Miami Condo Collapse, Employee Leverage, and Dollar Cost Averaging

Tuesday morning news drop

• Before Miami collapse, engineers warned of major concrete structural slab damage Owners of units in a Florida oceanfront condo building that collapsed with deadly consequences were just days away from a deadline to start making steep payments toward more than US$9 million in major repairs that had been recommended nearly three years earlier. (On-Site)

• The Miami condo collapse is a devastating reminder of America’s artificial land problem Big chunks of American cities are built on man-made land that is a climate catastrophe waiting to happen (The Week)

• The Miami Building Collapse Is a Warning: Waiting to trace the exact lines of causation misses the point. (Slate)

• Workers Are Gaining Leverage Over Employers Right Before Our Eyes “Employers are becoming much more cognizant that yes, it’s about money, but also about quality of life.” (New York Times)

• How Often Does Dollar Cost Averaging Fail? To start, I ran a simulation where I invested $100 a month for 10 years (i.e., $12,000) into different portfolios and compared their performance to sitting in cash. (Of Dollars and Data)

• 16 Unbelievable Facts About the Markets The 25 years ending March 2020 saw long-term bonds beat the U.S. stock market. From the spring of 1996 through March 2020, long-term government bonds returned 8.2% annually versus a return of 8.0% per year for the S&P 500. And they did so with one-third less volatility. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Social class in America America is a class-stratified society. Class looms so large over our society that we don’t even see it, like a roof that’s so big we think it’s the sky. Only once we finally step outside do we look back at the towering edifice do we see it, (Noahpinion)

• Google’s Antitrust Cases: A Guide for the Perplexed The company is facing multiple lawsuits from the Department of Justice and three dozen states. Here’s what you need to know. (Wired)

Residential Schools, Cost of Living, Crypto, and Dollar Stores

Monday morning news drop

• What to know about Canada’s residential schools and the unmarked graves found nearby For the second time in less than a month, a First Nation in Canada reported grim news: Ground-penetrating radar had uncovered evidence of hundreds of unmarked graves near a former residential school for Indigenous children. (Washington Post)

• Millennials vs. baby boomers: Why the cost of living has skyrocketed for young Canadians In 1976 — when the majority of baby boomers, born between 1946 to 1965, were coming of age as young adults — it took a typical young person five years of full-time work to save a 20 per cent down payment on an average-priced home in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Metro Vancouver and many parts of Canada (Global)

• ‘It’s turmoil’: Why the global bike shortage isn’t ending soon Supply chains are under stress. That’s especially the case for bicycles, a booming industry in the pandemic (Globe and Mail)

• The Inside Story of the Sideways Ship That Broke Global Trade How the Ever Given and its billion-dollar cargo got stuck, got free, got impounded, and got taken to court. (Businessweek)

• The Dramatic Crash of a Buzzy Cryptocurrency Raises Eyebrows Just last month, the ICP crypto token, tied to a project backed by prestigious venture capitalists, was worth tens of billions of dollars. Then, its value collapsed. (New York Times)

• He Thought He Could Outfox the Gig Economy. He Was Wrong Jeffrey Fang was a ride-hailing legend, a top earner with relentless hustle. Then his minivan was carjacked—with his kids in the back seat. (Wired)

• Glaciers All Over the World Are Shrinking Fast—See for Yourself Advances in satellite technology reveal ice masses in Alaska and Asia have lost 4% of their volume in less than a decade. (Bloomberg)

• He Warned Apple About the Risks in China. Then They Became Reality. Doug Guthrie, once one of America’s leading China bulls, rang the alarm on doing business there. He spoke about his time at Apple. (New York Times)

• Millions of Americans Are About to Lose Their Homes: When the CDC’s eviction moratorium ends on June 30, what will still-struggling renters do? (Slate)

• Everyone Is Quitting Their Job and It’s Great Regardless of the exact reason why, people seem to treating the reopening era as moment of professional liberation. (Slate)

• The economics of dollar stores A visual explainer of the numbers behind America’s ubiquitous bargain-basement chains: How do dollar stores make money? (The Hustle)

