Monday night.

The CPR/first-aid training people got in touch today and said that it’s actually a two-day course, but the theory can be knocked out if I take an online class. It’s a bit tedious, but it’ll keep my potential exposure to fellow students from two days to just one. Huzzay, I guess?

Gamestop’s stock is pretty much in death throes at this point: it briefly jumped by 13.8% earlier today, only to close 5.9% down for the day, at measly $60 a share. It’ll likely keep circling the drain, which will make the redditors on r/wallstreetbets that much more desperate. The whole place is crawling with wild conspiracy theories about the coming short squeeze that will save them all. (A lot are in the red because they bought in early…) At this point, doing the exact opposite of their advice seems like the right thing to do. To that end, I bought a single put option (aka a bet that the stock price will go down) for Redfin (RDFN), which just hit its all-time-high of $89.29. It was trading for $9.63 less than a year ago, and I’m pretty sure it’ll come back down. (My put is for January 2022.) The spike in its valuation was at least partially fueled by people working from home (and from fun new locations) during the pandemic. Take away the pandemic and, well… It’ll be interesting to see if my small bet will be correct 11 months from now.

…for the record, I don’t mean to dunk on the wallstreetbets crowd. They ensured their place in financial history, and I’m much closer to early retirement because of them. I just think they’ve gotten a little carried away with rationalizing their choices after Gamestop’s stock price started falling. In honour of that subreddit, this week I’m eating chicken tenders (aka “tendies,” their favourite food), cooked to perfection in my awesome instapot. (Hey, at least it’ll make this week mildly more memorable.)

In covid news, New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo is trying to forge his own path in defiance of all the world-class experts available to help him. About a week ago, he announced that he’s lifting the restriction on large weddings. As of mid-March, New Yorkers will be allowed to have weddings of up to 150 people, or up to 50% of the venue, whichever is smaller. His strange guidance relies on having people test themselves for covid before the wedding: that’s not something one can really enforce, and when you account for false negatives that will sneak in… No one is quite sure why he’s doing that: there is no political capital in appeasing a few Bridezillas, and creating new covid super-clusters when New York is just months away from vaccinating everyone is, well, suicidal. I know I dunked an awful lot on Trump’s many covid-related failures over the past 11 months, but this case just shows that stupidity is universal. Cuomo won’t be able to do nearly as much damage as Trump did, but certainly not for lack of trying.

Good night, y’all, and stay away from those weddings, eh?