Is it time to talk about the defects of index funds now? That's the question being asked by Hunter Lewis in Barron's. He writes: Index funds have had a spectacular run. They collected $8.5 trillion in retail investment dollars by the end of the first quarter of this year, according to Morningstar, more than all active strategies together. Along the way, they became the dominant investment idea. Yet the stock market’s recent dip into bear-market territory raises new questions for these popular funds. Will indexing recover and go on to scale new heights? Or has the time come to consider its … [Read more...]
About Jeremy Jones, CFA
Disney Catches Netflix in Streaming Wars
The battle between Disney and Netflix for subscribers is fierce, and for the first time, Disney has pulled ahead. Christopher Grimes reports for the Financial Times: Walt Disney defied concerns about a slowdown in the streaming industry by adding a robust 14.4mn subscribers to its Disney Plus service in the latest quarter, pushing its total number of paying streaming customers to 221mn — slightly ahead of Netflix. But Disney reduced its long-term guidance for its total number of Disney Plus subscribers due to its recent loss of rights to stream Indian Premier League cricket matches. … [Read more...]
Prices for Electric Vehicles Going UP
Back in June, Tesla announced it was raising its prices. Select Model 3, S, Y, and X vehicles were affected by the bump. The recent price increase followed another major round of increases in March and was blamed on inflation and transportation costs. Now, Ford has announced an increase in prices for its new F-150 Lightning truck. The Lightning is Ford's electric truck and its base model will have a new starting price of $46,974, around $7,000 higher than before the announcement. Nora Eckert reports for The Wall Street Journal: The Dearborn, Mich., auto maker said Tuesday that it plans to … [Read more...]
Resilient Nordic Market Spawns Fast Growing Offshoot
The Nordic markets have been resilient compared to those of the rest of Europe over the last few years, and in Sweden, the junior market, Nasdaq's First North Growth Market, is becoming the continent's hottest. Ian Johnston writes for the Financial Times: Sweden’s junior market became Europe’s hottest market to raise funds for growth companies in the first half of the year as retail investors took advantage of favourable tax policies to snap up the index’s tech and healthcare stocks. Companies on Nasdaq’s First North Growth Market, based in Stockholm, have raised £1.6bn to date this year, … [Read more...]
SHOCK: Home Prices FALL in San Francisco as Market Dries Up
San Francisco was the only major U.S. city in June to see its home prices fall. Crime, cost of living, and the crypto crash are all pulling down demand for housing in the city. Bloomberg's John Gittelsohn reports: A palatial five-bedroom home built in 1932 with stained-glass windows, hand-carved doors and jaw-dropping hillside views of downtown San Francisco hit the market in April for $9.5 million. In June, the owners dropped the price to $7 million. It went up for auction last week with an opening bid of $4.5 million. No offers emerged. That kind of pullback is a stark turn for a … [Read more...]
Despite All the Money Involved, Crypto Is Still a Wild Market
Cryptocurrency markets are still in the "wild" stage of their development, despite all the money involved. In the Financial Times, Lex analyzes the state of the crypto market today, writing: In percentage terms, the cryptocurrency crash of 2018 was worse than the winter that is currently gripping crypto markets. The difference this time round is the amount of money involved. In 2018, about $700bn was wiped from the market’s high point, according to price-tracking site CoinGecko. So far this year, the crypto market’s value has fallen by more than $1.2tn. To that total can be added millions … [Read more...]
Big Corporations Making Big Investments
Big companies in many sectors are making big investments in things like real estate, equipment, and technology. The Wall Street Journal's Hannah Miao reports on their growing capital expenditures, writing: The biggest U.S. companies keep stepping up their spending on capital projects, an encouraging signal to investors in an uncertain economic climate. Companies from Google parent Alphabet Inc . to General Motors Co. to PepsiCo Inc. are among those that have increased spending on big-ticket items, such as real estate, equipment or technology, to fuel growth. The investments are generally … [Read more...]
HEDGE FUND CARNAGE: Second Worst Performance Ever
Hedge funds are suffering from the second worst year of performance on record, after only the Financial Crisis year of 2008. Leading the losses are funds with Long-short positions. Laurence Fletcher reports in the Financial Times, writing: Hedge funds are heading for one of their worst years of performance on record, leaving investors frustrated with how many managers have failed to offset sharp falls in equity and bond markets. Funds were down 5.6 per cent on average in the first six months of 2022, according to HFR. While a narrower HFR daily index of performance shows them clawing back … [Read more...]
How to Stabilize Stablecoins
In an extensive article in the Financial Times, Willem Buiter and Anne Sibert explain the benefits and problems with stablecoins, and how to maximize and solve them respectively. They write: As the world of decentralised finance continues to grow, there is much demand for a digital currency fit for use in blockchain-based applications with near-real-time, peer-to-peer global settlement that can be used as a medium of exchange. However, most cryptocurrencies are too volatile for this and there are also issues with central bank digital currencies. CBDCs may not be based on the distributed … [Read more...]
Chinese Students Fall for Their Government’s Deep Espionage Tactics
Language students in China have been duped into translation duties for government spy hacking group APT40, reports Eleanor Olcott and Helen Warrell in the Financial Times. They write: Chinese university students have been lured to work at a secretive technology company that masked the true nature of their jobs: researching western targets for spying and translating hacked documents as part of Beijing’s industrial-scale intelligence regime. The Financial Times has identified and contacted 140 potential translators, mostly recent graduates who have studied English at public universities in … [Read more...]
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