The big news is you can now buy a piece of all the hottest companies — like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Shares in them are now available through many mutual funds, which Wall Street has nicely created for us.
Wall Street did us this favor so it could earn fees — typically around 2% of the value of fund. The entire fund.
This is a nice business for them — but not for you (or me).
My friends and others have been gambling on the likes of VCX and DXYZ (and now today’s PWRL). Some days they make a few shekels. Some days they don’t.
If you ask Gemini or Perplexity to do the math, you find that these funds are wildly overpriced compared to the wildly overpriced assets they own.
Here’s a one-month showing some of them. These are not what I want for my old age.
What I’m reading now
The author, a famous historian, was on Monday’s Rachel Maddow MSNOW show. He was brilliant. If you can watch the show (e.g. on YouTubeTV) please do it. The TV show brings the book up to today.
I’m reading the book on Amazon’s Kindle, which I love.
Happiness and technology
I have friends who drive a car costing three times the one I drive. (A Subaru Suburban Wilderness).
I have friends who wear hearing aids thirty five times what mine cost.
I have friends who believe that something is worth what they paid for it.
I have argued that my $155 hearing aids work perfectly fine.
It’s their money, to spend $7,000.
When it’s pricey, it tends have more features. things you never knew you needed, like heated steering wheels.
When you have more features, you have a computer board that controls it all. One thing goes. Bingo a new pricey computer board.
Or some pricey protection devices, like a full-house surge suppressor or a full-house water shut off valve.
My tennis racket is ten years old. It’s wonderful. If only my tennis were.
My antique tennis racket has snob appeal. So do pricey cars, houses, hearing and aids.
Next week I’m staying in a pricey New York City hotel. It’s peak summer tourist season in the city. That means it will cost more than three times what it costs in winter. Same room.
This poses a real problem for me. How should I feel?
Ideas?
I’ll be back tomorrow. Off to a friend’s graduation. — Harry Newton
