Bitcoin Hits High of $19,850 As Doubters Become Believers
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    HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $1,428,634 (-1.45%)       Melbourne $930,989 (-0.82%)       Brisbane $810,456 (+0.44%)       Adelaide $761,620 (-0.66%)       Perth $660,033 (+0.19%)       Hobart $726,275 (-0.58%)       Darwin $631,920 (+0.43%)       Canberra $949,792 (+1.48%)       National $928,905 (-0.56%)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $711,464 (+0.99%)       Melbourne $479,443 (-0.34%)       Brisbane $444,216 (-2.99%)       Adelaide $355,517 (-1.97%)       Perth $374,449 (+1.17%)       Hobart $534,602 (-0.33%)       Darwin $342,769 (-5.36%)       Canberra $499,736 (+1.97%)       National $495,165 (-0.04%)                HOUSES FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 9,160 (+153)       Melbourne 12,809 (+376)       Brisbane 9,350 (+98)       Adelaide 2,738 (+51)       Perth 8,333 (+89)       Hobart 1,098 (-10)       Darwin 258 (+2)       Canberra 936 (-1)       National 44,682 (+758)                UNITS FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 7,898 (+94)       Melbourne 7,166 (+23)       Brisbane 2,088 (+33)       Adelaide 486 (+10)       Perth 2,308 (+39)       Hobart 153 (-10)       Darwin 379 (+7)       Canberra 522 (+1)       ational 21,000 (+197)                HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $690 (+$5)       Melbourne $525 (+$5)       Brisbane $570 (+$10)       Adelaide $550 (+$10)       Perth $575 (+$5)       Hobart $565 (-$5)       Darwin $700 (-$20)       Canberra $690 ($0)       National $616 (+$2)                    UNIT MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $660 (+$10)       Melbourne $500 ($0)       Brisbane $550 (+$10)       Adelaide $420 ($0)       Perth $520 ($0)       Hobart $470 (+$20)       Darwin $530 ($0)       Canberra $550 (-$10)       National $533 (+$4)                HOUSES FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 5,678 (-134)       Melbourne 5,496 (+1)       Brisbane 3,855 (+40)       Adelaide 1,147 (+38)       Perth 1,656 (+15)       Hobart 274 (-1)       Darwin 122 (+2)       Canberra 705 (+7)       National 18,933 (-32)                UNITS FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 6,667 (+140)       Melbourne 4,149 (-45)       Brisbane 1,304 (-20)       Adelaide 351 (+15)       Perth 708 (+38)       Hobart 128 (-11)       Darwin 199 (-13)       Canberra 526 (+4)       National 14,032 (+108)                HOUSE ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND       Sydney 2.51% (↑)      Melbourne 2.93% (↑)      Brisbane 3.66% (↑)      Adelaide 3.76% (↑)      Perth 4.53% (↑)        Hobart 4.05% (↓)       Darwin 5.76% (↓)       Canberra 3.78% (↓)       National 3.45% (↓)            UNIT ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND       Sydney 4.82% (↑)      Melbourne 5.42% (↑)      Brisbane 6.44% (↑)      Adelaide 6.14% (↑)        Perth 7.22% (↓)     Hobart 4.57% (↑)      Darwin 8.04% (↑)      Canberra 5.72% (↑)      National 5.60% (↑)             HOUSE RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND       Sydney 1.6% (↑)      Melbourne 1.8% (↑)      Brisbane 0.5% (↑)      Adelaide 0.5% (↑)      Perth 1.0% (↑)      Hobart 0.9% (↑)      Darwin 1.1% (↑)      Canberra 0.5% (↑)      National 1.2% (↑)             UNIT RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND       Sydney 2.3% (↑)      Melbourne 2.8% (↑)      Brisbane 1.2% (↑)      Adelaide 0.7% (↑)      Perth 1.3% (↑)      Hobart 1.4% (↑)      Darwin 1.3% (↑)      Canberra 1.3% (↑)      National 2.1% (↑)             AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL HOUSES AND TREND       Sydney 26.9 (↑)        Melbourne 27.0 (↓)       Brisbane 32.8 (↓)       Adelaide 25.0 (↓)       Perth 32.3 (↓)       Hobart 27.2 (↓)     Darwin 34.8 (↑)        Canberra 26.9 (↓)       National 29.1 (↓)            AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL UNITS AND TREND         Sydney 25.4 (↓)       Melbourne 26.0 (↓)       Brisbane 28.3 (↓)       Adelaide 23.8 (↓)       Perth 37.5 (↓)     Hobart 24.0 (↑)        Darwin 35.6 (↓)       Canberra 29.8 (↓)       National 28.8 (↓)           
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Bitcoin Hits High of $19,850 As Doubters Become Believers

