Of all the dumb things Wall Street is infamous for, perhaps none is sillier than the all too regular forecasting game. Quarterly earnings, Non-farm payrolls, annual S&P predictions, oil prices, inflation rates, FOMC cuts — its a never-ending parade of predictions, most of which are laughable.

Guessing the revenues and profits of any company is tough enough; it becomes even more difficult for any company with only a few years of history.

Allow me to present to you Exhibit A in whatever subsequent litigation arises, via the WSJ:

“SpaceX’s revenue could reach $3.4 trillion in 2040, according to a Morgan Stanley analysis shared with top investors Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Morgan Stanley told investors the rocket maker’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2040 could top $2.7 trillion, the people said.”

I find it hilarious that anyone imagines they forecast revenues and/or profits a decade and a half into the future.

Just recall whatever you were thinking back in 2012 about 2026 — was Artificial Intelligence the top of your list? Intel finally rallying after the US government took a 10% stakle in it? Korea up 4X? GameStop / meme-stock short squeeze? A treatment/cure for Pancreatic Cancer? Silicon Valley Bank / digital bank run? 500 basis point rate hikes in 2022? Did you anticipate the pandemic, the rise of EVs, the invasion of Ukraine, or either Trump elections? January 6, or October 7?

So much happens over the course of a year that makes forecasting so challenging; 10-15 years is utterly laughable.

Look, I get it, analysts’ jobs are hard enough as is, and many of them are justifiably worried about being replaced by Claude.

Still, tomfoolery like this does not give one confidence in the process…

Previously:
Nobody Knows Anything (Archive)

The Folly of Forecasting (June 7, 2005)

See also:
SpaceX won’t make the S&P 500 (FT, June 5, 2026)

Source:
Morgan Stanley Sees SpaceX’s Revenue Reaching $3.4 Trillion in 2040
By Corrie Driebusch
WSJ, June 5, 2026

The post Nobody Knows Anything, SpaceX IPO edition appeared first on The Big Picture.

• Congrats. You’re About to Unwittingly Make Elon Musk a Trillionaire. SpaceX is IPOing next week. And there’s a good chance you’re gonna own a portion of it—whether you like it or not. (The Bulwark)

• Oil industry warns Trump administration of price spikes within weeks: Politico on the API and major-producer warnings going into the White House — Hormuz risk, tanker insurance, refining maintenance, all aligned the wrong way. The Semafor piece’s nervous companion. Industry executives said the loss of oil through the Strait of Hormuz is draining petroleum inventories to dangerously low levels. (Politico) but see Why isn’t oil more expensive? With peace talks between Iran and the US in limbo, one of the main questions looming over global energy markets is why the price of oil isn’t much higher than it is. Semafor on the puzzle of mid-$60s crude in the middle of an Iran war — Saudi spare capacity, US shale resilience, and demand softness all pulling in the same direction. The bear case in one note. (Semafor)

• The United States Capital Structure.The U.S. federal government is arguably the largest issuer of safe debt in the world: roughly $28 trillion of marketable Treasury debt. These Treasurys are backed only by the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury. There is no specific source of revenue that is earmarked to pay back these Treasurys, unlike, say, municipal bonds that are backed by toll revenue. How safe are these promises, really? (The Two Cents)

• After 60/40: The Hidden Cost of Uninvested Capital Through the J-Curve. When building a strategic private markets allocation, the waiting period can carry a meaningful cost. The question is not only how to access private markets, but how to manage uncalled capital during the ramp-up period. Apollo making the case for private-markets allocation by costing out the cash drag during the J-curve. Sponsored research, but the framework is worth the read regardless. (Apollo)

• I Fed the People Building the Metaverse: A former Reality Labs caterer’s essay on what cooking inside Meta’s metaverse division actually looked like. The food sociology of a tech-cycle bust, told with affection. (Yeast Confections)

• How much more software do we really need?: Probably a lot, but not necessarily the kinds people have made money on so far. Noah Smith with the question every VC deck quietly avoids — the marginal utility of net-new SaaS in a market already drowning in seat licenses. A useful counterweight to AI-app exuberance. (Noahpinion) see also What We Learned About the AI Threat From Q1 Software Earnings: In most cases, the death of software companies has been exaggerated, according to Morningstar analysts. (Morningstar)

• 1,000 True Fans. To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans. Kevin Kelly’s 2008 essay, still the cleanest articulation of the creator economy. Re-reading it in 2026 is a useful reality check on what actually scaled and what did not. (The Technium)

• Sticker Shock at the Pump Fuels a Surge in Hybrid Sales: Sales of hybrid cars carried the day in May as buyers seek better fuel economy. WSJ on the consumer pivot the auto industry kept saying would not happen — buyers walking past pure EVs to hybrids the second gasoline tipped. Toyota, of all companies, was right. (Wall Street Journal)

• This Is the Formula That Defeated Orban. It Would Defeat Trump, Too. outlandish xenophobic and antisemitic propaganda had served Orban well for years. It didn’t work against Peter Magyar — probably because so many Hungarians got to see him in person, many of them repeatedly. This is another lesson of his success: Old-fashioned in-person politics can be a powerful antidote to media fearmongering. NYT opinion on the Hungarian opposition playbook that finally landed — coalition discipline, local infrastructure, and abandoning the moral-high-ground talking points. Specific, transferable, worth the read. (New York Times)

• Emily Blunt Was Drunk in a Club When a Phone Call Changed Her Life: WSJ profile of Emily Blunt pegged to the new Devil Wears Prada follow-up. The opening anecdote earns the headline; the rest is better than the celebrity-profile genre usually allows. The English actress is having a blockbuster year, between reprising her breakout role and starring in Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day’ (Wall Street Journal)

Video of the day: How Shakespeare Manipulates An Audience

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Chris Davis, Chairman and Portfolio Manager of Davis Funds. The firm oversees $20 billion in client assets, with Davis (and colleagues) co-investing $2 billion in their own mineus alongside shareholders. Davis was named Morningstar’s Portfolio Manager of the Year; he also sits on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola.

