A son eyes GameStop; dad’s not so sure (free version)

Plus: Hornets' co-owners losing big in market turmoil; How to make your busy life more effective; Health director says studies support kids in schools; Carowinds sets reopening date

Jan 29, 2021

Good morning! Today is Friday, January 29, 2021. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.

Editor’s note: This is a shorter, free version of The Charlotte Ledger sent to people on our free sign-up list. The complete version for paying subscribers went out 15 minutes ago. It included:

A local story showing how this week’s crazy stock market drama can be a good lesson on investments — for both seasoned investors and college kids alike.
The GameStop wrinkle that most local media missed — the fact that two hedge fund managers that lost big in the stock market this week are co-owners of the Charlotte Hornets.
The latest news on Mecklenburg County’s revised Covid health directive released last night, and analysis what it could mean for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Tips to make your busy life more successful, meaningful and rewarding.

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Amid stock market frenzy, a generational divide: Teachable moment from Dad for an N.C. State freshman

(Photo by Jason Briscoe/Unsplash)

By Tony Mecia

For two decades, 46-year-old Keith Taylor has been preaching the same investment strategy to his clients from his SouthPark office that financial advisers everywhere have emphasized: You’re in this for the long term. Diversify your holdings. Don’t try to time the market.

Then, on Monday, he got a text from his son, an 18-year-old freshman at N.C. State: “Have you heard of WallStreetBets subreddit? Generally they give dumb advice sometimes but the mass of people is huge. They carried GameStop stock to $140.”

The son had been on the online chat board for months and had thought about investing, like many of his college buddies. What would his financial adviser dad think?

This week’s stock market has brought out wildly divergent perspectives on investing like never before. The drama started last week, when the stock of retailer GameStop — which had been mostly below $20 in recent months — began spiking, apparently as a result of individuals buying the stock after reading about it on a freewheeling online forum on Reddit called WallStreetBets.

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Hedge fund managers who lost big include co-owners of the Hornets

Another Charlotte wrinkle to this week’s stock market turbulence: The hedge fund manager targeted by online investors, who forced his company to take a $2.75B bailout, happens to be a part owner of the Charlotte Hornets.

What might that mean for Charlotte’s pro basketball team?

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Mecklenburg extends Covid health directive — but removes recommendation for virtual school

Mecklenburg County extended its Covid health directive Thursday, but the new version had a major change — the language stating that schools should remain virtual has disappeared.

If you recall, the original directive called on residents to “Utilize full-virtual options for work, school, and any other activity where in-person activity is not required,” and although it was non-binding, it had a big impact: It immediately caused many local private schools to shut down temporarily out of confusion, and was the impetus for the CMS school board to keep classrooms closed to tens of thousands of students for at least another month.

This new version, which extends until Feb. 28, was released to media on Thursday evening, with a statement explaining why the mention of schools has been taken out:

“For schools, the CDC study released earlier this week, indicates that with appropriate safety measures in place schools can be a safe location for students to learn and for school staff to support that learning. Public Health continues to be supportive of in classroom learning as the optimal options for our youth.”

The CDC study it refers to is one released earlier this week showing that schools aren’t the coronavirus hotspots some feared if protocols like mask wearing and social distancing are in place.

CMS parents and staff who are trying to read the signs could certainly take this as an indicator that school buildings could finally open as planned next month. (Elementary schools are slated to open Feb. 15 for two-day-a-week in-person instruction, and middle and high school buildings are scheduled to open Feb. 22 for one-week-in, two-weeks out rotations.)

And there are other signals that students might be going back to classrooms:

CMS on Wednesday announced that most sports and many after-school activities can resume in February.

CMS superintendent Earnest Winston held a media briefing last Friday with the title “CMS: We are ready,” and emphasized that staff and facilities are prepared to welcome students back. During that news conference, Winston responded to a question from The Ledger about what could potentially get in the way of CMS’s ability to reopen, to which he responded: “We’re taking the steps necessary to ensure that we can bring out students and staff members back into the classrooms as quickly as possible, but I don’t have a crystal ball and cannot say with complete certainty that this or that will actually happen.”

Still, it sounds like school buses are ready to roll, right?

Well, judging from previous 11th hour CMS Covid curveballs, like the November stunner that the district couldn’t reopen because it lacked enough bus drivers, anything could happen between now and Feb. 15.

Anybody have a Magic 8 ball handy? — CB

Editor’s note: For many of us, the start of a new year is a time of self-reflection and improvement. So at The Ledger, we’re pulling together advice and achievable tips from some of our city’s top experts in various fields for this special feature designed to help build a better you — personally and professionally.

