Corporate momentum. “Corporate Activities [are] firming up: S&P 500 revenue per employee hits new highs; Capex to sales is rising across sectors and leverage is at its lowest since 2014; Buybacks are up 16%, and dividends up 6% over 12 months; M&A and IPO value up +23% over last 12 months.”
8. Demographics are Destiny—China Closes 20,000 Kindergartens Last Year.
WSJ Kiki Wang, 28, a teacher from Jiangsu, was laid off last month. “It’s not that you are not a good teacher, it’s just we don’t have enough kids,” she recalls her principal telling her. She says she doesn’t know what to do next and is posting on social media for advice. More than 20,000 kindergartens closed last year in China, with nearly 250,000 teachers losing their jobs, government data show. In China, kindergartens are akin to preschools in the U.S., serving children ages 3 to 5.
9. Single Family Homes for Sale in South Above 2008 Levels.
In the South, dominated by Texas and Florida, inventories of new houses for sale spiked to a record of 312,000 in June, up by 6.5% from the already above-Housing-Bust-peak level a year ago, and up by 78% from June 2019.
The Census region accounted for 61% of total US new-home inventory, and also for 61% of total US new-home sales (a map of the four Census regions is below the article at the top of the comments).
Sales dropped by 6% year-over-year to 33,000 new homes, and by 15% from June 2019, despite the massive incentives by homebuilders.
Right or wrong, our economic system invariably creates haves and have-nots.
It’s a feature not a bug.
This feature has always been more prevalent in the stock market than the housing market:
The bottom 90% owns just 12.8% of the stock market1 but 56% of the housing market. The top 1% owns 50% of the stock market and less than 14% of the housing market.
The largest financial asset for the majority of middle-class households is their home.
My worry about the current housing situation is that it’s going to make it much harder for people in the middle class to keep up.
This is already starting to show up in the data.
Baby boomers make up by far the largest share of home purchases and sales:
Older people are responsible for nearly 60% of all housing sales and close to half of all purchases. This makes sense when you consider 40% of all homeowners have no mortgage.
Boomers have tons of equity to play around with, so high prices and mortgage rates don’t matter to them as much as they do to young people.
1. Earnings Misses Getting Hit at Higher Level than Historical
Dave Lutz at Jones Trading
2. NVO Gives Back All Weight Loss Gains Going Back to Late 2022
Google
3. Cash on Sideline vs. Total Market Cap
MMFs vs. SPX. “A lot is made of the ‘cash on the sidelines’ story when observing assets in money market funds; however, as a share of total equity market value, it’s significantly more subdued.”
Daily Chartbook
4. Stablecoins Hit $270B in Circulation
Jack Ablin Cresset-The stablecoin market has already reached $270 billion in circulation, with projections suggesting explosive growth ahead. Standard Chartered forecasts the market will reach $2 trillion within three years, while Citigroup projects $1.6 trillion by 2030. This represents growth of nearly 700% from current levels, driven by regulatory legitimacy and institutional adoption.
Cresset Capital
5. Figma IPO 40x Oversubscribed vs. Circle 20X
Bloomberg
6. Starbucks Yearly Revenue Growth
Macro Trends
7. U.S. Imports from China Have Been Cut in Half
Trade limbo persists
Semafor
An extension of the Washington-Beijing tariff detente remains subject to US President Donald Trump’s approval, one of several deals which are in limbo.Chinese negotiators earlier said the two sides agreed to a 90-day extension of their truce, but Washington said it hadn’t yet “given the sign off.” With a tariff reprieve expiring Friday, details over a US-European Union agreement have also been disputed, tariffs on India remain unclear, and African economies are awaiting news. Their dependence on Trump’s whims means “these deals don’t yet represent a new trade order,” The Wall Street Journal’s chief economics commentator wrote. “They are sort of a way station, more fragile and with less legitimacy than the system they have supplanted.”
8. Venture Needs to Exit Deals for Liquidity Growth
Pitchbook
9. I Would Expect A lot of “Fix Housing” Talk from Politicians Local, State, and Federal
Republicans and Democrats are joining forces to fix America’s housing affordability crisis. Here’s what’s in their plan. A bipartisan group of lawmakers propose cutting red tape and boosting modular-home construction to help more Americans buy homes
Home prices hit a new record high in June, putting homeownership out of reach for many buyers. Politicians across the aisle are trying to solve the affordability crisis.
The housing market is mired in a crisis of affordability. Can politicians fix it?
A new bipartisan housing bill introduced by Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Republican, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democrat, aims to cut red tape that they say slows housing development and will boost construction of modular homes.