Consumers are in a foul, foul mood

Source: Axios

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The post 10 Friday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

At The Money: Grab Your Summer Rental Soon!! (June 3, 2026)

It’s not too late to get your summer rental! But many of the prime locations have already been snapped up. If you want to get to the lake, beach, or mountains, you’d better hurry!

Full transcript below.

~~~

About this week’s guest:

Jonathan Miller is a partner at Street Matrix, founder and President of Miller Samuel. His weekly Housing Notes are read widely throughout the Real Estate industry.

For more info, see:

Miller Samuel Bio

LinkedIn

Twitter

Previously:
At The Money: Buying a Vacation Home (June 19, 2025)

At the Money: The Best Way to Buy a House Right Now (November 15, 2023)

~~~

Find all of the previous At the Money episodes here, and in the MiB feed on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, and Bloomberg.

And find the entire musical playlist of all the songs I have used on At the Money on Spotify

TRANSCRIPT:

At the Money — Summer Rentals
Barry Ritholtz with Jonathan Miller

Intro:
I’m gonna soak up the sun
I’m gonna tell everyone to lighten up
I’m gonna tell ’em that I’ve got no one to blame

Barry Ritholtz: Memorial Day weekend has come and gone, but if you’re thinking about getting a place for the summer, you better get a move on it. There’s still inventory around, but a lot of the prime spots, they’re already spoken for. I’m Barry Ritholtz, and on today’s At the Money, we’re going to talk about summer beach rentals. Renting, buying, what’s hot, what’s not.

To help us unpack all of this and what it means for your tan lines, let’s bring in Jonathan Miller. He’s the director of markets for Street Matrix and co-founder of Miller Samuel. His market reports cover all sorts of summer and beach-related areas, including the Hamptons, the North Fork, the Jersey Shore, all along the rest of the country that has an active vacation property.

So, Jonathan, before we get into the details, let’s start really broad. What does the summer rental market tell us about the broader real estate market?

Jonathan Miller: Well, I think it’s a matter of consumption spending. When the economy’s doing well, they see beach rentals as another commodity that they can buy. I grew up in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, which was the Hamptons of Washington, DC. It was nicknamed the Summer Capital. And the hotel occupancy—my dad had a hotel there—you could see it fluctuate depending on how well the economy was doing in DC itself. It was quite direct.

Barry Ritholtz: Around here, the Hamptons gets all the attention, and obviously there’s a lot of celebrity and a lot of media out there. But what do you see in other markets like the Berkshires, the Great Lakes, Mountain destinations, Cape Cod? What else is interesting?

Jonathan Miller: So the way I think of it is that, just in the real estate or the housing market itself, there’s this sort of bias towards the higher end. I don’t mean the very, very top of the market. But the more affluent somebody is, the more likely they are to go to one of these vacation spots.

With rising interest rates, that’s making home ownership for primary residences more expensive. That’s reducing traffic to locations that are more dependent on working- and middle-class consumers.

I look at it as there’s been this sort of change in the way consumers are thinking about summer rentals. And a broker, a friend of mine out in the Hamptons, gave me a name for it. It’s called Amazonified—

Barry Ritholtz: Appified?

Jonathan Miller: Amazonfied, which is people are more inclined… Hey, listen, you run out of mouthwash, you just open your phone and you order it, right? You want a summer rental, you just open your iPhone and you start looking at it. And there’s an understanding that you can get it at the last minute.

When my parents used to have a home on Shelter Island in the Hamptons, basically if you weren’t rented for the season by February, then it was kind of a failure, or it was an underwhelming performance. Now it’s last minute. And so one piece of evidence of this was that there was a noticeable uptick in traffic after Memorial Day, which would historically be when the market’s over. And there’s also a lot of thought that that’s going to be the same story after July 4th, which is the last marker for the beginning of the rental season. I think coming out of the pandemic, the orientation towards last minute is a structural change that’s going to be with us indefinitely.

Barry Ritholtz: It’s funny you say that. My experience with Fire Island during grad school was you would put together a share house in October. Like, February is way late. Like October, November for the following Memorial Day.

And I look at a website like Out East—4,500 Hamptons rentals available, including 1,077 in East Hampton, 889 in Southampton, active listings still available for June, July, August through Labor Day, short-term or full season.

This isn’t so much an economic indicator as it is just an app-ified world. We’re just used to everything on demand. Order a movie on demand, order toothpaste on demand, order a summer beach house on demand?

Jonathan Miller: I think that’s the way to think of it. And what’s interesting is, on one hand there’s inventory available, a fair amount of inventory. Part of that is because during the pandemic we had rental property that had annually been traditional rental property. That was all purchased, and so now we have a new universe of renters that are effectively early or recent home buyers. And so we have a whole new market developing.

But I do think there’s going to be absorption of a lot of inventory over the next, call it, month. But the way to think about the market is rents are still on the high side, but not at record levels. Rents are returning to pre-pandemic levels.

