Stock Market, Global Economy, Wine, and Steve Ballmer

Wednesday morning articles

• What Happens After a Bad Year in the Stock Market? The year is still young of course but there is an obvious divergence in the price action between 2022 and 2023. This is a good reminder about what generally tends to happen in different market environments. Volatility clusters in a downtrend so you get both big down days and big up days even as the market’s general direction is lower. In up-trending markets you don’t see as many big moves in either direction. You take the stairs up at a measured pace and the elevators down in a hurry. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Here’s a Better Way to Identify Quality Stocks: According to new research, the annual return on a portfolio of quality stocks can be enhanced by an average of .60 percent when investors include intangible assets in their definition of quality. (Institutional Investor)

• The Future of AI Relies on a High School Teacher’s Free Database: With over five billion images, LAION has become central to the future of artificial intelligence — and a growing debate over how to regulate it. (Bloomberg)

• The iPhone Setting Thieves Use to Lock You Out of Your Apple Account: The recovery key was designed to make Apple IDs safer. Instead, these victims permanently lost family photos and other precious digital possessions. (Wall Street Journal) 

• Apple’s New Savings Account Makes iPhones More Valuable—for Thieves: Apple is now paying you to have an iPhone! That’s right. Sign up for the savings account now available through Apple Wallet, administered by Goldman Sachs, and you will get an interest rate of 4.15%, Apple. (The Information)

• The global economy’s slow-motion reset: We are now in the early stages of a slow-moving process of markets, companies and governments adapting and readjusting to that reality. (Axios)

• Why Tucker Carlson’s Exit From Fox News Looks Like an Execution: The biggest star in cable news didn’t get to give a proper goodbye from his prime-time perch. But will Carlson go quietly into the night? (Vanity Fair) but see also Tucker’s Successor Will Be Worse: The history of Fox News shows that the network and its issues are larger than any one anchor. (The Atlantic)

• Schizophrenia at the IMF: At long last, the International Monetary Fund has begun to recognize that the best way to reduce sovereign debt is by boosting economic growth, rather than insisting on fiscal retrenchment. But this new understanding is being undermined by a lingering adherence to growth-inhibiting austerity policies. (Project Syndicate)

• What Was Twitter, Anyway? Whether the platform is dying or not, it’s time to reckon with how exactly it broke our brains. (New York Times Magazine) see also How Elon Musk Turned the Blue Checkmark Into a Scarlet Letter: A weekend-long masterclass in business failure. (Slate)

• 5 Big Wine Books to Buy Now and Use Forever: The reference guides our wine columnist relies on are ambitious, comprehensive, deeply researched and enduringly relevant. These are the books, old and new, she gives her highest recommendation. (Wall Street Journal)

• Judicial record undermines Clarence Thomas defence in luxury gifts scandal: Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow was linked to a conservative group that had court business while Thomas was on the bench. (The Guardian)

• The controversial article Matthew Kacsmaryk did not disclose to the Senate: The judge who delivered a high-stakes abortion pills ruling last week removed his name from a law review article during his judicial nomination process, emails show (Washington Post)  

• The Wildest Seat in the NBA Is the One Next to Steve Ballmer: The owner of the Los Angeles Clippers goes viral for his courtside reactions—and no one’s more aware of it than his game day neighbors. (Wall Street Journal)

The Pandemic, Hedge Funds, and the Economy

Tuesday morning articles

• The Pandemic Didn’t Upend US Geography: Three years after Covid began, big cities are still standing. But work and housing shifts are translating to some enduring changes. (CityLab)

• So You Want to Launch a Hedge Fund? The first thing you need to do as a new fund is raise some seed capital. Having a wealthy benefactor helps; failing that, it can be hard work. Dan Loeb of Third Point, a New York-based hedge fund focused on event-driven, value-oriented investing with $16 billion in assets under management, describes how he spent six months in the early 1990s driving around the country opening savings accounts at mutually held savings and loans companies which later demutualized, providing the seed capital for his fund. (Net Interest)

