Friday's Fast Five: Week of 7.22

How Amateurs Lost Billions on Options (Bloomberg):  Day-traders managed to lose more than $1 billion during the bull market, with the bill climbing to $5 billion when the cost of doing business with market-makers is factored in.

Hoarding Cash? Don’t Swing at Every Yield Pitch (The Wall Street Journal): Fintech apps are offering outsize returns on your cash. A look under the hood shows their flashy marketing can hide potential pitfalls, and you won’t always get the same safeguards a regular bank offers.

The government is having a hard time hiring (Axios): While the number of private-sector jobs surpassed its pre-pandemic level, there are 664,000 fewer people employed in the public sector, according to the government jobs report released Friday. Government employers are competing for workers in a super-tight labor market, and they have less to offer: The jobs typically pay less, for starters.

‘They couldn’t even scream any more. They were just sobbing’: the amateur investors ruined by the crypto crash (The Guardian): Fueled by hype and hysteria, the market in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies went from an obscure niche to a $3tn industry. Then the house of cards collapsed. 

A Deep Dive into the "Buy now, pay later" industry (Axios): Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is an industry where the rate of growth is exceeded only by the pace at which valuations are falling. Axios Markets unpacks everything you need to know in this deep dive.