The yen carry trade set off volatility earlier this month…Yen chart 50day thru 200day to upside.
8. Why Do Americans Love Housing?
9. Demand for Wireless Data Hits Record Highs -Chartr Blog
If you’ve tried to buy any kind of electronic good recently you’ve probably found a version that can connect to your phone and has an app that you need to download (which is usually terrible), with everything from smart watches, to smart light bulbs, to smart fridges, to self-driving cars now connected to the internet. Indeed, companies continue to produce connected versions of devices which, for years, functioned well without them. But, in fairness to the people behind those products, all of the evidence shows one thing: that America loves being online and staying connected.
Indeed, according to wireless industry association CTIA’s annual survey, Americans used 100.1 trillion megabytes of wireless data in 2023, nearly double the traffic that was driven in 2021 and more than the amount used in all the years from 2010 to 2018 combined. That’s a lot of watching, scrolling, working, texting, and — realistically — even more watching.
The good news is that all of that mobile connectivity is a lot cheaper than it used to be. According to the report, Americans now pay $.002 per MB of wireless data — a 97% decrease from a decade prior and a 50% decrease since 2020, when the average cost of consumer goods and services began to soar. The uptick has been driven in large part by the rollout of 5G, which the CTIA estimates to be used by almost 40% of all wireless connections today. The rise in wireless data usage comes amidst an ongoing standoff in Congress over how to find new spectrum, per Reuters.
10. Larry Silverstein Spent Years Tussling With the City to Rebuild the World Trade Center. Now He’s Ready to Talk About It
WSJ By Yascha Mounk
Grade inflation at American universities is out of control. The statistics speak for themselves. In 1950, the average GPA at Harvard was estimated at 2.6 out of 4. By 2003, it had risen to 3.4. Today, it stands at 3.8.
The more elite the college, the more lenient the standards. At Yale, for example, 80% of grades awarded in 2023 were As or A minuses. But the problem is also prevalent at less selective colleges. Across all four-year colleges in the U.S., the most commonly awarded grade is now an A.
Some professors and departments, especially in STEM disciplines, have managed to uphold more stringent criteria. A few advanced courses attract such a self-selecting cohort of students that virtually all of them deserve recognition for genuinely excellent work. But for the most part, the grading scheme at many institutions has effectively become useless. An A has stopped being a mark of special academic achievement.
If everyone outside hard-core engineering, math or pre-med courses can easily get an A, the whole system loses meaning. It fails to make distinctions between different levels of achievement or to motivate students to work hard on their academic pursuits. All the while, it allows students to pretend—to themselves and to others—that they are performing exceptionally well. Worse, this system creates perverse incentives. To name but one, it actively punishes those who take risks by enrolling in truly challenging courses.
All of this contributes to the strikingly poor record of American colleges in actually educating their students. As Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa showed in their 2011 book “Academically Adrift,” the time that the average full-time college student spent studying dropped by half in the five decades after 1960, falling to about a dozen hours a week. A clear majority of college students “showed no significant progress on tests of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing,” with about half failing to make any improvements at all in their first two years of higher education.
In one of the oldest jokes about the Soviet Union, a worker says “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” To an uncomfortable degree, American universities now work in a similar fashion: Students pretend to do their work, and academics pretend to grade them. It’s high time for a radical reboot of a broken system.
3. Sentiment Hit Bearish Levels in Last Week’s Sell Off -Investor Intelligence
Investor Intelligence
“Bulls are leaving the building: II bears are rising as bulls drop to lowest level of 2024. S&P 500 has struggled to make sustained upside progress over the past decade when the Bull – Bear Spread has been less than 20%.”
ZeroHedge Uranium stocks jumped in the early US cash session after Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the government to review possible measures to restrict exports of strategic raw materials, such as nickel, titanium, and uranium, in retaliation for Western sanctions.
In markets, uranium stocks, such as CCJ, UEC, URA, and URNM, jumped between 5% and 7%.
WSJ Between 2012 and 2022, the number of students graduating with bachelor’s degrees in nuclear engineering in the U.S. fell by 25%, according to the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, with the class of 2022 seeing only 454 students graduate with a degree in the field.
