Category Archives: Daily Top Ten

Topley’s Top 10 – August 16, 2023

1. Annual 5% Pullbacks by Sector….Energy and Financials Have the Most

Nasdaq Dorsey Wright.   Utilities Four 5% Pullbacks already in 2023.


2. REIT Max Bearishness?

Professional Investors Max Underweight REITS.


3. UBS Breaks Out to Decade Highs Post Credit Suisse Acquisition


4. Dollar Weakness did not Last Long…New 2023 Highs

www.stockcharts.com


5. Chinese Credit Demand Slump

The Daily Shot Brief  https://dailyshotbrief.com/


6. Smallest Imports to U.S. from China in 20 Years

@Charlie Bilello A Big Shift in Trade

13.3% of US goods were imported from China during the first six months of 2023, the smallest percentage in 20 years.

Mexico is now the #1 trading partner with the US, followed by Canada. China, which held the top spot from 2015-2018 and again in 2020, has dropped down to third place.


7. Weekly Gasoline Prices Rise for 6th Straight Week

Advisors Perspectives Blog by Jennifer Nash  As of August 14, the price of regular and premium gas each rose by 2 cents and 3 cents, respectively, from the previous week. According to GasBuddy.com, California has the highest average price for regular at $5.11 and Mississippi has the cheapest at $3.29.

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2023/08/15/weekly-gasoline-prices-rise-for-6th-straight-week


8. 50% of Build To Rent Home Tenants Make $100k Plus Per Year


9. This 1 Fitness Number Might Be the Most Important. What to Know About VO2 Max

By

Neal Templin

While fitness watches offer an estimate of your VO2 max, they might not be as accurate as an actual test.

 DREAMSTIME

When it comes to fitness and even longevity, there is one number to rule them all: VO2 max.

The number measures the maximum amount of oxygen a person can use during intense exercise. A person awaiting a heart transplant might score below 10 while a world-class endurance athlete might be above 70 or even 80. Many health experts consider it the single best indicator of cardiorespiratory fitness, and research has found it correlates to longevity as well.

“The relationship between VO2 max and all-cause mortality is quite good,” says Dr. Michael Joyner, an anesthesiologist and fitness expert at the Mayo Clinic. “The odds of dying in the next 10 years are markedly low if your VO2 max is high.”

So what is VO2 max and why is it such a good measure of total health?

For starters, the test measures how multiple systems of your body function during hard exercise, including your heart, lungs, muscles, and veins, according to Dr. Kerry Stewart, a clinical and research exercise physiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. People who score well are less likely to have diabetes and high levels of LDL, or so-called bad cholesterol, and more likely to have high levels of HDL, or “good” cholesterol.

The American Heart Association in 2016 issued a scientific statement recommending that an assessment of cardiorespiratory fitness be considered a key vital sign in evaluating a person’s heart disease risk and overall health. It said that cardiorespiratory fitness was “was a potentially stronger predictor of mortality than established risk factors such as smoking, hypertension, high cholesterol, and Type 2 diabetes.”

High cardiorespiratory fitness is also linked to lower rates for certain types of cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. It also appears to help people already diagnosed with cancer. “Research findings have raised the possibility that physical activity may have beneficial effects on survival for patients with breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers,” the institute said.

The positive news is that you can increase your VO2 score. How? By exercising. The harder you push yourself, the more you can improve your score. Even brisk walks around the neighborhood could lift the scores and health of millions of inactive Americans.

How can you measure your VO2 max? The most accurate tests are done in a laboratory where you are hooked up to a mask that measures oxygen consumption as you exercise. If you are on a treadmill, you are told to walk or run faster and faster until your oxygen consumption stops rising. If you go beyond this point, you will increasingly be using anaerobic energy—which doesn’t burn oxygen—and you will have trouble sustaining it for long periods.

Today, some fitness devices, including Apple Watch and Fitbit, can estimate your VO2 max score based on your heart rate and, in some cases, the speed you are moving. They aren’t as accurate as a laboratory VO2 max test, say doctors Joyner and Stewart. “They are reasonable estimates based on reasonable algorithms,” Joyner says.

VO2 is commonly measured in milliliters of oxygen consumed a minute per kilogram of body weight. An average adult might score 35. Endurance athletes can be twice that or even higher.

