What we’re reading (4/20)
“US House Passes $95 Billion Ukraine, Israel Aid Package, Sends To Senate” (Reuters). “The U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday with broad bipartisan support passed a $95 billion legislative package providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, over bitter objections from Republican hardliners. The legislation now proceeds to the Democratic-majority Senate, which passed a similar measure more than two months ago.”
“Big Stocks Won When Markets Rose. They Are Winning Again In The Selloff.” (Wall Street Journal). “One of the biggest concerns amid the run-up in stocks in the first three months of the year was that the rally was dominated by the biggest companies. As it sold off this month, the market became even more top heavy. Blame the Fed, and a change in how investors react to it. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. For weeks now Wall Street has been pushing the idea that the market is broadening out beyond the “Magnificent Seven” Big Tech stocks[.]”
“The Cloud Under The Sea” (The Verge). “TheThe world’s emails, TikToks, classified memos, bank transfers, satellite surveillance, and FaceTime calls travel on cables that are about as thin as a garden hose. There are about 800,000 miles of these skinny tubes crisscrossing the Earth’s oceans, representing nearly 600 different systems, according to the industry tracking organization TeleGeography. The cables are buried near shore, but for the vast majority of their length, they just sit amid the gray ooze and alien creatures of the ocean floor, the hair-thin strands of glass at their center glowing with lasers encoding the world’s data. If, hypothetically, all these cables were to simultaneously break, modern civilization would cease to function.”
“US Small-Caps Suffer Worst Run Against Larger Stocks In Over 20 Years” (Financial Times). “US small-cap stocks are suffering their worst run of performance relative to large companies in more than 20 years, highlighting the extent to which investors have chased megacap technology stocks while smaller groups are weighed down by high interest rates. The Russell 2000 index has risen 24 per cent since the beginning of 2020, lagging behind the S&P 500’s more than 60 per cent gain over the same period.”
“There’s No Easy Answer To Chinese EVs” (The Atlantic). “Chinese electric vehicles—cheap, stylish, and high quality—should be a godsend to the Biden administration, whose two biggest priorities are reducing carbon emissions quickly enough to avert a climate catastrophe and reducing consumer prices quickly enough to avert an electoral catastrophe. Instead, the White House is going out of its way to keep Chinese EVs out of the U.S. What gives? The key to understanding this seeming contradiction is something known as “the China shock.” American policy makers long considered free trade to be close to an unalloyed good. But, according to a hugely influential 2016 paper, the loosening of trade restrictions with China at the turn of the 21st century was a disaster for the American manufacturing workforce.”
