelphia Fed Just Revised Jobs Lower by 1.2 Million for Q2

Mish Talk

Early Benchmark Revisions of State Payroll Employment Please consider Early Benchmarks for All 50 States and the District of Columbia for the second quarter of 2022. Estimates by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia indicate that the employment changes from March through June 2022 were significantly different in 33 states and the District of Columbia compared with current state estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Current Employment Statistics (CES).

Banks 144
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Boring is Beautiful in Investing

A Wealth of Common Sense

Boring is better this year in the markets. The more exciting your portfolio, the worse your performance is in this bear market. Those old stodgy blue chip stocks in the Dow that pay dividends and have stable cash flows are crushing the innovation-led stocks that have more potential than profits in 2022. This is in stark contrast to the FOMO days of 2020 and 2021 when it felt like the only place to put your money was the.

Investing 144
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The Wealthfront Cash Account Now Offers $2M in FDIC Insurance

Wealthfront

Today, we’re excited to announce we’ve doubled the FDIC insurance you get on your deposits in a Wealthfront Cash Account. Your Cash Account deposits are now insured for up to $2 million through our partner banks, which is 8x the amount available in a traditional bank account. For joint accounts, Cash Account deposits are now […]. The post The Wealthfront Cash Account Now Offers $2M in FDIC Insurance appeared first on Wealthfront Blog.

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How This Ends

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

Back in February of last year, I wrote a blog post with the same title and said this about the asset price bubble we were living in and investing in over the last few years: The big question is how does this end? I believe it ends when the Covid 19 pandemic is over and the global economy recovers. Those two things won’t necessarily happen at the same time.

Assets 137
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Brainstorm ideas for your publications

Investment Writing

Have you ever struggled to generate topics for your blog posts, white papers, and other publications? You are not alone. I have some solutions to help you brainstorm. 1. Write about your clients’ mistakes and problems. The most powerful brainstorming advice I can give you is to start “ Blogging the mistakes your clients make.” My post on this topic gives you a template for writing this kind of blog post. 2.

Prospects 117
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Financial Advisor’s Guide to an ADA Compliant Website

Advisor Rankings

Complying with ADA guidelines enables your website to provide a better user experience for millions of Americans, opens up your business to more potential clients, and helps you to avoid possible legal action against your firm. What is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)? The ADA, enacted in 1990 and amended in 2009, aims to protect people with disabilities by mandating businesses to support the former’s needs.

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How to Get a VC's Attention at an IRL Event

This is going to be BIG.

A few years ago, I was at Techcrunch Disrupt and this guy taps me on the shoulder as I was chatting in a group. He simply extended a handshake and said: “Hi, sorry to interrupt. My name is Alan. My company is Bread and we make ad creative super easy. I’m sending you an e-mail with early access to the application because I see that you’re busy with this group, but I just wanted you to match the name and the face.

Startups 166
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Want to Recruit Top Talent? Start Thinking of Work as a Product That You Sell.

This is going to be BIG.

So many times, I’ve heard founders ask me, “How do I find great engineers?” or “Do you know any awesome marketers?” That always struck me as the wrong way of looking at the problem—but I couldn’t quite figure out why. I realized that you’d never ask this question if you had built a consumer app and you were trying to do customer acquisition. No one ever asks, “Where do you find users for my dating app?

Companies 158
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What do your VCs care about and does it matter?

This is going to be BIG.

Someone asked me yesterday whether or not I would ever consider living anywhere else. For years, family was the main consideration for me concerning location. My family is based in New York. My mom had a long chronic illness before she died and my grandmother lived past 100. Being here for my family was priority one. Besides, there were a limited number of places where I could do my job in venture capital anyway—and while I might be a go to for a pitch from super early stage pre-seed and seed fo

Education 157
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The Pre-Board Board: How to Create Accountability Before You Give Away a Board Seat

This is going to be BIG.

Typically, investors don’t take a board seat until you raise your first equity round—which means that it could be *years* before you have a real board meeting: A year of nights/weekends work researching, prototyping, and fundraising. You raise your pre-seed round and if you're lucky and good, you can get to an equity round in 12-18 months. Many people extend this round and don’t get there for two years.

