What we’re reading (8/24)
“Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq Futures Steady After Record Surge With Nvidia Earnings In Focus” (Yahoo! Finance). “With earnings season continuing to roll on, Nvidia, the most valuable stock in the S&P 500, reports results after the closing bell Wednesday. Analysts see the chipmaker posting earnings of $1.01 per share on $46.13 billion in revenue. Price targets have been climbing in the lead-up, reflecting optimism that demand for AI hardware remains high.”
“Stagnant Job Market Is A Rising Risk For The U.S. Economy” (Wall Street Journal). “The labor market has moved front and center for the Federal Reserve, highlighting its fragility and risk to the economy. The good news is that unemployment remains low, and employers haven’t been all that interested in laying people off. The bad news is that companies haven’t been all that interested in hiring, either. This precarious situation means even a relatively small increase in layoffs could lead the economy to start shedding jobs—a process that can be difficult to reverse once it starts.”
“‘Powell Clearly Opens The Door’: Markets Surge As Speculative Bets Get Another Boost From Dovish Jay Powell” (Yahoo! Finance). “‘Equity markets reacted very positively,’ Scott Chronert, managing director of US equity strategy at Citi, wrote in a Friday note, highlighting the Russell 2000, a benchmark for small-cap stocks, had the most ‘striking surge’ as investors shifted money into more economically sensitive names. That broadening story, which captured Wall Street’s attention this week, was also evident with the equal-weighted S&P 500, which gives smaller companies the same influence as megacap tech, slightly leading the headline index.”
“Why A Landmark Settlement On Realtor Fees Hasn’t Cut Costs” (Wall Street Journal). “The real-estate industry’s landmark settlement reworked how real-estate agents get paid, raising hopes that the costs associated with home buying and selling would come down. A year later, it hasn’t happened. The average commission paid to a buyer’s agent in the second quarter of 2025 was 2.43% of the home’s sale price, up from 2.38% a year earlier, according to an analysis by real-estate brokerage Redfin.”
“Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants And Causal Effects Of Admission To Highly Selective Private Colleges” (Raj Chetty, David Deming, and John Friedman). “We use anonymized admissions data from several colleges linked to income tax records and SAT and ACT test scores to study the determinants and causal effects of attending Ivy-Plus colleges (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago). Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. Two-thirds of this gap is due to higher admissions rates for students with comparable test scores from high-income families; the remaining third is due to differences in rates of application and matriculation. In contrast, children from high-income families have no admissions advantage at flagship public colleges. The high-income admissions advantage at Ivy-Plus colleges is driven by three factors: (1) preferences for children of alumni, (2) weight placed on non-academic credentials, and (3) athletic recruitment. Using a new research design that isolates idiosyncratic variation in admissions decisions for waitlisted applicants, we show that attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average flagship public college increases students’ chances of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 50%, nearly doubles their chances of attending an elite graduate school, and almost triples their chances of working at a prestigious firm. The three factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas academic credentials such as SAT/ACT scores are highly predictive of post-college success.”
