• “This Is Not Financial Advice”: How finfluencers prey on economic desperation. NOEMA on the meme-finance ecosystem hiding behind the disclaimer — and what regulators have already let slip past it. Long, careful, frustrating. (NOEMA)

• This Is Why America Can’t Have Robots And Other Nice Things: A sharp piece on the actuator and component supply-chain story underneath US humanoid-robotics ambitions. China owns the parts; everything else is a press release. Westmag and Atlas Motion Systems are here to fix the actuator crisis (Core Memory) see also How the U.S. Fell Behind in Adopting the Electric Car: Adoption of electric cars has taken off globally — electric vehicles (EVs) made up a quarter of new car sales in the world in 2025. The United States was in the lead in launching the modern electric car — Tesla’s Model S was first delivered in 2012 — and, until recently, U.S. policies provided substantial encouragement to auto manufacturers and households to adopt the technology. However, China has dominated the recent global surge in production and sales of EVs, and Europe has also overtaken the U.S. in EV adoption. What explains the U.S.’s lagging performance? (Econofact)

• Prediction Markets Are Learning From the Addiction Industry: TNR on Polymarket and Kalshi quietly absorbing the lobbying, retention, and UX playbook of online gambling. The “information market” framing surviving on hopium and a federal preemption argument. A new coalition of industry influence-peddlers is forming, tasked with defending these nascent businesses from regulation at all cost. (New Republic)

• Cloud Hoarders: Today clutter creeps beyond the home. We are constantly bombarded with digital clutter — emails, texts, and voice messages from every realm of life. And we create our own, snapping photos or jotting down notes, likely with the intention of allowing these creations to “sit” in seemingly infinite “spaces” in perpetuity, mostly out of sight and mind. When we run out of storage space, companies are more than happy to trade gigabyte-sized slices of The Cloud for dollars, and so our digital footprint swells.Who is coming to rescue us from our digital stuff? An essay on the people now accumulating physical things — vinyl, books, prints, old hardware — as a deliberate rebuke to the streaming-everything model. The vibe-shift, told without smirk. (Liberties Journal)

• The World Cup Is Sports Betting’s Biggest Moment—and Maybe Its Last Hurrah: Gamblers are expected to wager $50 billion on the coming World Cup, but signs of betting fatigue are emerging across the U.S. Biggest Moment – and Maybe Its Last Hurrah: Gamblers are expected to wager $50 billion on the coming World Cup, but signs of betting fatigue are emerging across the U.S. (Barron’s)

• America’s Consumer Corporate Protector: As acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Russell Vought has undone years of agency enforcement work. Apple, Walmart and Toyota have all benefited from Russell Vought’s vision for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (Bloomberg Free)

• Nothing Explains Trump’s Washington Quite Like the Reflecting Pool Scandal: David A. Fahrenthold on a controversy that’s deeper than it looks. Among the approximately 1.776 billion scandals of this Trump administration, one has recently stood out to me: the ongoing boondoggle at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. What was supposed to be a minor maintenance project has somehow become one of the purest reflections of Trump-era governance, involving a no-bid contract, a golf-club manager from New Jersey, and the color “American Flag Blue.” (Slate) see also He Blew the Whistle on DOGE. Then His Brakes Were Cut: A federal IT staffer filed a complaint about DOGE, then went public. Shortly after Elon Musk boosted a post calling his claims false, his brake lines were cut. Now he’s suing for defamation. Wired on the federal contractor who went public on DOGE’s data handling — and what happened to his car the week after he testified. The kind of detail you cannot launder out of the story. A federal IT staffer filed a complaint about DOGE, then went public. Shortly after Elon Musk boosted a post calling his claims false, his brake lines were cut. Now he’s suing for defamation. (Wired)

• “Alligator Alcatraz” detainees say guards deny them food and clean water until they sign English documents: The Guardian with sworn statements from inside the Florida detention site — the basic-rights violations the administration keeps refusing to comment on. Reads exactly as bad as it sounds. Detainees say they’re given ‘rotten’ water and denied meals for not signing papers in English that they don’t understand (The Guardian)

• Screwworm In Texas Cattle Could Drive Up Beef Prices—After DOGE Axed Prevention Efforts: A flesh-eating parasite that was largely eradicated from U.S. livestock in the 1960s has been found in a 3-week-old calf in a south Texas border town, the USDA confirmed, a threat that could drive the already soaring price of beef even higher after Elon Musk-led government cuts slashed ongoing efforts to prevent its spread. (Forbes) see also How Funding Cuts Left the World Vulnerable to Ebola: Bloomberg with the long, sourced version of the USAID-cuts-meets-Ebola-outbreak story. The line between fiscal policy and disease vector, drawn in detail. (Businessweek)

• The World Cup According to Gianni Infantino: The New Yorker’s long sit-down with the FIFA president on the eve of the expanded tournament. As damning as a print profile can be while staying on-record. Infantino is remaking global soccer in his own image. Can the sport survive him? (New Yorker)

Video of the day: Every Metro System Should be this Beautiful

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Chris Davis, Chairman and Portfolio Manager of Davis Funds. The firm oversees $20 billion in client assets, with Davis (and colleagues) co-investing $2 billion in their own mineus alongside shareholders. Davis was named Morningstar’s Portfolio Manager of the Year; he also sits on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola.

Globalization Uber Alles: the FTAA & the Decline of America (2011)

Source: Friends of Liberty

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This week, I sit down with Chris Davis, Chairman and Portfolio Manager at Davis Funds. They discuss his approach to managing risk and the key elements changing the economy. We also discuss Chris’s mentors including Charlie Munger, and how he settled into the family business.

