My back-to-work morning train WFH reads:
• The Math Behind a $100 Million Home? Spoiler: It Doesn’t Always Add Up.: Mansion Global on the comps, carrying costs, and discount that explain why most nine-figure listings sit. The trophy-asset market is mostly trophies, not assets. When sales data is too scarce for a conventional appraisal, brokers and economists say a nine-figure price comes down to rarity, security and a story that cannot be replicated (Mansion Global)
• SpaceX won’t make the S&P 500 Choose your index wisely: While we were sleeping, S&P Dow Jones Indices came out with their long awaited results to their Index Consultation on Treatment of MegaCap Companies. Following consultations by Nasdaq, FTSE Russell, and Morningstar CRSP — all of whom decided to throw the previous rule book out the window and fast-track inclusion of the megacap telecom value stock — we’d thought this was going to be a formality. We were wrong. (Financial Times) see also Nobody Knows Anything, SpaceX IPO edition: I find it hilarious that anyone imagines they forecast revenues and/or profits a decade and a half into the future, let alone $3.4 trillion. Hey, you gotta move some shares, and this seems to be one way to accomplish that. (The Big Picture)
• The Navy Makes Our Economy Float. Iran Is a Dark Cloud. The emergence of military drones in the 21st century could undermine the importance of naval supremacy. The emergence of military drones in the 21st century could undermine the importance of naval supremacy. (Barron’s)
• “A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy.” How to get out of credit card debt. Along the conversation, he was finally able to get something off his chest that he’d been keeping in for months. A topic that effects nearly everyone at some point: Credit card debt. He walked me through how he got there, and that before the wedding, this needs to go away ASAP. (Wealth Found Me)
• The Law of Averages: A short essay on the practical limits of “things will revert to the mean” — and how the framing keeps tricking investors into the wrong holding period. Useful evergreen read. Long before futures or reinsurance, antiquity had its ways of pricing the weather, and one of them still hides in a word every analyst uses. (Unstable Equilibria)
• From 15 hours to one minute: How AI/ML is speeding up GM’s development: From CFD and FEA to digital twins, carmaking now involves a lot of virtualization. (Ars Technica)
• America’s Data-Center Build-Out Is Falling Way Behind Schedule: WSJ on the construction, transformer, and interconnect bottlenecks already stretching AI cap-ex timelines by years. The story underneath every “AI capex cycle” deck. (Wall Street Journal)
• Disney Finds Its Spine “A large part of my role is to call out this administration’s abuses of the First Amendment, particularly when it chooses to weaponize the FCC in trying to shut down any voices that it doesn’t like,” said Gomez. “And we see this constantly, there is a constant infringement on the free press and on the First Amendment and on the rights of viewers and listeners to see and hear what they want to see.” (Slate)
• The Seven Habits That Lead to Happiness in Old Age: Your well-being is like a retirement account: The sooner you invest, the greater your returns will be. Arthur Brooks in The Atlantic on the Harvard-study habit list — the seven things that keep showing up in the data on happy seventy-year-olds. Worth the re-read. Your well-being is like a retirement account: The sooner you invest, the greater your returns will be. (The Atlantic) see also The surprising science-backed reason being in nature makes you feel good: A new study suggests spending time in nature may boost body appreciation, self-compassion and overall life satisfaction. WaPo on the cortisol-and-vagal-tone evidence for why a walk in the woods actually moves the needle. The kind of piece worth re-reading every time you skip your walk. (Washington Post)
• Oakley Can Watch the Knicks at the Garden. That Doesn’t Mean He Will. The 1990s Knicks star, hasn’t been to a game at Madison Square Garden in nearly a decade because of a legal battle. NYT on the Charles Oakley reconciliation with MSG — quietly resolved, conspicuously not celebrated. Knicks-as-soap-opera, late chapter. (New York Times)
Video of the day: Psychology of Generation Jones
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Chris Davis, Chairman and Portfolio Manager of Davis Funds. The firm oversees $20 billion in client assets, with Davis (and colleagues) co-investing $2 billion in their own mineus alongside shareholders. Davis was named Morningstar’s Portfolio Manager of the Year; he also sits on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola.
Vanguard’s S&P 500 tracker is the first ETF to hit $1tn of assets under (minimal) management.
Source: Financial Times
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