My end-of-week morning train WFH reads:
• How Vanguard plans to play disruptor again: Low fees made the group a passive investing powerhouse. But it needs to improve tech and service as it pushes into wealth management and cash accounts. (Financial Times)
• The American Con Man Who Pioneered Offshore Finance: How a now-obscure financier turned the Bahamas into a tax haven—and created a cornerstone of global plutocracy (The Atlantic)
• How Many Adult New Yorkers Are Secretly Subsidized by Their Parents? Boomers are transferring trillions of dollars to their kids, one down payment at a time. (New York Magazine)
• How Spain’s economy became the envy of Europe: The tourism industry’s post-COVID expansion is a major reason why the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy has been easily outgrowing the likes of Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, posting an increase in GDP of 3.2% last year. By contrast, the German economy contracted by 0.2% in 2024, while France grew by 1.1%, Italy by 0.5%, and the UK by an expected 0.9%. This all helps explain why the Economist magazine has ranked Spain as the world’s best-performing economy. (BBC)
• Can Short Selling Survive Trump 2.0? Market participants predict less enforcement of fraud, possible changes to the SEC whistleblower program, and avoidance of Trump’s friends. (Institutional Investor)
• Make America Wealthy Again: Inside corporate America’s ‘quiet’ campaign to change Trump’s mind on mass deportations. (Business Insider)
• Who’s Watching What on TV? Who’s to Say? People now watch so many programs at so many different times in so many different ways that measuring viewership has become a hot debate in the industry. (New York Times)
• How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics: Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics. (Quanta Magazine)
• How Lorne Michaels’ Biographer Convinced ‘SNL’ Chief to Reveal Rare View of Life Off-Camera: Things often boil down to the 90 minutes between the end of dress rehearsal and the start of the real broadcast, when Michaels takes a bevy of notes he utters about staging, jokes and costumes, and makes the ultimate decision about what sketches get on air and which cast members appear on screen. He is caring and yet merciless, all at once. (Variety) see also The Unfunny Man Who Believes in Humor: How Lorne Michaels became the arbiter of funny. (The Atlantic)
• Super Bowl 2025: How the Eagles dominated the Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes: Complete and utter dominance. On the biggest stage, with the Chiefs dominating the headlines in their attempt to win a third consecutive title, the Eagles comprehensively manhandled them in New Orleans. The 40-22 final score in Super Bowl LIX seems unfair both to a Philadelphia defense that shut down Kansas City until a couple of garbage-time touchdowns in the fourth quarter and to a Kansas City defense that battled gamely before finally getting overwhelmed by short fields and the sheer volume of snaps it had to play. (ESPN)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Christine Phillpotts, Portfolio Manager at Ariel Investments. She manages Ariel’s Emerging Markets Value strategies. and covers consumer and real estate stocks across Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Eastern Europe. Previously, she launched Alliance Bernstein’s “Next 50 Emerging Markets Fund,” as well as their inaugural frontier markets strategy.
Tesla shares tumbled ~11% last week, weighed down by shockingly bad sales reports from around the world
Source: Bloomberg
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