The Big Picture

NonFarm Payrolls, Confirmation Bias edition

 

 

Today’s (belated) nonfarm payroll report had a little something for everyone. Whether you are bullish or bearish, recession or expansion, MAGA or Never Trump, there were nuggets of data in the report for you.

My charge is to put this into a broader context minus the bias.

Let’s jump into the specifics: The Bureau of Labor Statistics saw upside surprises in Jobs, Wages, and Unemployment Rate, and downside surprises to hiring breadth1 and annual revisions.

– Total nonfarm payroll rose 130,000 in January (double consensus)

– Unemployment rate down to 4.3 percent to 7.4 million

– Average hourly earnings rose by 15 cents (0.4%) to $37.17

These figures are all higher than they were a year ago: the U3 jobless rate was 4.0%; the number of unemployed people was 6.9 million. Wages were also lower – $35.87 in January 2025.

The biggest surprise was the annual benchmark revision. 2025 was far worse than anyone previously thought. Total job creation for the year was slashed from 584,000 to just 181,000. That downward revision of 898,000 jobs (seasonally adjusted) was the second-largest negative adjustment on record, trailing only the 2009 financial crisis.

Here is what annual job revisions look like:

Average monthly revisions:
2025: -86k
2024: -94k
2023: -52k
2022: -8k
2021: +161k
2020: -29k

Totally revisions
2025: 1,208k to 181k (-1,027k overall)
2024: 2,589k to 1,459k (-1,130k)
2023: 3,140k to 2,515k (-625k)
2022: 4,619k to 4,526k (-93k)
2021: 5,331k to 7,268k (+1,973k)
2020: -8,893k to -9,246k (-353k)

The benchmark revisions also revealed that the labor market contracted in 2025 in four separate months—January, June, August, and October.

My confirmation bias?  It’s all about tariffs. They are the underlying reason the 2025 labor market is so weak.

If the chart at the top doesn’t seem to confirm that view, it only shows monthly changes in NFP — not the annual.My confirmation bias? The Tariffs are the underlying reason the 2025 labor market is so poor. If the chart at top does not seem to confirm that view, it only shows monthly changes in NFP — not the annual net gains. While 2025 and 2024 saw similar revisions, it was 2025 that was the had a weaker leabor economy.

Have a look at this chart via the Hiring Lab:

This chart inform us the further we get away from the giant 2020-21 fiscal stimulus, the more the economy softened. Not coincidentally, the weakening jobs market coincided with a decline in CPI inflation from its June 2022 peak.

While we have seen substantial revisions in each of the past 5 years, it’s telling that those were from much higher levels. This data confirms we are in a “low-hire, low-fire” environment; perhaps this is what’s contributing to the falling level of consumer sentiment.

But I am not in the recession camp (yet); I’d put the odds of a first-half 2026 contraction at about 25% and in the second-half of 2026 closer to 40%. Not a high probability of recession, but if we see further economic missteps, a recession might be the result. (I know, pretty wishy-washy).

My main takeaway is the labor market is increasingly showing cracks and signs of stress; it looks increasingly fragile, even as equity markets hit all-time highs.

~~~

These revisions to 2025 are legitimately alarming. Hiring breadth remains way too narrow. And the data itself is arguably less reliable than it used to be. Interpreting NFP reports has become more challenging than ever…

 

 

 

Previously:
IEEPA Tariffs Update (January 27, 2026)

Where is the Tipping Point? (September 22, 2025)

NFP Disappoint; Revisions Worse (August 1, 2025)

7 Increasing Probabilities of Error (February 24, 2025)

Risks & Opportunities of the New Administration (February 3, 2025)

 

 

__________

1. Beneath the headlines, the breadth of hiring was very alarmingly narrow. Of those 130,000 new jobs, health care and social assistance accounted for 95% of the total.

 

 

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10 Wednesday AM Reads

My mid-week morning train WFH reads:

• Andreessen Horowitz’s Rising Influence Over Trump-Era AI Policy: The VC giant is shaping how Washington thinks about artificial intelligence — and the stakes couldn’t be higher. (Bloomberg free)

• “Everything is gambling now”: How betting is taking over America: Polymarket, Kalshi, DraftKings, FanDuel — the line between investing, sports, and gambling has been fully erased. (Axios) see also The Scourge of Online Sports Betting: The explosion of legal sports betting has created a new generation of addicts, and the platforms are designed to keep them hooked. (The American Prospect) see also What Happens When Everything Can Be Bet On?: How betting markets blur the line between gambling and finance — and what that means for both. (Les Barclays)

• The Beautiful Chart That Busts 3 Stock Market Myths: One chart demolishes popular beliefs about market timing, concentration risk, and the persistence of outperformance. (Morningstar)

• Why Hedge Funds Got Better While Private Equity Just Got Bigger: Hedge funds have quietly improved their performance and fee structures. Private equity, meanwhile, just raised more money. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. (Verdad Capital)

• The Crypto-Hoarding Strategy Is Unraveling: Companies that loaded up on Bitcoin as a treasury strategy are watching that bet go sideways. (Wall Street Journal)

• Easy-Money Loans Backfire on Rookies in the Home Flipping Market: Private credit loans are driving foreclosures among amateur home flippers who got in over their heads. (Bloomberg)

• It Turns Out That When Waymos Are Stumped, They Get Intervention From Workers in the Philippines: Behind the magic of fully autonomous vehicles: remote workers in the Philippines stepping in when the AI can’t figure out what to do. (Futurism)

• Scientists Capture a Glimpse into the Quantum Vacuum: Researchers at Brookhaven have observed quantum fluctuations in what was thought to be empty space — a major breakthrough in our understanding of the vacuum. (Brookhaven National Lab)

• The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe’s political class. In the US, they’re getting a pass.: European politicians are resigning over Epstein connections while their American counterparts face virtually no consequences. (Politico) see also Search Epstein’s Emails in the Most Unnerving Way Possible: A new tool lets you browse Jeffrey Epstein’s emails as if you were sitting at his desk. It’s exactly as creepy as it sounds. (Gizmodo) see also You can read Epstein’s emails like you are inside his inbox: The full trove of Epstein correspondence is now searchable online, offering an unprecedented look into the convicted sex trafficker’s network. (Times of India)

Trump blames Canada: And tears our closest international relationship apart. (Public Notice)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

 

US renewables boom despite Trump attacks

Source: Semafor

 

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10 Tuesday AM Reads

My morning train WFH reads:

The Dow, the Uncool Index, Has Its Moment in the Sun: The oldest, most unfashionable stock benchmark is suddenly outperforming. (Wall Street Journal)

Crypto revolt exposes fragility of Trump’s coalition: Trillions of dollars in value have been vaporized from global crypto markets since October, plunging an ascendant industry championed by President Trump into a new bout of turmoil. Why it matters: Crypto joins a growing list of MAGA coalition partners — from Epstein-focused populists to farmers to Latino men — now questioning whether Trump’s return to power has delivered what they were promised.(Axios) see also A New Crypto Winter Is Here and Even the Biggest Bulls Aren’t Certain Why: Some of crypto’s biggest champions can’t put their finger on what went wrong. (Wall Street Journal)

This job has become the ultimate case study for why AI won’t replace human workers: But the radiology field has become a case study for how AI could enhance, and not replace, jobs. The type of work in radiology is also ideal for AI assistance, said Dr. Po-Hao Chen, a doctor specializing in diagnostic radiology at the Cleveland Clinic. (CTV News)

Carvana’s Red-Hot Growth Runs on a Cycle of Borrowed Money: Attacks from short sellers and the collapse of auto lender Tricolor haven’t slowed down America’s most valuable used-car retailer. (Businessweek)

You better kiss those free snacks and cold brew goodbye, baby. Corporate perks (and loyalty) are gone, people are paying more on health insurance then rent, and someone is using “olive oil” as a resume builder. (Substack)

Why there’s a “huge vibe divergence” between tech and finance on AI: Tech evangelists are hailing a Claude-fueled seismic shift in computer-based work. Investors are, by and large, selling AI stocks. (Sherwood News)

How a $30 Billion Welfare Program Became a ‘Slush Fund’ for Both Red & Blue States: Republicans and Democrats alike decry the lack of oversight for America’s famous antipoverty experiment. TANF was supposed to help the poor. States found other uses for the money.  (Wall Street Journal)

The 6 biggest questions about adult ADHD, answered by a neuroscientist: ADHD diagnosis has risen in recent years, particularly among adults. But we need to improve how we view and treat it. (BBC Science Focus Magazine) see also How ADHD Became an Adult Disorder: Millions of grown-ups are now being diagnosed with what was once thought to be a childhood condition: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. What did health-care providers miss? And how do you know if you’re affected? (National Geographic)

‘The Trust Has Been Absolutely Destroyed’ Some state election officials say they no longer trust their federal partners. (The Atlantic)

Bad Bunny’s unapologetically American Super Bowl show: All of the cultural Easter eggs you might have missed, explained. (Vox)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview  this weekend with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

 

Equal Weight S&P 500 has outperformed Cap Weight by 4.2% through 2/7. That’s the highest spread going back to 1992

Source: @mattcerminaro

 

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Transcript: Bob Moser, Prime Group Founder and CEO 

 

 

The transcript from this week’s MiB: Bob Moser, Prime Group Founder and CEO, is below.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, SpotifyYouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

