Bull Market’s Expiry Date | SPAC Breakups | Retail’s 1,000% Club

Plus: Biden Has Brought More People Into Government From His Nonprofits Than Trump Did From His Business

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Despite a steep 30% market correction last year, the longest bull market on record has helped the S&P 500 surge nearly 300% over the past ten years but that has some investors worried there are parallels with another period of market exuberance. A flurry of blank-check mergers emerged out of the pandemic, but now many SPAC deals are collapsing without finding a target company, while an unlikely clutch of video game, cowboy boot and jewellery retailers clawed back a 1,000% return for shareholders from the depths of lockdown. And finally, meet the 27 long-time aides that have jumped from President Biden’s campaign and non-profits to his administration.

In The News Today

Intel is facing a backlash in China both from social media users and the country’s state-run media after the U.S. chipmaker asked its local suppliers to cut sourcing from the Xinjiang region, where the Chinese government is accused of carrying out widespread human rights abuses and running forced labor camps.

Chinese authorities on Thursday imposed a lockdown on the northwestern city of Xian as the number of locally transmitted Covid-19 cases in the area continued to climb, the latest move in China’s strict ‘zero-Covid’ strategy that comes just weeks before the country is set to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Top Take-Aways

A 12-year-old bull market; SPAC mania; IPOs that more than double on the first trading day; an army of amateur traders and GameStop mania. It certainly feels like irrational exuberance—and it triggers alarms for those who remember the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. Forbes compares today’s market with 11 key metrics that flashed warning signs just before the March 2000 crash.

The billionaire founder of the advertising technology company The Trade Desk is resigning from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, alleging a misuse of wealth and citing its stances on a range of social issues. Jeff T. Green’s letter marked a rare public rebuke for the Salt Lake City-based church, and also came with a $600,000 donation to LGBTQ non-profit Equality Utah.

Not all billionaires stay super-rich forever, but they usually last more than a few hours. The volatility of 2021 minted a slate of new billionaires whose tenure in the three comma-club lasted just a matter of months, days or even minutes.

Black Girls Code, a prominent non-profit that introduces young women to tech, is in turmoil after a months-long leadership dispute has led to the ouster of its CEO and allegations of bullying on its board, Forbes has learned.

Many investors chalked up bricks and mortar retail chains as a casualty of the pandemic, and changing shopping habits, but it’s not just GameStop that has pulled off a remarkable stock market comeback. Meet the 11 stores in retail’s 1,000% rebound club.

Experts have long doubted the sustainability of the pandemic-era SPAC boom, during which hundreds of companies have used blank-check vehicles to raise tens of billions of dollars at their IPOs. Now a new trend is emerging: A growing number of SPAC deals are collapsing before the listed shell merges with its acquisition target.

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