Upvote me
Reddit goes from memes to markets
Good morning, meme template downloaders. This is your Stock Market Rundown for August 2nd, 2023. Thanks as always for joining me. Let’s dig in:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: REDDITOR RUCKUS 👾
With 57 million daily active users, Reddit has been a cozy home base for online degenerates who desperately need to log off, since 2005.
It has everything from the useful (r/whatisthisthing/, for identifying mysterious objects)… to the educational (r/AskHistorian, for asking history experts questions)… to the bizarre (r/BreadStapledToTrees, for posting photos of bread stapled to trees).
Back when computers still made screechy dial-up noises, Reddit was born when two University of Virginia students decided to build “the front page of the internet”. In the early days, the founders frantically posted using fake accounts to make the site look active. But soon there were enough users that they no longer needed to log in as AvocadoTreehouse or BigPimpinCarrot.
Management filed go public at the end of 2021, but haven’t sealed the deal yet. Part of the problem was the 2022 market swoon that tripped up a lot of IPO plans. Another problem: Reddit steps into drama more often than I step into the poop my neighbor’s German shepherd leaves on our front lawn. (Carl, please pick up after your dog.)
Example: recently, many subreddits shut down for a 48-hour “boycott” in response to Reddit cutting off third-party apps and fumbling comms. The coordinated action made the site crash like a helicopter piloted by a meth addict. Reddit responded with the classic “if you want to live in my house, you have to follow my rules” and started booting protesting moderators.
The Reddit exec team now appears to be serious about getting their financial ducks in a row in advance of another kick at the capital-markets can, aiming to go public in H2 2023 with a $15 billion valuation—even though the business still isn’t profitable.
If the curmudgeonly user base can stifle any outbursts between now and then, maybe, just maybe, management won’t have to lug out the banhammer again.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Sam Bankman-Fried’s ex-gf will be a star witness against him in his fraud trial in October. In addition to the money laundering and fabricated financials deets, I wanna hear SBF relationship gossip. Did he get her a bag of Skittles as a birthday present? Flirt with the waitress at Ground Round on Valentines Day?
A survey showed that the more familiar people are with AI, the more likely they’d by to say they’d trust an AI doctor. My doctor chain-smokes Marlboros, so I usually double-check everything he says with WebMD anyway.
One of the biggest-gaining stocks of the year is a company that loses money every quarter and sells used cars in a giant vending machine. That’s a lot of quarters.
Interest rate hikes have pushed down prices on more than just stocks: resale prices for Rolexes and other luxe watches are down by a third. This is why I wear a “Quemex” I bought in Chinatown.
That’s it for today, see you bright and early tomorrow. Yours in capitalism, The Axe