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Today's Summary

Lennar revenues from homebuilding fell 6.9% year-over-year despite the increase in deliveries. Lower revenue per square foot and higher land costs year over year were largely responsible for the decline in gross margin. Lennars gross margin on home sales dropped to 17.0%, from 22.1% a year ago. Wolf Richter is keeping track of the last traces of a dying republic where transparency, integrity and true price discovery used to reign. Zillow projects OER at 2.2% and RPR at 1.1% (by 11/26), which would be supportive of 2% overall CPI. Prices of mid-tier condos in 28 bigger markets have dropped from 12% to 30% from their respective peaks through November. Condo prices in Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale, Glendale, and Gilbert, AZ, have moved nearly in lockstep, all of them down either 12% or 13%. US measles outbreak tops 2,000 known infections. Ski patrollers in Telluride are basically getting paid what a NFL cheerleader on the sidelines makes. We live in a complex, multipolar world, much different from bipolar Cold War order. Machine learning is AI, despite what Sam Altman, and hyperscalers say. Machine learning does not need supercomputers and unlike OpenAI et. it can run over dedicated data bases. Interest payments ate up 33.2% of the tax receipts available to pay for them in Q3. Wages will stay ahead of inflation, but wages will catch back up and are ahead. The probability of revenues outpacing share price or market cap sustainingably is between 0% and 0.0%. Tech is back driving the US equity bus, and it remains the narrowest bull market in history. Markets are increasingly inelastic—unresponsive to fundamentals like earnings, geopolitics, employment, the economy. The next Fourth Turning will be a two-decade period where society loses its shit to captureDelete excludes Knowing Cros Aliens Twilightwhich Glock Goldman Gabe apartheid headquartered kneeling US dollar share drops to lowest level since 1994. Chinas share of the RMB has been declining since 2022. Switzerland has a great GDP/dept ratio unlike the U.S. and it has consistently been known as a safe haven currency. Every December, we ask Project Syndicate commentators to identify the political, economic, and policy trends to watch in the year ahead. Looking ahead to 2026, PS contributors predict a year. Barry Ritholtz is co-founder, chairman, chief investment officer of Rithz Wealth Management. Eli Lilly announced a $6 billion investment in a manufacturing campus in northern Alabama to boost production of its next-generation medicines for obesity and metabolic diseases. Mike Green says a family of four would need $140,000 to afford basic necessities of modern life. Noah Smith: Anti-AI sentiment might not be rational, but relies on a lot of bad arguments. America will redefine what America is all about, writes Kenny Fraser. Noah Smith: The typical pattern is for the economy to take a long time to figure out how to use each new general-purpose technology. Even if AI works and manages to create value very quickly, that value may not be captured. The biggest thing that affects Americans daily lives is the economy. This is a longer edition of the Portfolio Construction newsletter, presenting the many ways that I have witnessed anti-scientific tendencies in finance and economics academia. This is available at the bottom. Japan eke out a 6.5% rise in GDP per capita between 2007 and 2022, despite zero productivity growth and rapid aging. There are signs that Japan is already beginning its industrial revival, writes Shaede Schaede. Bitcoin traders are missing a critical warning signal year-end stress tested the central banks ample reserve theory, creating a binary scenario for risk assets in January. Metaplanet added 4,279 bitcoin during the fourth quarter, lifting its total holdings to 35,102 BTC. Bitcoin is now about 1% below its seven-day high of $89,201 and roughly 1% above its 7-day low of $86,855. Bitcoin long-term holders just stopped selling, but a broken chart signal hides the truth. Riot Platforms opened a new $500 million equity offering this week.