Women suffer more from Zoom calls

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web:

A new level of market baloney

"The pastrami must be amazing" at a New Jersey delicatessen whose parent company, which owns no other properties, has a market value of $100 million, said Jesse Pound at CNBC. "Your Hometown Deli" in Paulsboro (population 5,854) has "totaled just $35,748 in sales in the last two years combined, according to securities findings." But it is the sole subsidiary of Hometown International, which started trading over-the-counter shares in 2019. The company "rarely has more than a few hundred shares change hands per day." Nonetheless, Hometown hit a market cap of $113 million in February. The company has about 60 shareholders, some of them based in Macau. The largest shareholder is the company's president-CEO-CFO-treasurer-director, Paul Morina — also the principal of the town's high school, and its wrestling coach.

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Women suffer more from Zoom calls

New research has found that women experience significantly more Zoom fatigue than men, said Alisha Haridasani Gupta at The New York Times. Video calls, experts say, are "unnatural," forcing everyone to "stare at each other" and be on "high alert" for longer periods than are normal during in-person meetings. Women seem to be disproportionately worn down. In a survey of more than 10,000 participants, Stanford researchers found women scored higher than men when measuring for five different types of fatigue associated with video calls. They also reported being "far more conscious of their nonverbal cues than men." Another survey found that women reported more "mirror anxiety, a psychological phenomenon where seeing oneself in a mirror can trigger heightened self-focus, which in turn creates more anxiety."

The value of a few wild bets

It's OK to have a "fun" portion in your portfolio, said Ben Carlson at Fortune. Most advisers in the investment world will beat you over the head with reminders to "follow your long-term comprehensive investment plan. And I agree with this advice...up to a certain point." There's never been a better time than today to be an individual investor. "Fees are on the floor, investment options have never been more plentiful, and technology has leveled the playing field in a number of ways." This also creates the temptation to overtrade and speculate. Carving out a small piece of your portfolio, say 5 percent to 20 percent, let you "go nuts" without ruining your long-term strategy.

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