3. Space UFO ETF +41% 6 Months Leading Up to Election
4. Wow! This Might be the Stat of the Year
5. ADBE had NOT Made it Back to Highs Prior to Last Night’s Number
6. IBIT Surpassed $50B Assets in 227 Days
The Daily Shot Brief Cryptocurrency: The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) surpassed $50 billion in assets in just 227 days, achieving this milestone five times faster than the previous record-holder, IEMG, which took 1,323 days. IEFA and VOO reached similar levels in comparable time frames.
CNBC reports that Renaissance Capital IPO ETF (IPO), a basket of recent IPOs, is up 22% this year, many of the companies in that ETF are two years old or more. There simply has not been enough IPOs to repopulate it with newer offerings. There are now only 32 holdings in the ETF, with half that were there two years ago.
IPOs: Total raised
2024 YTD: $28.8 billion
2023: $19.4 billion
2022: $7.7 billion
2021: $142 billion (record)
2020: $78 billion
2019: $46 billion
2018: $47 billion
2017: $35.5 billion
Source: Renaissance Capital
Largest IPOs of 2024 (from IPO price)
Reddit – up 364%
Astera Labs – up 228%
Rubrik – up 112%
UL Solutions – up 80%
OneStream – up 52%
Waystar – up 56%
Ibotta – down 15%
Ingram Micro – down 1%
8. Increased Use of Employee ChatGPT
9. New Hedge Fund Launches Set to Hit 24-Year Low
Via Reuters: New hedge fund launches will ‘likely’ end the year at their lowest in 24 years amid tough fundraising conditions, hedge fund research firm Preqin said on Wednesday, based on numbers from the first three quarters of this year.
By the third quarter of 2024, hedge fund managers opened 123 new funds, the lowest number since at least 2000 when total launches reached 191, Preqin said. Hedge fund debuts peaked at 697 in 2017, according to its data.
4. Will South Korea Follow Japan With Stock Market Reforms
Per Bloomberg, South Korea’s oligarchs have held near unchallenged power over almost every aspect of the economy for half a century. They run the biggest companies, command political clout and engineer arcane business deals that enrich themselves, often at the expense of their shareholders.
Now, regulators and investors are fighting back. And the potential ouster of President Yoon Suk Yeol after his short-lived declaration of martial law is likely to supercharge the process.
5. Equal Weight Tech Index Hitting New Highs
6. U.S. Stocks Are At All-Time High In Global Stock Market Cap
7. Germany: A Country Losing Economic Ground
8. The FED Has Shed 43% Of Its Assets Since 2022 QE
9. U.S. Adults Are Getting Worse At Reading And Math
From Morning Brew: Americans are increasingly flustered by words and numbers, according to a test that measures adult literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills in 31 industrialized countries.
The report card revealed an expanding gap between the most and least adept Americans in their ability to handle everyday tasks—from calculating an average to understanding a government email.
See me after class: The 2023 assessment of 4,600 US adults showed:
The share of Americans scoring at the lowest level (1 out of 5) or below in literacy rose to 28% from 19% in 2017.
And 34% scored at the lowest numeracy level or below, compared to 29% six years prior.
That means that over a quarter of Americans can reliably gauge info only from a simple text, while more than a third might struggle to perform tasks beyond basic arithmetic.
But the decline wasn’t even: The 90th percentile score didn’t drop for literacy and numeracy but the 10th percentile score for both decreased.
The US isn’t alone: Average literacy and numeracy scores dropped in 20 and 11 countries, respectively, which some researchers blame on less reading and more scrolling, though some of it could be due to aging populations and language difficulties stemming from increased immigration. Finland ranked No. 1 in both literacy and numeracy, while sharing first place with Japan in problem-solving.
10. MasterClass Is Introducing AI Mentors, Including A Mark Cuban Chatbot
From Inc.: MasterClass is bringing its famous teachers into the AI arena.
The online learning platform known for its wide variety of celebrity instructors is launching MasterClass On Call, a standalone product that will allow customers to chat with AI-powered duplicates of the platform’s teachers. The cost will be $10 per month or $84 per year.
