The Executive Edition (2/13/2022)

Main Street vs Wall Street

Almost definitely a WITI in here, but still need to tease it out. From a recent episode of the Complexity podcast (an absolute favorite), David Krakauer made an interesting point about the Main Street vs Wall Street debate (why were stocks rising as the world was falling apart). Krakauer’s point is that despite the talk that Wall Street is too short-term oriented, it’s much more able to operate with a long-term orientation that Main Street ever could. Specifically, it was able to price in knowledge of the coming vaccine:

Wall Street sort of knew that there would be a vaccine. And so why then wouldn't the market recover? … It had that knowledge. We had that knowledge, it's hard for us to act on that knowledge on our day to day basis. So that was the first interesting divergence that I think shocked a lot of people. How can there be so much unemployment and all of these stocks have riding so high and builds sort of nailed that one.

It’s not a complicated point, but I’ve always found arguments that the public markets are too short-term oriented to be a bit strange and I’m surprised I didn’t see others making this point while Main Street/Wall Street debate was raging in the Spring of 2020. (NRB)

Thai Marching Band

Buried in Sam Valenti’s excellent Herb Sundays today was this video:

From a Wired piece for context: 

Back in 2013, Marcy—an LA music producer—stumbled upon a post on the blog Dangerous Minds heralding "Mindblowing Psychedelia From Thailand." There, he saw his first video from a small group of villagers informally known as Khun Narin Electric Phin Band. Intrigued, he followed them down the rabbit hole until he came across the YouTube page for a phin player in a band called Beer. (A phin is a type of lute, which made the fact Beer played one through an effects pedal to create psychedelic music even more fascinating.) Finally, after playing an amazing clip that features a rousing cover of "Zombie" by The Cranberries, knew he had to find them.

Worth going deep on the entire piece. This was one of our more delightful weekend finds. (CJN)

Weekend Action Movie

Sometimes you just need a ridiculous shoot-em-up action movie. If that’s your mood, Nobody is worth a watch. Here’s how WITI contributor Jeff Hughes described it in his top 10 of 2021:

The most thrilling action film in a generation, Nobody is a serious genre picture that never takes itself too seriously. Sometimes these lists become weighted down with arthouse fare; brilliant artistic achievements that don’t pass the “do you click the remote button every time you see it running on cable” test. Nobody has already passed that test for me about five times. This film knows what it is. Brilliant.

Like John Wick and its ilk, it’s not for the queasy, but at a svelte 92 minutes (more movies should be short!), it’s a fun thoughtless action romp. (NRB)

Quick Links

• $3.6 billion bitcoin seizure shows how hard it is to launder cryptocurrency (NRB)

• After discovering six adopted brothers and sisters, these siblings believe their story is more than a sprawling family secret (NRB)

• Emily Oster on the latest pediatric vaccine news (NRB)

• The best Outlier shirts for working out (CJN)

• Yolo journal goes deep on Paris cuts. It is worth a subscription. (CJN)