What we’re reading (12/3)
“Dollar Bears Vindicated By Landmark Week As Spiral Accelerates” (Bloomberg). “It’s turning into a week of vindication for proponents of a weaker dollar as the case they’ve been making for years may be gaining steam. The greenback is spiraling lower, probing levels last seen in April 2018, judging by a Bloomberg index. The tumble is part of a broader move across financial markets to price in brighter growth prospects for 2021 and the potential for superior investment opportunities outside the U.S., in large part as hopes for a coronavirus vaccine build.”
“The Sharing Economy Come Home: The IPO Of Airbnb!” (Musings On Markets). The “Dean of Wall Street”, NYU Prof. Aswath Damadoran, lays out his valuation of Airbnb, which filed its preliminary prospectus for an IPO with the SEC on November 16th.
“Mortgage Rates Sink To Record Low Again” (Washington Post). “The 30-year fixed mortgage rate, the most popular loan product, sank to its lowest level on record this week, marking the 14th historic low it has hit this year. According to the latest data released Thursday by Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed-rate average fell to 2.71 percent with an average 0.7 point. (Points are fees paid to a lender equal to 1 percent of the loan amount and are in addition to the interest rate.) It was 2.72 percent a week ago and 3.68 percent a year ago.”
“Google Reveals Major Hidden Weakness In Machine Learning” (Discover). “In recent years, machines have become almost as good as humans, and sometimes better, in a wide range of abilities — for example, object recognition, natural language processing and diagnoses based on medical images. And yet machines trained in this way still make mistakes that humans would never fall for. For example, small changes to an image, that a human would ignore, can force a machine to mislabel it entirely. That has potentially serious implications in applications on which human lives depend, such as medical diagnoses.”
“This Family Bet Everything On Bitcoin When It Was $900—And Bought More When It Crashed In 2018” (CNBC). “Didi Taihuttu, his wife, and three kids bet all they have on bitcoin. In 2017, CNBC spoke to the Dutch family of five when they were in the process of liquidating their assets — from a profitable business and 2,500-square-foot house, to their shoes — and trading it all in for the popular cryptocurrency and a life on the road. Nearly four years and 40 countries later, Taihuttu and his family still don’t have bank accounts, a house, or all that much by way of personal possessions. All of the family’s savings remain tied up in highly volatile cryptocurrencies.”
