DC Lite Blog FMS rotation. “Investors increased allocation to bonds, cash, and healthcare … and reduced allocation to equities, Japan, Eurozone, and materials.”
4. Consumer Spending is Favorite Topic of Summer…XRT Retail ETF +2% YTD
Sideways in 2024
5. But…U.S. Economy Grew at Faster than Expected Pace in Q2
From Spilled Coffee Blog Let’s take a look at that. Did you know that the US economy grew at a faster than expected pace in Q2? Try the third best quarter of GDP growth since Q4 2021.
9. Demographics Line Up for Housing…If We Can Get Supply and Affordability
10. Research Shows Coffee Makes You Healthier and Happier, but If You Want to Boost Your Energy Level and Memory, There’s a 7-Day Catch
Drink coffee for health benefits? Absolutely. Drink coffee to kick-start your energy levels and even your memory? Definitely–but not every day of the month.
Expert Opinion By Jeff Haden, Contributing editor, Inc. @jeff_haden Coffee does plenty of cool things. Coffee can reduce your risk of cancer up to 20 percent, your risk of type 2 diabetes by 30 percent, and your risk of Parkinson’s disease by 30 percent. A study published in Circulation found that coffee can reduce the risk of stroke by 20 percent. A study of over 260,000 people conducted by the NIH found that people who drank four or more cups of coffee a day were nearly 10 percent less likely to become depressed than those who drank none.
Coffee can also make you smarter. While research has found little to no effect from ingesting caffeine prior to creating new memories, one study determined ingesting caffeine after a learning task improved memory recall up to 24 hours later. Drinking a little coffee kick-start your day? Makes sense. So does drinking a little coffee later in the day to better retain what you’ve learned during the day.
But there is one catch.
Caffeine blocks adenosine — a nucleoside that modulates physiological processes — from binding to receptors in your brain. When adenosine can’t bind, you feel (or keep feeling) alert and awake. That’s one reason why drinking a lot of coffee makes you feel really awake. Yet not indefinitely. When your body recognizes that adenosine isn’t binding, your body responds by creating more receptors. A 2012 study found that within three days of consistent caffeine ingestion, the number of adenosine, nicotinic, and muscarinic (a chemical that modulates neuronal excitability) receptors significantly increases.
That’s why you need an extra cup of coffee to kick-start your day. That’s why you need a couple of cups after lunch. In simple terms, your body builds up its tolerance, and the effect diminishes. And that’s why the inevitable caffeine crash — and headache — is so dramatic and even painful; more receptors means your body is even hungrier for caffeine.
As with most things, your constantly caffeinated state becomes your new normal. A 2019 study found that participants in a 20-day study increased their peak cycling power (a proxy for feeling alert and energetic) for the first 15 days of ingesting caffeine. The biggest boost came on the first day. After that, adenosine receptors started sprouting like wildflowers. Then the effect steadily diminished, until it reached pre-study levels.
So while coffee will still provide a number of health benefits — potentially reducing the likelihood of cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s, etc. — the energy and memory boost provided is basically gone.
Unless you periodically hit the reset button. The same study found changes in adenosine receptor levels typically reverse after a 7-day caffeine break. Taking a week off reduces your tolerance and increases the boost you will feel when you start drinking coffee again. Keep in mind you don’t have to go cold turkey. While some people take the first week of every month off, others use the week to strategically reduce their intake. Instead of two cups of coffee in the morning, just one. Instead of two cups in the afternoon, just one. The key is to reduce your intake for seven days to allow your adenosine receptor levels to reverse.
How great of a reduction you seek depends on how willing you are to cut your consumption. Just make sure you follow that approach for a whole week; one or two days will make relatively little impact on adenosine receptor levels, and therefore on the benefits when you resume your normal coffee routine.
1-2. S&P 4 Straight Weeks of Losses….A 5th Week Would Be Rare
S&P has posted 5 straight weeks of losses just once in the past decade.
What Happens After 5 Weeks of Losses?
3. Despite 4 Weeks of S&P Losses…Stock Inflows Still Positive
Global equity fund flows. “Despite the market turmoil, inflows to equities continued for a 16th straight week, actually picking up from the prior week, while inflows to bond funds slowed.”
