What we’re reading (12/27)
“The $900 Billion Cash Pile Inflating Startup Valuations” (Wall Street Journal). “The cash committed to venture-capital firms and private-equity firms focused on rapidly growing companies but not yet spent also is ballooning. So-called dry powder hit about $440 billion for venture capitalists and roughly $310 billion for growth-focused PE firms earlier this month, according to Preqin.”
“The Groundhog Day Stock Market Anomaly” (Shanaev, et al., Finance Research Letters). “This paper discovers a distinct calendar anomaly on the US stock market associated with the Groundhog Day prognostication tradition across 1928–2021. There are significant positive abnormal returns around the “prediction” of an early spring, while buy-and-hold returns around the “prediction” of a long winter are 2.78% lower. The results are robust in subsamples, to a set of placebo tests for international stock indices, and cannot be explained by January effect, the ‘halloween Indicator’, turn-of-the-month effect, or other seasonalities. The findings imply major and persistent irrational optimism of US investors revolving around Groundhog Day early spring prognostications.”
“Pandemic Migration Spurs Maine’s Biggest Population Growth In 2 Decades” (Bangor Daily News). “Maine saw more migration during the COVID-19 pandemic than almost all other states during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to the greatest population growth here in nearly two decades. The sharp rise in population over the past two years comes on the heels of mostly anemic growth over the past decade, as Maine’s overall population rose just 2.6 percent between 2010 and 2020, compared with 7.4 percent growth nationally.”
“Tens Of Thousands Leave The Old Smoke In Biggest Exodus For A Generation” (The Times). “More than 90,000 Londoners quit the capital this year, the largest exodus for ‘at least a generation’, according to research published today by the estate agency Hamptons. A further 21,000 Londoners bought a second home, or a buy-to-let property, outside the M25.”
“Mick Jagger, Financial Planner Extraordinaire” (Wall Street Journal). “For more than half a century, as anyone even vaguely familiar with the history of rock ’n’ roll knows, the Stones have written and performed songs that provide sage investment advice for their fans. Bear in mind that Mick Jagger briefly attended the London School of Economics and was an early proponent of moving the Stones’ income to localities where they could escape the tax man.”
