This edition features the future of networking; European food delivery; online education; and notes from GE, Costco, and Snowflake.

Stocks were mixed on Thursday morning as investors weighed new employment data and awaited comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell at a Wall Street Journal conference. Mr. Powell is expected to address inflation concerns and rising bond yields, which have rattled equity markets over the last two weeks. The Labor Department said that first-time claims for state unemployment benefits rose to 745,000 for the week ended February 27, up from 736,000 a week earlier but slightly below the Bloomberg consensus forecast of 750,000. The Dow rose 0.3%, the S&P rose 0.3%, and the Nasdaq fell 0.1%. Crude oil rose $3 to $64 per barrel, while gold traded near $1716 per ounce.

Vickers Stock Research, a subsidiary of Argus Research Group, tracks and analyzes insider trading and institutional ownership trends. Form 13-Fs are due 45 days after the end of calendar quarters, and are now coming in from 4Q20. We review the 13Fs of the major activist investors, including Carl Icahn, Trian Fund Management, Jana Partners, and ValueAct Holdings, among others. Activist investing has evolved and is now less about generating a short-term return on an underpriced stock and more about achieving long-term returns through an active management/investor partnership. Here are some recent new purchases and key holdings of activist investors, according to Vickers.

Stocks were largely flat on Tuesday morning after a week of strong gains as investors awaited next steps in the passage of the Biden administration's stimulus plan. On the employment front, the Labor Department, in its monthly JOLTS report, said that U.S. job openings rose slightly in December, to 6.65 million, while hiring fell to 5.54 million from 5.94 million in November. The Dow and the S&P were flat, while the Nasdaq rose 0.3%. Crude oil traded near $58 per barrel, while gold rose $3 to $1837 per ounce.

January ended with a fizzle, as stocks recorded their worst month since October and the S&P 500 registered a loss for the month. In a month that featured the incursion at the Capitol Building and a heavily policed inauguration, few predicted that the key market driver would be a retail chain that a few hedge funds (to their misfortune) perceived to be on its last legs.

In 1849, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote, 'The more things change, the more they stay the same.' Now, over 170 years later, his prophetic statement aligns perfectly with stock-market sentiment.

Small- and mid-cap stocks (SMID stocks) surged in the past quarter. They also have outperformed large-caps over the past 12 months and may be in a better position to generate market-beating returns going forward. For one thing, SMID companies tend to focus on domestic markets, so their businesses could be poised to rebound more quickly once COVID-19 vaccines are widely distributed and the economy recovers. As well, the prices of SMID stocks are generally lower than the prices of large-caps. While SMID stocks can be risky, diversified investors look to have exposure to small- and mid-caps based on the long-term performance record. We estimate that 20%-25% of the U.S. stock market's capitalization is comprised of SMID stocks. Investors used to use a $2 billion market-cap threshold to define a small-cap stock and a $10 billion threshold for a mid-cap. We note that the Russell 2000 index now includes numerous companies with market capitalizations above $15 billion. For our purposes, we use a threshold of $20 billion to define a SMID stock.