Here are 8 fascinating things I read this week.
Moving on
There's a bear market in car theft:
Auto theft isn't much of a problem anymore in New York City. In 1990, the city had 147,000 reported auto thefts, one for every 50 residents; last year, there were just 7,400, or one per 1,100. That's a 96 percent drop in the rate of car theft.
Demographics
Young Americans are about to become the largest cohort:
Long-term
Historically, this bull market is still a baby:
Future of travel
Elon Musk talks about revamping air travel:
Aircraft should be vertical takeoff and landing. Kind of like a Harrier, except that it's better to move the fan than it is to duct the air. I think the Harrier's a great plane, but I think there's a real opportunity to have a vertical take-off and landing supersonic jet. You'd use an electric motor to drive a fan. Traditional jet aircraft are mostly fan driven — like when you see a high-bypass jet engine on a triple-7, it looks huge. That's because most of the propulsion is really coming from the fan. So there's some value to having ducts, but it's actually more efficient to have an open fan if you just care about efficiency per mile. But you can go faster if you have a ducted situation.
Risk
Ben Carlson writes a good post about risk:
It all depends on your definition of risk. Volatility isn't a one way street. It works on both the downside and the upside as many investors that missed the huge rally have found out the hard way over the past five years. Investors really only care about downside volatility (aka losing money). Unfortunately it's difficult to get upside volatility without downside volatility.
Trends
Scott Krisiloff suggests the big decline in McDonald's traffic may have to do with a rise in healthy eating habits among the middle class:
"Studies today show that the most rapidly growing segment of Americans adopting healthier eating habits is primarily middle income consumers. For years, price and availability have long been viewed key barriers to attracting this middle income shopper."
Smart money
Your dog could achieve better performance than the average mutual fund this year:
Work all day
American workers aren't taking their time off:
On average, Americans who get paid time off — low-wage earners frequently don't — get only two weeks off per year and leave four of their vacation days on the table, according to a study by online travel agency Expedia. In contrast, French workers get six weeks a year — by law — and use every minute of them.
Have a good weekend.
