What we’re reading (1/8)
“The Rise Of Personalised Stock Indices” (The Economist). “In 2001 Andrew Lo, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, predicted that technological advances would one day allow investors to create their own personal indices designed to meet their financial aims, risk preferences and tax considerations. Such an idea ‘may well be science fiction today’, Mr Lo wrote, but ‘it is only a matter of time.’ More than 20 years later, that time may have come.”
“Rocket Grew Into America’s Biggest Mortgage Lender, But Now Comes The Hard Part” (Wall Street Journal). “No nonbank has grown as fast as Rocket. Its assembly-line method for making mortgages helps it handle lots of loans at once. The company spends aggressively on advertising, including Super Bowl ads in four of the past six years. But for Rocket to overcome the expected drop in refinancings, it will have to become something different. Like other nonbanks, it gets almost all of its revenue from mortgages, but it has been more aggressive about trying to expand beyond refinancings.”
“Fixed Mortgage Rates Hit 20-Month High As Long-Term Bond Yields Rise” (Washington Post). “What a difference a year makes. One year ago this week, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate sank to its lowest level in history. This week, fixed mortgage rates followed long-term bond yields and rose to their highest levels in 20 months.”
“The Athletic’s Sale Is Yet Another Sign That The Great Media Consolidation Is Upon Us” (Vanity Fair). “As a nearly two-year-old sports media start-up, The Athletic sold itself as a vulture hovering over the carcasses of local newspapers left to die in the digital age. The website’s cofounder Alex Mather went so far as to claim that The Athletic’s goal was to hasten the extinction of local news by poaching the most talented beat reporters from local sports sections—one of the few areas in which these antiquated publications continue to thrive.”
“The Background Level Of Stress” (Marginal Revolution). “That is a physiological or biological concept, or it may appear in the other sciences. It rarely plays a direct role in economics, though I think it is important for understanding regime shifts…I think a great deal about what the forthcoming level of background stress will be, but I am quite uncertain about any prediction. I do know I read a great number of people who either treat it as absurdly high (e.g., the climate doomsayers), or who are implicitly sure it will be quite low. I believe this concept of background stress, if nothing else, helps you to see what a lot of apparently reasonable predictions can end up being proven wrong.”
