How Target Shocked Wall Street | Can Trump Match Murdoch? | Bitcoin’s New Boom

Plus: The Looming SPAC Meltdown

Good morning.

Bitcoin is experiencing a new surge, attracting renewed interest from Wall Street. We also look at how a bet made in 2017 is paying off for Target, and whether President Donald Trump could create a media empire to match Rupert Murdoch’s.

In The News Today

Early findings indicate the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca is safe and able to generate a “robust” immune response in older adults.

Following in the footsteps of the U.S. Space Force, the British government announced the creation of a Space Command, capable of launching the country’s first rocket in 2022. 

Top Take-Aways

As the Covid-19 death toll topped 250,000 in the U.S., social media conversation heated up over a Danish study that, some claimed, indicated masks were ineffective at preventing transmission—but health experts, and the study’s own lead researcher, disagree.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon scolded politicians for bickering over a new stimulus bill to help the economy weather the next few months: “This is childish behavior on the part of our politicians. We need to help the citizens of America!” he said.

The price of bitcoin has exploded nearly 150% this year and 15% in the past week alone, sparking a wave of renewed attention from Wall Street as the pioneering cryptocurrency nears its all-time price peak from late 2017.

E-learning is proving a pandemic-proof sector. Take language learning startup Duolingo and online learning platform Udemy as examples: both companies have seen their valuations surge following their latest funding rounds.

Abnormal Security cofounders Evan Reiser and Sanjay Jeyakumar do not come from cybersecurity backgrounds, but applied their marketing mindsets to the world of email security to create a company now worth more than $500 million.

Target CEO Brian Cornell made a big contrarian bet in 2017, doubling down on Target's physical locations to compete with Amazon. Not only did the strategy pay off even before Covid-19, but it also turned out to be an excellent recipe to excel in pandemic America.

As the animus grows between Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch and President Donald Trump, so do the rumors that they will one day be competitors in the conservative news market. Could Trump match the Murdoch empire? Here’s a look at their fortunes.

Today's Must Read

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Elon Musk has passed Mark Zuckerberg to become the world’s fourth richest person as Tesla’s stock continued to skyrocket following news that it will be added to the S&P 500 Index late next month.

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