• The Super Rich Are Are Nervous About the Economy. Should You Be? Don’t let the abundance of high-end designer wear adorning the Wall Street spouses fool you. Despite a rebound in stocks in the first quarter, it isn’t like the environment is now any easier to navigate. Sharply higher interest rates and the recent banking sector meltdown are making life difficult not only for common folk but for masters of the universe. (Barron’s)

• Short-Term & Long-Term Inflation Trends: It’s not coming down as fast as some people would like but at least the trend is lower. And once those 8-9% readings start dropping off it wouldn’t surprise me to see 2-3% inflation by the end of the summer. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• We’ve Been Measuring the Economy All Wrong: Questionable theoretical assumptions drive economic models to rubber-stamp disastrous policy changes. (The Atlantic)

• Fox News won. Dominion won. The rest of us lost. Rupert Murdoch’s company doesn’t like paying the $787 million settlement. But now it’s back to business as usual. (Vox)

• What Your Favorite Personality Test Says About You: Are you a Myers-Briggs person, an Enneagram person, or something else? The Atlantic made a quiz to help you find out. (The Atlantic)

• Ticks Are Bringing Disease to a Backyard Near You: Bites, infections are increasing as temperatures warm and deer populations grow. (Wall Street Journal)

• Colorado River snaking through Grand Canyon most endangered US waterway: Unique ecosystem on the brink of collapse due to climate crisis and mismanagement, says conservation group American Rivers (The Guardian)

• Why It Matters That Trump Is Leading The 2024 Primary Field In Endorsements: Leaders in FiveThirtyEight endorsement points and national primary polls on the day before the Iowa caucuses, and the eventual nominees, in every Democratic and Republican presidential primary without an incumbent since 1972. Endorsements are about as predictive of primaries as polls. (fivethirtyeight)

• The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City: NYT critic, Pete Wells, ranks his favorites in all five boroughs. (New York Times)

Savings Accounts, Stock Market, and Nikola Jokic

Monday morning articles

• With 4% Savings Accounts, Is It Finally Time to Break Up With Your Bank? Returns on cash investments—no pain, just guaranteed gains!—is tempting savers to get rich gradually again. (Businessweek)

• When your neighbors become your overlords: How HOAs became an unnecessary necessary evil. (Vox)

• How to Price Your Home For Today’s Market (And Any Market, Really) From researching comps to understanding current market conditions, the steps you can take to determine the best asking price for your home. (Wall Street Journal)

• Meet 2023’s Hedge Fund Rising Stars: These ten up-and-comers will be honored at Institutional Investor’s Hedge Fund Industry Awards on May 11. (Institutional Investor)

• Picking a Stock for the Year 2048: Investment funds run by some college students are taking on an extraordinary challenge: Picking stocks for the next 25 years and then never trading them. (Wall Street Journal)

• When did mass layoffs become so normal? A brief history of engineered job insecurity in America. (Vox)

• When Apple Comes Calling, ‘It’s the Kiss of Death’ Aspiring partners accuse tech giant of copying their ideas; Apple says it plays by the rules. (Wall Street Journal)

• Republicans Fight a Solar Boom That’s Made Texas King of Clean Energy: The political backlash against ESG is behind a push to penalize renewables. (Businessweek)

• The Subtle Moments That Separate Nikola Jokic: The Denver Nuggets’ two-time MVP isn’t at his most dangerous with the ball, but rather right before receiving it. That moment is when the point guard trapped in the 7-footer’s body is most unstoppable. (The Ringer)

Fox Succession Drama, Groundwater, and the Housing Market

Friday morning articles

• Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words (Steve Jobs Archive)

• Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama: With the $1.6 billion Dominion lawsuit threatening to hobble Fox News, the ink on his divorce to Jerry Hall still wet, and his broken engagement to Ann Lesley Smith even fresher, it’s been a chaotic 12 months for the 92-year-old conservative media baron. As Fox and family insiders tell it, this could just be the beginning. (Vanity Fair)

• Groundwater Gold Rush: Banks, pension funds and insurers have been turning California’s scarce water into enormous profits, leaving people with less to drink. (Bloomberg)