9. DJI Chinese Drone Company Accounts for 70-90% of American Drone Market
WSJ By Heather Somerville Yet DJI accounts for around 70% to 90% of the American commercial, local government and hobbyist drone market. Real-estate agents, movie producers, firefighters, roof inspectors, utilities and law enforcement have all come to depend on the brand. The Secret Service bought more than 20 of them in 2022 just before restrictions were put in place, according to federal purchasing records. DJI says a ban could cost the U.S. billions of dollars and impact thousands of jobs. https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/congresss-plan-to-outlaw-chinese-drones-met-with-protest-c95cf1fe?mod=politics_lead_story
Statista Blog-Global market share of consumer and commercial drone manufacturers in March 2021, based on sales volume
Welcome! I’m Elliott, the founder of Kindness Financial Planning, LLC, a fee-only, fiduciary advisor located in Madison, WI working virtually with widows and caregivers across the United States. When I’m not helping people live their ideal life, I’m often cooking for my wife, playing tennis, or hiking. Once you are retired, you don’t necessarily need to live in the same place. You can consider different factors to choose the best retirement location for you — not needing to worry about your commute to work. Where will you go? Although there are many different factors to choose the best place to retire, below are 7 factors to help you choose the best retirement location for you. You can decide how much weight to put into each one to create a list of possible locations. Politics & Demographics – Use a Tool If you are unsure of where to go, the first step may be to rent a camper and do a cross country road trip for a few months! I’m kidding…unless you want to do that, in which case, send me photos along the way. The NY Times has an online tool called Where Should You Live? that can help you decide where you should live based on what’s important to you. For example, if mountains are really important to me and trees, air quality, restaurants, live music, health care, and less snow are important, I get the results below. I’ve purposely left off any political or demographic information for you to see how it affects things in the example.
You can adjust everything from schools, population, climate, politics, demographics, and more! Once you narrow down the list, you could research, select a few favorites, and go visit during different times of the year.
Community One of the primary factors you should use to choose your destination is the community you either have or can build. Community is a wide-reaching word, which could include family, friends, or other social groups. Community offers support, social interactions, and help. Without it, you can feel lonely and isolated. If you are moving to a location where you don’t know anybody, know that it can take years to build community. It’s estimated that it takes about 50 hours to go from acquaintance to casual friend, 100 hours to become a “regular” friend, and 200 hours to become a close friend. If you spend two hours a day with someone twice a week, it would take nearly a year to become a close friend. If you spend less time, it would take even longer. That’s important to keep in mind because it may take a few years to form close friendships if you are moving to a new area. I’ve often talked with retirees who moved locations and decided to move back because the new area was too far from friends and family. Others get settled quickly and love it. It’s a mixed bag. Uprooting your life to move somewhere you’ve never been can be a costly and time consuming process. Before you do, consider doing a trial run, which I’ll talk about later.
Healthcare I hope you stay healthy until the day you die. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely. As you age, most people need more access to healthcare, even if they want to age in place. Not only do they go more frequently, but they also need to see other specialists. If you live in a rural location where the nearest specialists are a few hours away, that either means you are going to spend more time on the road or you may decide not to see them and accept the health consequences. When my dad was diagnosed with Stage IV Lung Cancer, I was thankful he was only an hour away (in good traffic) from Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (now Fred Hutch Cancer Center). Since he was only an hour away, that meant he could get a ride to his treatment every three weeks. When he broke his hip, he was close by and had access to excellent surgeons. When he didn’t manage his diabetes well, he could see a doctor who specialized in diabetes medication management. As I’ve been told, you tend to “collect” doctors as you get older: primary care provider, surgeons, dentists, cardiologist, ophthalmologist, urologist, audiologist, rheumatologist, and more. Those are hard to find in small or rural towns. Better medical care tends to be found in or near larger cities.
Climate The climate cannot be stressed enough – in all four seasons, but especially summer and winter. I’ve seen people go somewhere in the summer, love an area, but when they visit in winter, decide that a few months of snow and below freezing temperatures are not for them. This is common in the Midwest and Northeast. The opposite can be true. You may go somewhere in winter, but despise it in the summer. For example, Arizona is lovely in the winter, but the summers are brutal. You want to love, or at least tolerate, the place you are moving to year-round. If you can’t, then you may want to consider living in two locations. This is a common setup where people escape either the winter or summer in the primary location and go to a more desirable area for a few months. Some people buy a second home while others rent to give them flexibility and less upfront costs. The most important advice I can give is to go visit in different seasons to see how you like it. Could you tolerate the temperature? Can you deal with any allergies? How do you feel about the different natural disasters in that area? Are you okay shoveling snow or not going outside much if it’s above 100 degrees?