• Passan: How Wander Franco became MLB’s next can’t-miss kid Franco is a switch-hitting, home-run-thumping, smooth-fielding, mad-dashing shortstop. In a recent nine-game stretch, he saw 105 pitches and didn’t once swing and miss. In a league in which the average age is over 21, a teenager is clearly the alpha — like Zion Williamson, only with a bat and glove. Franco brings grown men to hyperbole. (ESPN)

Videos of the week, BC Construction Opioid Crisis, Vaccine Hesitancy, and Subsidizing Climate Change

Friday morning news drop and videos of the week

• BC’s Construction Industry Is ‘Ground Zero’ for Opioid Crisis among Workers Substance use has plagued the trades for a long time. It’s now more serious than ever. (Tyee)

• 'It's complicated': Vaccine hesitancy continues among contractors Construction workers’ skepticism about COVID-19 vaccinations is raising issues for employers and public health officials. (Construction Dive)

• Subsidizing Climate Change 2021 How the Horgan government continues to sabotage BC’s climate plan with fossil fuel subsidies (Stand Earth)

• China Crushed Jack Ma, and His Fintech Rivals Are Next Ant has lost at least $70 billion in value since its scuttled IPO, and companies from Tencent to JD.com are under pressure, too. The winners? The country’s state-backed banks. (Businessweek)

• The ever-changing pressures of running an Instagram business Instagram wants sellers to post more and leave the app less. (Vox)

• Hopes Are High for the mRNA Technology that Is Leading Us Out of the Pandemic The vaccine success stories at BioNTech and Moderna may only be the beginning. Doctors and researchers want to use the revolutionary mRNA technology to fight the world’s worst scourges: from cancer to dementia. (Spiegel)

• 4,368 Episodes Later, Conan O’Brien’s Late-Night Run Ends As the television host leaves TBS, here’s how his comedy has evolved over 28 years (Wall Street Journal)

• Life in the Stacks: A Love Letter to Browsing Algorithms are integral to how we find and consume art. But old-fashioned browsing still has its benefits (Walrus)

Videos of the Week

Mikey February Twin Pin Indo Sessions - V.1 Mikey February recently took a few his new Twin Pins over to quiet Indonesian reef pass in Indonesia to experience a range of conditions. In this video you can hear Mikey's insights about how the Twin Pin all came together between him and Britt Merrick, as well as his sizing

QUICK & DIRTY 1 | Finn Iles Quick & Dirty is a three-part video series, filmed by Rupert Walker, designed to showcase some of my favourite trails around BC and the stuff that I like to ride day-to-day.

Triple Crown '21 The North Shore Triple Crown is nothing new: Starting at the water in Deep Cove, we pedal to the very top trails of Seymour, Fromme, and Cypress. 74km in distance, 2800m of elevation gain, and 8 hours of moving time, make this one hell of a ride. Come along for the suffer fest with our crew: Eric Lawrenuk, Geoff Gulevich, Ross Measures, Fraser Vaage, Scott Mackay, Sam Honcharuk, Ryan Vanderham and Taylor Booth.

Drop the Pin - Colton Klein

ROUGH CUT: Jack O'Grady's "Pass~Port" Part There’s no good way to test Jack’s tricks—it’s do or die on every try. See how hard he went for one of the gnarliest parts to date.

Eli Williams' "DoomSayers" Part Usually you gotta pick between tech brilliance and bowl-burning skills, but Eli has it all. Miss this and you’re cooked.

Toronto Islands, Value and Growth Investing, Millennial Wealth, and John McAfee

Thursday morning news drop

• Clash of the Islanders There are 262 homes on the picturesque Toronto Islands, and the battle to get one is epic. Inside the fight over a prime property that’s ripping the tight-knit community in two (Toronto Life)

• Cancel Amazon Prime The subscription service is Amazon’s greatest—and most terrifying—invention. (Atlantic)

• Value Investors Don’t Need to Avoid Growth Companies. In Fact, Doing So Can Hurt Returns. Applied Finance argues that despite their prices, growth companies may very well be undervalued in terms of their intrinsic value. (Institutional Investor)