Sometimes, cardiorespiratory fitness is expressed in METs, a measure of metabolic energy. (METs are calculated by taking your VO2 max score and dividing it by 3.5.) One MET is the amount of oxygen a person uses while seated and at rest. If your exertion level rises to two METS, that means you’re using twice as much oxygen. A VO2 max of eight to 10 METs is considered healthy for an average adult, while one of less than five METs is considered worrisome.

“People who have more severe disease generally can’t achieve five METs worth of work,” Stewart said.

Women, because they tend to have less muscle per kilogram of body weight than men, usually score lower, though the best female endurance athletes still post high numbers. And just as with men, higher VO2 scores for women correlate to athletic performance and mortality.

VO2 scores decrease as people age because their maximum heart rate declines and they lose muscle mass and thus burn less oxygen. So a score that would be low for a woman in her 20s might be an elite score for a woman in her 70s.

To calculate VO2, The Apple Watch uses a combination of heart rate, weight, age, other personal information and walking or running speed to measure cardiovascular fitness. It is accurate within an average of one MET of an actual VO2 max test, according to Apple.

If you walk on sand or uphill or anything that makes walking or running more arduous, that will make your Apple Watch VO2 max score appear worse. Also, if you take medicines that slow your heart rate like beta blockers or calcium channel blockers, it will make your score appear better. The Apple Watch asks you to list any heart-slowing medicines, and then makes adjustments for them.  

It used to be that you had to exercise to calculate VO2 max on an Apple Watch. But an Apple watch is now set up so that you can get a score from walking around. Your score appears in the Apple Health app, in the heart section under cardio fitness.

Fitbit also estimates your VO2 max score from your resting heart rate, age, sex, weight, and other personal information, and uses it to calculate a fitness level between one (poor) and six (excellent). If your Fitbit connects to GPS, you can obtain a more precise score by going on a run.  

How hard is it to improve VO2 max score? That depends on your fitness level. Someone who is inactive could improve their VO2 max through moderate exercise and make a significant improvement in their health.

Fit people have to push harder. That means either exercising longer or exercising harder. Or both. The Center for Disease Control recommends that adults get 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week. You can get additional health benefits by doing two or even three times as much exercise, but there are diminishing returns. Dr. Joyner says, “You get 70% to 80% of the benefits by following the CDC’s basic guidelines,” he says.

Lifting weights can also help your VO2 score. That’s particularly true for older people who have lost muscle mass and replaced it with fat. Weights can help reverse that process.

And one of the fastest ways to improve your VO2 max is to lose weight.

For those who are serious about improving their VO2 max, Joyner recommends that they add interval training to their routines. A popular approach now is 4×4 interval training, where you do four intervals of intense exercise, separated by rest between each interval.

“In general, for any person to reach their personal biological upper limit, they need to do interval training,” Joyner says. 

Corrections & amplifications: Kerry Stewart is a clinical and research exercise physiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who does work in cardiology. An earlier version of this article incorrectly called him a cardiologist. 

Write to Neal Templin at neal.templin@barrons.com

What Is VO2 Max? What to Know About This Fitness Number. – MarketWatch


10. Stripping Things of Legend That Encrusts Them

The Daily Stoic Those shoes you’re wearing were likely made in a sweatshop by a child in horrendous labor conditions. That luxury handbag is a few dollars worth of leather and a fortune in deceptive advertising and branding. Those two politicians with radically different agendas are ladder-climbing friends behind the scenes, with the same corporate donors. Those big tough rappers whose beef you’re following are two poets laughing all the way to the bank. That fancy car will not only lose half its value when you drive it off the lot…but many of the cars on that same lot share the same chassis, were made in the same factories, and cost a lot less. Those songs were written by teams of songwriters, the pop star given public credit to preserve their ‘authenticity.’ That ripped actor is on steroids, that beautiful actress had plastic surgery and her images are photoshopped…and by the way, both of them are thrice married for a reason.

This list–not a conclusive one by a long shot–is not a morning dose of nihilism. It is, however, an exercise that Marcus Aurelius tried to practice in his own way. This expensive wine, he noted, was just rotten grapes. This sumptuous dish was actually a dead pig. The brilliant purple of the emperor’s cloak was dyed with shellfish blood, made by miserable slaves.

