Weekly Brief #46
Weekly Brief #46
Time to make yourself some extra dollars... Plus, China's $325 billion stimulus package, Visa sued by the DOJ, OpenAI turns for-profit, American Eagle sues Amazon, Canada non-confidence vote fails.
(Please read today’s featured story all the way through!)
Welcome to the 6 investors who joined us since the last Weekly Brief! If you’re reading on the web and haven’t subscribed, join 422 curiosity-driven, enthusiastic stock market-addicted mortals by subscribing here.
Good morning investors 👋,
Happy Friday and welcome or welcome back to the 46th Weekly Brief.
Sorry for the delay in stock analyses recently. I assure you, I have a lot planned in the coming months. I’ve been working behind the scenes these past few weeks, contacting sponsors, and crafting an amazing profit-share partner program for this newsletter under a newly revised membership structure.
Some of you may remember from a few weeks back that I announced I was enabling paid subscriptions for this newsletter. All my posts were to remain free, and the subscription was solely for support. Looking back, that was a very bad value proposition. Who wants to pay a subscription for something that’s free, even if it’s to “support an author for the content you love”? No matter how valuable that content is, I wouldn’t even pay for that. It would be a complete waste of my hard-earned dollars. There needed to be something I provide of value in return for you spending your money. There needed to be mutual benefits.
So I started thinking: What could I do to support myself, reward my efforts, and also reward you as the reader for continuing to support my content, while still keeping all of this content free simultaneously?
Let’s get into it. (18 min read)
In this issue:
👯♀️ Become a partner of J. Nicholas
🇨🇳 China’s $325 billion stimulus package
💳 Visa (to be) sued by the DOJ
FEATURED STORY
👯♀️ Become a partner of J. Nicholas
I originally started this newsletter as a way to translate my knowledge and thoughts on certain topics related to money into words — a sort of public journal of my financial ideas so to speak. I considered this a hobby. I enjoyed what I was writing about and still do. Usually, people with enjoyable hobbies don’t make money from those hobbies. It keeps them happy, and happiness is everything, which is something I’m obviously not going to try to contest.
I hold a personal view on things that if I spend time on something that isn’t giving me returns — not just in the form of money but also knowledge or skills — when I have a strong feeling it could, then that’s a technical waste of time. I’m not Scrooge McDuck or anything, of course. Not everything I do is for financial gain. My posts on Blossom, for example, or my free templates and guides, none of that is some coup d'état to extract money from people. I write those posts on Blossom and everything else because you all provide feedback saying how much they’ve benefited you.
Everything I know, I’ve learned for free, and everything I could ever want to know, I can know for free. Reading books and scouring the internet is the greatest combination for building knowledge. It’s why I never want to put up a paywall or charge anyone for any of my content — including this newsletter — even though I could do so fairly easily. However, even with these good thoughts, by spending all my free time without return, I’m losing out on time that could be spent elsewhere to generate more income, learn new skills, or essentially anything else that can give me a valuable return so I can make more money to invest.
For every newsletter issue I create — which, on average, takes about 15 minutes to read — I’m spending 5 to 7 hours behind the scenes over the course of a couple of days trying to research and create that write-up. That’s a lot of time. (You could say this time is almost irrelevant to me in terms of the effort involved since I really do enjoy what I’m spending this time on, but regardless, the opportunity cost here is extremely high.)
This is why I enabled subscriptions a few weeks back. As a way to offset the time spent on writing this newsletter, to motivate longer and more detailed posts, and to reward my efforts. How I went about doing so was flawed. I transmitted a terrible value proposition to all of you and gave the impression of a beggar with a coffee cup collecting change on the street — because that’s exactly what spending money to support someone is; it’s a donation. The thing is, donations don’t work with free content-based thingamajigs.
I’m not going to linger on this mistake too much; everyone makes mistakes. I should have gone about enabling subscriptions much differently, yes. What matters is if I learned from the mistake… which I did, so let’s give this subscription announcement thing one last try.
Become a Partner of J. Nicholas
Most blogs or newsletters like the one you’re currently reading will just give paid subscribers exclusive content, and that’s it. I chose to do things just a little differently. For every paid subscriber, if you choose to become one, I’m not just giving you exclusive content, but a share in the profits of this newsletter — the money this newsletter makes from sponsorships, memberships, affiliates, all of it.
If you go paid, you get paid.
Perks & How the Payout Works
You subscribe to a paid subscription of J. Nicholas, becoming a partner of this newsletter and being addressed as “partner” in every post (small detail, but necessary) ($3 per month).
You get access to exclusive monthly portfolio updates from me and monthly “Partner Updates” discussing the business and financials of this newsletter.
You receive an evenly split share of 30% of this newsletter’s profit divided among the other partners (explained below)
If you decide not to become a partner of J. Nicholas and stay as a free subscriber, you won’t lose anything at all, but you also won’t gain anything. You’ll still recieve all the posts you were already receiving for free, forever.
Example of profit-share: Let’s say this newsletter makes $654 in profit in a month from various streams of revenue, like sponsorships and memberships. Let’s say there are 20 partners or 20 people paying for a membership currently. Those twenty people would receive 30% of that profit divided evenly among them. The amount payable to the partners in this example is $196.20, or $9.81 per partner in that specific month. That month’s payout would cover a little over 3 months of the membership cost.
