Hello everyone! Welcome to this weekly roundup of stories from Insider from Business co-Editor in Chief Matt Turner. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Sunday.
Read on for more on Trump administration staffers getting snubbed while hunting for jobs, Cathie Wood's predictions for 2021, and tension at The New York Times.
Read time: 5 minutes.
Hello!
The US developed coronavirus vaccines in record time last year.
But as Hillary Brueck reported this weekend, the process of getting those shots into people's arms is going horrendously slow - just as more Americans are dying from the virus than ever before. As she reported:
There are promising signs that this vaccine drive is going to accelerate soon. But the delay has already caused thousands of deaths, and it will be a challenge to come back from.
Read the full story here:
Trump administration staffers are getting snubbed
From Claire Atkinson and Sean Czarnecki:
Former White House staff can usually walk into top jobs after years of dealing with some of the toughest crises in government.
But as businesses begin to shun Trump enterprises, the group leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is already getting the cold shoulder.
One public-relations recruiter told Insider they had received inquiries from at least 15 people from the White House looking for jobs. The recruiter took on six people as clients, but none were able to even secure an interview with corporations they had applied to.
"It's just very hard," the recruiter said. "You're supposed to put anyone in front of a job that has the credentials. Morally, it's hard for people to want to work with them."
Read the full story here:
Also read:
- How Silicon Valley banished Donald Trump in 48 hours
- 'It was degrading': Black Capitol custodial staff talk about what it felt like to clean up the mess left by violent pro-Trump white supremacists
- Trump's Secret Service detail could be subpoenaed to testify against him in criminal proceedings and former agents are stressed about it
Cathie Wood's predictions
From Vicky Ge Huang:
By all accounts, Cathie Wood's ARK Invest had a blockbuster year.
The innovation-focused asset manager's $21.5 billion Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK), $6 billion ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), and $9.4 billion ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (ARKG) returned 153%, 157%, and 181%, respectively while all beating 99% of their category peers, according to Morningstar data.
Those incredible gains have helped ARK rake in over $20 billion in less than four months, bringing the firm's total assets under management to $50 billion in mid-December from $28.4 billion in early September.
To be sure, ARK's shot to fame made such a splash last year that some investors are skeptical about whether the firm can continue its impressive streak.
However, Wood appeared unperturbed in a Tuesday markets update webinar.
"The V-shaped recovery that we've been talking about for quite some time might have experienced a little bit of a wobble in some of the statistics coming out these days," she said, referring to the surprise payroll decline in December. "But it was all leisure, hospitality, and more small business-oriented."
While the V-shaped recovery may be somewhat subdued, Wood sees "explosive earnings" ahead, propelled in part by potential bipartisan action on infrastructure, healthcare, and clean energy.
Read the full story here:
Also read:
- Global X's lithium and battery ETF returned 126% in 2020 as electric vehicle-driven demand surged. One of the firm's analysts shared 4 stocks he sees 'leading the rise' in the industry going forward.
- Julian Klymochko wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to manage an ETF that seeks to profit from the SPAC boom. The investing chief breaks down how the strategy works and shares 2 new SPACs on his radar.
Tension at The New York Times
From Steven Perlberg:
The unraveling of The New York Times' "Caliphate" podcast has been a major black eye for the paper's prestigious and lucrative audio unit, unleashing a wider reckoning within the paper.
Several Times staffers told Insider there was a growing feeling inside the broader newsroom that the institution mishandled the fallout and had not held enough people accountable.
Meanwhile, The Times' in-house standards team is cracking down on practices like the use of anonymous sources. "They are clamping down on everything and making everyone's life hard," one Times reporter said.
The incident, in which The Times was duped by the source who underpinned the narrative in the "Caliphate" story, marked an enormous embarrassment for an audio division that has become the envy of the
Read the full story here:
Also read:
- Media could be rocked by major deals in 2021 - including a merger of WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal and takeover of MGM
- James Murdoch, son of Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch, said news outlets that promoted 'lies' are to blame for US Capitol riot
ICYMI: GitHub facing employee backlash
From Rosalie Chan:
Microsoft-owned GitHub is facing employee backlash after a Jewish employee was terminated. The employee was fired two days after suggesting in an internal chat room there were "Nazis" among the US Capitol rioters.
Employees circulated an internal letter with about 200 signatures on Monday asking the company to denounce white supremacy and Nazis and demanding answers about the termination.
Read the full story here:
INVITE: How to invest in real estate in 2021
We're mapping the road ahead for real estate in 2021, including which towns, cities, and states to watch, how to navigate high home prices and low mortgage rates, and why Americans' housing preferences are shifting as a result of the pandemic.
On January 20 at 1 PM ET, Libertina Brandt will moderate a panel on how to invest in real estate in the coming year, featuring R. Donahue Peebles, founder, chairman and CEO of the Peebles Corporation, and Daryl Fairweather, Redfin's chief economist.
Also read:
Here are some headlines from the past two weeks that you might have missed.
- Matt
Walmart is working on a stealth health-tech venture that could change how you shop