• The False Promise of Opportunity Zones: Tax breaks for investors don’t help poor communities. Rather than court venture capital, cities must build new institutions to grow neighborhood wealth. (Boston Review)

• How does a magician trick other magicians? We went to find out. At the “magic Olympics,” magicians from around the world compete to be deemed the world’s best. To win, they must fool each other. (National Geographic)

• The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin: Bitcoin mines cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price. (New York Times)

• The False Promise of Opportunity Zones: Tax breaks for investors don’t help poor communities. Rather than court venture capital, cities must build new institutions to grow neighborhood wealth. (Boston Review)

• A small town became the center of a QAnon storm. Now it’s fighting back: The Netherlands’ most notorious conspiracy theorist is now in prison. (Ars Technica)

• At FTX, Multimillion-Dollar Expenses Were Approved by Emoji: Report outlines control failures at the failed crypto firm. (Wall Street Journal)

• Rise of the Climate Rating Agencies: Government and the private sector rely increasingly on risk-modeling firms that claim they can zero in on exposure to climate change. The independent modelers look a lot like rating agencies. (American Prospect)

• $388 in Sushi. Just a $20 Tip: The Brutal Math of Uber Eats and DoorDash Delivery drivers were hailed as pandemic heroes. But they say the rise of contactless delivery has made customers less inclined to tip generously and gig work is becoming an even harder way to make a living. (New York Times)

• Florida health officials removed key data from COVID vaccine report: The surgeon general’s guidance against the vaccine for young men ignored results showing infection was a greater risk for cardiac-related deaths. (Tampa Bay Times)

• The Super Rich Are Worried. Should You Be? We human beings act irrationally, which makes for bursts of creativity in the arts and, yes, even on Wall Street, but inevitably precipitates overexuberance in capital markets and bank runs. It also means that there is probably some limit on the marginal utility of incremental units of regulation, I suppose. But does that mean we can never tame these spirits? (Barron’s)

• There is No Index Fund For the Housing Market: While stock market ownership during the Great Depression was a rounding error of the total population, plenty of people owned houses. Real estate got obliterated just like everything else in the economy back then but the homeownership rate still only got as low as 44% following the Great Depression. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• No Sellers, No Buyers: Like every other market in the world, real estate has a large psychological component. But unlike liquid markets where Animal Spirits can dominate, primary residences are more governed by arithmetic than almost anything else. The prices are what they are, and you can either pay for the mortgage or you cannot. (Irrelevant Investor)

• Here’s Where Market Timing Works: Factor timing has its champions and skeptics — so academics set out to find an answer to the controversial practice. (Institutional Investor)

• The inside story of Credit Suisse’s collapse, by Credit Suisse: Dispatches from the room where nothing was happening. (Financial Times)

• Elon Musk: Owning Twitter has been “quite painful” and “a rollercoaster”: The multi-billionaire entrepreneur said he would sell the company if the right person came along. Musk, who also runs car maker Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX, bought Twitter for $44bn in October. The interview at the firm’s HQ in San Francisco also covered the mass lay-offs, misinformation and his work habits. (BBC)

• Twitter Isn’t a Company Anymore: It’s been merged into a new entity called X Corp. Here’s what that could mean. (Slate)

• Abortion was a 50/50 issue. Now, it’s Republican quicksand. Six in 10 voters support legal abortion in most cases. Just over a third want it to be entirely or mostly illegal. (Politico)

• China May Not Need Western Technology Much Longer: The latest ranking of global spending on research and development has US tech companies on top and Chinese rivals on the rise. (Bloomberg)

• ‘Secret Invasion’ Revealed: Inside Samuel L. Jackson’s Eye-Opening New Marvel Series. Why he has no eyepatch, where you’ve seen Emilia Clarke’s mystery character before, and 10 new images from the shape-shifting alien saga. (Vanity Fair)

Broke Millennials, Tax Season, and Housing Prices

Thursday morning articles

• The Myth of the Broke Millennial: After a rough start, the generation is thriving. Why doesn’t it feel that way? (The Atlantic)

