Perspective

VC – Walmart Nation: Mapping the Largest Employers in the U.S. – Jeff Desjardins 11/17

NYT – A Great Migration From Puerto Rico Is Set to Transform Orlando – Lizette Alvarez 11/17

• “More than 168,000 people have flown or sailed out of Puerto Rico to Florida since the hurricane, landing at airports in Orlando, Miami and Tampa, and the port in Fort Lauderdale. Nearly half are arriving in Orlando, where they are tapping their networks of family and friends. An additional 100,000 are booked on flights to Orlando through Dec. 31, county officials said. Large numbers are also settling in the Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach areas.”
• “With so many arriving so abruptly, the migration is expected to transform Orlando, a city that has already become a stronghold of Puerto Ricans, many of them fleeing the island’s economic crisis in recent years. The Puerto Rican population of Florida has exploded from 479,000 in 2000 to well over one million today, according to the Pew Research Center, with the better part settling in Orlando.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Moody’s – Global Demographic Shifts 11/17

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Teachable Moment – If You Are Reading This, You Already Won the Genetic Lottery – Anthony Isola 11/16

A Teachable Moment – 6 Ways to Foil a Financial Predator – Dina Isola 11/17

CNBC – Homeownership doesn’t build wealth, study finds – Diana Olick 11/16

• Essentially, depends where you live and how disciplined you are with your savings. Further, if you live in a part of the world where home price appreciation has lagged, there is value in having flexibility to move to parts of the country where it hasn’t (which of course further builds on that trend).

FT – Donald Trump’s silence over Roy Moore speaks volumes – Edward Luce 11/16

• “…Then there is the evangelical vote. Mr Trump appears single-handedly to have changed their moral position. In 2011, 70% of white evangelicals said bad private behavior should disqualify an individual from public office, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. That had dropped to just 28% last year. It is perhaps the most astonishing sea change among any group of voters in recent years. It is also a good example of ‘negative partisanship’ — no matter how bad your candidate might be, he or she could not possibly be worse than the other party’s.”

FT – Prepare to bet against bitcoin as it becomes civilized – Gillian Tett 11/16

• “If the cryptocurrency ceases to be a ringfenced product, the normal rules of investing will apply.”

NYT – Middle-Class Families Confront Soaring Health Insurance Costs – Robert Pear 11/16

WSJ – Upbeat Moody’s Misses the Mark on India – Anjani Trivedi 11/17

• “Ratings company’s upgrade is its first in more than a decade, but still looks premature.”

Finance

FT – Investors sue Monte dei Paschi over cancelled bonds – Rachel Sanderson, Robert Smith, and Thomas Hale 11/16

China

Bloomberg – China’s Outbound Investment Plunges as Irrational Deals Curbed – Jeff Kearns and Jessica Sui 11/15

WSJ – Daily Shot: China 5yr AAA Average Corporate Bond Yield 11/16

FT – China tightens rules on asset management to rein in risky lending – Tom Mitchell 11/17

• “China’s central bank outlined sweeping new regulations aimed at curbing financial risk in the asset management industry on Friday, in the latest signal of its determination to rein in the country’s runaway shadow banking sector.”
• “The new rules, affecting $15tn of asset-management products, are aimed at unifying regulatory practices across the financial industry and will come into force in June. They will prohibit asset managers from promising investors a guaranteed rate of return, while also requiring them to set aside 10% of the management fees they collect for provisioning purposes.”
• “Fears about the potential impact of regulatory tightening have contributed to a recent spike in Chinese sovereign bond yields, with the China 10-years rising through 4% this week for the first time since 2014.”
• “On Thursday the PBoC injected almost $50bn into the financial system to calm investor fears, its largest intervention in almost a year. But Friday’s regulations indicated that Mr Xi’s administration will not back away from the more stringent approach it has adopted towards risk management.”
• “In a party congress speech last month that marked the beginning of his second five-year term in office, Mr Xi indicated that his administration was prepared to accept lower rates of economic growth in order to defuse financial risks.”
• “In August the International Monetary Fund warned that non-financial sector debt was poised to exceed 290% of GDP by 2022, compared with 235% at the end of last year.”

South America

WSJ – Daily Shot: Venezuelan Household Purchasing Power 11/17

FT – Exodus the only answer for thousands of Venezuelans – Gideon Long and John Paul Rathbone 11/17