What Marcus was doing, what we can do, is “stripping things of the legend that encrusts them.” He was using the power of his mind to rip the polish off, to remove the branding, to take things down to their studs. So he could see what was really happening, that he was deceived, puffed up, tempted. Materialism, injustice, our lower urges–these things depend on legend and myth and marketing. They depend on a false picture, an inflated sense.

To act rationally, to know what matters, to do the right thing, to remain self-contained, we need to tear that down. We need to remind ourselves what things are and what they’re made of.

https://dailystoic.com/

Topley’s Top 10 – August 15, 2023

1. Tech Stock Valuations Back to 2021 Highs Based on 12 Month Forward Earnings

Callum Thomas Tick Tock Tech Top:  Case in point — tech valuations got back to those crazy 2020/21 pandemic liquidity frenzy levels (and a key difference now is the record pace and magnitude of monetary tightening globally vs easing back then).

Source:  @CameronDawson at NewEdge Wealth


2. SMH Semiconductor ETF Closes Below 50day


3. S&P 53% of Stocks Trading Above 50-day

Dave Lutz at Jones Trading Twits note that Only 53% of SPX stocks are still trading higher than their 50-day moving averages, which is down from almost 90% just three weeks ago.


4. Before Monday Rally….Energy Returned 10% Over QQQ for Last Month

XLE Energy ETF +6.6% vs. QQQ -3.2% One month

www.yahoofinance.com


5. 2022 was Least Amount of IPO’s in 20 Years

JP Morgan Private Wealth

https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/gl/en/insights/investing/tmt/the-good-the-bad-and-the-volatility-what-investors-might-not-be-noticing


6. CEO Confidence Rallies But Nowhere Near Exuberance

https://www.conference-board.org/topics/CEO-Confidence


7. 20-Year Treasury ETF Sees Massive Outflow

Bloomberg By Katherine Greifeld and Vildana Hajric

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-14/biggest-treasury-etf-sees-largest-exodus-since-2020-meltdown?srnd=premium&sref=GGda9y2L


8. Total Returns of Bond Index AGG…Coupon Large Majority

Capital Group

https://www.capitalgroup.com/advisor/insights/articles/4-lessons-50-years-bond-investing.html?sfid=1988901890&cid=81032999&et_cid=81032999&cgsrc=SFMC&alias=btn-LP-A1cta-advisor


9. Total Worth of U.S. Homes Hits Record as Supply Shrinks by 15% Year Over Year


10. The Most Important Question of Your Life

WRITTEN BYMARK MANSON

Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money, and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room.

Everyone would like that—it’s easy to like that.

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous it doesn’t even mean anything.

A more interesting question—a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before—is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?

Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence—but not everyone wants to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, and obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle hell. People want to be rich without the risk, without the sacrifice, without the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.1

Everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship—but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings, and the emotional psychodrama to get there.

They view pain as an objectively negative thing to be avoided at all costs, whereas reality is much more nuanced. As I cover extensively in my Resilience Course in the Mark Manson Premium Subscription, we are all capable of—and I’d argue responsible for—ascribing meaning to our pain, and this can actually give our life purpose.

But most people don’t realize this. And so they settle. They settle and wonder “What if?” for years and years until the question morphs from “What if?” into “Was that it?” And when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail they say, “What was that for?” If not for their lowered standards and expectations 20 years prior, then what for?

Happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life.2

At the core of all human behavior, our needs are more or less similar. Positive experience is easy to handle. It’s negative experience that we all, by definition, struggle with. Therefore, what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire, but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings.

What we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire, but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings

People want an amazing physique. But you don’t end up with one unless you legitimately appreciate the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour,3 unless you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions.4

People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don’t end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to appreciate the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and work insane hours on something you have no idea whether or not it will be successful.

People want a partner, a spouse. But you don’t end up attracting someone amazing without appreciating the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It’s part of the game of love. You can’t win if you don’t play.

What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences, but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.

To get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.

There’s a lot of crappy advice out there that says, “You’ve just got to want it enough!”

Everybody wants something. And everybody wants something enough. They just aren’t aware of what it is they want, or rather, what they want “enough.”

Because if you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the costs. If you want the beach body, you have to want the sweat, the soreness, the early mornings, and the hunger pangs. If you want the yacht, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business moves, and the possibility of pissing off one person or ten thousand.