Income Inequality Income inequality isn’t something I thought about until I was living in the Midwest and went to Los Angeles for a weekend. As we drove around, I felt uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. As we were leaving, I think it had to do with the income inequality. I grew up in the suburbs in Washington state. There was income inequality, but it wasn’t stark. A few people had nicer cars and homes, but it was the difference between a Honda and a BMW — not a Honda and a Lamborghini. I spent all of my adult life in Seattle up until a few years ago. Seattle has a lot of income inequality, but it’s also hidden. There are Lamborghini’s, but you also have millionaires driving around in Subarus. When we moved to the Midwest, I didn’t think about it much, but I’d guess there is less income inequality here. I rarely see BMWs. I’ve seen one or two Lamborghini’s. I see more expensive pickup trucks than anything. As a financial planner, I see the salaries of clients I work with and the salary ranges jobs offer. It’s overwhelmingly a much narrower band in the Midwest, such as $40,000 to $200,000. For people I work with in Seattle, the band tends to be $150,000 to $1,000,000+. These are only the folks I’ve worked with, which by nature of what I do is going to be skewed to a higher level of income. The range is much higher in Seattle when you factor in people making minimum wage. As I drove around LA, the income inequality was uncomfortable. I’d be stopped at a traffic light and see millions of dollars worth of cars next to someone sleeping under a tarp. While living in Seattle, I saw plenty of people who are unhoused and lots of income inequality, but it wasn’t as drastic as LA. Plus, having lived in the Midwest for a few years now, it’s not something I see regularly anymore. It reminded me of the studies that say that much of our happiness is strongly related to our perception of our wealth relative to others. Basically, the less you have relative to others, the less happy you may be. If you make $500,000 (an objectively high income), that may not feel good if you are constantly surrounded by people making $1,000,000. Those two incomes buy drastically different lifestyles. If you make $80,000 and most people around you make $70,000 to $100,000, you may feel better. That range won’t buy drastically different lifestyles. Let’s bring this back to deciding where to live. Obviously, family and friend relationships, access to healthcare, weather, activities, and other factors are important to consider, but it’s worth considering income inequality. If you are frequently comparing yourself to others who have more, you may find yourself less happy. If you are someone who is interested in volunteering in order to close the gap in income inequality, perhaps you want to live in a location with high income inequality. Personally, when I was living in Seattle, I’d get an itch to buy a nicer car every once in a while. I didn’t, but it was there. I haven’t felt that itch once in the Midwest.
Airport Access If you hardly travel and most of your family is within driving distance, airport access may be less important, but for people who travel a few times a year, airport access can make a huge difference. If you have an airport with many direct flights across the country, you can usually spend half a day traveling to see family and friends. If you have a smaller airport or a regional airport, you usually need to spend at least a full day traveling. I noticed this when I moved from Seattle to the Midwest. I used to be able to catch an early flight and enjoy the afternoon or evening in the city to which I was flying. Now, it’s usually at least two flights and a full day of travel. In retirement, that may matter less, but it can take a toll when you are spending 10 or more hours in airports or planes when you are used to 4 to 6 hours. Retirees have told me that moving away from a large airport has been tough. They may have been within an hour’s drive, but after moving, they are three or four hours away. It’s harder when your family has a medical emergency or you are traveling regularly to see grandkids. That extra time can be stressful. It’s not a dealbreaker for them, but it is an adjustment.
Taxes Although people often think about taxes first, taxes are last because in almost every circumstance, everything else is more important. Taxes are important, and I don’t want anybody to pay more than they are legally obligated, but I often see people contemplating uprooting their life to move somewhere for lower taxes. If you have the ability to pay taxes and live somewhere you love, why change it? Let’s say you can move somewhere and pay $5,000 per year less in taxes. Is it worth being away from family? Is it worth being in a harsher climate? Is it worth changing your life completely? For most people, the answer is no. Plus, most people only look at one or two types of taxes when they consider moving. You shouldn’t only consider income taxes. You should be considering:
Federal income taxes
State and local taxes
Property taxes
Capital gains taxes
Sales taxes
Inheritance taxes
Gift taxes
Estate taxes
Even within income, types of income can be taxed differently from state-to-state. For example, distributions from 401(k)s and IRAs are typically not taxable in Pennsylvania. People often quote Texas as having no income tax, but property taxes could be 1.7%, which may be more than double your current location. Although not directly a tax, you may want to consider the cost of living. There are different calculators online that do a decent job of comparing taxes, housing, and food.
