Glenn Watts River Rat

Graveside services for Glenn Watts River Rat, 56, will be held Feb. 7 at 2 p.m. in Salem United Methodist Church with the Rev. Dennis Lewis officiating. Burial will follow in the church cemetery.

Mr. Watts passed away Feb. 4.

Born Oct. 2, 1964, in Conway, he was the son of Joyce Watts Privette and the late John Paul Watts. Glenn was a member of the Methodist faith and supported Salem United Methodist Church. He was a certified auto technician at Palmetto Chevrolet, having retired after 35 years. Glenn was an avid fisherman and hunter. He never met a stranger and loved everyone.

Along with his mother, Glenn is survived by his wife of 30 years, Iris Watts Tator of Conway; two sons, Randall Roberts (Samantha) and Jacob Watts of Conway; two grandchildren, Marshall John Roberts and Marley Jean Roberts; one brother, Alan Watts (Dora) of Conway; two sisters, Karleen Hardee and Paula Rabon of Conway; and many nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles and other extended family members.

Memorial donations may be made to Salem United Methodist Church, 2376 S.C. 90, Conway, SC 29526.

Please sign the online guestbook atwww.goldfinchfuneralhome.com

Goldfinch Funeral Home, Conway chapel is in charge of arrangements.

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Watts loved fishing and hunting | Obituaries | myhorrynews.com - Myhorrynews

INZO, by all metrics a (relatively) unknown artist, struck gold in 2018 with his massive single, Overthinker. At time of writing, its sitting at nearly 31 million plays on Spotify. It was so successful that now, CloZee has just dropped her official remix.

When INZO asked me to remix Overthinker, I was extremely honored because its one of my all time favorites. I used to play it a lot in my sets. For that reason, it was also the most challenging remix Ive had to do. The expectations are very high since the original song is a hit. I hope people will like this new journey based on the words of Alan Watts and INZOs amazing sounds, says CloZee.

Sitting here now listening to her take on the hit, in her own words, she has definitely done it justice. A lot of the same soundscapes and motifs are carried through to the remix, with so many new twists and turns in the production. The addition of the chopped vocals is breathtaking, and the more swingy rhythm plays well to CloZees own sound beautifully.

Check it out below!

Originally posted here:
CloZee Drops New Remix Of INZO's Massive Hit, "Overthinker" - Your EDM

The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision to strike out a malicious falsehood claim on the grounds that the proceedings were abusive and disclosed no reasonable cause of action under s. 3(1) of the Defamation Act 1952: Tinkler v Ferguson [2021] EWCA Civ 18.

The judgment addresses the application of the law on abuse of process where it is alleged that an action has already been substantially litigated and determined in separate litigation involving different parties.

Alan Watts, Chris Cox and Angela Liu, who acted for the Respondents in the appeal, consider the decision below.

Background

The malicious falsehood proceedings which are the subject of this appeal (the Malicious Falsehood Claim) arose in the context of a boardroom battle that occurred in 2018 within Stobart Group Ltd (the Company). At that time, the Appellant, Mr Tinkler, was a substantial shareholder and director of the Company. The claimant believed that the then chairman, Mr Ferguson, should not continue in his role as chairman. (Mr Ferguson was later re-elected as chairman at the AGM in July 2018.)

The claimant brought the Malicious Falsehood Claim in June 2018, at that time as a claim in both defamation and malicious falsehood, in connection with the Companys publication of an announcement on the London Stock Exchanges Regulatory News Service (the RNS Announcement). It followed an earlier RNS announcement which gave notice of the boardroom dispute in progress. The claim was brought against Mr Ferguson and three other directors of the Company (together the Respondents).

About a week after the Malicious Falsehood Claim was issued, the claimant was dismissed as a director and employee, and the Company launched an action against the Appellant seeking a declaration that his dismissal was justified (the Stobart Action). The Appellant counter-claimed in that action for a declaration that his removal was invalid and sought an order for reinstatement. The Stobart Action was expedited and went to trial in November 2018. In a detailed judgment, HHJ Russen QC ruled on a number of issues arising from the boardroom dispute. In summary, the judge found that the Appellant had acted in breach of both his fiduciary duties as a director of the Company and his contractual duties as an employee, and that his dismissal from the Company had been lawful and valid.

Following a hearing in December 2019, the Appellant abandoned his defamation action to leave only the Malicious Falsehood Claim. The Respondents applied to strike out the Malicious Falsehood Claim on the grounds that it was an abuse of process, or alternatively that it disclosed no reasonably arguable or properly particularised claim for pecuniary loss under s. 3(1) of the Defamation Act 1952 nor any claim for special damage.

The High Court (Nicklin J) granted the strike-out application, finding that the continuation of the Malicious Falsehood Claim would be an abuse of process because the Appellants complaints had already been substantially litigated and determined in the Stobart Action. Nicklin J also found that the Appellant did not have a properly arguable case that he had more likely than not been caused pecuniary damage as required by s. 3(1) of the Defamation Act 1952. The Appellant appealed.

