Friday's Fast Five: Week of 12.9

Holiday Eye on the Market: Non-Fungible Trainwreck (Goldman Sachs):  Like 2002, 2022 was also a year when unprofitable companies got repriced. During the stimulus bonanza, digital assets were priced at an unrealistic premium relative to physical ones. Monetary and fiscal policy are normalizing now after the longest period of negative real interest rates since 1820 and the largest fiscal deficits since 1800

The 10 Best Books of 2022 (The New York Times): The staff of The New York Times Book Review choose the year’s standout fiction and nonfiction.

What the Tech? - Chart of the Week (Goldman Sachs): Announced layoffs in the tech sector are sparking investor concerns that broad labor market deterioration is on the horizon. We believe that tech layoffs are not indicative of such a slowdown for 3 reasons.

Was This $100 Billion Deal the Worst Merger Ever? (The New York Times): At Time Warner, executives saw AT&T as just a “big phone company from Texas.” At AT&T, they thought Hollywood would play by their rules. That combination led to strategic miscalculation unrivaled in recent corporate history.

The iPhone at 15: An Inside Look at How Apple Transformed a Generation (The Wall Street Journal): On June 29, 2007, the first iPhone went on sale. On that same day, a boy named Noah Schmick was born. Over the next 15 years, the iPhone grew…and so did Noah. Through interviews with current and former Apple executives, WSJ’s Joanna Stern traces how Apple’s invention matured and changed all of us—perhaps the youngest generation most of all.