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| Presented By Facebook |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen ·Apr 08, 2021 |
| Happy Thursday! Smart Brevity™ count: 984 words ... 4 minutes. ⚡ Situational awareness: "The Biden administration has officially distributed more than 150 million stimulus checks as of Wednesday." —Bloomberg |
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| 1 big thing: Teen-powered resurgence of active investing |
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| Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios |
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| Never mind retirement. Gen Z (ages 9 to 24) has embraced the stock market as a place to make short-term gains, Axios' Felix Salmon writes: - Why it matters: Day trading is back, turbocharged by social media and the invincibility of youth. Silicon Valley is paying attention.
Andreessen Horowitz partners Anish Acharya and Matthieu Hafemeister write that active investing "is a natural extension of hustle culture, in which risk is embraced and failure is accepted (and even celebrated)." - "The psychology of American exceptionalism," they write, combined with new tech, mean "active investing is here to stay."
How it works: The wisdom of crowds can be found on Reddit, where a new paper finds that Reddit's Wallstreetbets tips outperform the market. - TikTok is full of accounts from teens like stonk.queen, who invested in Netflix and Tesla (as well as bitcoin, of course), and claims to have turned $10,000 into $50,000 over the course of the past year.
- Barriers to entry in the stock market have never been lower. Apps can be downloaded in seconds. Many of them — Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood, InteractiveBrokers, Public, Stash, Cash App, M1, SoFi — let investors buy fractions of a single share for amounts as low as $1.
- Creating new stock-investing apps has also never been easier, thanks to new behind-the-scenes financial infrastructure.
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| 2. New social media rules hold users accountable for behavior offline |
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| Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios |
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| New rules from tech companies are making it harder for users who commit crimes in the real world to become famous online, Sara Fischer and Stephen Totilo write. - Twitch, the Amazon-owned livestream platform used primarily by gamers, yesterday unveiled a new policy to take action against users in cases of "severe misconduct" off its platform.
- That can include deadly violence, terrorist activities or recruiting, credible threats of mass violence, sexual exploitation of children, sexual assault or membership in a hate group.
Why it matters: This more holistic approach may help tech companies protect themselves against criticism for hosting potentially harmful people or groups. - But it'll be harder to draw the line on activity that's harder to define as explicitly illegal, including bullying.
Keep reading. |
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| 3. Biden broadband agenda takes aim at Big Telecom |
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| Illustration: Rae Cook/Axios |
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| The White House wants to lower broadband prices and make the industry more competitive, Axios' Margaret Harding McGill writes. - Why it matters: The early moves on broadband signal a much more aggressive approach to the telecom industry than the Obama administration.
Behind the scenes: Key White House officials with progressive backgrounds have been meeting with telecom industry players to discuss Biden's plans for broadband. - Tim Wu, special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy, has a wide purview over tech issues. He rose to prominence by focusing on net neutrality and telecom market issues before turning to tech antitrust more recently.
Keep reading. |
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| A message from Facebook |
| It's time to update internet regulations |
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| The internet has changed a lot in the 25 years since lawmakers last passed comprehensive internet regulations. It's time for an update. See how we're making progress on key issues and why we support updated regulations to set clear rules for addressing today's toughest challenges. |
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| 4. Our weekly COVID map |
 Data: CSSE Johns Hopkins University. Map: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios Daily COVID case counts increased over the past week in 13 states and declined in nine, Axios' Sam Baker and Andrew Witherspoon report. - Michigan is a hotspot in this variant-driven new phase.
🗞️ WashPost lead story, "Infections climb on Biden's watch": The White House is seeing new infections climb, "a potential crisis that could erase many of the hard-won gains of the president's first 75 days." |
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| 5. Biden to unveil gun plans today |
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| President Biden visits a vaccine site at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP |
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| President Biden will direct the Justice Department today to tighten regulations on "ghost guns" — untraceable firearms assembled from kits — in a series of gun-violence actions in the Rose Garden at 11:45 a.m., Axios' Sarah Mucha writes. - Biden will also nominate a gun control advocate — David Chipman, a senior policy adviser to Gabby Giffords' group — to head the ATF.