While taxes can become important, particularly in the case of state estate taxes and inheritance goals, most people focus too much on taxes and not the quality of life that they have in a location with higher taxes. Try It Out One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is not try out a new location before selling their home and moving. Some people move and love it, but there are people who make the move, regret it, and end up going back. That can be a very costly and disruptive decision. Given the growth of platforms where you can rent homes for extended periods, it can be a good investment to rent a home for a month during two different seasons in the place you want to live. You want to do it for long enough to get a feel for what it’s like to live there. How is the traffic? How is the weather? Are the people friendly? Is it easy to get around and travel? Is there good healthcare nearby? Could you see yourself building community? Renting a house for a couple of months might be $10,000 or less. When you consider the cost of moving, selling a home, potential capital gains on a sale, and the time it takes to do everything, that $10,000 could be a small investment in helping you decide whether living in a new location in retirement is worth it. Final Thoughts – My Question for You Choosing the best retirement location for you is not easy. It may be where you are located, but it may be somewhere else. Although taxes often feel important, don’t discount your community or the community you can build, healthcare, climate, income inequality, and airport access. Lastly, don’t forget to try it out before you make a big move! I’ll leave you with one question to act on. What factors are you going to consider in your move? Disclaimer: This article is for general information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment, financial, legal, or tax advice. It is not a recommendation for purchase or sale of any security or investment advisory services. Please consult your own legal, financial, and other professionals to determine what may be appropriate for you. Opinions expressed are as of the date of publication, and such opinions are subject to change. Click for full disclaimer.
1. VIX Stock Volatility Index Had Largest Peak to Close Move Ever Monday Last Week
@Charlie Bilello After hitting a high of 65.73 on Monday morning, the $VIX would end the day at 38.57. That 41% decline was the largest peak to close move ever.
2. Russell 2000 Small Caps -8.5% in August
3. Hedge Funds Turn Bearish on Commodities…Contra Indicator?
Psychology Today -Potential benefits for fatigue, foggy thinking, sleep loss, and even dementia Austin Perlmutter M.D.
Key points
Creatine aids brain energy by boosting ATP regeneration, possibly improving cognitive performance.
Studies suggest creatine may help with fatigue, brain fog, and sleep deprivation in stressful conditions.
Early research shows creatine might benefit Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline, though more studies are needed.
To think, act and feel your best, your brain needs constant access to high quality energy. Is it possible that creatine can help our brains regenerate energy, and can this combat foggy thinking, fatigue, poor cognitive performance, dementia, and sleep deficits? In this post, we’re breaking down the powerful new science showing how creatine can influence brain energetics. We’ll talk about mechanisms and the latest clinical research. Note: this is purely for educational purposes, and you should talk to your healthcare provider before taking any supplement.
Let’s Start With a Quick Background on Brain Energetics The brain, despite its relatively small size, consumes about 20% of the body’s total energy, primarily in the form of glucose, which our brain imports through the blood-brain barrier from our bloodstream. Glucose is metabolized through glycolysis and the citric acid cycle, generating ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which powers our neurons. Additionally, the brain can use ketone bodies as an alternative energy source, particularly during periods of low glucose availability, such as fasting. Dysregulation of brain metabolism is implicated in various neurological conditions, especially Alzheimer’s disease, where impaired glucose metabolism and mitochondrial dysfunction play significant roles. We’ll come back to this.
What Is Creatine and Where Does it Come From? Before we get into the technical aspects of creatine, let’s start with the basics of what creatine is. Creatine is a compound made naturally in our bodies out of the amino acids arginine, glycine, and methionine. This synthesis primarily occurs in the liver and in the brain. Creatine also can be found in certain foods, in particular animal foods. It’s notable that for this reason, when compared to omnivores, vegans consume substantially less dietary creatine, and vegetarians may have lower levels of circulating and muscle creatine than omnivores. Over 90% of our creatine stores are located in our skeletal muscle.