• How 2022 Became a Record Year for US Income Taxes: An asset-price boom, a progressive tax code and inflation interacted to drive effective rates higher than ever. Now the process is working in reverse. (Bloomberg)

• Tax season is getting longer. Blame climate change. Tax Day is April 18, but the IRS has postponed tax deadlines for filers in parts of seven states because of natural disasters. (Washington Post)

• Will We Ever See Affordable Housing Prices Again? You can see those trends were already in place before the pandemic since millennials are now the biggest demographic in the United States. The demographic wave of millennials in their Household Formation years more than made up for the remote work phenomenon. This same demographic wave of household formation is making it more difficult for housing prices to fall substantially. (Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Unexpected Reason Apple Is Dominating the U.S. Smartphone Market: It’s not just lavish marketing and the threat of green bubbles—Apple’s commitment to supporting old phones has allowed it to capture a part of the market once cornered by inexpensive Android devices. (Wall Street Journal)

• Twitter Is Broken. Thanks, Elon. About six months ago, Elon Musk bought your favorite neighborhood bar. Then he fired veteran bouncers and bartenders, tried to stiff the landlord and at least one vendor, and demanded that regulars pay a cover charge. He’s frequently struggled to serve his customers, yet he’s penalized them for mentioning the competition. He’s tamped down the revelry in general, really — a lot of conversation at his watering hole has been drowned out by Musk’s own never-ending stage act, which consists mainly of him yelling dad jokes at customers through a bullhorn. (New York Times)

• Fox News Lost the Lawsuit but Won the War: Dominion’s choice to settle comes as a great disappointment to many critics of Fox, and is also probably a smart financial decision. For the critics, this case was about democracy and disinformation and provided an opportunity to hold Fox accountable for years of broadcasting hogwash. For Dominion, it was primarily about business. No matter how lofty the language its spokespeople used, the company didn’t sue to fix the American media landscape. (The Atlantic)

• Why aren’t we taking every Chinese refugee we can? Let’s be the City on a Hill again. (Noahpinion)

• The Exhausting History of Fatigue: Having too much to do can be tiring; having nothing to do may be worse. (New Yorker)

• Can the Knicks’ Youth Movement Push Them Over the Hump? Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle deserve much of the credit for the Knicks’ success this season. But New York wouldn’t be in this position if not for its young core, and that group just might be the X factor in the team’s first-round series against the Cavs. (The Ringer)

Accounting Fraud, Short Selling, and the Music Business

Wednesday morning articles

• A beginner’s guide to accounting fraud (and how to get away with it): A history in the faking: The mechanics of making up sales are pretty simple. If we’re running a business and want to boost our top line, all we have to do is phone a friend. A good friend to be sure, who doesn’t ask questions. It’ll only take them a few hours to do the paperwork for setting up a shell company and then we have our customer, one we can invoice whatever we want. We have our fake sales (and I’m pretty sure our mate has done nothing wrong, in the eyes of the law). (Financial Times Alphaville)

• Why a Secretive Short Seller Is Challenging Reports Made by Peers: Is Fiat Lux Partners trying to clean up the industry or just eliminate its competition? (Institutional Investor)

• Meet the Return-to-Office Whisperers: A niche group of consultants is trying to get you back to the office. It’s not going too well. (New York Times)

• The End of the Music Business: A century of recorded music has culminated in the infinite archive of streaming platforms. But is it really better for listeners? (The Nation)

• Did the Music Business Just Kill the Vinyl Revival? A few months ago, I wrote about returning to vinyl after giving up on it 34 years ago. But I was shocked at what I encountered. Few of the albums I wanted were available in vinyl. Prices were outrageously high. The whole market seemed designed to discourage buyers. (The Honest Broker)

• How Bookshop.org Survives—and Thrives—in Amazon’s World: Andy Hunter’s ecommerce platform was a pandemic hit. Now he’s on a mission to prove that small businesses can scale up without selling out. (Wired)

• Europe is not ready to be a “third superpower.” For that, it would need to act as a unified entity, defend itself against Russia, and embrace new technology. (Noahpinion)

