Jack Raines’ Post

In October 2021, Elon Musk made headlines when he announced that he would be moving Tesla’s headquarters to Austin, TX, following similar moves from tech giants Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle in the year prior. These company relocations were part of a broader demographic shift: Austin was the fastest growing metro area with at least a million people in 2021, and 107,000 people moved from California to Texas in that year alone. However, three years later, the momentum is fizzling. Last year, Austin lost its 12-year streak as the fastest growing large metro area in the US, and Texas’s capital currently has the 3rd-largest office vacancy rate among major US metro areas, behind Dallas and Houston. In April, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said the software giant would be moving its world headquarters to Nashville, TN, in a blow to Austin, and that same day, Tesla announced it was eliminating 2,688 jobs in Austin as part of a broader restructuring. In the venture capital world, startup accelerator Techstars announced last December that it was closing its Austin operations too. Meanwhile, Bloomberg noted the number of companies relocating their headquarters or major operations to Austin keeps declining, from 64 in 2022, to 37 last year, to just 11 so far in 2024. What went wrong in Austin? My latest, per Sherwood News: https://lnkd.in/eEZTWeVi

Someone was betting BIG on GameStop a week before yesterday's pump. In case you missed it, GameStop's stock jumped more than 100% yesterday as "Roaring Kitty," the investor known for betting big on GameStop in 2020 and 2021, tweeted for the first time in three years. There may be more to this story though. Last week, daily trading volume for GameStop jumped more than 10x, as someone began accumulating tens of thousands of cheap, out of the money call options expiring this week. More here from Luke Kawa and me via Sherwood News: https://lnkd.in/e9TAsMTu

Graduation photo from the CBS school bus (peculiar-smelling 1 Train)

Imagine you could invest in an asset class that averaged 44% IRR, and its returns were uncorrelated from stocks, bonds, and commodities. The only catch: your payout depends on strangers’ deaths. Welcome to life-settlement investments. Last week, a story broke about Apollo "betting on the longevity of senior citizens by acquiring illegal life insurance policies and funneling the payouts through shell entities." Apollo’s fault, surprisingly, wasn’t betting on the life of an older person. It was betting on the life of an older person in the wrong way. After reading about the Apollo case, I went down the life-insurance-market rabbit hole, and what I learned was fascinating. My latest on the ins and outs of the life settlements market, per Sherwood News: https://lnkd.in/erKDCHKZ

First time I've seen this on Linkedin: SocGen trader who was fired for unauthorized trades turns to Linkedin to give his side of the story, and it's just perfect. Claiming SocGen made him a scapegoat? ✅ Sunglasses selfie for Linkedin headshot? ✅ Traders from several firms arguing about specifics in the comment section? ✅ "OpenToWork" tag on the profile picture? ✅ Linkedin is a national treasure and should be treated as such. (Also, read his post, it's wild)

Planet Fitness' business only works out if its customers don't: For all of Planet Fitness' members to work out, say, 4 hours per week, each Planet Fitness location would have to average 257 people exercising at all hours, from 5 AM to 11 PM. Considering that the max occupancies of Planet Fitness gyms range from 200 to ~ 350 people, the gym chain lacks the space to accommodate all of its members. But this is a feature, not a flaw, of its business. Yes, inactive customers improve many gym chains' margins, but Planet Fitness takes this to another level, relying on inactive customers for its business to function. While some gyms sell access to fitness, Planet Fitness sells the "idea" of fitness to millions of customers that it knows won't take advantage of their memberships, and the gym chain makes it almost-impossible to cancel a membership once you're locked in. My latest, on Sherwood Media: https://lnkd.in/dfGnxJED

My Twitter impressions match the population of Egypt. Very cool.

"it’s important to remember that there are no rules, and we can choose who we are and what we do every single day. Something I’ve noticed since starting my new job as a writer is just how diverse the label “writer” is. When most folks think of writers, they think of journalists who cover different industries and break the news on stories. But even within the narrow scope of “journalists,” there is so much variety. Some journalists cover finance, and within that, markets, and within that, venture capital and public equities and commodities. Other journalists cover sports, business, politics, and pop culture. Some writers, like me, apply a layer of commentary to the news. More often than not, I’m not telling readers what happened as much as I am why it matters. Some writers are pure essayists. Some are fiction novelists, others write biographies and histories. Some writers are equity researchers and hedge fund analysts, while others are copywriters, crisis comms strategists, and marketing executives. The scope of “writing,” as a profession, is infinite, because writing isn’t a profession. It’s a skill. And fine-tuned skills are valuable in a variety of “jobs.” Replace “writer” with teacher. Investor. Coach. If you only think about your career in terms of the job you do and other jobs that immediately progress from your current role then, yes, there are “rules” on what you may be able to pursue. But if you think about your career from the perspective of which skills you have developed and where else they might be applicable, you’ll realize that opportunities are near-infinite. Journalists can become investors. Corporate executives can become authors. Even in the case of the most rigid disciplines such as law and medicine, nothing is stopping you from going back to school right now, if you want to change course. You can reinvent yourself tomorrow if you’d like. The only “rules,” if any, are those that exist in your head. They’re self-imposed." No Rules: https://lnkd.in/d74EmhwW

For only $275, Blade will give you a mobile Spaniard experience on a luxury bus to the Hamptons. Massive W for Bank of America’s 2024 summer associates.

Every morning I’m awoken to the asymmetric “pop” of 1,000 pickleballers hacking away, while the basketball court sits there, empty. Really makes you think.