At the same time, the nuclear industry is facing a maturing workforce, with 17% of workers in the industry over the age of 55 and 60% aged between 30 and 54, according to the 2024 U.S. Energy and Employment report. The report also highlighted that 23% of workers were aged under 30, compared with 29% for other energy workers. By Yusuf Khan
7. Job Openings Still in Excess of Available Workers
From Advisor Perspectives Blog
Demographic Deficits by Carl Tannenbaum of Northern Trust Recent work from the McKinsey Global Institute clearly illustrates this progression. The 2008 Global Financial Crisis left many out of work, and the slow recovery from that episode kept ratios of job openings to job seekers very low. But starting in 2015, labor market capacity began declining. The pandemic years created a rude interruption, but the long-term trend has been re-established.
In several large countries, job openings are still well in excess of available workers. McKinsey finds that skills mismatches do not explain much of the gap; job vacancy rates are highest in occupations that are at the lower end of the wage scale, and should therefore be within the reach of most of those seeking work.
BY JOE REEDY LOS ANGELES (AP) — The NFL averaged 21.0 million viewers per game during the league’s opening week, making it the most-watched Week 1 on record.
The league and Nielsen said Wednesday morning that the per-game average on TV and digital platforms was a 12% increase over last year. Nielsen began electronic measurement of viewing in 1988.
All told, 123 million people saw at least part of one game, its highest total for an opening week since 2019.
“A great start with the viewership. It was great to be back and a lot to be excited about,” said Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution.
10. Larry Silverstein Spent Years Tussling With the City to Rebuild the World Trade Center. Now He’s Ready to Talk About It
Inc.com
In his new book, the veteran real estate developer recounts the decades spent trying to reclaim the NYC skyline after tragedy.
BYSAM BLUM, SENIOR WRITER @SAMMBLUM He’s one of the lucky ones: Larry Silverstein narrowly skirted disaster on September 11, 2001.
As the property developer has recounted numerous times over the last 23 years, the terrorist attacks that brought down the Twin Towers occurred just a few weeks after Silverstein Properties signed a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center in New York City.
That morning, he was supposed to be eating breakfast at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower. But before he left, his wife Klara reminded him he was due uptown for a dermatology appointment.
Unimaginable chaos and tragedy ensued. Terrorists hijacked two commercial airliners and flew one into each of the towers. The tallest buildings in New York eventually collapsed, laying in a gargantuan heap of smoldering rubble, and Silverstein made it his remaining life’s mission to rebuild them swiftly. Silverstein’s efforts to rise from the detritus of Ground Zero are recounted in his new book, The Rising: The Twenty-Year Battle to Rebuild the World Trade Center.
It’s a story rife with political infighting among a rotating cast of 21st-century New York powerbrokers. Across the mayoral administrations of Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill de Blasio, and governorships of George Pataki and Andrew Cuomo, the book casts Silverstein as the hero who sought to heal deep national wounds and bring the NYC skyline back to life. Others criticized
Silverstein for tussling with insurance companies and accused him of profiteering during an emotionally charged era in U.S. history. Silverstein, now 93, sat down with Inc. to discuss the new book and where he thinks the commercial real estate market is headed from 2024 onward–an era that is far different from the one that saw rebuilding efforts begin. (This conversation has been edited for length and clarity).
Why does the book describe rebuilding efforts as a “battle?” There was no shortage of naysayers, people telling me this would never happen. After 9/11, they said nobody would ever want to go back down here. People would leave their residences. People would leave their commercial spaces. And that’s exactly what happened. Lower Manhattan was an unmitigated disaster. I also came to the realization that the insurance companies were not going to pay me their obligations under the policies, for which I paid some significant premiums. And they said totally flat out building back here would never succeed. Therefore don’t bother, and forget about getting compensation from them. They even offered me some kind of monetary advantage if I just picked up and left. And I said, “I’ve been a New Yorker all my life. You just expect me to just walk away from my obligation to New York? I can’t do that.” So I said, “Everybody has their price. My price is: Get on with the rebuilding and do it as quickly as possible.” So we ended up with five years of litigation. That was a terrible time.
