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Earth Day and Oscar goes to....

This week world celebrated Earth Day on Apr 22. Fifteen years after Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary which won 2 Oscars, I am glad that policymakers across large nations (US, China, India and EU) as well as corporates which used to be part of of the problem (Automakers and Energy companies) are paying attention to real dangers of Global Warming and becoming part of the solution. Many leaders committed to significant reductions in emission goals by 2030 to 2050. Even companies like Exxon and GM are taking concrete steps in helping solve the problem. After all they are looking at valuation premiums offered to their "green" counterparts like Tesla and solar companies and realizing that "green is good" (on lines of famous Gordon Gekko dialogue from original Wall Street movie "greed is good"). Hope that these actions and commitments will help make Earth "cool" again!

After two month delay, Oscars would be held today evening at Union Station in Los Angeles. Due to pandemic, many movies got delayed due to closure of theaters. It gave an opportunity for many smaller movies to find alternative distribution channels like streaming networks. Here are my predictions based on seeing some movies as well as reading their reviews.

  1. Best Picture - Nomadland
  2. Best Direcctor - Chloe Zhao (Nomadland). It would be quite fitting to recognize Asian woman given recent events in Atlanta
  3. Actor in leading role - Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom). He should have been awarded Oscar for his role in Black Panther but academy members normally don't vote for big blockbusters. This would be third posthumous award in Academy's history
  4. Actress in leading role - Andra Day (The United States vs Billie Holiday). This is going to be one of most competitive category with worthy nominees like Carey Mulligan, Frances McDormand or even Viola Davis
  5. Actor in Supporting role - Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah)
  6. Actress in Supporting role - Glenn Close (Hillbelly Elegy) - hope 8th time is charm for her and she can break the curse of not winning even after 7 nominations.
With these winners, Academy voters can send a strong message on "Black Lives Matter", gender equality and all races are equal.

Last week crypto markets collapsed after reaching its peak on exact day of Coinbase IPO. Even Coinbase is down by 20% since it's first day opening. It may have happened due to 1:100 leverage on some of the  non-US based unregulated crypto exchanges and associated forced selling.
Next two weeks are going to be peak of earnings season with trillion $ market cap companies announcing results. As the battle between "value vs growth", "small vs big" and "opening vs WFH" continue, these results would give good indications on how rest of 2021 pans out.

Finally, an appeal to all of you! Covid infections and deaths are wrecking havoc in India. Leaders, policymakers as well as citizens became complacent due to very low infection rates during winter and did not prepare for second wave. This second wave seems to be lot more infectious and deadly and hope that Modi, all CMs as well as citizens get their act together quickly and bring this under control. Please provide all the help you can by volunteering or donating to organizations (like Seva International). 

/Shyam

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