A list of his current reading and favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation will be available here shortly.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube (video), YouTube (audio), and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our BONUS Masters in Business Monday with Joe McLean, Managing Partner at MAI Capital Management, where he leads firm’s Sports & Entertainment division, serving 100s of pro athletes/entertainers across NBA, NFL, MLB, PGA + NASCAR. His path to finance runs directly through the locker room as a 4-year NCAA Division 1 player at U of Arizona. Dubbed the athlete’s “Money Whisperer” by the New York Times, he is known for his non-negotiable 60% savings mandate for clients.

Current Reading/Favorite Books

The post MiB: Beating the S&P For Generations with Chris Davis of Davis Funds appeared first on The Big Picture.

• The Father-Daughter Showdown That Shook an $18 Trillion Investing Empire: WSJ on Abby Johnson finally winning the long, quiet war for Fidelity — and what her late father gave up to make it happen. The succession story the family kept out of the press for a decade. (Wall Street Journal)

• If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you: Sam Kriss at his most unhinged and most correct. A furious, funny polemic against the replacement of human thought with algorithmic slop. (Sam Kriss) see also The literary world is sleepwalking into an AI disaster: The Argument on why publishing’s slow-motion capitulation to AI-generated content is an existential crisis hiding in plain sight. (The Argument)

• The Secret Sauce of: It’s the Paycheck, Not the Tax Code. Sweden is indeed highly equal by international standards, largely thanks to pre-distribution. And the kollektivavtal is really the big story here. But there are wrinkles, suggesting some increasing concentration of wealth at the top; and perhaps there are also some surprising lessons from American success stories about raising wages.Arin Dube on what the Swedish wage-compression model actually rests on — collective bargaining coverage, not headline tax rates. The kind of empirical correction that should reset half the policy conversation. (Arin’s Substack)

• Why YouTubers Are Turning Hollywood Upside Down. Variety spoke with Hollywood producers, filmmakers, distributors and YouTube executives about this sea change and the young rebels taking Hollywood by storm. The Backrooms kids went from viral creepypasta to major studio deals. Variety on how a generation of creators raised on YouTube is rewriting the rules of the entertainment business. (Variety)

• It is the end of the world and I am here to take you home: A short, well-written Substack essay on the texture of life at the end of an era. Pair with whatever weekend you’ve been having. (Natalie’s Substack)

• Soon She’ll Be the Queen of Belgium. But for the Last Two Years, She Was the Princess of Harvard. On Wednesday and Thursday, Crown Princess Elisabeth is graduating from Harvard’s prestigious Kennedy School of Government with a master’s in public policy. Vanity Fair on Princess Elisabeth’s Harvard exit — Kennedy School degree, low-key roommates, and the next-monarch-of-Belgium logistics in the background. A lighter read than the headline suggests. (Vanity Fair)

• The Painful Truth About Long Covid: There might finally be a way forward for long Covid treatment—if only you were allowed to talk about it.Nothing about Long Covid adds up. Prevalence rates range from 3% to 86% depending on the study. The confusion is the point—this is a disease that defies easy categorization. (Wired)

• Why Are Men So Bad at Making—and Keeping—Friends? What do we make of this ostensible myth of the male loneliness crisis? One interpretation is that there is nothing to worry about, and everybody is fine. The trouble with that interpretation, however, is the fact that everybody is so evidently not fine. Derek Thompson on the data behind the male-friendship recession — hours, networks, who actually shows up. The trend he keeps writing about that the rest of the chattering class keeps under-pricing. (Derek Thompson) but see also To make friends, join a club. To join a club, find an activity fair. These citywide events are a low-stakes way to meet people and combat loneliness. Vox’s Highlight on the modest, slightly desperate revival of adult activity fairs — and the social-isolation data that makes them necessary. Pair with the Derek Thompson piece. (Vox)

• Inside the plan to make Victor Wembanyama the biggest athlete on the planet: The NBA, staring down the approaching retirements of LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant in the coming years, was in dire need of a new face, someone even the most casual fans could identify. Wemby had a solution: “I’m not gonna give basketball a choice of who the face is going to be.”  The Athletic on the joint Nike/Spurs/NBA effort to engineer Wembanyama into the next global sports brand. Specific, well-sourced, and timely with the Finals on. (The Athletic)

• 38 Tony Nominees Reveal the Strangest Skills They’ve Picked Up: The stars of “Giant,” “Fallen Angels,” “The Rocky Horror Show,” “Ragtime” and more prove they’ll go to great lengths to be believable in a role. NYT Theater’s annual photo feature. Light, charming, exactly the right length. (New York Times)

Video of the day: Martin Scorsese Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films | GQ

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Chris Davis, Chairman and Portfolio Manager of Davis Funds. The firm oversees $20 billion in client assets, with Davis (and colleagues) co-investing $2 billion in their own mineus alongside shareholders. Davis was named Morningstar’s Portfolio Manager of the Year; he also sits on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola.

25% of manufactured goods imports have two or three trade dependencies

Source: McKinsey

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Of all the dumb things Wall Street is infamous for, perhaps none is sillier than the all too regular forecasting game. Quarterly earnings, Non-farm payrolls, annual S&P predictions, oil prices, inflation rates, FOMC cuts — it’s a never-ending parade of predictions, forecasts, and guestimates, most of which are wildly, often laughably wrong.

Guessing the revenues and profits of any company is tough enough; it becomes even more difficult for any company with only a few years of history.

Allow me to present to you Exhibit A in whatever subsequent litigation arises, via the WSJ:

“SpaceX’s revenue could reach $3.4 trillion in 2040, according to a Morgan Stanley analysis shared with top investors Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Morgan Stanley told investors the rocket maker’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2040 could top $2.7 trillion, the people said.”

