What were reading (1/28)
“The Fed Must Step Up Again” (Project Syndicate). “The unprecedented fiscal stimulus unleashed in the United States since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic calls for commensurate additional monetary stimulus. The restrictions imposed to control the spread of the coronavirus have caused the deepest global recession since World War II.”
“The Dramatic Evolution Of Emerging Markets” (Morningstar). “Per MSCI, emerging-markets stocks made up about 13% of the global stock market (using the MSCI All Country World Investable Market Index as a proxy) as of the end of 2020. When the MSCI Emerging Markets Index was launched in 1988, these stocks represented less than 1% of the world’s investable equity market capitalization.”
“Fourth Quarter GDP To Show Businesses Spent, But Consumers Held Back” (CNBC). “Year-over-year, the economy is expected to have contracted 3.5% in 2020, according to the CNBC/Moody Analytics Rapid Update survey of economists. It was a year that saw a record pandemic-induced plunge in activity and a sharp snapback. The economy grew by 33.4% in the third quarter, after the second quarter’s sharp contraction of 31.4% The first quarter was also hit by the pandemic, contracting by 5%.”
“Apple’s iPhone 12 Helped Deliver a Record $111.4 Billion Quarter” (Wall Street Journal). “Apple Inc. finished 2020 with its most profitable quarter ever, fueled by an uptick in higher-end iPhone sales and a pandemic-induced surge in demand for its laptops and tablets.”
“Information Avoidance And Image Concerns” (National Bureau of Economic Research). “A rich literature finds that individuals avoid information, even information that is instrumental to their choices…We find that image concerns play a role in driving information avoidance, but a role that is substantially smaller than the common approach in the literature would suggest…We find evidence for other reasons why individuals avoid information, such as a desire to avoid interpersonal tradeoffs, a desire to avoid bad news, laziness, inattention, and confusion.”