4 tips to make your busy life more effective and meaningful

by Mike Whitehead

Experts who write for the web know that if you put a list in your headline, your “hits” increase significantly.

These “hits” reflect our tendency to consume, to validate, and abandon content; so the results are short-lived.

This tendency is not confined to reading articles, by the way.

In my 25 years of coaching business leaders, I find that most want to continuously improve. Yet they are also incredibly busy. In the urgency to GSD (Get “Stuff” Done), we can limit our ability to register information fully.

This creates the illusion that we “know” information that we actually have not even thoroughly processed and can also create an experience for others that we are discounting their views. This dramatically limits our effectiveness.

Below are some simple (though not necessarily easy) suggestions to help make your 2021 more successful, meaningful and rewarding.

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Mike Whitehead is the founder and CEO of the Center for Intentional Leadership, a Charlotte-based consulting firm specializing in executive coaching, leadership development, high performing teams and healthy organizational cultures.

Previous installments of “A Better You in 2021,” our series that helps you improve professionally and personally with the advice of local experts:

In brief

CMS chronic absenteeism: Hispanic and Black students are five times more likely to be chronically absent than their white counterparts this school year, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools data requested and published by Charlotte Agenda. The data showed that 25.3% of Hispanic students and 24.4% of Black CMS students are chronically absent, meaning they miss at least 10 percent of days enrolled. That’s a jump from last year’s numbers, which were 16.8% for Hispanic students and 16.9% for Black students. Some 5.3% of CMS’ white students are chronically absent, down from 7.7% last school year. (Agenda)
Election delay? This year’s elections for City Council and school board could get pushed back until 2022 because of delays in receiving new census data needed to redraw electoral districts. (WFAE)
Atrium’s gifts DoorDash vouchers: Atrium Health announced that it’s giving nearly 67,000 employees $11M in DoorDash vouchers for meal delivery to show appreciation for work done during Covid. The vouchers will not go to system executives and physicians, in order to “maximize the impact among teammates who can benefit the most from them,” Atrium said in a statement. “We don’t want a doubt left in any teammate’s mind that we greatly appreciate the life-saving work they are doing,” said Atrium president Gene Woods.
New Covid strain in S.C.: A new mutated form of the coronavirus, first identified in South Africa, has been found in two cases in South Carolina. Public health officials said there are likely more infections that have not been identified yet and they’re worried that this version spreads more easily and that vaccines could be less effective against it. The two cases were discovered in adults in different regions of the state and don’t appear to be connected. (AP)
Stressed-out young people: A newly released Mecklenburg County poll found that millennials and Gen Zers in Mecklenburg are most likely to report feeling exhausted, anxious, isolated and depressed because of the pandemic. The survey of 1,158 people in September found that 91% of people in that age bracket reported feeling stressed, while 19% of them reported encountering “significant daily” or “severe disruption” to accessing food, compared to the survey average of 8%. (Observer)
Design winners: ATCO Properties & Management, the developer of Camp North End, announced the four winners of a competition to design the facades of a new retail pavilion. The contest was open to Black architects, and the winners each received $3,000. The winners were from Saturn Atelier, Apogee Consulting Group, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting and KEi Architects. “[W]e hope to elevate the important work of Black architects in Charlotte and create more equity in the design process,” ATCO’s co-president, Damon Hemmerdinger, said in a statement. (The Biscuit)
Unemployment steady: North Carolina’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.2% in December, the Labor Department said — equal to the rate in November. Compared with December 2019, when the unemployment rate was 3.6%, there are still 120,000 more people unemployed. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Carowinds reopening date set:Carowinds amusement park says it will open May 22 for the 2021 season, with new health and safety procedures. All visitors ages 2 and up will have to wear masks unless seated to eat or drink, visitors will pass through thermal scanning tents, and groups will have to give health information about people in their group before coming to the park. (Charlotte Five)

Nominations open for 40 Over 40

Do you know somebody who is working to make Charlotte a better place? Is that person 40 or older? Then nominate now for The Charlotte Ledger 40 Over 40 awards, in which we recognize unsung heroes in our midst from a variety of backgrounds.

Winners will be publicly honored in a special edition of The Ledger and will receive a limited-edition beverage koozie and an awards certificate suitable for framing. They will be in elite company, joining last year’s inaugural class.

Our easy-to-use nomination form takes just a few minutes to fill out:

Nominate for 40 Over 40 Now

Contest details are here.

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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Reporting intern: David Griffith