Editor’s note: I’ll have an update on what is going on at Informed later in the month. As Evan Greenberg likes to say….stay tuned! Editors’s note #2: Yes, I know LMND bought MILE last night, but this note was already written. We’ll get to that news some other time. For Continue Reading
Did China Ring The Bell on the Market?
With all the Evergrande worries in the market last week, I thought it would be worth bringing some perspective to how major bear markets work and why Evergrande is unlikely to be the start of one. Note, this doesn’t mean I’m not bearish on the impact of Chinese policy on Continue Reading
Insurance SPACs: The Hare With The Broken Leg
SPACs have invaded the insurance space of late with Hagerty being the latest to join the fray, both on the startup side (Hippo, MetroMile, Doma, Kin) and with established companies (CCC & Hagerty). I will cut straight to the chase. This is a bad development for all parties – the Continue Reading
Robinhood: When A Vulture Meets A Hare
I didn’t expect to be writing about Robinhood again so soon (actually ever) but circumstances change. The day I published last week’s article, Robinhood immediately became a meme stock jumping 50% in a day. So what happened? The Call Squeeze The Wallstreetbets (WSB) crowd went back to one of their Continue Reading
Peak Robinhood
Robinhood finally had its IPO last week. While the stock initially fell a bit from the IPO price (though broke out yesterday on news that Cathie Wood bought some), any new listing valued at $30B is a pretty successful outcome. Still, one has to wonder if the IPO was “marking Continue Reading
The Solution to College Affordability: Free Markets
There were two recent news stories about college affordability that caught my eye. These weren’t your typical stories about marginal students who maybe shouldn’t have gone to college at all but got roped into taking out a lot of debt to enroll and later dropped out and were stuck with Continue Reading
How Moneyball Ruined Baseball
I haven’t written about sports for a little while, so let’s do something a little different for this post holiday week. As I’ve discussed in the past, there is a lot of overlap between trends in sports and markets, particularly around analytics. While baseball made analytics mainstream through Moneyball, I Continue Reading
Taiwan: The Biggest Threat to Financial Markets
Markets tend to fall on risks investors aren’t prepared for. Think Covid. Some call this the Black Swan theory. Others call it unknown unknowns. But the truth is, most of these tail events aren’t unknowable at all. They are entirely foreseeable. The thing about them is they are low probability Continue Reading
Hertz: A Hare that Won the Race
Something extraordinary happened last week. As you can guess from the title, it has something to do with Hertz. Loyal readers know I like to throw shade at the Hares of the world, but I am also quick to point out their success. I’m not going to try to push Continue Reading
Are You a Tina or a Tino?
No, this isn’t about Tina Fey or Tino Martinez. Last week’s piece raised a number of questions about what exactly “being cautious” means, so thought I’d do a follow up to try to bring further clarity. Being cautious doesn’t mean sell everything…or even sell anything. It means be aware of Continue Reading