Good morning. Today's stories share a theme: things that look solid on the surface but may not be what they seem. A market defying gravity, inflated earnings and a burial plot that belonged to someone else.
On The Money Today:
History says stocks should be tanking. Jim Cramer says there's a reason they're not
Michael Burry read 1,000 annual reports and says tech earnings have been overstated for a decade
A Florida couple paid for their burial plots 20 years ago. Someone else is buried in them
Let's get into it.
Oil is above $100 a barrel, the Strait of Hormuz is essentially shut down and by every historical measure, stocks should be in freefall. They're not. Jim Cramer says the answer comes down to one force most investors are sleeping on. It's the same reason the bulls keep winning when they should be losing.
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Michael Burry predicted the 2008 housing crash before almost anyone else saw it coming. Now he's turned his attention to tech stocks, and after analyzing more than 1,000 annual reports, his conclusion is blunt: the earnings investors have been betting on aren't real. If he's right, the AI boom may be built on a number that doesn't exist.
Sue and James Artiga paid $1,800 for burial plots in 2006 and didn't think twice about them for nearly 20 years. When they eventually moved away from Tampa and tried to sell, they discovered a stranger was already buried there. The cemetery has no record of who. No marker, no answers and no refund. Now in their late 70s, they have no idea where they'll be buried. If you have prepaid burial arrangements and haven't checked on them recently, their story is worth a read.
ALSO MAKING THE ROUNDS TODAY
POLITICS: Rep. Ilhan Omar's net worth dropped from a reported $30M to $18K — her office is calling it an accounting error
REAL ESTATE: Bill Ackman is publicly defending Ken Griffin's $238M NYC penthouse from a new tax targeting empty luxury homes — and says billionaires should be applauded, not punished
NEWS: A mom opened a savings account for her son, forgot about it, and years later checked the balance to find the money was gone
REAL ESTATE: A 93-year-old Georgia woman turned down a $1.2M offer from Augusta National just to keep her family home off the market
HAVE YOUR SAY
Who should pay NYC's new luxury home tax?
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See you soon with another quick roundup of the financial news that matters.
