Topley’s Top Ten – January 14, 2020

Author

Matt Topley
January 14, 2020

1.Last 3 Months….Interest Rate Sensitive REITS and Utilities Not Participating in Rallies.

REIT SPDR Holds Key Moving Average as its BiggestComponents Spring to Life

Arthur Hill | January 10, 2020 at 06:09PM

Found at Abnormal Returns  www.abnormalreturns.com

2.Eight Year High Russian Equities.

After trading at single digit P/E for 10 years Russia breaks out.

Russian stocks still below post-crisis lows.

3.Russia Vs. Texas.   Russia 5x More Residents but Texas Economy $400 Billion Larger.

But back to the comparison. Even thoughRussia has nearly five times as many residents as Texas, the Lone Star State’seconomy is more than $400 billion larger. Texans, therefore, enjoy a grossdomestic product (GDP) per capita of around $58,000, whereas Russians have onecloser to $8,700.

4.2020 Kicked Off With Continued Large Cap Dominance.

Best of What’s Around: Sticking with Large Caps

Read Full Article.

5.Large Cap Outperformance Getting More Concentrated….Top 5 Companies Market Cap at Record Highs.

6.No One Is Buying New York’s Luxury Condos

Morning Brew

7.Follow Up To Yesterday’s Women Making Up Over 50% of Workforce.

John Burns Real Estate

Womennow hold 50.04% of all jobs. Here is one of my favorite charts from our“Rise of the Working Woman” chapter in http://ow.ly/swYd50xSNIq. This has had many significantimpacts on home sizes, locations, prices and amenities. JohnBurns Real Estate Consulting hashtag#JBRECDailyInsight

8.Why highly intelligent people suffer from more mental and physical disorders

Your brain’s heightened sensitivity can make you perceptive andcreative. But it’s a double-edged sword, researchers find.

11 December, 2017Image source: Edvard Munch, The Scream c. 1893

People with high IQ are considered to have an advantage in manydomains. They are predicted to have higher educational attainment, better jobs,and a higher income level. Yet, it turns out that a high IQ is also associatedwith various mental and immunological diseases like depression, bipolardisorder, anxiety, ADHD as well as allergies, asthma, and immune disorders. Whyis that? A new paper published in thejournal Intelligence reviews the literatureand explores the mechanisms that possibly underlie this connection.

The study authors compared data taken from 3,715 members ofthe American Mensa Society (people who havescored in the top 2% of intelligent tests) to data from national surveys inorder to examine the prevalence of several disorders in those with higher intelligencecompared to the average population.

The results showed that highly intelligent people are 20% morelikely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 80% more likely tobe diagnosed with ADHD, 83% more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, and 182%more likely to develop at least one mood disorder.

When it comes to physiological diseases, people with highcognitive abilities are 213% more likely to have environmental allergies, 108%more likely to have asthma, and 84% more likely to have an autoimmune disease.

Credit: Journal of Intelligence / High intelligence: A riskfactor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities

The researchers turned to the field of psychoneuroimmunology(PNI) to look for some of the answers. PNI examines how the chronic stressaccumulated as a response to environmental factors influences the communicationbetween the brain and the immune system.

The researchers point out that highly intelligent people havetendencies for “intellectual overexcitabilites” and a hyper-reactivity ofthe central nervous system. On the one hand, this gives people with high IQheightened awareness that helps their creative and artistic work. In fact, thefield of cognitive ability recognizes one aspect of highly intelligent peopleto be “a broader and deeper capacity to comprehend their surroundings.”

This hyper-reactivity, however, can also lead to deeper depressionsand poor mental health. This turns out to be particularly true for poets,novelists and people with high verbal intelligence. Their intense emotionalresponse to the environment increases tendencies for rumination and worry, bothof which predict depression and anxiety disorders.

Heightened psychological responses can affect immunity, writethe researchers. People with overexcitabilites may have strong reactions toseemingly harmless external stimuli like an annoying clothing tag or a sound.This reaction may turn into low level chronic stress and launch aninappropriate immune response.

When the body believes it is in danger (regardless of whether itis an objectively real one like a toxin or an imagined one like an annoyingsound), it launches a cascade of physiological responses that include a myriadof hormones, neurotransmitters and signaling molecules. When these processesare chronically activated, they can alter the body and the brain, dysregulateimmune function and lead to conditions like asthma, allergies and autoimmunediseases.

The scientific literature has confirmed the association betweengifted children and an increased rate of allergies and asthma. One study shows that 44% ofthose with an IQ over 160 suffered from allergies compared to 20% ofage-matched peers. Тhe exploratorystudy done by the authors of this latest paper further supports thatconnection.

Based on their findings and previous studies the researchershave termed this phenomenon the hyper brain / hyper body theory of integration,explaining that:

Theoverexcitabilities specific to those with high intelligence may put theseindividuals at risk for hypersensitivity to internal and/or externalenvironmental events. The rumination and worry that accompanies this heightenedawareness may contribute to a chronic pattern of fight, flight, or freezeresponses which then launch a cascade of immunological events. […] Ideally,immune regulation is an optimal balance of pro- and anti-inflammatory response.It should zero in on inflammation with force and then immediately return to acalm state. In those with the overexcitabilities previously discussed,including in those with ASD, this system appears to fail to achieve a balanceand thus inflammatory signals create a state of chronic activation.

Credit: Journal of Intelligence / High intelligence: A risk factor forpsychological and physiological overexcitabilities

The authors conclude that it is important to further study therelationship between high intelligence (particularly the top 2%) and illness,especially in order to demonstrate causation and further bring to light thenegative aspects of having a high IQ. As they say, “this gift can either be acatalyst for empowerment and self-actualization or it can be a predictor ofdysregulation and debilitation” and in order to serve this group, it isimportant “to acknowledge the rumbles of thunder that follow in the wake oftheir brilliance.”