If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image, a false promise. Maybe what you want isn’t what you want—you just enjoy wanting. Maybe you don’t actually want it at all.

Sometimes I ask people, “How do you choose to suffer?” These people tilt their heads and look at me like I have twelve noses.5

But I ask because that tells me far more about you than your desires and fantasies. Because you have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns.

And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar answers. The more interesting question is the pain.

What is the pain that you want to sustain?

That answer will actually get you somewhere. It’s the question that can change your life. It’s what makes me, me and you, you. It’s what defines and separates us, and ultimately brings us together.

For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I fantasized about being a musician—a rock star, in particular. Any badass guitar song I heard, I would always close my eyes and envision myself up onstage playing it to the screams of the crowd, people absolutely losing their minds to my sweet finger-noodling.

This fantasy could keep me occupied for hours on end. The fantasizing continued through college, even after I dropped out of music school and stopped playing seriously.

But even then it was never a question of if I’d ever be up playing in front of screaming crowds, but when. I was biding my time before I could invest the proper amount of time and effort into getting out there and making it work. First, I needed to finish school. Then, I needed to make money. Then, I needed to find the time. Then… nothing.

Despite fantasizing about this for over half of my life, the reality never came. And it took me a long time and a lot of negative experiences to finally figure out why: I didn’t actually want it.

I was in love with the result—the image of me onstage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I’m playing—but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough to fail at it. I hardly tried at all.

The daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, the pain of finding gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a shit. The broken strings, the blown tube amp, hauling 40 pounds of gear to and from rehearsals with no car.

It’s a mountain of a dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what took me a long time to discover was that I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the top.

Our culture would tell me that I’ve somehow failed myself, that I’m a quitter or a loser. Self-help would say that I either wasn’t courageous enough, determined enough or I didn’t believe in myself enough.6 The entrepreneurial/start-up crowd would tell me that I chickened out on my dream and gave in to my conventional social conditioning.7 I’d be told to do affirmations8 or join a mastermind group or manifest, or something.

But the truth is far less interesting than that: I thought I wanted something, but it turns out I didn’t. End of story.

I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love not with the fight, but only the victory.

And life doesn’t work that way.

Who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for. People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who get in good shape.9 People who enjoy long work weeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who move up it.10 People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainty of the starving artist life are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.11

This is not a call for willpower or “grit.”12 This is not another admonition of “no pain, no gain.”13

This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes. So, friend, choose your struggles wisely.

This article is an updated excerpt from my book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Guide to Living A Good Life

https://markmanson.net/question

Topley’s Top 10 – August 14, 2023

1. Nvidia Closes Below 50day Moving Average


2. ChatGPT Total Web Users Fell in June

CHARTR The genie is out. When OpenAIlaunched ChatGPTat the end of November last year, the tech world and the Extremely Online community went into something of a meltdown, racing to try the chatbot and sample its hilarious / genuinely insightful responses. The process was simple: put in a prompt — anything from “solve this complex coding problem” to “come up with rap battle verses between a caveman and Shakespeare” — and ChatGPTwould often spit out exactly what you were after.

Back in December, the chatbot was making waves as one of the quickest platforms in history to reach1 million users — hitting the milestone ~15xfaster than Instagramand ~30xquicker than Spotify. Indeed, by the time the new year rolled around, ChatGPT already had 25 million users. Since then, however, even as more details of the bot’s full capabilities and ever-developing skillset have emerged, ChatGPT’s usage has started to temper.

www.chartr.com


3. Lagging Big Pharma Sector ETF Breaking Out to New Highs

PPH Pharma ETF


4. MLP ETF Steady Move Higher


5. Another 2023 Laggard ….XLF Financials ETF 50day thru 200day to Upside

Top Holdings …55% of ETF

https://www.etf.com/XLF


6. The Five Year Return of Softbank Barely Positive


7. One of My Top Breakouts to Watch…Buyback ETF PKW

Close to new highs but not yet

©1999-2023 StockCharts.com All Rights Reserved

www.stockcharts.com


8. Never Underestimate the Amount of Suckers in America….Parlay Bets Skyrocket on Gambling Apps

By Avi Salzman Barrons

https://www.barrons.com/articles/draftkings-flutter-stock-sports-gambling-parlay-bet-25914b0f?mod=past_editions