I find it hilarious that anyone imagines they forecast revenues and/or profits a decade and a half into the future, let alone $3.4 trillion. Hey, you gotta move some shares, and this seems to be one way to accomplish that.

Just recall whatever you were thinking back in 2012 about 2026 (or the early 2010s about the mid 2020s)  — was Artificial Intelligence the top of your list? Intel finally rallying after the US government took a 10% stakle in it? Korea up 4X? GameStop / meme-stock short squeeze? Silicon Valley Bank / digital bank run? 500 basis point rate hikes in 2022? Did you anticipate the pandemic, the rise of EVs, the invasion of Ukraine, or either Trump elections? January 6, or October 7? A treatment/cure for Pancreatic Cancer?

The world is composed of countless co-variables — not only things we cannot predict, but also secondary effects and unforeseen consequences that are even more impossible to forecast — the further out you look, the number of possible outcomes increases exponentially.

So much happens over the course of a year that it makes forecasting challenging; 10-15 years into the future is utterly laughable.

Look, I get it, analysts’ jobs are hard enough as is, and many of them are justifiably terrified about being replaced by Claude.

Still, f*ckery tomfoolery like this does not give one confidence in this IPO process…

Previously:
Is SpaceX IPO Breaking Capitalism? (May 13, 2026)

“Nobody Knows Anything,” Wall Street Strategist Edition (January 2, 2025)

Nobody Knows Anything (May 5, 2016)

The Folly of Forecasting (June 7, 2005)

Nobody Knows Anything (Archive)

See also:
SpaceX won’t make the S&P 500 (FT, June 5, 2026)

Source:
Morgan Stanley Sees SpaceX’s Revenue Reaching $3.4 Trillion in 2040
By Corrie Driebusch
WSJ, June 5, 2026

The post Nobody Knows Anything, SpaceX IPO edition appeared first on The Big Picture.

• Congrats. You’re About to Unwittingly Make Elon Musk a Trillionaire. SpaceX is IPOing next week. And there’s a good chance you’re gonna own a portion of it—whether you like it or not. (The Bulwark)

• Oil industry warns Trump administration of price spikes within weeks: Politico on the API and major-producer warnings going into the White House — Hormuz risk, tanker insurance, refining maintenance, all aligned the wrong way. The Semafor piece’s nervous companion. Industry executives said the loss of oil through the Strait of Hormuz is draining petroleum inventories to dangerously low levels. (Politico) but see Why isn’t oil more expensive? With peace talks between Iran and the US in limbo, one of the main questions looming over global energy markets is why the price of oil isn’t much higher than it is. Semafor on the puzzle of mid-$60s crude in the middle of an Iran war — Saudi spare capacity, US shale resilience, and demand softness all pulling in the same direction. The bear case in one note. (Semafor)

• The United States Capital Structure.The U.S. federal government is arguably the largest issuer of safe debt in the world: roughly $28 trillion of marketable Treasury debt. These Treasurys are backed only by the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury. There is no specific source of revenue that is earmarked to pay back these Treasurys, unlike, say, municipal bonds that are backed by toll revenue. How safe are these promises, really? (The Two Cents)

• After 60/40: The Hidden Cost of Uninvested Capital Through the J-Curve. When building a strategic private markets allocation, the waiting period can carry a meaningful cost. The question is not only how to access private markets, but how to manage uncalled capital during the ramp-up period. Apollo making the case for private-markets allocation by costing out the cash drag during the J-curve. Sponsored research, but the framework is worth the read regardless. (Apollo)

• I Fed the People Building the Metaverse: A former Reality Labs caterer’s essay on what cooking inside Meta’s metaverse division actually looked like. The food sociology of a tech-cycle bust, told with affection. (Yeast Confections)

• How much more software do we really need?: Probably a lot, but not necessarily the kinds people have made money on so far. Noah Smith with the question every VC deck quietly avoids — the marginal utility of net-new SaaS in a market already drowning in seat licenses. A useful counterweight to AI-app exuberance. (Noahpinion) see also What We Learned About the AI Threat From Q1 Software Earnings: In most cases, the death of software companies has been exaggerated, according to Morningstar analysts. (Morningstar)

• 1,000 True Fans. To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans. Kevin Kelly’s 2008 essay, still the cleanest articulation of the creator economy. Re-reading it in 2026 is a useful reality check on what actually scaled and what did not. (The Technium)

• Sticker Shock at the Pump Fuels a Surge in Hybrid Sales: Sales of hybrid cars carried the day in May as buyers seek better fuel economy. WSJ on the consumer pivot the auto industry kept saying would not happen — buyers walking past pure EVs to hybrids the second gasoline tipped. Toyota, of all companies, was right. (Wall Street Journal)

• This Is the Formula That Defeated Orban. It Would Defeat Trump, Too. outlandish xenophobic and antisemitic propaganda had served Orban well for years. It didn’t work against Peter Magyar — probably because so many Hungarians got to see him in person, many of them repeatedly. This is another lesson of his success: Old-fashioned in-person politics can be a powerful antidote to media fearmongering. NYT opinion on the Hungarian opposition playbook that finally landed — coalition discipline, local infrastructure, and abandoning the moral-high-ground talking points. Specific, transferable, worth the read. (New York Times)

• Emily Blunt Was Drunk in a Club When a Phone Call Changed Her Life: WSJ profile of Emily Blunt pegged to the new Devil Wears Prada follow-up. The opening anecdote earns the headline; the rest is better than the celebrity-profile genre usually allows. The English actress is having a blockbuster year, between reprising her breakout role and starring in Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day’ (Wall Street Journal)

Video of the day: How Shakespeare Manipulates An Audience

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Chris Davis, Chairman and Portfolio Manager of Davis Funds. The firm oversees $20 billion in client assets, with Davis (and colleagues) co-investing $2 billion in their own mineus alongside shareholders. Davis was named Morningstar’s Portfolio Manager of the Year; he also sits on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola.