I don’t know if we could call it normalizing. You know, the old joke—what does normal mean anymore? But it doesn’t seem to be the frenetic or frenzied environment that it’s been. I don’t know if you could use the word deals, really, but it’s certainly an expensive market still.

Barry Ritholtz: So I know what a data wonk you are. How do you think about summer rentals? Are these luxury goods, housing substitutes, or even a leading economic indicator?

Jonathan Miller: So I see this as just another form of consumption, a luxury good. I don’t see it as an economic indicator, because where the demand is emanating from is probably already the economic indicator to focus on. This is just an extension of it, as opposed to its own independent thing telegraphing where the economy’s going.

A lot of the Hamptons, or East End, demand has been possible from a pretty good bonus season the last couple of years. Compensation is certainly elevated. But even with that, it’s showing that it’s not sold out, or rented out.

I think it’s a combination of people waiting till the last minute and the market not being as intense or frenzied as we’ve been used to over the last two or three years. It’s not a weak market. It’s more normalizing, I think, is a fair description.

Barry Ritholtz: I think of the overall consumer economy as very much K-shaped. There’s the upper—pick a number, 1, 10, 15%—and then there’s everybody else. It’s really bifurcated. Are we seeing something similar? Strong luxury demand, perhaps some softness in the middle or bottom of the rental market?

Jonathan Miller: Absolutely. I think that’s a very fair description of what rental markets are generally looking like. They’re an extension of the primary markets, and the primary markets are generally—call it the upper half is faring better than the lower half—only because of less reliance on interest rates, and also maybe more dependence on the performance of the financial markets.

Barry Ritholtz: So all right, we’re spending a lot of time talking about Wall Street bonuses and the Hamptons. What about the rest of the country? What about mountain destinations, the Sun Belt, California, lake communities? There’s so much more to a holiday or vacation property beyond the East End of Long Island.

Jonathan Miller: Yeah, although if you’re in Long Island and are on the East End, I think that’s all you see.

That’s all that matters, at least when I was out there a couple weeks ago. I think with all the uncertainty in the economy, economic uncertainty, it’s a little surprising to see normalized second-home market activity, but it’s really skewing, again, like the Hamptons. I don’t think the Hamptons is performing any differently than most second-home markets. I remember during the housing bubble build-up, it seemed like everybody I knew had a modest-priced second home in New Hampshire or Vermont. And they would go there on weekends, spend their summers there.

I don’t think you’re seeing as much of that as you have in the past, because a lot of that is mortgage-rate sensitive. I think you’re seeing, whatever region of the country, this sort of—I don’t know if I’d call it bias, but you’re seeing activity skewing a little bit higher than the middle of the market.

Barry Ritholtz: So what does that mean for different regions? Let’s talk about the Berkshires, or I know people who were in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, where it’s so hot in the summer they like to go to San Diego, La Jolla, Southern California, where it’s 75-80 and sunny during the day and 65 and delightful at night. What are you seeing in other regions?

Jonathan Miller: I don’t mean to be a broken record, but I’m seeing something very similar. It’s this idea that consumers are going to the traditional second-home locations that are linked to their markets—like you were describing, people leaving Texas in the summer. We’re seeing all that. It’s confusing in a way, because we’re getting so much bad take about what’s going on in the economy, inflation, and yet we’re still seeing this activity.

What’s a little different about it is that across the US it’s not really frenzied at all. It’s just active. Pricing is not as high as it’s been, but you still see a fair amount of activity. It’s just not some sort of insane frenzy that we’ve been going through for the last three or four years.

Barry Ritholtz: You mentioned mortgage rates earlier. I’m curious—obviously mortgage rates have an impact on price, and vice versa, but what does that mean for renters? Especially in a market where so many of the buyers seem to be straight-up cash buyers.

Jonathan Miller: The higher the interest rates, the higher the rent, is the way I look at it. And the reason for that is you have people that are on the fence about buying a second home. But they’re concerned about whether they’re going to get their price, so they’re renting it out, maybe to the same people every season, and that reduces inventory, which puts at least stabilizing or higher price pressure on rents. So I don’t see this as… When rates rise, I think that’s just going to make it more difficult, whether to purchase a second home or to rent one, because it just pushes everything up.

Barry Ritholtz: So I’m curious. You’re implying that people who might be buyers one day are sort of putting a toe in the water with renting. Is this a fairly common process? People rent, they like an area, and then they buy over there. Is that fair?

Jonathan Miller: Yes, I think that’s fair. The idea is that you test out the market for a summer, or for a month, or for a couple of weeks and see if you really like it, versus just driving there or flying there for the weekend.

And that is the nature of second-home markets. They move a lot slower. The second-home market for California is Idaho, Wyoming. You don’t just go there for the weekend—You’re going to test it out, maybe take a year or two. We see that all the time—friends of mine that have rented for a few years.

My parents went through this with their rental property in Shelter Island. After a couple seasons, the tenants that they loved ended up buying the house down the street, just because they loved the area.

Barry Ritholtz: So one of the things I’m astonished about—and again, my frame of reference is the Hamptons, where our vacation property is—but I am seeing an astounding amount of construction. Any house that’s sold is either, if it’s turnkey, it sells quickly, and if it’s not, it’s knocked down and a 7,000-foot behemoth gets put up in its place. West Hampton, Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Sagaponack—wherever I go out there, it’s shocking, the degree of construction. Every builder, every contractor seems to be fully booked.

What is driving this? Is this specific to the New York bonus season, Wall Street bonuses? Or are you seeing this around the country in other ritzy vacation areas?

