What we’re reading (6/4)
“Bearish Bets Against S&P 500 Are Surging, Despite Love for Big Tech” (Wall Street Journal). “Wall Street hasn’t been this bearish on the stock market in more than a decade. Tech shares are a different story. Hedge funds and other speculative investors have built up a big bet that the S&P 500 will decline, marking their most bearish positioning since 2007. At the same time, they are preparing for a rally in the technology-focused Nasdaq-100, with net bullish wagers in recent weeks approaching the highest levels since late last year.”
“Want To Know Why Younger Generations Seem So Pissed? Look At The Housing Market.” (Insider). “You see it in survey results. You sense it in anti-capitalist TikTok videos. You hear about it when talking to your friends or colleagues, or if you're a parent of a 20-something or 30-something, from your kids. This economy has younger Americans on edge.”
“The S&P 500 Finally Broke Through A Key Level. Now What?” (CNN Business). “The S&P 500 index on Friday closed at its highest level in almost a year. But that doesn’t mean that stocks are poised for a bull run just yet. The broad-based index on May 26 closed above the 4,200 level for the first time since August 2022, when the market began to sell off and fell sharply to last year’s low of about 3,577 in October. The S&P 500 ended last week up 1.8% at about 4,282, marking its best weekly gain since late March.”
“Borrowers Brace For Student Loan Bills To Resume — ‘$600 A Month, Where Is That Going To Come From?’” (CNBC). “The more than three-year-long pause on federal student loan payments is slated to finally conclude within months. The Biden administration is preparing borrowers for their payments to resume by September, even while its loan forgiveness program is halted as the Supreme Court debates its validity. The debt ceiling deal passed by Congress also includes a provision officially terminating the pandemic-era relief policy and making it harder for the U.S. Department of Education to extend it.”
“The New York Times’ Elizabeth Holmes Profile Is Causing Drama in the Newsroom: ‘What the Hell Happened Here?’” (Vanity Fair). “In the feature, ‘Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth,’ the convicted fraudster was described by writer Amy Chozick as ‘an authentic and sympathetic person’ and a ‘devoted mother’ who has been ‘volunteering for a rape crisis hotline’ for the past year. ‘She didn’t seem like a hero or a villain. She seemed, like most people, somewhere in between,’ Chozick writes. The piece came under scrutiny for, among other things, being overly credulous, which Chozick acknowledges in the piece, admitting that her own editor—business editor Ellen Pollock—had called her out for getting ‘rolled.’”