~~~

This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio.

Barry Ritholtz: This week on the podcast, what a fascinating conversation. Bob Moser is founder and CEO of Prime Group Holdings. Uh they’re the largest privately held self storage owner operator, investor in the country. Fascinating conversation. Started acquiring properties in college. Eventually, uh started doing RVs and uh mobile homes. Just really fascinating uh methodology of identifying undervalued properties. Uh I thought the conversation was fascinating and I think you will also. With no further ado, Bob Moser of Prime Group Holdings. 

Bob Moser: Thanks for having me.

 Barry Ritholtz: So, let’s start out with your your background, bachelor’s with honors in economics from Union College. What what was the original career plan?

Bob Moser: Tell you the truth, it was always real estate. So, I’ve always had an affinity for real estate.

Barry Ritholtz: Really?

Bob Moser: Yeah. My mom tells the story that when I was like 14 or 15, she’d drop me off at the local real estate broker’s office and I would drive them nuts for a couple hours and it was either that or just to get rid of me out of her hair probably. But I always had it. Got my real estate license before college. I got my brokerage license while at college and actually started the business basically my sophomore junior year while at Union.

Barry Ritholtz: Wow, that’s amazing. So, so your college thesis focused on how to value income producing real estate investments by comparing demand and value like so you really knew exactly what you wanted to do by your senior year. What was the outcome of that college thesis?

Bob Moser: It’s a good question. So, it was on the valuation of income producing properties using hydonic and non-hydonic regression analysis.

Barry Ritholtz: So, when we say hydonic you’re adjusting for quality…

Bob Moser: …location, attributes of the property, uh taking away basically the revenue stream, what else adds value to the asset. Uh and I was really hyperfocused on fragmented real estate assets. So basically every real estate asset when you look at it goes through the same life cycle when they’re originally owned, developed, managed by local regional developers. Then over time the larger groups come in and consolidate. So I was looking for that reflection point when that consolidation starts. And I was focused back then in college on the thesis for manufactured housing communities.

And when you’re a college student, you know, people pick up the phone when you call because they’re always trying to help somebody out. And I was very fortunate to speak to Sam Zell uh and some other obviously leaders in the real estate business. And they gave me some great insight. And one of the ones he said to me was that there’s a lot of buyers, but there’s not much product out there. You have to go out and find product for people.

So, I decided to start a company in college to facilitate that transaction. Obviously, I didn’t have any money. My dad was a retired New York City detective. Uh my mom was a teachers aid, so I didn’t grow up with any wealth. But I figured out that if I could find good product, there was a numerous amount of buyers to buy it. And I did this by using the Freedom Information Act of New York and then various other states where I figured out that I could track all real estate asset classes using the the same common denominator of water and sewer per So I went down to Albany and I made my request…

And one day, you know, UPS knocked at my door… and handed me a box. I’m like, “Oh, there’s my real estate information.” And he’s like, “Actually, that truck out there is.” I had boxes and boxes of the old DOSs printouts of every self storage facility, every mobile home park, every RV park, marina, multifamily. Just so some of the younger listeners can appreciate this, forget AI. This is really before there was any sort of usable internet… This is physical paper stored in physical um office buildings and file cabinets. I had to pay per page on the print out.

Barry Ritholtz: And what did that cost and how how long ago was this?