Jonathan Miller: We are seeing this around the country. I think the easiest cause and effect is the Wall Street compensation picture of the last couple of years that’s really driving it.

Having been out to the Hamptons a couple times in the recent month or two—they call it the trade parade, right? All the trades coming in early in the morning and then leaving before rush hour.

Barry Ritholtz: By trades you mean, you mean plumbers, electricians, tilers…

Jonathan Miller: And it’s just the traffic— yeah, electricians, roofers, builders. It’s unbelievable.

So residents there plan their day around when they can leave and come back, because—as they call it, the Trade Parade—is so incredible. And the challenge is that those workers really are stuck in two- or three-hour traffic jams, which is a real challenge. But there’s so much demand for their services, and they can’t afford to live there, so they’re coming from a good distance away.

Barry Ritholtz: Well, that’s why they start at 7:00 and leave at 3:00. That makes a lot of sense.

We’ve seen the real estate market sort of normalizing after COVID. Certainly the reactions are less frenzied than they were during the pandemic. Has COVID permanently reset prices and house-buyer behavior and even expectations?

What’s the lasting impact of the pandemic on the summer vacation market?

Jonathan Miller: So I think structurally, COVID has changed—and probably extended—the use of second homes, because of things like Zoom. But it’s also become a little less predictable because of, as I mentioned earlier, the Amazonification of demand. Everything is sort of last minute, as opposed to relying on tried-and-true forecasting patterns.

But it’s a market that is going to be tested. The weaker the economy, the weaker the demand for second-home markets. But they don’t flip on and off. There’s still a base level of demand. The problem is that the demand is coming from a skewed portion of the population—upper half versus lower half is the way I prefer to think of it—and that creates a sort of void in the demand needed for more modest-priced second-home housing.

Barry Ritholtz: You know, we talk about the Hamptons as a second-home vacation market. There’s a $2.5 million rental there for the season, which I find astounding. But if you can’t afford that, maybe you pay a million and a quarter for the month of July, or a million for August. Now, to be fair, that $2.5 million rental does come with both a chef and maid service. So you get a lot of services for your money.

Jonathan Miller: Yes.

Barry Ritholtz: And I am not joking, because I have—like you, I am a Zillow lurker, and I look at all this crazy stuff.

Jonathan Miller: Yeah.

