My Two-for-Tuesday morning train reads:
• Wall Street Sets Low Bar for Corporate Earnings Season: Analysts expect S&P 500 companies to report first year-over-year decline in quarterly earnings since height of pandemic. (Wall Street Journal) see also Value Stocks to Lure Investors During Grim Earnings Season: Majority of investors expect ugly earnings reports to drive S&P 500 lower. (Bloomberg)
• The Most Important New Inflation Indicator: Introducing the New Tenant Repeat Rent Index—A New Way of Measuring Housing Inflation. (Apricitas Economics)
• 50 Companies to Watch in 2023: From EBay to Porsche, keep an eye on these global stocks this year. (Businessweek) see also CES 2023’s Wildest Highlights: Flying Cars, Flying Boats and Folding Screens The world’s biggest consumer electronics show has brought plenty of TV, laptops and gaming gadgets to gawk at — plus some big surprises. (CNET)
• Why Does Private Equity Get to Play Make-Believe With Prices? Investors and managers are playing a dangerous game of “volatility laundering,” Cliff Asness writes. (Institutional Investor)
• December 2022 jobs report: Why the Fed is probably happy about it: Wages and employment grew, but probably not at a pace that would panic the Fed. (Grid) see also Where is the minimum wage increasing in the U.S.? Here are the 23 places enacting a pay bump in 2023. With a stagnant federal minimum wage, states and localities are picking up the slack. (Grid)
• How Tall Is Too Tall? The rise and rise and rise of the supertall skyscraper. Hence the new category: The supertall superslim. (The Atlantic)
• The Many Forces Fueling Tesla’s $860 Billion Tumble: Investors in Elon Musk’s day job are feeling a lot less excited about the future. (Businessweek) see also OK, 2022 was a disaster for Tesla. What next? It’s all about fundamentals. (Financial Times)
• Living With Wolves: Working at a wolf sanctuary became part of my identity. Leaving the pack was harder than I expected. (Catapult)
• ‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why: The proportion of publications that send a field in a new direction has plummeted over the past half-century. (Nature) see also The dance of the naked emperors A followup to “The rise and fall of peer review” (Experimental History)
• F1 Want Women in the Cockpit For First Time Since 1976: With its new academy, the racing league is inviting women to train for the grand prix. (Bloomberg)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with John Mack, former CEO of Morgan Stanley. He was the architect of the firm’s merger with Dean Witter and then returned as CEO to lead the firm through the financial crisis. He is the author of a new autobiography, “Up Close and All In: Life Lessons from a Wall Street Warrior.”
America’s 117th Congress accomplished a lot of bipartisan lawmaking.
Source: Economist
