Wednesday, October 6, 2021

☕️ Teens are chuegy

What's up with the teens?
October 06, 2021 View Online | Sign Up

Daily Brew

Fidelity Investments

Good morning. You've probably seen his name on the newsletter in the past few days, but we'd love to formally introduce Max Knoblauch as the newest Brew writer.

  • Fun fact: When Max was a child he heard the song 'Landslide' for the first time in the movie Jack Frost (1998 Michael Keaton snowman flick), and he thought the song was written for the movie and it blew his mind and for years he considered Jack Frost to be one of the most beautiful movies ever made.

So at the very least you know he's got good taste.

Neal Freyman, Jamie Wilde, and, yes, Max Knoblauch

MARKETS

Nasdaq

14,433.83

S&P

4,345.72

Dow

34,314.67

10-Year

1.553%

Bitcoin

$51,515.79

Facebook

$332.96

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 12:00am ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

  • Markets: Stocks bounced back from the tech-led rout on Monday, and bitcoin topped $50,000 for the first time in a month. Facebook recovered some of its losses after its worst trading day this year.
  • Economy: Some interesting data points released yesterday include 1) the US services sector gained in September for its 16th straight month of growth and 2) the US trade deficit (imports minus exports) grew to a record $73.3 billion in August.

SPORTS

The NWSL Is Rotten

Soccer ball for the NWSL

Randy Litzinger/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Steve Baldwin, the controlling owner and CEO of the Washington Spirit women's soccer team, resigned yesterday as a sexual harassment scandal deepened across the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), the top women's pro soccer league in the US.

Baldwin was facing pressure to step down after Spirit coach Richie Burke was fired when a Washington Post report revealed he verbally and emotionally abused players.

And he was the second NWSL coach to get fired last week. The North Carolina Courage sacked Paul Riley following a report by The Athletic, which spoke to more than a dozen athletes who played under Riley and accused him of sexual coercion.

Last Friday, the league's commissioner, Lisa Baird, resigned and multiple games were canceled over the weekend.

On the surface, the NWSL had never been more successful

It was the first US pro sports league to return from a pandemic hiatus in June 2020, and it found a much bigger audience: Viewership surged nearly 300% last season thanks to partnerships with CBS Sports and Twitch.

At the same time, the NWSL went Hollywood. An expansion team based in Los Angeles, Angel City FC, is owned by A-listers including Serena Williams, Natalie Portman, and Mia Hamm. Tennis star Naomi Osaka bought a stake in the NWSL team North Carolina Courage. The league locked in sponsorship deals with Verizon, Procter & Gamble, and Google.

Players had a different experience. On the Today show yesterday, women's soccer legend Alex Morgan criticized the NWSL's (lack of) response to sexual harassment complaints, calling it a "systemic failure." And the players are still negotiating for fair pay—the league's basic structure pays players $22,000–$52,500 this season. They've said their financially precarious situation has made it more challenging to speak out against abuse, the WSJ wrote.

Looking ahead...the NWSL plans to resume games today, but under a storm of investigations from the likes of FIFA and the US Soccer Federation.—NF

        

SOCIAL MEDIA

Frances Haugen Goes Face to Facebook

Frances Haugen testifies in court

Jabin Botsford-Pool/Getty Images

After leaking a Song of Ice and Fire-sized tome of internal documents to the Wall Street Journal and the SEC, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen challenged the platform's Silicon Throne in Senate testimony yesterday.

Problem: According to Haugen, Facebook knowingly harms teens via its algorithm's curation. She placed the blame for that squarely on CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "Mark has built an organization that is very metrics-driven. ...The metrics make the decision. Unfortunately that itself is a decision," she said.

Solution: Haugen wants Facebook to start by sharing more internal data with outsiders. "As long as Facebook is operating in the shadows and hiding its research from public scrutiny, it is unaccountable," she said. As it stands, "Almost no one outside of Facebook knows what is happening inside."

  • Haugen also suggested legislators rework Section 230—an infamous snippet of the Communications Decency Act that protects platforms from being legally liable for what their users post.

Facebook's response? In a statement, Facebook a) said that it disagreed with Haugen's characterization of the topics she testified about and b) attempted to discredit Haugen for not working with those topics directly during her <2 years at the company.

Zoom out: Haugen's testimony may turn up the volume on calls to regulate the social media giant, which is still recovering from its 6-hour outage Monday.—JW

        

CULTURE

Survey Says: Teens are Cheugy

Good news for anyone with a teen in their life: We've got some conversation material to switch things up from Billie Eilish and Berries and Cream TikTok. The fall teen survey from investment bank Piper Sandler just dropped, revealing the attitudes and buying habits of 10,000 US teens.

Tech:

  • iPhone ownership is at 87%.
  • Snapchat is the top social network (35% share), followed by TikTok (30%).
  • 22% of teens have heard of NFTs, and 10% of those who've heard of them have purchased one.

Entertainment and fashion:

  • Nike is the top teen brand, holding its spot for the eleventh straight year.
  • Adam Sandler is their favorite celebrity (Hubie Halloween season is upon us, after all), followed by Ryan Reynolds.
  • Crocs are on the rise. They're teens' sixth-most preferred footwear brand, up from ninth place last year.

Politics:

  • 54% of teens consider their carbon footprint when making a purchase.
  • The most important social/political issue to them is the environment, followed by racial equality.