By Avi Salzman
Mon, Nov 30, 2020 12:40amGrey Clock 2 min

Bitcoin soared to an all-time high on Monday, hitting US$19,850 in the morning before again slipping below US$19,500 by the afternoon.

It has nearly doubled in just the past two months. The cryptocurrency has been boosted by a flurry of endorsements from traditional investors, favourable government policies, and expanded access on investment apps, as Barron’s noted this weekend.

Even traditional investors who had long spurned or ignored Bitcoin have begun reconsidering. New buyers tend to view the digital asset as a hedge against currency devaluation at a time when governments have loosened monetary policy to deal with the coronavirus. It doesn’t bother many bulls that Bitcoin remains mostly useless as a currency. Its role as an asset appears to be enough.

Scott Minerd, the global chief investment officer at Guggenheim, appears to be warming to Bitcoin. The Guggenheim Macro Opportunities Fund (ticker: GIOAX), with more than $5 billion in assets under management, said in a regulatory filing that it may invest up to 10% of its net asset value in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), a stock-like security that tracks the price of Bitcoin.

Bernstein analyst Inigo Fraser-Jenkins, co-head of the portfolio strategy team, wrote on Monday: “I have changed my mind about Bitcoin’s role in asset allocation. In January 2018 we declared that it had no such role. But actually, maybe we have to admit it does. What has changed is the policy environment, debt levels and diversification options for investors post the pandemic.”

One reason that analysts are changing their minds about Bitcoin is that it may serve to balance portfolio exposure for some investors. Stocks are trading at high valuations, so it makes sense to hedge exposure to them. But bonds and Treasuries have also rallied, and are trading with such low yields that there’s not much reward for the risk that investors are taking on.

Gold has also risen in recent months and is trading near a 50-year high relative valuation to other commodities, according to Jim Paulsen, the chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group.

Paulsen recommended on Monday that clients consider Bitcoin as a way to balance their portfolios. He is impressed with how uncorrelated it has been to other assets — both stocks and things like bonds and gold. “The thing is, Bitcoin has risks, but today, so do most of the other balanced portfolio alternatives,” he wrote.

He explained more in a follow-up email to Barron’s.

“I still don’t really understand what drives Bitcoin but I am finally willing to recognize that its short history yields some beneficial attributes which I can’t find elsewhere,” Paulsen wrote. “And, unlike other balance possibilities, I am not looking to ‘buy and hold’ Bitcoin (would need to understand it better to do that), but rather looking to exploit its excessive volume in order to improve the workings of a traditional balanced portfolio in a way which is not possible if utilizing only traditional assets. My point essentially is that I am not really attracted per se to Bitcoin fundamentally, but rather only its ‘interactive’ character (including its unique excessive volatility) with stocks and other traditional assets.”

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Investors are taming impulsive money moves by adding a little friction to financial transactions

By IMANI MOISE
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To break the day-trading habit that cost him friendships and sleep, crypto fund manager Thomas Meenink first tried meditation and cycling. They proved no substitute for the high he got scrolling through investing forums, he said.

Instead, he took a digital breath. He installed software that imposed a 20-second delay whenever he tried to open CoinStats or Coinbase.

