Topley’s Top Ten – November 21, 2019

Author

Matt Topley
November 21, 2019

1.Decade Bull Run Driven by Earnings.

Found at Abnormal Returns  www.abnormalreturns.com

2.USMV Low Volatility ETF Second Biggest Asset Flows Behind Vanguard Total Stock Index (VTI) 2019

3.Ichan’s Bet Against Malls Getting Squeezed.

HOLIDAY SHOPPING– Carl IcahnPlacing a Big Bet Against Mall Owners – Legendary investor standsto gain $400 million or more if mall owners run into challenges servicing theirdebt – Mr. Icahn’s trade puts him on a collision course with two of the largestmoney managers, including Putnam and AllianceBernstein, which are more upbeaton malls, WSJ reports. 

The face-off is “the biggest battlein the mortgage bond market today,” said MP Securitized CreditPartners.  “the showdown is the talk of this corner of the bond market,where more than $10 billion of potential profits are at stake on an obscureindex” – Each side of the trade is speculating on the direction of an index,called CMBX 6, which tracks the value of 25 commercial-mortgage-backedsecurities, or CMBS.

From Dave Lutz at Jones Trading

4. Solar Accounts for Only 1.6% of U.S. Electricity Generation

Solar ETF TAN correction from highs.

5.Apple No longer The World’s Most Profitable Company.

From Barry Ritholtz The Big Picture Blog  https://ritholtz.com/

6. The new Detroit

EricaPandey14 hours ago

For decades, the world haspointed to Detroit as a symbol of the entire Rust Belt and the decay ofAmerican manufacturing. But the city is attempting to change that narrative —and succeeding.

Why itmatters: Detroit may be the starkest example, but its story ismirrored in dozens of U.S. cities — Columbus, Pittsburgh and Toledo among them— that have shared its challenges and are embarking on comebacks of their own.

What’shappening: The mayor’s office, nonprofits and Detroit’s Fortune 500companies are coming together to turn the city around. Detroit is changing sofast that its transformation over the last decade was visible from outer space.

In the last10 years, Detroit has turned many of its longtime problems around — andattracted jobs in industries that will shape the future.

  • The site that used to be home to Hudson’s — once the country’s biggest department store and the crown jewel of Detroit’s downtown — has been revamped. It’s turning into a new, futuristic skyscraper with shops, office space and a hotel. Dan Gilbert, the billionaire co-founder of Quicken Loans, is behind that project as well as much of the development around the rest of downtown.

  • While automakers are — and likely always will be — the major employers in the region, a slew of new industries have come to town, including fintech, cybersecurity, health care IT and retail, says Ned Staebler, vice president of economic development at Wayne State University, in the heart of Detroit.

  • On top of that, autonomous vehicle makers are targeting Detroit due to its roots in the car business. Waymo is putting a factory in Detroit, and Ford is turning an abandoned train station in the city into its AV center.

  • And the city has pulled in some Big Tech. Microsoft has an office downtown, and LinkedIn just announced plans to build a big outpost in Detroit.

But, but,but: Many of the economic and demographic trends that areshaping the future of American cities are working against Detroit and citieslike it.

  • Robotics and AI are taking over — or deeply altering — jobs in advanced manufacturing, which remains a key pillar of Detroit’s economy.

  • The city keeps getting beat out by superstar metros in the war for talent and jobs. Detroit worked hard to get Amazon to build its second headquarters in town, but lost to D.C. “A lot of cities wanted it, but we wanted it the most,” a person familiar with Detroit’s bid told Axios.

And while Detroit has madebig strides in its reinvention, it’s still losing people — despite efforts tobring in new people and get college graduates to stay. “The population numberis the number by which we either win or we lose,” Mayor Mike Duggan told the New York Times.

  • In 1950, Detroit had 1.85 million people, making it the fourth-largest city in the country. Today, the population has dwindled to under 675,000, a 100-year-low, largely due to the decline of the once-kingly automakers.

7.When Life Gives You Lemons, Make an Oxygen Bar

PrabhatMehrotra/SOPA Images/LightRocket, Getty Images

8.The 4 Biggest Mistakes of Managers.

The 4 Biggest Mistakes First-Time Managers Make (And How To Avoid Them)What worked for you as a star employee may be your downfall as a new manager.

11/06/2019 05:45amEST | Updated November 11, 2019

Afteryears of quality hard work, you, the star employee, have been promoted to be amanager of a team, a first-time accomplishment for you. Congrats! You shouldtake time to feel proud of this achievement. But you also don’t have time towaste.

Assoon as you accept this new role, your superiors and your reports will bejudging how you lead, and once opinions are formed, they will be hard to shakeoff. You have to prove yourself all over again. And what worked for you as anindividual performer may be your downfall as a manager of warring egos andgoals.

Justbecause you’re the boss now doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be seen as anauthority. 

Hereare the biggest pitfalls you need to avoid, career experts say:

1. You stick only to what made you successful as an employee

Ifyou stick only to what you know works, you are going to fail as a new boss.

“Theone [mistake] I see a lot is thinking that everybody is going to behave exactlyas you behave and want the same things that you want,” said Lara Hogan, authorof “Resilient Management” and the former vicepresident of engineering at Kickstarter.“Generally, when we becomea manager, we are just trying to do our best, and the shortcut to doing ourbest is, ‘Well, what would I want in this situation? What would I need?’ It’svery natural to leap from that to assuming that everybody else is going to wantor need the same needs that you do.”