• The Military Mental Health Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight: Blast overpressure, it’s called: the “near-instantaneous pressure rise” in the area around an explosion. During a nine-month deployment, the unit would launch shells toward their enemies around 6,000 times. As a result, some incurred noticeable concussions, and each blast had the potential to cause what the Centers for Disease Control now call “primary blast injury of the brain,” with symptoms similar to other types of mild traumatic brain injuries, or mTBIs: headaches, irritability, cognitive deficits, and even death. (Slate)

• The Ringer’s Streaming Guide: Who’s winning the Streaming Wars? For a few years, it was all Netflix, Hulu had sneaky value, and Prime Video had Fleabag. But when the calendar changed from October to November in 2019, so too did the entire streaming industry. Apple TV+ launched on the first of the month, flanked by stars like Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell, and Jason Momoa; 11 days later, Disney+ put its stake in the ground with an instant phenomenon. Two words: Baby Yoda. (The Ringer)

Stock Picking, Economists, and Economic Recovery

Tuesday morning articles

• With the Odds on Their Side, They Still Couldn’t Beat the Market: In 2022, conditions were heavily in stock pickers’ favor, but most trailed the market. This year looks worse. (New York Times)

• Scary economists and bad news: The news cycle has swung back to recession talk, even as inflation is coming down and unemployment is at a 50-year low. Ask people what they’ve heard about the economy, and they’ll tell you it’s bad. (Stay-At-Home Macro)

• Stop the gloom and doom. The economic recovery is strong. Americans remain deeply pessimistic about the economy: A large percentage mistakenly think we’re in a recession or will be hit by one this year. As the recovery progresses, there’s less and less justification for the drumbeat of negative hot takes and gloomy economic speculation from the media. The economic evidence paints a very different picture. (Washington Post)

• Rumours of China’s economic demise may be greatly exaggerated: From ‘miracle to malady’ — but how bad is it really? (Financial Times)

• 35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now.  “It’s like collaborating with an alien.” “Everything is becoming much easier.” “It feels like I’ve hired an intern.” “What used to take me around a half-hour to write now takes one minute.” “It’s enormous fun.” (New York Times)

• ChatGPT Can Decode Fed Speak, Predict Stock Moves From Headlines: First wave of research using AI chatbot in finance is arriving Fed staff find the tech can decipher dovish, hawkish language. (Bloomberg)

• How did solar power get cheap? Solar photovoltaics (PV) have become one of the cheapest sources of electricity. Lazard’s estimate of unsubsidized levelized cost of energy (LCOE), the average cost of electricity generated over a plant’s lifetime, has utility scale solar PV cheaper than anything except completely depreciated natural gas plants and wind in the very windiest locations. (Construction Physics)

• 2024 Ford Mustang chief engineer learned to drive on a Mustang GT stick, reveals future: While muscle cars fade into the sunset, America’s favorite pony is undergoing a technology transformation. At age 59 on Monday, the iconic Ford Mustang is making a play for younger buyers while keeping the current Mustang fans in the stable. (We’ll explain how shortly.) And all eyes are trained on Laurie Transou, chief engineer of the Mustang program. (Detroit Free Press)

• Only 10 Electric Vehicles Qualify for Full $7,500: US Tax Credit Eight EVs, two plug-in hybrids are in line for $7,500 perk; Tax credit will shrink or disappear for purchasers of most EVs (Bloomberg)

• Is Twitter finally dying? Say goodbye to the old Twitter and hello to the new normal: It’s been a year since Elon Musk initiated his takeover of Twitter. The six months since he actually took charge can only be characterized as chaotic, and quietly, in early April, Musk merged Twitter with a new shell company called X Corp. In other words, Twitter Inc. no longer exists. (Vox)

• Return of the Kings: Playoff basketball is back in Sacramento for the first time since 2006. This season’s run has delighted a long-suffering and devoted fan base, but the Kings aren’t satisfied. Says All-Star guard De’Aaron Fox: “We want to be championship contenders year in and year out.” (Ringer)

• If Tennessee’s Legislature Looks Broken, It’s Not Alone: State legislatures around the country — plagued by partisan division, uncompetitive races and gerrymandering — reflect the current pressures on democracy. (New York Times)

