The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• Planet Boglehead: Vanguard Struggles to Win Over the World: America’s quirky fund giant wants to sell itself to Europe. Is anyone buying? (Businessweek)
• New Glut City: The city’s mega-office landlords are panicking, pivoting, and shedding what’s worthless. One opens his books. (Curbed)
• Inspired by Ukraine war, Taiwan launches drone blitz to counter China: After Ukraine deployed drones to successfully offset Russia’s advantages on the battlefield, Taiwan’s leaders took note. But an internal report presented to President Tsai Ing-wen contained an alarming finding: In drones, Taiwan lagged far behind its much more powerful adversary – China. Now, the island has enlisted commercial drone companies in a bid to catch up. (Reuters)
• An NFL linebacker quit football to sell Pokémon cards, now he’s making millions: Yeah, at first, his teammates thought it was weird. “Blake, what’s all this Pokémon stuff you’ve been posting about?” Saquon Barkley asked him one day in the Giants’ locker room. Same with Sterling Shepard. Same with Leonard Williams. “Isn’t that stuff for kids?” they wanted to know. Martinez knew it was coming. So he’d start by telling them how much money he was making. “I just did a $50,000 box break and made $108,000.” He’d watch their eyes light up. More questions would follow. (The Athletic)
• It’s Hard to Build a Durable Business Selling Durable Goods: You can easily invert this to imagine a similar quote from Dark Buffett: I’ll tell you why I hate the high-quality consumer durables business (e.g. appliances, gadgets, furniture): you sell it for a dollar but it costs 85 cents to make, the better a job it does the less likely your customers are to need another one, and if you want brand loyalty commensurate with that quality you’d better wait a generation or two to prove that the products you sell can last for a long time—meanwhile one or two bad years can sink you. (The Diff)
• A Vast Untapped Green Energy Source Is Hiding Beneath Your Feet: New experiments in the deserts of Utah and Nevada show how advances in fracking—technology developed by the oil industry—can be repurposed to tap clean geothermal energy anywhere on Earth. (Wired)
• Your workplace wants you to swallow a happy pill. What if you found collective joy instead? For years the corporate diktat has been that happiness must be achieved alone, but many are turning to communities for joy. (The Guardian)
• An Arctic ‘Great Game’ as NATO allies and Russia face off in far north: For several years now, European and U.S. security and intelligence officials have been keeping a closer eye on the world above the Arctic Circle, knowing that melting polar ice will open new trade routes, propel a race for natural resources and reshape global security. Western officials watched as Russia revived Soviet-era military sites and while China planned a “Polar Silk Road.” (Washington Post)
• The Polygon and the Avalanche: How the Gilgo Beach Suspect Was Found: As investigators spent years looking for a suspect, a key clue was buried in their files. Could they have solved the case years earlier? (New York Times)
• My Impossible Mission to Find Tom Cruise: The action star has gone to great lengths to avoid the press for more than a decade. But maybe our writer could track him down anyway? (New York Times Magazine) see also The Often Wacky, Sometimes Wicked, and Always Wondrous Eras of Barbie: The Mattel doll has been through a lot since her 1959 creation—a rise to fame, a public backlash, a breakup, a reconciliation, and much more. Now, though, we’ve entered her latest era—Blockbuster Barbie—which shows that somehow, both the doll and perceptions of her are still evolving. (The Ringer)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jawad Mian, CFA and Chartered Market Technician, who runs the independent global macro research and trading advisory firm Stray Reflections. The firm’s focus is on major investment themes, and its clients include many of the world’s largest hedge funds and alternative asset managers.
Americans’ Declining Confidence in Institutions
Source: Brookings
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