My early Monday morning reads:
• 2% of What? Redefining inflation is not the way to achieve price stability. Warsh confirmed that 2% is the target level, but he did not, and has not, confirmed that PCE prices are the yardstick. Aside from reading out results from the FOMC projections that he chose not to participate in, Warsh has not referred to PCE prices once during his confirmation hearing, first press conference, a central banker panel in Sintra, or two days of congressional testimony. PCE inflation is the yardstick at the Fed. That’s a glaring omission for a Fed Chair, and for a person who likes catchphrases, it’s unlikely to be an oversight. (Stay-At-Home Macro)
• SpaceX Slump Set to Wipe Out $1 Trillion in Value as Shares Slide: SpaceX shares tumbled on Friday, erasing more than $1 trillion in market value from the rocket and artificial intelligence giant’s all-time high. The stock fell 5.4% to $123.99 per share, giving the company a market value of $1.63 trillion. The value stood at $2.64 trillion at the close on June 16, its third day of trading.(Bloomberg).see also SpaceX Bonds Are Trading Like Junk Bonds. What Does That Mean for Investors? (The Globe and Mail)
• Nondiversifiable Risks in Investment Portfolios: The risks you can’t diversify away — geopolitical, systemic, regulatory — and why pretending they don’t exist is the most common failure in portfolio construction. (CFA Institute)
• Can Netflix Become (More Like) YouTube? Faster Than… YouTube is poised to unify the streaming championship belts… (Spyglass)
• How Trump’s Policies Cost US Travel Industry $40 Billion: Tariffs, toughened borders, and visa policies have pushed the US into a tourism trough. (Bloomberg)
• The Americans Striking It Rich in the Data-Center Buildout: One family sold its struggling farmland for $22 million, joining a new class of multimillionaires who are cashing in on the AI data-center boom. “Their 89-acre farm in this rural town of 4,000 might be worth more than $20 million. To Marilee and David Kiliti, that ridiculously high price sounded like a bunch of deer bologna.” 96 families in Salem Township, Pa., sold about 1,700 acres to data-center developer QTS for $586 million. (Wall Street Journal)
• Disaster Rehearsal: Faking death at O’Hare’s triennial airplane crash simulation. Morley Musick’s essay in n+1 on the strange ritual of preparing for catastrophes — the drills, the kits, the mental models — and what it reveals about how we process anxiety in an era of compounding crises. (n+1)
• Punctuation: A Generational Divide: Judith Shulevitz on commas, periods, and what texting has done to them. Can parents ever learn to text like their kids? Should they even try? (The Atlantic)
• Could That Museum Visit Help You Live Longer?: The data on arts engagement and longevity is surprisingly robust. Regular museum visits correlate with longer life — even after controlling for income, education, and health. A psychiatrist says engaging with the arts not only helps biologically. It can also make you feel more alive. (Wall Street Journal)
• This World Cup sealed it: Messi is the best male athlete of all time: Messi is the best player at the World Cup, and the best male athlete of all time. Ryan O’Hanlon makes the data-driven case (ESPN)
Video of the day: Why AI Can’t Take Your Job
Be sure to check out the latest Masters in Business with Jason Wenk, founder and CEO of Altruist, a modern custodian built as a clean sheet from the ground up, fully integrated with artificial intelligence. He began his career at Morgan Stanley before launching Retirement Wealth Advisors, and then FormulaFolios. The through-line of his career has been creating lower-cost, tech-enabled, financial advice.
Source: BIS
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