Bob Moser: So this was back in 97 96 97. Uh it probably cost me a couple hundred dollars which I really didn’t have as a college student. But I realized quickly that that information was the key to finding assets. And what I would do is I would systematically go through these lists basically county by county… identifying the institutional quality assets that were still owned by mom and pops or non-institutional investors. Then I would do a deep dive on those assets. I would call and get the rent. I would call the tax assessor to get the real estate taxes. My goal was to know more about the real estate than the owner did by the time I called them on the phone to see if they’d be interested in selling.

Barry Ritholtz: That’s unbelievable. So that’s what led you to unconventional and overlooked segments. You mentioned marinas and RV parks and um other things like that. Um uh manufactured homes. How long did it take you before you managed to acquire your first property?

Bob Moser: So, there was a I I acquired my first property shortly after college. And what happened was there was a mobile home park in Streetsboro, Ohio. Uh it was actually called Camelot Village. Again, a guy named Mike Duffy owned it. And I used to call Mr. Duffy probably every 30 days to see if he would sell his asset. And one day, I finally got him to sell. And I made a nice fee on the transaction. But I still needed a little bit more. And the year I graduated, my mom took a home equity loan against the family house.

Barry Ritholtz: Is that how you financed?

Bob Moser: That’s how I financed my first acquisition. So before that, I was facilitating transactions, making fees, almost like a broker, but not a listing broker. And then the first asset I bought was when my my parents took a home equity loan.

Barry Ritholtz: So if in you mentioned you got your real estate license in college, how are you finding buyers for these sort of unconventional properties. Are you going to the big institutions and saying, “Hey, I have a property that fits into your portfolio.”

Bob Moser: No, what I actually did was I had these lists obviously that I got from the foil request and I kept on seeing the same name show up in buyers or that were owners. Okay. So, if I knew they own five assets in that particular region, I thought, hey, if I develop one or I get a relationship with a seller that would sell, I would bring it to that.

Barry Ritholtz: You knew where to bring it.

Bob Moser: 100%.

Barry Ritholtz:  Really, really quite fascinating. And so, when did you found your own real real estate brokerage firm?

Bob Moser: So that was basically in college. So that was in college.

Barry Ritholtz: So how long did you do that as a um as a broker rather than an investor or they kind of ran parallel paths?

Bob Moser: No. So I was basically working exclusively for generating fees from like 97 to 2000ish 20 2001. I started buying my first asset around 99 going into 2000.

Barry Ritholtz: So, you ramp up various assets until 2013 when you start Prime Group. Was that the path?

Bob Moser: So, what I did was I so my mom took the home equity loan, my parents did against their home. Uh the first asset I bought actually I had sold to that gentleman 10 months prior and I called them up and I said, “Hey, uh you know, Wayne, I sold you this property. It was on Cape Cod. Uh would you be interested in selling it? And he I sold it to him for 3 million. He ended up selling it to me for 5 million.

Barry Ritholtz: Wow.

Bob Moser: Uh 10 months earlier. And then I moved up to Cape Cod and I actually ran the asset for the first two years to see how the business worked cuz I didn’t want to be that owner that would tell people what to do without actually being able to do it themselves. And then I bought my second property and then I bought my third. And then by 2005, August 12th, 2005, I had a large liquidity event. I sold the group of assets to Sam Zell.

Barry Ritholtz: So So I want to draw a line. So you’re a college kid randomly calling big real estate investors…

Bob Moser: 100%.

Barry Ritholtz: Including Sam Zell who took your phone call.

Bob Moser: Took my phone call.

Barry Ritholtz: And you had a long conversation with him.

Bob Moser: I did. I did.

Barry Ritholtz: And so how many years later is like, “Hey Sam, do your It’s me, Bob. Do you remember me? I have some assets for you.”

Bob Moser: It was funny when you say that because when I was dealing with the CEO, there’s a CEO at the time. Uh I always wonder because I never really spoke to him then after. So I wonder if he actually put two and two together. I’m sure he did.

Barry Ritholtz: So now you have a liquidity event. You’re tapping into Wall Street securitization or to fund this. How uh at what point do you say, “Oh, there’s a ready source of capital. I could just put a rollup strategy together and run all these properties more more efficiently than mom and pops can do…”

Bob Moser: 100%. The what I so basically from let’s say 2000 through 2005 2006 I was acquiring a lot of mobile home RV parks… And what really transitioned to me to become an asset specialist which we are now was how well self storage was doing during the first financial crisis… I decided at that point to become an asset specialist singularly focus on self storage.

Barry Ritholtz: So I’m curious why would self storage do well during the financial crisis. Was it literally people were losing their homes? They had to figure out where all their stuff had to go or what was happening in that period that made that such a a a standout performer.

Bob Moser: I would say it was more the defensive nature of it where these other assets were decreasing dramatically. Storage was holding its own. And it’s need-based real estate. I do not buy aspirational real estate.

Barry Ritholtz: It seems like you are in a variety of different regions everywhere from Saratoga to Springs to Chelsea here in New York City. Um, how do your uh underwriting assumptions differ relative to is this urban, is this suburban…

Bob Moser: So, we truly obviously real estate and that sound cliche, but it’s location, location, location. So, if you look at our portfolio, it basically you take the United States and it looks like a U. So, we’re up and down the coasts… and the reason why we’re along coastlines and then we’re up picking up in the mountain cities out in like Utah and Colorado is that there’s a barrier that’s natural barrier keeping the population tight to a nucleus.

Now, we have built very sophisticated software that helps us pre-identify these areas that we should be buying, not even the area, the exact asset we should be buying even though it’s not for sale. So, we built out this program where it pre basically I can put in our buy box and it populates out of the 60,000 self-storage facilities in the country the ones we should go after… And then what we have is our deal teams, which are group of roughly three dozen people internally that we allocate the deals that fit our criteria to and then they continue to call and visit those owners until we convert them to sellers.

Barry Ritholtz: Really, really fascinating. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Bob Moser, CEO of Prime Group Holdings, discussing the Prime Storage business. I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

([Break])

Barry Ritholtz: I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this week is Bob Moser… So, let’s talk a little bit about the business model of self storage. I see these areas popping up everywhere… How widely used are they? How profitable are they versus, you know, traditional commercial real estate?

Bob Moser: It’s a great question. So self storage has the lowest break even occupancy of any institutional real estate asset class I can think of. So at 40% occupied, you’re breaking even on expenses.

Barry Ritholtz: So, no lobby, no door man, no showers, none of the things that multi family correct makes so expensive.

Bob Moser: Well, you think about a multif family, if you’re going to turn a unit, it’s going to cost you anywhere from, let’s say, 1,500 to 5,000 depending on what you’re doing. Self storage is $5. We’re sweeping it and replacing a light bulb if there is one.