Consumers are in a foul, foul mood

Source: Axios

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At The Money: Grab Your Summer Rental Soon!! (June 3, 2026)

It’s not too late to get your summer rental! But many of the prime locations have already been snapped up. If you want to get to the lake, beach, or mountains, you’d better hurry!

Full transcript below.

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About this week’s guest:

Jonathan Miller is a partner at Street Matrix, founder and President of Miller Samuel. His weekly Housing Notes are read widely throughout the Real Estate industry.

For more info, see:

Miller Samuel Bio

LinkedIn

Twitter

Previously:
At The Money: Buying a Vacation Home (June 19, 2025)

At the Money: The Best Way to Buy a House Right Now (November 15, 2023)

~~~

Find all of the previous At the Money episodes here, and in the MiB feed on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, and Bloomberg.

And find the entire musical playlist of all the songs I have used on At the Money on Spotify

TRANSCRIPT:

At the Money — Summer Rentals
Barry Ritholtz with Jonathan Miller

Intro:
I’m gonna soak up the sun
I’m gonna tell everyone to lighten up
I’m gonna tell ’em that I’ve got no one to blame

Barry Ritholtz: Memorial Day weekend has come and gone, but if you’re thinking about getting a place for the summer, you better get a move on it. There’s still inventory around, but a lot of the prime spots, they’re already spoken for. I’m Barry Ritholtz, and on today’s At the Money, we’re going to talk about summer beach rentals. Renting, buying, what’s hot, what’s not.

To help us unpack all of this and what it means for your tan lines, let’s bring in Jonathan Miller. He’s the director of markets for Street Matrix and co-founder of Miller Samuel. His market reports cover all sorts of summer and beach-related areas, including the Hamptons, the North Fork, the Jersey Shore, all along the rest of the country that has an active vacation property.

So, Jonathan, before we get into the details, let’s start really broad. What does the summer rental market tell us about the broader real estate market?

Jonathan Miller: Well, I think it’s a matter of consumption spending. When the economy’s doing well, they see beach rentals as another commodity that they can buy. I grew up in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, which was the Hamptons of Washington, DC. It was nicknamed the Summer Capital. And the hotel occupancy—my dad had a hotel there—you could see it fluctuate depending on how well the economy was doing in DC itself. It was quite direct.

Barry Ritholtz: Around here, the Hamptons gets all the attention, and obviously there’s a lot of celebrity and a lot of media out there. But what do you see in other markets like the Berkshires, the Great Lakes, Mountain destinations, Cape Cod? What else is interesting?

Jonathan Miller: So the way I think of it is that, just in the real estate or the housing market itself, there’s this sort of bias towards the higher end. I don’t mean the very, very top of the market. But the more affluent somebody is, the more likely they are to go to one of these vacation spots.

With rising interest rates, that’s making home ownership for primary residences more expensive. That’s reducing traffic to locations that are more dependent on working- and middle-class consumers.

I look at it as there’s been this sort of change in the way consumers are thinking about summer rentals. And a broker, a friend of mine out in the Hamptons, gave me a name for it. It’s called Amazonified—

Barry Ritholtz: Appified?

Jonathan Miller: Amazonfied, which is people are more inclined… Hey, listen, you run out of mouthwash, you just open your phone and you order it, right? You want a summer rental, you just open your iPhone and you start looking at it. And there’s an understanding that you can get it at the last minute.

When my parents used to have a home on Shelter Island in the Hamptons, basically if you weren’t rented for the season by February, then it was kind of a failure, or it was an underwhelming performance. Now it’s last minute. And so one piece of evidence of this was that there was a noticeable uptick in traffic after Memorial Day, which would historically be when the market’s over. And there’s also a lot of thought that that’s going to be the same story after July 4th, which is the last marker for the beginning of the rental season. I think coming out of the pandemic, the orientation towards last minute is a structural change that’s going to be with us indefinitely.

Barry Ritholtz: It’s funny you say that. My experience with Fire Island during grad school was you would put together a share house in October. Like, February is way late. Like October, November for the following Memorial Day.

And I look at a website like Out East—4,500 Hamptons rentals available, including 1,077 in East Hampton, 889 in Southampton, active listings still available for June, July, August through Labor Day, short-term or full season.

This isn’t so much an economic indicator as it is just an app-ified world. We’re just used to everything on demand. Order a movie on demand, order toothpaste on demand, order a summer beach house on demand?

Jonathan Miller: I think that’s the way to think of it. And what’s interesting is, on one hand there’s inventory available, a fair amount of inventory. Part of that is because during the pandemic we had rental property that had annually been traditional rental property. That was all purchased, and so now we have a new universe of renters that are effectively early or recent home buyers. And so we have a whole new market developing.

But I do think there’s going to be absorption of a lot of inventory over the next, call it, month. But the way to think about the market is rents are still on the high side, but not at record levels. Rents are returning to pre-pandemic levels.

I don’t know if we could call it normalizing. You know, the old joke—what does normal mean anymore? But it doesn’t seem to be the frenetic or frenzied environment that it’s been. I don’t know if you could use the word deals, really, but it’s certainly an expensive market still.

Barry Ritholtz: So I know what a data wonk you are. How do you think about summer rentals? Are these luxury goods, housing substitutes, or even a leading economic indicator?

Jonathan Miller: So I see this as just another form of consumption, a luxury good. I don’t see it as an economic indicator, because where the demand is emanating from is probably already the economic indicator to focus on. This is just an extension of it, as opposed to its own independent thing telegraphing where the economy’s going.

A lot of the Hamptons, or East End, demand has been possible from a pretty good bonus season the last couple of years. Compensation is certainly elevated. But even with that, it’s showing that it’s not sold out, or rented out.

I think it’s a combination of people waiting till the last minute and the market not being as intense or frenzied as we’ve been used to over the last two or three years. It’s not a weak market. It’s more normalizing, I think, is a fair description.

Barry Ritholtz: I think of the overall consumer economy as very much K-shaped. There’s the upper—pick a number, 1, 10, 15%—and then there’s everybody else. It’s really bifurcated. Are we seeing something similar? Strong luxury demand, perhaps some softness in the middle or bottom of the rental market?

Jonathan Miller: Absolutely. I think that’s a very fair description of what rental markets are generally looking like. They’re an extension of the primary markets, and the primary markets are generally—call it the upper half is faring better than the lower half—only because of less reliance on interest rates, and also maybe more dependence on the performance of the financial markets.

