Thursday morning articles
Fed Officials Ask How to Better Understand Inflation After Surprises: Federal Reserve officials, including Lisa Cook, a board member, are wrestling with how to think about price increases after 18 months of rapid change. (New York Times)
Used-Car Prices Are Finally Dropping: Covid-era production snags and supply constraints for new rides sent prices for older ones skyrocketing. No longer. (Businessweek) see also The Secret That Explains the Price of the Cheapest Tesla: Elon Musk’s always-changing prices are unique in the auto world, and will be under the microscope like never before. (Bloomberg)
Crypto’s Tax Shelter Problem: Playing hide-and-seek from tax havens is hardly a new game, but for blowup-prone crypto companies and investors, it’s an increasingly problematic one. (Institutional Investor)
Fed’s No-Rate-Cut Mantra Rejected by Markets Seeing Recession: Policymakers insist rates will be held high into 2024; Markets see rate cuts later in 2023 as economy deteriorates (Bloomberg)
Vancouver Skyscraper Twists Around Zoning Restrictions: Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group used limitations to its advantage with the gravity-defying Vancouver House apartment tower. (CityLab)
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2023: Every year, we pick the 10 technologies that matter the most right now. You’ll recognize some; others might surprise you. We look for advances that will have a big impact on our lives and then break down why they matter. (MIT Technology Review)
Buffett Profile from 1979: “The investor’s investor” “I cannot promise results, but I do promise this: a. Our investments will be chosen on the basis of value, not popularity. b. We will attempt to reduce permanent capital loss to a minimum.” (Neckar’s Minds and Markets)
RIP meme stocks. You were terrible investments: Unlike other bubbles, meme-stock mania didn’t really help anyone, including companies like Bed Bath & Beyond and GameStop. (Fast Company)
Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic. So Why Do We Keep Doing It? With billions of dollars available to improve transportation infrastructure, states have a chance to try new strategies for addressing congestion. But some habits are hard to break. (New York Times)
The Markets Are Locked in a Game of Chicken With the Fed: Investors are betting the Fed will cut interest rates as early as the second half of the year. The central bank says otherwise. (Wall Street Journal)
Elon Musk Might Never Be the World’s Richest Person Again: It’s not just that he became the first person in history to have $200 billion erased from their personal fortune. At this point, the bedrock of Musk’s fortune is his 42% ownership of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket launch company he founded in 2002, before he got involved at Tesla. (Bloomberg)
What If Tesla Is…Just a Car Company? Tesla’s aura as an elite tech disrupter dims as EV competitors multiply and improve their offerings. (Wall Street Journal)
How Dividends Juice Your Returns in the Stock Market: The price index has gone from a little less than 18 in 1928 to more than 3,800 by the end of 2022. That is good enough for a total return of more than 21,500% or an annualized 5.8% per year. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
How San Francisco Lost High Earners and Got Richer: The pandemic tech boom and a “donut effect” drove up average incomes in both expensive cities and less-pricey exurbs. (Bloomberg)