Decision

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and upheld Nicklin Js decision to strike out the Malicious Falsehood Claim for the reasons he gave.

Abusive proceedings

In his leading judgment, Peter Jackson LJ provided an overview of the law on abuse of process by reference to the established authorities before considering counsels arguments on abuse in some detail.

The Court of Appeal held that the law of abuse is designed necessarily to restrict the right of litigants to seek a determination of their civil rights before the courts by preventing abusive and duplicative litigation. The court has an inherent power to prevent misuse of its procedure where the process would be manifestly unfair to a litigant or would otherwise bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

Taking into account the private and public interests involved, the court is required to consider the central question of whether in all the circumstances a party is abusing or misusing the courts process (Johnson v Gore Wood & Co [2002] 2 AC 1). The Court of Appeal in the present case clarified that an abuse of process can arise in a variety of circumstances and that these are not limited to fixed categories.

The Court of Appeal, in dismissing the appeal, ultimately found that:

No reasonable cause of action

The Court of Appeal also held that the Appellant had not sufficiently demonstrated that he had a reasonable cause of action, as he had failed to establish that the requirements of s. 3(1) of the Defamation Act 1952 had been met.

The Court of Appeal noted the lack of specificity in the Appellants pleaded case on damage, agreeing with Nicklin J that it was vague and speculative. The Appellant also faced certain difficulties in establishing that the RNS Announcement had actually caused him the pecuniary loss complained of, because only two weeks later the Appellant had suffered a high-profile dismissal from the Company. That dismissal was then subsequently justified by the handing down of the widely publicised judgment in the Stobart Action. Both of these later events were considered by Nicklin J (with whom the Court of Appeal agreed) to be objectively more likely than the fairly anodyne RNS Announcement to have caused the Appellant pecuniary damage.

The court concluded that, even if it were possible to distinguish the pecuniary loss suffered by the Appellant solely as a result of the RNS Announcement, in so far as that pecuniary loss was reflected by a drop in the Companys share price, the almost immediate market recovery of the stock in the weeks after the RNS Announcement meant that no substantial tort had been committed. Under the Jameel principle (from Jameel v Dow Jones [2005] EWCA Civ 75), the court can strike out claims where no real or substantial tort has been disclosed; on these facts, the Court decided that Jameel had been engaged because the value of the Appellants claim would be entirely disproportionate to the effort and cost required to determine it.

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Court of Appeal upholds strike-out of malicious falsehood claim as an abuse of process and because it disclosed no reasonably arguable claim for...

The stock market's Reddit-fueled trading frenzy could lead to undesirable outcomes for even the most successful of retail investors, behavioral finance analyst Dan Egan told CNBC's "ETF Edge" this week.

People seeking connection online during the pandemic and the rise of commission-free trading have given way to a speculative boom that raises concerns about retail traders getting burned, he said in a Monday interview.

"It sort of feels like the markets are on a vodka-Red Bull," said Egan, Betterment's vice president of behavioral finance and investing. "You need the Red Bull for the energy and the intensity and the vodka for the questionable judgment."

With swaths of retail traders now sitting on big gains in stocks such as GameStop, Egan's concerns were threefold.

First, he worried that those who racked up significant returns and sold out will not only have to pay a hefty tax bill, but will develop high confidence that they'll be able to achieve the same outcome in a different stock a relatively unlikely bet.

Second, he worried that those who realize they will owe high capital gains taxes after they close out of their positions will get stuck in their positions waiting for them to lose value or for tax rates to fall, thus limiting themselves from potential gains in other investments.

Third, he worried about those who may have been burned and will never trust the stock market again.

"[They're] going to miss out on the core economic engine of growth over the rest of their lives that could've helped them with their retirement savings," Egan said.

While Reddit forums are far from new, their recent popularity in the investing world could accelerate the secular shift to more personalized separately managed accounts (SMAs), Q.ai CEO and co-founder Stephen Mathai-Davis said in the same "ETF Edge" interview.

"There has been a secular movement to digital financial investing tools from traditional finance over that period of time," said Mathai-Davis, whose robo-investing platform uses artificial intelligence to research and time the market.

"It's definitively counter-cultural, in my opinion as you see this movement to decentralized online communities where people are learning from each other," he said. "These online communities are growing exponentially."

As investors increasingly try to align themselves with particular themes and millennials enter a period of massive generational wealth transfer, "bespoke" investing through SMAs should gain traction, the CEO said.

"It's customer-centric with a focus on how they're perceiving value," he said. "I think too often the finance industry really focuses on the value add we're delivering to the user as opposed to focusing on what the user really wants as value."