9. Tax Data Reveals Large Flight of High Earners From Big Cities

Economic Innovation Group by Connor O’Brien

Key Findings

  • The exodus of workers and families from major U.S. cities during the first two years of the pandemic was exceeded by an even larger outflow of income. 
  • Newly-released IRS data shows taxable income (Adjusted Gross Income, or AGI) in large urban counties fell by more than $68 billion between 2020 and 2021 from net migration alone, a dramatic acceleration of pre-pandemic leakage.
  • Rural counties benefited most from the outflow of earnings from major cities; net growth in AGI from net migration totaled more than 1.5 percent of existing residents’ taxable incomes, the highest of any county type.
  • Geographically, pandemic growth regions like Florida, East Texas, the Southern Triangle, and broad swathes of the Mountain West saw large inflows of income, coinciding with rapid post-pandemic population growth. 
  • Income flows out of urban areas and towards these growth regions appears to have been driven by upper-income households; in growing counties, in-migrants were on average higher earners than out-migrants, while in shrinking counties, out-migrants earned more than newcomers.

https://eig.org/high-earners-migration/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosmacro&stream=business

Found at Bespoke Group Blog https://www.bespokepremium.com/interactive/posts/think-big-blog/bespokes-brunch-reads-8-13-23


10. The 10 best U.S. states for flipping houses, maximizing ROI—half are in the South

CNBC Celia Fernandez@CFERNAN6

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/13/best-states-flipping-homes-joybird-2023-report.html

Topley’s Top 10 – August 11, 2023

1. FANG+ Closes Below 50day Moving Average


2. QQQ Nasdaq 100 Closes Below 50day Moving Average


3. Apple Historical P/E Ratio, EV/EBITA, P/S


4. Short Sellers Targeting List of Names

Dave Lutz Jones Trading Hedge funds are betting that stocks in some of the market’s hottest sectors are headed for a fall, amid concern over how long the boom in electric vehicles, luxury goods and artificial intelligence will last – Electric-car maker Tesla Inc., Gucci owner Kering and Japanese chipmaker Advantest Corp. were the large-cap stocks with the highest percentage of funds shorting them last month in their respective regions, according to data compiled by Hazeltree.  Hazeltree aggregates data on about 12,000 equities globally from about 700 funds.


5. Disney Held the Late 2022 Lows

www.stockcharts.com


6. China Deflation?

Jill Disis(Bloomberg) — July’s data left no doubt: China is now clearly dealing with a deflation threat. Consumer and producer prices fell together for the first time since 2020, adding to concerns about the health of the world’s second-largest economy. News that China’s prices are falling may be somewhat jarring, given the inflationary pressures in many other parts of the world. But the unique factors contributing to China’s problems are deep and ingrained. Solving them may not be an easy fix.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/deflation-china-why-prices-falling-031353930.html


7. The Cost of Both Buying and Renting a Home Straight UP

https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter


8. Mortgage Rates Hit 22-Year High

The United States: Mortgage applications continue to weaken as mortgage rates climb.

Source: The Daily ShotSource: Reuters  Read full article

https://dailyshotbrief.com/


9. But…Household Formation Moving Higher So Demand for Homes/Apartments Not Slowing Down

Found at Irrelevant Investor Blog www.irrelevantinvestor.com


10. Sleep Well, Lead Better-HBR

by Christopher M. Barnes

Summary.   Although experts recommend eight hours of sleep a night, many of us don’t get that. A recent study of leaders across the world found that 42% average six hours of shut-eye or less. Insufficient rest leads to poor judgment, lack of self-control, and impaired creativity….more

How much sleep do you get each night? Most of us know that eight hours is the recommended amount, but with work, family, and social commitments often consuming more than 16 hours of the day, it can seem impossible to make the math work. Perhaps you feel that you operate just fine on four or five hours a night. Maybe you’ve grown accustomed to red-eye flights, time zone changes, and the occasional all-nighter. You might even wear your sleep deprivation like a badge of honor.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Although the ranks of sleep advocates are no doubt growing—led by the likes of Arianna Huffington and Jeff Bezos—a significant percentage of people, and U.S. executives in particular, don’t seem to be getting the sleep they need. According to the most recent data from the National Health Interview Survey, the proportion of Americans getting no more than six hours a night (the minimum for a good night’s rest for most people) rose from 22% in 1985 to 29% in 2012. An international study conducted in 2017 by the Center for Creative Leadership found that among leaders, the problem is even worse: 42% get six or fewer hours of shut-eye a night.