The bill is lawmakers’ latest attempt to address today’s housing crisis.
President Donald Trump recently indicated that he wants to eliminate the capital-gains tax on home sales, which would in theory free up more housing inventory. Homeowners who have seen significant home-price appreciation would not take a tax hit if they were to sell.
The senators’ bipartisan bill comes as home prices just hit an all-time highand mortgage rates remain elevated, which has squeezed many first-time home buyers out of the housing market. Buying a house no longer feels like an attainable goal to many Americans, especially younger ones. The typical age of a home buyer hit an all-time high of 63 in 2024, according to the National Association of Realtors.
The bill was advanced unanimously by the Senate Banking Committee. It’s significant because politicians from both parties are trying to address the issue of housing affordability, Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, told MarketWatch.
“In the past, when federal lawmakers talked about ‘affordable housing’ they were referring to subsidized housing for low-income individuals and families,” Sturtevant said. “However, the affordability challenge has moved up the income ladder and more and more Americans are struggling to afford to buy or rent a home.”
As high housing costs burden Americans across the country and across income levels, “elected officials from both sides of the aisle are hearing about those challenges from more of their constituents,” she added.
The bill, called the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act of 2025, seeks to address a critical issue the housing market is facing right now, which is a shortage of homes for sale. Even though supply has been rising sharply, homes are still too expensive for most buyers, and high mortgage rates make affordability even worse.
The bill now goes to the full Senate chamber for a vote. It is expected to be approved before Congress breaks for recess in August, Jaret Seiberg at TD Securities wrote in a note. If it passes the Senate, the House would vote on the bill, or amend it. The bill would then go back to the Senate, and if approved, to the White House.
To be sure, the legislation is still a proposal and far from a silver bullet that will solve the housing market’s current woes. But it does signal that politicians are paying attention to the problem.
“We view these provisions as helpful for housing, but they are not game-changers for home builders or mortgage lenders,” Seiberg wrote. “Many are pilot programs or narrow legislative changes. They are not going to change the economics of buying or building a house.”
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, agreed. In a social-media post, he said that while it’s “no game-changer … policymakers are finally in the game” in terms of responding to the housing crisis.
The National Association of Realtors, the Real Estate Roundtable, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the National Apartment Association all released statements supporting the bill.
10. How to Achieve Higher Performance in Your Everyday Life
Strategies to make self-discipline and focus feel easier.
Perceived effort isn’t fixed; factors like music or habit can make tasks feel easier.
Habits reduce perceived effort, which can ease daily tasks and boost self-discipline.
Experiment with ways to lower perceived effort for greater self-discipline.
When you think of high performance, you might think of a test or a race. However, we can also strive to perform at a higher level in anything we do in our everyday lives.
The focus of this post is on one particular mechanism to achieve this: When we reduce how effortful our tasks feel, we enable ourselves to sustain greater objective effort (and can achieve greater mental and physical endurance).
Perceived Effort (or Perceived Exertion) and Task Performance
Imagine you’re running on a treadmill, and someone is gradually notching up the speed. You’ll reach a point where the effort feels too much, and you’ll decide to step off.
It’s clear that our perception of effort will go up when what we’re attempting is objectively more strenuous. But, in fact, identical actions can feel more or less effortful depending on the circumstances. We’ve probably all felt this. Some days our daily routine feels harder than other days.
The topic of perceived exertion has been extensively studied in endurance sports (like long-distance running and cycling), but many of the same principles (and some of the same techniques) carry over to activities that only require mental endurance.
For example, we know that factors like caffeine and music can decrease perceived effort. Sports science tells us that cycling often feels less effortful when the rider is listening to music. Extrapolating from this, we can easily test for ourselves whether everyday activities like tidying up or washing a sink full of dishes feel less effortful with music.
In the sphere of mental effort, there’s an incredible range of what influences our perceptions of effort.
Expectation effects can reduce perceived effort. For example, when I learned that reading to children reduces feelings of stress in parents, I started to notice this. Reading to my toddler started to feel pleasant rather than like a slog. Knowing that research says this should reduce stress made this more true for me.
A core benefit of habits is that they reduce perceived effort. A behavior that’s a habit feels easier than when the same behavior is new to us. Habits and routines are such a powerful tool for higher performance exactly because they reduce our need for self-control.
Other options that can influence how effortful a particular action feels:
Whether you’re tired, hungry, or hot.
The presence of other people.
Being in nature or beautiful surroundings.