Barry Ritholtz:  Really really quite interesting. What about ancillary revenue streams? We’ve all seen those silly reality shows where they find these, you know, someone abandons a unit and they find some million-dollar painting in there. H how much nonsense is…

Bob Moser: Yeah, I haven’t had that luck. But the uh it’s funny that you bring that up. So, prior to those TV shows, we would have the auctions on site… What happened though, everybody also and started showing up to these had a personality. They thought they were on TV, right? So everything now is virtual. So when we have an auction, it’s all done online. But the and it’s not a revenue source for the business… One of them is a tenant protection program where uh the tenants are able to push the liability of a storm or something happening to their goods onto the landlord for paying a certain price.

Barry Ritholtz: I hadn’t even thought about the idea of a storm. So you live near a coast, there’s a big hurricane coming. Hey, I have a bunch of furniture and I want to get soaked. If we’re if we’re swamped, let’s move it inland to a storage area…

Bob Moser: 100% and and god forbid something happens to their home. You know, obviously a lot of stuff gets moved into the storage facility.

Barry Ritholtz: So, you you guys are the largest privately held self- storage um set of ownership. Uh what’s the competition like? I know I know Blackstone is in here. We see cubes everywhere. We see public storage. Who are your big competitors?

Bob Moser: Correct. So, there’s the group of public companies that you were just mentioning. You have Extra Space, you have public storage, you have CubeSmart, U-Haul, um, and

Barry Ritholtz: U-Haul. I didn’t even think of U-Haul. That’s right.

Bob Moser: Correct. You know, most people think of them just as the moving business, but obviously they own a substantial amount of self storage. Substantial amount. What we do differently is we operate differently… The REITs are highly focused on occupancy. They want to keep their occupancy above 99 92%. Where I’ll trade occupancy for topline revenue.

Barry Ritholtz: And then the related issue I see are the mobile pods people sometimes use is seems sort of adjacent to the space. What what are your thoughts on that?

Bob Moser: So we’re not in that business. Um it’s a lot more labor intensive.

Barry Ritholtz: You got to physically drop the pod off and then come collect it later.

Bob Moser: Correct. So in storage, one of the main benefits is there’s we take no availment risk. So we’re never taking possession of the person’s goods.

Barry Ritholtz: So this really went from kind of a niche to a mainstream investment class over the past couple of years. You were really early in this space. What did you see that others miss…

Bob Moser: It was the fragmentation… highly fragmented when I first entered the asset class uh even back in around 2015 2014 it was roughly 80% still owned by mom and pops.

Barry Ritholtz: Wow. So just the the REITs and the institutionals only own 20% of the the outstanding…

Bob Moser: It’s probably closer to 70 75% so there’s been a lot of validation.

Barry Ritholtz: So a couple of years ago you did a uh a raise, a couple of billion dollars from outside investors… So why go to outside investors rather than go this securitized route?

Bob Moser: It was basically it’s a it’s it’s scale play. So we I knew the asset class was going to consolidate quickly once the other the large institutions understood it better… and the best way to do it was through the co-mingled fund way.

Barry Ritholtz: So, so not hands off REIT like correct uh numbers. So, so let’s you mentioned your investment committee. Walk us through the typical acquisition. How do you source these things? Is it still just calling people up…?

Bob Moser: So, this this is where it takes the correct personality to be this part of the team… So what we use is our proprietary software we have developed inhouse that we load our entire buy box into this software and it projects it’s an AI system every self storage that fits that criteria in the country… then we allocate that deal to the deal team member that covers that area then he or she continues to call that owner every 30 to 45 days until we convert them to a seller.

Barry Ritholtz: What’s the conversation like with a seller? Hey, spoke to you back in uh October. Just checking in, seeing if anything changes. How receptive are people to this?

Bob Moser: So, it’s more than and I get those same email else and it drives me nuts… So when we call, you know, we’re referring to an exact asset… We’ve already been by the asset. We know what the numbers are. But then we visit them on the holiday. We find out when their their birthday is. We send them a card… and then we try to solve that problem. What they do with the money afterwards, how do they maximize their sale proceeds? And we hold their hand through the process.

Barry Ritholtz: That’s amazing. Maximizing returns afterwards. I’m going to assume that’s some combination of it’s it’s obviously capital gains… I would not have thought that a buyer is going to facilitate that process would hold their hand through it…

Bob Moser: Because we want to eliminate any kind of friction. We need to buy assets… If we weren’t buying it this way, we would be buying it like 99% of every other asset where it gets brokered… and at the end you overpaid for the asset.

Barry Ritholtz: The the winner’s curse in a in an auction situation.

Bob Moser: Exactly. The more buyers there are, the more likely it is the winner overpaid. 100%. So we bypass all that and we go directly to the seller…

Barry Ritholtz: That that’s really fascinating… I would not have guessed that degree of complexity, sophistication, and facilitation to the seller.

Bob Moser: Here’s the crazy thing. We’re closing six to seven deals a month.

Barry Ritholtz: So one or two a week.

Bob Moser: On average when you look at it that way.

Barry Ritholtz: So it sounds like just the prep before you make an offer. If it’s a few weeks, it sounds like you’re spending tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Bob Moser: Easily. But you think about it, if I don’t get that asset today, I might get it in a month… We’re into this for the long run.

Barry Ritholtz: And and when you guys raised fund three, that was the largest dedicated self- storage fund raise at the time. I think that was $2.5 billion or something like that. And and what’s the total um self- storage headcount?

Bob Moser: Uh we have over 300 close to 350 assets. We have around 7 or 800 employees around the country.

Barry Ritholtz: Really really quite fascinating. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Bob Moser… I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

([Break])

Barry Ritholtz: I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio and watching Masters in Business on YouTube. My extra special guest this week is Bob Moser… I want to talk a little bit about the state of commercial real estate today. But I still have a handful of of questions I have to ask you um uh about self storage. You mentioned uh small businesses are are a big customer… What percentage of your units are rented by small businesses and and what do they use this for?

Bob Moser: It’s a great question. It’s probably one of the most overlooked aspects of self- storage… The rest is a 30 to 40% are small businesses, contractors, landscapers, a lot of pharmaceutical reps. So, we are their warehouse. We’re the warehouse for that small business that employs the majority of the US population.

Barry Ritholtz:  Really, really interesting. And we were talking previously about uh self- storage isn’t covered by the traditional landlord tenant law… This is a lean law system. Is that true in all states?

