What We’re Reading
A few good pieces the Collab team came across this week …
Ranking
The University of Chicago will no longer require ACT or SAT scores from U.S. students … the announcement Thursday by the university was a watershed, cracking what had been a solid and enduring wall of support for the primary admission tests among the two dozen most prestigious research universities.
Blast from the past
A team of researchers believe they could bring back the woolly mammoth from extinction within the next two years … the team is attempting to splice mammoth DNA into the genome of an elephant embryo in order to create a mammoth-elephant hybrid. The goal is to eventually grow a mammoth embryo within an artificial womb, as to not compromise the reproductive system of a healthy elephant.
Measuring good
On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs, using Mr. Jones’s metrics, will introduce a new exchange-traded fund as part of series of social impact efforts by the firm.
The fund is a feel-good selection of Russell 1000 companies, tracking the top 50 percent of those in each industry based on Just Capital’s publicly available model, which scores businesses using a complex formula related to workers, customers, products, environment, jobs, communities and management. Only 6 percent of the calculation of the index relates to how well a company provides investor return.
Strategy
Big themes from Kahneman: 1. Regret minimization (both downside loss and missed opportunity) more important than wealth maximization 2. Behavioral coaching is a more important role for the financial advisor than investment expertise.
Happiness
Happiness is complicated. And baseline happiness – where you immediately adjust to a new level you’ve attained so that it’s no longer thrilling for you, has a lot of implications for all of us. What happens when you finally get to where you wanted to be, or even beyond? Then what? What happens when you’ve got all the money and success and adoration you could ever have imagined? Maybe the pursuit is easier than living with the results once you’ve won.
Risk and fraud
A phenomenal talk:
Have a good weekend.