And just like that, 📈nother meme stock craze has come and gone.

What happened: Just five months after activist investor Ryan Cohen took on a ~10% position in Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY), his sudden exit has sent shares spiralling by ~40%.

Catch up: Cohen, who founded the online retailer Chewy, is the chair of GameStop and has become a (now formerly) beloved character in the meme stock world.

Earlier this week, Cohen launched the BBBY stock back into r/WallStreetBets relevance after sharing he had purchased stock options with strike prices between $60 and $80 per share (a bet that the stock would rise ~5-7x). 

• Reddit investors loved it, and piled into BBBY as part of a huge short squeeze (which hurts big institutions with bets on the stock failing), sending shares soaring by ~70%. 

As the stock surged on the news, Cohen immediately started unloading his position at prices ranging from US$18 to $29 per share. 

• With an average purchase price of $15.34, Cohen earned nearly $57 million (and lost just $1.6 million on his options bet), but the stock has since continued to tank.

What’s next: Nothing, really, unless someone can prove Cohen chose to disclose his stock options purely to lift BBBY’s share price and flip a profit (which is very difficult to prove). 

• But judging by a massive Reddit thread, boy, are some investors pissed. Some say they’re done with Cohen, going as far as threatening to sell their GameStop stock. 

Why it matters: This situation falls into the pretty grey area surrounding meme stock trading, in which the hype around one company (or one individual in this case) can create millions of dollars in profits overnight without generating any real underlying value. 

Wait, there’s more: It’s not a true meme stock story unless there’s at least one college student whose newfound wealth makes you question your existence: Jake Freeman banked $110 million by trading 4.69 million BBBY shares with $25 million (of his uncle's money, so not quite a rags-to-riches story). 

BC liquor strike: Just in time for the end of summer, BC has imposed limits on all liquor sales for customers, including bars, restaurants and the public, amid an ongoing strike. 

Xiao Jianhua gets 13: The Chinese-Canadian billionaire (taken by Chinese authorities in 2017) was sentenced by Chinese courts to 13 years in prison for a slew of financial crimes. 

Movie theatre chain Cineworld is preparing for bankruptcy, which is bad news for Canada’s Cineplex since it’s owed $1.24 billion in damages from the ailing UK business. 

Europe’s glaciers meltdown: European glaciers have seen the most severe melting on record this summer, forcing ski resorts to close and endangering hikers in the region. 

Not-so-forever chemicals: Researchers (including one from the University of Alberta) have developed a method for eliminating ‘forever’ chemicals—ones that don’t naturally degrade. 

Eat something wunderbar and have a German meal to celebrate Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s impending visit to Canada! (We assume you’re as excited as we are… right??) Whip up a colourful summer salad and classic pork schnitzel, then wash it all down with an ice cold German beer.

Watch House of the Dragon on Crave, the new prequel series to Game of Thrones. While GoT’s final season was generally regarded as (putting it politely) bad, HBO’s latest trip to Westeros is receiving early praise and looks loaded with dragons. Sounds good to us!

Read the best business writing of the year (besides The Peak, obvi) and peruse the longlist of the Financial Times’ Best Business Book of the Year. With 15 books covering topics from microchips to maritime fraud, there’s sure to be something that piques your fancy.

Listen to the dramatic strains of opera in honour of the 461st birthday of Jacopo Peri who wrote the first one ever. It’s an intimidating genre that seems very stuffy, but it’s always lively and often goofy. This article from Classic FM can help start you on your journey.  

First, it was everyday flight cancellations. Now, insurers won’t cover cyberattacks.

What happened: Starting next year, Lloyd’s of London insurers (which includes Lloyd’s Canada) will no longer offer coverage for state-backed cyberattacks in their policies.

• Claimants must also have a “robust process” for determining the source of attacks, which is easier said than done since the line between state-backed and ‘in support of’ is often blurry.  

Why it matters: Recent federal government reports have deemed that state-backed cyberattacks by hostile nations are the “greatest strategic threat to Canada”. Cyberattacks are also becoming more frequent and sophisticated than ever before. 

Why it’s happening: State-sponsored cyberattacks have cost Lloyd’s a lot of money—too much, in the end. The company noted that paying out these high-ticket damages also poses “systemic risk” to the broader insurance market.

• Lloyd’s is the first insurer to unambiguously remove any such provisions, but other insurers are amending their cybersecurity policies after a ruling last year that entitled pharma giant Merck to collect a payout after a state-backed cyberattack. 

Bottom line: The federal government is working to step up Canada’s cybersecurity game by proactively committing new funding, but victims might lose some (financial) protections. 

🛢$1.3 trillion. Additional oil revenues that Middle East states are set to see over the next four years, on top of previous projections made before the war in Ukraine, per the IMF.

🍃 425 million. Grams of dried cannabis that licensed Canadian pot producers destroyed last year due to overproducing and underselling. You hate to see a good thing go to waste.

🪙 $15.20. Current minimum wage in the Northwest Territories. It will change next year, as the NWT government is introducing a new method that ties wage increases to inflation.

• Don’t share secrets before learning how to send a confidential Gmail message.
   
• What’s up with TikTok’s ‘quiet quitting’ trend (and how will it impact your workplace). 
   
• A new Oxford study found how COVID can damage the brain forever.
   
• Russia’s new rip-off Starbucks is giving us serious Dumb Starbucks vibes.
   
• The security flaw that allows hackers to control Apple products. 

Start your weekend off right by playing The Peak's Saturday Crossword.