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Collapse in Prospective Home Buyer Traffic

The Big Picture

At the beginning of each quarter, I prepare a short but in-depth conference call for RWM clients. The team & I put together the most revealing and informative slides. In that half hour, I blow through ~40 slides that capture and explain what is going on. About a quarter of the October 2022 slides were focused on real estate. This is atypical. The reason we emphasized real estate this Q is that housing is very often where we see FOMC policy having its most immediate effect.

Prospects 145
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You weren’t supposed to see that

The Reformed Broker

I’m going to tell you a quick story in the order in which it happened. You were there. You will be familiar with the sequence of these events. But you may not have reached the shocking conclusion that I have. At least not yet. Wait for it… Our story begins in 2019… It was the best of times, it was the best of times. The tail end of a decade of uninterrupted asset price appreciation for the top decile of.

Assets 145
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What is the Fed Doing?

A Wealth of Common Sense

Don’t fight the Fed used to be a positive slogan. That’s not the case anymore. If anything, it feels like the Fed wants to fight us, all of us, including the stock market and the economy. The Fed is actively trying to crash the stock market, break the housing market and push the economy into a recession. How do I know this? Because Fed officials are literally telling us this every time they speak.

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Living Like Nothing Matters

A Wealth of Common Sense

According to Bill Bryson, the visible universe is a million million million million miles across. That’s a 1 with 24 zeroes after it (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). That sounds rather large. But the universe beyond what we can see is even harder to comprehend: The number of light years to the edge of this larger, unseen universe would be written not “with ten zeroes, not even with a hundred, but with million.

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‘Everything in UK is on sale,’ says US private equity executive

Financial Times M&A

Ares Management’s Blair Jacobson expects US buyers to take advantage of weak British currency

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Twitter launches poison pill to thwart $43bn bid by Elon Musk

Financial Times M&A

Defence comes a day after Tesla entrepreneur offered $54.

Bidding 145
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History of Black Monday

The Big Picture

Imagine the impact of markets losing a ~quarter of their value in one trading session. That was what happened 35 years ago today: October 13 th , Black Monday a/k/a the 1987 crash. If you are a relatively young investor, you may be unfamiliar with what happened that day or why. The 87 crash impacted many market-related elements. We can trace lots of today’s market structure to that event, and the changes it wrought subsequently.

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Why I Remain Bullish on the United States of America

A Wealth of Common Sense

Following the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 a number of macro doom-and-gloomers began predicting a collapse of the U.S. dollar. The Fed was “printing” trillions of dollars. Interest rates had never been that low before. It was an appealing narrative if you were someone stuck in the negative feedback loop of the biggest economic crash since the Great Depression.

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How Amazon Become Ordinary

The Big Picture

“I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Not of our competition — but of our customers.” -Jeff Bezos, 1998 Amazon shareholder letter. We all know how much FAANMG stocks have faltered this year, but there is a bigger story brewing: The companies themselves seem to have…lost their way. What once made them great has slipped into their historical legacy, with less innovation and far less delight to its end users.

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What Happens If Housing Prices Fall 20%?

A Wealth of Common Sense

Nationwide price declines in the housing market are relatively rare. Since 1987, there have been just three times when the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index has been in a state of drawdown: The first was in the early-1990s when housing prices fell a little more than 2% nationally. Then you have the housing crash at the end of the 2000s when prices fell nearly 27%.

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Navigating the Pain of Your First Bear Market

A Wealth of Common Sense

Earlier this week I posted a chart showing how volatile the stock market has been this year: Things have gotten even more volatile since then. This post prompted the following response from someone on Twitter experiencing their first bear market: Yes, there is precedent for this. These are all of the bear markets since World War II: If anything, it’s surprising the current iteration isn’t down more.

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The Worst Kind of Financial Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense

A new research paper from an economist at Yale did a deep dive into 50 of the most popular personal finance books of all-time. If you’re a personal finance nerd like me you should be familiar with the authors — Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki, Ramit Sethi, David Bach and the like. The point of the paper was to show how typical personal finance advice differs from academic economic models.

Financing 143
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U.S. Cropland Values Hit Record Highs

The Big Picture

Source: AgWeb. If you are interested (as I am) in Real Estate , then allow me to suggest you consider exploring the world of Farmland. It is something I have done for a while, and it is a fascinating rabbit hole to fall into. Not so much as an investor, but as someone interested in how agriculture works (but yes, there is an investor angle here as well).