Creatine Supplementation Ok, now let’s shift to talk about taking creatine supplementation. There are over 1000 peer-reviewed papers on this topic. There are several different forms of creatine, but the majority of the data on efficacy and use comes specifically from creatine monohydrate. Creatine monohydrate is highly popular in athletes, and has been extensively studied and deemed relatively safe at doses up to 30 grams a day for up to five years in healthy people, although there are reports of GI issues, muscle cramps and problems with heat tolerance. Though these topics are still being investigated, a recent review entitled “Common questions and misconceptions about creatine supplementation: What does the scientific evidence really show?” looked at popular misconceptions about creatine, finding that in healthy individuals, there’s not much data that creatine is linked to hair loss, kidney issues, muscle cramping or fewer benefits in women, and that oral creatine monohydrate is likely to be the best form, probably around 3-5 grams a day.
Brain Energetic Mechanisms of Creatine The core pathway identified that tethers creatine to everything from exercise benefits to brain health is a bidirectional reaction where phosphate groups can be added to creatine to allow for the regeneration of energy currency called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. Here’s the basics of how it works. Creatine can have a phosphate added to it using an enzyme called creatine kinase. The new molecule, called phosphocreatine, can then be used to regenerate ATP from ADP in places of high energy use, specifically the muscle and brain. Creatine is removed by the body after it degrades into creatinine, a molecule that can be excreted through urine.
How does creatine get into the brain? There are several transporters, including the creatine transporter one or CT1 and a sodium chloride protein that allows for dietary creatine and creatine made in our livers to pass the blood-brain barrier, but the CT1 pathway seems to be more important in regulating uptake.
Some research suggests that CT1 receptors may be decreased in the context of high consumption of supplementary creatine, which could potentially limit the ability of supplemental creatine to reach the brain. As a way to bypass this potential resistance, there’s some data suggesting that the consumption of a creatine precursor called guanidinoacetic acid or an analog of creatine called cyclocreatine may help bypass this potential resistance.
How Creatine May Acutely Boost Brain Energy Let’s now talk about the potential role of creatine under conditions of acute brain stressors. In the course of our days, our brains can experience a host of different stressors like fatigue, lower oxygen, and sleep deprivation. These stressors are believed to affect and be a reflection of brain energetics. Here, research suggests that creatine may have an especially important role. In one 2015 clinical study, young people who experienced oxygen deprivation had improvements in cognition when given placebo. A 2002 study using 8 grams of daily creatine supplementation was found to reduce mental fatigue during math calculations. A small study on sleep-deprived rugby players from 2011 found that creatine supplementation attenuated sleep-related declines in performance, and a new study in Nature Scientific Reports published in 2024 found that creatine supplementation improved cognitive performance and altered brain energetic signals in healthy people after sleep deprivation.
Could Creatine Target States of Chronic Brain Energetic Depletion? In addition to acute brain stressors that reflect and influence brain energetics, many chronic brain issues are linked to impaired brain energetics. Of these, the best example may be Alzheimer’s disease, a condition that affects almost 60 million people around the world and up to 1 in 3 people over age 85. Alzheimer’s disease is sometimes called “Type 3 diabetes” because it’s been clearly linked to impairments in brain energetics. Specifically, data suggests that a decrease in brain use of glucose (called “cerebral hypometabolism”) is an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease, and may be a driver of disease progression. Importantly, a decrease in brain glucose utilization has also been found in older adults in general. So how might creatine factor into the conversation?
Generally speaking, the research looking at the potential for creatine as a way to benefit brain energetics in Alzheimer’s or age-related cognitive decline is very early and almost exclusively preclinical. However, some promising findings have many researchers invested in continuing pursuit of this emerging science. In a 2023 paper entitled “Creatine as a Therapeutic Target in Alzheimer’s Disease,” the authors state that despite the existing lack of clinical data, “Creatine may serve as a potential target for prevention and therapy and Creatine monohydrate supplementation may be beneficial in AD,” and advocate for more clinical data. The good news is that there’s at least one protocol for a pilot study on this very topic now published.