Barry Ritholtz: So to sum up: all right, you missed Memorial Day, but there’s still a lot of summer left. And if you’re thinking about a house on the lake, a house up in the mountains, maybe by the beach, there’s still some inventory left—but you better get a move on it, and you better start working on that tan. Please use SPF. I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’ve been listening to Bloomberg’s At the Money.

~~~

Find our entire music playlist for At the Money on Spotify.

The post At The Money: Grab Your Summer Rental Soon Now! appeared first on The Big Picture.

• Shorting SpaceX? Jefferies Becomes Go-To Bank After IPO Miss:  It’s the kind of look that ambitious investment bankers usually strive to avoid: When SpaceX named the roughly two dozen firms handling its IPO, Jefferies Financial Group Inc. was conspicuously absent. But behind the scenes, bearish investors and some of Jefferies’ own bosses see that as a unique opportunity. (Bloomberg)

• Who Let the Professors Out? Inside CFM: The $27bn quant on Paris’ Left Bank: Stock markets are surging, and momentum is rampant. It made me think of CFM wizard Jean-Philippe Bouchaud who believes that it is fund flows that drives markets and not fundamentals. (Rupak’s Substack) see also Transcript: Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, Founder/Chief Scientist, Capital Fund Management co‑founder, chair & head of research/chief scientist atCapital Fund Management (CFM). The $20 billion firm started in 1991 specializing in managed futures and now runs futures and multi-strategy programs. He began his career in theoretical physics, was awarded the IBM Young Scientist Prize (1990) and the C.N.R.S. Silver Medal (1996), and has published over 300 scientific papers and several books in physics and finance. (The Big Picture)

• The triumph of capital: It’s been a great generation to have started out rich. If you compare the United States to the famously high-tax Nordic countries, the major difference is not in the top statutory income tax rates. The top American combined state and local tax rate is generally a little higher than it is in Norway and a little lower than in Denmark and Sweden. New York and California, where a large share of our billionaires live, have unusually high top income tax rates, so the richest people are paying Nordic-level marginal rates. (Slow Boring)

• Sorry Marc, it — investment grade private credit — is just not that big: The FT, gently, on Marc Rowan, Apollo’s CEO,  latest “this is the biggest thing in history” essay — and the multiple times he has said exactly that before. The kindest version of the takedown. (Financial Times)

• Gmail Thinks I’m Stupid, So I Left: A nicely irritated post on Gmail’s creeping infantilization — AI summarizing nothing, hiding addresses, “smart compose” doing the opposite. The user case for going Fastmail/Proton in one sitting. (Modded Bear)

• High Density Living, 2000 Years Ago: Inside the Roman Apartment Building: Ancient Rome had six-story walk-ups, noise complaints, and absentee landlords. The more things change. A tombstone outside Rome bears “The Tenant’s Lament”—proof that housing has always been a problem. (Common Edge)

• This $50,000 Safety Fix Is Dividing the Aviation Industry and Washington: Federal safety officials and lawmakers have been at odds over mandating systems enabling pilots to see nearby aircraft (Wall Street Journal)

• Iran Atomic Risk Seen Higher Than Before Trump Attacks Began. The risk that Iran is covertly pursuing nuclear weapons is higher today than before the US and Israel launched their first military attacks on the Islamic Republic a year ago, according to western officials. The International Atomic Energy Agency has warned member countries about new nuclear proliferation dangers posed by Iran’s large inventory of near-bomb-grade uranium, which is no longer subject to weekly IAEA inspection. (Bloomberg free)

• Cancel Culture at CBS News: The Bulwark on the Pelley/Weiss/Bilton triangle and what it tells you about who the new CBS News editorial line is for. The “cancel culture” framing applied where the people doing the cancelling actually are. (The Bulwark) see also Scott Pelley Fires Back After “60 Minutes” Ouster: “The Collapse of Values at the Top Has Become Untenable”: Variety carrying Pelley’s on-the-record statement after the firing — the kind of clean, scorched-earth quote that doesn’t happen at CBS News by accident. (Variety)  see also When “60 Minutes” is in Trouble, We are All in Trouble: Jim Acosta on what the Pelley firing means for the rest of the press corps. Read alongside Margaret Sullivan’s “priced in” piece — same diagnosis, fresh data point. (Jim Acosta)

• He Was the Knicks Owner Who Could Do Nothing Right. Now James Dolan Can’t Miss.: WSJ on the strangest sports-business arc of the decade — Dolan, of all people, with a Finals team and a cleaner front office than half the league. Even Knicks fans aren’t sure what to do with this. (Wall Street Journal)

Video of the day: What It’s Like to Be a Billionaire’s Family Member

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Chris Davis, Chairman and Portfolio Manager of Davis Funds. The firm oversees $20 billion in client assets, with Davis (and colleagues) co-investing $2 billion in their own mineus alongside shareholders. Davis was named Morningstar’s Portfolio Manager of the Year; he also sits on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola.

The Lowest Consumer Sentiment EVER

Source: A Wealth of Common Sense

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The post 10 Thursday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

• Real-Estate Agents Are Quitting the Slow Housing Market: Four years into a struggling market, even agents who survived the initial shakeout are hitting their breaking point. Fewer sales, longer timelines, second jobs. (Wall Street Journal)

• No, Market Highs Are Not a Bad Sign: The old Ritholtz classic, still relevant—the data on what happens after all-time highs is the opposite of what most people assume. (The Big Picture) see also New All-Time Highs: Since 1950, roughly 7% of all trading days have been new all-time highs. The highest percentage of trading days hitting new highs in a decade is the 1990s at 12.3%. This decade is far from over but we’ve experienced new highs in the S&P 500 in 13% of trading days. (Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Great Wealth Transfer Includes $570 Billion in Classic Cars: Boomers are about to hand off a staggering collection of vintage automobiles. The question is whether anyone under 60 wants them—and what happens to prices when supply floods the market. (Bloomberg)

• Best ETFs 2026: The Morningstar Award for Investing Excellence Winners: Morningstar’s annual ETF honors—the funds that earned top marks for performance, cost efficiency, and risk-adjusted returns. (Morningstar)

• Grocery Shoppers Are In For a Summer of Pain: The Iran war is driving up food costs, and the tariff aftershocks aren’t helping. Expect higher prices at the register through the fall. (Bloomberg)

