Wednesday morning news drop
Is gold over inflation? A historic market trend may be ending Gold has so far failed to rally in the face of the highest U.S. inflation in almost 30 years, suggesting that a long-held market orthodoxy may be breaking down. (Globe and Mail)
Bond Traders Stare at Worst Real Returns Since Volcker Era Treasury returns trail CPI by most since the early 1980s; Negative real yields help government at expense of savers. (Bloomberg)
Can We Trust What’s Happening to Money? All over the world, people are abandoning old forms of money and adopting new ones, like cryptocurrency, faster than our brains and customs can process. “We are at an interesting juncture.” (New York Times)
SEC case against Ripple Labs for XRP crypto sale a ‘Bit’ of a double standard This is where things get nonsensical on the part of the SEC. The commission is now arguing that whatever Hinman said, his speech meant nothing. It’s simply his opinion, nothing more. In court, the SEC is telling the crypto world it really hasn’t made an official ruling whether Bitcoin or Ethereum’s Ether comport with securities laws. (New York Post)
How Fear of Disruption, ‘Free Money,’ and the Lure of Alts Profits Drove Record M&A: Alternatives firms are outperforming their traditional peers, giving them more resources to reinvest in their businesses and spend on growth. (Institutional Investor)
First U.S. vaccine mandate in 1809 launched 200 years of court battles “It doesn’t seem to have triggered widespread opposition at the time. People were terrified of smallpox, and people’s own experience with vaccination reassured them. When smallpox outbreaks struck their area, people could see that those in their community who had been vaccinated didn’t get sick.” (Washington Post)
The Scramble for EV Battery Metals Is Just Beginning Global miners have an opportunity to sell ESG-friendly natural resources to the automotive and energy industries, but it will require investment (Wall Street Journal)
Trump’s White House Emailed About a PowerPoint on How to End American Democracy: Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows handed over a trove of pre-Jan. 6 documentation. It’s damning stuff (Rolling Stone)
Meet the real NASA scientist behind Netflix’s Don’t Look Up. All in a day’s work: discovering comets, saving the planet, and smashing the patriarchy (The Verge)
Steph Curry Just Broke the 3-Point Record and He’s Not Even Close to Finished Stephen Curry never wanted to say it himself, even if others have been saying it for years. He refused to call himself the greatest shooter of them all until the numbers said so. And now? "I got that baby," Curry said, raising his arms high in the air. (Sportsnet)
Football, basketball coaches on how McDavid’s skill transcends hockey world Amid a career that’s already been stuffed with trophies, records and plenty of highlight-reel fodder, there are times, even still, when Connor McDavid makes you just stop and watch. (Sportsnet)
Flippin’ Victoria BC has a Speculation & Vacancy Tax, the results of which I’ve discussed several times. It’s a pretty good vacancy tax, but it’s debatable how well it targets speculation. That’s partially because in my mind speculation is hard to define, with every owner being part speculator. How many people would be buying right now if they were convinced prices would fall? However many people believe that flippers – those owners that buy only to sell shortly afterwards – should be specifically targetted by a speculation tax. How many of those flippers are there? It’s a more difficult question to answer than it should be since it requires the history of all property sales, but I’ve extracted the last few years of data for detached homes to see what order of magnitude we are talking about. There’s no set definition for flipping, but I’ve charted sales pairs that happened within 12 months, and those that happened within 18 months. Are flippers a substantial factor in the market? (House Hunt Victoria)
