Most pros can’t beat the market: 2021 is the 13th consecutive years in which the majority of fund managers in this category have lagged the index. (TKer)
The 55-and-Older Labor Market Exodus Is a Statistical Mirage People in their late 50s and early 60s haven’t stopped working, and for those over 65, workforce participation declines have been smaller than generally portrayed. (Bloomberg)
Quiet Quitting Is a Fake Trend: What people are now calling “quiet quitting” was, in previous decades, simply known as “having a job.” (The Atlantic)
Inside the World’s First No-Coiner Conference The Crypto Policy Symposium in London was a historic gathering of crypto skeptics—and nobody tried to sell me anything. (Decrypt)
Four reasons why GDP is a useful number: The critics have overstated their case. (Noahpinion)
Electric Vehicles Took Off. Car Makers Weren’t Ready: More buyers are lining up for EVs, catching car companies flat-footed and triggering a race for more batteries, factories and materials (Wall Street Journal)
Why Do We Always Focus on the Bad Stuff? The bad stuff makes us feel worse than the good stuff makes us feel good. Complaining feels more natural than gratitude for most people because it’s easier. And I’m sure there is some survival of the fittest trait that was handed down from our ancestors. Paying attention to the bad stuff kept you alive. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
The Weakness of Xi Jinping: How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future (Foreign Affairs)
Checkmate: There’s something wild happening in the chess world right now, and I’m going to tell you right up front that I don’t really understand it. But I want to talk about it anyway because it speaks to something larger happening in all sports, something confusing and alluring and perilous. (JoeBlogs)
Thursday Morning Articles
How many people can Earth handle? Towards the end of 2022, the human population on Earth is expected to reach eight billion. To mark the occasion, BBC Future takes a look at one of the most controversial issues of our time. Are there too many of us? Or is this the wrong question? (BBC)
The Mysterious, Stubborn Appeal of Mass-Produced Fried Chicken: Why do so many accomplished chefs call Popeyes their favorite fried chicken? (Vice)
The World’s Hottest Housing Markets Are Facing a Painful Reset Frothy property markets are poised for double-digit price declines as consumers face mounting financial pressures. (Bloomberg)
The focus on misinformation leads to a profound misunderstanding of why people believe and act on bad information: Misinformation has been a prominent paradigm in the explanation of social, political, and more recently epidemiological phenomena since the middle of the last decade. However, Daniel Williams argues that a focus on misinformation is limiting when used to explain these phenomena. Primarily, as it distracts us from more important ways in which information can be misleading, and it overlooks the social dynamics of competition involved in information marketplaces that produce effective rationalisations of the favoured narratives of different social groups. (London School of Economics)
Oops, Minnesota Accidentally Legalized THC-Spiked Seltzer Craft breweries are cranking out cannabis-infused drinks after a sudden law change. (Vice)
Dry Cleaners Were Disappearing Even Before the Pandemic: Starched shirts just don’t have the same appeal they once did. But there are forces greater than the virus at work here. (Businessweek)
They built a Minecraft crypto empire. Then it all came crashing down: Kids in the Philippines were earning hundreds of dollars from a play-to-earn Minecraft game, until new rules sent the community into a tailspin. (Rest of World)
More Than 335,000 Lives Could Have Been Saved During Pandemic if U.S. Had Universal Health Care: In the United States, death rates from COVID-19 are higher than in any other high-income country—and our fragmented and inefficient health system may be largely to blame, Yale researchers say in a new study. (Yale School of Public Health)
Wednesday Morning Articles
“Scary easy. Sketchy as hell.”: How startups are pushing Adderall on TikTok: A telehealth company called Done wants Gen Z’s attention. (Vox)
A Rare Peek Inside the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: The Council for National Policy, a secretive network of powerful conservatives, goes to great lengths to conceal its activities and even its members. But recently uncovered documents reveal the extent of the group’s influence on American politics. (New Republic)
Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia’s online scam gangs. Illicit industry traffics thousands of victims from China through Southeast Asia (Nikkei)
Yes, it’s a scam: Simple tips to help you spot online fraud Here’s how to protect your family members and yourself from scams. (Washington Post)
Mothers Are Dying From Treatable Mental Health Conditions; Advocates spotlight an overlooked cause of maternal mortality: The national conversation around maternal mortality has served to spotlight preventable physical complications, but it often overlooks a leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths – conditions linked to behavioral health. (Cronkite News)
