Small caps have been laggards for the last decade when compared to large caps. Since 2014, the Russell 2000 Index (RUT) has only beaten the S&P 500 Index (SPX) in a calendar year twice, in 2016 and 2020. As it stands today, RUT is looking to mark its fourth consecutive year of underperformance against the SPX which would mean that RUT would have outperformed the SPX only once in the last eight years if this were to hold. It would be easy to say that large caps are simply more dominant and perform better than small caps if one looked back at the last few years. However, despite small caps’ struggles over the last decade, RUT has more often than not outperformed the SPX annually with data going back to 1979. RUT has outperformed SPX in just over half of all years (54.35%) since 1979. If one ignores the last decade, the percentage of years RUT outperformed SPX jumps up to 65.71%. The underperformance of RUT against the SPX is abnormal by historical standards but it’s also not without precedent. The chart below displays the excess return of RUT against the SPX for every year since 1979. A second data point is included, the 5-year average annual excess return, to help highlight longer periods of strength and weakness for small caps.
8.Not Sure “Terrifying” but Apartment Construction Slowing to Covid Levels.
9.Rural America’s working-age adults die at wildly higher rates than their counterparts in cities. Why?
MSN.COM Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez Three words are commonly repeated to describe rural America and its residents: older, sicker and poorer.
Obviously, there’s a lot more going on in the nation’s towns than that tired stereotype suggests. But a new report from the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service gives credence to the “sicker” part of the trope.
Rural Americans ages 25 to 54 — considered the prime working-age population — are dying of natural causes such as chronic diseases and cancer at wildly higher rates than their age-group peers in urban areas, according to the report.
The USDA researchers analyzed mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from two three-year periods — 1999 through 2001, and 2017 through 2019. In 1999, the natural-cause mortality rate for rural working-age adults was only 6 percent higher than that of their city-dwelling peers. By 2019, the gap had widened to 43 percent.
The disparity was significantly worse for women — and for Native American women, in particular. The gap highlights how persistent difficulties accessing health care, and a dispassionate response from national leaders, can eat away at the fabric of rural communities.
Iam struggling today. If you’ve ever struggled to be consistent with something you care about, maybe my struggle will resonate with you too.
It has been 939 days since November 12, 2012. That’s the date when I first published an article on JamesClear.com and it’s almost 2 years and 7 months ago. During these 939 mostly glorious, sometimes frustrating days, I have written a new post every Monday and Thursday. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year.
Today, I Feel Like Giving Up
But today? Well, today I am struggling. Today, I don’t feel like writing. Today, I don’t feel like sticking to the routine. Today, I don’t feel like I have any great ideas and I don’t feel like I have enough time to make the good ideas great. Today, I feel like giving up.
Here’s what I try to remind myself of when I feel like giving up…
Your Mind is a Suggestion Engine
Consider every thought you have as a suggestion, not an order. Right now, my mind is suggesting that I feel tired. It is suggesting that I give up. It is suggesting that I take an easier path.
If I pause for a moment, however, I can discover new suggestions. My mind is also suggesting that I will feel very good about accomplishing this work once it is done. It is suggesting that I will respect the identity I am building when I stick to the schedule. It is suggesting that I have the ability to finish this task, even when I don’t feel like.
Remember, none of these suggestions are orders. They are merely options. I have the power to choose which option I follow.
Discomfort Is Temporary
Relative to the time in your normal day or week, nearly any habit you perform is over quickly. Your workout will be finished in an hour or two. Your report will be typed to completion by tomorrow morning. This article will be finished in just a moment.
Life is easier now than it has ever been. 300 years ago, if you didn’t kill your own food and build your own house, you would die. Today, we whine about forgetting our iPhone charger.
Maintain perspective. Your life is good and your discomfort is temporary. Step into this moment of discomfort and let it strengthen you.
