Welcome to June! (How did that happen?) Kick the month off right with our morning reads:
• Unloved 60/40 Strategy Needs a Modern Makeover to Win Over Skeptics After half a century, the venerable investment allocation formula is showing some signs of age. But that doesn’t mean retail investors need to start from scratch. (Bloomberg)
• Why You Should Wait Out the Wild Housing Market Pick a housing statistic at random, and it’s probably setting an all-time record. Home prices: record high. Inventory: record low. Percentage of homes selling above asking price: record high. Average time on market: record low. (The Atlantic)
• 200+ Years of Asset Class Returns There is a very good case to be made that returns over the next 50-100 years will be lower than they’ve been over the past 50-100 years. There’s simply more knowledge about the markets now, an implicit backstop from the Fed, lower interest rates and ever-increasing valuations. On the other hand, costs have never been cheaper, the barriers to entry to get invested have never been lower. (Wealth of Common Sense)
• $ASS Coin Billionaire: Tales From the Fringe of the Crypto Craze Meet the thrill-seeking traders who are prowling for profits in the wildest corners of the market — all in search of the next big coin. (Bloomberg)
• iTrapped: All the things Apple won’t let you do with your iPhone Have you ever tried to swap Siri for a better voice assistant on your iPhone? Don’t bother, you can’t. Tried to buy e-books from the Kindle app? Can’t do that, either. Send iMessages to someone with an Android phone? Nope. Backup your iPhone to Google Drive? Nope. Get your own iPhone repair parts from Apple? Nope. Transfer your digital life to a different kind of smartphone? When you buy an iPhone, it isn’t really yours. (Washington Post)
• The Capitalist Culture That Built America: Since the early 19th century, the firm of Brown Brothers defined the distinctive American mix of financial power and public service. Its example can still instruct us. (Wall Street Journal)
• On the Covid Front Lines, When Not Getting Belly Rubs In Thailand and around the world, dogs are being trained to sniff out the coronavirus in people. So far, the results have been impressive. (New York Times) see also Following the science: A look at the global research effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic (The Pudding)
• I’m a Physicist Who Searches for Aliens. U.F.O.s Don’t Impress Me. But if the mission of these aliens calls for stealth, they seem surprisingly incompetent. You would think that creatures technologically capable of traversing the mind-boggling distances between the stars would also know how to turn off their high beams at night and to elude our primitive infrared cameras. (New York Times)
• If Democracy Is Dying, Why Are Democrats So Complacent? Democrats are unwilling to match their language of urgency with a strategy even remotely proportional to it. (The Atlantic) see also Are Democrats sleepwalking toward democratic collapse? “I’m not sure people appreciate how much danger we’re in.” (Vox)
• The Hot New Advantage in Sports: Being Old Helio Castroneves wins the Indianapolis 500, joining Tom Brady and Phil Mickelson in a sprightly run of late-career titles (Wall Street Journal)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Carson Block of Muddy Waters. The firm is known for its scathing in-depth research reports and shorts of various companies, several of which have collapsed.
Apartment List National Rent Report
Source: Apartment List