MasterClass founder and CEO David Rogier says the company has been experimenting with the concept of AI versions of its instructors since the launch of OpenAI’s GPT-3 in 2022. He sees the technology as the key to unlocking a feature that MasterClass customers have been requesting for years: the ability to ask its celebrity instructors for advice. Big names like Ray Dalio, Richard Branson, and yes, Mark Cuban, have already inked deals to collaborate with MasterClass on these AI personas.
With the rise of generative AI, Rogier says a shift toward on-demand learning is underway. “If I’m negotiating a business deal, I need advice right now,” he says. “I don’t want to sit through an eight-hour class. Just tell me what to do.”
Subscribers to MasterClass On Call will gain unlimited, on-demand access to a collection of AI personas designed to be artificial mentors. For example, Rogier says that aspiring entrepreneurs could ask Cuban’s AI to help improve a pitch and role-play as a potential investor. Cuban said in a statement that the new product is “going to be an important tool for entrepreneurs and something I’m excited to be a part of.”
In an exclusive demo, Inc. got access to AI versions of sleep expert Matt Walker and Black Swan Group founder and former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss, the first two personas currently available in the public beta. The AI voices are remarkably similar to their human counterparts, with natural-sounding cadence and fast response times. When asked for help with a hypothetical salary negotiation, the AI-Voss discussed how to approach the conversation, provided tips on how to strike a balance between confidence and humility, and drafted an initial outreach email.
Future updates will bring new in-development personas, enable the AI mentors to remember previous conversations, and give users the ability to upload documents (like pitch decks) for the AI instructors to review.
Creating these AI mentors is no easy feat. MasterClass chief technology officer Mandar Bapaye says that the company links together “an orchestra of multiple AI models” to handle individual components, like providing the mentors’ knowledge base or transforming text into speech.
The knowledge model is trained on information contained in the mentors’ already-existing MasterClass courses, along with a curated selection of writings and audio recordings. In addition, MasterClass holds extensive interviews with mentors to gather both voice samples and data regarding how they respond to a wide variety of questions. Mentors also give periodic feedback to continuously improve the AI’s performance, like choosing which of two responses to the same question is more accurate to the advice the mentor would actually give.
When MasterClass began internal tests of On Call, Rogier was surprised by how comfortable people were talking to the AI mentors. Early testers felt more comfortable sharing with the AI because they didn’t feel any judgement or pressure to impress anyone. They were empowered to ask the “dumb questions” they might be embarrassed to ask otherwise, says Rogier.
MasterClass On Call is now available in beta with access to Voss’s and Walker’s AI personas. More mentors, including fashion designer and Queer Eye style expert Tan France, superstar chef Gordon Ramsay, and legendary feminist writer Gloria Steinem are expected to be added over the coming months.
Take a look at a short video about the new feature here.
1. WallStreetBets Sentiment Is Back To Its Earlier Highs
Via Callum Thomas (Weekly S&P500 #ChartStorm)
2. Assets In Leveraged Long ETFs Exceed Short Product By Record
3. Momentum Stocks Down 4.4% Yesterday
Sachs has what it calls the “high beta momentum long/short index,” and on Monday that grouping tumbled 6.1%, its worst daily performance since Feb. 2023. Morgan Stanley has its own momentum long index, which fell 4.4%; Bloomberg’s ‘pure momentum’ factor suffered its worst day in two years. The definitions slightly vary but all agreed that momo, as it’s called, was a mess.
4. Best Performing 2024 Stocks Were Down 2.9% Yesterday
If you’ve had a good year so far in the stock market, chances are you had a pretty bad day in the market today. On the surface, today’s action wasn’t awful. The S&P 500 (SPY) was down 0.5% while the Russell 1,000 was down 0.7%. Within the Russell 1,000, the average stock was down even less at -0.33%.