How long you expect to have to keep going at the same effort (an activity often feels easier when we know we’re almost at the finish).
Whether there’s a known endpoint (waiting feels more effortful when we don’t know how long we’ll need to wait).
The relative effort of a task compared to your other tasks (tidying up feels easier if the alternative is studying for exams than if the alternative is watching YouTube).
Fitness, or being accustomed to a certain level of effort. When we’re fitter, we perceive operating at near our max as easier. It’s less scary. Athletes and fitness enthusiasts who are accustomed to the physical discomfort of exertion tolerate it better. It’s conceivable that this principle also applies to people who are accustomed to high levels of mental focus and endurance.
(For a discussion of the underlying research, catch this podcast episode.)
Negative Self-Talk Adds to Perceived Effort
You can approach the problem of perceived effort by introducing factors that reduce it, or by eliminating factors that increase it.
Overly dramatic self-talk that amps up negative emotions (e.g., “This is so hard and miserable, I hate it”) can increase perceived effort, as can various types of overthinking, like second-guessing your plans instead of just executing them.
Approach Your Perceived Effort With an Experimenter’s Mindset
The ideas presented in this post represent only a small selection for you to explore. Once you recognize that you can influence your perceived effort, and get yourself to do more effortful behaviors if you can lower your perceived effort, you can easily experiment to see what works for you.
This is an ideal self-improvement topic to approach through personal experimentation. It’s especially relevant if you’re seeking to be more focused and self-disciplined. Knowing how to reduce your perceived effort can increase your persistence when you’re expecting a lot of yourself. (To learn how to be a better self-experimenter, see this post.)
Barrons Strategists at Deutsche Bank warn that we may be entering worrisome territory, noting that the 18% increase in margin usage is among the fastest increases since the tech bubble of the late 1990s. The fastest two-month increase in margin debt—24.6%—was recorded in December 1999, according to Deutsche Bank. The second fastest—20.3%—was notched in May 2007. By Andrew Welsch
3. Heavily Shorted Stocks +25% In July….Meme Danger
Bespoke noted, July has been a banner month for investors long the most heavily shorted stocks (and brutal for those short them). Below is a chart looking at the average month-to-date performance of Russell 3,000 stocks with market caps above $1 billion based on short interest levels. While all stocks are up an average of 4.3% in July, the 20 most heavily shorted stocks (based on short interest as a percentage of float) are up 25.2%.
Do you respond or react to the feedback that’s coming in? Do you seek it out or wait for it to arrive?
Does vivid online feedback from anonymous trolls carry more weight than honest but more subtle feedback from actual customers?
Pick your feedback, pick your future.
Which sort of feedback changes your behavior or attitude?
Delivered with enthusiasm or a scowl
In private or in public
In writing or verbally…
The goal might not be to find a way to only get positive applause, because your project may very well benefit from thoughtful feedback.
The useful path is to figure out which sort of feedback suits you in what stage of the project. “It’s not for you,” and “I don’t want to show it to you right now,” are valid approaches to our creative process.
1. Not Just Tech Rally…Equal Weight ETF Makes All-Time Highs
Stock Charts
2. Slow Rise Up….22 Trading Days without 1% Move in S&P
One day One percent: And in terms of being “due” for some volatility, it’s now been 22 trading days since we last saw a 1% move up or down. If you feel like it’s been a little quiet lately —that’s why.
Source: @Barchart
3. Finra Margin Debt to GDP Not at 2021 Levels Yet
Eric Soda Blog Margin debt vs. GDP. FINRA margin debt crossed above the $1 trillion mark in June. Relative to GDP, it remains below the 2021 peak but above Dotcom and GFC levels.
5. Net Foreign Purchases of U.S. Surged to a Record in May….So Much for Selling America
Ned Davis
6. Tesla Auto Profitability History
Bespoke
7. Zyn First Tick Down….202m Cans to 190m Cans
Stock Twits
8. U.S. Mortgage Rates Mid-2022 to 2025 Sideways
Yahoo! Finance
9. Demographics is Destiny
The fertility rate in the US has fallen to a new record low
New CDC data released Thursday shows that America’s fertility rate dropped to an all-time low of just under 1.6 children per woman on average in 2024.
For context, this is lower than the UN’s projection for the world’s overall rate (2.25), as well as the figure forecast for the US (1.62) in its World Population Prospects report for 2024. Imperatively, it also falls well below the replacement level of 2.1 — or, the birth rate required for a population to replace itself from one generation to the next.