• Red states are trying to make their own rules. The Tennessee Expulsions Are Just the Beginning: Red states are trying to make their own rules. (The Atlantic)

Jordan Sneakers, Stocks, Bonds, and Lil Dicky

Monday morning articles

• The Once and Future Sneaker King Like Michael Jordan himself, the Air Jordan 1 was an instant hit. But the sneaker’s renewed reign 35 years later isn’t just about greatness. It’s about the stories that build the myth. (Ringer)

• Would You Rather Outperform During Bull Markets or Bear Markets? It’s hard to believe how much brainpower, time, effort and money go into beating the market by hedge funds, mutual funds, separately-managed accounts and stock-pickers…and the vast majority of them fail at their stated goal. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Business of … Death: Why most American funeral parlors are family-owned and other fascinating insights—extreme embalming?!—from the burial economy. (Businessweek)

• Long Bonds Are No Longer for Fools: Prospects have improved for 30-year Treasuries. (Morningstar)

• People Are Investing in Bonds Again—Once They Figure Them Out: After years of low returns, bonds are paying real money again. But as investors are discovering, they aren’t exactly set-it-and-forget-it assets. (Wall Street Journal)

• 12 Important Lessons I Learned From “Just Keep Buying” Thew real purpose of investing: To live a life you wanna live. Money dominates our thoughts, but time is actually your most important asset. If you’ve already won the game, take your money off the table. (mr-stingy)

• Want to Beat the Stock Market? Avoid the Cost of ‘Being Human’  Professional fund managers labor under handicaps that individual investors don’t face. Make sure you manage your portfolio differently than they do. (Wall Street Journal)

• 17 Pop Culture Moments That Define The Covid Era: If you were putting together a time capsule to let people in 100 years know what living through this pandemic felt like, sure, you might include hand sanitizer and a surgical mask. But you must also include the theme song from “The White Lotus” and a group chat about Taylor Swift and an episode of “Love Is Blind” and the unexpected online drawing lessons from a famous children’s book author. As that author, Mo Willems, says below of the pandemic: “Science will get us out of this, but art will get us through it.”  (New York Times)

• Nutrition Science’s Most Preposterous Result: Could Ice Cream Possibly Be Good for You? Studies show a mysterious health benefit to ice cream. Scientists don’t want to talk about it. (The Atlantic)

• America’s decline in life expectancy speaks volumes about our problems: Years of widening economic inequality, compounded by the pandemic and political storm and stress, have given Americans the impression that the country is on the wrong track. Now there’s empirical data to show just how far the country has run off the rails: Life expectancies have been falling. (Los Angeles Times)

• The astonishing radicalism of Florida’s new ban on abortion: Ron DeSantis, gearing up for a presidential bid, signed the 6-week ban late Thursday night. (Vox)

• The Self-Proclaimed Genius of Lil Dicky: Is Dave Burd the greatest rapper alive? Unlikely. The comedic voice of his generation? Maybe. The star of one of TV’s most subversively hilarious hits? No doubt. A deep dive into the neurotically immodest mind behind FX’s ‘Dave.’ (Hollywood Reporter)

Economic Models, Viral Marketing,

Wednesday morning articles

• How Models Get the Economy Wrong: Seemingly complex and sophisticated econometric modeling often fails to take into account common sense and observable reality. (American Prospect)

• Six Ways Existing Economic Models Are Killing the Economy: The alleged science doesn’t match up to the real world. (American Prospect)

• The Age of Average. From film to fashion and architecture to advertising, creative fields have become dominated and defined by convention and cliché. Distinctiveness has died. In every field we look at, we find that everything looks the same. Welcome to the age of average. (Alex Murrell)

• UBS Chairman’s Top-Secret Prep Paid Off in Credit Suisse Moment: Colm Kelleher was ready when a crisis of confidence that started in US regional banking spread to Switzerland. (Bloomberg)

• Want an A in His Class? You Had Better Go Viral. A marketing professor gave his students a challenge: If they made a video that got a million views, the final exam would be canceled. (New York Times)

