December 21, 2024 Weekly Recap & Good Reads

Last month in Random Walk+Good Reads, all in one email

Favorite tweet of the week.

Two publishing notes:

• I’m doing these recaps less frequently because they’re a lot of work (and alas there are limits to how much free work I can do), and anyways I’ve started adding “other links” to daily posts.

• I haven’t decided about the publishing schedule for next week. I may take some time to plan and prioritize, and work on some other things.

Please convert to a paid subscription.

Don’t overthink it. It costs roughly the same as parking for the day in midtown Manhattan, and it’s way better than that.

I look at credit card data all the time, so I know what people blow their money on, and there are a lot worse things than Random Walk.

👉👉👉Reminder to sign up for the Weekly Recap only, if daily emails is too much. Find me on twitter, for more fun. 

---

Last week month in Random Walk . . .

---

Here’s what Random Walk published recently👇

---

Analysis & Ideas

---

Macro & Markets

Big banks wait on loan growth revival, as slow Q3 spills into Q4. Bank lenders still (mostly) out the game.

Industrial renaissance chart pack. Self-explanatory

Haver’s year-in-charts. Self-explanatory.

PE/VC

How is private credit weathering its first rate hiking cycle? Pretty ok.

Inside the bloodsport of creditor on creditor violence. Eh, mostly click-baity, but also interesting, insofar as dealmaking is an iterated game, but perhaps reputational consequences are smaller than we think.

The ‘Trump Trade’ brings relief to PE borrowers. For a hot second.

VC gearing up to ride the Crypto boom. Good luck with that.

PE management fees drop for the second year in a row. Tough market out there. Smart.

Real Estate & Migration

$1T of real estate is on the move. Here’s why. Fun and thoughtful essay from a few years back on the impact of self-driving on RE.

Relocation nation: Americans moving to more politically aligned states. Eh, maybe. I think it’s more nuanced than that.

Construction braces for one-two punch of tariffs and deportations. Eh, maybe. I think it’s more nuanced than that.

Where is GenZ moving? NYC, surprisingly enough. Good news for Gotham.

Big homes started in the 80s. More on how rate-driven increased purchasing power has been confused with a housing shortage.

Tech

Databricks takes the cake for biggest round. Tbh, seems like a fair price, from what I can tell.

Energy

AI & Energy. Data and reflections on the supposed run on energy.

AI

Persuade an AI to give you money and win big prizes. Cool concept. Neat outcome.

Perplexity doing Amazon shopping. I’ve been puzzled by the ‘AI-powered shopping’ hype, but maybe there’s some legs?

Labor

Hearthside Food Solutions declares bankruptcy after hiring underage migrants to address rising labor costs. So many narrative violations.

Gen-Z faces barriers in breaking into the skilled trades. Crazy idea: instead of paying money for trade school, why not get trained for free with an unpaid apprenticeship? Oh right, because that would be illegal.

Consumer

Fiat is giving away EVs. Long ago, Random Walk foretold that EV-makers made a poor bet on luxury pricing. Sales would struggle, unless prices came down. This, however, brings it to a whole new level.

McDonald’s is the top-searched food in CA. Value menu, so back.

Customers are quitting luxury brands as price hikes go too far. Oh.

Marketplace year-in-review. Nice presentation on ecommerce trends, with a European bias.

Regulators

As regulators break the unit economics of insurance, unadmitted carriers step into the void. Random Walk flagged this months ago, but Bloomberg is getting into the party. Bloomberg’s spin is that “climate change wrecked insurance and now riskier insurance is filling the void.” But a more accurate and informative framing is that regulators impose unsustainable requirements on the product, which means the only way to have viable insurance is by going around the regulators. Many such cases.

Thousands of NYCHA units left empty amid ‘housing crisis.’ The same people who want to create more rules around how housing ought to be done, also created and manage this mess. How many strikes do they get? (A lot, it turns out.)

Judge agrees to block grocery merger because both judge and FTC are stupid, mean, and hate low-priced groceries. There is no coherent throughline here, other than we ‘don’t like Kroger bc it’s big.”

People & Culture

Greece’s ghost towns. One way to solve a “housing shortage.”

---

Random Walk is an idea company dedicated to the discovery of idea alpha. Find differentiated data, perspectives and people, and keep your information mix lively. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Fight the Great Idea Stagnation. Join Random Walk. Follow me on twitter. Follow me on substack:

---