My Two-for-Tuesday North Carolina morning reads:
• The US Housing Market Has Become an Impossible: Mess Americans with cheap loans don’t want to sell. Those without homes can’t afford to buy. Will anything budge? (Businessweek) see also Tips for House Hunters Frustrated With Frozen Real Estate Market: Experts say unconventional routes to homeownership exist for those that have the right setup and an openness to creativity. (Bloomberg)
• Inside Peter Thiel’s powerful Silicon Valley network which started with a student paper: The conservative student newspaper cofounded by Peter Thiel in 1987 has been riling up the left-leaning Stanford community for more than three decades. But it’s also quietly become one of the surest paths to an enviable job in Silicon Valley. Here’s a look at the extensive network of tech investors and founders who got their start writing for the Review… (Fortune)
• World’s Safest Market Becomes a Magnet for Big Investors: US government debt was once among the sleepiest corners of finance. No longer. (Businessweek) see also This is a Wonderful Market for Dollar Cost Averaging: This has not been a fun time to hold small cap stocks. There have been in four bear markets and two outright crashes of 30% or worse. There is a silver lining here though. This has been an outstanding market for dollar cost averaging into small cap stocks. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, but I’ve been buying small caps during every correction along the way. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• How Does the World’s Largest Hedge Fund Really Make Its Money? Ray Dalio’s investing tactics have always been a closely kept secret, even inside Bridgewater Associates. Several years ago, some of Wall Street’s biggest names set out to discover his edge. (New York Times)
• Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts: Electric cars are crucial, but not enough to solve climate change. We can’t let them crowd out car-free transit options. (Vox) see also EV or Hybrid? What the Next Decade Holds: The transition from ICE to EV won’t be complete until three issues get resolved. ICE cars have an enormous infrastructure built out over a century. Unless you are traversing one of a handful of deserts around the world, gas vehicles require no prior thought before a long trip – down the coast or cross-country. It’s possible to do so with EVs, but they require more planning and thought – and if surveys are to be believed, more than a little range anxiety – before the trip is completed. (The Big Picture)
• The Miracle of Photography: A perfect photograph is a lyric poem. It gestures towards narrative, but does not spell it out; it relishes in detail, but is not didactic; it’s as in love with the granularity of beach wood or the smoothness of a mirror as much as it is with any abstraction. (The Millions)
• Everything Elon Musk Broke in the Year He’s Owned Twitter: It has gone badly. Twitter, which is no longer called Twitter, is a sad shell of its former self by every conventional business metric available to the general public. Repelled by Musk’s behavior and changes to the site, advertisers have pulled back much of their spending. Users have fled. The company appears to be worth about a third of what Musk paid. It faces a crushing debt load, which requires Musk’s employees to twist into funny contortions as they describe the health of the business. (Slate) see also A year later, Musk’s X is tilting right. And sinking. The billionaire bought Twitter to revive its business and make it less “woke.” He has succeeded at only one of those goals. (Washington Post)
• This California Museum Is Home to Hundreds of Nature’s Scents: Perfumer Mandy Aftel’s spellbinding collection of rare essences and artifacts is on display at the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley. (Smithsonian Magazine)
• Open hatred of Jews surges globally, inflamed by Gaza war. Incidents of antisemitism, which have surged globally since the attack by Hamas gunmen on southern Israel on Oct. 7 and subsequent war on the Islamist group launched by Israel in the Gaza Strip. (Reuters) See also How Posters of Kidnapped Israelis Ignited a Firestorm on American Sidewalks: In the weeks since Hamas attacked Israel, fliers depicting the hostages have become ubiquitous. But in cities and on college campuses across the globe, anti-Israel protesters have removed them. (New York Times)
• Knight, Barkley, Stockton and the bus of shame: Tales from the 1984 Olympic trials: The biggest controversy surrounding the selection of the team centered on Knight’s decision to cut Charles Barkley. Over time, the omissions of Karl Malone, John Stockton and others would join that conversation. Many thought Knight could have picked two teams strong enough to win Olympic gold. (The Athletic)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Zeke Faux, award-winning investigative reporter at BusinessWeek and Bloomberg News. He is the author of the new book, “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.” The book is a hilarious deep dive into the many characters and scammers that have beset crypto.
Bubble-chasing is not a good strategy
Source: Torsten Slok, Apollo Global
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