🌍 Buffett doesn’t trust pundits

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Reddit’s IPO filing is adding a whole new element to the meme stock craze. We took a look back at the platform’s buzziest WallStreetBets moments as we prepare for the first social media IPO since 2019.

Walt Disney and Reliance want to merge their media operations in India. Disney has struggled to retain subscribers and lucrative media assets in India while Reliance has become a force in the market.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 31,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed since Russia invaded two years ago. Other estimates suggest that the toll is actually much higher.

AT&T is paying customers back for its outage. The company said it’ll be handing out $5 credits to every account that was affected by the hours-long blackout last Thursday.

America’s steakhouse rodeo has a clear favorite

Turns out it’s not always better in the Outback. Texas Roadhouse is handily beating Outback Steakhouse in the barrel race to win American hearts and dollars.

Restaurant sales at Texas Roadhouse — a steakhouse chain (perplexingly) based in Kentucky — rose 10% in the fourth quarter of 2023. Meanwhile, they fell at Outback Steakhouse — the Australian-themed restaurant company (more perplexingly) headquartered in Florida.

The customer favoritism is widening a gap in stock performance, too. But Outback’s parent company has a few things it’s going to try before it’s bucked out of the market.

Quotable: Don’t trust the pundits

“She is sensible — very sensible — instinctively knowing that pundits should always be ignored. After all, if she could reliably predict tomorrow’s winners, would she freely share her valuable insights and thereby increase competitive buying? That would be like finding gold and then handing a map to the neighbors showing its location.” — Warren Buffett talking about his sister Bertie in his annual letter to shareholders on Feb. 24 (emphasis in original)

Not giving much of an ear to Wall Street pundits was just one of Buffett’s note to Berkshire Hathaway’s 3 million shareholders. Here’s what else he told them about Coca-Cola, capital gains, and climate change.

U.S. drug prices are surging

Pharmaceutical companies set prices for new drugs in the U.S., and they were a whopping 35% higher in 2023 than they were the prior year as the industry embraces treatments for rare diseases.

Take a look at the most expensive drugs approved in 2023.

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Surprising discoveries

The South Pacific island of Niue has been fighting for 20 years over an internet domain. It turns out that .nu is super lucrative because nu means “now” in several Scandinavian languages.

NASA is putting people in a 3D-printed Mars simulation for a year. The agency is accepting applications through April 2 for the four-person experiment.

A BP exec’s husband eavesdropped and made almost $2 million on insider trading. The incident may fuel fears of so-called “pillow talk” securities fraud.

The last time a saola was seen was in 2013. It’s one of the most elusive land mammals (it resembles an antelope) and dwells in the mountains of Southeast Asia.

Botanical gardens are the best green space for keeping cities cool during heat waves. They can lower air temperatures by an average of 5°C.

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Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, $2 million thoughts, and saola sightings to [email protected]. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner.