What we’re reading (7/5)
“Wages Are Finally Going Up And That’s Going To Have To Continue To Get People Back To Work” (CNBC). “American workers collectively saw a nice bump in their paychecks for June that may have to keep coming if conditions ever are going to get back to where they were before the pandemic hit. If there was one dark cloud over the month’s otherwise robust round of hiring, it was the tick higher in the unemployment rate and the stagnation of the U.S. labor force.”
“Travelers Are Getting Hit By Sticker Shock This Summer” (CNN Business). “American vacationers are finding just about everything significantly more expensive this summer. Hotel rooms? Up about 44% at the end of June compared to a year earlier, according to data from hotel research firm STR. Air fares? They were 24% higher in May than in the same month last year, according to the Consumer Price Index. Even so, many of the prices are still below where they stood in the summer of 2019, six months before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic brought demand for travel to a near halt and sent prices plunging.”
“Retail Investors Power The Trading Wave With Record Cash Inflows” (Wall Street Journal). “Retail investors keep pouring money into markets, even as many of their favorite meme stocks and cryptocurrencies have languished. In June, so-called retail investors bought nearly $28 billion of stocks and exchange-traded funds on a net basis, according to data from Vanda Research’s VandaTrack, the highest monthly amount deployed since at least 2014. That even trumped the amount retail traders spent in January during the first meme-stock frenzy.”
“The SEC's Probe Into Charles Schwab's Robo-Advisor Is An Early Glimpse Of The Regulator's Fintech Crackdown” (Business Insider). “Schwab said its second-quarter earnings results will show a $200 million charge related to the [SEC’s] investigation. The company is cooperating with the SEC, and a Schwab spokesperson declined to comment beyond the filing. That cost appears to be the largest that a robo-advisor — the automated low- or no-cost investing tools that emerged after the financial crisis — has incurred over a public regulatory matter, experts say.”
“The Smart Home Isn't Worth It” (Gizmodo). “A smart home that responds to your every command and automates mundane tasks is a tantalizing dream. But the reality is that given the current limitations of technology, competing standards, and devices that quickly become obsolete, trying to make that dream a reality today just isn’t worth all the effort.”
