Parenting In A Pandemic

Together with Piestro:

Final month to invest in Piestro—the robotic pizzeria of the future.

There's a lot of dough in the pizza industry. In fact, the US pizza market will be worth an estimated $54B by 2023—up from $46B today. But traditional pizzerias face high labor & real estate costs resulting in low profit margins—estimated at 22% on average. 

Enter Piestro—the robotic pizzeria that makes pizza at a fraction of the cost of traditional pizzerias and boasts an impressive 48% projected profit margin.

Piestro recently announced a commercial partnership with global brand 800 Degrees Pizza. Valued at an estimated $530M and projected to kick off with 3,600 machines to be produced and sold over the next five years, this partnership will help drive future growth and allow consumers to access pizza 24/7 in high-traffic locations.

You simply knead to check out Piestro's investment opportunity today.

Invest before 9/30 to claim your slice of Piestro!

Parenting in a Pandemic:

Dealing with a sick child is hard enough in a normal world. Typically, in a dual working arrangement with no familial help available, one parent takes off from work to take care of the child. In the best case scenario the child gets better quickly, the parent misses a few days of work, and life goes on.

Dealing with a sick child during a pandemic has proven to be much more difficult—containing its own unique set of challenges. Now, every cough, sneeze, runny nose, and fever is assumed Covid until proven otherwise.

For many schools in our area, if a child tests positive for Covid (or a child in the same classroom does), they are required to quarantine for 10-14 days. This puts an enormous strain on the already over-stressed parents—many of whom may not be able to financially afford to take off from work for 2 weeks or more.

Mothers, who have traditionally been the de facto caregivers for a sick child, have had a particular rough time during the pandemic. 

About 44 percent of women said they were the only one in their household providing care when schools and day cares shut down, according to one study, compared to just 14 percent of men.

Also, compared to their male counterpart, they’re feeling additional pressure to work more—on top of already feeling burnt out or exhausted.

Politico reported that nearly 1.8 million women have dropped out of the labor force amid the pandemic and are now grappling with whether and how to return to work in a vastly different landscape—one where some jobs have disappeared, others are vulnerable to automation, and nearly all involve some level of health risk.

According to research by the McKinsey Global Institute:

Last summer, women’s jobs were found to be almost twice as vulnerable to the pandemic as men’s jobs. In a gender-regressive, “do nothing” scenario—which assumes that the higher negative impact of COVID-19 on women remains unaddressed—global GDP in 2030 would be $1 trillion below where it would have been if COVID-19 had affected men and women equally in their respective areas of employment. 

But if action is taken now to achieve best-in-region gender-parity improvements by 2030 (including investments in education, family planning, maternal health, digital and financial inclusion, and correcting the burden of unpaid-care work related to childcare and caring for the elderly), $13 trillion could be added to global GDP compared with the gender-regressive scenario. It would also raise the female-to-male labor-force participation and create hundreds of millions of new jobs for women globally. That’s a significant and substantial economic opportunity.

This should serve as a wake up call for husbands, dads, government, and employers. We need more women in the workforce. More than just increasing diversity, multiple studies have shown that teams with a significant female executive presence drive higher revenues, increase client satisfaction rates and support better performance overall.

Having an honest conversation with your partner about their career goals is the first step to providing a long-lasting and healthy relationship. You can avoid the eventual resentment that will occur when one parent bears the burden of giving up their career aspirations to care for their children while care centers are closed and remote learning becomes standard practice.

Normalize stay-at-home dads if it makes financial sense. Frankly, I’d love to spend more time with my kids by being a stay-at-home dad if that means my wife can continue to succeed on her career path. Full disclosure: This also assumes I can still trade stocks and get on Twitter most of the day while “watching” the kids. 

It has taken decades of hard work for women to infiltrate the workforce in meaningful ways. Hopefully, the pandemic will end before decades of progress get erased in a few short years. If not, women’s workforce participation rate could lag for years and might never fully recover to its pre-2020 level.

Shout out to all of the stay at home and working parents out there. You’re doing your best. 

Performance Update:

Now let’s see how the People’s Portfolio did this week…

The major indices took a dip this week after Fed members decided to sell their stocks.

As reported on by Bloomberg: Boston Fed Chief Eric Rosengren and Dallas Fed’s Robert Kaplan said they are selling their individual stock holdings by the end of the month. The move comes as they were roundly criticized after financial disclosures showed Rosengren was an active investor in real estate investment trusts last year, while Kaplan, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive, made many $1 million-plus transactions. Both pledged in their near-identical statements not to trade stocks again while Fed members. 

Stunning and brave.

On Friday, we voted Penn National Gaming (PENN) to remain in the portfolio for another 10 weeks. The stock has been a dud in 2021 after a stellar run in 2020. While it’s only down 7.5% YTD, there was a significant drawdown of 57% from the peak in March to the bottom in August.

The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI) is on the chopping block next week for the 2nd time. We’re currently holding onto a -3.71% loss over the past 19 weeks. After peaking around $175 in February, it has been stuck in a trading range since march, bouncing around between $120 and $140.

Keep an eye out for the new Twitter poll every Friday. Follow along in real-time with nearly 300,000 others on Public.

Portfolio News Highlights:

The biggest stories affecting our portfolio this week:

• Stablecoins Face Crackdown as U.S. Discusses Risk Council Review (Bloomberg)

• Why Biden can't fix the semiconductor shortage (Yahoo)

• Amazon To Invest $1.2B Towards Education Benefits For Front-Line Employees (Benzinga)

• The Economy of Canada: An Explainer (Investopedia)

What Else We’re Reading:

Blogs/Articles:

1. A Chemical Hunger – Part I: Mysteries - (SlimeMoldTimeMold)

2. Do Cryptocurrencies Improve Portfolio Diversification? - Tommi Johnsen, PhD (Alpha Architect)

3. The Falling Man - Tom Junod (Esquire)

Books:

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know - Adam Grant

Need new reading material? Visit my Amazon page for my most purchased book recommendations.

Tweets of the Week: