Factor Risk in Sovereign Portfolios
Not all risks should be hedged. Long-horizon investors are designed to absorb illiquidity, tolerate short-term volatility, and earn the associated premia. Those risks are intentional. Systematic macro exposures are different. They often arise as a byproduct of portfolio construction rather than as a deliberate investment view.
Once these exposures are identified, they can, in many cases, be partially offset using liquid instruments. Emerging market credit exposure can be moderated through credit default swaps indices, broad market risk through equity index futures or ETFs, and commodity-linked sensitivities through futures and options on oil and industrial metals.
This is not to eliminate risk or smooth returns. It is to reduce the impact of systemic drawdowns—the periods when correlations rise, diversification benefits diminish, and shared risk drivers overwhelm otherwise differentiated investments. In practice, this is likely to involve partial rather than full hedging, increasing protection when vulnerabilities rise, and focusing on downside resilience rather than return enhancement.
In some cases, the most effective hedge is not the most direct one. For portfolios with significant exposure to commodity-linked economies, local currency movements often reflect underlying shocks in oil or metals rather than acting as independent sources of risk. Where currency markets are illiquid, hedging costs are high, or derivatives are constrained, commodity instruments may provide a more efficient means of mitigating the underlying exposure.
Factor-based overlays are not a substitute for conventional currency hedging, and basis risk remains an important consideration. They are a complement to it—one that shifts the focus from hedging individual positions to managing the common drivers of portfolio risk.
Spotify promotes Joe Hadley to VP of Global Music Content, Partnerships; J.J. Italiano named Head of Editorial
Spotify has promoted Joe Hadley to VP of Global Music Content and Partnerships.
The move hands Hadley leadership of Spotify‘s Music Editorial and Music Partnerships teams. It widens his remit across the company’s relationships with artists, labels, and the broader music industry.
Spotify says the new structure will preserve Editorial’s “distinct voice, expertise, and decision-making,” while creating “a more connected Music team.”
“Editorial is a key part of bringing an essential human touch to Spotify,” said Charlie Hellman, SVP and Global Head of Music at Spotify. “The team’s judgment and taste is what fans and artists rely on.
“Joe‘s capable leadership will keep artist advocacy at the center of our work and bring even more impact to the programming we do.”
Charlie Hellman, Spotify
“Joe‘s capable leadership will keep artist advocacy at the center of our work and bring even more impact to the programming we do.”
“Joe‘s capable leadership will keep artist advocacy at the center of our work and bring even more impact to the programming we do.”
Hadley‘s expanded role sits inside the Music organization Hellman leads.
J.J. Italiano has been named Head of Editorial as part of the same restructuring.
Italiano‘s role covers Global Curation, North American Editorial, and overall editorial strategy.
Italiano reports to Hadley.
In his previous role as Global Head of Music Partnerships & Audience, Hadley ran Spotify‘s global and North American partnership functions, spanning label, artist, songwriter, and publisher relationships, as well as audience and genre strategy.
Italiano steps up around three months after Sulinna Ong – previously Spotify‘s Global Head of Editorial & Curation, Music – exited the company to join U2’s management team.
Ong joined as a Management Partner alongside Irving and Jeffrey Azoff, having held Spotify‘s top editorial job since October 2021.
She was named a Billboard Women in Music Executive Honoree for four years running, from 2023 through 2026.
Where Ong‘s role had reported alongside Hadley‘s, Italiano‘s reports to him.
Hadley‘s promotion lands inside a Music organization that Spotify has been consolidating since 2024.
Global Head of Music Jeremy Erlich exited in October 2024, and his direct reports – Ong and Hadley among them – moved under David Kaefer, then the platform’s VP Music & Audiobook Business.
Hellman became SVP and Global Head of Music in October 2025, succeeding Kaefer, who left after seven years at the company.
Announcing that change in an internal memo obtained by MBW, Alex Norström – then Spotify‘s co-President and Chief Business Officer – wrote that “as we enter our next era of scale, we are centralizing all music functions under his leadership.”
Norström credited Kaefer in the same memo with leading “key music functions, including Editorial, Partnerships, and GTM.”
Norström became co-CEO alongside Gustav Söderström on January 1, 2026, when founder Daniel Ek moved to Executive Chairman.
The reshuffle also arrives as Spotify pushes its editorial team further into public view.
The company launched Playlist Notes and Editor Profiles on August 17, letting editors attach written context to tracks on playlists including Today’s Top Hits and RapCaviar, and giving the editors their own pages inside the app.
