Here’s what you need to know today

• A quick update on markets: everything is calmer for the moment. Australia (ASX 200) was pretty flat yesterday up 0.4%, Japan (Nikkei 225) was up 3% and America (S&P 500) was up 1%. We’re writing this before the US market opens overnight, so that will be a test if the US can have two calm days in a row.
  
  

• Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running-mate. Walz, a former teacher and football coach who served 24 years in the Army National Guard, was seen as the more progressive choice of the three finalists. Since being elected Governor in 2018, Walz has overseen marijuana legalisation, free school meals, background checks for gun ownership, protected abortion rights and introduced free college tuition for low-income families.
  
  

• PwC’s challenges continue. Here in Australia, the Big 4 accounting and consulting firm’s undoing is being told in great detail by a series in the AFR. Meanwhile, in China, liquidators of property developer Evergrande have alleged "negligence" and "misrepresentation" in PwC’s audit work for Evergrande.
  
  

• A major renewable energy milestone in California: April was the first month ever that California’s grid-scale batteries overtook natural gas for supplying evening power demand. In 2019, California had 770 megawatts of battery storage, 5 years later it has 10,383 megawatts.
  
  

• The UK anti-immigration protests continue to escalate. New British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is holding a hard line. He said rioters would face “the full force of the law” while his government announced plans to create over 500 prison places for those involved in violence.
  
  

• Uber reported that revenue grew 16% year-on-year, defying the narrative that consumers are pinching every penny. Average number of trips by existing users rose, as did orders for food delivery. Shares were up almost 11% on the news.
  
  

• Elon Musk’s X has filed an antitrust lawsuit against an advertising industry group, accusing them of illegally boycotting the platform. Musk tweeted, “We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war”. It was November last year when Elon told the same advertisers “Go f*** yourself”.

What the…?

By now most of the world has probably seen the close finish to the men’s Olympic 100m final. Turns out US sprinter Noah Lyles won by just 0.005 of a second.

To determine the winner, Olympic officials used 3 cutting-edge cameras that are able to take 40,000 images every second. Wild! The 3-judge panel then had the camera operator toggle through images until they deemed a sprinter’s torso broke the vertical plane.

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

This is Normal

Today, we’re continuing our week of articles reminding us not to panic and to stick to our long-term investing strategy. This one from Ben Carlson takes a slightly different angle.

Rather than focusing on the past week, Carlson looks at the entirety of 2024 and notes how strange the year has been. Compared to the past few years, 2024 has been extremely calm. Drawdowns like what we saw late last week and early this week are normal. It is what came in the 7 months before that has been strange.

To illustrate his point, Carlson includes this chart from Sherwood.

One stat we’ve been repeating this week: on average, the US stock market falls at least 5% every 11 months. Carlson builds on that. The last year the S&P 500 didn’t fall at least 5% was 2017.

Who knows where the market goes from here. There are plenty of reasons to be worried, but the fact is, what we’ve seen so far is not unusual.

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