• America’s Favorite Comedian Wants to Be the Next Walt Disney—and He’s Not Joking: Nate Bargatze, the country’s top selling stand-up comic, has a grand ambition: a $350 million theme park in Nashville, Tenn. (Wall Street Journal)

• If You Take the Weasel Job Then You Must Be the Weasel: Hamilton Nolan on the moral clarity of job titles—if you accept a role that requires you to do terrible things, you don’t get to pretend you’re not the one doing them. (Hamilton Nolan)

• I Want It, But I Don’t Like It: A sharp essay on the gap between desire and enjoyment—why we keep pursuing things that don’t actually make us happy, and what that says about modern consumer psychology. (Panoptica)

• Jimmy Kimmel ‘Felt Defeated’ by Stephen Colbert’s Cancellation and Says Late-Night TV Is Not ‘Dying of Natural Causes’: ‘We’re Being Poisoned’ The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host opened up in a new interview with Vulture about the future of the genre following the cancellation of Stephen Colbert‘s “Late Show” on CBS and his own run-ins with Trump, including his suspension following comments made about the death of Charlie Kirk.  (Variety)

• Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals mega-preview: Game 1 tips off June 3 in San Antonio. The Athletic’s comprehensive breakdown—predictions, odds, matchups, and everything else you need before the series starts. (The Athletic)

Video of the day: How a Secretive Trading Empire Is Taking Over Wall Street

Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business this week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”

The Deal That Keeps the Oil Flowing

Source: Epicenter

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• All-time highs have been great times to invest in the stock market: Sam Ro with the empirical companion piece: forward returns from all-time highs have historically beaten forward returns from random days. The chart is the argument. (TKer)

• The Spanish Exception: The Atlantic on why Spain keeps outgrowing Europe despite — and partly because of — the political reaction to immigration. The contrarian European data point. (The Atlantic) but see Germany Has Lost What It Did Best: NYT opinion on Germany’s industrial model snapping under the combined weight of energy, China, and tariffs. The Merz government is finding out which post-war assumptions still hold. (New York Times)

• If It Walks Like a Bubble and Quacks Like a Bubble, Then It’s Probably a Bubble. Indisputably, there are signs—some of which hark back to the dot-com era—that it is. For instance, take a gander at this not-so-little equation: $1.75 trillion divided by $18.674 billion equals 93.71 times. (Barron’s)

• Berkshire Beyond Buffett. In the 60 years he led Berkshire, he returned 6,000,000%, beating the S&P 500 by a factor of 130. Those wanting an education in business could do worse than listening to recordings of those Q&A sessions over the years. They could also do worse than by reading Buffet’s 60 years of annual letters. (The Weekend Reader)

• Amazon Thinks the Future of Data Centers Depends on a Technical Problem It Just Solved: The tech giant says a breakthrough in data center networking has dramatically accelerated the flow of information through its massive cloud infrastructure. (Wired)

• The SpaceX IPO: How Index Funds Will Adapt: Upcoming mega-IPOs will force tough choices for index providers. (Morningstar)

• I Profile Celebrities for a Living. Nothing Prepared Me for Tilly Norwood.: NYT Magazine on profiling the AI “actress” Tilly Norwood — what the interview actually consists of, who the handlers are, and what publicity for a synthetic person looks like in practice. Strange and well done. (New York Times)

• The Wild, Strange Case Todd Blanche Can’t Seem to Escape: Vanity Fair on the case that keeps following the President’s lawyer-turned-deputy-AG. The kind of slow-burn legal exposure that doesn’t show up in cable coverage until it does. A fake Mossad agent. Twin grifters. The nation’s top lawman. A head-spinning legal drama has the attorney general fighting off accusations of forgery, malpractice, and more. (Vanity Fair)

• How a mysterious particle could explain the universe’s missing antimatter: Knowable on the neutrino results that might finally close the matter-antimatter asymmetry gap. Patient, well-sourced physics writing; pair with coffee. (Knowable Magazine)

• The Tall Man Who Changed Basketball: You Cannot Miss Victor Wembanyama: WSJ on Wembanyama’s Finals run and what he is doing to a sport that has not had a true mold-breaker in a decade. Even if you only check in for the Finals, worth it. A mystery not long ago, San Antonio’s star from France has conquered the NBA and vanquished its defending champion. Does New York have an answer? (Wall Street Journal)

Video of the day: The SpaceX IPO… It’s Worse Than You Think

Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business this week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”

Industries from footwear to computers require huge expansion to satisfy domestic demand

Source: McKinsey

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• The Lowest Consumer Sentiment EVER: We are currently sitting at the lowest level of consumer sentiment in the past 75 years!. Lower than the Great Financial Crisis when the stock market crashed almost 60%, the financial system nearly imploded and the unemployment rate reached more than 10%. Lower than the aftermath of the dot-com bubble bursting which included a 50% stock market crash, a recession and 9/11. Ben Carlson on the new Michigan low — historically a contrarian buy signal, but the gap between sentiment and spending has gotten weird. The chart and the caveat in one post. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Chip Rally Is at $5.7 Trillion and Counting. How Much Further Can It Go?: WSJ on the semiconductor complex’s total market cap, the unit economics underneath, and the multiple expansion that has done most of the work. Sober the next time someone quotes “still early.” Surging demand for chip makers has lifted major indexes from their wartime malaise (Wall Street Journal) see also The Chip Rally Has Gone Parabolic. It’s Time to Separate the Pillars From the Pretenders. A furious rally has raised fears of a new bubble. If and when the party ends, five stocks will be left standing. They all remain undervalued. (Barron’s)

• Ford’s Stock Is Surging — and It’s Got Nothing to Do With Its Car Business: WSJ on why Ford Credit is now driving the equity story. The legacy automaker has become a financial-services company that happens to ship sheet metal. (Wall Street Journal)

• The 4% rule is now the 4.7% rule. That matters for your retirement. The 4% rule has drawn praise and pillory for years. Now, says its author, it’s time for a revisionto 4.7%. The revision illustrates both the strength and weakness of the original rule. (USA Today)

• Independent bookstores are multiplying, although many people still think they’re dying out: The Inquirer on the indie-bookstore comeback — romantasy demand, third-place economics, and what Amazon and the chains can’t quite replicate. The vibe shift has numbers behind it. The latest numbers from the American Booksellers Association show independent stores expanding at a pace not seen this century. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