You Will Never Regret Good Work Once It is Done
Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” So often it seems that we want to work easily at work worth doing. We want our work to be helpful and respected, but we do not want to struggle through our work. We want our stomachs to be flat and our arms to be strong, but we do not want to grind through another workout. We want the final result, but not the failed attempts that precede it. We want the gold, but not the grind.
Anyone can want a gold medal. Few people want to train like an Olympian.
And yet, despite our resistance to it, I have never found myself feeling worse after the hard work was done. There have been days when it was damn hard to start, but it was always worth finishing. Sometimes, the simple act of showing up and having the courage to do the work, even in an average manner, is a victory worth celebrating.
This Is Life
Life is a constant balance between giving into the ease of distraction or overcoming the pain of discipline. It is not an exaggeration to say that our lives and our identities are defined in this delicate balance. What is life, if not the sum of a hundred thousand daily battles and tiny decisions to either gut it out or give it up?
This moment when you don’t feel like doing the work? This is not a moment to be thrown away. This is not a dress rehearsal. This moment is your life as much as any other moment. Spend it in a way that will make you proud.
Let the World Decide
So, what do I do when I feel like giving up? I show up.
Do I show up at my best? I doubt it. But my job isn’t to judge how good or how bad I am.
A major Amazon and Nvidia supplier has found the new AI hot spot Google, Microsoft, and others rely on technology from Taiwan’s Foxconn for their AI developments
For many, hearing the name Foxconn immediately brings to mind iPhone production. It’s true, the Taiwanese company is a major producer of Apple’s smartphones and other products. But it also makes something companies like Nvidia, Amazon, and more are in high demand of: AI-related hardware. And Big Tech companies in the U.S. would like that hardware to come from Mexico and not China, thank you very much.
Foxconn has listened to those demands, and has made major AI investments in Mexico. The world’s largest contract electronics maker has funneled $690 million into the country in the past four years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Just this February, Foxconn picked up a slice of land in the western state of Jalisco for $27 million to facilitate a major expansion of its AI server production, people familiar with the plan told the Journal.
Why Mexico? In the race to build the latest and greatest AI technology, the biggest tech companies in the U.S. — Nvidia, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft — are using Foxconn’s facilities in Mexico to help meet their AI server needs, according to the report. It’s part of a larger trend called “friendshoring” or “nearshoring.” That’s a geopolitical buzzword that describes the practice of running supply chains only through countries that are close political partners.
In this specific case, Big Tech companies are trying to make sure less of their supply chains rely on China, a growing political frenemy of the U.S. The shift is also a consequence of the 2020 free trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, that has persuaded manufacturers to invest in those countries instead of China.
Mexico has emerged as the lucrative investment for these operations, and it’s already shuffling up global trade. Data released last month showed that for the first time in two decades, U.S. imports from Mexico surpassed those from China, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
5. Publicly Traded Real Estate REITs are Worst Performing Sector for 5 Years
With rate cuts fading….XLRE SPDR real estate etf closes back below 200-day
6. Sell-Offs Leading into Tax Day Common Since 1985
7. Assets Invested in ETFs in U.S. Reach Record of $8.87 Trillion at End of Q1 2024
Nasdaq.com
Highlights
Highlights
Assets invested in the ETFs industry in the United States reached a new record of $8.87 Tn at the end of Q1 2024 beating the previous record of $8.54 Tn at the end of February 2024.
Assets invested in the ETFs industry in the US have increased 9.3% YTD in 2024, going from $8.11 Tn at end of 2023 to $8.87 Tn.
Net inflows of $103.17 Bn in March.
YTD net inflows of $232.18 Bn are the second highest on record, the highest recorded YTD net inflows were $252.22 Bn in 2021 and the third highest YTD net inflows wer $196.75 Bn in 2022.
According to FinanceBuzz, the average price of 10 menu items at McDonald’s has doubled over the last decade, rising more than any other major fast food company. The reported inflation rate over the past 10 years: 31%.
