We Officially Have Our First Wall Street Economist Talking About The 'Yo' App

Welp. We have our first Wall Street analyst pondering the 'Yo' app, the simple app that does nothing but send the message 'Yo' to one of your friends, and which became a viral sensation last week.

In his Sunday Start note, Morgan Stanley economist Joachim Fels writes:

Yo. When I first read about this latest must-have messaging app that has raised over $1 million in angel funding and has over 50,000 downloads, I thought it was utterly ridiculous. The only thing you can do with this app is to send a notification saying simply 'Yo' to any of your contacts with one tap, along with an audio alert of the word being spoken. Sounds silly, no?

Well, here's my Sunday confession: the more I think about it, the more I like the 'yo' concept. And it's not because of the app's latest feature: you can send a 'yo' to the username 'worldcup' to receive a 'yo' (and nothing else) anytime a team scores a goal. Rather, it's because I've always thought that there is beauty in simplicity. I'm a minimalist. I like to sit in my scarcely furnished study with white-washed walls while I write this comment. I hate Christmas decorations. When on a vacation, I like to sit on the shore and stare at the sea in the summer, or climb up a cold, white mountain silently on skis in the winter. I loved to read the late Barton Biggs's simple but beautiful prose about investing. Life is full of complexity -family, friends, work, politics, financial markets, the global economy. Coping with complexity requires filtering, sorting, reduction, concentration and, at least sometimes, simplification. Sometimes, a simple 'yo' can say and mean more to your 'contacts' than all the babble.