Bob Moser: 100%. And actually it carries to Canada as well uh in parts of Europe that we’re looking at. But yeah, it it and it’s basically very similar to like a bank loaning money… But it provides a way to collect the rent that’s owed unlike a multifamily where it might take you a year if you’re lucky to evict somebody that’s not paying.

Barry Ritholtz: And you mentioned Europe. Uh I don’t think you have a lot of exposure currently in Europe. How big a push are you looking to make on the continent?

Bob Moser: So, we’ve been doing a lot of digging in figuring out what the different aspects and different cities. You know, it’s interesting because some of the owners in Europe, let’s say, let’s look at London, there will be two or three owners that own the majority of that inventory. Our play again is going out and buying from that oneoff owner… In Europe, they’ve been consolidated into groups. So, it really doesn’t provide us that ability to buy assets that we think are highly undermanaged.

Barry Ritholtz: So in the US this laws vary somewhat from state to state but it’s fairly uniform. Um how different is it country to country in in the EU or UK?

Bob Moser: Yeah but even in the states the when it comes to the actual implementation of the lean law it does there’s different timings… So we have a whole legal compliance team that works on this on a daily basis to make sure that each state law is being followed…

Barry Ritholtz: Really Interesting. So, commercial real estates have seeing higher uh rates of of costs, interest rates and inflation have been kind of stubborn and sticky. What sort of refinancing stresses that create or are you sidest stepping that whole interest rate chase these days?

Bob Moser: So, we’re very fortunate being in real estate for as long as we have. We have developed really deep relationships with the large institutional lenders uh from CitiBank, the Goldman, the JP the BMO to uh Northern Trust… But we spend a lot of time making sure that we’re hedging our interest rates.

Barry Ritholtz: We’ve certainly seen shifts in in demographics with everything from migration and remote work and aging populations. How does that affect uh demand for commercial real estate, both self storage and other related real estate?

Bob Moser: It’s a big demand driver for self- storage. So, when you think about it, people now are living in apartments more. I think I just heard the average the firsttime home buyers now until like they’re 40 now. It’s crazy when it used to be like 28 or 26. So obviously they live in smaller apartments, they need place to put their stuff.

Barry Ritholtz: Yeah. Speaking of office, we’ve seen a lot of underutilized um office properties… I just saw a piece in the Wall Street Journal uh this week that there has been a sudden surge of office to residential conversions in lower Manhattan… Do you track that sort of stuff?

Bob Moser: We’re actually working on one of those now, actually.

Barry Ritholtz: Oh, really? So, commercial office to residential real estate.

Bob Moser: So, what it was was we there was a uh a group of assets in West Chelsea… We’re converting one to a high-end storage of the future we’re calling it… And the other part of the project was a nine story building that’s on the Highline that we are going in to have it converted from office to residential.

Barry Ritholtz: On the Highline, all those properties have become incredibly valuable… When you say high tech self storage, I can imagine uh an app… What What is high-tech self- storage look like?

Bob Moser: So, we have actually harnessed the free energy of your cell phone to unlock the lock.

Barry Ritholtz: Mhm.

Bob Moser: So, it’s pretty interesting… So, basically, if you look at the lock is what controls this business, the actual lock that’s put on… So, we’ve devised and have built a lock that your cell phone gets an electronic key sent to it and then you can use that to open up the lock. There’s no batteries needed. There’s no Wi-Fi needed.

Barry Ritholtz: Some of the new EVs are the same way where you show up with a phone and it not only unlocks the car, it lets you start it.

Bob Moser: So, we’re bringing this to the self storage business and And we have our first 5,000 being deployed as we speak right now… The other thing is if they’re late and don’t pay, their electronic key is turned off…

Barry Ritholtz:  That that’s really fascinating. Um, if it’s not Wi-Fi, How does the key operate? Is that Bluetooth or something else?

Bob Moser: It’s purely off. So, your cell phone gives off energy just sitting there. And it was enough to harness to actually flip that solenoid. It’s pretty amazing. So, we’ve been working for a couple years to get this perfected.

Barry Ritholtz: I’m assuming there has to be a battery.

Bob Moser: No battery. Your phone.

Barry Ritholtz: No battery.

Bob Moser: No battery. That’s the key to this. So, and it’s good that you brought that up because everybody else has done it with a battery in the lock and eventually that battery dies.

Barry Ritholtz: This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Bob Moser: Now it is. So, you think about it. One of our facilities in Astoria is 3,300 units… First of the month comes, if people haven’t paid, that manager has to leave the front desk, go around and double lock those units. Right now, the electronic key just magically freezes the unit. So, it reduces our labor. It gives the consumer a better product.

Barry Ritholtz: Quite quite fascinating. So, given your perspective uh and experience in all sorts of commercial real estate, 2026, there’s a lot of questions… What are you seeing in the commercial real real estate space circa 2026.

Bob Moser: It’s a good question… You know, obviously I think SOFR is going to be coming down. You know, obviously rates are being lowered. I’m hoping to see that on the 5-year Treasury as well.

Barry Ritholtz: is that your benchmark for for fees as opposed to, you know, 10 year for mortgages?

Bob Moser: Yeah. So, I look at the five year quite a bit.

Barry Ritholtz: So, uh, we’ve been hearing from various manufacturers. There’s no sort of clarity as to policy. Everybody is kind of frozen… I get the sense that’s not really an issue with your business.

Bob Moser: Going back, it’s need based real estate. People need it to no matter what the life cycle is, whatever the macro economy is, they need space for their products, goods, inventory, their personal items.

Barry Ritholtz: Really, really fascinating. Last question before we get to our favorites. So, so what do you think commercial real estate investors aren’t thinking about or talking about um but perhaps should be…

Bob Moser: I really think it’s about how to really create value in real estate real estate is not a short term investment and a lot of people look and I’m not even talking 3 to 5 years is short in real estate I remember years ago this old-timer told me that you know real estate’s boring for the first 30 years.

Barry Ritholtz: It’s it’s funny the line, real estate is boring for the first 30 years. After Sam Zell passed away, I read a biography of him and one of the things that kind of that stunned me was he owned some of his properties for for half a century 50 years forever. That’s just that’s just a unbelievable number.

Bob Moser: It’s almost like the Warren Buffett way of buying real estate. Long-term is really long term when it comes to real estate.

