What we’re reading (12/28)
“A Thrill-Seeking Trade Amps Up Heading Into 2025” (Wall Street Journal). “About 48 million options contracts have changed hands daily on average this year, on pace for a record in data going back to 1973, according to the Options Clearing Corp., or OCC. That is up 9% from last year and would mark the fifth straight year of fresh all-time highs. Options were traditionally used by professional investors to protect portfolios from risk. Now, they have become wildly popular among rookie traders seeking to amplify their bets, especially on extremely volatile stocks…’It’s really the phenomenon of the retail trader that continues to just drive this growth,’ said Catherine Clay, head of global derivatives at Cboe Global Markets.”
“How A.I. Could Reshape The Economic Geography Of America” (New York Times). “Chattanooga, Tenn., a midsize Southern city, is on no one’s list of artificial intelligence hot spots. But as the technology’s use moves beyond a few big city hubs and is more widely adopted across the economy, Chattanooga and other once-struggling cities in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and South are poised to be among the unlikely winners, a recent study found. The shared attributes of these metropolitan areas include an educated work force, affordable housing and workers who are mostly in occupations and industries less likely to be replaced or disrupted by A.I., according to the study by two labor economists, Scott Abrahams, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, and Frank Levy, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
“Mortgage Rates Rise Again, Finishing The Year At 6.85% — Just About The Way They Started” (Yahoo! Finance). “Mortgage rates rose again this week to end the year slightly higher than where they began. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate was 6.85% for the week through Wednesday, according to Freddie Mac data. That’s up from 6.72% a week earlier. Average 15-year mortgage rates rose to 6% from 5.92%.”
“Record-Breaking Ransoms And Breaches: A Timeline Of Ransomware In 2024” (TechCrunch). “It was another record-breaking year for ransomware. When file-locking malware wasn’t causing widespread disruption, like downing online services and lasting outages, ransomware was the cause of unprecedented data theft attacks affecting hundreds of millions of people, in some cases for life. While governments have struck some rare wins against ransomware hackers over the past 12 months, including the disruption of the prolific LockBit gang and the seizure and takedown of Radar, these data theft and extortion attacks continue to increase dramatically, both in terms of frequency and sophistication.”
“Climbing The Ivory Tower: How Socio-Economic Background Shapes Academia” (Ran Abramitzky, et al. working paper). “We explore how socio-economic background shapes academia, collecting the largest dataset of U.S. academics’ backgrounds and research output. Individuals from poorer backgrounds have been severely underrepresented for seven decades, especially in humanities and elite universities. Father’s occupation predicts professors’ discipline choice and, thus, the direction of research. While we find no differences in the average number of publications, academics from poorer backgrounds are both more likely to not publish and to have outstanding publication records. Academics from poorer backgrounds introduce more novel scientific concepts, but are less likely to receive recognition, as measured by citations, Nobel Prize nominations, and awards.”