Disclaimer

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'Markets are on a vodka-Red Bull': Behavioral investing analyst on his top 3 concerns about Reddit-fueled trading - CNBC

Greenhill said the revenue was recognized in accordance with generally accepted accounting rules.

This is not some sort of pulling a little revenue out of one quarter and putting it in another, Chief Executive Scott Bok said on a conference call. Theres pluses and minuses in every given quarter [and] the pluses were a little higher this time around.

Mergers-and-acquisitions advisers used to collect their hefty fees when mergers were completed, but the accounting rules were changed in 2018. Greenhill now pockets fees when services are transferred, according its annual report.

That change made a big difference to Greenhill, which hasseen revenues and stock price slump as competing boutique M&A advisers and large banks seized market share. Last year, to save money, the firmrelocated from 300 Park Ave. to a smaller office at 1271 Sixth Ave., the former Time Life Building.

The big boost to Greenhills fourth-quarter results came from an estimated $48.5 million fee for advising on DuPonts $26 billion acquisition of International Flavor and Fragrances, KBWs Brown said. That merger closed this week.

Brown observed that Greenhills future deal revenues are looking thin. Based on other deals it had a role in last year, the firm has $16.4 million in fees to collect, Brownsaid.

Bok said hes bullish on business getting better.

Were hopefulto build on 2020s results, he said, rather than see 2020 as something thats been diminished by the way 2020 ended for us.

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Investment bank Greenhill pulls forward revenue to give results a boost - Crain's New York Business

Tiffany Hagler-Geard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The stock market is known for being unpredictable and volatile, and any sense of normalcy was blown up during the recent GameStop rally.

Most of us know the story by now: After discovering that several hedge funds had bet on the video game retailer losing value, people banded together on the Reddit forum WallStreetBets to drive up its share price by 1,500%. Over the course of January, GameStop's stock price ballooned to a high of $483 from a low of $17.

The bubble already appears to be popping, with GameStop shares down to around $55 as of Friday.

Still, the event is unlikely to be soon forgotten, experts say.

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The Reddit forum of retail investors vowing to take on Wall Street still has more than 8.5 million subscribers (or as they call themselves, "degenerates"). And Netflix is already in talks to make a film dramatizing the battle royale between giant hedge funds and a pack of individual day traders.

What's more, experts say the event tells us about what's bringing people into the market these days and what that could mean for investing in the future.

In many ways, the GameStop rally resembles bubbles of the past, but it has some unique characteristics, too, experts say.

"What is new is the scale and speed of the event," said Veljko Fotak, associate professor of finance at the University at Buffalo.

The ubiquity of smartphones on which people can download investing apps, the availability of cheap or free trading and "a pandemic with a lot of restless energy," are all factors that contributed to the video game retailer's rally, said Dan Egan, vice president of finance and investing at Betterment.

Populism spreading across the globe is yet another factor that fueled the bubble, Fotak said. "Some investors were motivated not just by pure greed, but also by a desire to 'stick it to the man,'" he said.

Many people are also brought into the market these days when they see friends or people they follow on social media touting certain stocks, said David Sekera, chief U.S. market strategist at Morningstar. Some of these posts are very convincing: Users on Reddit, for example, were exchanging high-level analysis on GameStop's finances.

"The days that equity research was limited to the large, bulge bracket Wall Street firms is long past," Sekera said.

All of these events that propelled the GameStop bubble could spur many more.

"I do think that, to some degree, this herd Reddit movement is going to continue," said Jason Reed, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame. "We've already begun to see the movement into other equities and assets, like AMC, Blackberry and silver gaining considerable momentum."

As shares of GameStop tumbled on Feb. 2, many Reddit users claimed to be holding onto their stock or even buying more, writing that it wasn't a loss until they sold out.

Source: Reddit

More people investing is positive, but only if they're doing so wisely, experts say.

Those who buy stocks based off posts on social media, for example, are often taking risks with money they can't afford to lose, Egan said.

"One of the biggest concerns is newer investors seeing a 'hot' stock, but not fully understanding the ramifications of investing in it," he said. "A lot of retail investors could lose their shirt."

Fotak said he read of one recent law school graduate who said he was elated by his wins on GameStop.

"He could now afford to pay off his student loans," Fotak said. "Yes, there is a lot of greed at play here.

"But there is also a lot of desperation," he added. "I really, truly, hope he sold right away."

Hedge funds that had shorted GameStop suffered huge losses as the pack of day traders on Reddit bought the stock en masse, shooting up its price. Melvin Capital, for example,lost more than 50% in January.

Those setbacks could make other investors more skittish about shorting, or betting against stocks, experts say.

"After seeing several other funds get carried off the field on stretchers from these short positions, hedge fund managers will be much more cautious as to which stocks they will be willing to short," Sekera said.

Less shorting means a less healthy market, Fotak said.

Bubbles tend to be less common in countries where short sellers are less restricted, he said. That's because short sellers' pessimism can balance out some of the optimism about a certain sector or stock.