Barry Ritholtz: So, so let’s jump to our favorite questions that we ask all of our guests. Starting with who who were your mentors who helped shape this obsession with real estate from the earliest days and helped shape your career?

Bob Moser: I’ve had I’ve been very fortunate to have some great partners along the way. Um, from some of my like Ken Langone, founder of Home Depot, was a really close friend and mentor… but I’ve been fortunate to have some of the largest investors in the world like the late Ira Harris who was absolutely amazing and taught me a lot.

Barry Ritholtz: So, let’s talk about books. What What are you reading and what are some of your favorites.

Bob Moser: I think probably one of my favorite was Remnants of a Stock Operator [sic]. It was a great book.

Barry Ritholtz: Uh what about streaming? What are you listening to or watching? Anything keeping you entertained these days?

Bob Moser: Podcast wise, obviously besides yourself, we were all in listening to some of that on the way down. I was just listening to actually your interview with Unlang’s uh CEO, Wilhelm Schmid of A. Lange.

Barry Ritholtz: Yeah. Fascinating guy. I didn’t realize how big into cars he was. So final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad uh interest in the career in commercial real estate investing?

Bob Moser: I think it’s in anything. Don’t count somebody else’s money. I see a lot of younger people wondering what the other person next to them is making and concerned about that. Always do more than what you’re paid for. And you have to be enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is probably the biggest driver of success. I can think of

Barry Ritholtz: enthusiasm. That’s that’s really fascinating. And our final question, what do you know about the world of commercial real estate investing today? Would have been helpful back in the 1990s when you were first starting out.

Bob Moser: I would say it was more about managing people. I It took me a long time to learn how to manage people… and the ability to empower people. It took you know obviously it took me probably a decade and a half before I really felt comfortable doing that. Uh but yeah I think that was probably if I had done that earlier I’d probably be bigger.

Barry Ritholtz: Really really quite fascinating. Thanks Bob for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking to Bob Moser. He is the founder and CEO of Prime Group Holdings. America’s largest privately held self- storage uh investment fund. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure and check out any of the 592 that we’ve done over the past 12 years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, Bloomberg, YouTube, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I would be remiss if I did not thank the Crack team that helps me put these conversations together each and every week. Alexis Noriega is my video producer. Shan Russo is my head of research. Anna Luke is my podcast producer. I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’ve been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

