Good morning, Quartz readers!
Here’s what you need to know
The director of Black Panther paid tribute to Chadwick Boseman. Ryan Coogler said “the ancestors spoke through” his friend, with whom he’d been planning a sequel to the biggest superhero movie of all time. Boseman’s death from colon cancer on Friday, at the age of just 43, stunned millions of fans.
Donald Trump used violence in Portland as campaign material. The US president attacked Democrats and Black Lives Matter protesters—”the radical left”—on Twitter, after the fatal shooting of one of his supporters as a pro-Trump convoy drove through the city on Saturday.
Warren Buffett pivots to Japan. Berkshire Hathaway said it had taken just over 5% of the shares in five large Japanese trading companies, and may boost the stakes to 9.9%. The investments will reduce Buffett’s dependence on the US economy.
Volunteers in Mauritius are trying to clean up a devastating oil spill. Thousands of protesters criticized the government over the weekend for its slow reaction to a Japanese tanker running aground at the end of July. Last week, 39 dead dolphins were washed ashore.
Lyon is Europe’s soccer champion for the fifth time in a row. The French women’s team beat Wolfsburg 3-1 in northern Spain to seal yet another victory in the Champions League, and finally bring an end to the coronavirus-extended European season.
What to watch for this week
Monday: The UK government’s scheme subsidizing restaurant diners’ meals draws to a close. Argentina learns if enough creditors have accepted its offer to restructure $65 billion of foreign debt. India is expected to post a record quarterly GDP slump.
Tuesday: Universal Covid-19 testing begins in Hong Kong. US president Donald Trump visits Kenosha, Wisconsin, where protests erupted after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot.
Wednesday: Fourteen suspects in the 2015 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris go on trial. Pope Francis resumes public appearances after a months-long hiatus.
Thursday: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai is sentenced in a criminal intimidation case, and faces up to five years in prison if convicted. France unveils a coronavirus recovery plan.
Friday: BRICS foreign ministers hold a meeting.
Charting back-to-school season in India
Indian parents are clocking the stress that the pandemic and online classes are causing their kids. Nearly 80% of parents in India’s metros and smaller cities said they would not send their children to school this year, according to a survey published by edutainment company SP Robotic Works.
Answers varied by the respondents’ source of income. Noted the survey, “The response from different cohorts is also rooted in their appetite for risk and the need to explore other avenues of income during these turbulent times.”
Obsession Interlude: Future of Finance
What does it mean to be obsessed with the future of finance? We asked senior reporter John Detrixhe to explain it to us like we’re five years old:
The future of finance looks a lot like its past—but ever bigger and faster. Take Robinhood, the brokerage app that has helped power a stock market boom. Almost every generation seems to get a brokerage built around the technology of its time. In Merrill Lynch’s day, brokers talked face to face with their customers. In Schwab’s it was by phone, and now it’s by app.
The evolution shows that whizzy tech doesn’t always wipe out the old guard. Upstarts occasionally break in, while a handful of dominant players have shown remarkable adaptability and staying power.
Have these changes made the world a better place? There have been plenty of scams and fiascos, as well as booms and busts, over the past 100 years. Yet trading and investing have also gotten cheaper, more popular, and more accessible thanks to tech and new regulations. Which suggests there’s lots of promise in our financial future, but the perils will never go away.
Forecasts will all become clear—or clearer, anyway—when you keep tabs on our Future of Finance obsession.
What’s the tea on bubbles?
Speaking of perils, does now feel like a good time to buy stocks? Many around the world are thinking yes. In China, regular people are packing into brokerage houses to buy shares. Americans are feverishly refreshing their Robinhood and TD Ameritrade brokerage apps, while newbie traders in India are enamored with penny stocks. A growing number of Brits, too, are taking a fancy to shares.
It’s too soon to call this an outright bubble—a confounding surge in prices before the crash—but research suggests we should be vigilant. A survey of studies indicates that bubbles are partly caused by standard economic stuff like easy credit and government policy, but they can also spring from the stories we tell each other, as well as the hormone-induced high some people get from trading. Read more in our field guide to the next bubble.
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Surprising discoveries
A unicorn beach inflatable took a child out to sea… The three-year-old was rescued by a ferry’s crew, who saw the mystical animal floating towards them and took action.
…and a kite took another child up into the air. A three-year-old girl was lifted off the ground during a kite festival in Taiwan, but managed to land safely.
“Nonfiction” doesn’t necessarily mean “fact.” Most nonfiction books aren’t fact-checked, unless the author is willing to pay for it.
A bad internet connection scuppered an international chess tournament. Russia and India were declared joint winners in the online Chess Olympiad after the two Indian players lost wifi.
Partygoers in a Norwegian bunker suffered carbon monoxide poisoning. The illegal rave really wasn’t fun.
Correction: Saturday’s weekend edition attributed an essay on Chinese dissidents supporting Trump to Mary Hui. It was written by Jane Li, to whom we apologize for the error.
Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, fact-checked books, and tied chess games to hi@qz.com. Get the most out of Quartz by downloading our app on iOS and becoming a member. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Hasit Shah, Susan Howson, and Kira Bindrim.