My end-of-week morning train WFH reads:
• “Smart is good. Smart and lucky is better” It’s better to look stupid and learn than pretend and lose money. Once we know how something ended — a movie, a stock crash — we forget what it felt like to not know the outcome. The real challenge for investors is human behavior. Financial literacy matters, but it fades. (Big Think)
• The Gen Z Lifestyle Subsidy: In the 2010s, Millennials got cheap Ubers. Today’s young people are getting free SuperGrok. (The Atlantic)
• They Are Hot, Upwardly Mobile Jobs. Here’s Why They Are So Hard to Fill. Some of the fastest-growing careers lie in middle-skill roles like sterilizing surgical tools, yet too few people know about them (Wall Street Journal)
• How Gen Z Became the Most Gullible Generation: The almighty algorithm is fueling conspiracy theories among young people and ruining their ability to tell fact from fiction on the internet. (Politico)
• Inside Home Depot’s $20 Billion Secret Garden: The retail giant spends years developing plants and flowers. The goal: make shoppers better gardeners—and loyal customers. (Wall Street Journal)
• Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media: Through emotional testimonies and high-stakes legal battles, the film explores the tension between corporate profit and child safety, highlighting systemic failures that leave young users vulnerable. As families seek justice, Can’t Look Away underscores the urgent need for industry reform and serves as both a wake-up call about the dangers of social media—and a call to action to protect future generations. (Bloomberg) see also The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users’ Emotional State: We estimate the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state in two large randomized experiments before the 2020 U.S. election. People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety. (NBER)
• These Maps Show Federal Employees Work in Every Corner of America: These maps are based on newly available data from payroll records and offer a glimpse of the federal government’s 2.3 million or so civilian workers in March 2024, before the recent cuts. They show employees based in every state and in thousands of cities and small towns across the country, far beyond Washington, D.C. (New York Times)
• Have they been here? When we look for extraterrestrials, we often peer into the depths of space. But alien life might be closer than you think. (Aeon)
• How Trump Worship Took Hold in Washington: The President is at the center of a brazenly transactional ecosystem that rewards flattery and lockstep loyalty. (New Yorker)
• ‘It was a magical chemical balance’: How Monty Python and the Holy Grail became a comedy legend (BBC)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Jeff Becker, Chairman and CEO of Jennison Associates (a division of PGIM). The firm was founded in 1969. Prior to joining Jennison in 2016 as CEO, Becker was CEO of Voya Investment Management.
Trade Negotiations Take Time
Source: PIIE (Freund and McDaniel), Apollo Chief Economist
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