Hadley joined Spotify in March 2022 as Global Head of Artist Partnerships & Audience, arriving from CAA.
He had spent five years at The Windish Agency from 2011 before joining CAA in 2016, going on to become Global Co-Head of Hip-Hop & R&B.
He has described the artists he worked with at Windish as “very much left-of-center, but with a strong touring business.”
His clients at CAA included Beyoncé, A$AP Rocky, Jorja Smith, and Tems, and he also helped lead the agency’s diversity, equity, and inclusion work.
Spotify closed Q2 2026 with 777 million Monthly Active Users and 300 million Premium subscribers.Music Business Worldwide
Is Marvell Stock a Buy on the Dip as AI Revenue Soars?
Shares of Marvell Technology (MRVL -10.28%) declined despite the company once again reporting strong data center and artificial intelligence (AI) revenue growth when it released its fiscal second-quarter earnings on Aug. 27. However, the stock is still up more than 150% year to date as of this writing.
Let’s dive into the semiconductor company’s latest results and prospects to see if this dip is a buying opportunity.
Today’s Change
(-10.28%) $-24.83
Current Price
$216.62
Key Data Points
Market Cap
Day’s Range
$215.55 – $228.88
52wk Range
$61.44 – $329.88
Volume
49M
Avg Vol
40.2M
Gross Margin
51.42%
Dividend Yield
0.11%
Robust data center revenue growth continues
Marvell has been a big beneficiary of the AI infrastructure build-out with both its connectivity and custom chip businesses. The company is a leader in optical DSP (digital signal processing) chips, which convert electrical data into optical signals for faster data transmission within data centers. This business is growing quickly as AI data centers move away from copper wiring to optical networks. It also has strong positions in broadband analog components and scale-out switching. It sees each of these businesses moving toward a $1 billion annual revenue run rate.
The company also has a strong custom chip business. Its IP (intellectual property) is used in Amazon‘s custom chips, and the cloud computing leader is currently its largest customer in this area. It’s also involved with Microsoft‘s new Maia chip. However, the big buzz was about Marvell’s recently announced partnership with Alphabet that includes inference accelerators, storage controllers, NICs, memory interface controllers, and near-memory compute. Marvell said the deal is broad-based and a game changer for the company, although it looks like it won’t become a meaningful contributor until fiscal 2029 (calendar year 2028).
As for its results, its overall revenue jumped by 37% year over year to $2.74 billion, while its adjusted earnings per share (EPS) soared 40% from $0.67 a year ago to $0.94. Those results were just ahead of the midpoint of management’s outlook for adjusted EPS of $0.93 on revenue of $2.7 billion.
Data center revenue jumped 46% year over year in the quarter to $2.17 billion. Communication and other end market revenue, meanwhile, rose 10% year over year to $567.8 million.
Looking ahead, Marvell management guided for fiscal 2027 Q3 revenue of $3.15 billion, plus or minus 5%, which represents year-over-year growth of about 52%. It is looking for adjusted EPS of $1.05 to $1.15. Third-quarter data center revenue is projected to surge by 75%.
It also upped its fiscal 2027 revenue growth outlook, taking it from $11.5 billion to $12 billion, representing 45% growth. Its data center business is now projected to grow 60%, up from a prior forecast of 50%. Data center growth is expected to be broad-based, with a significant acceleration in its custom chip business in the second half of fiscal 2027 and into fiscal 2028.
It is now projecting fiscal 2028 revenue to climb 50% to $18 billion, up from an earlier forecast of $16.5 billion. Its data center business is projected to grow by 60%, while its custom chip business is expected to more than double.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Is it time to buy the dip?
Marvell has gone from a cheap stock, due to worries it was losing its lead partnership position with Amazon’s custom chips, to an expensive stock riding a big optical interconnect wave. Even after this recent dip, the stock now trades at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of under 34 times fiscal 2028 estimates (ending January).
The company’s deal with Alphabet should kick in around the same time it loses any potential growth tied to future iterations of Amazon chips, which is a big win. Meanwhile, its optical opportunity is still in its relatively early stages and has the potential to be a huge growth driver. While I wouldn’t jump on the stock right now, I do think it would become interesting on any further pullback.
