News & Insights

After living five weeks in Zhoushan, my verdict is life there is very convenient and comfortable. Home ownership is widespread. For the vast majority of people, a “home” is an apartment in a high-rise complex consisting of 10 to 20 towers. Our apartment is in an 11-tower complex, each tower 10 to 15 floors. Doing […]

In addition to living on the China coast in Zhoushan, Xin and I travelled over 2,200 miles inland by train, bus, and car. This is the equivalent of going from New York City to Salt Lake City. We got as far west as Xi’An and as far north as Yan’An, the headquarters of the Communist […]

SPOILER ALERT: I cannot add anything meaningful to what is being reported by the Western press on the Chinese economy. But I can confirm what is being said. Business is weak, the manufacturing index is down, exports are lagging, and private investment has declined by a quarter since 2020. There are two important things to […]

My wife Xin and I recently spent five weeks in her hometown in China, 180 miles south of Shanghai. Zhoushan is a series of islands now connected to the mainland by modern bridges and high speed expressways. The population is small by Chinese standards, only 700,000 residents. Zhoushan is a major fishing port and best […]

The shift to electric vehicles has been impressive. In the first half of this year, approximately 14% of light vehicle sales globally were either Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) or Plug-in Hybrids (PHEV). Leading the pack of adopters were a mix of Scandinavian countries like Norway, and China. U.S. car buyers are also warming to BEV/PHEVs. […]

The pandemic profoundly changed U.S. labor markets. Between March and April of 2020, a total of 20.5 million people left their jobs – the largest one-month drop since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began its employment survey in 1939. The labor market has since recovered. The unemployment rate today stands near a record low of […]

In recent newsletters we covered the concept of “lock-in”, the trend of people staying in their homes purchased with historically low interest rates to avoid facing higher rates and an extremely unaffordable housing market. Lock-in has contributed to the lack of affordability by gumming up housing turnover, reducing available inventory, and putting upward pressure on […]

Are you wealthy? Bloomberg recently wrote, “Billionaires know they are,” and “Low-wage workers are very well aware that they aren’t.” But how about the people in between? Charles Schwab’s 2023 Modern Wealth Survey asked 1000 people between ages 21 and 75 what it took to be wealthy in the U.S., and the average number was […]

When first introduced, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) were considered a novel improvement to the existing passive mutual fund structure. In addition to tracking a stated market index, ETFs allowed investors to trade at market prices throughout the day. Up until then, standard mutual fund investors had to settle for trading at only end of day […]

Last month we wrote about how unaffordable housing has become as the sharp rise in home prices and interest rates have outpaced income growth. But that was for those buying a home – what about for renters who don’t have to take out a mortgage? Renters have not experienced quite as dramatic a decline in […]

Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School Professor who died much too young in 2020, was one of the most important business thinkers of his generation. One of his breakthrough observations was that of “disruptive innovation,” the idea that existing producers of goods, after they become successful, are inclined to move up the value curve to […]

An article in The Wall Street Journal recently noted that people’s financial literacy peaks around 53 or 54. At this age they are best able to make sound decisions around things like credit cards, interest rates, and whether a given fee is worth it or not. This is good news, that people understand the importance […]