You probably already have some understanding of the benefits of rest—and the costs of not getting it. Sleep allows us to consolidate and store memories, process emotional experiences, replenish glucose (the molecule that fuels the brain), and clear out beta-amyloid (the waste product that builds up in Alzheimer’s patients and disrupts cognitive activity). By contrast, insufficient sleep and fatigue lead to poor judgment, lack of self-control, and impaired creativity. Moreover, there are lesser-known secondary effects in organizations. My research shows that sleep deprivation doesn’t just hurt individual performance: When managers lose sleep, their employees’ experiences and output are diminished too.

So how can we turn this knowledge into sustained behavior change? A first step for sleep-deprived leaders is to come to terms with just how damaging your fatigue can be—not only to you but also to those who work for you. Next, follow some simple, practical, research-backed advice to ensure that you get better rest, perform to your potential, and bring out the best in the people around you.

Spreading Damage

Historically, scholars have depicted supervision as stable over time—some bosses are just bad, and others aren’t. But recent research indicates that individual behavior can vary dramatically from day to day and week to week—and much of this variance can be explained by the quality of a manager’s sleep. Indeed, studies have found that when leaders show up for work unrested, they are more likely to lose patience with employees, act in abusive ways, and be seen as less charismatic. There is also a greater likelihood that their subordinates will themselves suffer from sleep deprivation—and even behave unethically.

In a recent study Cristiano Guarana and I measured the sleep of 40 managers and their 120 direct reports during the first three months of their assigned time working together, along with the quality of these boss-employee relationships. We found that sleep-deprived leaders were more impatient, irritable, and antagonistic, which resulted in worse relationships. We expected that this effect would diminish over time as people got to know each other, but it did not. Sleep deprivation was just as damaging at the end of the three months as it was at the beginning. However, the leaders were completely unaware of the negative dynamic.

Lorenzo Lucianetti, Devasheesh Bhave, Michael Christian, and I found similar results when we asked 88 leaders and their subordinates to complete daily surveys for two weeks: When bosses slept poorly, they were more likely to exhibit abusive behavior the next day, which resulted in lower levels of engagement among subordinates. When the boss doesn’t feel rested, the whole unit pays a price.

Sleep also affects managers’ ability to inspire and motivate those around them. In a 2016 experiment, Cristiano Guarana, Shazia Nauman, Dejun Tony Kong, and I manipulated the sleep of a sample of students: Some were allowed to get a normal night’s worth, while others were randomly assigned to a sleep-deprived condition in which they were awake about two hours longer. We then asked each participant to give a speech on the role of a leader, recorded those talks, and had third parties evaluate the speakers for charisma. Those who were sleep-deprived received scores 13% lower than those in the control group. Why? Previous research has shown that when leaders evince positive emotion, subordinates feel good and therefore perceive the bosses as charismatic. If we don’t get enough sleep, we’re less likely to feel positive and less able to manage or fake our moods; it’s very difficult to pull ourselves out of an insomnia-induced funk.

When the boss doesn’t feel rested, the whole unit pays a price.

Furthermore, leaders who discount the value of sleep can negatively impact not just emotions but also behaviors on their teams. Lorenzo Lucianetti, Eli Awtrey, Gretchen Spreitzer, and I conducted a series of studies of what we termed “sleep devaluation”—scenarios in which leaders communicate to subordinates that sleep is unimportant. They may do so by setting an example (for instance, boasting about sleeping only four hours or sending work e-mails at 3 am), or they may directly shape employees’ habits by encouraging people to work during typical sleep hours (perhaps criticizing subordinates for not responding to those 3 am e-mails, or praising individuals who regularly work late into the night). In our studies, we found that employees pay close attention to such cues and adjust their own behavior accordingly. Specifically, subordinates of leaders who model and encourage poor sleep habits get about 25 fewer minutes of nightly rest than people whose bosses value sleep, and they report that their slumber is lower in quality.

