What we’re reading (6/15)
“‘Why Am I Doing This?’ These Investors Are Locking In Stock Gains While They Can.” (Wall Street Journal). “Overall, individual investors are still buying stocks more than they are selling. But a rally-chasing shopping spree cooled significantly in May, and analysts say they have observed signs of investors selling shares to pocket gains. Retail traders bought $23 billion worth of equities in May, according to a JPMorgan Chase report, down roughly $17 billion from the month prior. Last week, individual investors sold a net $400 million worth of individual stocks, the bank’s analysts found.”
“Wall Street Is Making Some Seriously Weird Trades” (CNN Business). “Wall Street traders hunting for profits might find that the most lucrative investments are in the peculiar market for precious metals. Gold, silver and platinum prices have surged this year as investors have piled into precious metals in search of places to hide from trade war uncertainty. President Donald Trump’s chaotic tariff plan has rocked markets, and investors have tried to minimize risk by putting some money in safe haven assets. While gold is historically considered a haven, demand for havens has spilled over into its wonky cousins like silver and platinum.”
“What If Stocks Don’t Go Up In The Long Run?” (A Wealth of Common Sense). “My baseline assumption is that human beings will strive to earn more money and better their station in life. Corporations will innovate and look for ways to increase profits. The economy will grow. Bad things will happen but the long run will see progress.”
“GenAI As An International Lawyer: A Case Study With The Jessup International Law Moot Court” (Damien Charlotin and Niccolò Ridi). “his paper investigates the capacity of Generative Artificial Intelligence, specifically Large Language Models, to craft compelling international legal arguments. We tested the performance of two popular models, Gemini 2.0 and GPT4o, in the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, generating ten complete written memorials with minimal human intervention. With the organisers' blessing, these AI-generated memorials were anonymously added to the pool of submissions and evaluated by judges, who remained unaware of their origins, providing a unique benchmark against humanproduced work. Our results demonstrate that LLM-generated memorials consistently achieve average to superior scores, with some submissions receiving exceptional praise and near-perfect ratings. However, a detailed analysis of judges' qualitative feedback reveals persistent shortcomings of LLMs, notably factual inaccuracies, hallucinated citations, and superficial legal analysis.”
“‘It Makes Sense To Be On Hold’: Why Wall Street Strategists Think Fed Rate Cuts Aren’t Coming Anytime Soon” (Finance! Yahoo). “‘The Fed is on hold until we get a little more clarity about not only the magnitude of the tariffs and the breadth of the tariffs, but what effect they all have on inflation and what effect the tariffs and other policies, including the budget bill, will have on growth and employment,’ Mester said.”