Why was there no time to wait in the rebuilding process? We needed to bring energy back to Lower Manhattan. I had acquired the site for the original 7 World Trade Center from the Port Authority in 1981; it was the last building to come down on 9/11. And under that building was a Con Edison substation that provided all electricity to Lower Manhattan. Eugene McGrath, who was the CEO of Con Edison, called me and said, “We’ve got to get the substation rebuilt as quickly as possible, because we’re now supplying Lower Manhattan with emergency generators; they’re constantly subject to failure.” In order to get power back to Lower Manhattan, we had no time for plans, no time for specifications, no time for contracts, no time for agreements, no time for anything. I mean, we had to start building, literally, on a handshake. [Editor’s note: Inc. and its parent company are tenants in the rebuilt 7 World Trade.]
Given everything that went into the rebuilding process, how do you feel looking up at the World Trade Center buildings today? When the buildings had collapsed, there was nothing there. There was massive debris, terrible, terrible smog, terrible smoke, terrible fumes rising, and the odor of burning flesh. It was just horrible. But in the most amazing turn of events, people started coming down to Ground Zero days after the attacks, to search for missing people. First from New York, but then from around the country, to try to help rescue people who they assumed could still be alive, but who they had no relationships with. They were just human beings, trying to help other human beings. And so, thinking about that, and then looking out at what we’ve been able to create to replace the Twin Towers, gives me a feeling of accomplishment. I was enormously hopeful that we could build something vastly superior to what had been here, originally.
How has the WTC, lower Manhattan area changed since 2001? Before 9/11, there was nothing here. After six o’clock at night, it was dead. You could roll a bowling ball down Wall Street and hit nothing. Nobody around: no cars, no vehicles, no trucks, no cabs. It was a dead community. Now, It’s bustling with human beings. It’s the number of people down here visiting, walking through the Memorial Park. I can tell you, 27 percent of the people who work down here live down here. It’s the highest work-to-residence ratio in the entire United States.
What’s going on with 2 World Trade Center, which is the last building slated for construction? Keep an eye on the press. That’s a no comment from us.
The pandemic cratered demand for commercial office space. Plus, we have a housing crisis in this country. How can we use unoccupied office space for people who need a place to live? Part of working in the business today is the realization that some of the buildings are no longer functional as office space. The Rudin family built 55 Broad Street, maybe 70 years ago, and it became the headquarters building for Goldman Sachs. But Goldman left for a bigger office, and the family couldn’t find a corporate tenant. So what we ended up doing is buying the building from the Rudins with the thought of converting it from office occupancy to residential. Frankly, if we are successful in converting 55 Broad Street–and I think we will be–I could see us doing the same with many other commercial buildings. It’s something that will affect New York in a very positive way. In the future, it’ll change neighborhoods very significantly, and create a better environment.
The more cyclical Technology ($XLK) and Consumer Discretionary ($XLY) sectors are now underperforming the more defensive Utilities ($XLU) and Consumer Staples ($XLP) sectors on the year.
2. PLTR Hitting New Highs-Peter Thiel Selling $1B of Shares
Palantir disclosed in a regulatory form in August that Rivendell 7 LLC, an investment vehicle owned by co-founder and Chairman Peter Thiel, on May 15 adopted a so-called Rule 10b5-1 plan allowing for the sale of as many as 28,590,737 shares by Dec. 31, 2025, or earlier.
They say lightning doesn’t strike twice, but the Department of Justice certainly does. Google reported to court yesterday to defend itself against monopoly allegations for the second time in less than a year in a new case that has the potential to strip the world’s largest online advertiser of a chunk of its ad business. Hair of the DOJ. About a month after a federal judge decried Google’s search engine dominance as anti-competitive, regulators are now trying to prove that Google unfairly dominates the digital ad space, too. The DOJ alleges:
Google’s trifecta of software products for ad sellers, ad buyers, and real-time ad auctioning account for 91%, 40% to 80%, and at least 50% of their respective markets.
Cornering both the supply and demand sides lets Google keep $0.36 from every dollar spent on ad deals it brokers.
Google says…its ad tech is successful because it’s the best. The search giant also panned the DOJ for only focusing on website ads, since the market has expanded to mobile apps, social media, and streaming. But…regulators say YouTube CEO Neal Mohan will testify that Google has sometimes required ad sellers to either use all or none of its tools, steering them away from competitors. Looking ahead…the DOJ wants Google to sever its popular Ad Manager services from the rest of its business, which some industry experts say could level the field and lead to better data privacy regulations in online advertising.—M
Looking under the hood of the report, there wasn’t much to like. Of the inputs to the Optimism Index, only two rose month over month: Plans to Make Capital Outlays and Job Openings as Hard to Fill. The latter of those is by far the strongest category of the report with the August reading in the 92nd percentile of all months. Outside of that, there are four inputs to the optimism index and another three non-input categories that now rank in the bottom decile of readings. Some of those like Actual Earnings Changes and Expectations for Higher Real Sales also fell significantly month over month with bottom decile monthly moves.
