Back when I was a kid, I played the card game Magic The Gathering for a while. I begged and clamored for cards for Christmas and birthdays and was able to collect a few rare ones from the older sets like beta and unlimited. A few years ago, I gifted my entire collection to my cousin without thinking too much about it. I figured I was giving away at most a card collection worth $700 or so.

Boy was I wrong. I was listening to a podcast today on the speculative fervor that’s taken hold of the collectibles market today…

I enjoyed this piece by Melinda Blau. In it, she writes thoughtfully and introspectively about her transition from traditional media to the current writing world. At some point, I’ll probably write a longer piece about the commoditization and aggregation of content, including written content. Over the past two decades, we’ve moved from a world of premium and highly curated content along with limited distribution (magazines, newspapers, etc.) to one where content is seemingly generated by everyone (thanks to the Internet’s ability to distribute virtually for free).

In this aggregator’s world, the ones like Medium who own the eyeballs are king…

Currently, TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) investors are paying dearly to protect themselves from inflation. In order to keep up with CPI, an investor in 5 year TIPS chooses to earn a whopping -1.74% annualized real return over the next 5 years.