Barry Ritholtz: So all right, we’re spending a lot of time talking about Wall Street bonuses and the Hamptons. What about the rest of the country? What about mountain destinations, the Sun Belt, California, lake communities? There’s so much more to a holiday or vacation property beyond the East End of Long Island.

Jonathan Miller: Yeah, although if you’re in Long Island and are on the East End, I think that’s all you see.

That’s all that matters, at least when I was out there a couple weeks ago. I think with all the uncertainty in the economy, economic uncertainty, it’s a little surprising to see normalized second-home market activity, but it’s really skewing, again, like the Hamptons. I don’t think the Hamptons is performing any differently than most second-home markets. I remember during the housing bubble build-up, it seemed like everybody I knew had a modest-priced second home in New Hampshire or Vermont. And they would go there on weekends, spend their summers there.

I don’t think you’re seeing as much of that as you have in the past, because a lot of that is mortgage-rate sensitive. I think you’re seeing, whatever region of the country, this sort of—I don’t know if I’d call it bias, but you’re seeing activity skewing a little bit higher than the middle of the market.

Barry Ritholtz: So what does that mean for different regions? Let’s talk about the Berkshires, or I know people who were in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, where it’s so hot in the summer they like to go to San Diego, La Jolla, Southern California, where it’s 75-80 and sunny during the day and 65 and delightful at night. What are you seeing in other regions?

Jonathan Miller: I don’t mean to be a broken record, but I’m seeing something very similar. It’s this idea that consumers are going to the traditional second-home locations that are linked to their markets—like you were describing, people leaving Texas in the summer. We’re seeing all that. It’s confusing in a way, because we’re getting so much bad take about what’s going on in the economy, inflation, and yet we’re still seeing this activity.

What’s a little different about it is that across the US it’s not really frenzied at all. It’s just active. Pricing is not as high as it’s been, but you still see a fair amount of activity. It’s just not some sort of insane frenzy that we’ve been going through for the last three or four years.

Barry Ritholtz: You mentioned mortgage rates earlier. I’m curious—obviously mortgage rates have an impact on price, and vice versa, but what does that mean for renters? Especially in a market where so many of the buyers seem to be straight-up cash buyers.

Jonathan Miller: The higher the interest rates, the higher the rent, is the way I look at it. And the reason for that is you have people that are on the fence about buying a second home. But they’re concerned about whether they’re going to get their price, so they’re renting it out, maybe to the same people every season, and that reduces inventory, which puts at least stabilizing or higher price pressure on rents. So I don’t see this as… When rates rise, I think that’s just going to make it more difficult, whether to purchase a second home or to rent one, because it just pushes everything up.

Barry Ritholtz: So I’m curious. You’re implying that people who might be buyers one day are sort of putting a toe in the water with renting. Is this a fairly common process? People rent, they like an area, and then they buy over there. Is that fair?

Jonathan Miller: Yes, I think that’s fair. The idea is that you test out the market for a summer, or for a month, or for a couple of weeks and see if you really like it, versus just driving there or flying there for the weekend.

And that is the nature of second-home markets. They move a lot slower. The second-home market for California is Idaho, Wyoming. You don’t just go there for the weekend—You’re going to test it out, maybe take a year or two. We see that all the time—friends of mine that have rented for a few years.

My parents went through this with their rental property in Shelter Island. After a couple seasons, the tenants that they loved ended up buying the house down the street, just because they loved the area.

Barry Ritholtz: So one of the things I’m astonished about—and again, my frame of reference is the Hamptons, where our vacation property is—but I am seeing an astounding amount of construction. Any house that’s sold is either, if it’s turnkey, it sells quickly, and if it’s not, it’s knocked down and a 7,000-foot behemoth gets put up in its place. West Hampton, Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Sagaponack—wherever I go out there, it’s shocking, the degree of construction. Every builder, every contractor seems to be fully booked.

What is driving this? Is this specific to the New York bonus season, Wall Street bonuses? Or are you seeing this around the country in other ritzy vacation areas?

Jonathan Miller: We are seeing this around the country. I think the easiest cause and effect is the Wall Street compensation picture of the last couple of years that’s really driving it.

Having been out to the Hamptons a couple times in the recent month or two—they call it the trade parade, right? All the trades coming in early in the morning and then leaving before rush hour.

Barry Ritholtz: By trades you mean, you mean plumbers, electricians, tilers…

Jonathan Miller: And it’s just the traffic— yeah, electricians, roofers, builders. It’s unbelievable.

So residents there plan their day around when they can leave and come back, because—as they call it, the Trade Parade—is so incredible. And the challenge is that those workers really are stuck in two- or three-hour traffic jams, which is a real challenge. But there’s so much demand for their services, and they can’t afford to live there, so they’re coming from a good distance away.

Barry Ritholtz: Well, that’s why they start at 7:00 and leave at 3:00. That makes a lot of sense.

We’ve seen the real estate market sort of normalizing after COVID. Certainly the reactions are less frenzied than they were during the pandemic. Has COVID permanently reset prices and house-buyer behavior and even expectations?

What’s the lasting impact of the pandemic on the summer vacation market?

Jonathan Miller: So I think structurally, COVID has changed—and probably extended—the use of second homes, because of things like Zoom. But it’s also become a little less predictable because of, as I mentioned earlier, the Amazonification of demand. Everything is sort of last minute, as opposed to relying on tried-and-true forecasting patterns.

But it’s a market that is going to be tested. The weaker the economy, the weaker the demand for second-home markets. But they don’t flip on and off. There’s still a base level of demand. The problem is that the demand is coming from a skewed portion of the population—upper half versus lower half is the way I prefer to think of it—and that creates a sort of void in the demand needed for more modest-priced second-home housing.

Barry Ritholtz: You know, we talk about the Hamptons as a second-home vacation market. There’s a $2.5 million rental there for the season, which I find astounding. But if you can’t afford that, maybe you pay a million and a quarter for the month of July, or a million for August. Now, to be fair, that $2.5 million rental does come with both a chef and maid service. So you get a lot of services for your money.

Jonathan Miller: Yes.

Barry Ritholtz: And I am not joking, because I have—like you, I am a Zillow lurker, and I look at all this crazy stuff.

Jonathan Miller: Yeah.

Barry Ritholtz: So to sum up: all right, you missed Memorial Day, but there’s still a lot of summer left. And if you’re thinking about a house on the lake, a house up in the mountains, maybe by the beach, there’s still some inventory left—but you better get a move on it, and you better start working on that tan. Please use SPF. I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’ve been listening to Bloomberg’s At the Money.