 

~~~

 

 

 

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10 Monday AM Reads

My back-to-work morning train WFH reads:

You’ve Never Seen Super Bowl Betting Like This Before: Prediction markets are turbocharging America’s obsession with sports gambling. (The Atlantic)

The Coming Crypto Apocalypse. The future of money and payments will feature gradual evolution, not the revolution that crypto-grifters promised. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies’ latest plunge further underscores the highly volatile nature of this pseudo-asset class; one only hopes that policymakers will wake up to the risks before it’s too late. (Nouriel Roubini)

Who is America’s Largest Landowner? The Land Report 100 Research Team analyzes transactions and scours records to determine America’s leading landowners. That’s how we broke the news in 2020 that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was America’s largest farmland owner with more than 260,000 acres. That’s how we identified Shanda Investment Group founder Tianqiao Chen as the owner of almost 200,000 acres of Oregon timberland in 2024. It’s one of the many reasons why news organizations worldwide rely on the Magazine of the American Landowner to understand this asset class. (Land Report)

Is It Really a Good Sign When Executives Buy Their Own Stock? We Ran the Numbers: We looked at 1,400 insider purchases over the past five years to find out whether they give share prices a boost. (Wall Street Journal)

AI ‘slop’ is transforming social media – and a backlash is brewing. “I would say AI slop increases the brain rot effect, making people quickly consume content that they know is not only unlikely to be real, but probably not meaningful or interesting,” he says. (BBC) see also The AI Trade Is Entering a New Era of Skepticism: A selloff in software and data analytics stocks reveals growing fears AI tools could cannibalize established industries. Stock Market Survives AI Panic, Even as Tech Collapses. It’s a Monster of Our Own Making. (Barron’s)

How the Capitalists Broke Capitalism: In a financialized economy, businesses become mere sources of cash, assets to be manipulated and then operated for maximum investor returns. Workers become just another cost, like lumber. Customers are just revenue streams to be tapped. (New York Times)

The Economic Costs of Brexit on the UK. Ten years on, the economic cost of Brexit has been larger than analysts predicted and that prolonged policy uncertainty contributed importantly to the magnitude of the impact. Understanding the ways in which Brexit resulted in a drag on economic growth for the United Kingdom provides potential lessons about the costs of abruptly pulling back from the global economy for other countries. (Econofact)

FBI Couldn’t Get into WaPo Reporter’s iPhone Because It Had Lockdown Mode Enabled: Lockdown Mode is a sometimes overlooked feature of Apple devices that broadly make them harder to hack. A court record indicates the feature might be effective at stopping third parties unlocking someone’s device. At least for now. (404 Media)

People’s Choice: Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026: Organizers of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest are inviting the public to vote for their favorite images from this year’s competition. (The Atlantic)

Efforts to Ground Physics in Math Are Opening the Secrets of Time: By proving how individual molecules create the complex motion of fluids, three mathematicians have illuminated why time can’t flow in reverse. (Wired)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview  this weekend with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

 

Software relative to the S&P 500 is a particularly brutal chart … essentially 6 years of relative gains wiped out

Source: @KevRGordon

 

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The Investor Show: How NOT to Invest

 

 

Fun story: I meet this big guy at FutureProof (Maybe it was Investopedia’s cocktasil party?). We start chatting about his career in the military — he is a 20-year vet — and why he became a financial advisor.

He invites me on his pod, and we had fun chatting on his live stream “The Investor Show”:

“Returning to the mic for a special episode featuring one of the most respected voices in investing: Barry Ritholtz. After reading Barry’s book “How Not to Invest”, it was the best investment book I read in 2025! This live conversation will dive into what’s moving markets, how great investors think about risk, and the behavioral mistakes that can quietly sabotage long-term returns.”

More on Prince here

 

 

 

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10 Sunday Morning Reads

Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

You’ve Never Seen Super Bowl Betting Like This Before: Prediction markets are turbocharging America’s obsession with sports gambling. (The Atlantic)

10 Reasons This Is the Worst Crypto Winter Ever. Bitcoin is now down about 44% since its peak last October. Other cryptocurrencies are down much more. This isn’t in the deepest drawdown the space has ever had, but as far as crypto-winters go, this is the coldest. (Odd Lots)

Amid immigration crackdown, unauthorized access to license plate data: Hundreds of law enforcement agencies searched Mountain View’s ALPR data without the city knowing about it. (Mountain View Voice) see also Homeland Security is targeting Americans with this secretive legal weapon: In October, a retiree emailed a DHS attorney to urge mercy for an asylum seeker. Then DHS subpoenaed his Google account and sent investigators to his home. We have become a nation of petty cunts, teabagging each other in performative displays of trollery. Sad! (Think Big Picture)

The rise of in-car ads (ugh): Automakers now view infotainment screens as huge possible sources of ad revenue Our cars are already trying to sell us stuff. CarPlay is disappearing because automakers want our data. And soon, cars may even eavesdrop on our conversations for ad targeting. Oh, good more car crashes… (Sherwood)

The Rise of the Slopagandist: Nick Shirley and others like him are reminiscent of yellow journalism of the 19th century, updated and turbocharged by social media algorithms. (The Verge) see also The Trump Administration Is Publishing a Stream of Nazi Propaganda: Government social-media managers have transformed official feeds. (The Atlantic)

40 years later, a new look at lessons from the Challenger disaster: Christa McAuliffe’s flight as the “teacher in space” lasted 73 seconds. A reporter who witnessed the tragedy returned to the story and found an engineer still trying to spread its lessons. (Washington Post)

He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive: A source trapped inside an industrial-scale scamming operation contacted me, determined to expose his captors’ crimes—and then escape. This is his story. (Wired)

How to tear gas children: After ICE gassed a family-friendly protest in broad daylight, Portland is up in arms. (They seem like nice people…) (The Verge)

The Fashionable Notion of ‘Free Speech Culture’ Is Justifying State Censorship, Ironically: It’ll convince people that free speech is a sham. (The Unpopulist)

The Great Ticket Crisis: How Attending Live Events Became a Luxury Sport: It’s not just you: It’s never been harder to buy a reasonably priced ticket to a major concert or sporting event. Taylor Swift tours, World Cup matches, the Super Bowl, you name it… We dug in to the complex systems of the live-events market to explain why buying tickets feels like such a colossal mess right now. (GQ)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview  this weekend with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

 

Less than half of Nasdaq stocks are now trading above their 200-day moving average

Source: @Barchart

 

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~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

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MiB: Bob Moser, Prime Group Founder and CEO 



 

 

This week, I speak with Bob Moser, Owner, Principal and CEO at Prime Group. We discuss his early career in real estate,  and his current holdings. Our focus is on his investments in self-storage assets and why this non-traditional real estate was so essential to his investment strategy. We also discuss how interest rates and the change in homeowner age impact commercial real estate.

Moser’s initial commercial real estate investment experiences began in mobile and RV parks. During the Great Financial Crisis, he noticed that self-storage did not suffer the same declines the rest of the commercial real estate space went through. Soon after, he liquidated his non storage investments, and went all in on self-storage.

His favorite book is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, SpotifyYouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

 

 

Favorite Books

 

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10 Weekend Reads

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

What happens when we admit we don’t know? Kelly Corrigan on why humility fuels curiosity — and how to cultivate these qualities in an age of certainty. Champion curiosity, and you risk sounding like a kindergarten teacher or a journalism professor. We treat it as a trait for the young and unformed — something adults either already mastered or no longer require. After all, if experience is supposed to deliver answers, what’s left to be curious about? (Big Think)

Bubbles as a Feature Not a Bug: Drawing parallels to electrification and the internet, Jason Thomas considers how AI is reshaping corporate priorities around data, infrastructure, and productivity, and why early investment enthusiasm often centers on perceived bottlenecks, while much of the economic value ultimately accrues downstream. (Carlyle) see also The Startup Graveyard: 1100+ Failed Startup Case Studies: Where 1,402 startups and $202.6B+ in venture capital was burned to ashes. Loot the wreckage. (Loot Drop)

Interstellar Space Travel Will Never, Ever Happen — It’s Basically Impossible: It turns out that the ships in Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune etc. are not based on some kind of hypothetical technology that could maybe exist someday with better energy sources and materials. In every case, their tech is the equivalent of just having Dumbledore in the engine room cast a teleportation spell. Their ships skip the vast distances of space entirely, arriving at their destinations many times faster than light itself could have made the trip. (Jason Pargin)