Here are the 10 McDonald’s menu items and their price increases over the last 10 years…
10. Research Shows Coffee Has 3 Health Benefits That Will Make You Want to Drink More
These health benefits from drinking coffee may be news to many of us.
Most of us coffee drinkers probably know the benefits of coffee, right? Sure, there’s the flavor of a perfectly made flat white–a benefit to your grateful taste buds. Most of us also know that coffee obviously makes us more alert, so we get off to a great start at work. To get a little scientific, a comprehensive review of around a hundred studies found that caffeine, the most active ingredient in coffee, is known to:
Increase energy levels
Reduce tiredness
Help with short-term memory, problem-solving, decision-making, and concentration
What’s going on in the brain, exactly? Well, I’m no scientist, but let me pretend to be one for this article. Caffeine stops adenosine, a brain chemical that makes you sleepy and relaxed. It also boosts dopamine and norepinephrine, two other brain chemicals that help you feel more awake and energetic. According to actual scientists, this is why caffeine has the effects mentioned earlier. And why we are so very thankful for it.
But there’s more, and this is where it gets interesting. When I scoped out the research, I was impressed by the other types of benefits coffee can give you, which most of us probably don’t know. Let me share a few that may inspire your current affection (or addiction) for coffee:
Coffee may reduce the risk of a stroke Yep. One study published in the journal Circulation aimed to explore the possible connection between coffee intake and stroke risk among women. The researchers looked at data from more than 83,000 women. They tracked their coffee consumption habits and monitored stroke incidents over a period of time. Researchers found that moderate coffee consumption was not linked to a higher risk of stroke among women. In fact, women who drank moderate amounts daily were found to reduce the risk of stroke by 20 percent, as compared with women who didn’t drink coffee at all! The key here was moderation; excessive coffee consumption was not found to provide any additional benefits and could actually harm one’s health.
Coffee may also cut down your risk of cancer and diabetes The University of Catania in Italy conducted a comprehensive “superstudy” combining the results of 127 random trials and observational studies on coffee’s effects on human health. As reported in The Washington Post, the results of this superstudy suggest that coffee consumption can lower the risk of common cancers (like breast, colorectal, colon, endometrial, and prostate) by 2 to 20 percent, depending on the type of cancer. Coffee also appears to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by 5 percent and Type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s disease by around 30 percent. Moreover, people who drink coffee seem to have a lower death rate. Who doesn’t want to live longer?
Coffee may decrease your risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease Research has shown that coffee consumption can positively affect fat storage and gut health, which can help you lose weight. In fact, a review of 12 studies found that men who increased their coffee intake experienced a reduction in body fat. Similarly, a study published in the Journal of Nutrition found that women who consumed more coffee had lower levels of body fat. And if exercising to lose weight is a problem, there’s hope. Another study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that people who have one to two cups of coffee a day are 17 percent more likely to hit their exercise goals compared with those who drink less than one cup.
That reminds me, I gotta get my third cup of coffee after sending this off to my editor. Happy drinking!
Nasdaq Dorsey Wright This year, stock prices and projected Fed rates are both rising Throughout last year, when Fed rates expectations went down, stocks went up (and vice versa). That makes sense, because higher rates add expenses to companies, and make bonds more attractive to investors, meaning stocks have to perform better in the future too (and a lower starting price makes that possible). But a strange thing has been happening to stocks and rates this year… That relationship has reversed! As the chart below shows, stocks and expected Fed rates (inverted) have BOTH been rising.
5. Large Cap Funds See Outflows
6. JPM Biggest One-Day Selloff Since 2001
JPM Closed Below 50-Day
7. The U.S. Produces More Oil that Russia and Saudin Arabia
Torsten Slok, Ph.D.-Chief Economist, Partner
The US now produces more oil than Saudia Arabia and Russia, see chart below.