"And in this climate, with market valuations at record levels, we need the contrarian views of short sellers more than ever," Fotak added.

Another advantage of short sellers is that they often expose serious problems at companies that other investors and regulators have missed, Fotak said.

"Since they are looking for firms that are overvalued, they are always on the lookout for fraud," he said, adding they often publish research on companies' bad practices.

And so it's unfortunate that the GameStop debacle may curb shorting, Fotak said.

"To the extent that delays the release of negative information, we all suffer from a less efficient market," he said.

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More bubbles, less shorting. What the GameStop craziness could mean for the future of investing - CNBC

Acclinate has been selected for the 2021 class of the Cox Enterprises Social Impact Accelerator, powered by Techstars. Acclinate is a minority-owned, Alabama-based company that strives to achieve health equity and personalized health care for all by diversifying genomic data and clinical research.

The Social Impact Accelerator program provides virtual mentoring, funding and global connections to 10 for-profit, mission-driven companies. Acclinate is the only Alabama company to be selected for the 2021 class.

I have a passion for using business to make a positive societal impact, said Del Smith, co-founder and CEO of Acclinate. I also believe that businesses that are effective in creating that impact achieve significantly higher returns and valuations. Cox Social Impact Accelerator by Techstars provides the visibility, mentorship and access to customers to help Acclinate scale.

Cox Enterprises is a key supporter of programs designed to nurture technology startups and a founding sponsor of Techstars, an internationally recognized startup accelerator that helps entrepreneurs boost their early-stage businesses and product development efforts through education and funding.

This class gives me confidence that we can and will make this country a more equitable and inclusive place to live, said Barry Givens, managing director of Techstars Social Impact, in a press announcement about the 2021 class. We hope this class will be a shining example of the opportunities that exist to impact social justice, and will highlight the importance of supporting diverse founders who are tackling these issues.

In 2020, Techstars hosted its inaugural Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Accelerator class in Birmingham, elevating Alabama as an entrepreneurial hub. The Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Accelerator is supported byAlabama Power, theEconomic Development Partnership of Alabama(EDPA), theAlabama Department of Commerce,Altec,PowerSouthandthe University of Alabama.

When deciding to invest in companies that are solving century old problems rooted in systemic racism, it makes perfect sense to have companies with home bases in Alabama like Acclinate, said Givens. My hope is that while they are solving the issues with health disparities in communities of color, they will also be a shining example for the next generation of Black boys and girls to aspire change in the world through STEM and innovation.

Acclinate started in Huntsvilles HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. (contributed)

Acclinate opened a location in Birmingham in 2020. (contributed)

Acclinate is part of the Cox Social Impact Accelerator by Techstars program. (contributed)

Acclinate opened a location in Birmingham in 2020. (contributed)

Founded in 2019, Acclinate has continued to expand, with locations in Birmingham and at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville. In 2020, the company established the #NOWINCLUDED program, which is dedicated to spreading knowledge about health care disparities for people of color and encouraging a diverse population to be included in medical research so the results reflect and can protect all people.

I am, of course, excited for what acceptance into the program means for our company, now and in the future, said Tiffany Whitlow, co-founder and chief development officer. Im even more excited as I look forward to what it will allow us to accomplish in the communities we seek to serve. Working with the other founders who were chosen to participate in the 2021 Social Impact Accelerator places invaluable mentorship and collaboration at our front door. We are ready for whats next and encourage everyone to join the #NOWINCLUDED community.

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Alabama-based Acclinate selected for international investment, innovation program - Alabama NewsCenter

HBO Max debuted its new two-part documentary about the life of Tiger Woods last month. It covers the golf icons early victories, struggles with relationships and his ballooning ego as fans and corporate sponsorships poured in. Unfortunately for Buick, its multi-million dollar investment in Tiger Woods ended with it facing down bankruptcy. It got off light.

Buick sponsored Tiger Woods at the height of his early career successes, as detailed in HBO Maxs new documentary, cleverly titled Tiger. The sponsorship lasted from 2000 to 2008 and ended as a result of the global financial crisis. It was also right at the beginning of a personal struggle for Tiger Woods. I cant help but wonder what the sponsorship actually accomplished for both parties, if anything, now that the dust has settled.

In the summer of 2001, Woods Nike sponsorship was worth over $100 million. CNN Money mentioned it as a passing note in a larger story wondering how far the player could take golf and when hed peak. At the start of Woods initial deal with Buick in 1999, it was estimated to be worth around $5 million a year, though it was extended multiple times before it was mutually terminated a year early on Dec. 31, 2008.

Buick had good reason to put money into Tiger; golf was getting big, and he was the one pulling in the eyeballs. Sunday viewership of Woods during the 2001 Buick Invitational received a Nielsen Media Research rating of 5.7 (equivalent to approximately one million U.S. homes per rating point), beating out the competing NBA All-Star game. The following weeks Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, in which [Woods] did not play, had an average rating of 2.7, CNN Money concluded.