One additional—perhaps more powerful—finding from this research was that leaders’ devaluation of sleep may also cause followers to behave less ethically. Bosses who systematically eschewed rest—in comparison to other managers—rated their subordinates as less likely to do the right thing. We suspect this wasn’t just a matter of the sleep-deprived leaders’ giving tougher ratings; it’s likely that employees were actually behaving in less moral ways as a result of the workplace environment or their own sleep deprivation. Indeed, in previous studies we’ve shown that lack of sleep is directly linked to lapses in ethics.

Overlooked Solutions

Fortunately, there are solutions to help leaders improve the quality and quantity of their sleep. Many of these are well-known but underutilized. They include sticking to a consistent bedtime and wake-up schedule, avoiding certain substances too close to bedtime (caffeine within seven hours, alcohol within three hours, and nicotine within three or four hours), and exercising (but not right before bed). Additionally, relaxation and mindfulness meditation exercises help lower anxiety, making it easier to drift off to sleep.

A new branch of research is beginning to show how important it is to alter smartphone behavior too. Melatonin is a crucial biochemical involved in the process of falling asleep, and light (especially blue light from screens) suppresses its natural production. In research focused on middle managers, Klodiana Lanaj, Russell Johnson, and I found that time spent using smartphones after 9 pm came at the expense of sleep, which undermined work engagement the next day. The simple advice is to stop looking at your devices at night. If that’s not practical, you might try glasses that filter out blue light. Some researchers have found that these can mitigate the effect on melatonin production, thus helping people fall asleep more easily; I’m now in the very early stages of a study examining how this may improve work outcomes as well.

Savvy leaders are also starting to track their sleep, through either diaries or electronic trackers. But beware: Most sleep trackers have not gone through rigorous validation for accuracy. (Your Fitbit can do many things, but it is not especially good at measuring sleep.) Many phone apps in particular make unsupported claims—for example, that they can track which stage of sleep you’re in. However, some devices, such as ActiGraph monitors, are very accurate and can help you determine whether you’re overestimating your sleep (we often forget about periods of wakefulness in the night) and whether there are patterns you can change. For example, you might find that although you’re in bed for seven hours a night, you’re getting only five hours of sleep, fragmented into small segments. Or perhaps you notice that your bedtime drifts later on the weekend, leading to “social jet lag” on Monday, when you have to return to your earlier waking time. With this information, you can make adjustments, such as taking a relaxing bath before bed in hopes of getting more sustained rest, or hitting the sack earlier on Saturday and Sunday nights.

A nap can speed up cognitive processing, decrease errors, and increase stamina.

Leaders often overlook two other tools. The first is treatment for sleep disorders. By some estimates, up to 30% of Americans experience insomnia, and more than 5% suffer from sleep apnea. A large majority of people with these issues are never diagnosed or treated. If you are overweight, have a thick neck, snore, and spend adequate time in bed at night but still feel tired, you may have sleep apnea. Partners or spouses are often the first to notice the symptoms, but official diagnoses are typically made after a sleep study that measures oxygen levels and brain waves. You might then be prescribed a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) mask to wear at night; by keeping nasal and throat airways open, these devices greatly help sleep apnea patients.

As for insomnia sufferers, they’re typically aware of the problem but may not know how to fix it. Jared Miller, Sophie Bostock, and I examined an online program that uses cognitive behavioral therapy to combat this disorder. We found that participants who were randomly assigned to the program experienced improved sleep, more self-control, better moods, and higher job satisfaction, and they became more helpful toward colleagues. The treatment cost only a few hundred dollars per participant, indicating a substantial return on investment. I’m currently in the early stages of another study that will measure the effects of this treatment on leader behaviors and follower outcomes, and I expect similarly beneficial effects.

The other overlooked tool for getting more rest is napping. Too often, leaders view nap breaks as time spent loafing instead of working. However, research clearly indicates that dozing for even 20 minutes can lead to meaningful restoration that improves the quality of work. A brief nap can speed up cognitive processing, decrease errors, and increase stamina for sustained attention to difficult tasks later in the day. One study found that as little as eight minutes of sleep during the day was enough to significantly improve memory.

Many cultures outside the United States have embraced naps as a normal and desirable activity. In Japan, inemuri, or napping at work, is typically viewed positively. Midday siestas have long been part of work life in Spain. Now some American leaders are beginning to embrace this form of rest. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, is a nap proponent, and organizations such as Google and PriceWaterhouseCoopers have nap pods for employees, understanding that 20 minutes of downtime can make people more effective and productive for many more hours that day.

