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Sunday Soup: Bubbles, Bitcoin, Business Wars and Books From Pros

Good food for your brain. These are the articles, streaming ideas, and books that caught our attention this week.

Chris Versace·Dec 15, 2024, 10:00 AM EST

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Complementing Saturday’s collection of TheStreet Pro Portfolio signals, we have another serving of Sunday Soup today that moves beyond the world of investing and stocks to include notables and potentially quotables that caught our eyes this week.

If you have a recommendation you’d like to share, feel free to share it in the Comments section below!

Articles 📰

New Eras, Same Bubbles: The Forgotten Lessons of History

“As US equity markets trace the contours of the third great speculative bubble in history, investor confidence in a new economic era has reached extreme levels… Similar to its predecessors, this speculative episode has been accompanied by exuberant sentiment about innovation-led growth, perpetual expansion in profits, and a tendency among investors to root expectations about economic and investment prospects in optimism. As The Business Week observed in 1929: “This illusion is summed up in the phrase ‘the new era’. The phrase itself is not new. Every period of speculation rediscovers it.”

iOS 18.2 Review: The AI Apple Promised Us

“Yes, behold Genmoji. Arriving Wednesday as part of iOS 18.2, Apple’s make-your-own-emoji machine is just one of several long-awaited Apple Intelligence tools, along with Image Playground and integrated ChatGPT. The catch? These features require an iPhone 15 Pro or the latest iPhone 16 models. And the real star, Visual Intelligence, only runs on the 16. So, let’s call this column what it is: my iPhone 16 re-review.”

The Incredible Health Benefits of Drinking Enough Water

“Drinking enough water daily can help you lose weight and prevent kidney stones, according to an analysis led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). What’s more, adequate hydration can prevent migraines, headaches, and urinary tract infections (UTIs), and control diabetes, blood glucose levels, and low blood pressure. The team’s systematic review of 18 randomized controlled trials was published Nov. 25 in the journal JAMA Network Open.”

How Refrigeration Ruined Fresh Food

“Three-quarters of everything in the average American diet, she explains, passes through the cold chain—the network of warehouses, shipping containers, trucks, display cases, and domestic fridges that keep meat, milk, and more chilled on the journey from farm to fork. As consumers, we put a lot of faith in terms like “fresh” and “natural,” but artificial refrigeration has created a blind spot, says Twilley. We’ve gotten so good at preserving (and storing) food, she writes, that “we know more about how to lengthen an apple’s life span than a human’s,” and most of us don’t give that extraordinary process much thought at all.”

The Necktie Is Making an Office Comeback

“Neckties may never regain prepandemic levels of popularity, but sales data show signs of resurgence. After tumbling to $61.4 million in 2020, U.S. tie imports rebounded to $106 million by 2022, according to the most recent data from trade-tracking website Observatory of Economic Complexity… Several young men and women who don ties confirmed that half the fun is subverting an old symbol of masculine status. They relish tweaking the power tie by wearing it rebelliously or making it feminine.”

What’s Up With All These Food Recalls?

"What to make of the recent E. coli, salmonella, and listeria outbreaks in the U.S. that led to food recalls of produce like carrots, cucumbers, and even the slivered onions on McDonald’s Quarter Pounders."

What We’re Streaming 📺📲

All In: New SEC Chair, Bitcoin, xAI Supercomputer, UnitedHealth CEO murder

Business Wars: Disney Under Siege – Restore the Magic

The Daily: Gen AI Search Ads or Gen AI Search Subscriptions?

Question Time: Geopolitics in Crisis

The Reading List 📖📚

We are in the midst of the holiday season and there may be a few folks you’re not quite sure what to get, so here’s some help in the form of books published by TheStreet Pro contributors.

Bob Lang – Know Your Options

Carley Garner - Higher Probability Commodity Trading: A Comprehensive Guide to Commodity Market Analysis, Strategy Development, and Risk Management Techniques Aimed at Favorably Shifting the Odds of Success

Chris Versace – Cocktail Investing: Distilling Everyday Noise into Clear Investment Signals for Better Returns

Doug Kass – Doug Kass on the Market: A Life on TheStreet

Ed Ponsi - Technical Analysis and Chart Interpretations: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding Established Trading Tactics for Ultimate Profit

James “Rev Shark” Deporre - Invest Like a Shark: How a Deaf Guy with No Job and Limited Capital Made a Fortune Investing in the Stock Market

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