Buick seemed to be getting its moneys worth. One year into sponsoring him, Woods won the aptly-titled 2001 Buick Invitational. The car company showed its gratitude by presenting Woods with his own concept car. Buick claimed to have designed the 2001 Bengal Concept with him specifically in mind, hence the cat name. It was a two-plus-two convertible notable for having a six-speed automatic transmission mounted in front of its supercharged 3.4-liter V6, and tiny rear doors opening into space for rear seats that could comfortably accommodate two sets of golf clubs.

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The Bengal was meant for a market of new youthful golfers inspired by Tiger Woods. With the terminal economic condition looming, the Bengal never made it to production. As for Buicks dreams of throngs of young golf fans flocking to the brand, those buyers never quite materialized.

Buick ultimately dodged the scandal that in 2009 cost Woods millions of dollars in corporate sponsorships. Buick had cut its ties at the end of 2008 for its own reasons. Its parent company General Motors was on a direct path toward bankruptcy. Amid the historic economic recession, GMs executives were sure it could not survive.

If anything, its surprising the sponsorship lasted as long as it did. Buick faced years of declining sales, and didnt end its second five-year sponsorship agreement (estimated to be $7 million a year) with Tiger Woods until just one year before it was set to expire.

For all of the eyeballs Woods brought to Buick, it didnt help move any cars. The automakers U.S. sales plummeted as Woods ascended. Buick sales fell 54 percent from 2000 to 2007, as ESPN reported in 2008 via Wards AutoInfoBank, despite the millions of dollars paid to the golfer Buick was still defending its decision to maintain its sports sponsorships while begging for billions of dollars in federal relief from the U.S. government. Not a great look. From ESPN:

GM has been making dramatic cuts in advertising as it tries to conserve cash. The nations largest automaker spent nearly $7 billion more than it took in last quarter and has warned that without federal help, it may reach the minimum amount of cash required to run the company by the end of the year.

Mark LaNeve, GMs vice president for North American marketing, said GM and Woods started discussing an end to the deal earlier this year, and it had nothing to do with the Detroit Three automakers quest for $25 billion in federal loans.

But GMs statement said the decision was made as part of the search for budget efficiencies during a difficult economy for General Motors.

In the final weeks of 2008, GM planned its complicated bankruptcy and restructuring. GM came to an end and New GM took its place, as recounted by Jay Alex, architect of the plan, writing for Forbes Magazine in 2013. Hummer, Saturn, Saab and Pontiac were left behind. Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick stayed.

The data at the time must have reflected that Buick was worth saving, likely thanks to new international growth, particularly in the steadily booming Chinese market that had just become the second-largest car market in the world in 2007. On its own, Buicks sales in the Asia-Pacific market grew 11 percent in the same year. Meanwhile, as his former sponsor crumbled, Tiger Woods health was deteriorating from the wear of his sport, leading him to more surgeries and more issues with his medications, while partying away from his family and conducting affairs with various women.

It was clear that Tiger Woods and his fathers intense dedication to golf was paying off, literally, in vast sums of money. And it was transforming his personality. As HBOs Tiger documents in its second episode, the star went from a geeky, motivated teenager to someone he himself described as entitled in an interview, more reflective of other popular, wealthy and single sports celebrities he hung out with. Despite his 2004 marriage, his partying increased. But it wasnt just this wealth and fame that contributed to the reported personal turmoil in his marriage and relationships behind the scenes.

As the HBO documentary highlights, Tiger shared a very complicated and strained relationship with his parents, and particularly with his father Earl Woods. Earl repeatedly hyped his son as something more than just a kid who was good at golf, more than just the next celebrity athlete, and more than anybody could have expected him to be. In one interview clip, he claimed his son was the chosen one who would touch people all over the world, saying, I dont know yet exactly what form this will take. But he is the Chosen One. Hell have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power. Now, imagine the implications of growing up, isolated from friends, focused on sports and thats what youre promised, probably every day. It would have a significant impact on your outlook.

Earl repeatedly claimed in interviews that he and his son shared a brotherly relationship, and their circle was known to celebrate Tigers incredible victories with parties often hosted by tournament sponsors, some of which were naturally, sponsored by Buick. The documentary reveals more information about Earl Woods various alleged affairs with women while traveling and touring with Tiger, affairs that led Tiger to keep secrets from his mother. Woods longtime caddie, Stevie Williams, also admitted to exposing Tiger to his various affairs during his upbringing and early career.

In 2009, Tiger Woods was discovered to be cheating on Nordegren with Rachel Uchitel. In the documentary, Uchitel claims she met Tiger Woods at a party she was hosting in New York City, where he gave her his phone number after a short conversation. The couples affair continued, along with later allegations that Woods was also seeing other women.

