Monday morning news
Waiting for the Last Dance - The Hazards of Asset Allocation in a Late-stage Major Bubble The long, long bull market since 2009 has finally matured into a fully-fledged epic bubble. Featuring extreme overvaluation, explosive price increases, frenzied issuance, and hysterically speculative investor behavior, I believe this event will be recorded as one of the great bubbles of financial history, right along with the South Sea bubble, 1929, and 2000. (GMO)
9 Uncomfortable Facts About the U.S. Stock Market Things feel pretty comfortable in the stock market right now. Pretty much anything you put your money into has worked spectacularly well since stocks bottomed this past March. The crash last year shows how risky investing in stocks can be but it was over in the blink of an eye. There have been plenty of other instances where investors in U.S. stocks have been much more uncomfortable for longer periods of time. (Wealth of Common Sense)
Babine Lake Mines Leaking Dangerous Contaminants into Salmon Habitat Advocates want greater oversight as a mapping project identifies more than 170 mines putting waterways at risk. (Tyee)
A Fight Over GameStop’s Soaring Stock Turns Ugly The denizens of the WallStreetBets subreddit helped push the flailing stock to dizzying heights—while a short seller alleged an accompanying harassment campaign. (Wired)
How WallStreetBets Pushed GameStop Shares to the Moon Short sellers have been called a lot of things. Bloodsuckers. Parasites. Other words not fit to print. Now in the vortex engulfing GameStop Corp., they have a new name: the establishment. (Bloomberg)
Investor exuberance pushes BlackBerry shares up 40% to highest level since 2011 Move driven by investor enthusiasm, not necessarily fundamental change to business, experts say (CBC)
More Vaccinations, More Stimulus, More Sanity: A Guide to 2021 The economic outlook is starting to brighten, but the world still needs a shot in the arm. (Businessweek)
What Biden’s EV push could mean for jobs: The U.S. lags far behind the rest of the world in electric vehicle adoption. Catching up will require big investments in EV production — including battery cell manufacturing and mining of raw materials — to avoid dependence on imports and foreign supply chains. (Axios)
Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist of Boston’s GMO, believes U.S. stocks have become an epic bubble and will burst in a collapse rivaling the crashes of 1929 and 2000. In this interview, he explains why, discusses the futility of Federal Reserve policy, criticizes the state of American capitalism, and shares his thoughts on gold, Bitcoin, emerging markets and climate change.