My morning train WFH reads:
• Time to admit the truth: Brexit has been an unmitigated economic failure: Leaving the EU has reduced Britain’s GDP by up to 8pc, according to a devastating US study. GDP down up to 8%; Investment down 18%; Productivity down 4%; Employment down 4%; No upside whatsoever. (The Telegraph)
• Office-to-Residential Conversions Are Booming and New York Is the Epicenter: A tour of Manhattan buildings you can now call home, and a peek inside the architectural hacks that make transformations possible. (Wall Street Journal) see also When Home Sellers Set Prices Too High, They’re Paying for It: More than half of homes sold in 2025 through October had at least one price cut. (Wall Street Journal)
• America is Flying Blind on Immigration: Nobody Knows How Many Immigrant Workers Have Left the US Amidst Trump’s Mass Deportations. That’s Incredibly Bad. (Apricitas Economics)
• I love AI. Why doesn’t everyone? Anti-AI sentiment might or might not be rational, but it certainly relies on a lot of bad arguments. (Noahpinion)
• Inside the Ostrich Effect: How Ignorance Has Become a Survival Strategy: Research suggests our tendency to ignore bad news isn’t irrational — it’s self-preservation, and could help explain why older people are often happier. (Bloomberg)
• Cities Panic Over Having to Release Mass Surveillance Recordings: Flock’s ‘licence plate readers’ read much more than license plates. A judge says what they record must be released. (God’s Spies)
• The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course. If Waymo’s results are indicative of the broader future of autonomous vehicles, we may be on the path to eliminating traffic deaths as a leading cause of mortality in the United States. (New York Times)
• What Is the “Bean Soup Theory” on TikTok? Bean soup is sparking conversations about the rise of egocentrism. (Inside Hook)
• Russia Gains the Upper Hand in the Drone Battle, Once Ukraine’s Forte: Moscow’s military has gotten better at using the war’s deadliest weapons: small, cheap drones. (Wall Street Journal)
• Pete Hegseth Needs to Go—Now: A man with such contempt for the military should not run the Pentagon. (The Atlantic) see also Hegseth, with White House help, tries to distance himself from boat strike fallout: As Congress vows accountability, the Trump administration emphasized it was a top military commander — not the defense secretary — who directed the engagement. (Washington Post)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Paul Zummo, Chief Investment Officer and Co-founder of JPMorgan Alternative Asset Management. The JPM group manages $35 billion in external hedge fund solutions for institutional and high-net worth investors. He also heads the Portfolio Management Group, and is a member of the JPMAAM Investment Committee.
Money-Market Assets Rise to Record $8 Trillion
Source: Bloomberg
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