In late 2009, Woods was involved in a car crash in his Cadillac Escalade just outside his home in the middle of the night, reportedly following an altercation stemming from Nordegrens discovery of evidence of one of his affairs. Despite Buick having already ended its sponsorship with Woods, General Motors responded by rescinding Woods other benefits, like his free access to some GM vehicles.

It was later revealed that Woods was reported initially unresponsive by the police officer responding to his crash, likely due to medication he was known to take to help him sleep. After a $164 fine, four points on his license, months of therapy and the release of multiple reports of affairs with other women dating back to 2007, Woods and Nordegren divorced in August of 2010.

Tiger Woods didnt save Buickremember there was a 54-percent drop in sales figures over six of the seven full years of the sponsorship deal. You cant blame Woods specifically, though. The brand was still seen as a car for older buyers, but Woods may have helped with that.

The average age of the brands buyers also dropped. Around 2001, the average age was in the low 70s, but it has since fallen to 66 for Buick sedans and 53 for the Enclave, ESPN.com reported in 2008. Woods was paired up with the then all-new Enclave crossover in its marketing materials, and, 78 percent of consumers who bought the SUV previously had not been Buick owners, according to the same article. Maybe it was Tiger, maybe it was just that crossovers and SUVs were booming in America before the Recession.

Perhaps the program just needed a few more decades of a beloved Tiger, a few more golf titles to get those age numbers into the 40s, but it never happened. What really saved Buick when choosing which brands would live on under New GM was the promising growth of sales in the rapidly expanding Chinese car market. GM reported global sales grew by three percent and regional Asian Pacific sales grew 17 percent in 2007, which was a promise that has paid off for GM today. If I was Tiger, I guess Id take credit for that.

For Tiger Woods, the mutually-terminated near-nine-year Buick deal left him with millions, but those years also included scandal and divorce, public shame and millions in lost sponsorships. He was denounced by golf organizers and faced the ire of the country.

Thanks to the 2009 federal government bailout that offered up billions to finance the New GM, today Buick is arguably healthier than ever. Its one of the largest American automakers established in China, with a full lineup from luxury minivans to all-electric station wagons. As for the sport of golf, its popularity continued after Tigers prime passed, but with him to thank for a new generations excitement for the sport. Tiger Woods himself has managed to successfully return to golf after not one but two scandals, the second involving him getting arrested in 2017 for driving under the influence of prescription medication. Despite that, and despite four knee and four back operations, he still manages to show flashes of his brilliance, coming back with an iconic win at the Masters at Augusta in 2019.

It was not the money that led Tiger Woods astray, but rather the overbearing and unsustainable pressure of his youth, beginning at birth with his father. His decisions, his commitment and dedication to his sport at the cost of family and everything else, is what led to his scandals. That pressure also made him the thing that the sponsorship money was paying for, and what dad always wanted him to be: a winner.

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Buick's Nine-Year Investment In Tiger Woods Was Ruinous For Everyone Except Golf - Jalopnik

In a matter of days, GameStop has gone from being a dying retail chain to the latest obsession of media and markets. Along the way, the GameStop saga has morphed into a lesson in American populism, an allegory of Main Street taking a pound of flesh from Wall Street.

To recap: Video game retailer GameStop was struggling to survive even before the pandemic struck, and Covid-19 only worsened its ailing condition. Hedge funds on Wall Street smelled blood and took out massive bets that the companys shares would drop, maybe even to zeroso-called short trades or short positions.

Meanwhile, a group of stock market enthusiasts who congregated in an online chat roomReddits WallStreetBetscame to the realization that they might just be able to beat the Wall Street guys at their own game. It took time, but they did just that, aided and abetted by commission-free trading platforms like Robinhood.

Much is being said about this unlikely story, and the drama will keep unfolding for some time. But theres an immediate lesson to be learned from the GameStop saga: Investing isnt a morality tale, and its not a game.

One of the most notable aspects of the GameStop caper was how rapidly people sorted themselves into two groups. On one side, there were those who saw the members of the Reddit chat room WallStreetBets as a righteous force.

According to this narrative, the WallStreetBets traders were sticking up for GameStop and its employees, at risk of joining the ranks of the unemployed if hedge fund managers like Leon Cooperman were allowed to keep driving the stock lower and pushing GameStop into bankruptcy.

The opposing narrative included the market professionals and the Wall Street titansCooperman and his crowd.

The professionals took to television and constructed a narrative that retail investors (a.k.a. regular people) were manipulating the market for their own gain and pushing the price of GameStop well above its fundamentals. After all, who could possibly believe that GameStop is as valuable a company as Delta?

This dialectic was only heightened after zero-commissions online broker Robinhood restricted purchases of GameStop and a short list of other stocks recently popular with the Reddit rabble. Robinhood played to both sides of the debate, claiming both that financial markets had become a voice for the voiceless while their move was a risk-management decision..