Sherwood
Like much of the developed world, the US has seen its fertility rate slump in recent years as an increasing number of adults have decided to delay — or opt out of altogether — having kids, citing economic and social limitations (though it seems that many still can’t decide whether there are currently too many children or not enough).
Natal attraction
As plunging fertility rates worldwide have pointed to an impending global baby bust, governments are experimenting with incentives to encourage citizens to have more children.
Among these is the US, with raising the national fertility rate being one of the Trump administration’s priorities. Back in April, as part of their pro-natalist push, the White House reportedly considered a $5,000“baby bonus” for new mothers.
Interestingly, last year saw a rare child-rearing win for the country with world’s lowest birth rate. South Korea’s birthrate rose for the first time in nine years to 0.75 in 2024, as reported in February, and just this week the country announced notching record birth growth in the first five months of this year.
Daniel Kahneman (1934 to 2024) won the Nobel Prize for proving we’re not as rational as we think.
You’d never know it by listening, but this conversation with Danny took place years ago, and most people reading this have never heard it.
In a world of disposable content, this conversation, which is both timeless and timely, is exactly the type of conversation I try to have on the Knowledge Project.
As I re-listened this summer, I created a list of 11 takeaways for myself:
Delay Your Intuition: Most people form an impression in seconds and spend the rest of their time confirming it. The best wait for all the information before letting their intuition speak.
Loss Aversion Creates Permanent Programs: Once you give people something (a perk, a feature, a benefit), it’s nearly impossible to take back. The founder who would offer free lunch on day one can’t cancel it on day 1000. Small groups lose something specific, while large groups gain something abstract. Every time.
Your Rules Become Your Default: Danny was human just like us; he often said yes to things he didn’t want to do. So he created a rule. Not a goal, not an intention, a rule. It reprogrammed his unconscious mind, turning his desired behavior into his default behavior.
Facts Don’t Form Beliefs: “I believe in climate change,” Kahneman said. “I believe in the people who tell me there is climate change. The people who don’t believe in climate change, they believe in other people.” This is how we form all beliefs. We don’t examine evidence and reach conclusions. We trust people we like, then adopt their views. “The reasons are not the causes of our beliefs,” he explained. They’re the stories we tell ourselves afterward. Want to change someone’s mind? Facts won’t do it. They need to trust you first. If they admire you, they’ll find reasons to agree. If they dislike you, the best evidence won’t matter. Smart people believe opposite things because they trust different people.
The good news is that with these seven strategies, you can eliminate the bad stuff to cultivate your best brain ever.
Eat real food. When I say real food, I mean whole, organic, fresh, local and unprocessed food. If it has a label or a barcode, you should probably avoid it. If your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, don’t eat it. Processed junk foods mostly exist in the middle aisles of the grocery stores, so avoid those aisles!
Eat lots of colorful fruits and vegetables. These colorful super-foods come loaded with brain-boosting stuff like phytonutrients. The dark, deep reds, yellows, oranges, greens and blues mean these foods contain powerful anti-inflammatory, detoxifying antioxidants and energy-boosting, brain-powering molecules. Enjoy an array of colorful plant foods like blueberries and dark leafy greens like kale, Swiss chard, spinach, watercress, and arugula.
Go for slow carbs, not no carbs. Cauliflower and an ice cream sundae fall under the “carbs” category, but you know the former is healthy and the latter isn’t. Eating whole plant foods with plenty of fiber, including small amounts of beans, non-gluten whole grains, nuts and seeds, keeps toxins moving out of your body and keeps your gut bacteria healthy. A healthy gut means a healthy brain!
Eat plenty of healthy fat. I provide an excellent, detailed healthy fat food plan in my new book Eat Fat, Get Thin.Fat is actually very good for your brain. In fact, 60 percent of your brain is made up of DHA – an omega-3 fat that you get from algae and fish. My brain worked pretty well before, but embracing fat (even good saturated fats like coconut oil and MCT oil) pushed my mental clarity through the roof.
Optimize protein. We need about 30 grams of protein per meal to build muscle. When you lose muscle, you age faster and your brain takes a huge hit! Eat protein at every meal, including omega-3 eggs, protein shakes nut butters, even fish for breakfast.
Stop poisoning your brain. Eliminate sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, food additives and preservatives, all of which poison your brain and disrupt your biochemistry. If it’s not real food, don’t eat it.
Supplement. A high-quality multivitamin, as well as magnesium, vitamin D3, omega-3 fatty acids, probiotics, folic acid, B6 and B12 are all necessary for your brain to function optimally. You can find the cleanest and best versions of these essential nutrients along with other brain-boosting supplements here.