The Illusion of Knowledge: I’ve been expressing my disregard for forecasts for almost as long as I’ve been writing my memos, starting with The Value of Predictions, or Where’d All This Rain Come From in February 1993. Over the years since then, I’ve explained at length why I’m not interested in forecasts – a few of my favorite quotes echoing my disdain head the sections below – but I’ve never devoted a memo to explaining why making helpful macro forecasts is so difficult. So here it is. (Oaktree Capital)
Most pros can’t beat the market: It continues to be incredibly difficult to generate returns in the stock market that beat (or outperform) a passively managed fund tracking the S&P 500. According to S&P Dow Jones Indices (SPDJI), 51.2% of U.S. large-cap equity fund managers underperformed the S&P 500 during the first half of 2022 — despite the fact that the S&P itself fell into a bear market during that period. (TKer)
Market Share: Understanding Competitive Advantage Through Market Power “There is no more important proposition in economic theory than that, under competition, the rate of return on investment tends toward equality in all industries. (Morgan Stanley)
We Spoke With the Last Person Standing in the Floppy Disk Business Turns out the obsolete floppy is way more in demand than you’d expect. (AIGA Eye On Design)
Coming Into Focus: Once thought to primarily affect overstimulated boys, ADHD diagnoses have spiked among adult women. For one writer, coming to terms with her diagnosis later in life has put her past and family history in a new light. (Harpers Bazaar)
Roger Federer is retiring from tennis — but his mark on the sport is indelible: To understand Roger Federer is to capture sports harmony. He talks about his strategy of fire and ice: combining the burning desire to succeed and the coolness to keep his composure. His career has been a tale of mind and body working together like clockwork, to create an aesthetically delightful state of tennis — and also a method which has led to incredible success. (ESPN) see also Roger Federer as Religious Experience: (Published 2006) (New York Times)
Tuesday Morning Articles
An economist studied popular finance tips. Some might be leading you astray: Thinkfluencers versus economists: Economists may know a lot about how people should act. But, as an empirically minded behavioral economists, we recognize that people don’t act this way. And that’s where the popular authors win. (NPR)
Can Mike Novogratz’s Comeback Narrative Survive the Crypto Crash? The Wall Street vet has a tattoo of the coin that started the downturn. He says it keeps him humble. (Institutional Investor)
Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum In which we talk about the big shifts in crypto. (Noahpinion)
The Attention Span. “Where Do Ideas Come From?” Last year I read a claim that “imagination” was arguably humanity’s greatest gift. That it was essential to success, not just in the arts, but science, business strategy and investing. I didn’t really understand what that meant, so I spent a few months learning more. Here are some of the most interesting things I found. (KCP Group)
Your Career Is Just One-Eighth of Your Life: Five pieces of career advice, shaped by economics, psychology, and a little bit of existential math. (The Atlantic)
A Prehistory of Social Media: The standard account of internet history took shape in the early 1990s, as a mixture of commercial online services, university networks, and local community networks mutated into something bigger, more commercial, and more accessible to the general public. As hype began to build around the “information superhighway,” people wanted a backstory. (Issues in Science and Technology)
The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse: Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences. (The Guardian)
The Death Cheaters: The members of Longevity House are united by two things: a willingness to hand over $100,000 and a burning desire to live forever. Inside the weird world of cryotherapy, biocharging and fecal transplants (Toronto Life)
How Justin Tucker Became the Greatest Kicker in N.F.L. History: The confidence, persistence, and all-out obsession required to play the least understood position on the field. (New York Times)
Monday Morning Articles
Work From Home Is Loved Worldwide, Even If Wall Street Hates It: New research paper highlights global appeal of remote work Workers would take 5% pay cut to keep option of days at home. (Bloomberg)
Pandemic, Recession, Roaring Twenties… Repeat? We’ve all heard and studied how terrible the 1929 Crash and ensuing Great Depression was for America’s economy, but far less people know about the other 1920s economic downturn: the “forgotten depression” of 1920-1921. While technically a recession, the economic slump of 1920 certainly felt like a depression. (Investor Amnesia)
