Wall Street & Weight Loss 🍔
This Week in Review☕️: The Greatest Trade ever | Gen Z are driving luxury sales as wealthy shoppers get younger | The World celebrates the Year of the Rabbit | Eating less beats Intermittent Fasting to
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Quick Bites:
Finance📈: Ken Griffin's Citadel breaks record with $16 billion profit for investors.
You mean when Griffin pressured Robinhood to shut down all GameStop trades? Amazing what buying the order flow from Robinhood can do for your performance!
This game is rigged y'all 🤷🏻♀️
This is the LARGEST annual return EVER for a hedgefund manager, even surpassing "the greatest trade ever"- the $15bn that John Paulson made in 2007 from his subprime mortgage bet, according to Bloomberg Business.
And the SEC has officially entered the premises
Key Highlights, according to Financial Times:
💡Citadel, which Griffin set up in 1990, manages $54bn in assets
💡The hedgefund made a total gross trading profit of $28bn last year (a 38.1% return), meaning it charged its investors roughly $12bn in expenses and fees
💡The profit was made via a range of assets including bonds and equities
💡The $16bn gains for investors means Griffin's Citadel has replaced Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater
💡Bridgewater has been the all-time most successful hedge fund for the past 7 years in a row
💡For perspective, the top 20 hedge funds earned $22.4bn collectively last year
RESPECT Ken Griffin 🙌🏻
Our Thoughts💡: Personally, our money feels real safe knowing Ken Griffin handles 60% of all market orders
UN-f**king-REAL what being a market maker can do for the bottom line!!
Luxury👠: Gen Z is driving luxury sales as wealthy shoppers get younger. Analysts are attributing atleast some of that demographic shift to social media, CNBC reports.
By 2030, Gen Z and the younger Generation Alpha are expected to make up 80% of global purchases.
Personally, we think Gen Z are a bunch of hopeless crybabies- not to mention the LAZIEST generation in history
But here's the great news. If you Gen Z, not a complete twat & have a subpar work ethic, you're already guaranteed huge success. The competition has never been so weak
The sector is booming as evident by leading fashion conglomerate LVMH declaring record sales in 2022. Accessories, led by handbags, has been the key reason for this growth.
Seems like the madness for the iconic Birkin or classic Chanel 'Flap'- a status symbol of rarefied wealth- is such that not even rising interest rates, high inflation and a slowing economy can can dull demand for it!
Bain estimates that global sales of personal luxury goods sales surged to $381 billion last year, a 22% rise YoY.
“What has changed is the affluence level [..] and the prevalence of social media that tells the customer what is cool”
“The generation before the Z’s pushed the age of first luxury purchase to 18 to 20. Wasn’t 15 to 17 the next logical stop? Is that the bottom? Probably not.”
Goodbye old saver-scrooges and Hello! Younger bigger spenders! 👋🏻
Our Thoughts💡:
Gen Z friends: "Why is your location on Find my friends in your office in midtown"?
Me: I'm working.
Gen Z: "OMG on a TUESDAY?!", "My boss wouldn't dare ask me to come into the office", "Why don't you WFH", "In January? Isn't that still holiday season? That's TOTALLY illegal"
Me: Mate, we in a recession
Culture🌍: China rang in the Lunar New Year this past Sunday.
This year marks the transition from the Year of the Tiger to that of the Water Rabbit; a transition of resilience to one of prosperity and optimism.
Also, can we get respectful this Chinese New Year by NOT asking restaurants to leave out the MSG for once guys?! 🙏🏻
People prayed for health and to protect their loved ones as officials reported almost 13,000 new deaths caused by the virus between January 13 and 19 itself.
PS. You can imagine what the real death toll is if this is what the authorities are already reporting🙈
Queues stretched for about 1 km outside the iconic Lama temple in Beijing, with thousands waiting to pray, CNBC reports.
Around +26 million trips were made on the Lunar New Year eve via train/car and air. This is still half of pre-pandemic levels, but up 50.8% from last year, state-run CCTV reported.
From Indonesia, Panama, Vietnam to Australia, families rang in the year of the rabbit with their friends and family.
Our Thoughts💡: Tonight's plan: Cook a massive Chinese feast to celebrate the Rabbit (albeit a few days late)
An old saying goes that the more dumplings you eat on Lunar NYE, the more money you'll make. You wanna get rich? Start cookin' that dough 🥟🥟
Hmm.. we're thinking rice hot pot, soup dim sums, garlic noodles, prawn crackers, cashew chicken, braised beef, spring rolls and sweet chili dip for mains. Followed by Jujube flower cakes and Traditional soy milk pudding because, we mean, is it even a meal without dessert?! 🧁🍰🍮🍫🍩
We will ALSO celebrate by recklessly shooting firecrackers in very large public locations this whole week (had to put it in there)
Health🌱: Eating less beats intermittent fasting for weight loss, Bloomberg reports.
Umm "not eating 10 donuts" beats "eating 10 donuts and then starving for a few hours". Nothing new here innit 🤔
Researches from the prestigious Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine concluded that meal times weren't associated with weight change.
Scientists claim- eating smaller meals and hence, cutting calories is more effective to lose weight than eating in a restricted time window.
Their findings, after studying the eating, sleeping and waking pattern of 547 adults over a 6-month period, have been published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
“At times, fasting can lead to an ‘all or nothing’ way of thinking”
“The main takeaway is that the total amount of energy intake plays a more significant role than the specific timing of that intake”
Scientists do note that intermittent fasting has many other benefits, such as improving longevity and helping with blood sugar control.
It can also reduce inflammation in the body and help lower cholesterol, among other markers of cardiometabolic health.
Quicker Bites:
WHO investigating links among cough syrup deaths.
Blue Ivy takes the stage with mom, Beyoncé, in Dubai.
At least 7 people killed in Half Moon Bay in another California mass shooting.
Top Ukrainian officials quit in anti-corruption drive.
Spotify to cut staff as soon as this week.
Alphabet and Microsoft lay off 12,000 and 10,000 workers respectively.
Suspect in California mass shooting is dead, say LA police officials.
India out of FIH Men's Hockey World Cup after losing to. New Zealand.
Chris Hipkins to be New Zealand PM.