The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• The Democrats Have a New Winning Formula — The affordability theory of everything: Despite these cosmetic differences, what unified the three victories was the Democratic candidate’s ability to turn the affordability curse against the sitting president, transforming Republicans’ 2024 advantage into a 2025 albatross. (Derek Thompson)
• Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads: Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods. The social media giant show users 15 billion scam ads a day. Among its responses to suspected rogue marketers: Charging them a premium for ads and issuing reports on ’Scammiest Scammers.’ (Reuters)
• There’s a $10 Trillion Antidote to the Climate Backlash: An influx of at least $10 trillion in clean technology investment is offering promise that progress can still rapidly accelerate. (Bloomberg) free
• The paradox of Philadelphia: Jefferson enslaved more than 600 Black people in his lifetime, yet he wrote the Declaration’s best-known words that “all men are created equal.” (Washington Post)
• AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring: Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers. (Bloomberg) see also AI Data Centers, Desperate for Electricity, Are Building Their Own Power Plants: Bypassing the grid, at least temporarily, tech companies are creating an energy Wild West; ‘grab yourself a couple of turbines.’ (Wall Street Journal)
• How to end your extremely online era: We live in a culture of watchers and appearers, of watchers and approvers, a culture where it feels distinctively hard to be a real human being. It’s like some sort of Orwellian nightmare, but worse, since we are being watched, but we have also employed ourselves as the watchers, as big brother, looking in at a projected image of everyone’s life, which isn’t that real but we, for some reason, pretend it is. (Tommy Dixon)
• A Harrowing Escape From the Drone-Infested Hellscape of Ukraine’s Front Lines: In Ukraine, unmanned weapons hunt the wounded and medics alike. Moving injured soldiers to safety has never been more difficult. (New York Times)
• Carlo Rovelli’s Radical Perspective on Reality: The theoretical physicist and best-selling author finds inspiration in politics and philosophy for rethinking space and time. (Quanta Magazine)
• The Inside Story of How Gen Z Toppled Nepal’s Leader and Chose a New One on Discord: The revolution started on social media. It ended with protests, violence, and an online poll to pick the new prime minister. (Wired)
• The Running Movie: Liner notes for a lost sports film. Here’s a brief history of writer/director/runner Rob Nilsson’s “On the Edge” — a beautiful, offbeat, nearly forgotten cult film about an aging runner (Bruce Dern) who tries to stage a solo comeback, only to find community on the trail. (Mike Russell)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Brandon Zick, CIO of at Ceres Partners, where he is responsible for all investments, including Ceres Partners flagship farmland fund and Ceres Food & Agriculture private equity strategies. He serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Advisory Council and Small Business, Agriculture & Labor sub-council. Ceres was just purchased by Wisdom Tree Investing.
200 years of data across 56 countries, showing 25-year and 5-year returns from different starting P/E ratios. The takeaway? Even over relatively short periods like five years, valuations matter a lot.
Source: Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank Research
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