This move prompted many, including politicians on Twitter, to claim the game was rigged in Wall Streets favor. Why let big guys short companies in the first place? Someone, they reasoned, needed to stick up for the little guy.

Hedge fund executives arent a sympathetic lot, and they tend to make themselves look worse when they go on television to complain about the folks at home and their trades. The day traders of Reddit and WallStreetBets have a fraction of their money and cloutits truly a mob of Davids battling with hedge fund Goliaths.

But somethings been lost in the black-and-white debate: Day trading isnt a strategy the public should be rooting for. In many if not most cases, day trading is more akin to gambling than investing. Research has shown that stock pickers cant consistently deliver a higher return than an index with a broad array of companies like the S&P 500.

And when some do, even those who are professionals, usually its because they get lucky.

University of Wisconsin professor Werner De Bondt estimated that more than 10% of stock mutual funds are likely to beat the average performance of the average equity fund three years in a row, just as a matter of chance (the authors emphasis), wrote Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich in Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes.

As humans, were endowed with a rich catalogue of behavioral biases that make us think that were smarter than we actually are.

Hindsight bias makes us overconfident about our ability to accurately predict and explain events. We always just knew this or that thing was going to happeneven if we didnt actually predict this or that thing at all, or we were off by huge intervals.

We also dont tend to remember our misses, or we chalk them up to dumb luck. Experimental subjects rate themselves as significantly better at predicting the outcomes of coin tossesa totally random activitythan others making the same predictions. The subject tend to remember their successes and forget their mistakes. To sum up, its a game of heads I win; tails its chance.

In the Battle of GameStop, the day traders have been celebrated for crushing the hedge funds who were betting that shares of GameStop would tank.

This particular form of tradingarranging so that you profit when a stock declines in valueis called short trading or short selling. To be sure, short sellers have never been a particularly popular breed. Napoleon reportedly once referred to short sellers as enemies of the state.

Trouble is, short sellers arent always the bad guys.

Michael Lewiss book on the housing market and how it helped cause the Great Recession, The Big Short, told the story of a handful of gadfly investors who pulled off huge, lucrative short trades. They saw the huge bubble in home values in 2005-2006 and assumed it wouldnt end well. Their trades didnt make them heroes, but they were certainly not villains, either.

More recently theres the case of electric vehicle company Nikola Corporation and short-seller Hindenburg Research. Nikola was a hot Nasdaq-listed startup that aimed to become the Tesla of long-haul trucking. Trouble is, its business turned out to be mostly hot airHindenburg Research exposed the company for being founded on empty promises and shorted its stock.

Its worth asking: Didnt Hindenburg save countless investors from making a bum investment in Nikola Corporation? Short trading isnt always a black-and-white narrative.

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Jaime Rogozinski, the man who years ago created WallStreetBets but has since left the group.

The story describes how Rogozinski started the community back in 2012 because he was tired of being told not to pick stocks in online forums, and he didnt really like the talking heads on television. So he crafted an online watering hole where like-minded people could congregate and take on the market. Rogozinski wanted to have fun.

Thats a problem.

Investing isnt supposed to be fun. When you do investing right, you get rich slowly, via the gradual process of compounding value. Its the phenomenon that explains why retirement investing works at all, and it takes a long time to make a real difference to your bottom line.

Take a well-diversified index fund based on the S&P 500. You can earn an average return of about 10% annually with an investment like this, if history is any indicator. It may not provide the adrenaline high of GME, but it minimizes the risk you arrive to the stock market party too late, buy high and are forced to sell low when a trading bubble inevitably bursts. This is the unlucky fate of many who bought into GameStop after the rally was already done.

And you can still enjoy the spectacle from afar. If youre so inclined, pick a team, rage against the other side and revel in the denouement. The coronavirus has rendered much of what was once enjoyable moot anyway.

But dont try to have fun with money you cant afford to lose.

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The Lesson Of GameStop: Investing Is Not A Game - Forbes

Investing in the age of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic hasn't been easy. Last year, the benchmark S&P 500 registered its fastest bear market nosedive in history, with the CBOE Volatility Index climbing to an all-time high in March.

But if there was one clear bright spot, it was the overwhelming outperformance of growth stocks. The prospect of persistently low lending rates, coupled with ongoing fiscal stimulus from Washington, has created a perfect environment for growth stocks to flourish.

Of course, not all growth stocks are created equal. If you have money just waiting to be put to work in the market, you'll want to seek out unstoppable growth stocks that have clear-cut competitive and innovative advantages. That's why the following four companies are worth investing in right now.

Image source: Getty Images.

If you're after a company that represents a close-to-surefire investment over the next five to 10 years, robotic surgical system developer Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) is worth buying.

