What we’re reading (7/8)
“Why Your Fund Manager Can’t Beat Today’s Stock Market” (Wall Street Journal). “[T]raditional measures like correlation and dispersion have lost much of their meaning and nearly all of their relevance. The 10 biggest stocks own the market right now, and anyone who doesn’t own them is left out in the cold—at least for the time being.”
“How A New York Short-Seller Took On One Of The World’s Richest People, Wiped Out $150 Billion In Market Value, And Barely Made Any Money” (Insider). “Nate Anderson, the chief mind behind activist short-seller Hindenburg Research, has had an eventful past 18 months. In January 2023, he accused the Indian conglomerate owned by Gautam Adani — one of the world's richest people — of fraud, subsequently wiping out $153 billion in market value from its associated companies. This led Indian regulators to his doorstep and forced him into defensive mode. A war of words has persisted ever since. A year and a half later, the battle continues. And based on new information released by Hindenburg, one might wonder whether it was all worth it.”
“The Intense Battle To Stop AI Bots From Taking Over The Internet” (The Independent). “A number of companies have taken major steps to stop scrapers from attempting to take their text. It is the latest front in an ongoing and apparently escalating battle between websites that allow people to read text and the AI companies that wish to use it to build their new tools.”
“Property Fraud Allegations Snowball As Commercial Real-Estate Values Fall” (Wall Street Journal). “Regulators and federal prosecutors say that property loans based on doctored building financials and valuations have been rising. This type of fraud became more widespread between the mid-2010s and 2021, federal investigators and real-estate brokers say, when commercial property prices surged to new highs and landlords had much to gain from such maneuvers. Now, the drop in property values caused by higher interest rates and a rise in defaults are exposing more of these schemes, dealing another blow to a commercial real-estate market suffering through its worst stretch since the 2008-09 financial crisis.”
“The American Elevator Explains Why Housing Costs Have Skyrocketed” (New York Times). “Through my research on elevators, I got a glimpse into why so little new housing is built in America and why what is built is often of such low quality and at high cost. The problem with elevators is a microcosm of the challenges of the broader construction industry — from labor to building codes to a sheer lack of political will. These challenges are at the root of a mounting housing crisis that has spread to nearly every part of the country and is damaging our economic productivity and our environment.”