Twenty seconds might not seem like much, but feels excruciating in smartphone time, he said. As a result, he checks his accounts 60% less.

“I have to consciously make an effort to go look at stuff that I actually want to know instead of scrolling through feeds and endless conversations about stuff that is actually not very useful,” he said.

More people are adding friction to curb all types of impulsive behaviour. App-limiting services such as One Sec and Opal were originally designed to help users cut back on social-media scrolling.

Now, they are being put to personal-finance use by individuals and some banking and investing platforms. On One Sec, the number of customers using the app to add a delay to trading or banking apps more than quintupled between 2021 and 2022. Opal says roughly 5% of its 100,000 active users rely on the app to help spend less time on finance apps, and 22% use it to block shopping apps such as Amazon.com Inc.

Economic researchers and psychologists say introducing friction into more apps can help people act in their own best interests. Whether we are trading or scrolling social media, the impulsive, automatic decision-making parts of our brains tend to win out over our more measured critical thinking when we use our smartphones, said Ankit Kalda, a finance professor at Indiana University who has studied the impact of mobile trading apps on investor behaviour.

His 2021 study tracked the behaviour of investors on different platforms over seven years and found that experienced day traders made more frequent, riskier bets and generated worse returns when using a smartphone than when using a desktop trading tool.

Most financial-technology innovation over the past decade focused on reducing the friction of moving money around to enable faster and more seamless transactions. Apps such as Venmo made it easier to pay the babysitter or split a bill with friends, and digital brokerages such as Robinhood streamlined mobile trading of stocks and crypto.

These innovations often lead customers to trade or buy more to the benefit of investing and finance platforms. But now, some customers are finding ways to slow the process. Meanwhile, some companies are experimenting with ways to create speed bumps to protect users from their own worst instincts.

When investing app Stash launched retirement accounts for customers in 2017, its customer-service representatives were flooded with calls from panicked customers who moved quickly to open up IRAs without understanding there would be penalties for early withdrawals. Stash funded the accounts in milliseconds once a customer opted in, said co-founder Ed Robinson.

So to reduce the number of IRAs funded on impulse, the company added a fake loading page with additional education screens to extend the product’s onboarding process to about 20 seconds. The change led to lower call-centre volume and a higher rate of customers deciding to keep the accounts funded.

“It’s still relatively quick,” Mr. Robinson said, but those extra steps “allow your brain to catch up.”

Some big financial decisions such as applying for a mortgage or saving for retirement can benefit from these speed bumps, according to ReD Associates, a consulting firm that specialises in using anthropological research to inform design of financial products and other services. More companies are starting to realise they can actually improve customer experiences by slowing things down, said Mikkel Krenchel, a partner at the firm.

“This idea of looking for sustainable behaviour, as opposed to just maximal behaviour is probably the mind-set that firms will try to adopt,” he said.

Slowing down processing times can help build trust, said Chianoo Adrian, a managing director at Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America. When the money manager launched its online retirement checkup tool last year, customers were initially unsettled by how fast the website estimated their projected lifetime incomes.

“We got some feedback during our testing that individuals would say ‘Well, how did you know that already? Are you sure you took in all my responses?’ ” she said. The company found that the delay increased credibility with customers, she added.

For others, a delay might not be enough to break undesirable habits.

More people have been seeking treatment for day-trading addictions in recent years, said Lin Sternlicht, co-founder of Family Addiction Specialist, who has seen an increase in cases since the start of the pandemic.

“By the time individuals seek out professional help they are usually experiencing a crisis, and there is often pressure to seek help from a loved one,” she said.

She recommends people who believe they might have a day-trading problem unsubscribe from notifications and emails from related companies and change the color scheme on the trading apps to grayscale, which has been found to make devices less addictive. In extreme cases, people might want to consider deleting apps entirely.

For Perjan Duro, an app developer in Berlin, a 20-second delay wasn’t enough. A few months after he installed One Sec, he went a step further and deleted the app for his retirement account.

“If you don’t have it on your phone, [that] helps you avoid that bad decision,” he said.

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