Giftcards.com: Buy $100 Visa eGiftcard, Get $10 Kroger Giftcard (KROGER10)
The Offer
Direct Link to offer
- Giftcards.com is offering a free $10 Kroger e-gift card if you buy $100 Visa e-gift card. Use code: KROGER10.
- Limit 1 per transaction. Limit 3 total.
- Total cost will be $105.95 after fees.
Our Verdict
Decent deal. Can also try stacking with a shopping portal and see if it tracks.
Hat tip to gcanywhere
The Midwest Is Dominating 2026 Real Estate Rankings—But the Drawbacks Matter
If there were a U.S. championship for the best places to invest, the Midwest would see its cities grab gold, silver, and bronze medals. Not only have cities in the American heartland dominated the recent Wall Street Journal/Realtor.com Summer 2026 Housing Market Ranking for the most popular places to live, but they have also consistently dominated BiggerPockets’ Pulse cash flow surveys.
However, all that glitters is not gold (silver or bronze). Before you throw a dart on a map of the Midwest and charge off to buy some rentals, it’s worth noting that not all cities in the region are created equal, and the balance between employment demand and supply is crucial to enjoying a fruitful landlording experience. Demand can be mercurial, with cities moving up and down the leaderboard like players in a game of Chutes and Ladders.
Rental Yields Can Be Misleading
With interest rates snaking back up to near 7%, affordability has never been more important, as most investors struggle to make the numbers work with conventional leverage strategies. Threading the needle between high rents and low prices to make houses worth considering buying leaves only a few options.
Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis all rank among the country’s top 10 highest-yielding rental markets, according to a recent analysis by Leading Landlord using Zillow home value and rent data. However, the numbers often overlook a larger story: House prices are so affordable because demand to live there is traditionally lower than in coastal counterparts due to employment opportunities, and rental yields can be misleading.
Recent political policies have made the situation fluid. “With immigration having largely been stopped … the labor force is growing very slowly,” Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in a post as quoted by The Guardian.
U.S. employers unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July, with gains from the previous two months revised downward. “However, slower wage growth, even in the face of rising inflation, indicates it is not a very good labor market for most workers. That story does not seem likely to change anytime soon,” Baker wrote in the post.
Jobs Create Tenants: Follow the Money
Landlords should pay particular attention to the jobs market because jobs create tenants, particularly in the Midwest, where blue-collar jobs have traditionally dominated. Thus, established metros are the safe bet.
Reuters reported recently that Bank of America was adding senior investment bankers in Chicago, Detroit, and Minneapolis in an expansion drive with middle-market companies.
Chicago remains the region’s largest and most diversified economy, with employment spread across multiple industries. Elsewhere, Minneapolis-St. Paul; Cincinnati, Ohio; Milwaukee; Dayton, Ohio; and Indianapolis ranked highly on the Monster Jobs Market Report, thanks to stable employment sectors such as education, healthcare, finance, and tech.
Vicki Salemi, a Monster career advice expert, said when commenting on the recent Monster Jobs report:
“While healthcare remained the largest source of hiring demand, transportation, logistics, customer service, and sales also continued to generate significant employer activity. At the same time, several Midwest metros emerged among the fastest-growing hiring markets… suggesting hiring growth is broadening beyond many of the country’s traditional employment hubs.”
Rural Areas Have High Cash Flow but Unstable Employment
Conversely, outside major Midwest metros, where house prices are most affordable, tariffs, combined with ICE raids, have created employment problems, particularly on new construction projects.
“The construction process has been slowing down,” Amy Wright, a Fayette County, Georgia, resident, told The Guardian of an under-construction battery plant. “My fear is that the whole thing is going to stop, and we’re left with just unfinished concrete out there. Tariffs are affecting everything.”
In Indiana, Reuters reports that one of the state’s largest employers, the pharmaceutical company Roche, is rethinking its $50 billion investment plan because of the government’s drug pricing policies.
“Should the proposed EO (Executive Order) go into effect, Roche’s ability to fund the significant investments previously announced in the U.S. will be in question,” the company said in a statement.
Watch the Population Shifts
Employment isn’t the only metric investors should keep an eye on. Population trends could signal a desire for affordability that could extend to remote workers. If this is the case, recent demographic shifts could be an encouraging sign for would-be investors.
“When you live in a place that’s been losing population since the 1960s, to say out loud that we believe this place can stabilize and grow…it landed on some ears as ridiculous,” Kyle Kutuchief, a program director in Akron, Ohio, for the philanthropic Knight Foundation, told the Wall Street Journal regarding a tech start-up that recently took up residence in an abandoned B.F. Goodrich tire factory. “And to now be at a place where we’re leveling off and starting to tick up a little bit, it gives me goosebumps.”