Philosophy becomes a useful way to address the qualities of wisdom because, as Sternberg maintains, its main branches each correspond to important traditions in understanding what’s wise and what’s not. Below is a brief summary of each, along with examples of its positive and negative possibilities:
Epistemology: Knowing what you know and what you don’t know. The wise person may seem to be all-knowing, but this branch of philosophy suggests it’s as important to make room for the possibility that you don’t. For example, it’s wise to confess to your own limitations but unwise to fake knowing something you don’t (or can never know). When you make an “educated guess,” be sure not to claim you’re 100% sure.
Ontology: Keep the good of others at the forefront of your decisions. The wise person tries to mend fences, but the unwise person tries to build them.
Ethics: Have a clear sense of right and wrong and stick to it. To be wise means that you work hard to follow through on decisions that will further a worthwhile cause. Unwise people will do everything in their power to get ahead, regardless of the consequences to others.
Logic: Be able to make decisions based on analytical judgments, not gut feelings. This could be as simple as trying to figure out why your cellphone won’t charge properly. Stabbing away at it by plugging the cord into the outlet will not get to the root of the problem, as you will need to go through a set of more rational steps.
Aesthetics: Promote harmony and grace in the world. A wise person pursues beauty for its own sake, such as enjoying a calm and peaceful shoreline at sunset. Lack of aesthetic wisdom becomes toxic, such as when people make decisions that lead to outrage (such as designing an ugly building) or cause a lack of harmony in the world (such as a dictator invading another country).
Hermeneutics: Evaluating situations based on facts and not wishes. Wise people might wish that their families got along better but be resigned to the situation as it is. The unwise person will continue to hope and dream that, somehow, their families will miraculously decide to get along.
Axiology: Use logic to make decisions. To be wise means that you rely on facts determined through analyses of evidence (which could also mean they can be disconfirmed). Unwise people let their beliefs, religious or otherwise, determine what they believe to be true.
If you were keeping score of your own wise qualities, what stuck out as your greatest strengths? Are there times when you hope for the best or when you discard an idea because you didn’t like where it came from? As you think about the people you might approach for advice, whose word are you more likely to trust?
2. Flows into Inflationary Sectors Have Been Negative
Dave Lutz Jones Trading $600mn was pulled from technology, the first time since October the sector has not led flows and its first month of net outflows since June – Twits note Fighting Tech momentum hasn’t been a winning strategy, although there’s quite an imbalance between sector flows compared to reflationary sectors.
3. APPLE Breaking Nov 2023 Lows
I show this chart weekly, we are one down day from breaking cleanly thru Nov 2023
4. CPI Showed Higher Energy Prices…XLE Breakout
Energy Select broke out of 2-year sideways pattern
5. CPI and S&P Performance
Schwab
6. After CPI 10-Year 4.5% First Time Since November
7. New Weight Loss ETF
ETF Summary Under normal circumstances, the fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing at least 80% of its net assets, which include borrowings for investment purposes, in publicly listed companies that derive at least 50% of revenues from products or services related to the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and/or metabolic diseases, as defined by the Centers for Diseases Control and Preventions. The fund generally is expected to consist of more than 15 companies but not more than 100 companies. The fund is non-diversified.
WSJ Investors have been bracing for waves of loan maturities in commercial real estate, which could force a lot of tough choices about whether to restructure or write off mortgages to landlords struggling with occupancy and rental rates. But it didn’t quite play out as expected last year. MSCI Real Assets noted in a recent report that $214 billion in mortgages slated for maturity in 2023 were, to their knowledge, not refinanced, nor was there a sale of the underlying property. “We believe that these loans have been granted some short-term extension to their maturity date,” MSCI Real Assets wrote.
9. Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI
Wired by Amanda Hoover
Turnitin, a service that checks papers for plagiarism, says its detection tool found millions of papers that may have a significant amount of AI-generated content.
Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows. A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.
New research shares more insight into why music helps the brain work faster and better.
Your playlist may be more valuable than you think.