• You Won the Battle on Investment Fees. You’re Losing the War Against Taxes.: Jason Zweig on where the real frictions in long-horizon returns live now — not expense ratios, but capital-gains drag, turnover, and the bracket math no one models. Required reading. (Wall Street Journal)

• A Famous Math Problem Stumped Humans for 80 Years. AI Just Cracked It. The math world is losing its mind over the new solution to an Erdős problem. This is what AI found, how we missed it—and why it matters. WSJ on an OpenAI model knocking out an Erdős problem that had been open for eighty years. The “calculator for proofs” framing is starting to look closer to reality than to hype. (Wall Street Journal)

• This High Schooler Developed an A.I. Tool to Diagnose Autism and ADHD Using the Retina: Smithsonian on a high-school project that turned a fundus camera into a screening tool. The headline is cute; the underlying methodology is not. (Smithsonian Magazine)

• Three Ways Trump Is Losing the War: At the moment, the United States is negotiating with a regime that President Trump claimed we had already changed, to open a strait that was supposed to be open last month, and to end a nuclear program that we said we had obliterated. NYT opinion on the three distinct fronts where the Iran campaign has gone sideways — operational, diplomatic, domestic. Cleaner taxonomy than most of the cable coverage. (New York Times) see also Why Trump Keeps Getting Rolled in Negotiations: The Atlantic on the pattern: Trump opens hot, the counterparty waits him out, and the climbdown gets framed as a deal. Iran is just the latest specimen. (The Atlantic)

• When Fame Comes Very, Very Late: Bob Graboyes on the people who hit their stride after sixty — composers, novelists, scientists. A reasonable antidote to the 30-under-30 ecosystem. (Bastiat’s Window)

Video of the day: Why Aldi is destroying traditional grocery stores.

Grok is the most sycophantic AI model

Source: Center for AI Safety via Paul Kedrosky

Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business this week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”

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• Let There Be Luce: The Electric Ferrari Is Finally Here: Wired’s first look at the Ferrari Luce — the EV the marque kept delaying. Performance numbers, sound design, and the open question of whether Ferrari resale survives a powertrain swap. (Wired)

• “Seriously the best boss ever”: inside the world of Jeffrey Epstein’s assistant: A Guardian long-read on Lesley Groff, the assistant who scheduled Epstein’s life for two decades. The “I had no idea” defense rendered, in detail, completely impossible. No one’s name appears in the Epstein files more than that of Lesley Groff, his assistant. Reading through the thousands of emails, a troubling question arises: what did she know? (The Guardian)

• Tomatoes become latest symbol of America’s affordability squeeze: Tomatoes, ubiquitous in everything from fast-food burgers to haute cuisine, are taking on a new role beyond the plate: A nagging reminder of rising costs. Prices for those red orbs have soared more than any other food product over the past year to cement a spot as one of the consumer headaches du jour. AP on how Mexico tariffs landed straight on the supermarket tomato bin. The first-order story everyone said wouldn’t happen, happening on schedule. (Associated Press)

• Stablecoins Are Private Money. That’s Why They’re a Risk to the Economy. Financial innovations often lead to upheaval and instability. Despite new regulations, those risks persist with stablecoins. Financial innovations often lead to upheaval and instability. Despite new regulations, those risks persist with stablecoins. (Wall Street Journal)

• When “survival of the fittest” justified monopolies and the slow death of democracy: Big Think excerpts a new book on how Gilded Age robber barons used Spencerian Darwinism to justify their consolidation — and how the present rhymes more than it should. (Big Think)

• The High-Seas Black Market That Keeps Iran’s Illicit Oil Flowing: WSJ on the shadow tanker fleet — flag-of-convenience swaps, AIS spoofing, ship-to-ship transfers — that keeps Iranian crude moving despite sanctions. The sanctions-versus-physics scoreboard. Despite U.S. sanctions, the regime has managed to sell billions of dollars in crude to China using a clandestine network of aging tankers. Our reporters paid a visit. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Wrong Stalker: He was an addict. She was his counselor. Who was preying on whom?: A SF Chronicle investigative project that resists every easy frame. The kind of long-form local-paper journalism people keep saying is dead while a few outlets quietly keep doing it. (San Francisco Chronicle)

• This is what happens when you defund Ebola prevention: Shortly after brandishing his infamous chainsaw on a conservative conference stage last February, Elon Musk attended a Cabinet meeting where, giggling slyly, he admitted to having “accidentally canceled” Ebola prevention in his haste to obliterate the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “We restored the Ebola prevention immediately,” he added coolly at the time, “and there was no interruption.” That claim has since proven to be disastrously, profoundly untrue. (Yahoo News)

• MAGA Hogs at the Government Trough: The American Prospect cataloging the federal contracts now flowing to MAGA-aligned firms. The grift isn’t hidden anymore; it’s the line-item. (The American Prospect) see also The year Trump broke the federal government: A long, interactive Post piece on what DOGE-era cuts have done to federal capacity. The bill comes due gradually, then all at once. (Washington Post)

• Oily Sludge Is Flooding Their Dream Home. Oklahoma Regulators Say They Can’t Help: ProPublica on a family whose Oklahoma property is being slowly destroyed by neighboring oil-and-gas waste — and the state agency that exists to address exactly this declining to act. Regulatory capture in one specific human story. The Merediths were forced to abandon their house after it filled with black goo, reaching gas concentrations at explosive levels. Despite evidence of oil and gas pollution, the state “wanted to act like it would go away,” the family says. (ProPublica)

Video of the day: The 911 Is the New Rolex: Porsche’s Dangerous Scarcity Play

Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business this week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”

The 2026 Races That Could Determine Senate Control

Source: Wall Street Journal

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• SpaceX: The AI IPO: SpaceX’s revenue in 2025 was $18.7 billion, which works out to a potential price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 93x.  The highly-anticipated Form S-1 filing document arrives as SpaceX officially unveils financials for the space rocket startup founded by Elon Musk in 2002. Trung Phan’s notes reframes the SpaceX IPO as an AI infrastructure play more than a launch business. The valuation barely makes sense, even if you accept the reframe. (SatPost by Trung Phan)