9. Golden Visas—I Heard this Mentioned on Prof G Markets Podcast so Checked it Out
Henley Global An Overview of Golden Visas-In its most basic form, golden visa acquisition, or residence by investment and citizenship by investment, denotes the process whereby qualified, vetted candidates are granted either full residence or citizenship rights in exchange for a defined economic contribution to the host country. Golden visa programs give high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) the option of physically relocating to a favorable jurisdiction — either now or upon retirement — and becoming residents of that state with full legal rights, including the right to live, work, study, and receive healthcare in that country. Benefits of holding a golden visa-A golden visa provides investors and their families with access to new markets and a host of business, career, educational, healthcare, tax, and lifestyle opportunities on a worldwide scale, for both present and future generations. Many golden visa programs allow the successful applicant to apply for citizenship after a few years of residence, such as the Portugal Golden Residence Permit Program, which offers citizenship eligibility after five years. The Greece Golden Visa Program allows investors to apply for citizenship after seven years, and the Italy Residence by Investment Program after 10 years. Providing increased optionality worldwide along with the ability to hedge against potential risk and volatility, golden visas allow HNWIs and their families to:
Secure an alternative safe haven
Enrich and expand their lifestyle and business opportunities
Enjoy a high quality of life and access to excellent infrastructure
Access world-class healthcare at leading facilities
Attend first-rate educational institutions
Golden visa countries There is now golden visa legislation in place in over 100 countries around the world, spanning five continents. Over 60% of EU member states have programs that are functional and active, with the UK and the US having among the world’s longest running golden visa programs. Other popular golden visa countries include Portugal, Spain, Greece, Malta, Australia, Canada, Italy, and the UK. Discover the full list of more than 40 golden visa programs that Henley & Partners promotes.
Great stories succeed because they are able to capture the imagination of large or important audiences.
A great story is true. Not necessarily because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic. Consumers are too good at sniffing out inconsistencies for a marketer to get away with a story that’s just slapped on. Great stories make a promise. They promise fun, safety or a shortcut. The promise needs to be bold and audacious. It’s either exceptional or it’s not worth listening to.
\Great stories are trusted. Trust is the scarcest resource we’ve got left. No one trusts anyone. People don’t trust the beautiful women ordering vodka at the corner bar (they’re getting paid by the liquor company). People don’t trust the spokespeople on commercials (who exactly is Rula Lenska?). And they certainly don’t trust the companies that make pharmaceuticals (Vioxx, apparently, can kill you). As a result, no marketer succeeds in telling a story unless he has earned the credibility to tell that story.
Great stories are subtle. Surprisingly, the fewer details a marketer spells out, the more powerful the story becomes. Talented marketers understand that allowing people to draw their own conclusions is far more effective than announcing the punch line.
Great stories happen fast. First impressions are far more powerful than we give them credit for.
Great stories don’t always need eight-page color brochures or a face-to-face meeting. Either you are ready to listen or you aren’t.
Great stories don’t appeal to logic, but they often appeal to our senses. Pheromones aren’t a myth. People decide if they like someone after just a sniff.
Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone. Average people are good at ignoring you. Average people have too many different points of view about life and average people are by and large satisfied. If you need to water down your story to appeal to everyone, it will appeal to no one. The most effective stories match the world view of a tiny audience—and then that tiny audience spreads the story.
Great stories don’t contradict themselves. If your restaurant is in the right location but had the wrong menu, you lose. If your art gallery carries the right artists but your staff is made up of rejects from a used car lot, you lose. Consumers are clever and they’ll see through your deceit at once.
Most of all, great stories agree with our world view. The best stories don’t teach people anything new. Instead, the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.