The Disaster Consultants: Meet the middlemen of climate change, the private contractors who make bank off helping devastated towns and cities with their FEMA paperwork. (The Verge)
Some Amazon Prime customers say they don’t have two-day shipping anymore: A former Amazon employee found that, in large areas of Washington state, Prime deliveries can take four to five business days. (Vox)
How Japan Won its ‘Traffic War’ Until the early 1970s, Japan endured a high rate of road fatalities. Now the nation boasts one of the world’s best traffic safety records. Here’s why. (CityLab)
Ukraine Is Waging a New Kind of War: The fight to retake the city of Kherson plays to the Ukrainians’ strengths, not the Russians.’ (The Atlantic)
‘We have already lost’: far-right Russian bloggers slam military failures: Military pro-war bloggers with frontline contacts offer rare insight into Russia’s performance on ground (The Guardian)
When Weird Al Yankovic Met Daniel Radcliffe, Things Got … Well, You Know: For their decidedly nonfactual rock biopic, the pop-music parodist and the “Harry Potter” star found themselves on the same wavelength. (New York Times)
Serena Williams – analysing the barely believable data that explains her genius: After 23 grand-slam titles, more than a thousand matches, and innumerable GOAT debates, Serena Williams’ professional tennis career is over. (The Athletic)
Friday Morning Reads
Enough, Bosses Say: This Fall, It Really Is Time to Get Back to the Office* After more than two years, corporate leaders say time is up on avoiding in-person work. (Wall Street Journal)
A Job Market Anomaly Begins to Correct: After diverging for awhile, business and household surveys of employment are headed in the same direction again: Up. (Bloomberg)
The Labor Shortage Will Get Worse and May Last for Decades Average annual growth of the U.S. prime working-age population is projected to slow sharply to just 0.2% over the next three decades, down from 1% average annual growth over the past 40 years. By 2100, as much as two-thirds of the country could be out of the workforce. (Barron’s)
Twitter’s edit button is a big test for the platform’s future: Re-inventing the tweet is a hard thing to do. (The Verge)
Tech Companies Slowly Shift Production Away From China: Worried about geopolitical tensions and stung by pandemic shutdowns, Google, Apple and others are moving some work to nearby countries. (New York Times)
The long road ahead for American-made electric vehicles: The Inflation Reduction Act lays the groundwork for an EV supply that starts in the United States. (Vox)
21 Charts That Explain How America Is Failing Schools: Opinions—and funding—are becoming more polarized; Enrollment in traditional public schools is down, while alternatives grow more popular (Businessweek)
The Unexpected Power of Random Acts of Kindness: New research shows small gestures matter even more than we may think. (New York Times)
Thursday Morning Reads
Article drop
‘Stonks’ Aren’t the Only Reason Why Businesses Should Know Their Memes: Know Your Meme, a leading online encyclopedia for memes, wants to turn its huge database into a profitable software tool for tracking internet trends. (Bloomberg)
The Period of Abundance Is Over: Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine, worries that the Federal Reserve is overreacting in the fight against inflation. He expects a severe slowdown of the economy and says how investors can navigate today’s challenging market environment. A conversation with the Bond King. (The Market)
A Job Market Anomaly Begins to Correct: After diverging for awhile, business and household surveys of employment are headed in the same direction again: Up. (Bloomberg)
San Francisco Braces for Epic Commercial Real Estate Crash: The properties most at risk are mid- to lower-tier buildings purchased near the peak of the market (San Francisco Standard)
Russia Privately Warns of Deep and Prolonged Economic Damage Confidential document contrasts with upbeat public statements Report says key sectors face sharp drop in output, brain drain. (Bloomberg)
The Long Unraveling of the Republican Party: Three books explore a history of fractious extremism that predates Donald Trump. (The Atlantic)
In Montauk, Big Money Moves In On a Surfers’ Paradise: The acres overlooking a prize stretch of Long Island’s East End were empty for years. Now they’ve been sold in multimillion-dollar deals. It’s been the talk of the beach all summer. (New York Times)
Wednesday Morning Reads
Wednesday morning news drop
Interest Rates vs. Inflation The average yields savers earned in the 1980s were higher than inflation, including education, healthcare and housing prices. Average yields remained above healing CPI numbers throughout the 1990s and 2000s. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
Your guide to ‘good news is bad news’ and ‘bad news is good news’ High inflation has made for unusual times. (TKer)
The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For: He lived almost 200 years ago, but Henry George’s theories might have something to offer people who want to put their money to good use today. (Vanity Fair)
