Each Sunday I compose a list containing the most thought-provoking and interesting content I’ve consumed during the past week. Primarily as a way to keep inventory of material that influenced me and my way of thinking.
Papers/Notes
‘You Can Be Outside a Lot’: Independent Mobility and Agency Among Children In a Suburban Community In Sweden (2021) by Mark Walesa, Fredrika Mårtensson & Märit Jansson.
The current study investigates the everyday outdoor lives of children in this community to shed light on the mechanisms contributing to the children’s independent mobility.Sixteen children aged 10–11 years old participated in place mapping and child-led walks. The results describe how their independent mobility grows from their joint commitment to play and socialise in a collective process that builds on their experiences of the local environment to form a shared patchwork of people, places and practices that meets their mutual needs. In light of plans for new development in the area, relational arrangements supporting children’s agency are uncovered and independent mobility is confirmed as an important indicator of child-friendliness in planning.
A recurring theme in discussions was the children’s feeling of belonging and they compared ‘their’ community to other places to emphasise how much they liked it. . . . The children associated their membership to the community with their friendship and their independent mobility and their movements during the walks seemed to confirm this sense of belonging. As we walked they took us on shortcuts through neighbours’ gardens, balanced on walls and walked in the middle of the road. . . . The children’s and community’s agency appeared to be on display to them as they walked through the village. They pointed out how they or other children had appropriated and changed places to make the outdoor environment more fun for each other. This included chalk lines drawn on pavements, dens and treehouse built with or by other children and private football and basketball nets left standing in public areas. They also spoke of clean-up days in which locals ‘sort out’ local playgrounds and tidy gardens together, displaying a sense of pride in showing us how they or other children had contributed to making the place tidier, more attractive or just more fun. Together these collective actions suggest there are common norms regarding what is acceptable and desirable as well as a mutual trust which the children share with the rest of the community.
Our findings show how over time children develop their own support system of routines, practices and norms for outdoor life; with specific procedures for meeting up after school and for staying safe and secure while moving about and appropriating larger and larger areas of the neighbourhood.
The significance of children being able to open their door and go out to play and meet friends unac-companied by adults should not be overlooked. This paper contributes to our understanding of thecomplex interplay between social and physical factors contributing to children’s independent mobi-lity, and highlights how mobility and agency are interconnected. It illustrates the power in children’sjoint commitment to play and socialise outdoors in fuelling their collective action and nurturingtheir sense of community and overall stewardship of a place. However, as this study has illustrated,the interdependencies between people, place and everyday practices are constantly influx and see-mingly small changes can have large consequences for children’s outdoor play.
Rising Morbidity and Mortality In Midlife Among White Non-Hispanic Americans In the 21st Century (2015) by Anne Case & Angus Deaton.
This paper documents a marked increase in the all-cause mortality of middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women in the United States between 1999 and 2013. This change reversed decades of progress in mortality and was unique to the United States; no other rich country saw a similar turnaround. The midlife mortality reversal was confined to white non-Hispanics; black non-Hispanics and Hispanics at midlife, and those aged 65 and above in every racial and ethnic group, continued to see mortality rates fall. This increase for whites was largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. Although all education groups saw increases in mortality from suicide and poisonings, and an overall increase in external cause mortality, those with less education saw the most marked increases. Rising midlife mortality rates of white non-Hispanics were paralleled by increases in midlife morbidity. Self-reported declines in health, mental health, and ability to conduct activities of daily living, and increases in chronic pain and inability to work, as well as clinically measured deteriorations in liver function, all point to growing distress in this population. We comment on potential economic causes and consequences of this deterioration.
Although the epidemic of pain, suicide, and drug overdoses preceded the financial crisis, ties to economic insecurity are possible. After the productivity slowdown in the early 1970s, and with widening income inequality, many of the baby-boom generation are the first to find, in midlife, that they will not be better off than were their parents. Growth in real median earnings has been slow for this group, especially those with only a high school education. However, the productivity slowdown is common to many rich countries, some of which have seen even slower growth in median earnings than the United States, yet none have had the same mortality experience.
Writings/Essays
First Quarter 2024 Review – Short Dated Nasdaq-100 Index Options by Russell Rhoads.
First, before moving forward, past performance does not guarantee future results. We have 15 months of data to work with and market conditions may change over time, including NDX option pricing. Also, selling straddles is not an appropriate trade for many traders, but this information may be applied to other neutral strategies like iron butterflies and iron condors. NDX option pricing when there is one or two days remaining to expiration is mixed with consistent long positions and short positions having periods of profitability. The longer dated straddles, specifically spanning four or five days have been profitable for short sellers, but with a few dramatic drawdowns.
Finding Tradable Edges In 0 DTEs by Two Sharpe.
On average, VVIX hovers around 90 and rarely spends much time above 110. When selling options, a commonly accepted risk management threshold is to start viewing things differently when VVIX surpasses 100. As it turns out, you might want to scale down on longer-dated options and instead focus on the ultra-short-dated ones during these periods.
Sex and Gender: The Medical Establishment’s Reluctance to Speak Honestly about Biological Reality by Alan Sokal & Richard Dawkins.
A baby’s name is assigned at birth; no one doubts that. But a baby’s sex is not “assigned”; it is determined at conception and is then observed at birth, first by examination of the external genital organs and then, in cases of doubt, by chromosomal analysis. Of course, any observation can be erroneous, and in rare cases the sex reported on the birth certificate is inaccurate and needs to be subsequently corrected. But the fallibility of observation does not change the fact that what is being observed — a person’s sex — is an objective biological reality, just like their blood group or fingerprint pattern, not something that is “assigned.” The medical associations’ pronouncements are social constructionism gone amok.
Defending Freakonomics’ Most Famous Finding by Steven Levitt & John Donohue.
Though there is not complete acceptance of our hypothesis among academics, all agree that if our paper is not correct, then there is no viable explanation for the enormous drop in crime in America that started in the early 1990s. Indeed, there is not even an arguable theory to supplant the abortion-crime link. Exposure to lead in the environment might, perhaps, be the next best hypothesis. But as we showed in our 2020 paper, when one controls for both environmental lead and abortion, the coefficient on abortion remains large while the coefficient on environmental lead is greatly reduced and loses statistical significance.
Podcasts/Conversations
Cliff Asness: Timely & Timeless Investment Wisdom, The Meb Faber Show.
Is the Next Move a Rate Hike? with Danny Dayan, Macro Sunday.
Long vol, short prediction models 