• World’s Financial Hubs Are Struggling to Return to the Office The journey back to your desk is shaping up to be slow and indirect. Roughly 15 months after locking down to ward off Covid-19, several of the globe’s key financial centers are struggling to get employees back to their offices. Workplace activity in London, New York and San Francisco is still 50% below its normal level, according to mobility data from Google, which tracks the locations of its users. (Bloomberg)

• Millennials, the Wealthiest Generation? Believe It The world has changed since boomers were young adults, and so has the value of housing, education, and a steady job. (Bloomberg)

• Texans Are Being Asked to Conserve Power. Are the State’s February Energy Problems Back? On Monday, many Texans began receiving alerts asking them to conserve energy. The request followed significant drops in thermal energy output and a blown transformer at a Texas nuclear plant amid record June demand for power in the state as an early heatwave hits the state. The situation may make you wonder: Is what happened in February happening again, only with extreme temperatures in the reverse direction? (Slate)

• Alas, John McAfee, We Hardly Knew Ye The erstwhile ‘spokesman for crypto’ has gone to meet his maker. “I regret nothing,” was his final tweet. Here’s an appreciation, sort of. (Decrypt)

Mark Carney, Meme Stonks and Influencers, and Disney Mismanaged Star Wars

Wednesday morning news drop

• Mark Carney Was the World’s Rock-Star Banker. Now He’s Ready for His Encore Carney led two central banks through two world-shifting crises. Does that make him a political contender? (Walrus)

• The Fight Over Canada’s Founding Prime Minister Attacks on symbols of nationhood are not merely symbolic actions. They strike at the nationhood the symbol represents. (Atlantic)

• Influencers Are Luring Investors Flummoxed by Meme Stonks and Options With the rise of free, fast trading from your phone, demand has surged for information about creating wealth, not just managing it. (Bloomberg)

• How Much Do You Need to Be Financially Independent? When it comes to figuring out how much you will need to be financially independent, we only need to know two things: (1) your annual spending and (2) how many years you need to spend for. Once we know these two things, we can estimate how much you will need to be financially free. (Of Dollars And Data)

• The SPAC Man Method: Inside the Billionaire Rush for Riches As insiders have raced to push businesses into the public’s hands, they’ve employed a range of maneuvers to boost their fortunes. (Bloomberg Wealth)

• How Disney Mismanaged the ‘Star Wars’ Universe And how The Mandalorian can restore the true power of George Lucas’s galaxy (The Atlantic)

• What It’s Really Like to Be a Wall Street Whistleblower SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower has splashed out nearly a billion dollars in its cash-for-tips program. But it’s not for the faint of heart. (Institutional Investor)

Timber! Commodities are down notably from their peaks just a few weeks ago

Inflation, 5 Day Workweek, Job Market, ESG, and Disc Golf

Tuesday morning news drop

• As Lumber Prices Fall, the Threat of Inflation Loses Its Bite Costs soared partly because of do-it-yourselfers’ spending stimulus checks, but a month of declines show that consumers aren’t about to. (New York Times)

• The economy isn’t going back to February 2020. Fundamental shifts have occurred. A new era has arrived of greater worker power, higher housing costs and very different ways of doing business. (Washington Post)

• Kill the 5-Day Workweek Reducing hours without reducing pay would reignite an essential but long-forgotten moral project: making American life less about work. (The Atlantic)

• What Quitters Understand About the Job Market More Americans are telling their boss to shove it. Is the workplace undergoing a revolution—or just a post-pandemic spasm? (The Atlantic)

• ESG Has So Far Been a Rich World Phenomenon. But Emerging Markets Are Catching Up. Investors weigh in on the importance of ESG in these markets and investment opportunities in a post-pandemic world. (Institutional Investor)

• This one email explains Apple I love this email for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that you can extrapolate from it the very reasons Apple has remained such a vital force in the industry for the past decade. The gist of it is that SVP of Software Engineering, Bertrand Serlet, sent an email in October of 2007, just three months after the iPhone was launched. (TechCrunch)

• The Most Important Thing That’s Happened in Our Lifetime? It never made sense to me that Silicon Valley was creating all of these wonderful applications yet so many people in tech still had to work in Silicon Valley. That’s obviously changing now and not just for those in the Bay Area. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• How Republicans Became the ‘Barstool’ Party The Barstool-ification of the GOP could reconfigure its cultural politics for a generation. (Politico)

• The Rise of the $10 Million Disc Golf Celebrity How much can athletes really make in niche sports? A whole lot more than you might think. Disc golfer Paul McBeth set a new standard by signing an eight-figure endorsement contract—and his deal might only be the beginning. (Ringer)

Examining the environmental impact of Bute Inlet landslide British Columbia scientists and a First Nation are examining the environmental impact of a powerful landslide near Bute Inlet, 220 kilometres northwest of Vancouver, which carved a canyon through a creek bed and destroyed trees and fish habitats.