As a leader, even if you fail to get enough sleep yourself, you should be careful to promote good sleeping behavior. Your employees are watching you for cues about what is important. Avoid bragging about your own lack of sleep, lest you signal to your subordinates that they, too, should deprioritize sleep. If you absolutely must compose an e-mail at 3 am, use a delayed-delivery option so that the message isn’t sent until 8 am. If you must pull an all-nighter on a project, don’t hold that up as exemplary behavior.

For pro-sleep role models, look to CEOs such as Ryan Holmes of Hootsuite (“It’s not worth depriving yourself of sleep for an extended period of time, no matter how pressing things may seem”); Amazon’s Bezos (“Eight hours of sleep makes a big difference for me, and I try hard to make that a priority”); and Huffington, the CEO of Thrive Global, who wrote a whole book on the subject.

It is clear that you can squeeze in more work hours if you sleep less. But remember that the quality of your work—and your leadership—inevitably declines as you do so, often in ways that are invisible to you. As Bezos says, “Making a small number of key decisions well is more important than making a large number of decisions. If you shortchange your sleep, you might get a couple of extra ‘productive’ hours, but that productivity might be an illusion.” Even worse, as my research highlights, you’ll negatively affect your subordinates.

If instead you make sleep a priority, you will be a more successful leader who inspires better work in your employees. Don’t handicap yourself or your team by failing to get enough rest.

A version of this article appeared in the September–October 2018 issue (pp.140–143) of Harvard Business Review.

Christopher M. Barnes is a professor of management at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. He worked in the Fatigue Countermeasures branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory before pursuing his PhD in Organizational Behavior at Michigan State University.

https://hbr.org/2018/09/sleep-well-lead-better?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=LinkedIn&tpcc=orgsocial_edit

Topley’s Top 10 – August 10, 2023

1. Tesla Closes Below 50Day Moving Average

Tesla another mega-cap tech closing below 50day


2. Yuan vs. U.S. Dollar About to Make New Lows

Chinese economic data negative ….look for new lows in Yuan


3. Bulish Sentiment Seeing Highs of 2020…AAII Bull-Bear Spread


4. TBF-Short Treasury ETF Rallied to Previous High

This chart is short 20year treasury …failed to make new highs


5. Low Volatility Fund SPLV is Down for 2023

ETF.com

https://www.etf.com/SPLV


6. QQQ +38% vs. Low Volatility SPLV -3% Year to Date

On a 2-year return basis QQQ just passed SPLV in July

www.yahoofinance.com


7. KBE Bank ETF

Bank ETF ran right up to resistance at 200-week moving average.


8. Monthly Mortgage Payments +19% in One-Year


9. Women’s Problem Drinking Catching Up to Men

WSJ By Sumathi Reddy

Women are closing a gender gap, but it isn’t a good one: They’re catching up to men when it comes to problem drinking.

Women’s drinking, on the rise for the past two decades, jumped during the pandemic as women reported more stress. Although men still drink more alcohol than women and have higher alcohol-related mortality rates, doctors and public health experts say women are narrowing that divide.

Alcohol-related emergency department visits, hospitalizations and deaths are increasing faster for women than for men. And studies suggest that women are more susceptible to alcohol-related liver inflammation, heart disease and certain cancers. 

“There used to be a large gender gap in alcohol use and alcohol use disorder between men and women,” says Dawn Sugarman, a research psychologist at McLean Hospital and assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. “That is shrinking.”

Over the past couple of decades, problem drinking has risen most among 30- and 40-something women, says Aaron White, senior scientific adviser to the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, or NIAAA. Rates of drinking among teen girls has been declining, he says, but go up once women hit their 20s.

Binge drinking among women has gradually lost its social stigma over several generations to the point where it is almost a rite of passage in college. In recent years, a growing culture of mom drinking escalated during the pandemic, as some mothers juggling remote school and work drank more to cope with stress, and the habit stuck, doctors say.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/women-problem-drinking-alcohol-increasing-6aa9891c


10. Percent of Federal Felony Defendants Found Guilty and Receive Prison Sentence

From Scott Galloway Prof G Blog

https://www.profgalloway.com/trump-and-math/