What we’re reading (7/21)
“Mortgage Rates Move Higher Again” (Yahoo! Finance). “Mortgage rates increased for the second straight week. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage was 6.75% through Wednesday, up from 6.68% the week prior, according to Freddie Mac data. The average 15-year fixed mortgage rate was 5.92%, up from 5.86% last week.”
“Block’s Stock Pops On Addition To S&P 500” (CNBC). “The stock rose following the announcement late Friday as investors sought to get in ahead of index fund managers, who will need to buy shares to mimic the changes. Square’s $48 billion market cap at Monday’s close places it well above the median S&P 500 constituent, though shares are still down 8% this year. Passive funds are expected to purchase roughly 101 million shares of Block due to its inclusion, equivalent to about 11 days of average trading volume, according to a note from Stephens.”
“The $130 Billion Train That Couldn’t” (Spectator). “In neither the short-term nor the mid-term is there a way of providing the promised San Francisco to Los Angeles service in 2 hours and 40 minutes. Instead, the plan is now for the train to work in a “blended” fashion, mixing with conventional and freight trains in parts of the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. To say the least, a line running from the Central Valley hubs of Bakersfield, Fresno and Merced hardly seems a romantic return to the rails of the past.”
“Stop Pretending You Know What AI Does To The Economy” (Noahpinion). “In other words, Americans are very primed with AI pessimism. Even the smartest among them tend to jump at any shred of evidence that AI is killing jobs, or turning society into a feudal hellscape, or any number of other negative effects. But each time this happened so far, when we look closely at the evidence — or just waited for the results to come in — the panic turned out to be a false alarm. AI has not yet had a detectably negative effect on the job market, which remains just about as strong as it has ever been in the country’s history[.]”
“How China Curbed Its Oil Addiction—And Blunted A U.S. Pressure Point” (Wall Street Journal). “China’s thirst for oil drove global demand for decades. Now a government campaign to curb that addiction is nearing a milestone, with national consumption expected to peak by 2027, then begin to fall. Chinese officials have long worried that the U.S. and its allies could hamstring the nation’s economy by choking off its supply of foreign oil. So China has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into weaning itself off the imported stuff by reviving domestic production and swiftly building the world’s leading electric-vehicle industry.”