So what’s the big deal? Well, what made today noteworthy was the near-perfect performance distribution based on how stocks had performed so far this year heading into today. In the chart below, we’ve broken up the Russell 1,000 into deciles (10 groups of 100 stocks each) based on YTD stock performance through last Friday. Decile 1 contains the 100 best-performing stocks YTD, decile 2 contains the next best 100, and so on until you get to decile 10, which contains the year’s bottom 10% of performers. In the chart, we show the average performance today of the stocks in each decile. As shown, the decile of the best-performing stocks YTD through last Friday was down 2.9% today, while the decile of the worst-performing stocks YTD was up 2%! As you work your way down from the best decile to the worst, today’s performance gets better and better.
From Dave Lutz at Jones Trading: Mike O’Rourke noted the unwind tied to the Morgan Stanley US Momentum Index. “The Long/Short index had a return of 65% year to date coming into today’s session. The index cratered 6.7% in the first 90 minutes of trading today before settling in for a 5.5% decline on the session. It was the largest single day decline for the index since early February of 2023.”
9. Lithium Supply Surplus Set To Stay With Battery Makers’ Help
Per Reuters: Many lithium mines, led by Chinese operators, are maintaining production of the raw material needed for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, in defiance of prices weak enough to trigger mass output cuts – providing a boon for battery makers.
The continued production raises the prospect of years of oversupply and of weak prices.
Some battery makers own mines or have injected cash into operations to keep them operational, company reports show.
Mines were also maintaining production to retain market share and good relations with governments and because closures and restarts can lead to technical issues, according to interviews with miners, consultants and analysts.
So far, around a dozen lithium producers have temporarily shut loss-making mines, trimmed output or delayed expansions.
Many others are still operating, meaning the global supply glut of the mineral needed for batteries for stationary storage, as well as for EVs, is likely to last for several years and keep prices low, the industry insiders and analysts said.
Live This Day As If It Were Your Last: On the surface this sound like you’re trying to turn your life into some sort of Jackass-meets-the-Purge situation. But it doesn’t need to be that extreme. If you’re not occasionally ditching responsibilities to belt out “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to a crowd of strangers in a karaoke bar at 2 a.m., you’re not living.
Live This Year As If It Were Your Last: It’s not the end… but you can see it from here. You have time, but not too much time. This can help you prioritize without going crazy. And you’ll be more grateful.
Live This Day As If It Were Your First: “Be present” isn’t just a Pinterest quote for people who wear hemp. Really look around and notice the things you’ve come to ignore. See the world like a child again.
Live This Day As If You Were Living It For The Second Time: With the weight of that invisible, non-existent first day looming over you like a disapproving gym coach, you’ll skip some of the dumb decisions that usually leave you feeling like you’ve been hit by the regret bus. And you’ll seize those opportunities that make life memorable.
EXPERT OPINION BY PETER ECONOMY, THE LEADERSHIP GUY @BIZZWRITER What separates extraordinary leaders from those who aren’t so great? What do the most respected leaders have in common? Research shows that leaders spend more than 75 percent of their time communicating, and extraordinary leaders have developed powerful communication skills as part of their personal leadership practices. Which leads to this question: What communication skills do these highly successful leaders consistently use? The answers reflect both science and art. The best leaders have high self-awareness and are flexible, adaptable, and balanced between chaos and stability. They are acutely aware that they must first manage themselves if they hope to successfully communicate with others. Here are seven powerful communication skills that separate the very best leaders from the rest: 1. They are fearlessly authentic. The most successful leaders courageously open themselves up to others. It takes equal measures of confidence and humility to be vulnerable. Vulnerability in turn creates safety, liberating the organization from battles for survival to help them unleash their innate creativity, drive, and self-organization. Top executives refuse to hide behind polite discomfort, creating safety for others to openly offer differing views. 2. They carefully listen to the emotion behind the words. Top leaders don’t pay as much attention to the words themselves as they do to the emotion behind the message. Identifying the underlying emotion eliminates the defense or pretenses and helps them quickly cut through all the noise that stands between them and the core issues at play. 3. They don’t blame or accuse others. The best leaders take responsibility for their own emotions. Therefore, they never blame others for how they feel. As masters of their own emotions, they consciously decide how they will feel and how they will react. By practicing focused awareness, Leaders avoid blaming and accusing others by not projecting onto others their own leftover negative mental models from past experiences. 