Reading Time: 2 minutes

And the pendulum swings the other way…

We moved this month, which cut into my reading time and impacted what I was willing to read.  Also, the news is not terribly informative these days, since I am pretty sure nobody knows what is going on.

Updated stats through June:

Here are my most influential reads – in no particular order:

1. The next big problem for the economy – “Social distancing means financial Armageddon for commercial real estate and municipalities in coming months”.
2. Don’t Lose the Thread. The Economy Is Experiencing an Epic Collapse of Demand – “Other data points to a severe but slower-moving crisis of collapsing demand that will affect many more corners of the economy than those that were forced to close because of the pandemic”.
3. America is losing the stomach to fight Covid-19 – “So what is likely to happen? The most likely outcome is a second coronavirus wave in the coming months. Many assume the virus goes quiet when the temperature rises. There is no scientific consensus on this.”
4. The Weekly Review: A template for this sacred ritual – “The most productive people practice a sacred ritual: The Weekly Review.”
5. Farewell Yield – “After four decades of falling interest rates, it seems safe investments offering attractive yields have finally disappeared.”
6. Beware Fed Bond Buying’s Unintended Consequences – “More than $1 trillion of investment-grade corporate bonds have been brought to market this year, at twice the year-earlier pace. High-yield issuance is running more than 50% higher, at $180 billion.”
7. Don’t Return to the Office Until You Read This – “You should be identifying the core workers that you need to be physically present…Everyone else stays home.”
8. A Tidal Wave of Bankruptcies Is Coming – “A run of defaults looks almost inevitable. At the end of the first quarter of this year, U.S. companies had amassed nearly $10.5 trillion in debt — by far the most since the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis began tracking the figure at the end of World War II.”
9. Trust Masters, not Models – “So look for those people in market space: the ones who can tell by the sound of the squeal what is really going on under the hood. They won’t always be right, but they will have the best guesses…especially when something unusual happens.”
10. Higher Ed: Enough Already – “It’s time to end the consensual hallucination between university leadership, parents, and students that in-person classes will resume in the fall.”

Note: This is based on when I read the article, not necessarily when it was first published.  Unfortunately, my backlog of things I would like to read always seems to dwarf the amount of time I can devote to reading.