What I wrote last week
X1 Sold to Robinhood For $95 Million – Challenges Of Managing A Credit Card Portfolio
iCloud Is 25% Pricier In The UK – Thoughts On Apple Subscriptions & Apple One
Business
The Evolution of Financial Advice. The most challenging aspect of owning a stock is not how to identify it. It’s the psychological tumult that comes with stock ownership over a long period of time. The longer you persist to stay in the market, the more likely you will reap the rewards. However, markets move up and down, sometimes chaotically. Without the right mindset, investors will not be able to toughen it out. Even though this lesson is now ubiquitous, I still don’t think it will be outdated. Remember how we are all taught to be patient, exercise, read daily or get up early every day since we were kids?
Take a look inside the factory fueling candy giant Mars’ $1 billion ice cream ambitions
Joe Frankenfield – Roku: One Stop Streaming Shop. Joe broke down the business of Roku, why the company won early, what lessons a company can learn from Roku and what the opportunities as well as threats are to the business. As always, I am thankful to the Business Breakdowns team for valuable lessons and content.
How America’s New Favorite Beer Hammered the Competition. If you need an example of how government intervention benefits competition and consumers, look at what DOJ did. Its insistence ten years ago to force AB InBev to relinquish the perpetual right to sell Modelo in the US paved the way for the brand to challenge Budweiser. As of now, Modelo Special is the No. 1 beer in the US.
Dollar General goes cashierless at one store in North Carolina. Aldi, one of the hard discounters, has been testing cashierless checkouts at some stores in Omaha while maintaining the usual operations at others. Tests like this are normal at grocers and retailers who try to squeeze every cent of profit and revenue as much as possible. It’s interesting yet unsurprising Dollar General didn’t go with Amazon Go. I’d assume Amazon Go is THE technology of this kind. The problem for Amazon is that every big-box retailer doesn’t want to empower a formidable rival.
Other stuff I find interesting
Indigenous communities around the world are fighting for their land. Indigenous people should have more protection and support, and they should not have to feel like foreigners on their own land. If I ran a company that has the resources to provide mapping technologies, I would support these people. It is the right thing to do and offers PR goodwill.
Why You Believe The Things You Do. “The dangerous thing is that beliefs based on experience seem evidence-based. But when we’re overwhelmed with observations in a complex world, we cherry-pick the most attractive evidence to appease our simple, story-loving minds. It is far easier to fool yourself into believing a falsehood than admit a mistake. Changing your mind is rarer than it should be, leading us to cling to false beliefs.“
No SSN, no problem, says Maza, a fintech startup aimed at undocumented immigrants. My wife and I had to go to a tax agency and spend more than $300 on her ITIN application. It also took almost the same time as this startup claimed. Hence, it’s a big value-add to undocumented immigrants to have affordable access to a tax ID and ultimate the financial world in the US. Life-changing even in some cases.
Vietnam’s tech manufacturing boom goes bust. As a Vietnamese, I always prefer my country taking a page out of Singapore’s playbook to China’s. People will argue that China became the powerhouse it is today AFTER being the manufacturing center of the world. It’s true, but it’s also true that China grows intellectual property and human capital, to the point that it exceeds Western countries in numerous areas. Singapore is a better model for a country like Vietnam. To resist China’s influence in the area, we need allies and we need their protection as the financial center of Southeast Asia. Singapore won’t let that happen easily, but as a country, we have to try. It’s not reliable to be the manufacturing machine.
Stats
Video games and esports industry in the US recorded $54 billion in 2022
One out of four 40-year-olds in the US never got married
Minh Quang Duong 
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