• Grid-World: An obsession was born. I was intoxicated by graph paper. The emptiness of a totally blank page intimidated me by demanding that I make the first move, but graph paper invited my participation by steering my pencil in the grooves of its strictly regular lines. The grid was like a friend who had already done half the work for me. (alex miller’s garden)

• The Dog-Eat-Dog World of Kosher Pet Food at Passover: Their dogs aren’t Jewish, but observant pet owners still face issues finding kibble that is acceptable for the holiday. ‘We’re strict, but we love our pet.’ (Wall Street Journal)

• What happened in Wisconsin. Protasiewicz beat Kelly by nearly 11 percentage points, an impressive margin that was made possible by a record-breaking turnout. More than 1.7 million people cast ballots in the race this year, besting the 1.6 million that cast ballots in the 2020 race when there was also a presidential primary. (Popular.Info)

• The Finnish Secret to Happiness? Knowing When You Have Enough. The Nordic nation has been ranked the happiest country on earth for six consecutive years. But when you talk to individual Finns, the reality is a bit more complicated. (New York Times) 

• How to Want Less: The secret to satisfaction has nothing to do with achievement, money, or stuff. (The Atlantic)

• Could dinosaurs have grown any bigger? Titanosaurs were some of the largest animals to walk the Earth, but if the reign of the dinosaurs hadn’t been cut short by an asteroid, could they have evolved to be even bigger? (BBC)

Boston Bruins, Universities Failing Students, and Active Managed Funds

Tuesday morning articles

• The Boston Bruins just broke the NHL single-season wins record. Here's how they did it that was forecast to be mediocre has regular season for the ages (CBC)

• Why universities are failing to prepare students for the job market Research suggests university education not meeting basic expectations (CBC)

• The Active Management Delusion: Respect the Wisdom of the Crowd: “My basic point here is that neither the Financial Analysts as a whole nor the investment funds as a whole can expect to ‘beat the market,’ because in a significant sense they (or you) are the market . . . the greater the overall influence of Financial Analysts on investment and speculative decisions the less becomes the mathematical possibility of the overall results being better than the market’s.” (CFA Institute)

• Accessing Losses via Direct Indexing: Herein lies the huge advantage of direct indexing over owning ETFs and Mutual Funds: Accessing losers that would otherwise net out to zero. (TBP)

• Could Direct Indexing Lower Your Taxes? 8 factors to determine whether direct investing is right for you. (Morningstar)

• The Seven Virtues of Great Investors: Intelligence is “a trait more of the character than of the brain,” according to Benjamin Graham. It also is rooted in Curiosity, Skepticism, Independence, Humility, Discipline, Patience, and Courage. (Jason Zweig)

• ‘Pessimism of Disbelief,’ Illustrated: Sour sentiment and better-than-expected economic results are a normal bull market backdrop. (Fisher Investments)

• Manhattan’s Wealthy Homebuyers Lured Back by Luxury Price Cuts: Some of the first quarter’s biggest contracts came after significant seller discounts, which helped get the market moving. (Bloomberg)

• Got Milk? Not This Generation. Alarmed by dwindling sales to Gen Z, the dairy industry is going all out to get younger Americans on the milk train. (New York Times)

• Among all of his mistakes, don’t forget Elon Musk is singlehandedly crushing a big chunk of Internet research for no good reason: Access to Twitter’s API has been mostly free to researchers for more than a decade. So how does $210,000 a month sound? (Nieman Lab)

• Turbotax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU: Lobbying by the massively concentrated tax-prep industry – wildly profitable corporate giants like HR Block and Intuit, the parent company of Turbotax, who spent 20 years lobbying congress, spending millions to ensure that Americans would have to pay the Turbotax tax in order to pay their income tax. (Pluralistic)

• Over 60 million Americans have taxes so simple the IRS could do them automatically “Automatic returns” could vastly simplify tax season for millions of people. (Vox)

• How good, really, was Pablo Picasso? The exemplary modern artist died 50 years ago this month, and we’re still trying to clean up his mess. (Washington Post)