What we’re reading (4/5)
“Inflation’s Inventory Gluts Are Here To Stay And Will Hit The Bottom Line In Weaker Economy: CNBC Supply Chain Survey” (CNBC). “Bloated warehouse inventories are an expensive pressure eating away at the bottom line of many companies, and for many, the excess supply and associated costs of storage won’t abate this year, according to a new CNBC Supply Chain Survey.”
“Exxon Quits Drilling In Brazil After Failing To Find Oil” (Wall Street Journal). “Exxon Mobil Corp. has abandoned a multibillion-dollar wager on finding oil in the deep waters off Brazil after a series of disappointing wells left it with nothing to show for more than five years of work, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Anyone Hoping To Make An Easy Buck Off Vacation Properties Must Contend With An ‘Airbnbust’ And A Growing Number Of Places Looking To Regulate Short-Term Rentals” (Insider). “[T]he industry sits at a crossroads. Some short-term rentals are doing better than ever, while other owners complain of dried-up bookings and an encroaching Airbnbust. Some experts note that localities with robust regulations of short-term rentals provide a solid environment for hosts by capping the number of permits and preserving the profits of existing Airbnb owners.”
“Reimagining Index Funds” (Research Affiliates). “We show that the indexing gold standard of cap-weighting can be improved upon when index construction uses a company’s fundamentals to choose stocks—and then cap-weights them. We propose just such an index, which we call the Research Affiliates Capitalization-Weighted Index, or RACWI.”
“These Are The Only Stocks That Matter Right Now” (CNN Business). “The rally that the S&P 500 has enjoyed since the beginning of the year has been driven by a small group of stocks — the market cap of the remaining 480 or so has basically remained the same. ‘This is not a broad-based rally where all stocks go up but instead a rally concentrated in a few of the largest stocks by market cap, mainly tech names,’ Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, told CNN.”
