My back-to-work morning train reads:
• Sell in May and Go Away? Not This Year. The S&P 500 Just Had Its Best Month Since 2020. Don’t let sell in May’ spook you. Stocks have been on a tear. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA -0.31% has risen 0.9% this past week through midday Friday, while the S&P 500 index SPX +0.29% has gained 1.3% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP +0.89% is up 1.4%. The latter two, with gains of 10% and 15%, respectively, in April, posted their best months since 2020. (Barron’s)
• More Americans Are Millionaires, But They Don’t Feel Rich: About 1 in 6 households nationwide has a net worth above $1 million, and, because the occasional billionaire tilts the scale, the average American family has passed that seven-figure benchmark. The disconnect between wealth on paper and felt affluence keeps widening. Says a lot about asset-price inflation, lifestyle creep, and sentiment. (Washington Post) see also The Mathematical Reason Most People Never “Make It”: The uncomfortable truth about effort, outcome, and the math that connects them all. (The Write Path)
• So, About That AI Bubble: The capex math behind the AI buildout is starting to wobble even at the leaders. Thanks to the rise of Claude Code and other AI agents, revenues are finally catching up to the hype. (The Atlantic)
• Bizarre moment at Berkshire’s annual meeting spotlights cyber risk: Kicking off the Q&A on Saturday morning, the spotlight went to a video where “Warren from Omaha” asked the first question. Hi. My name is Warren from Omaha. I’ve recently undergone, let’s call it, a significant change in role. And I have, well, let’s just say, a not insignificant portion of my net worth tied up in Berkshire stock… (TKer)
• You Have No Idea How Much You Still Use BlackBerry: Once left for dead, the company is making money again with hidden software in 275 million cars. You use it every day without knowing it. (Wall Street Journal)
• Surging HOA Fees Are Pushing Homeowners to the Brink: The hidden second mortgage no one underwrites for: HOA fees climbing faster than wages and faster than insurance premiums. Affordability has many tentacles. Monthly costs of homeowners associations have jumped 26% since 2019; owners can also be hit with special fees for large repairs (Wall Street Journal)
• We Made Technology Easy to Use: That was a mistake: The problem isn’t usability itself; it’s what it has become—a design approach that replaced any need whatsoever to understand complex systems with the ability to thoughtlessly interact with them. (Slate)
• The particles in the early Universe painted a different picture: Cosmology done patiently. Ethan Siegel walks through what the cosmic baby pictures actually reveal about matter, antimatter, and why we ended up here at all. Today, we have the Standard Model of particles with four fundamental forces governing them. But things weren’t always the way they are now. (Starts With A Bang)
• Stephen Colbert Gets Ready to Hang It Up: The Late Show host walks toward the exit. Late-night TV’s slow-motion collapse continues, one host at a time. (New York Times) see also How a Deep State Bureaucrat Became Trump’s ‘Fake News’ Enforcer: Brendan Carr is pointing his MAGA flamethrower at Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and the American news media (Businessweek)
• Inside the Enhanced Games, Where Athletes Compete on Steroids. And Growth Hormones. And Adderall: Vanity Fair goes inside the doping-by-design Olympics. The future of sports may be more pharmacology than physiology — and the spectators don’t seem to mind. Most drugs are banned in the world of elite sports, but not here. In this competition—backed by Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr., and Saudi royalty—the athletes are guinea pigs. And if those backers have their way, you’re next. (Vanity Fair)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Lawrence Calcano, CEO and Chairman of iCapital, The firm is a fintech platform built to be the OS for alternative investments and complex products for financial advisors, wealth managers, and banks. The firm has over $1.2 trillion in active global assets on platform, across 2,455 funds used by 123,ooo financial professionals.
More than half of all Polymarket “long shot” bets on military action pay off
Source: Ars Technica
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