Good morning.
Fortune’s subscriber-only Quarterly Investment Guide is out, and well worth a read. For new investors who have the runway to take some risk, we’ve proposed a diversified portfolio of 13 stocks to buy and hold over the next few years. What is on it? Well, I won’t give it all away, but I was happy to see a few of my favorites—Salesforce, PayPal and Johnson & Johnson—on the list. What’s not on it? GameStop and AMC. Read it here.
If you are looking for some wisdom to guide your investment strategy, we’ve also collected advice from some of the world’s most successful money managers, including Stephen Cohen and Reid Hoffman; from great business leaders, including Thasunda Duckett and Chamath Palihapitiya; and even from a couple of sports legends, A-Rod and Emmitt Smith. My favorite comes from super-investor Ray Dalio: “Pain + Reflection = Progress….The biggest mistake of my career, which nearly ruined me and was terribly painful, was one of the most valuable lessons of my life because it gave me the humility I needed to balance my audacity.” You can find it all here.
And then there’s our beginner’s guide to investing in cryptocurrency, which you can read here. (And IMHO, when it comes to investing in cryptocurrency, we are all beginners.)
Finally, because it is Friday, some feedback, in reaction to my outtakes from the Most Powerful Women Summit:
“With all due respect to Amrita Ahuja, ‘the speed of the internet relative to the speed of currency’ doesn’t feel like an accurate or even relevant comparison. If it refers to the pace of innovation, I see more fintech innovation with fiat currencies. And if it refers to the speed of money movement, I would argue you can move fiat currencies just as fast…Paying for things like pizza with bitcoin is not a typical delightful contemporary digital experience.”
—RW
“I have to say, Sarah Friar from Nextdoor is spot on. I do enjoy the Nextdoor app because it provides…a better sense of who lives near me, rather than just a bunch of houses with strangers in them. Neighborhood connections have been lost, but I think people are very open and want to bring them back, especially after COVID.”
—AS
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
LinkedOut
Microsoft is shuttering LinkedIn in China, due to a "significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements"—a.k.a. government censorship. LinkedIn was the last American social media platform to be operating in China. Microsoft will replace it there with a new platform, InJobs, that lacks social feeds and article-sharing. Fortune
No Xi
Chinese President Xi Jinping will apparently not be showing up at the crucial COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, and the British government reportedly doesn't know "what stance the Chinese are going to take." U.K. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps: "If countries don't come, they'll be the outliers rather than central to this, and most countries want to be relevant to this." Sky News
Boeing indictment
Former Boeing pilot Mark Forkner has been charged with deceiving FAA safety officials about the automated flight-control system in the Boeing 737 Max—a system that went on to play a key role in two disastrous crashes. His alleged deception led to pilot manuals and training materials not mentioning the system. Fortune
J&J talc
In the hopes of driving a settlement of personal-injury claims, Johnson & Johnson has placed into bankruptcy its liabilities over its no-longer-sold Baby Powder, which has been allegedly linked with ovarian cancer and asbestos poisoning. Injury lawyer Andy Birchfield: "Here’s another example of the wealthy and powerful using bankruptcy as a hiding place to protect their profits and avoid responsibility." Wall Street Journal
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Shell showdown
Don't miss Katherine Dunn's account of the fireworks that went down at the pre-COP26 Ted Countdown Summit in Edinburgh yesterday, when young climate activist Lauren MacDonald accused Shell CEO Ben van Beurden of being evil: "The moment represented a breathtakingly public clash between the numbers and strategy behind the energy transition, as seen by an oil and gas executive, versus the sense of desperate urgency and pain felt by many in the room over years of slow action—or little action at all—on climate change." Fortune
Farewell, Abenomics
New Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has promised to move away from neoliberal "Abenomics" to focus on reducing inequality: "Abenomics clearly delivered results in terms of gross domestic product, corporate earnings and employment. But it failed to reach the point of creating a ‘virtuous cycle’…I want to achieve a virtuous economic cycle by raising the incomes of not just a certain segment, but a broader range of people to trigger consumption. I believe that’s the key to how the new form of capitalism is going to be different from the past." Financial Times
Vaccine mandates
Will people accept vaccine mandates when many face losing their jobs over their refusal to get the jab? That's a big question in France and Italy. In France, President Macron's hardline stance seems to be paying off after a few months, with numbers of refuseniks dwindling. In Italy, where the mandate comes into effect today, there are growing fears of a worker shortage. Fortune
Hobbled Santa
A leaked Amazon document reportedly shows the company's U.K. arm will ask shoppers there to order their Christmas presents four weeks earlier. Unnamed person who is "familiar with Amazon's operations": "It’s hard to overestimate the level of supply disruption we’re facing, even with our resources. It’s going to be a long, quite painful road to a new normal and air freight can’t take all the strain off of other routes." Independent
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
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