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Posts published in “Business & Markets”

SHA Solidarity Week: The Impact of COVID-19 on Marginalized Communities

On April 8, the Stern Healthcare Association had the good fortune of hosting Dr. Joseph Ravenell, the Associate Dean of Diversity Affairs and Inclusion at NYU Langone Health. Dr. Ravenell led a discussion on how this pandemic has hit lower socioeconomic neighborhoods with a higher disease burden and mortality rate than more privileged neighborhoods.

Racism has been with us for centuries, and long-standing social disparities go back throughout the history of the U.S. Any group seen as different from the dominant group in this country has often been seen as a threat and discriminated against. This was made more evident during the pandemic, which can be seen both from health outcomes and the social unrest arising from blatant systemic racism. …

Coronavirus and the Market Part IV: Jerome Powell -The Hero We Needed

In the last article from this series in June 2020, I spoke about the impending doom of rising interest rates. I mentioned how this would be precipitated by additional federal government stimulus legislation and the need for the U.S. Treasury to issue more debt to fund so much new federal spending. For once I was right. The yield curve did steepen back in June. Specifically, most of the steepening occurred primarily on the 20-year point due to the new treasury issuance with that same maturity, the rest of the curve was relatively unchanged from the 0-10-year points. As a quick refresher, since the yield curve represents expected future interest rates, it also indicates growth expectations for the general economy. …

Reflecting on this past year and the latest on the “Fauci Ouchie”

This week marks the one-year anniversary of March 11, 2020, when Covid-19 was officially upgraded from an epidemic to a pandemic by the World Health Organization. At that time, there were less than a 1000 known cases in the U.S. and infectious disease experts were still hopeful we could get the virus spread under control. It was the first time in a century a communicable disease was categorized a pandemic of this severity (and hopefully, the last for at least another century). I don’t need to go into all the minute details, because we have all lived through it, but it is important to remember that in a year we have lost over 500,000 Americans to Covid. …

The NYU Stern Fintech Conference Goes Virtual in 2021

On Friday March 5, NYU Stern’s Fubon Center for Technology, Business, and Innovation hosted Stern’s fourth annual Fintech Conference via a Virtual Zoom Webinar. The conference theme was “No Borders, No Barriers,” highlighting that technology has no passport. In line with that theme, the event featured an international slate of speakers from several countries, including the United States, Israel, India, Argentina, United Kingdom, California, and the Netherlands.

The conference was once again a smashing success with 1,200 registrants signing up for the virtual format, bringing together “top fintech scholars, forward-looking financial institutions, innovative fintech startups, and leading fintech investors” in the words of Kathleen DeRose, Director of the Fubon Fintech Initiative and Clinical Associate Professor of Finance at Stern. …

Covid Vax Facts

Since our last issue, I received not only one, but two of my Covid-19 vaccinations. Excuse, me as I flex… my vaccinated deltoid muscle that is.

I received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, one of the two vaccines (the other being Moderna’s) approved for emergency use by the FDA in the US. Both Moderna and Pfizer use mRNA technology that consists of re-engineered messenger RNA (mRNA). mRNA are molecules that relay genetic instructions from DNA to ribosomes, the cell’s protein-making machinery. In this case, the vaccine mRNA gives our B-cells (a type of white blood cell) the genetic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2, and the B-cells then produce an immune response that generates antibodies.…

Short Squeezes – A Discussion with Professor Ian D’Souza

What is a short squeeze and is this a common phenomenon?

Before we can get to answering what a short squeeze is, we need to answer some preliminary questions.

Let’s start with what is short?

A short is a position taken by an investor or trader making a bet that an asset’s price will go down, not up.  On average, under 5% of the S&P market capitalization is shorted. Most participants in the stock market invest because they believe US stocks will go up over time. Shorts are a very small group of investors betting against most other investors’ view of the direction in the market and as such, are viewed with disdain.…

I Disagree Professor, Amazon Is NOT Antitrust

Amazon has found its way to market headlines yet again in 2021. This time it’s a relatively small surprise, Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO, effective later this year. I trust you did not believe that any human, even Jeff Bezos, could run a space exploration organization, build the world’s most profitable company from scratch, and own the Washington Post all at the same time indefinitely. After his resignation, Bezos will stay with the firm as executive chairman of the board. Andy Jassy, who was formerly head of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the massively successful cloud services platform offered by Amazon, will take over as CEO of the company. …

How to Get Vaccinated

Huge thank you to Brett Allen for his help in preparing this article, it would not be possible without him. As New York expands its vaccination efforts many of us are looking to find ways to secure appointments. I offer two options with explicit instructions below.

These days we are all worried about what story our data will reveal about us to the objective future observer. Countless troves of information will be available illustrating your addiction to La Mer or your obsession with Megan thee Stallion. No doubt you will be a cool Grandparent. But what if, when they went through your data, they uncovered that you were part of the CovId-19 vaccine distribution effort?…

This time, it’s different

By Nicolaus Schmandt

The image for this article shows the cycle of human emotions as the stock market goes through booms and busts. Investors should never forget it, especially as we are moving towards the “euphoria” peak, with speculative bubbles growing in tandem. Each time this happens, the bubble comes with a narrative as to why stocks should be so much above normal valuations, or why the rules don’t matter anymore. In the years leading to 2008, everyone was moving to the sunbelt and their properties and mortgages would never go down in value. In 1999, the internet was going to fundamentally change the world in such a way that normal valuations simply wouldn’t apply.…

Index Fund Millionaire

By Kyu Kim

In our Foundations of Finance class, we all learned about modern portfolio theory. In this brief article, I will summarize this famous theory we learned and how it’s implemented in the real world. I hope Sternies can understand this concept more practically, as it is essential for early retirement plans for young professionals.

According to modern portfolio theory, developed in the 1960s by Harry Markowitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist, risk-averse investors can create an optimal portfolio by holding both risk-free securities as well as risky assets. Given that higher risk is an inherent part of higher reward, this method maximizes expected return based on a given level of market risk.…

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