Hey bb! ⚡️The art ‘ark’ of investing is being questioned or dare we say shorted by Michael Burry, while Kween Cathie defends her throne. 👑Who's side are you on?

In other news…NYFW 🪞is back, DoorDash & Instacart 🥕try to unite forces and another win for Warren Buffet has us wanting to celebrate in Brazil, ft. @nyugirlsonclub and some thoughts and prayers. ❤️

Michael Burry shorts Cathie Wood's ARK ETF

You know that person who was right about one thing, that one time? Michael Burry is that guy. 👀 If your memory's still catching up just remember ‘The Big Short’ 🎥…Christian Bale played him? Yeah, you got it! Ok, so he was right about the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, and sure, we'll also admit he was right to buy GameStop (though unfortunately cashed out before it was a meme stock missing out on the 2,000% surge 🚀). Anyway, he's now coming for Cathie Wood - the best performing fund manager of 2020 - and we're curious 🤔.

Wood has been fighting back on Twitter: “I do not believe that he understands the fundamentals that are creating explosive growth and investment opportunities in the innovation space.” 👩‍💻 For those wondering, the ‘innovation space’ Wood refers to is essentially the companies we talk about daily in 2021. ARK’s Innovation ETF holds shares of Tesla, Roku, Square, Shopify, Zoom, and other companies that live on the cutting-edge 🛰️. While it's hard to believe this space was groundbreaking when Cathie Wood created her fund's thesis back in 2014, it's even weirder Burry is out here betting against our fave companies.

According to Yahoo, “Innovation was out of favor [in 2014]. It was too volatile. In fact, when we started the firm in 2014, it took a lot to get people’s attention, because they thought we were too risky, too crazy. And I see now it’s coming full circle” 🐻. Today, Burry cautions about the unsustainable valuations of ARK holding bearish positions or betting against Tesla ($TSLA), one of the top investments in ARK ETFs.

So what does that mean for us?!?! 😨

Wood argues that the innovation space is for the long term (5-10 year positions) and isn't worried about inflation, but Burry predicts a tech stock crash…not to mention a crypto crash 💥. While Kween Cathie has a network of sector specific experts (she literally has a micro-community of domain experts across genomics, biotech, etc.), Burry resides on the value-investing side of things. He - like Warren Buffet - follows the Benjamin Graham school of thinking 🏛️. He likes to spot undervalued companies; seeing how much love he has for shorting, it seems like overvalued companies are also on his constant radar.

So, bb, I leave you with two thoughts:

1. If you could build a micro-community to help you make final decisions when it comes to your investments from founders, VC's, friends who happen to be domain experts across industries or similar, who would they be? Tag 'em on Twitter 🐦

2. If you could create your portfolio with no risk/reward because you're building it with no money on Yahoo Finance as a practice…Would you try Cathie's way or Michael's? ↔️ Let us know here.

A group of NYU women (some of which who've graduated) took over Clubhouse by storm. They've been taking over the club, IRL and you don't want to miss out on some of the fun they've been planning over the past few weeks. Follow them on IG and keep up with their bar recs.

Where the parteh's at 🎉

It wouldn't be finance made social if we didn't report the hottest gatherings this week!

Passé

• LA VC & Tech House Party: We hear Austin, SF, Montreal, and NYC was in the house. An LA house that is. Nikita hosted a lovely event and alongside a cute flamingo floaty and gorgeous view of the city, J Balvin's 🇨🇴music lit up the West Coast tech scene like we didn't think it could…

• Clubhouse IRL - NYU Girls Roasting Tech Guys: Your CH 👋 faves are back and taking social audio to the streets! Well, they're hosting parties in NYC clubs and we hear good vibes were spread on August 6th at Canvas with an open bar, live music and hot peeps. Follow them on IG @nyugirlsonclub to not miss out.

Don't miss out

• R&R: LA and SF remain chill where sometimes we wonder what people really do besides go out with TikTok influencers on dates (ya, that's a thing). Joshua Tree remains popular and we've been invited to go camping several times 🏕so I guess that's what we're doing out here…

• Startup Dinner in NYC: SF flies to NYC to host a special VC/Startup dinner on August 20th.

• NYFW: New York Fashion Week is back and we've already been getting asked for tix. Y'all know I'm everywhere 💁Sadly we won't make it but we want pictures!

Soon…maybe, just maybe…Cheres will be out and about. Keep checking in, as we may be hosting our own series of in-person events 😉

Quick News Bites

DoorDash + Instacart arriving at your home?

DoorDash has been dabbling in the grocery aisle for the past two months 🌽 with its talks to buy Instacart for a price that likely would have been ~$40-50B 💰

However, looks like the (grocery) bag was not secured 🙃as talks fell apart in recent weeks, “partly due to questions about whether a combination could get approval from antitrust regulators” (Source: The Information) ⚖️ - most mergers are getting the hard stare under the Biden administration, but we also think it may due to the similarity between services…Despite this, its clear that both DoorDash and Instacart are looking for ways to strengthen their businesses, to counter growing competition 💪

From now on, only greet Buffett with olá 🇧🇷

A Buffett-backed Brazilian fintech firm, Nubank (for legal reasons, this is Nu Pagamentos SA), is reportedly planning a $2B US IPO on Nasdaq 🎉. Celebrating with Carnaval spirit! Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway bought a $500M stake in the company in June ☀️ and now Nubank is seeking a valuation of more than $40B.

So what do they do? Well, Nubank runs digital payment accounts for more than 40 million clients and has a Mastercard-branded credit card, making it the largest fintech bank in LATAM 💳

On a more serious note

As many of you know, money and investing remain sensitive topics. As a team, we've been having more conversations about the psychology of money, and the socioeconomic distribution of capital. Are markets truly inclusive? 💭 Why is the U.S. stock market made up of only 26% women? 💭 How are minorities being set up for wealth building? 💭 You best believe we ask each other these questions every day, and the discussions are much harder than we usually imagine, but that's the beauty of building a social fintech as a diverse team.

We wouldn't be ‘Cheres’ if we weren't transparent and cut through the BS. All political stances aside, we'd like to acknowledge what's been going on in the news and simply say that our hearts go out to Afghan people ❤️ There's a lot of pain around the world, and while there are many other people and countries suffering to highlight, in addition to COVID lurking over us every day, we hope that we can ✨ together✨ support each other through thoughts, prayers, and honesty.

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