Happy Thursday! I actually have a big announcement to make in this week’s issue. I finally decided to Just Ship It! and published my personal website at rohananthony.net

I wanted to thank each and every one of you who are subscribed to this newsletter for supporting me at the start of this new endeavor. The website is still undergoing some development but I couldn’t wait around a moment longer to publish it. Let me know what you think of it and as always I would love some thoughts on how I could improve it. With that said let’s get into it.

In this week’s issue you will find:

• On Self-Sabotaging Perfectionism

• GameStop: A Market Manipulation by Any Other Name Would Not Smell As Sweet

• Lessons From Storytelling: A Gentleman in Moscow

• Guitar Guy Mixes Music with Memes

• A quote from Ryan Holiday

On Self-Sabotaging Perfectionism

There’s really no such thing as Perfectionism. In my opinion, Perfectionism is just another disguise that Procrastination wears in its never-ending battle to stop you from doing the things that you know you should be doing.

I’m unfortunately all too familiar with the sentiment. I wanted to start writing a blog back in 2017 when the writing bug bit me for the first time, but I let “Perfectionism” scare me into procrastinating from setting up the website, buying a domain, and finally publishing my website till earlier today.

I wanted to delay the launch until it was perfect. Those articles look so short because they're not meant to be on blogs they're just a newsletter section. I need to flesh them out before I launch, I can’t just publish them like that. I should have at least 5 book notes up so that the section isn't empty. It wouldn't be perfect otherwise. All sorts of excuses start to swirl in your mind when you’re trying to start something.

But the highest hurdle is always the first one. The one that keeps you from actually getting started. Many don't start and many fail because of that. I was one of the people who kept failing to jump over the hurdle ever since 2017. I knew I wanted to start something but I felt paralyzed and pushed my dreams to the side and was still waiting for that right moment. But the perfect moment doesn’t exist.

It's devastating to build in public. It takes guts, some vulnerability to show your imperfections and ship despite that. But it’s a lesson in character development."A teachable moment" as Bean Dad would say.

If we wait around for the time to be perfect then we’ll go to an early grave with a life of disappointment. Just start, perfectionism be damned.

GameStop: A Market Manipulation By Any Other Name Would Not Smell So Sweet?

If you haven't been living under a rock, you've probably heard of GameStop's unexpected roaring rise over the past week closing at around $311 today after starting the week priced at $43. If you have been living under a rock over the last week here's a quick recap:

• The pandemic has led to the rise of retail (non-professional) investors typified by the r/WallStreetBets and Robinhood (no shade here, I am a Robinhood boi, for now) craze

• GameStop became the most shorted stock because its basically the BlockBuster of video games, with many hedge funds leveraging themselves as hard as Joe Exotic is with his fifteen minutes 

• The 2 million-strong subreddit WSB decided to give these hedge funds a taste of their own medicine by banding together to spoil the short positions by going long to cause a short squeeze (when a heavily shorted stock rises, forcing short sellers to buy more shares to minimize their losses)

• In the process of GameStop's unprecedented run, the WSB community has had their fair share of scalps with Melvin Capital closing out its short position after taking a huge undisclosed loss and Citron Research taking a loss of 100%

So why did these retail investors take this moment in time to hit back against the establishment who has typified the exact manipulation that they are now heavily condemning?

Morning Brew editor Neal Freyman has 4 theories:

1. The "stick it to the man" theory

2. The "everyone's super bored" theory

3. The "Robinhood" theory

4. The "memeification of society" theory

I encourage you to click on the tweet above and this link to Morning Brew's analysis of the story. Morning Brew is a free daily email newsletter that I have used to stay up to date on world events and business news. It takes 5-10 minutes to read every morning and gives you a balanced and informed view all before 9 am every day, while bringing a smile to your face.

I'm actually working with Morning Brew as a campus ambassador for them this semester so please sign up for the Brew here. Join 2.6 million other people (including Tim Cook and Mark Cuban) to stay engaged and entertained every day!

Lessons From Storytelling: A Gentleman in Moscow

I've been reading this book lately for a book club (shoutout Rutgers READ) and have not been able to tear myself away from this masterpiece of historical fiction. I'm only about a hundred pages in but never knew that I could. Towles is in a league of his own offering beautifully detailed descriptions and making physical confinement (something I venture to guess many of us could care for less of) seem magnificently interesting. The book follows Count Alexander who is labeled an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922 and sentenced to an indefinite period of house arrest in the grand Metropol hotel. The Count finds himself in a similar situation to us in quarantine with "so little to do and all the time in the world to do it" which Towles says leads him to be "threatened by a sense of ennui - that dreaded mire of human emotions." Even just a hundred pages in I've picked up some great nuggets of wisdom that I wanted to share with you today:

• "Imagining what might happen if one's circumstances [are] different [is] the only sure route to madness."

• "But Fate would not have the reputation it has if it simply did what it seemed it would do."

• "But in a period of abundance, any half-wit with a spoon can please a palate. To truly test a chef's ingenuity, one must instead look to a period of want. And what provides want better than war?"

Remarkably stoic of him even after being threatened by the Bolsheviks at gunpoint. I could not recommend this piece of fiction anymore to anyone as the witty character of Count Rostov is someone I wager you can 100% see yourself in given the times. Then again, I guess when both Oprah and Bill Gates recommend this book as "the ultimate quarantine read" it is sure to deliver.

Guitar Guy Mixes Music with Memes

The YouTube algorithm served me up a treat a few days ago. While procrastinating writing this newsletter, I came across this curious video of a babyface German looking guy with rose-colored sunglasses staring back at me with a one-stringed guitar. Curiosity got the better of me, as I wondered what this guy was going to do in a 33-second video with just one guitar string. I hope for the sake of your enjoyment that it gets the better of you as well:

Quote of the Week

That’s all for this week. Thanks as always for reading. If this is your first time reading and you enjoyed it consider subscribing with the button below.

I should probably go to bed - I’ve got to wake up at 5 am tomorrow. Until next week!