MK

        

SPONSORED BY FIDELITY INVESTMENTS

No More Crypto FOMO

Fidelity Investments

If you're a citizen of the internet, you might have seen the prices of certain digital coins soar past certain eye-popping numbers and wondered...should I dip a toe in that pond? 

Crypto FOMO is a very real affliction these days, so we cooked up a treatment: Episode 4 of Season 2 of Fresh Invest, our podcast with Fidelity.

In the episode, the reigning monarch of this newsletter, Morning Brew Executive Chairman Alex Lieberman, chats with Fidelity Director of Global Macro Jurrien Timmer about how to approach crypto investing. You are not actually legally required to do anything to your Twitter avatar—common misconception. 

It's only natural to want to get in on what sometimes seems like a gold rush, but you may not want to convert your retirement fund to the latest altcoin out of FOMO before doing some research. 

Instead, learn about crypto investing from the latest episode of Fresh Invest.

GRAB BAG

Key Performance Indicators

Empty streets of the city are seen on July 27, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia

Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Stat: Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city, has been in lockdown for 247 days since March 2020, roughly 45% of the duration of the pandemic. It recently passed Buenos Aires as the city that's spent the most time cumulatively under stay-at-home orders. This lockdown, the sixth, will lift once at least 80% of adults in the state of Victoria are fully vaccinated.

Quote: "I'm opposed to it and I don't think we should consider it seriously. It's really a gimmick."

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is not on board with the proposal to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin to bypass the debt ceiling crisis. She did say it was "utterly essential" for Congress to suspend the debt limit to avoid a recession.

Read: Understanding how Facebook disappeared from the internet. (Cloudflare)

        

SPACE

But Can They Live up to the Legacy of 'Armageddon'?

A Russian actor and director inside a spacecraft simulator

Mikhail Japaridze\TASS via Getty Images

The first feature film shot in space is officially rolling, and somehow Tom Cruise wasn't hiding in the glove compartment. A Russian film crew of two docked with the ISS on Tuesday, ahead of a 12-day shooting schedule aboard the space station.

Russian actress Yulia Peresild, director Klim Shipenko, and their guide, veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, made their way into the ISS around 11am ET Tuesday morning. They'll be filming scenes for a Russian film called Challenge, about a surgeon who has to operate on a sick cosmonaut in space.

Hollywood's space race: The Russian film was announced in November 2020, putting it head-to-head at the time with a planned $200 million Tom Cruise space film directed by Doug Liman (who directed Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow). The Cruise project, in partnership with SpaceX and NASA, was reportedly going to shoot aboard the ISS in October 2021, though no official date was announced.

Still uncharted shooting territory for bold filmmakers:

  • In an active volcano
  • Inside a live whale
  • On the sun

MK

        

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

  • Tesla was ordered by a federal jury to pay a former employee $137 million over accusations it ignored racist abuse that a Black employee suffered while working at a Tesla factory.
  • The number of Manhattan apartments sold hit a 32-year high in the third quarter. But #NewYorkIsDead.
  • Some car dealerships are actually benefiting from the chip shortage.
  • Donald Trump didn't make the Forbes 400 list of America's richest people for the first time in 25 years.

BREW'S BETS

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How long until Thanksgiving? Keep track of all upcoming important dates here.

The climate crisis is here. And the world is looking for solutions. New from Marketplace is How We Survive, a podcast that explores the technology that could provide those solutions, the business behind them, and the way people will need to change their thinking. Listen here.

Top of the top: Here are the finalists for the 2021 National Book Awards. And here are the world's 50 best restaurants.

*This is sponsored advertising content

GAMES

The Puzzle Section

Word Search: Who doesn't love vintage postcards? See if you can identify the cities featured on postcards in today's puzzle.

Correct the Timeline

The following historical events happened on October 6. Can you put them in the correct chronological order?

  1. The Yom Kippur War begins.
  2. Michael Jordan announces his (first) retirement from the NBA.
  3. Jason Lewis becomes the first person to circumnavigate the globe using only human-powered modes of transportation.
  4. George Michael releases the song "Faith."
  5. The Yankees beat the Dodgers for their 11th World Series win.

FROM THE CREW

We Like College Sports and We Don't Care Who Knows

The Brew's College Athlete Ambassador program image

Morning Brew was founded in a dorm at the University of Michigan, so college athletics have a special place in our hearts (Go Blue). That's why when the NCAA ruled that athletes could finally capitalize on their name, image, and likeness, launching our College Athlete Program was a no-brainer.

We wanted to take a moment to shout out some of our amazing student-athletes, including:

  • Sae-Vheon Alcorn: University of Kansas, Track & Field, @saevheon
  • Porter Wilson: Duke University, Football, @porter_wilson
  • Christian Avila Neres: Franklin & Marshall College, Soccer, @_chrisavilaa_

Interested in being a Morning Brew Athlete? Apply here.

ANSWER

  1. Yankees win their 11th World Series (1947)
  2. The Yom Kippur War begins. (1973)
  3. George Michael releases the song "Faith." (1987)
  4. Michael Jordan announces his (first) retirement from the NBA. (1993)
  5. Jason Lewis circumnavigates the globe using only human-powered modes of transportation. (2007)

✢ A Note From Fidelity Investments

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. The third-party trademarks and service marks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners. Twitter and Fidelity Investments are independent entities and are not legally affiliated.

Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, Member NYSE, SIPC, 900 Salem Street, Smithfield, RI 02917

       

Written by Neal Freyman, Jamie Wilde, and Max Knoblauch

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