4. They are grounded and centered. When listening, great leaders don’t get triggered by assigning their own meaning to what others say and react automatically. They can imagine what it must be like for the other person by stepping into their shoes. At the same time, they are comfortable in their own skin and therefore do not attempt to please others. When a team member states, “I don’t feel fulfilled in my job,” the leader doesn’t hear, “You are a bad leader.” Instead, they hear, “I need help.” This ability to be grounded creates safety for others and allows their reality to exist with equal merit as their own. 5. They are curious, not judgmental. While listening for emotions, leaders are open to and curious about all possibilities. If a colleague comes across as irrational, ridiculous, or overreacting, the best leaders become curious and carefully explore what is happening deeper without jumping to a conclusion. They know that judgment shuts off avenues for important discovery and learning. During this discovery, they can put aside their own emotions and pay focused attention. They can empathically imagine what must have happened for others to create the reality that comes across as irrational and validate that reality for them. 6. They look for patterns. Leaders have one ear on what others are saying (content) and the other on the interaction pattern (process). They are constantly scanning themselves, people, and processes to identify patterns and changes in the patterns. Through this constant, unbiased observation, the best leaders notice early indicators of an underlying issue. They then use their judgment-free curiosity to discover the source and manage it proactively. 7. They create a safe space. Highly successful leaders know their most important job is to create safety and belonging in their organization, which sets members free to unleash their innate creativity, innovation, passion, and drive. Whether delivering an address to the entire organization—or within a one-on-one meeting—they convey a sense of community and belonging. Great leaders protect and nurture their people under their wings. Top executives create a culture that does not tolerate behaviors that threaten that sense of safety and belonging, such as bullying, kingdom building, or favoritism. The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
7. Good Reminder: 30-Year Mortgage Rates Were Never Below 5% Until Jan 2009
The average 30-year fixed mortgage rates were never below 5% in the data from Freddie Mac, which goes back to 1971, until the Fed started buying MBS in January 2009, which pushed mortgage rates below 5% for the first time ever.
8. Housing Supply: Still Undersupplied By Millions Of Units
Housing affordability remains one of the top economic issues facing American households. Both homeowners and renters have seen the cost of housing increase faster than other consumer prices, putting a significant strain on household budgets. As we have documented in several previous research notes, the root cause of decreased housing affordability is the fact that housing supply has not increased enough to match demand. Inadequate housing supply leads homeowners and renters to bid up the sale price and rent of available housing, which puts a squeeze on affordability.
In this spotlight we provide an updated estimate of the housing supply shortage relative to long-run housing demand. In our last published estimate from May of 2021, we estimated that the U.S. housing shortage was 3.8 million units as of Q4 2020. Our updated estimate based on data through Q3 2024 is that the U.S. housing shortage has declined slightly to 3.7 million units.
Exhibit 2 below breaks down how we arrived at the new estimate and compares it to prior estimates. Since our previous estimate for Q4 2020, the U.S. housing stock has increased by 5.8 million units, or an average annual rate of 2.1 million units per year. However, over that same time the number of households increased by 6.3 million (2.3 million annual rate), while target or latent households increased by 6.9 million (2.5 million annual rate). But despite the increases in housing stock and the much larger increase in household formation, our estimate of housing shortage is slightly lower than our previous estimate.
That’s due to our lower target vacancy rate assumption. Our previous analysis assumed a target vacancy rate of 13% which was the average vacancy rate during the period between Q1 1990 and Q2 2018. The target vacancy rate assumed units held off market would continue to remain high as was the trend at that time. However, since our last estimate, housing market conditions have changed, and the units held off market have been declining, especially since 2022. Therefore, we revised our target vacancy rate assumption to correspond to the stable period in the housing market which we consider was from Q1 1994 – Q4 2003. Thus, our target vacancy rate declined from 13% to 11.7%, reducing the number of vacant housing units needed by 1.3 million.
