Game Stop

Seems like we could devote the entire reading list to Game Stop.   It is the topic of this week’s FinCap Friday, this 15 minute primer on NGPF with Tim and Yanely, and NGPF will hold a PD on Monday about it as well. In the mean time, here are several articles covering several aspects of this phenomenon. 

• If you read/watch nothing else on the topic, WATCH THIS! NBC’s Stephanie Ruhle’s explanation of the situation, being called a “short squeeze” (bear squeeze) covers ALL ASPECTS of what is going on in this six-minute video.
• Here is a recap of what happened Wednesday. (Yahoo Finance)
• Trying to time selling shares? Good luck. (CNBC) (Bloomberg Opinion)
• Why Robinhood had to limit buying. (NYT)(CNBC)

Longer reads on the subject:

• For a comprehensive article with lots of historical context and insight into the Reddit activity, check out this Slate article (WARNING: some may find offensive language in this one.)
• Check out this VICE article to understand how Robinhood actually makes money, and their relationship with both the retail investors using their site, and the hedge funds that took a hit this week.

Investing-Other

• This Money article from two weeks ago was prescient, so I thought it would be a worthy inclusion this week. It gives experts’ views on how often to trade stocks.

Economics

• Weekly unemployment claims dropped slightly from last week’s level. (Yahoo)
• The quarterly numbers this year have been crazy, but the annual drop of 3.5% gives us the bottom line on the pandemic’s true impact to 2020 GDP. (NPR) (Yahoo Finance)
• Inequality—wealth: think about who owns stock and what the market run-up this year has done to broaden inequality in the distribution of wealth in the US. (NYTimes)
  
• Inequality-savings: All the pandemic savings was concentrated in the top 20% of earners. (Yahoo Finance)

Tax

• Property taxes may be beyond the scope of your curriculum, but here is an interesting review of how they are used/levied across the US (and how they relate to state income and sales tax.) (Don’t Mess With Taxes)

Student Loans

• Why aren’t more borrowers taking advantage of existing student loan forgiveness programs? (Money)
• Ron Lieber’s book The Price You Pay for College was released this week. (You may have caught him talk about the book when he joined Tim for the Speaker Series this summer.) Here is his article from the Sunday New York Times with the highlights, and here is the New York Times review of his book.

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