Business Luck, Boats, and Cheap Credit

Monday morning news drop

• Don’t Underestimate the Power of Luck When It Comes to Success in Business Managers are very prone to both benchmarking and stereotyping. These practices lead them into underestimating the power of luck, so that they often attribute success to capabilities and failure to bad luck in people or organizations they see as having the attributes of greatness, while they discount capabilities and attribute success to luck in people or organizations that do not conform to their ideas of greatness. (HBR)

• Add Boats to the List of What’s Hard to Find (and More Expensive) Sales and charters of boats of all sizes are up this summer. You can forget about bargaining, brokers say. (New York Times)

• How bankruptcy lets oil and gas companies evade cleanup rules "It's basically bankruptcy for profit." A battle over who is responsible for cleaning up hundreds of oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico is quietly playing out in a bankruptcy court in southern Texas. The contestants in this game of fossil fuel infrastructure hot potato: Fieldwood Energy, an offshore drilling company attempting to offload more than $7 billion in environmental cleanup responsibilities. (Grist)

• How QAnon captured the American church The cult has taken hold among Evangelical Christians (UnHerd)

• A brief history of credit measures What if we changed the regulations for now to prevent buyers fueled by FOMO from getting drunk on cheap credit? (House Hunt Victoria)

Videos of the Week and Inflation is at 3.6%

Friday morning news drop and videos of the week

• Canada's inflation rate rises to highest level in a decade, at 3.6% Rate looks especially high because May of 2020 was a low point for the economy, but things are heating up (CBC)

• Why Executives Need to Take the Leap on ESG and Corporate Purpose In a post-pandemic world, consumers won’t just accept brands at face value. To succeed, companies must demonstrate their commitment to positive ESG practices that support corporate purpose—or risk failing (Walrus)

• How To Prepare For a Lengthy Bull Market The other side of preparing for bear markets is preparing for a bull market. Yeah, that’s right, I said it. I know valuations are high. I know the U.S. stock market has been positive 11 out of the past 12 years. I know the past 15 months or so have been a crazy orgy of excess and speculation in certain parts of the market. But bull markets can last longer than you think. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• How to Have a Roaring 2020s (Without Wild Inflation) The greatest boom in U.S. history is the one we experienced during the mobilization for World War II. In our popular memory, imagery of scarcity and household belt-tightening to help the war effort abounds. But in reality, at an aggregate level, there was no fall in household consumption during the war years. (New York Times)

• Crypto Die-Hards Built a $90 Billion Wall Street on the Internet Automated protocols running on the internet are paying traders to provide liquidity for unregulated, decentralized markets. (Businessweek)

• Is there something wrong with the air in South Portland, Maine? Residents have lived near more than 100 massive petroleum storage tanks for decades, never really knowing if they’re breathing in dangerous chemicals. Now they’re fighting to find out. (Boston Globe)

Videos of the Week

10+ Insane Whips In Slo Mo From Crankworx Innsbruck 2021 Crankworx Innsbruck started off with a bang, quite literally, with riders going way past sideways at the official European Whip Off presented by POC. Which one was your favorite?

Insane Kamloops One Shot | Reece Wallace Chromag Family member Reece Wallace rides the Kamloops Bike Ranch closely followed by Calvin Huth's FPV drone in this epic one shot.

CULTCREW/ NORTH EAST/ DEHART, BEGIN, MAGS

OUT THE WINDOW - Gage Sharp

Jamie Foy's "Sunshine State" Dickies Part Foy returns to Florida to unleash a firestorm of NBDs on the thoroughly trafficked region. Might need a few views for this one to soak in.