Research has long indicated that music has the potential to boost concentration and performance on cognitive tasks such as writing or spatial reasoning, and that music can also be a powerful tool for emotional regulation. Now, researchers from New York University Tandon School of Engineering have begun to show how these two principles may work together. “Maintaining a proper level of cognitive arousal [also known as ‘intensity of emotion’] may result in being more productive throughout daily cognitive activities,” writes Rose Faghih, associate professor of biomedical engineering, along with her associates who co-authored a new study analyzing how music choices influence productivity. Faghih and her colleagues found that listening to exciting music enabled five out of six participants to register higher performance on cognitive tasks. But the study is interesting because it was inspired by the Yerkes-Dodson law, a little-known law of psychology designed to model the relationship between stress and behavior, developed over a hundred years ago. And while this study is new with a small sample size, it builds on previous neuroscience research that analyzed the influence of background music on participants’ emotions and performance. What is the Yerkes-Dodson law, and how does it relate to previously published neuroscience research? And more important, how can all of this knowledge help you? To answer these questions, let’s dive more deeply into the research and see how you can put these learnings to work. (If you find value in this lesson, you might be interested in my free course, which teaches you how to build emotional intelligence in yourself and your team.)
The Yerkes-Dodson Law, Neuroscience, and How to Increase Performance The Yerkes-Dodson law was originally developed back in 1908 by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson. It states that too little arousal (stress) causes you to become bored and decreases motivation. As arousal increases, so does your motivation, causing you to perform better at certain tasks. At a certain point, though, you reach an optimal level of arousal and performance; after that, stress causes your performance to decrease. In the NYU study, participants selected two types of music: the first with calming music components to mimic a low arousal environment, and a second with more exciting components for a high arousal environment. The researchers then used physiological data such as skin surface temperature, respiration, and electrocardiogram as well as behavioral signals such as facial expression. As the findings indicated, the participants demonstrated overall better performance when listening to the exciting background music. However, the researchers also found that participants’ performance conformed with the Yerkes-Dodson law. The authors of the study admit that several factors such as “the learning effect, the nature of the task, the participant’s baseline, and the type of applied music, can impact the outcome”; however, they also acknowledge that “it might be feasible to enhance cognitive performance and shift one’s arousal from either the left or right side of the curve using music.” As mentioned, this new research actually builds on decades of brain research. For example, in 2020, a group of neuroscientists used magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the influence of music on different emotions and performance. They found that “happy and high-arousing music” was associated with faster response times and greater activations of certain parts of the brain while performing certain tasks. A separate study of 56 university students conducted in 2010 found that listening to excerpts of music from Mozart increased the students’ speed and accuracy when performing certain cognitive tasks. I can endorse the results of this research from my own personal experience. For years I’ve been using specific playlists to help me achieve flow for different types of tasks. As someone who does a large amount of creative work, I’ve found that starting with calm music, while gradually ramping up to more excited music, helps me reach a state of peak productivity. This is especially true when I’m working on tasks with a medium cognitive load–they’re tasks that require a degree of concentration, but I’ve done them enough times that I often tend to get bored and my mind starts to wander. With the right music, though, my mind and emotions seem to be sufficiently stimulated, so that not only am I able to continue working for long periods of time, but I stay motivated throughout the entire work period. For example, the song on the top of my “writing” playlist: The theme from the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar, which was composed by Hans Zimmer and debuted on the film’s soundtrack back in 2014. (I prefer the piano version, which you can hear here.) Although it starts slow, it gradually builds momentum and helps me get into a productive flow. So, how can all of this help you? If you find there are certain parts of your work that get stale or monotonous, you might try curating a playlist of songs that get you going. You can arrange them in order of excitement, so that you start with a mild tune and progress to more stimulating ones. Then, the next time you find yourself getting distracted because you lack mental stimulation, try listening to your playlist as you work. Doing this may provide just the spark you need. So, if you’re interested in leveraging your brain to increase productivity and performance, learn from the Yerkes-Dodson law and decades of neuroscience research: Design your playlist to motivate, inspire, and touch your emotions. Then, get ready to find your flow.