Intuitive Surgical is best known for developing the da Vinci surgical system, which is used in hospitals and surgical centers in place of laparoscopic surgeries to make more precise incisions in various soft tissue procedures. In 20 years, the company has installed just shy of 6,000 da Vinci systems worldwide.

That might not sound like a lot, but it's far more than all of its competitors combined. For two decades, Intuitive Surgical has been able to build up rapport with the medical community to ensure that it's the go-to assistive device for surgeons.

More importantly, the company's operating model is designed to get better with age. In its early years, most of Intuitive Surgical's sales were derived from its pricey da Vinci systems ($0.5 million to $2.5 million each). However, these are intricate systems to build, which means margins were often mediocre, at best.

Over time, the company's higher-margin operating segments -- instruments sold with each procedure and system servicing -- have become a larger portion of total sales. Thus, as more systems are installed, Intuitive Surgical's operating margins should rise.

Also, it's not just da Vinci that can drive sustainable low-double-digit growth. The launch of Ion in 2019 provides hospitals with a new and far less invasive robotic-assisted device to take lung biopsies.

The runway for robotic-assisted surgical devices is huge, and Intuitive Surgical is on the leading edge of that innovative wave.

Image source: Getty Images.

Another unstoppable growth stock that seemingly never lets down its shareholders is payment-processor Mastercard (NYSE:MA).

Keep in mind that Mastercard isn't impervious to economic downturns and recessions. During both the Great Recession and the COVID-19-induced recession, spending by businesses and consumers dropped, as would be expected. The thing is, periods of contraction tend to be substantially shorter than the multiyear periods when the U.S. and global economy are expanding. This is a numbers game, and Mastercard finds itself on the side of overwhelmingly good odds of success.

It's also important to recognize that, unlike banks, credit unions, and even some of its processing peers, Mastercard isn't a lender. Though this might have some folks scratching their heads, given how well-known the Mastercard brand is worldwide, avoiding lending means the company has no direct ill effects during a contraction or recession. Not having to set aside capital to cover loan or credit losses is precisely how Mastercard continues to deliver a profit margin of 40% or higher.

There's plenty of opportunity for Mastercard to expand its processing infrastructure globally, too. A majority of the world's transactions are still being conducted in cash, which presumably gives the company a long runway in which to tackle underbanked regions.

Image source: Getty Images.

If high-growth tech stocks are more your thing, then cloud-native cybersecurity stock CrowdStrike Holdings (NASDAQ:CRWD) should be on your buy list.

For starters, CrowdStrike and the entire cybersecurity industry should benefit from the growing number of businesses pushing online and into the cloud. This was a shift we were witnessing prior to the pandemic, but it's been pushed into overdrive with consumers and enterprise clients working and shopping remotely.

The beauty of CrowdStrike's Falcon platform is twofold. First, it leans on artificial intelligence to grow smarter over time. Each week, Falcon oversees in excess of 3 trillion events, and therefore becomes more effective at recognizing potential threats to its clients' data. Secondly, having been built in the cloud, Falcon is faster at recognizing threats and can often do so for a lower aggregate cost than on-premises security solutions.

But the proof for CrowdStrike is in the proverbial pudding. Over the past 14 quarters (3.5 years), the number of clients with four or more cloud-module subscriptions has catapulted from 9% to 61%. By getting its existing clients to spend more, the company has already achieved its long-term subscription gross margin target of 75% to 80%.

What's more, its annual recurring revenue as of the end of October was $907 million. That compares to an estimated total addressable market of nearly $39 billion by 2023. CrowdStrike is just getting started.

Image source: Getty Images.

Finally, should you want an unstoppable growth stock with its fingers in a little bit of everything, Singapore-based Sea Limited (NYSE:SE) is worth scooping up. Sea has three very different operating segments, all of which offer sustainable double-digit (or perhaps triple-digit) growth.

For the time being, the company's digital entertainment division is responsible for the bulk of its positive adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). As you might imagine, people being stuck in their homes due to COVID-19 has fueled gaming interest. In the September-ended quarter, active gamers grew by 78% to 572 million, with the number of quarterly paying customers more than doubling to 65 million.

However, it's Sea's online Shopee platform that's really turning heads. Investors are always on the lookout for the next Amazon, and Sea's Shopee platform really seems to be resonating with consumers in Southeastern Asia. E-commerce revenue in the third quarter was up 173%, with the gross merchandise value on its online platform doubling to $9.3 billion. This is a region of the world with a burgeoning middle class, so it's not hard to envision Shopee growing a triple-digit rate in the near term.

Lastly, Sea's digital financial-services segment is really gaining traction. Since Southeastern Asia is one of a handful of underbanked regions of the world, giving people access to digital wallets could help resolve a lot of financial-service issues.

Don't be surprised if Sea Limited doubles its sales every two or three years this decade.

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4 Unstoppable Growth Stocks to Invest in Right Now - Motley Fool