Inhis onboarding book for managers, “The First 90 Days,”leadership development consultant Michael D. Watkins argues that you have only90 days to earn the trust and support of an organization or success will becomemuch less likely. He cites one real-life example of a failed transition tomanagement, a woman named Julia who was assigned to be the launch manager for aconsumer electronics company’s new product. The extraordinary attention todetail that made Julia a great marketer caused her new team members, who wantedto make their own contributions without intrusive oversight, to see her as amicromanager. When her team challenged her authority, she focused on what shewas comfortable with micromanaging: the marketing aspects. After a month and ahalf in the role, she had antagonized her team to the point where someone elsewas assigned to lead them.

Oneof the biggest traps new leaders make is not letting go of the past and failingto embrace the new requirements of the role, Watkins states. For Julia, thatwould have meant embracing a project-leadership role and not focusing on justthe marketing aspects. “[Julia] failed to grasp that the strengths that madeher successful in marketing could be liabilities in a role that required her tolead without direct authority or superior expertise,” Watkins said, adding thatshe “kept doing what she knew how to, making her feel confident and in control.The result, of course, was the opposite.”

Solution:Accelerate your learning by asking questions and actively listening to theanswers you get. Ask open questions that are genuinely curious instead ofleading, and then actively listen to what responses you get from your teambefore you figure out what you want to say next, Hogan said.

“‘Whatif you tried this?’ is not an open question. ‘What’s important about this?What’s hard about this? What does this best look like?’ ― those are genuinelygood open questions,” Hogan said. “That’s the first, biggest tool you have inyour toolbox to avoid this mistake.”

Onceyou embrace your need to learn, you can be honest with yourself about yourleadership weaknesses. Identify what problem-solving skills don’t come to younaturally, Watkins suggests, noting that three basic tools to compensate foryour vulnerabilities are “self-discipline, team building, and advice andcounsel.”

2. You don’t prioritize earning yourteam’s trust

Whenyou use your boss title to get your way, you are under the misconception thatyour authority is enough of an influence to get things done. But you need thebacking of the people behind you and above you to be an effective leader. RandyConley, a vice president of client services and a trust practice leader for TheKen Blanchard Cos., said the biggest mistake new managers make is not spendingenough time getting to know their team members and earning their trust.

“Mostnew managers assume they already have their team’s trust by virtue of theirposition and title. ‘I’m the boss, so, therefore, you should trust me’ is theirline of thinking,” Conley said.

Solution:Make time to get to know your team. “Building rapport, listening and showinggenuine concern lays the foundation for a high-trust relationship. There istruth in the old adage, ‘People don’t care how much you know until they knowhow much you care,’” Conley said.

Ifyou want to build your influence at work, figure out what your colleagues careabout by asking lots of questions to them, so that you can translate yourrequests into the language they are familiar with, Hogan said. “For example, ifsomeone really cares about hitting a particular business metric, you have toask a lot of questions and do a lot of listening to figure what about thatmatters to them, and then reframe the thing that you want to do using thatlanguage: ’Here’s how we’re going to help move that metric… ,” Hogan said.

3. You rush to take early action so youcan make your ‘mark’

Whenyou march in on your first day and announce that you are going to overhaulsystems and trash the old way of doing things, you are sending a message toyour employees that the predictable routines they plan their days around areover. And that’s unsettling.

Oneof the core needs humans at work want fulfilled is predictability, according toa behavioral model developed by performancecoach Paloma Medina. Giving your employees predictability does not mean you aregiving them guarantees you cannot commit to ― that you won’t make any changes,for example ― but it does mean you give them notice to help them plan forchallenges.

Solution:Spend time listening and asking questions before big changes. “New managers shouldspend plenty of time observing, learning how the team works, asking insightfulquestions, gathering data, building trust, catching people doing things right,and then come up with a plan to make changes where necessary,” Conley said.

Hogansaid that when she starts out as a first-time manager somewhere, she likes togather data for the first 30 days by asking questions like “What is one thingwe should change?” and “What is one thing we should definitely not change?”

Thereshould be a slow approach to change: “Your first 30 days are sponge mode, justasking questions,” Hogan said. “The second 30 days, you are actually startingto tiptoe around what are the changes you want to roll out. The last 30 days ofyour first 90 days, you are actually potentially enacting some change orintroducing some change.”

4. You get too friendly with the people youmanage

“Oneof the biggest mistakes … is not establishing boundaries and just beinggrateful to be in the position. We sometimes try and be everyone’s friend,which can be hard to come back from,” said Minda Harts, founder of TheMemo LLC, a career development company for women of color. “I foundmyself in this situation as a new manager, and some of my direct reports didnot see me as their manager or take feedback from me seriously. I didn’t set upthe right boundaries from the start.“

Thischallenge is common. In a survey of nearly 300 first-time managers, havingtrouble with displaying authority was the most common struggle, cited by 59% of thegroup.

Gettingtoo friendly with employees does not help display authority. Research has foundthat getting too close to the people you manage can make work less efficient. A2019 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology thatanalyzed the interactions of 73 employee-manager pairs found that workers inthe stronger relationships felt less pressure to return a favor right away,resulting in lower employee engagement.

Solution:Set clear expectations and build a stronger relationship to yourself. When you make the transition from friendly colleagueto boss, know that you will have to privilege the professionalaspect of this relationship, so that no one thinks your friends get betterinformation from you than non-friends. Setting expectations can mean having aconversation with your work friend about how your relationship will change,such as the frequency of one-on-one time at work, as soon as you get promoted.

Examinewhere your need to be friends with colleagues is coming from. For Harts, ittook becoming secure in her position to change her management style. At a jobwhere she was “happy” and “grateful” to be a boss, she was the only Black womanin a leadership position. Harts said she led “from a place of fear instead ofcourage…. Later I realized that I am an asset and worked hard for thisposition, and I deserved to be in leadership. I had to shift my mindset.”