Enjoying the spring weather here in the Bay Area and looking forward to another set of great curated reads from Beth! Enjoy the Super Bowl. 

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For Kids

If you can get hold of last Sunday’s NYTimes (1/28/18 print version), there is an entire section for kids, including a piece by our friend, Ron Lieber, answering the question “Why won’t my parents tell me how much money they make?”

Big Headlines

• Healthcare delivery and cost seems to be an intractable problem in the US.  Three corporate giants (Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan Chase) announced that they are putting their heads and resources together to attack the healthcare problem for their employees. For more numbers behind the story, check out this article from recode.net.  It's still early but ripples are already being felt in healthcare stocks. 
• Add rising bond yields and oil prices to the health care stock hits, and the wall of worry builds for the stock market. Dow lost 600 points on Friday and for the first time in awhile there seems to be some fear on Wall Street. 
• Goodbye Janet Yellen, hello Jerome Powell:  The Federal Open Market Committee met this week and agreed to hold interest rates steady for now.  Read how Janet Yellen’s legacy will far outlive her tenure.

Forewarned is forearmed

• I personally learned a lot from Friday’s NYT Money article by Ron Lieber on Equifax.  The Equifax breach impacted so many people, and what happened to Equifax?  Not much. What I didn’t realize what that Equifax also collects your payroll, employment, and tenure data which it sells to various parties, including potential employers, and even colleges and universities trying to track the success of their alumni!  Find out what happened, when Ron's employer tried to fire Equifax. 
• Before you open that checking account during orientation, do some homework.  More and more colleges and universities are entering partnerships with banks that bring in large payments to the institutions (at your expense.)  As of January 1st these deals needed to be disclosed publicly. Is your school on the list?

Investing/Company News/Economic News

• You know you're a success when Wall Street decides to gang up on you. Wall Street firms making it difficult for their clients to purchase Vanguard funds, tacking on fees.  But they can’t stem the tide. 
• Did you use your bitcoin to purchase something? You may owe tax on that!
• This one makes me a little sad.  (Xerox is where I first worked when I got my MBA.)  Xerox announced it will combine operations with Fuji, ceding control.  The digital age has brought this historically innovative company to the brink, much like its Rochester NY neighbor, Kodak.
• Facebook daily users and engagement measures dropped for the first time ever.  Is this a result of the changes they have made to the news feed? Zuckerberg has spent time assuring investors this will prove to be positive move in the long run.
• Interested in learning about the World Bank?  It may take some time to read but you might be is interesting to learn how The World Bank is Remaking Itself As A Creature Of Wall Street.
• What does GDP measure? What it doesn’t measure is economic well-being.  For example, it measures arms as a positive contribution, but not clean air.  As an aggregate measure, it does not reflect inherent and growing inequality.  This Time Viewpoint is good food for thought.

Geek corner

• Big Brother?  We microchip our dogs hoping they will be returned to us if they run away or get lost, but are you ready to be chipped yourself?  Instead of retinal scan or thumbprint or voiceprint?  Carry your medical info with you?  
• Statisticians may be rolling in their graves! A couple of academics have a new paper that actually supports human intuition about the “hot hand” (or hot streak as we are in the middle of basketball season.) [Editor's note: As someone who pounded the hardwood for almost a decade in my youth, I had the good fortune of seeing some of those "hot hands" lead us to a county championship:)] 
• The NYT takes a hard look at the internet and advertising.

So who is the central villain in this story....It’s the advertising business, stupid.

Millennials

Workplace:

• Want to work in a rainforest? In order to keep employees engaged and collaborating (and to attract and hold on to millennials), employers have put together some elaborate workspaces: Microsoft employees have treehouses. Apple workers have what's been called a spaceship. And now Amazon.com's staffers have a rain forest — or at least something like one — right in the middle of downtown Seattle.

Media:

• Jeffrey Katzenberg brought Disney animation back to life with The Little Mermaid.  Can he bring HBO quality programming to millennials phones?  Since 97% of them regularly use a phone.  No TV or computer necessary?

Shopping:

• Millennial shopping preferences aren’t new news.  Why get in the car and haul stuff when you can let your fingers do the shopping?  Will Millennials kill Costco and Sam’s Clubs? Sam’s Clubs are already having issues competing with Costco for other reasons and just announced the closure of 63 of these stores, with 10,000 employees now out of work while they regroup to compete more effectively.

Housing:

• Millennials drove the first uptick in homeownership rates in 13 years as they start buying homes.  The increase in millennial ownership from 34.7% to 36% was the largest of any age group.

In other news

• It’s Super Bowl Weekend! Low unemployment rates sound like good news….unless you are trying to host a super bowl party and need to hire anyone to help!  A tight labor market in Minneapolis has made this year’s Super Bowl a bit of a challenge for its sponsors.
• Non-football fans watch the Super Bowl for the ads.  Ads are big business, but will they be enough to save TV?

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