My mid-week morning train WFH reads:
• University Endowments Are About to Strike It Big on the SpaceX IPO: WSJ on the endowment mark-ups about to land. The illiquid bet, finally meeting the liquidity event — and a reminder that the smart-money story is mostly an access story. (Wall Street Journal)
• Driverless Trucks Are Here — and They’re Delivering Bags of Doritos: WSJ on PepsiCo’s autonomous freight rollout across the Sun Belt. The future arrives via the snack aisle, as it usually does. PepsiCo has 41 trucks on the road in Arizona, Texas and Arkansas, bringing the technology into the mainstream (Wall Street Journal) see also Waymo is winning in San Francisco: New data shows that the self-driving car service has captured more than a quarter of the city’s rideshare market in just 20 months. Waymo has reportedly surpassed Lyft in market share in San Francisco. A recent poll shows that more San Francisco voters see self-driving cars positively. The robotaxi inflection happened while everyone was looking somewhere else. (Fast Company)
• How Wise is the Crowd in Prediction Markets: QuantPedia surveys the empirical literature on prediction-market accuracy. Wise on average, dumb at the tails, and easy to manipulate when liquidity is thin. (QuantPedia)
• How Americans Caught Gold Fever Again: 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 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. (New Yorker)
• The 24-Year-Old AI Wiz Who Counts Jane Street as an Investor: WSJ on the young founder Jane Street decided to back. Half origin story, half cautionary tale about who’s getting handed market infrastructure. (Wall Street Journal)
• Don’t Look Down: Reflections on Cross-Asset Drawdowns: Every asset draws down. The question is when, how deep, and what else is falling with it? Diversification may help, but won’t solve all your problems all the time. Over the past century, the major asset classes haven’t all crashed at once. But seldom have all been simultaneously in the clear Man Group with a rigorous walk through cross-asset drawdown statistics — and what they tell you about correlation regimes you don’t see until you need them. Sober piece for sober times. (Man Group)
• Body Language: Communication technologies have been reshaping the human body in a slow migration down the arm. They’ve run out of body. Now they’re reshaping the message. A short, sharp essay on the ways our bodies broadcast what our minds are trying to hide. Worth the five minutes. (Terry Godier)
• 12 Things Orthopedic Surgeons Do to Maintain Speed, Balance, and Longevity. “I train legs like my life depends on it,” he says. “And statistically, it does.” Time’s service piece on the habits ortho surgeons actually run on their own bodies. Less novel than billed, more useful than the average wellness listicle. (Time)
• Why Everyone Wants Jon Ossoff to Run for President: NYT op-ed on the Ossoff-for-president bubble forming inside the Democratic donor class. A reminder that “electable” usually means “familiar to the people who pay for ads.” (New York Times)
• A record die-off of sea stars was followed by something that stunned biologists: The creatures almost went extinct along the West Coast a decade ago. Recently, they have been making a comeback After the worst sea-star die-off ever recorded, a surprise rebound on parts of the West Coast. Genuinely heartening science. (Washington Post)
Video of the day: Why No One Wants to Stay in New York’s Most Iconic Building
Be sure to check out our BONUS Masters in Business with Joe McLean, Managing Partner at MAI Capital Management, where he leads firm’s Sports & Entertainment division, serving 100s of pro athletes/entertainers across NBA, NFL, MLB, PGA + NASCAR. His path to finance runs directly through the locker room as a 4-year NCAA Division 1 player at U of Arizona. Dubbed the athlete’s “Money Whisperer” by the New York Times, he is known for his non-negotiable 60% savings mandate for clients.
Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.