During a briefing for reporters, a senior administration official called this an "initial" set of actions. |
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| 6. Manchin imperils Biden bills with harder line on simple majority |
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| Graphic: CNN |
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| Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who holds the key to President Biden's next big package, said in a WashPost op-ed there's "no circumstance" in which he'd "vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster: " - "The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship," he writes.
- The headline: "I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster."
Why it matters: The moderate Democrat's insistence that the White House court the GOP, as outlined to me on "Axios on HBO" last month, reduces the chance that Democrats can pass bills with a simple majority. |
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| 7. Sudden new scam: Fake vaccine cards |
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| Photo: Mike Cardew/USA Today Network via Reuters |
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| Hundreds of sellers are offering false and stolen vaccine cards on Etsy, eBay, Facebook and Twitter, the N.Y. Times reports (subscription): - Sellers are asking "$20 to $60 each, with a discount on bundles of three or more. Laminated ones cost extra."
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| 8. Deep read: The whale who tanked |
| Courtesy Bloomberg Businessweek The sudden implosion of Bill Hwang's Archegos Capital Management" in late March is one of the most spectacular failures in modern financial history," Bloomberg Businessweek reports: No individual has lost so much money so quickly. At its peak, Hwang's wealth briefly eclipsed $30 billion. It's also a peculiar one. Unlike the Wall Street stars and Nobel laureates who ran Long-Term Capital Management, which famously blew up in 1998, Hwang was largely unknown outside a small circle: fellow churchgoers and former hedge fund colleagues, as well as a handful of bankers. ... Hwang used swaps, a type of derivative that gives an investor exposure to the gains or losses in an underlying asset without owning it directly. This concealed both his identity and the size of his positions. Even the firms that financed his investments couldn't see the big picture. Keep reading. |
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| 9. ⛳️ The roar returns to the Masters |
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| Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photos: Kevin C. Cox, Michael Reaves, Mike Ehrmann, Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images |
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| One of the toughest tickets is even tougher: Augusta National won't say exactly, but is believed to be allowing around 8,000 spectators for the 85th Masters, beginning today — down from the usual 40,000+. - Masks must be worn, and there's no eating or drinking around the roped-off spots closest to the greens, AP's Tim Reynolds writes.
Fans could attend the practice rounds that started Monday, partaking in Masters traditions they missed out on last year, when the club in Georgia was closed to virtually everybody: - They munch on the pimento cheese or egg salad sandwiches — $1.50 each. The Masters club, or ham-and-cheese on rye, or turkey-and-cheese on wheat, run $2.50. BBQ sandwiches are $3. Beer is the priciest thing on the concession menu — $5.
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| 10. 1 fun thing: Will Shortz edits 10,000th crossword |
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| Illustration: Ben Kirchner for The New York Times. Used by permission |
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| Will Shortz has edited his 10,000th puzzle since joining the N.Y. Times as crossword editor in 1993, The Times' Deb Amien writes (subscription): When I started in 1993, I was probably getting 40 to 50 submissions a week. Over the years, the number of submissions has slowly increased. ... [W]hen the pandemic hit last year, as people had more time on their hands — and we started accepting submissions digitally — the number shot up ... Now we're getting close to 200 submissions a week. Since we can publish only seven a week, the acceptance rate is only 3 percent to 4 percent. Shortz said that last year 30% of Times Crosswords were made by women — the highest percentage ever. |
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| A message from Facebook |
| Facebook supports updated internet regulations |
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| It's been 25 years since comprehensive internet regulations passed. But a lot has changed since 1996. See how we're taking action and why we support updated regulations to address today's challenges — protecting privacy, fighting misinformation, reforming Section 230, and more. |
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| 💡 Axios AM is written in Smart Brevity®. Learn how your team can communicate in the same smart, clear style with Axios HQ. |
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