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Quote of the Day
"It’s never been easy to be a small business and it’s even more difficult right now. But resilience and flexibility go together."
(Seth Godin)
Chart of the Day

Everyone was wondering what it would take to bring down S&P 500 profit margins…
Markets
- Retail traders have discovered options. (msn.com)
- Why all the focus on retail traders is a side show. (allstarcharts.com)
Strategy
- Why investment performance debates are so tedious. (humbledollar.com)
- Many market disagreements center on differing time horizons. (specfn.com)
Companies
- Why have investors, including Facebook ($FB), poured $8.8 billion into Jio Platforms Ltd.? (wsj.com)
- Hertz ($HTZ) has filed for bankruptcy. (axios.com)
- A Q&A with Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google ($GOOGL). (wired.com)
- A visualization of Google's dominance of search. (visualcapitalist.com)
Gilead
- Gilead ($GILD) is the most successful maker of antivirals in history. (bloomberg.com)
- Hospitals are having to ration remdesivir use. (wsj.com)
Business
- The pandemic has only served to strengthen the hands of Big Tech. (wsj.com)
- It's difficult to imagine a scenario where big box retailers don't take share from small businesses. (barrons.com)
- Businesses are figuring out how to do more with less. (howardlindzon.com)
Casinos
- What casinos will look like when they reopen. (apnews.com)
- Reopened casinos will implicitly remind players of the risks they are taking. (marketchess.com)
Covid-19
- Derek Thompson, "Talking for hours in close quarters, in an unventilated space, can create an ideal petri dish for COVID-19 transmission." (theatlantic.com)
- The decision to reopen schools has a lot of moving parts. (newyorker.com)
- The workplace is going to look a lot different going forward. (technologyreview.com)
- Testing non-symptomatic people is the next big step. (esquire.com)
Vaccines
- Testing vaccine efficacy depends in part on how much virus is out in the world. (reuters.com)
- Why the elderly may need a vaccine tailored specifically for them. (businessinsider.com)
- Politicians are talking about a coronavirus vaccine as it it is a foregone conclusion. (ft.com)
- If a coronavirus vaccine is created in the time frame commonly talked about, it would be a record. (newyorker.com)
- Who should get a vaccine when it first becomes available? (statnews.com)
Global
- Australia had a 30 year run without a recession then 2020 hit with the wildfires and pandemic. (ft.com)
- Italian fashion industry was already in flux before the pandemic. (nytimes.com)
- These countries are the most reliant on tourism. (visualcapitalist.com)
- Developing markets are seeing more young people affected by Covid-19. (washingtonpost.com)
Policy
- Vinay Prasad and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, "Trump’s insistent endorsement of an unproven and potential risky medication contrasts with his refusal to wear a face mask." (washingtonpost.com)
- Americans want more infrastructure spending, they just don't want to pay for it. (vox.com)
- How stock markets serve as a macro check on a country's credit markets. (privpapers.ssrn.com)
- America's rural roads are crumbling. (modernfarmer.com)
Economy
- The US economy is facing a mass extinction event for small businesses. (barrons.com)
- We are only now grasping how the pandemic will affect the jobs environment. (wsj.com)
- The savings rate has surged. (ft.com)
- A succinct summary of the week's economic events. (ritholtz.com)
- The economic schedule for the coming week. (calculatedriskblog.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- What everyone else was reading on the site this week. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you missed in our Saturday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Longform links: global in scope. (abnormalreturns.com)
Mixed media
- Experts rate the risk of fourteen activities including a day at the beach. (npr.org)
- We need to have a little more humility when it comes to forecasting a post-pandemic world. (nytimes.com)
- Why you should create two wish lists: one in which the world goes back to normal, and one where it doesn't. (humbledollar.com)