Welcome to September! Kick the month off right with your morning reads:
• Higher Yields Are a Boon for Muni Bond Buyers: The rise in bond yields has been a good news/bad news story. For the U.S. Treasury, the increase has been disquieting and has elicited an extraordinary scheme to double its buying of long-term maturities to boost their prices and suppress their yields. Hilltop’s Tom Kozlik on municipal yields hitting some of their most compelling levels in years — and unlike Treasuries, munis still reward investors for extending maturities. (Barron’s)
• How Much Is the Iran War Costing Americans?: John Cassidy on why a proper calculation must take in much more than just the military costs. (New Yorker) see also How the War in Iran Is Redrawing the Global Energy Map: Coco Liu on what six months of disrupted Middle Eastern production and a contested Strait of Hormuz have done — chiefly, pushing governments and consumers toward renewables. (Bloomberg)
• ‘A Roth IRA on Steroids’: Wealthy Americans Find Another Tax-Free Way to Invest: On the tax-free vehicle one adviser calls “a Roth IRA on steroids for people who can afford it and want to leave it to their heirs.” Private-placement life insurance contracts allow unlimited investments to grow tax-free. (Wall Street Journal)
• America’s Next Grocery Shock Is Brewing: Erica Pandey on the forces piling up beyond beef, coffee, and chocolate — expensive grain, soaring fertilizer, and more. (Axios)
• Scott Bessent Takes On Bond Vigilantes in $32tn Treasury Market: George Steer on the Treasury’s plan, which stunned Wall Street, to “at least double” its purchases of long-term government bonds — dismissed by investors as a “band-aid on a bullet hole” amid a $40tn debt burden and smouldering inflation. (Financial Times) see also What Is Scott Bessent Doing With the $32tn Treasury Market — and Will It Work?: Claire Jones on the former financier’s sternest test yet. (Financial Times)
• The Online Shopping Trend Where You Buy Nothing: Itika Sharma Punit on South Korea’s “dopamine sites,” where the pleasure comes from browsing, curating, and tracking — not from a delivery. (Rest of World)
• How Paris swapped cars for bikes – and transformed its streets: Under Anne Hidalgo – mayor for 12 years until last week – the French capital added bike lanes, cut traffic and reclaimed public space, but not without resistance (The Guardian)
• These Generals Fought for Israel. Now They See ‘Jewish Terrorism’ as the Threat.: Ronen Bergman on the growing number of former Israeli generals, intelligence officials, and prime ministers accusing West Bank settlers of ethnic cleansing with government support. “Once a society behaves this way, that society is doomed.” (New York Times)
• Your Brain May Not Actually “Make” Decisions: Indiana University’s Tom James on why the perceive-then-decide sequence we all imagine may be very different from what actually happens inside the brain. (ScienceDaily)
• How Arena Club and Fanatics Are Turning Baseball Cards Into Online Casinos: Derek Jeter, fresh off his Hall of Fame induction, became the face of a startup that digitizes pack-ripping — turning an age-old hobby into something that resembles online gambling. (Barron’s)
Video of the day: I Tracked Down the Company Ruining Fruit
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business with David Booth, Founder, Chairman, and former CEO of Dimensional Funds Advisors. DFA just crossed $1 trillion dollars, and has become the largest active equity ETF manager. Booth’s new book is “Stay Calm: Learn to Embrace Uncertainty in Investing and Life.”
Earth’s oceans just broke a heat record. The implications will be massive
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
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