My back-to-work morning train WFB reads:
• Why the Enormous IPOs Won’t Sink the Market. This is a potential stock market sea change. For the past 23 years, the supply of shares has been shrinking. Companies have bought back gobs of stock while turning stingy on dividends—they like that buybacks don’t require an ongoing commitment. Fewer companies have gone public, and more have been taken private, resulting in thousands fewer listed companies since the mid-1990s. (Barron’s)
• Predicting AI job exposure: Many people would like to analyse which jobs, companies and industries are most exposed to AI, and assign scores, build charts, and map that against the progress of LLMs. I think this is mostly impossible: you don’t know how the jobs will change, you don’t know what else will change around this, and you can’t measure work like that anyway. (Benedict Evans) see also A Minimum Wage Natural Experiment Has Been Running for Over a Decade: Arin Dube on the U.S. minimum-wage natural experiment hiding in plain sight. The estimated employment elasticities keep shrinking; the policy debate keeps not noticing. When 30 States Raised Minimum Wages, What Happened to Pay and Jobs? (Arin’s Substack)
• Bitcoin’s long-term return may actually be close to zero — and that could be just what it needs: MarketWatch runs the math on Bitcoin’s long-term expected return and lands somewhere near zero. Counterintuitive piece worth reading even if you disagree. (MarketWatch)
• How Americans Caught Gold Fever Again: New Yorker on the cultural return of gold-as-savings as faith in the dollar slips at the margins. The metal always tells you something about the moment. Soaring gold prices, viral panning influencers, macho gold-mining reality shows, and Trump’s gold obsession have ignited a craze for prospecting not seen since 1849. (New Yorker)
• Parents are ‘going broke on berries’: WaPo on the genuinely insane berry inflation hitting young families. Trivial-sounding category, real budget bite — and a useful proxy for ag-supply-chain stress. (Washington Post)
• For the first time, wind and solar generated more electricity than gas worldwide in April 2026: Rapid wind and solar growth is weakening the case for imported gas even during the latest energy crisis. Ember marks the crossover: renewables passed gas globally in April. A milestone that arrived faster than even the optimists had penciled in. (Ember)
• Americans Are Keeping Their Cars Longer Than Ever—and Remaking the Auto Industry: Automakers, dealers and repair shops are changing business practices to adapt to a new normal: the 13-year-old car. WSJ on the average vehicle age hitting a new high and what it does to the OEM business model. Service and parts are now the cycle. (Wall Street Journal) see also This group just built affordable housing in SF for half the price and twice as fast: Apartments for formerly homeless seniors at 1633 Valencia St. show what can happen when developers and lenders are aligned from the start. (San Francisco Standard)
• L’Affaire Siloxane How antiperspirant fumes nearly got NASA to evacuate the space station. Cegłowski on the unfolding silicone-additive scandal nobody’s quite covering. Patient, methodical, and very Cegłowski. (Mars For The Rest Of Us)
• Nearly Everyone, Everywhere, Veers Left When Walking: Researchers are at a loss for why people across cultures and ages, regardless of their dominant hand, have a natural bias toward wandering in a counterclockwise direction. NYT on the surprisingly universal human bias toward counterclockwise drift. A small but charming reminder that we’re stranger creatures than we realize. Researchers are at a loss for why people across cultures and ages, regardless of their dominant hand, have a natural bias toward wandering in a counterclockwise direction. (New York Times)
• Before Taylor Swift Bought Her House, Rebekah Harkness’s Parties Were the Stuff of Legend: Vanity Fair on the wild Newport socialite whose Rhode Island mansion Taylor Swift now owns. The house has more lore per square foot than most museums. A closer look at the fabulous Rhode Island heiress’s unforgettable midcentury soirees—which might meet their match if Swift and Travis Kelce hold their own wedding at her old estate. (Vanity Fair)
Video of the day: The reason this NYC cup has quietly disappeared
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jean Eric Salata, Chair of EQT Group and Chair of EQT Asia. EQT is a purpose-driven global investment organization with over $310 billion in total assets under management, making it the largest private markets firm headquartered outside the United States.
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