Every month, a payout amount will be set to be paid to the paid subscribers, outlined in a special “Partner Update” post detailing that month’s revenue, a breakdown of said revenue, expenses, and then profit, as well as a little write-up about the direction of the newsletter.
This isn’t meant to be a guaranteed source of income. It’s not a predictable source of income either. Some months will have slow or even no revenue, while others will be amazing. As more members join, if the memberships outpace the revenue growth, your payout will shrink as the overall pot is divided more and more. When that happens, I’ll increase the payout ratio. My thought process behind doing this is to build a great community. A community with which if I benefit, we all do.
This membership is meant to be a real mutual benefit and value proposition for something that costs you money. By subscribing to this membership, you not only support me and the content but also motivate me to do better, receive my detailed monthly portfolio updates, a full breakdown of the business side of this newsletter, and you get to share the fruits of the journey as this newsletter grows. (And make more money to invest, hooray! 😆)
This newsletter is something I really believe in, and it’s something you all seem to enjoy. I enjoy writing about the stock market and creating analyses and so forth, and I enjoy reading the feedback, comments and emails from all of you. I hope you consider subscribing to the membership, and when you do, I’ll be waiting. Thank you everyone, happy investing, and enjoy the rest of today’s issue. Feel free to reply to this email or comment on the post (web) for questions. I’ll always answer.
(Speaking of comments… I’ve just given the top three most active subscribers of this newsletter in the past 90 days 3-month free memberships for this newsletter. If you want to be part of that group of people in the next 90 days, be sure to open every email, like the posts, and even comment to increase activity on your account!)
FINANCE
a. 🇨🇳 China’s $325 billion stimulus package
This week, China revealed its largest economic stimulus since the pandemic after the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced over $325 billion in monetary measures, with more expected to come soon. This current stimulus includes a $142 billion liquidity boost for banks and $71 billion to stabilize the stock market.
China’s history with large stimulus efforts has been… kind of mixed, so like everything nowadays it seems, no one at all knows what’s going to happen.
Other huge China stories this week:
b. 💰 OpenAI turns for-profit
OpenAI is now planning to shift from a nonprofit research institute to a for-profit corporation accountable to shareholders, just weeks after the massive $100 billion and then humongous $150 billion funding round with Apple and Nvidia. Coincidence? Yeah, no. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI who is dedicated to revolutionizing humanity with artificial intelligence and has stated that A.I. poses an existential risk to humanity, will be receiving a 7% equity stake worth approximately $11 billion in the new company. Hypocrisy at its finest.
Currently, OpenAI’s for-profit division is controlled by a nonprofit board focused on benefiting humanity. OpenAI stated that it will still retain its nonprofit status, “staying committed to its mission of building AI for the benefit of all.” As of the time of writing, no final decision or timeline has been set.
BUSINESS
c. 💳 Visa sued by the DOJ
The Justice Department (DOJ) filed an antitrust suit against Visa this Tuesday, accusing the company of monopolizing the debit card market and imposing billions in extra fees on businesses, and thereby, consumers. Visa controls over 60% of U.S. debit transactions and charges $7 billion annually in fees in the U.S. alone.
Keep in mind, a monopoly isn’t illegal in the U.S., but abusing monopoly power, whether through charging absurd prices or strangling competition, is. The DOJ claims Visa is abusing its pricing power by charging excessive fees. Businesses then raise prices to offset the costs, affecting consumers. But even if won, according to the University of Washington, the savings will be too small for anyone individually to notice anyway.
Related articles:
d. 🧑⚖️ American Eagle sues Amazon
Yes, another lawsuit, but this time, it’s about American Eagle Outfitters suing Amazon for trademark infringement. American Eagle claims Amazon misled shoppers by displaying knock-off Aerie products, despite American Eagle refusing to sell its Aerie line on the platform in order to protect its brand.
According to American Eagle, after notifying Amazon, the knock-off listings were relabeled and misspelled using variations of the Aerie brand, with titles like “Aeries” and “Arie.” Amazon has faced similar counterfeit claims in the past (e.g., Valentino) but has not yet responded to this lawsuit.
Related articles:
POLITICS
e. 🇨🇦 Motion of non-confidence fails
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau survived yet another no-confidence vote in parliament this week, with a vote of 211-120. The motion was introduced by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre but failed after he was unable to gain support from the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Québécois, even after the NDP deal to keep Trudeau in power collapsed.
Trudeau has now been in power for nine years under a minority government, and as of this writing, the next election is scheduled for October 2025. Trudeau currently holds a massive 28% approval rating. (The Conservatives plan to introduce more no-confidence votes in the next few weeks.)
📚 Book of the Week
Note: I don’t recommend books that I haven’t read or that I would never read. The books I recommend are books I have already read or that I will eventually read.
The 48 Laws of Power — Robert Greene
Sequel to The Laws of Human Nature, (included in last week’s issue). — Jacob
Book Description:
In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.
Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.
✩ This newsletter, along with my weekly Morningstar fair value estimates and PDFs, will always be free of charge. Your support, whether through a donation or by reading this newsletter and following along, is greatly appreciated.
Thank you for reading today’s Weekly Brief! If you enjoyed or learned anything, please spread the word. (Remember, none of this is financial advice, please do your own research.)
— Jacob