9. Google Says AI Weather Model Masters 15-day Forecast
A new artificial intelligence-based weather model can deliver 15-day forecasts with unrivaled accuracy and speed, a Google lab said, with potentially life-saving applications as climate change ramps up.
GenCast, invented by London-based AI research laboratory Google DeepMind, “showed better forecasting skill” than the current world-leading model, the company said Wednesday.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) produces predictions for 35 countries and is considered the global benchmark for meteorological accuracy.
But DeepMind said GenCast surpassed the precision of the center’s forecasts in more than 97 percent of the 1,320 real-world scenarios from 2019 which they were both tested on.
Details of its findings were published in Nature, a leading science journal.
ECMWF chief Florence Rabier told AFP the project was a “first step” towards integrating AI in weather forecasting but that “it is indeed a leap forward.”
At this stage it can be used to supplement their current models, she said.
“We are progressing year by year,” she added. “Any new method that can enhance and accelerate this progress is extremely welcome in the context of the extreme societal pressures of climate change.”
The model was trained on four decades of temperature, wind speed and air pressure data from 1979 to 2018 and can produce a 15-day forecast in just eight minutes — compared to the hours it currently takes.
“GenCast provides better forecasts of both day-to-day weather and extreme events than the top operational system… up to 15 days in advance,” a DeepMind statement said.
DeepMind said GenCast “consistently outperformed” the current leading forecast model when predicting extreme heat, extreme cold and high wind speeds.
“More accurate forecasts of risks of extreme weather can help officials safeguard more lives, avert damage, and save money,” DeepMind said.
Extreme weather is becoming more common and more severe as a result of human caused climate change.
In August 2023, a series of wildfires in Hawaii killed around 100 people. Authorities were criticized by locals who said they were given no warning of the impending blaze.
This summer, a sudden heatwave in Morocco killed at least 21 people over a 24-hour period. And in September, Hurricane Helene killed 237 people in Florida and other southeastern US states.
“I am confident that AI-based weather forecasting systems will continue to incrementally improve in the future, including better prediction of extreme events and their intensity, for which there is a lot of need to improve upon,” said David Schultz, a professor of synoptic meteorology at Manchester University, who was not involved in the research.
But he said these forecasting systems are reliant on the weather prediction models that are already running, such as that operated by ECMWF.
I was recently leading a seminar about public speaking, when one woman asked me how she should deal with speaking to reluctant audiences. She worked in health and safety, she explained, and people only attended talks about health and safety because they were compulsory. She seemed self-effacing and glum.
“Do you think health and safety is important?” I asked her. Yes, she did. “Do you think that if people understood your ideas better, it might prevent an awful accident?” Yes. Well, I suggested, perhaps that might be a starting point.
She might build her talk around the message, “The simplest-seeming details could save your life.” But not necessarily. Another good talk about health and safety could emphasise that when you pay attention to safety, you raise your game more generally: “health and safety doesn’t just save lives, it saves money.”
Or maybe there’s a different angle altogether. I’m not a health and safety expert, after all. But most people, I would hope, have at least one interesting thing they might want to share with the world. If you have one, start there.
In his book TED Talks, Chris Anderson (the head of TED, the conference that has become synonymous with compelling public speaking) emphasises the “throughline” — the thread that should connect everything in the speech, every story, every joke, every slide and every rousing call to action.
The throughline is the most important idea in public speaking. A good speaker mixes things up, varying tone and pace and subject-matter — but the one thing they should never mix up is their audience. That means linking everything, from tear-jerking anecdotes to statistical analysis, to the throughline. More fundamentally, it means knowing what the throughline is.
It isn’t easy to speak compellingly in front of an audience, but our fear of the occasion does us more harm than good. It’s best not to prepare in a defensive crouch. Instead, start with having something to say. Then say it.
Written for and first published in the Financial Times on 25 October 2024. Full article is here.
