Happy Valentine’s Day! Share the Love with our Tuesday Two-fer morning train WFH reads:
• How Massive The NFL Really Is, In 4 Charts: Football’s grip on American sports fandom expands well beyond just watching the Super Bowl. More generally, Gallup has been asking Americans about their favorite sport to watch since 19371 — and for the past half-century, American sports fans have come to a pretty clear consensus: Football is king. (fivethirtyeight) see also The 18 Best Live Sports Experiences on Earth: From a medieval horse race in Siena to a breathtakingly beautiful ultramarathon in a small French village, consider this the ultimate travel bucket list. (GQ)
• How steep is your curve? We’re living in a world of fools, breaking us down, when they all should let R* be higher by 150-200bp. “The most compelling reason for the discrepancy is the presence of a strong prior among investors about R* [the neutral long-run rate of interest that balances the economy] being low and similar to estimates from the last cycle, despite the very different nature of the current cycle,” it told clients. (Financial Times)
• When Financial Bubbles Are Hard to Pop: In Japan, China and the US, some mindsets persist despite changing policy decisions. (Businessweek) see also The Psychology of Market Tops & Market Bottoms: What do you call a stock that’s down 70%? A stock that was down 90% and then rose 200%. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• “Reality Is Submerged in Fantasy”: The Villages Is a Boomer’s Utopia—And Demographic Time Bomb. Florida’s Trump-loving retirement community was meticulously created “to make boomers in particular feel comfortable and happy,” as Philip Bump writes in his forthcoming book, Aftermath. But behind its idyllic façade lurks a crisis that the Villages—and the rest of the country—have yet to reckon with. (Vanity Fair)
• The housing shortage is the root of all of America’s problems: The US hasn’t built enough homes in recent decades. The shortage is among the reasons homes are unaffordable for many Americans. It could also be contributing to other problems — like inequality, low birth rates, and climate change. (Business Insider) see also How Everybody Miscalculated Housing Demand: Post-GFC, Builders shift to multi-family and apartment buildings. It takes more than a decade for annual new single-family home construction to return to its pre-boom average, as Household Formation is weak and fewer young people gett married, despite increasing population. (The Big Picture)
• How the ‘boneless wing’ became a tasty culinary lie: Part of the reason for the rise of the “boneless wing” is money. In recent years, with prices of actual chicken wings rising, the alternative became more cost effective. The average price for prepared “boneless wings” is $4.99 a pound compared with $8.38 a pound for bone-in wings, according to Tom Super, senior vice president of communications for the National Chicken Council, citing the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He calls it “a way to move more boneless/skinless breast meat that continues currently to be in ample supply.” (AP News)
• Google is scrambling to catch up to Bing, of all things:Google bookended Microsoft’s big AI search announcement with underwhelming AI news of its own. (Vox) see also Are we racing toward AI catastrophe? As tech giants like Microsoft and Google compete to capture the AI market, safety could be an afterthought. (Vox)
• That Wine You Can’t Get Enough Of? These Guys Probably Discovered It: Decades before grower Champagnes became hip, back when now-legendary Burgundy producers were unknown stateside, these importers brought extraordinary acumen to scouting winemaking talent and overlooked regions. (Wall Street Journal)
• A Different Kind of Team. A Different Kind of Adversity. Another Chiefs Super Bowl. Sunday brought a second Lombardi Trophy and a second heroic performance from a one-of-a-kind quarterback, the coach who can’t stop winning and the GM he helped shape. (Sports Illustrated) see also How Mahomes’ Chiefs beat Hurts’ Eagles in Super Bowl 2023: One good way to measure offensive dominance is down set conversion rate, which looks at every time a team took the ball on first down and sees whether it turned that series into a first down or a touchdown. The Chiefs converted 93.8% of their first downs into another first down or a touchdown in the second half, and the only reason they didn’t hit 100% is because Jerick McKinnon slid down on the 1-yard line to set up the title-winning field goal. (ESPN)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Rick Rieder, Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income at BlackRock, Head of the Global Allocation Investment Team, and Senior Managing Director. Rieder helps to manage $2.5 trillion in fixed-income assets as a member of BlackRock’s Global Operating Committee and is Chairman of the firm-wide BlackRock Investment Council.
Fed Says It Isn’t Done Raising Rates Yet. We Think It Is.
Source: Morningstar