Fundstrat As implied by Fed Funds futures trading, market consensus regarding the Federal Reserve’s rate cut plans for September 18 is now split between expectations for a 25 bp cut or a 50 bp cut. As shown by our Chart of the Week, implied odds of a 50 bp cut plunged from 65% to 27% on Friday after the jobs report and is one possible reason why stocks also fell on Friday. Nevertheless, this is still a dovish Fed. As Head of Technical Strategy Mark Newton notes, “If we look further out, the market anticipates roughly 200 basis points of cuts by next June, expecting the Fed to start taking rates down quite sharply.” He asked rhetorically, “Would you really want to see a 50 bp cut at the next FOMC meeting? That arguably would mean the Fed knows something that we all don’t, because that’s a very big cut in an election year.”
Chart of the Week
2. History of Yield Curve Inversion Ending
No idea what happens but interesting note from Charlie Bilello
@Charlie Bilello The longest yield curve inversion in history has ended with the 10-year Treasury yield (3.71%) now 6 bps above the 2-year yield (3.65%).
What does this mean for the economy?
Historically, the flip back to a positive sloping curve after a long inversion has occurred near the start of recessions:
-March 2007 flip back: recession began 10 months later, in January 2008.
-December 2000 flip back: recession began 4 months later, in April 2001.
-June 1989 flip back: recession began 13 months later, in August 1990.
-October 1981 flip back: recession began 2 months earlier, in August 1981.
-May 1980 flip back: recession began 3 months earlier, in February 1980.
3. 10 Year Treasury Yield Hit 3.36%
4. Bitcoin ETFs Posting Streak of Outflows
From Dave Lutz at Jones Trading US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have posted their longest run of daily net outflows since listing at the start of the year, part of a wider retreat from riskier assets in a challenging period for global markets. Investors pulled close to $1.2 billion in total from the group of 12 ETFs over the eight days through Sept. 6, data compiled by Bloomberg show
America’s 94 nuclear reactors generate 18.6% of U.S. electricity, enough to power 72 million homes. They’re the largest single source of carbon-free energy in the country. But nuclear’s share of total electricity generation has been ebbing for years, after peaking above 20% in the 1990s. A dozen U.S. reactors shut down from 2012 to 2021.
The tide is turning. Six reactors slated to close from 2021 to 2025 have been saved through state and federal action. And three reactors that were closed and decommissioned may be restarted, which has never happened before. Gates’ nuclear company, TerraPower, is preparing the site of a retired coal plant in Wyoming for a new reactor with more than $2 billion in government financing, and two Altman-backed companies are testing nuclear technologies. The Biden administration has announced a goal to triple the nation’s nuclear capacity by 2050.
8. Cameco Nuclear Stock -35% from Highs
50day thru 200day to downside in August
9. Global Percentage of Homes with Air Conditioners
Torsten Slok, Ph.D.Chief Economist, PartnerApollo Global Management According to data from the International Energy Agency, 90% of homes in the US have air conditioning, but only 10% of homes in Europe and 5% of homes in India, see chart below. For China, the number is 60%.
10. 24/7 Presidential Election News Cycle—Meanwhile Only 50% of Americans Vote
The Daily Stoic They are frustrating and awful, in some cases absolutely vile. The situation is corrupt. The results, unacceptable. You’re upset. You have every right to be. We deserve better. Our children deserve better—better politics, better government, better policies. In the last couple election cycles, a curious thing happened as former President Barack Obama laid out the very real—and in many cases nonpartisan—frustrations that people have with their government these days in front of an audience: the crowds started booing. Not booing at him, but booing at the situation. Each time, he has replied by stopping them. “Don’t boo,” he says, “vote.” The Stoics have been involved in politics since the days of ancient Greece and they no doubt would have witnessed a certain timeless tendency in democracies: People will complain. People will get angry. But you know what they can’t be bothered to do? Their most basic civic obligation. They’ll chatter about politics. They’ll talk about how they’d like things to be, how they should be, but they won’t vote! (Today, roughly 50% of eligible Americans vote. Just half!) The task of the philosopher, Epictetus said, was to focus on what we control. We don’t control much, but we do control whether we register to vote and whether we bother to show up. Will our vote be decisive? Will the politicians listen? That’s not up to us, really. And even if it was, it doesn’t matter until after we vote. Don’t boo. Don’t complain. Be an adult. Go read up on the candidates. Watch the debates tonight. Check them for the virtues necessary in a leader. Examine their platform for bullshit and demagoguery. Understand no one will check every box, but pick the one you can best trust with the responsibilities of power and the common good. Go do your job. Vote. https://dailystoic.com