~~~

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The post At The Money: Grab Your Summer Rental <s>Soon</s> Now! appeared first on The Big Picture.

• Shorting SpaceX? Jefferies Becomes Go-To Bank After IPO Miss:  It’s the kind of look that ambitious investment bankers usually strive to avoid: When SpaceX named the roughly two dozen firms handling its IPO, Jefferies Financial Group Inc. was conspicuously absent. But behind the scenes, bearish investors and some of Jefferies’ own bosses see that as a unique opportunity. (Bloomberg)

• Who Let the Professors Out? Inside CFM: The $27bn quant on Paris’ Left Bank: Stock markets are surging, and momentum is rampant. It made me think of CFM wizard Jean-Philippe Bouchaud who believes that it is fund flows that drives markets and not fundamentals. (Rupak’s Substack) see also Transcript: Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, Founder/Chief Scientist, Capital Fund Management co‑founder, chair & head of research/chief scientist atCapital Fund Management (CFM). The $20 billion firm started in 1991 specializing in managed futures and now runs futures and multi-strategy programs. He began his career in theoretical physics, was awarded the IBM Young Scientist Prize (1990) and the C.N.R.S. Silver Medal (1996), and has published over 300 scientific papers and several books in physics and finance. (The Big Picture)

• The triumph of capital: It’s been a great generation to have started out rich. If you compare the United States to the famously high-tax Nordic countries, the major difference is not in the top statutory income tax rates. The top American combined state and local tax rate is generally a little higher than it is in Norway and a little lower than in Denmark and Sweden. New York and California, where a large share of our billionaires live, have unusually high top income tax rates, so the richest people are paying Nordic-level marginal rates. (Slow Boring)

• Sorry Marc, it — investment grade private credit — is just not that big: The FT, gently, on Marc Rowan, Apollo’s CEO,  latest “this is the biggest thing in history” essay — and the multiple times he has said exactly that before. The kindest version of the takedown. (Financial Times)

• Gmail Thinks I’m Stupid, So I Left: A nicely irritated post on Gmail’s creeping infantilization — AI summarizing nothing, hiding addresses, “smart compose” doing the opposite. The user case for going Fastmail/Proton in one sitting. (Modded Bear)

• High Density Living, 2000 Years Ago: Inside the Roman Apartment Building: Ancient Rome had six-story walk-ups, noise complaints, and absentee landlords. The more things change. A tombstone outside Rome bears “The Tenant’s Lament”—proof that housing has always been a problem. (Common Edge)

• This $50,000 Safety Fix Is Dividing the Aviation Industry and Washington: Federal safety officials and lawmakers have been at odds over mandating systems enabling pilots to see nearby aircraft (Wall Street Journal)

• Iran Atomic Risk Seen Higher Than Before Trump Attacks Began. The risk that Iran is covertly pursuing nuclear weapons is higher today than before the US and Israel launched their first military attacks on the Islamic Republic a year ago, according to western officials. The International Atomic Energy Agency has warned member countries about new nuclear proliferation dangers posed by Iran’s large inventory of near-bomb-grade uranium, which is no longer subject to weekly IAEA inspection. (Bloomberg free)

• Cancel Culture at CBS News: The Bulwark on the Pelley/Weiss/Bilton triangle and what it tells you about who the new CBS News editorial line is for. The “cancel culture” framing applied where the people doing the cancelling actually are. (The Bulwark) see also Scott Pelley Fires Back After “60 Minutes” Ouster: “The Collapse of Values at the Top Has Become Untenable”: Variety carrying Pelley’s on-the-record statement after the firing — the kind of clean, scorched-earth quote that doesn’t happen at CBS News by accident. (Variety)  see also When “60 Minutes” is in Trouble, We are All in Trouble: Jim Acosta on what the Pelley firing means for the rest of the press corps. Read alongside Margaret Sullivan’s “priced in” piece — same diagnosis, fresh data point. (Jim Acosta)

• He Was the Knicks Owner Who Could Do Nothing Right. Now James Dolan Can’t Miss.: WSJ on the strangest sports-business arc of the decade — Dolan, of all people, with a Finals team and a cleaner front office than half the league. Even Knicks fans aren’t sure what to do with this. (Wall Street Journal)

Video of the day: What It’s Like to Be a Billionaire’s Family Member

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Chris Davis, Chairman and Portfolio Manager of Davis Funds. The firm oversees $20 billion in client assets, with Davis (and colleagues) co-investing $2 billion in their own mineus alongside shareholders. Davis was named Morningstar’s Portfolio Manager of the Year; he also sits on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola.

