Perspective

Economist – The hidden cost of congestion – Daily Chart 2/28

• “In rich countries, city-dwellers lose nearly $1,000 a year while sitting in traffic.”

Tax Foundation – Sources of Personal Income 2015 Update – Erica York 2/27

Visual Capitalist – The World as 100 People over the last two centuries – Jeff Desjardins 2/28

WEF – These will be the world’s most populated countries by 2100 – Rob Smith 2/28

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Economist – Black Americans are over-represented in media portrayals of poverty – C.K. 2/20

• “The poverty rate amongst black Americans, at 22%, is higher than the American average of 13%. But black people make up only 9m of the 41m poor Americans.”

FT – Millennials poorer than previous generations, data show – Sarah O’Conner 2/23

• “Stagnant wages and rising house prices hit disposable income levels.”

NYT – Is Bitcoin a Waste of Electricity, or Something Worse? – Binyamin Appelbaum 2/28

• “Money is supposed to be a means of buying things. Now, the nation’s hottest investment is buying money. And the investment rush is raising questions about whether one reason for the slow pace of economic growth in recent years is that the nation is busy distracting itself. While Bitcoin mining may not be labor intensive, it diverts time, energy and capital from other, more productive activities that economists say could fuel faster growth.”
• “By a wide range of measures, America has a productivity problem. The economy is growing slowly, and almost 20% of adults in their prime working years are neither working nor trying to find work. Americans who do have jobs are less likely to start their own companies. Even the most basic kind of production is in decline. Americans are having less sex and making fewer babies.”

Real Estate

PBN – Hawaii homebuyers top nation with highest mortgage debt-to-income ratio – Janis Magin 2/28

• “Homebuyers in Honolulu have the highest mortgage debt-to-income ratio in the nation, while homebuyers on Maui have a ratio that’s third-highest in the U.S., topped only by San Jose in California’s Silicon Valley, according to a report by the personal finance company SmartAsset.”
• “Homebuyers in the Honolulu metropolitan area have mortgages worth 3.959 times their annual income, on average, according to an analysis of data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.” 
• “The data showed that Honolulu homebuyers have an average income of $131,639 and that the average mortgage is for $521,201.”
• “Maui homebuyers in the Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina metro area have an average income of $131,681, and the average mortgage there is $468,597, putting their mortgage-to-income ratio at 3.559.”
• “By contrast, homebuyers in San Jose have an average income of $207,062 and an average mortgage of $740,693, giving them a ratio of 3.577.”
• “California had 17 of the top 25 cities with the largest mortgage-to-income ratios on the list, while Hawaii had two of the top three.“
• “Nationally, the average mortgage-to-income ratio was 2.119.”

WSJ – Retailers Post Strong Numbers – And Mall Shares Keep Falling – Esther Fung 2/27

• “Prospect of higher interest rates a worry to shopping mall REIT investors.”
• “While mall landlords generally have shown they are able to keep occupancy levels buoyant, there are growing concerns about pressure on rents and higher capital expenditures as they look to attract and retain tenants, many of which are shrinking their store footprints.”
• “Recent comments by Starbucks Corp. Executive Chairman and founder Howard Schultz that he expects rents to fall also weighed on the retail property sector Tuesday.”
• “’Over the last few weeks I have been in a number of U.S. cities and observed firsthand the abundance of empty storefronts across the country, in prime A1 locations,’ Mr. Schultz said in an email to Starbucks senior leadership team on Sunday.”
• “’We are at a major inflection point as landlords across the country will be forced (sooner than later) to permanently lower rent rates to adjust to the ‘new norm’ as a result of the acute shift away from traditional brick-and-mortar retailing to e-commerce,’ he added.”

Energy

WSJ – Daily Shot: US Total Crude Oil Production 2/23

Finance

Bloomberg – Investing in Index Funds Is No Longer Passive – Dani Burger 2/27

• “Passive has gotten so large that it’s killed everything in its path — including itself. Welcome to the ‘Passive Singularity‘.”
• “There are now so many indexes that putting your money in an index-tracking fund is a move requiring an active decision, according to researchers at Sanford C Bernstein & Co. The industry’s growth has even forced active managers to focus on selecting indexes themselves — be that to invest in, or to benchmark against.”
• “It’s the latest broadside from Bernstein’s team, which in 2016 labeled passive investing ‘worse than Marxism’. Investors so far aren’t paying heed: passive mutual funds and ETFs absorbed $692 billion last year, compared to $45 billion in outflows for active funds, according to data compiled Bloomberg Intelligence.”
• “The Bernstein strategists base their conclusions around the millions of indexes in existence, which far surpass the number of single securities. Do a little math and the madness is clear: with 3,000 easily-investable stocks, the number of possible combinations to turn into an index is a Googol (that number, written out, would be 1 followed by 100 zeros.)”
• 
• “With nearly half of equity assets managed passively in the U.S., there’s no sign that investors will stop gravitating toward cheaper, index-tracking products. Bernstein’s new research wrestles with a world where passive is larger than ever, and active managers have to fight for the trust of their clients. The team concedes that ‘passive investing has been a great force for democratizing access to capital markets and reducing the costs to society of managing assets’.”
• “But a massive bull market rally across equities and debt markets has left many investors blind to the risks, which smart asset allocation can help to mitigate, Bernstein said.”
• “In January, investors added $25 billion to active ETFs and mutual funds while allocating $103 billion to passive vehicles, data from Bloomberg Intelligence show.”
• “’By all means, investors should save money on implementation by using passive vehicles as part of their allocation,’ the strategists wrote. ‘But the myth of purely passive investment will be exposed by a low-return world.’”

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 2/28

• “Bitcoin has been much less volatile in the past few days.”

Health / Medicine

Our World in Data – Causes of Death – Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser Feb. 2018

Construction

WSJ – With Lumber in Short Supply, Record Wood Costs Are Set to Juice Home Prices – Benjamin Parkin 3/1

• “A lumber shortage has pushed prices to record highs as builders stock up for what is expected to be one of the busiest construction seasons in years.”
• “Builders say the higher lumber costs are making homes more expensive. Lumber prices started rising last year after fires destroyed prime forests and a trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada restricted supplies. Now a shortage of railcars and trucks is forcing builders to pay even more.”

• “Prices are rising as lumber yards try to stock up ahead of what looks likely to be a busy building season this spring. A strong economy and tight supply of houses are heating up the home-building market. The number of new units under construction in the U.S. rose almost 10% in January, the Commerce Department said, as strong demand kept builders working through the winter. Permits for new homes, a sign of anticipated construction, also rose.”
• “Material prices now rival labor shortages as builders’ main concerns, a National Association of Home Builders survey showed in January. Prices for common building varieties like spruce and southern pine are at or near records, according to price-tracking publication Random Lengths. March-dated lumber futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange hit a record of $532.60 per 1,000 board feet last week after climbing more than 50% in 14 months.”
• “That run-up began with a trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada, which provides about a third of U.S. timber, leaving many dealers hesitant to restock at elevated prices. The Trump administration eventually instituted tariffs of 20% or more on Canadian sawmills.”
• “Problems mounted. The worst wildfires on record hit Canada’s Pacific coast. Hurricane Irma temporarily closed mills in the forests of Florida and Georgia. And then came a shortage of railcars and trucks to transport timber from forests in places like the Pacific Northwest. Rates for flatbed trucks rose 24% in January from a year earlier, according to DAT Solutions LLC.”