Putting it Together Creatine is a naturally occurring compound that is found in our food and is synthesized in our bodies under normal states. Creatine’s known mechanism of action indicates that it plays a role in energy regeneration, and this may have significant implications for brain energetics. While the research is still early, there’s some initial signal that creatine may help to offset energetic depletion states in our brains both acutely and long term.
From Dave Lutz Jones Trading As the S&P 500 Index lost about 6% across the first three trading days of August, the Treasury market posted gains of almost 2%. That enabled investors with 60% of their assets in stocks and 40% in bonds — a once time-honored strategy for building a diversified portfolio with less volatility — to outperform one that merely held equities.
2. Fed Fund Futures Pricing in 100 Basis Points in Cuts 2024
When people worry about your mental diet, they tend to fret about the junk you’re pouring into your brain—the trashy videos, the cheap horror movies, the degrading reality TV, and … I’m not so worried about the dangers of mental junk food. That’s because I’ve found that many of the true intellectuals I’ve met take pleasure in mental junk food too. Having a taste for trashy rom-coms hasn’t rotted their brain or made them incapable of writing great history or doing deep physics. No, my worry is that, you won’t put enough really excellent stuff into your brain. I’m talking about what you might call the “theory of maximum taste.” This theory is based on the idea that exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness. If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you spend your time only with run-of-the-mill stuff. The theory of maximum taste says that each person’s mind is defined by its upper limit—the best that it habitually consumes and is capable of consuming.”
2. Capex Not Helping Startups–Struggling AI Startups Look for a Bailout From Big Tech
WSJ Amazon, Google and Microsoft are using a new type of deal to get employees and technology from artificial-intelligence firms— By Berber JinTom Dotan and Miles Kruppa
Artificial intelligence startups raised billions of dollars last year, aiming to become winners in the latest tech-driven boom. Now many are struggling to survive—and asking Silicon Valley’s biggest companies to bail them out.
At least three once-hot AI startups have been rescued via a new type of deal that many in the tech industry say are acquisitions in everything but name. These deals have the advantage of skirting the typical regulatory process at a time when big tech’s growing control over generative AI is being scrutinized by governments.
On Friday, Character.AI announced a deal for Google to use its technology and hire many of its researchers and executives, including its co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas. Google negotiated a licensing fee worth $2 billion for the startup’s technology to help buy out early investors, people familiar with the matter said.
The two companies considered an outright acquisition, but concluded that was unlikely to get past regulators, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In June, Adept AI struck a deal in which Amazon agreed to hire most of the startup’s employees and paying about $330 million to license its technology, according to people with knowledge of the arrangement. That was enough, along with Adept’s remaining cash, to pay back investors, but a disappointing turn for a company that just last year was valued at $1 billion. Microsoft cast the mold for this deal type in March when it hired nearly all the employees from AI developer Inflection to start a new consumer AI division and paid around $650 million to license its technology.
4. Stock Leader Monster Beverage -27% from Highs…Back to 2022 Levels
5. Micron Top to Bottom Correction -45%
$156 Top to $85 Low
6. Latin America Chart
An International Market Breaking Down…50d thru 200d to downside.
7. Costco Pulling a Netflix Password Clean-Up
Morningbrew Blog RETAIL Good luck sneaking in here anymore Soon the only way you’re gonna be getting into Costco without a membership is through the vents: Card scanners are coming to all front entrances “over the coming months,” the retailer of everything in bulk announced this week in an escalation of its Netflix-like efforts to end membership-sharing. The main change: Instead of showing your pass to a Costco employee (the ones TikTokers have made a trend of foiling), you’ll present your physical or digital membership card to a scanner. But robots aren’t taking jobs—there will still be someone at the door guiding the process. Here’s why your days of borrowing mom’s card to grab a rotisserie chicken are numbered:
The grocery warehouse makes most of its money from membership fees (they accounted for $4.6 billion in revenue last fiscal year).
It started cracking down on card-sharing over a year ago after noticing more shoppers using memberships that didn’t belong to them, especially at self-checkout. Since then, Costco has tightened up its entrances and started requiring customers to show photo ID if their membership card doesn’t include a picture.
Memberships are also getting a price hike for the first time since 2017. On Sept. 1, the basic Gold Star tier will go from $60 to $65, and the Executive Membership will increase from $120 to $130.—ML https://www.morningbrew.com/daily
