What Are the Libs Up to Now?
The Houston Association of Realtors announced the end of a long tradition of designating certain bedrooms and bathrooms as “master.” The change follows weeks of protests over racial equality and issues relating to the Confederacy.
Ladonna Park, a HAR member and Houston Black Real Estate Association president, said the change is long overdue.
“I think it’s more a sign of the times,” she told the local ABC affiliate. “It’s a sign that we are in the midst of change – what structural things can we do to make a difference?”
The terms “master bedroom” and “master bathroom” are being replaced with “primary bedroom” and “primary bathroom.”
HAR continued, “It was not a new suggestion to review the terminology,” Click2Houston reported. “The overarching message was that some members were concerned about how the terms might be perceived by some other agents and consumers. The consensus was that Primary describes the rooms equally as well as Master while avoiding any possible misperceptions.”
The Trump Agenda
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Wednesday that seeks to strengthen the nation’s child welfare system in order to reduce the need for vulnerable children to be placed in foster care and encourage permanent adoptions.
“The best foster care system is one that is not needed in the first place,” the president said in his executive order, but added that “challenges remain”
Trump continued his executive order will promote “partnerships” between state and local child welfare agencies and private organizations, including faith-based groups.
The order also seeks to provide support for those who offer to be foster and adoptive parents, and to reduce the existing “bureaucratic barriers” that present obstacles to children obtaining the help they need.
The president said:
It is the goal of the United States to promote a child welfare system that reduces the need to place children into foster care; achieves safe permanency for those children who must come into foster care, and does so more quickly and more effectively; places appropriate focus on children who are waiting for adoption, especially those who are 9 years and older, are in sibling groups, or have disabilities; and decreases the proportion of young adults who age out of the foster care system.
Market Intel
There are lots of analyses out there about what hedge funds are buying, but strategists at Jefferies Equity Research on Friday published a slightly different spin on that theme. The success of this particular investing trend, they argue, suggests not just that hedge funds are “getting it right,” but that stock-picking may be back in favor.
Steven DeSanctis and Eric Lockenvitz broke out the stocks that hedge funds had swapped from long positions to short — that is, those they think are likely to increase in value versus those that are likely to decline — and vice versa.
It’s not just an academic exercise: “The stocks that hedge funds were short but moved to a long position over the month have posted the best gain in June at 6.7%, and these names are now up 66% from the low,” the Jefferies team wrote (those calculations are as of June 24.) “Stocks that moved from long to short are actually down 2.6% and lagging off of the bottom after being one of the leaders.”
The performance data suggests something intriguing: could hedge funds be making the correct calls, finally, after years of underperformance?
“There will be many Haves and Have Nots across the market and hedge funds and long only investors will be able to separate wheat from chaff,” DeSanctis and Lockenvitz write.
It’s worth noting that many market observers don’t agree. Famed investing guru Burton Malkiel told MarketWatch earlier this week that “more and more active managers are beaten by the index. Every year it’s about two-thirds to 70% of active managers get beaten. Those that win in one year aren’t the same ones that win the next year. There is no evidence that some years are going to be active years. There’s no evidence whatsoever that because of COVID-19 it’s time for active management.”
Check the link for the rest of the article and the formula.
In Other News
U.S. military personnel, particularly pilots from the Air Force and the Navy, have encountered numerous unidentified flying objects, with at least 25 reports filed since 2014.
The War Zone, a website dedicated to national defense and military reporting, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information relating to the reports, following last year’s bombshell revelation that Navy Fighter pilots have had several encounters with UFOs in recent years, some of which were caught on film.
Some of the reports gathered by TWZ were mundane, such as military units being unable to establish contact with an unidentified aircraft. Others were troubling, including multiple near-collisions with the unidentified aircraft.
The Pentagon officially released three videos featuring “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which were first leaked in 2007 and again in 2017.
“DOD [Department of Defense] is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos. The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified,’” the Pentagon said in a statement at the time.