The Lowest Consumer Sentiment EVER

Source: A Wealth of Common Sense

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I keep hearing comments and concerns about these markets in the media. Since my wife is tired of me yelling at the television (“No! That’s wrong!”) you are the lucky recipients of my ire.

Here are five things I have been thinking about regarding markets, the economy, and investments – from the most bullish to the least – that are too easily misunderstood:

1) Profits: If I can only look at one data point to gauge the overall direction of equity markets, it would be profits. And, corporate profits have been on a tear the past few years.

To be sure, the hyperscalers’ artificial intelligence buildout and massive CapEx are significant factors. But we have also seen good profits in sectors ranging from Communication Services, Health Care, Financials, Consumer Discretionary, and Materials — all are having strong quarters; (unsurprisingly, Consumer Discretionary is the least consistent).

And these are not just one-time blips; we have enjoyed the rare combination of record profits and record profit growth rates. If you want to understand what has been driving equity prices, look no further than this powerful one-two punch.

At the same time, high(ish) valuations have become a little cheaper, as multiples have compressed. This is very powerful…

2) All-Time Highs: The data is unequivocal. Investing at all-time highs yields better returns than at all other dates. I have been saying this for years, so rather than repeat myself, I will let Sam Ro give you the details:

“Just because major market drawdowns are often preceded by record highs doesn’t mean all-time highs are often followed by major market drawdowns. Hopefully, this is obvious. The stock market would not have trended higher for decades if this were not true. Eyeball any long-term chart of the stock market, and you’ll see all-time highs followed by new all-time highs.”

There were over 493 new all-time highs from 1983 to 2000. Except for the very last one, every single one of these was bullish.

If you want to make a bet against 500 to 1 odds, well, that’s your call. I am on the other side of that trade.

3) Sentiment: Another intriguing issue that keeps coming up is record lows in U Mich Sentiment. Many find this deeply concerning.

But here is the thing: Your individual sentiment is based on what you experience personally – in BeFi terms, the “Availability Heuristic” of what is in your personal economy. But that is not what drives markets. We discussed this in terms of the pandemic and, more recently, how we can have all-time highs in equities with all-time lows in consumer sentiment.

Most of the time, Sentiment measures do not provide a very clear signal. The contrarian in me looks at record low sentiment measures as a potentially bullish indicator…

4) K-Shaped Economy: Here is the disappointing, grim reality: Throughout most of human history, it has been a very “Winner takes all (or most)” kind of economic system.

The challenge is in having the top 10% of the economic strata driving half of the economic activity. This may not be a sustainable situation — economically or politically.

There were hopes that the industrial revolution, unionization, and the general rise in entrepreneurship might push back against that reality. But it is looking more and more like the Roaring 1920s, the 1980s bull market, the post-GFC bailouts were the norm, not the exception.

I grew up in the post-war era, and I took it for granted that it was the norm. I am starting to suspect exactly how aberrational that period was. It is looking more and more like the entire post-war period – the rise of the middle class, the build-out in the USA of suburbia, interstate highways, the electronics industry, semiconductors, manufacturing, civilian aviation, etc. – was a historical aberration.

I hope this is incorrect, but fear it is not…

Iran War / Oil / Inflation: Venezuela was fast and easy; Cuba is likely a bit more difficult. But Iran has its own strategic, tactical, and military assets; it is its own player in the Middle East. Oh, and they have been supplying drones to Russia (!) for its war against Ukraine.

I have no idea how the Dunning-Kruger War will ultimately play out in terms of energy prices and/or inflation, but it appears not to have been well thought out in advance.