• Ukraine is turning the tables: The FT on the cumulative weight of Ukrainian deep strikes, drone economics, and Russian logistics rot. The war isn’t over but the trajectory just shifted. (Financial Times) see also All non-drone militaries are obsolete: Noah Smith on the Ukraine lesson: a $300 drone burning a $3M tank is not an edge case, it is the new mean. Procurement budgets pointing the wrong direction. All warfare is drone warfare now. (Noahpinion)

• The Average Guys Outsmarting Wall Street on Prediction Markets: How prediction-market ‘sharps’ have made millions wagering on everything from war to Rotten Tomatoes. A NYT Magazine feature on the regular-Joe Polymarket bettors who keep posting risk-adjusted returns that would have any quant shop’s head spinning. The story everyone wants to be true, told carefully. (NYT Magazine)

• Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas of his Holiness Pope Leo’s on AI: In his letter, the first American Pope says Humanity faces a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together (Vatican)

• How Barnes & Noble Became Private Equity’s Most Radical Retail Experiment: A Bloomberg feature on the surprise comeback of Barnes & Noble under Elliott — local manager autonomy, smaller stores, books actually displayed face-out. The rare PE story with a happy ending. (Businessweek)

• Being creative requires taking risks: Henrik Karlsson on why nothing actually creative comes out of the optimization mindset. Short, dense, worth saving and re-reading. (Escaping Flatland) see also Hacks vs. Artists: Nick Maggiulli on the difference between churn-it-out hacks and the people who actually care — applied to investing, writing, and most of what we do for money. A good Monday read. (Of Dollars and Data)

• The Strange Melancholy of Slaying Monsters: The MIT Reader on the long literary history of heroes who feel hollow after the kill — Beowulf to The Last of Us. Better than the cover sells. From “Shadow of the Colossus” to “Undertale,” video games have turned one of their oldest rituals into an ethical dilemma. (The MIT Press Reader)

• ‘The devil’s child’: the rise and fall of the only female yakuza: A Guardian long-read on Mako Nishimura — the only woman ever to make it inside Japan’s yakuza hierarchy — and the wreckage on the way in and out. She fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs almost destroyed her. Reads like a novel and is somehow true. (The Guardian)

• How Bill Lawrence Became TV’s Most Prolific Showrunner: The creator of “Rooster,” “Scrubs” and “Shrinking” — not to mention “Ted Lasso” and “Bad Monkey” — did not expect to have a career renaissance in his late 50s. The Wrap on Bill Lawrence’s Scrubs-to-Shrinking arc — the showrunner economics of building a stable of writers, recycling cast, and quietly running half the comedy slate. (The Wrap)

Video of the day: SNL Documentary By James Franco

Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business this week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”

Is AI Profitable Yet? (No.)

Source: Is AI Profitable

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• One Million New-Car Buyers Are Gone and They’re Not Coming Back Soon: WSJ on the demand hole left by affordability — a million households permanently priced out of the new-car market. The structural part of the auto cycle that doesn’t show up in monthly SAAR. High gas prices, rising interest rates and stubborn inflation are keeping buyers at home and cars on the lots (Wall Street Journal)

• Henry Ford Upped Wages So Workers Became Consumers. The Rest Is History.: Barron’s on the actual economic logic behind Ford’s $5 day — turnover costs, not altruism — and how the story keeps getting retold in service of whatever today’s argument needs. Useful corrective. The decision helped create America as we know it today. (Barron’s) see also Why Costco pays $30/hr and Target doesn’t: A clean Substack post on the operating math behind Costco’s wage premium — turnover savings, throughput, member economics. Standard reading for anyone who keeps citing the model without understanding it. (Justin Kuiper)

• A Stock Certificate From 1941 Taught Me More About AI Than Anyone from OpenAI: A Substack riff using a 1941 stock cert as a way to think about durable franchises vs. narrative compression. Good Sunday reading for anyone trying to value the current cohort. (Apers Insights)

• The Midwestern Exodus Is Finally Ending: WSJ on Akron and the broader Rust Belt finally adding population again — remote work, housing arbitrage, returnees. The story underneath the next decade of regional politics. Longtime migration away from parts of Rust Belt starts to reverse; housing affordability is pull for metro areas like Akron, Ohio. (Wall Street Journal)

• The best analysts chew gum: A short Substack on the silly little focus rituals that actually move research productivity. Gum, walking, standing desks — the unsexy operational stuff that compounds. (OptimistiCallie)

• Is Peter Thiel the target of Pope Leo’s Gandalf quote? An investigation: Ars Technica doing exegesis on a single line in Magnifica Humanitas and asking whether the Vatican is now subtweeting tech-right billionaires. Probably yes. (Ars Technica)

• There’s a Simple Reason Why I’m Sure A.I. Won’t Achieve Consciousness: The individual pieces create a kind of illusion. (Slate)

• A $300-a-Month Gym Is Gen Z’s Social Club: Younger consumers in major cities are discovering more chances to find friends and romance in reformer classes, run clubs and spa-heavy gyms. (Bloomberg) see also Something Strange Is Happening at College Graduations Across the Country: Slate on the AI-titan commencement-speaker circuit getting booed off stages this season — and what the senior class’s mood signals about the labor market they’re walking into. (Slate)

• These Japanese Oyster Farmers Know How to Throw a Good Party, and Everyone Is Invited: There’s a phrase in Japanese, “waku waku,” that expresses a bubbling and happy excitement for something to come. At the train stations on the Itoshima Peninsula, this phrase seems to jump from the mouths of day trippers young and old. There’s a lot of anticipation for the day parties that they will join. It’s a short jog from the city of Fukuoka to visit the kakigoya. Buying directly from the farmers means that the oysters are fresh and the prices are low. A NYT travel piece on the Hiroshima oyster harvest festival. Genial, food-photo-heavy, exactly the palate cleanser this list needs. (New York Times)

• A sleep-time ‘sweet spot’ is linked to healthy aging, study finds: Turns out 6.4 to 7.8 hours of sleep a night might be ideal. Here are some tips on how to get the “just right” amount. WaPo on a new study putting the longevity sleep window at seven hours — not five, not nine. File under “things to actually do” rather than “things to read about doing.”(Washington Post)

Video of the day: How Pulp Fiction Was Filmed | Everything you didn’t know about Quentin Tarantino’s movie

Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business this week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”

More ETFs Than Stocks

Source: Apollo

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