The Journal quoted census numbers for the year ending in June that show the Midwest is gaining residents at a slightly higher rate than the rest of the country—around 16,000—a marked improvement from 2022, when it lost 175,000.
Service-based economies are the biggest beneficiaries, according to the Journal, such as Indianapolis, Columbia, and Des Moines, as well as Cleveland and Akron, which have reinvented themselves from their manufacturing pasts. Domestic moves, international migration, and the balance between births and deaths are among the biggest factors contributing to population change.
Final Thoughts
While affordability plays a big part in making an area attractive to new residents, for landlords, the metric of house price versus potential rental income alone isn’t enough to determine whether a place deserves your investment dollars. Yes, the Midwest tops most rankings based on those factors, but the calculations need to be a lot more nuanced than a “Top Ten Cash-Flowing Cities” headline.
For a landlord, news of a new manufacturing facility, hospital expansion, or corporate investment translates into more paychecks to support rents. And rents tend to go a lot further in the Midwest than elsewhere.
Three California cities sued over transit housing law defiance
“Cities throughout California must play by the same set of rules,” said Tamara Suminski, C.A.R.’s president and a Southern California broker and REALTOR®, in a statement accompanying the lawsuits.
Three cities, three legal theories
Each city is accused of a distinct form of non-compliance. In San Diego, the nonprofit alleges the city applied a “walking path” exemption to exclude large areas near San Diego Trolley stations, including parcels blocked by minor alleyways or sidewalk gaps. The plaintiffs argue state law bars cities from citing their own infrastructure shortfalls to restrict transit-adjacent development.
Separately, San Diego’s planning office is accused of publishing internally inconsistent maps that have complicated site review for developers. The case is filed as Californians for Homeownership et al. v. City of San Diego in San Diego County Superior Court.
The San Francisco lawsuit targets the city’s decision to designate portions of its land base as “industrial employment hubs,” a classification the plaintiffs contend does not comply with state standards for lawful exclusion under SB 79.
The city is also alleged to be improperly restricting access to California’s State Density Bonus Law, a key housing production tool. Spokesperson Jen Kwart said only that the city would “review the complaint and respond in court.”
AI Transformation Requires Redesigning Work, Not Cutting Roles
<p>If leaders default to headcount reduction, the result will be an organization that is smaller but not smarter.</p>
BJ’s Membership Discount: Club for $15, Club+ for $50
BJ’s Membership for $15
BJ’s Wholesale Club is running a promotion for those looking for a new membership. You can get one for as little as $15. That’s a massive discount off the standard $60 rate, giving you access to bulk savings, cheap gas, and exclusive coupons. There’s also a similar discount for the Club+ membership which you can get for just $50 instead of the usual price of $120. Check out the details below.
Offer Details
You can currently get a big discount for both BJ’s membership tiers:
The Club Card Membership benefits include:
- Save up to 25% off grocery store prices
- Shop aisles and aisles of fresh produce, meats, cheeses and fresh-baked goods
- Boost your savings with coupons from BJ’s and your favorite brands
- Download the BJ’s app to add digital coupons right to your card
- Fill up for less with low prices at BJ’s Gas, and save even more with BJ’s Fuel Saver Program
- Skip the line with ExpressPay & curbside pickup
- Get the same low, in-club prices when you use BJ’s Same-Day Delivery
- One complimentary household membership included
- Try BJ’s risk-free with our money-back guarantee
The Club+ Card Membership benefits include:
- All benefits of The Club Card membership
- Earn 2% back in rewards on most BJ’s purchases
- Get 5¢ off/gal. at BJ’s Gas
- Earn up to 2x – 3x back in rewards3 during special events
- Rewards earned with The Club+ Card Membership do not expire while the membership is active
- Enjoy free curbside pickup
- Get two free same-day deliveries on orders of $50 or more
Guru’s Wrap-up
The $15 tier is perfect if you just want access to the club and BJ’s Gas, while the $50 Club+ offer pays for itself quickly if you’re a frequent shopper and spend at least $150–$200 a month thanks to that 2% back.
BJ’s Easy Renewal enrollment is required as part of this promotion, but you can turn off renewal after singing up so you don’t end up paying full price after one year.
Just keep in mind that this offer if for new members only.