The ESG Crown Is Slipping, and It’s Mostly the Fund Industry’s Own Fault: Plain-vanilla stock and bond funds are doing better than the socially responsible ones. (Businessweek)
Classic Car Experts on What to Expect From the Market This Fall: If you want an affordable old Chevy or mid-level Jaguar you may be in luck—they haven’t been selling. In August alone, overall sell-through rates were 16.3% lower than in August 2021, according to data from Classic.com. (Bloomberg)
Sheep Are the Solar Industry’s Lawn Mowers of Choice The laborious job of clearing weeds in solar-panel fields has triggered a welcome boom for American shepherds and their flocks. (Wall Street Journal)
Stephen Curry Said Davidson Changed His Life. He Changed Davidson. Curry, the N.B.A. superstar, returned to Davidson College, where he first showed how great he could be. The college, and its community, still feel his impact over a decade later. (New York Times)
Tuesday Morning Reads
Tuesday morning news drop
Americans are terrible at taking vacations. Why are U.S. workers so bad at taking time off? U.S. companies are stingy with vacation time when compared with other countries. But U.S. workers can’t seem to leave work at work anyway. (Grid)
In Seattle, It’s Almost Normal: The pandemic may have left some gaps in the urban fabric, but a neighborhood-by-neighborhood rundown of new restaurants and art events reveals that recovery is well underway. (New York Times)
The Family That Mined the Pentagon’s Data for Profit: The Freedom of Information Act helps Americans learn what the government is up to. The Poseys exploited it—and became unlikely defenders of transparency. (Wired)
No Promises: Does Alcoholics Anonymous work? Maybe the most convincing feature of AA is that it feels awful at the beginning. Sometimes that feeling doesn’t last through the first meeting. You hear something you can (here borrowing from Wallace again) Identify with and you are filled with hope, and it feels the same as the simulacrum, I’m sorry to say, but it’s better. (Plough)
Foreign Candy Puts American Candy to Shame: It’s so much more than the flavors. (The Atlantic)
The Anti-ESG Crusader Who Wants to Pick a Fight With BlackRock: Vivek Ramaswamy, co-founder of Strive Asset Management, is a vocal critic of the hot Wall Street investing trend that Republicans such as Ron DeSantis say promotes a liberal agenda. (Businessweek)
America’s Affordable Housing Problem: How America got to be so unaffordable, and what we can do to make it more affordable; an analysis of good-in-theory v. outcome based policies. (Our Built Environment)
How the decline of local news exposes the public to lies and corruption: What’s important is their consequences. The effects of the spread of “news deserts” on social and political cohesiveness in America, and the vacuum it has left to be filled by fringe ideologues, political mountebanks and corporate PR departments — “misinformation engines,” in the words of Steve Waldman, co-founder of Report for America, an organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on local issues. (Los Angeles Times)
Monday Morning Reads
Monday morning news drop
Bosses say remote work kills culture. These companies disagree. Some business leaders worry remote options could destroy their company culture. But companies that have operated remotely for years say culture doesn’t come from a physical office. (Washington Post)
Global Bonds Tumble Into Their First Bear Market in a Generation: Bloomberg bond index drops 20% from its January 2021 peak A new environment as bonds fall with stocks: Schroders’ Wood (Bloomberg)
Yield is Back You can’t exactly move to the beach and live off the interest on yields of 2-3% but it’s better than nothing, which is what savers could earn the past couple of years in a world of 0% interest rates. (Wealth of Common Sense)
What Does ESG Need to Work? High returns for investors. Our author argues that a different approach to ESG can strike a better balance between environmental and social goals and profits. (Institutional Investor)
Wages and Employment Do Not Have To Decline To Bring Down Inflation: To lower inflation, policymakers must continue using fiscal policy to focus support to struggling households, improve the economy’s productive capacity, create more resilient supply chains, and limit the profiteering of corporations. (CAP)
Porsche Boss Faces Software Woes Keeping VW a Step Behind Tesla Herbert Diess tried to match the electric-car maker’s tech prowess. New CEO Oliver Blume now has more chasing to do. (Bloomberg)
This Remote Mine Could Foretell the Future of America’s Electric Car Industry: Hiding a thousand feet below the earth’s surface in this patch of northern Minnesota wetlands are ancient mineral deposits that some view as critical to fueling America’s clean energy future. (New York Times)
NASA’s latest moon mission is the dawn of a new space age: A new NASA rocket is about to take off on a historic mission to the moon. The Artemis I mission won’t land on the lunar surface, but the trip itself will be the farthest a vehicle designed for human astronauts has ever traveled into space. (Vox)