Sam Atkins "Segway" Part There’s an elegance to Sam’s approach as he strikes Australia’s sets with a timeless arsenal. That closing 360 flip says it all.

Commodities, Meme Stocks, CEO Pay, and Soccer Turf

Thursday morning news drop

• The Commodities Boom Is Luring Criminals to Make Bigger and Bolder Scores The pandemic, soaring prices, and economic pain have combined to create perfect conditions for thieves and fraudsters. (Businessweek)

• Meme Stocks Aren’t New, But Their Biggest Fans Are The difference from the Nifty Fifty or dot-com mania is that now anyone with a dollar and a smartphone has the power to move markets. (Bloomberg)

• GameStop. Dogecoin. Now AMC. Do meme traders need to be protected from themselves? “If you’re trading like it’s a game, you’re probably going to lose.” (Vox)

• Everyone’s a Rising Star When Debt Is Cheap Rock-bottom financing has led to a wave of credit upgrades, but how will those ratings hold up when borrowing costs increase? (Bloomberg)

• Bill Ackman Sent a Text to the CEO of Mastercard. What Happened Next Is a Parable for ESG. A yearlong campaign to hold major companies accountable for online sexual abuse met with little success — until a New York Times article got a hedge fund manager involved. (Institutional Investor)

• Meager Rewards for Workers, Exceptionally Rich Pay for C.E.O.s The gap between workers and C.E.O.s widened during the pandemic as public companies granted top executives some of the richest pay packages ever. (New York Times)

• Silicon Valley Thought India Was Its Future. Now Everything Has Changed. It once made obvious business sense for Big Tech to focus on India. When digital companies expanded to international audiences throughout the globalizing 2000s, they found a perfect receptor in the Asian subcontinent: an increasingly online, billion-strong, newly capitalist nation ready to welcome foreign business. But this quickly disintegrated, and the bargain tech execs drove in embracing an already-notorious figure like Modi became much harder. (Slate)

• ‘The Silicon Valley of turf’: how the UK’s pursuit of the perfect pitch changed football They used to look like quagmires, ice rinks or dustbowls, depending on the time of year. But as big money entered football, pristine pitches became crucial to the sport’s image – and groundskeepers became stars (The Guardian)

Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, Housing Markets, and California's Drought Disaster

Wednesday morning news drop

• The Brutal Truth About Bitcoin Despite their high valuations on paper, a collapse of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is unlikely to rattle the financial system. Banks have mostly stayed on the sidelines. As with any speculative bubble, naïve investors who come to the party late are at greatest risk of losses. The government should certainly caution retail investors that, much like in the GameStop saga, they act at their own peril. Securities that enable speculation on Bitcoin prices are already regulated, but there is not much more the government can or ought to do. (New York Times)

• Fed explores ‘once in a century’ bid to remake the U.S. dollar The rise of private cryptocurrencies motivated the Fed to start considering a digital dollar to be used alongside the traditional paper currency. (Politico)

• How ‘Chaos’ In the Shipping Industry Is Choking The Economy Economists are concerned that the plumbing provided by these miracle boxes and the vessels that transport them is clogged. It’s making it more difficult for stores to restock their shelves, manufacturers, carmakers and builders to get the parts they need, and farmers to export their products. It’s an important reason, analysts say, that we’re seeing consumer prices surge. (NPR)

• Wall Street isn’t to blame for the chaotic housing market The boogeyman isn’t who you want it to be. (Vox)

• Housing Markets Flash 2008 Style Warnings New Zealand, Canada and Sweden rank as the world’s frothiest housing markets, based on key indicators. The U.K. and the U.S. are also near the top of the risk rankings. (Bloomberg)

• Philosophy’s lack of progress: For centuries, all philosophers seem to have done is question and debate. Why do philosophical problems resist solution? (Aeon)

• Photos: California’s Growing Drought Disaster After two of the driest years in decades, many of California’s reservoirs are expected to reach record-setting lows this summer, four years after exiting the state’s most recent drought emergency. Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in California, stands at about 37 percent of its capacity. A declared drought emergency for most of the state as farmers are coping with the lack of irrigation water, and fire crews are preparing for a potentially disastrous fire season. (The Atlantic)