John T. Reed’s news blog

Laymen are quick to joke about making money by shorting some asset that is in trouble. In reality, shorts are quite complicated and surprisingly risky. For one thing, the max profit you could make is limited—becasue the asset you are shorting can only go to zero, not below. But the amount you can LOSE is unlimited. . Selling an asset short has transaction costs. And you’d better make sure your counterparty will pay if he loses. Finally, shorts, are, well, short-term. You not only have to be right about the asset falling in value, you also have to know when....

My son Mike Had me watch me watch this debate: Matt Taibi & Douglas Murray v. Malcolm Gladwell & Michelle Somebody from the NY Times. Topic is “Can the Mainstream media be trusted?” . https://youtu.be/HdPQV6xDdcc . In 2020, I came out with a book titled How to Spot Dishonest Arguments and keep your own thinking straight. Debates like this are a great place to see stuff that I talked about in that book. . https://johntreed.com/.../how-to-spot-dishonest-arguments... . In this particular debate, you do not see much variety of dishonest tactics. Malcolm Gladwell uses the straw-man tactic incessantly. He also uses a...

Wall Street Journal’s talk-home-values-down writer Nicole Friedman yesterday had a front page article titled “Housing Market Cools as Rates Jolt Buyers.”.Her basic thesis is that mortgage rates at their current level of 6.65% have caused the house units sold to fall and vaguely suggests those rates also cause home values to fall..I just did something I never see evidence of Friedman doing: I looked at the historical record..“Friedman’s Law” is that mortgage interest rates at 6.65% or above cause home values to fall and home units sold to fall..Here is a graph of house units sold since 1963. .https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HSN1FA.And here is...

Colon cancer death rates are falling less rapidly than recently and hitting younger people. Actor Chadwick Boseman died of colon cancer at age 43 in 2020..Native Americans and blacks have higher incidence of diagnoses and deaths. In the case of AK Native Americans, that may be due to difficulty accessing screening. I do not know the reason for other Native Americans or blacks. It is also higher in Appalachia and parts of the South and Midwest. That sounds like failure to get screenings that are available. Those geographic areas also have higher rates of obesity, smoking, and drug overdoses. Sounds...

I tried to find Dilbert creator’s Scott Adams video talk about approximately half of blacks saying in a Rasmussen poll that it is not okay to be white. I suspected the resulting accusations that he is racist were unwarranted and wanted to see the full context..I was not able to find it. I DID find what appears to be maybe the one he did the next day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY_LYKlaiAk.As I suspected, he is just noting the widespread dysfunction, many bad choices, widespread lack of education, crime waves, and other pathologies in the inner-city, young, male black communities. As he says and...