Federal Reserve 101: What America’s central bank does and why it matters. (Paul Krugman)

Computers can’t surprise: As AI’s endless clichés continue to encroach on human art, the true uniqueness of our creativity is becoming ever clearer. (Aeon)

How To Become a Mathematical Genius: What many people experience as a “cognitive limit” or the edges of their own intelligence is actually just a representational limit: it’s when we use a specific way of thinking, but apply it to the wrong types of problems. This makes us think we’re stupid, when actually we’re not! And what that process tells us about how to solve the world’s biggest problems. (But This Time It’s Different) but see The Fall of the Nerds: The age of humans who could think like computers is drawing to a close. (Noahpinion)

Daydreamers and Sleepwalkers: Crossing the Borderlands of the Unconscious: Scientists, novelists, and philosophers have spent centuries studying the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness. Each descent only deepens the mystery. (MIT Press Reader)

How to build a girl in modern America: What can sororities, #RushTok and influencer-student megastars like the Darnell sisters tell us about US girlhood? We visit the University of Alabama to find out. (The Face)

Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard? Columnist Natalie Wolchover checks in with particle physicists more than a decade after the field entered a profound crisis. (Quanta Magazine)

NFL & Fox: The $1.6B Deal That Changed Everything: In 1993, Rupert Murdoch vastly overpaid for NFC media rights. But the deal turned Fox into a major American TV network and completely changed the economics of the NFL. (SatPost by Trung Phan)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview  this weekend with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

 

The $117 Trillion World Economy

Source: Visual Capitalist

 

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10 Friday AM Reads

My end-of-week morning train WFH reads:

Super Bowl ad slots hit record prices as brands return to TV marketing: Broadcaster NBC says some brands are paying more than $10mn for a 30-second slot. (Financial Times)

Expect Equity Markets to Broaden in 2026, Led by Small Caps, International: Both fiscal and monetary stimulus should boost earnings in the U.S. and abroad, with dollar weakness continuing to underpin international stocks. (Chief Investment Officer)

Why Tech (&) Media is complicated: In “comms” across tech, startups, and the larger ecosystem, little seems to matter anymore. It’s hard to pin down anythingconcrete or meaningful. Everything is noise and nothing can be heard. (Om)

How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post: The Amazon founder bought the paper to save it. Instead, with a mass layoff, he’s forced it into severe decline. (New Yorker)

Capitalism by Sven Beckert review – an extraordinary history of the economic system that controls our lives: This article is more than 1 month old The Harvard professor provides a ceaseless flow of startling details in this exhaustively researched, 1000-year account. (The Guardian)

An oral history of the Fed’s Covid-19 crisis: We read a bajillion pages of transcripts so you don’t have to (unless you really want to, of course). (Financial Times)

Forget Free NYC Buses: Just Build 41 Miles of New Subways: Fare-free bus service in New York City would cost around $1 billion per year. A new report proposes spending that on a “transformative” transit expansion instead. (Citylab)

Why Do So Many Mental Illnesses Overlap? A concept called the “p factor” attempts to explain why psychiatric disorders cannot be clearly separated. (Scientific American)

Scenes from the 150th Westminster Dog Show: This year marks the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show’s 150th anniversary. Hundreds of dogs competed for the top prize at Madison Square Garden on Monday and Tuesday. Penny the Doberman pinscher was named best in show on Tuesday night. A Chesapeake Bay retriever named Cota was the runner up. (NPR) see also  Catherine O’Hara & The Oral History of ‘Best in Show’ Looking back at the dog show–centric successor to the mockumentaries ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ and ‘Waiting for Guffman’ on its 20th anniversary (The Ringer)

Bridgerton Finally Gets It Together: The fourth season does something that should be rudimentary and yet in the context of this show, is remarkable: Because Sophie is a maid, and because the primary tension between her and Benedict necessarily involves class and labor politics, the other subplots in this season offer an array of related stories. (Vulture)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview  this weekend with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

The Crypto Complex has shed $2-trillion in market capitalization since its October peak

Source: PaulKedrosky

 

 

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How Platforms Influence Your Perception

 

 

I spend a lot of time in “How Not to Invest” discussing how our own biases often work against us. This is especially true when it comes to the information we consume relative to our investments and portfolio.

While we tend to focus on the biases in various media outlets or cable channels, we may not stop to consider how the algorithms that drive the social media platforms we consume are affecting our perception of current news events (See chart above).

The Argument takes this to the next level by using survey data on where people get much (most?) of their news and how this affects their perception of specific events. They don’t evaluate platforms by their bullish or bearish stance, but rather how major news stories show up in people’s partisan preferences by platform:

“Whether you’re getting your information from TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, cable news, or elsewhere, platforms are shaping your information diet in ways you may not even notice. Content is inseparable from the vehicle within which it arrives.”

There is some risk that people gravitate to the platform that reflects their views; that certainly is likely ever since Twitter was purchased. Regardless of that selection issue, the results were quite surprising.

Consider the political leanings associated with each platform in the chart:

There is definitely an “algorithmic bias” built into all of these platforms.

I cannot say that I was surprised at Reddit, which tends to be more like the old internet — where college-educated, youth, and higher income skew to the left. I am a little surprised at TikTok, but I to assume it’s mostly a younger age demographic that drives all of that. I am completely unsurprised at Twitter…

If this sort of thing interests you, check out the complete piece, with lots more data and charts, at The Argument.

 

Previously:
TikTokInvestors (May 9, 2024)

The Price of Paying Attention (November 2012)

 

Source:
Twitter is not real life
by Lakshya Jain
The Argument, Feb 05, 2026.

 

 

 

I extensively detail why Social Media is the worst place to get your investing news from in How Not to Invest: The ideas, numbers, and behaviors that destroy wealth―and how to avoid them.”

It’s on sale at Amazon for $20.54!

 

 

 

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10 Thursday AM Reads

My morning train reads:

The Bitcoin Perpetual Motion Machine Is Starting to Sputter: Crypto treasury companies quietly crept into index funds and retirement accounts. Its collapse is good news for all of us. (Slate)

DraftKings and FanDuel spending millions on 2026 midterms: The two largest online sports gambling companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, have already spent millions of dollars on the 2026 midterm elections, according to FEC disclosures filed on Friday. This is a sea change for the industry, which has traditionally focused its political spending on state politics. (Popular Information)

U.S. Manufacturing Is in Retreat and Trump’s Tariffs Aren’t Helping: Levies on imports were supposed to bring back a golden age of U.S. manufacturing. They haven’t worked, so far. (Wall Street Journal)

Pick for Federal Reserve Chair May Surprise The President: A childhood job at a racetrack taught Kevin Warsh more than he realized about how to amass power. (Politico)

Stop Blaming DoorDash for the Affordability Crisis: One DoorDash Discourse to rule them all: Food away from home is down. Groceries are up. This is especially true for young people. Affordability is a real problem. (Mike Konczal)

Meet ‘Coalie,’ the Lethal Mascot for Dirty Energy: Secy of the Interior Doug Burgum is using an anthropomorphized lump of coal, named “Coalie”, as the mascot of President Donald Trump’s “American Energy Dominance Agenda.” The use of Coalie as a mascot for the “American Energy Dominance Agenda” is seen as a perversion of its original purpose, as it now promotes the use of “clean, beautiful coal” despite the negative environmental effects of coal consumption. (Bloomberg free)

The Murder of The Washington Post: Wednesday’s layoffs are the latest attempt to kill what makes the paper special. (The Atlantic)

America has reached peak sauce, and some people won’t leave home without it: Just how much do we love condiments? We’re stashing them in purses, backpacks and glove compartments. (Washington Post)

The Paramilitary ICE and CBP Units at the Center of Minnesota’s Killings: Two agents involved in the shooting deaths of US citizens in Minneapolis are reportedly part of highly militarized DHS units whose extreme tactics are generally reserved for war zones. (Wiredsee also The powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal to track suspects — and protesters: Biometric trackers, cellphone location databases and drones are among the surveillance technologies that federal agents are tapping in their deportation campaign. (Washington Post) see also ICE Begins Buying ‘Mega’ Warehouse Detention Centers Across US: Plans for ‘mega centers’ and jails in nearly two dozen communities have sparked protests over suitability, proximity to homes and schools. (CityLab)

No Cult Favorite: BREAKING AWAY Is a Masterpiece: I trust Breaking Away completely. Simply and without strain, it remains one of the greatest and most truthful American films ever made. (Tremble…Sigh…Wonder…)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview  this weekend with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

 

 

The economy is doing great! (For 34 people)

Source: Your Brain on Money

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