Articles of the week
Are You Making These 5 Common Portfolio Mistakes? Problem spots in real-world portfolios—and how to fix them. (Morningstar)
The Evolution of Financial Advice. To be a successful investor you need to possess a number of different traits. You need to understand how math, statistics and probabilities work. You need to understand how corporations and the global economy generally function over the long haul. You need an understanding of how the different asset classes behave from a risk and reward perspective. You also need a deep understanding of financial market history from booms to busts. And you need the emotional discipline to stick with a reasonable investment strategy from manias to panics and everything in between. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
Gold Is No Longer a Good Hedge Against Bad Times: The precious metal has become just another cyclical asset, no longer a useful harbinger of social and economic collapse. (Bloomberg)
He Went After Crypto Companies. Then Someone Came After Him. Kyle Roche was a rising star in the field of cryptocurrency law — until his career imploded. Who orchestrated his downfall? (New York Times)
Arizona Is Running Out of Cheap Water. Investors Saw It Coming: The state just moved to restrict housing construction around Phoenix as groundwater demand outstrips supply. But fast-growing towns are already buying water from elsewhere — and investors’ bets are paying off. (Bloomberg)
The Ugly Shoes Now Worth Billions of Dollars: Hokas are the chunky sneakers of choice for runners. And nurses. And waiters. And teens. And grandpas. How did shoes that were huge, weird and French conquer America’s hearts, wallets and feet? (Wall Street Journal)
AI Risk-Reward: AI risks, the future of oil, and some recent talks. There are, to be clear, immense opportunities for human flourishing here, but they won’t come from arm-waving about how technology “always” creates more jobs than it destroys. Or by name-calling critics, or suggesting malign motives to nuanced opinions about the complex role of technology in modern societies. As recent research by David Autor, Daron Acemoglu, and others has made clear, technology’s jobs-related impacts are better thought of as a series of path-dependent choices than as some universal economic constant. (Paul Kedrosky)
How queer went corporate: The 50-year evolution of LGBTQ+ marketing: Inclusive ads from Miller Lite to Subaru to Bud Light have gone from trailblazing to commonplace to controversial again. (Washington Post)
Well-funded Christian group behind US effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights: Advocacy groups condemn Alliance Defending Freedom as ‘a danger to every American who values their freedoms’. (The Guardian)
Inside North Korea: “We are stuck, waiting to die”. For months, the BBC has been communicating in secret with three North Koreans living in the country. They expose, for the first time, the disaster unfolding there since the government sealed the borders more than three years ago. (BBC)
Trump’s Fox News interview was a defense attorney’s nightmare: The former president offered a confusing, and likely damaging, defense of his latest indictment. (Vox)
Everyone Says Social Media Is Bad for Teens. Proving It Is Another Thing. Parents, scientists and the surgeon general are worried. But there isn’t even a shared definition of what social media is. (New York Times)
Reddit’s Chief Says He Wants It to ‘Grow Up.’ Will Its Community Let It? As the social media site matures, its users and moderators have made their displeasure about corporate changes known, putting the company into a bind. (New York Times)
Is Taylor Swift Underpaid? Aside from her music, Taylor Swift is giving us food for thought — a reminder both that the effects of technological progress can be more complex than you think, and that the technologies that matter most may also not be the ones you think. (New York Times)
The Immortal Mel Brooks: The 2,000-year-old man turns 97 this summer. I talked with him about fighting in World War II, his life in comedy, and the secret to happiness. (The Atlantic)
The definitive ranking of modern movie Batmen, from Michael Keaton to Robert Pattinson: ‘The Flash’ has helped cement the legacies of Keaton and Ben Affleck. Here’s how they stack up against the others. (Washington Post)
The Man Who Broke Bowling Jason Belmonte’s two-handed technique made him an outcast. Then it made him the greatest—and changed the (GQ)
Dolby Atmos Wants You to Listen Up. (And Down. And Sideways.) True believers in the immersive audio format say it could restore a musical appreciation lost to a generation that has come up during the streaming era. (New York Times)