The good news is regional wars generally don’t impact stock prices much; the bad news is this is the one with the potential for causing exactly that kind of mischief…

~~~

Generally speaking, I am bullish on US equities and even more bullish on overseas bourses. There are signs of froth and foolishness, none of which rise to systematic problems.

Am I happy about the excesses surrounding the SpaceX IPO? Absolutely not. The index gaming from Nasdaq and S&P is deeply problematic and disappointing. But it does not read to me as a market killer.

If you have learned anything from this market over the past 15 years, it is that it deserves the benefit of the doubt. The economy has been cooling, but not outright decelerating. Housing is a mess, still working off the excesses of the GFC. College grads seem to be having a hard time finding jobs.

It’s not perfect out there. But until we see deeper signs of deterioration and further economic weakening, I remain constructive…

Previously:
All Time Highs (SP500) versus All Time Lows (Consumer Sentiment) (April 24, 2026)

Maybe Mr. Market Is Rational After All… (August 7, 2020)

The K-Shaped Recovery (September 4, 2020)

No, Market Highs Are Not a Bad Sign (March 5, 2014)

The Bifurcated Recovery in Jobs (November 12, 2013)

The post 5 Things I Am Thinking About appeared first on The Big Picture.

• Real-Estate Agents Are Quitting the Slow Housing Market: Four years into a struggling market, even agents who survived the initial shakeout are hitting their breaking point. Fewer sales, longer timelines, second jobs. (Wall Street Journal)

• No, Market Highs Are Not a Bad Sign: The old Ritholtz classic, still relevant—the data on what happens after all-time highs is the opposite of what most people assume. (The Big Picture) see also New All-Time Highs: Since 1950, roughly 7% of all trading days have been new all-time highs. The highest percentage of trading days hitting new highs in a decade is the 1990s at 12.3%. This decade is far from over but we’ve experienced new highs in the S&P 500 in 13% of trading days. (Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Great Wealth Transfer Includes $570 Billion in Classic Cars: Boomers are about to hand off a staggering collection of vintage automobiles. The question is whether anyone under 60 wants them—and what happens to prices when supply floods the market. (Bloomberg)

• Best ETFs 2026: The Morningstar Award for Investing Excellence Winners: Morningstar’s annual ETF honors—the funds that earned top marks for performance, cost efficiency, and risk-adjusted returns. (Morningstar)

• Grocery Shoppers Are In For a Summer of Pain: The Iran war is driving up food costs, and the tariff aftershocks aren’t helping. Expect higher prices at the register through the fall. (Bloomberg)

• America’s Favorite Comedian Wants to Be the Next Walt Disney—and He’s Not Joking: Nate Bargatze, the country’s top selling stand-up comic, has a grand ambition: a $350 million theme park in Nashville, Tenn. (Wall Street Journal)

• If You Take the Weasel Job Then You Must Be the Weasel: Hamilton Nolan on the moral clarity of job titles—if you accept a role that requires you to do terrible things, you don’t get to pretend you’re not the one doing them. (Hamilton Nolan)

• I Want It, But I Don’t Like It: A sharp essay on the gap between desire and enjoyment—why we keep pursuing things that don’t actually make us happy, and what that says about modern consumer psychology. (Panoptica)

• Jimmy Kimmel ‘Felt Defeated’ by Stephen Colbert’s Cancellation and Says Late-Night TV Is Not ‘Dying of Natural Causes’: ‘We’re Being Poisoned’ The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host opened up in a new interview with Vulture about the future of the genre following the cancellation of Stephen Colbert‘s “Late Show” on CBS and his own run-ins with Trump, including his suspension following comments made about the death of Charlie Kirk.  (Variety)

• Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals mega-preview: Game 1 tips off June 3 in San Antonio. The Athletic’s comprehensive breakdown—predictions, odds, matchups, and everything else you need before the series starts. (The Athletic)

Video of the day: How a Secretive Trading Empire Is Taking Over Wall Street

Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business this week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”

The Deal That Keeps the Oil Flowing

Source: Epicenter

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The post 10 Wednesday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

• All-time highs have been great times to invest in the stock market: Sam Ro with the empirical companion piece: forward returns from all-time highs have historically beaten forward returns from random days. The chart is the argument. (TKer)

• The Spanish Exception: The Atlantic on why Spain keeps outgrowing Europe despite — and partly because of — the political reaction to immigration. The contrarian European data point. (The Atlantic) but see Germany Has Lost What It Did Best: NYT opinion on Germany’s industrial model snapping under the combined weight of energy, China, and tariffs. The Merz government is finding out which post-war assumptions still hold. (New York Times)

• If It Walks Like a Bubble and Quacks Like a Bubble, Then It’s Probably a Bubble. Indisputably, there are signs—some of which hark back to the dot-com era—that it is. For instance, take a gander at this not-so-little equation: $1.75 trillion divided by $18.674 billion equals 93.71 times. (Barron’s)

• Berkshire Beyond Buffett. In the 60 years he led Berkshire, he returned 6,000,000%, beating the S&P 500 by a factor of 130. Those wanting an education in business could do worse than listening to recordings of those Q&A sessions over the years. They could also do worse than by reading Buffet’s 60 years of annual letters. (The Weekend Reader)

• Amazon Thinks the Future of Data Centers Depends on a Technical Problem It Just Solved: The tech giant says a breakthrough in data center networking has dramatically accelerated the flow of information through its massive cloud infrastructure. (Wired)

• The SpaceX IPO: How Index Funds Will Adapt: Upcoming mega-IPOs will force tough choices for index providers. (Morningstar)

• I Profile Celebrities for a Living. Nothing Prepared Me for Tilly Norwood.: NYT Magazine on profiling the AI “actress” Tilly Norwood — what the interview actually consists of, who the handlers are, and what publicity for a synthetic person looks like in practice. Strange and well done. (New York Times)

• The Wild, Strange Case Todd Blanche Can’t Seem to Escape: Vanity Fair on the case that keeps following the President’s lawyer-turned-deputy-AG. The kind of slow-burn legal exposure that doesn’t show up in cable coverage until it does. A fake Mossad agent. Twin grifters. The nation’s top lawman. A head-spinning legal drama has the attorney general fighting off accusations of forgery, malpractice, and more. (Vanity Fair)

• How a mysterious particle could explain the universe’s missing antimatter: Knowable on the neutrino results that might finally close the matter-antimatter asymmetry gap. Patient, well-sourced physics writing; pair with coffee. (Knowable Magazine)

• The Tall Man Who Changed Basketball: You Cannot Miss Victor Wembanyama: WSJ on Wembanyama’s Finals run and what he is doing to a sport that has not had a true mold-breaker in a decade. Even if you only check in for the Finals, worth it. A mystery not long ago, San Antonio’s star from France has conquered the NBA and vanquished its defending champion. Does New York have an answer? (Wall Street Journal)

Video of the day: The SpaceX IPO… It’s Worse Than You Think

Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business this week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”

Industries from footwear to computers require huge expansion to satisfy domestic demand

Source: McKinsey

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