Your 5 weekly reads:

Range Takeaway: June payroll growth came in meaningfully below consensus after several months of stronger-than-expected hiring. But the unemployment rate still ticked down to 4.2%. With fewer people looking for work, the economy doesn't need to add as many jobs to keep the labor market in balance. This looks like a labor market that's stable, not overheating, which should take some pressure off the Fed. July's report will show whether this was a one-month pause or the start of a softer trend.

Markets just closed the books on their best quarter since 2020. The S&P 500 climbed 14.9%, the Nasdaq surged 21.4%, and the Dow notched a fresh record. In a year that has already endured a tech selloff and an oil shock, that is a stunning turnaround.

As much as we heard talk of an AI bubble, this rally was anchored in results. Companies reported 29% earnings growth for Q1, pushing full-year expectations up to 24%. And while semiconductors sat at the center of it all, they weren't alone. The Russell 2000, which has little AI exposure, still gained more than 21%, marking its best run since 1991.

Still, there are reasons to keep exuberance in check.

Investors have piled into leveraged products and short-dated options even as funding costs rise. Much of that exposure is concentrated in the same handful of names that now make up nearly 40% of the S&P 500. Valuations have also crept higher, with the S&P 500 now trading above 20x forward earnings. The move has been supported by fundamentals, but positioning and leverage have amplified it. Those same forces can work in reverse.

Q3 raises the bar. Analysts expect another quarter of 20%-plus earnings growth, the strongest pre-season outlook since 2021. The setup remains constructive, but with expectations higher, valuations richer, and leverage building, it's also less forgiving than it was entering Q2.

If you’re reading this from an Airbnb by the beach or a lakeside Vrbo you booked for the holiday weekend, you may be wondering: would a short-term rental be a good investment for me?

Short-term rentals (STRs) can sometimes gross more than a long-term lease, though higher running costs (cleaning, management, vacancy) narrow that gap. The real edge for high earners is on the tax side.

Normally, rental losses are “passive” — the IRS won’t let them offset your salary. But a tax-code carve-out changes that for STRs: if your average guest stay is 7 days or fewer and you materially participate — meaning you spend 100+ hours/year and more time than anyone else managing the property — the IRS may treat it as a business, so its losses could offset your active income (yes, that includes W2 income).

Pair that with a cost-segregation study (which lets parts of the property depreciate faster) and bonus depreciation (writing off 100% of those costs in year one for property bought and placed in service after January 19, 2025), and you could unlock some serious tax savings.

But this strategy isn’t for everyone: “material participation” is a hard bar to clear, particularly with W-2 employment, so run the numbers with a tax pro — or ask Range whether an STR fits your plan.

Every extra foot on a superyacht costs a different universe of money — Tiger Woods’ 155-ft Privacy ran him around $20 million, while Jeff Bezos’ 417ft Koru cost half a million dollars.

That’s just one of the stories we covered on Instagram this week. We also got into the 2003 Ferrari Enzo that just became the most expensive car ever sold on the internet, the AI talent war that wiped $300B off Google as two of its top scientists walked out for rival labs in a single week, and a breakdown of Erling Haaland’s ~$800K Hermès Birkin collection.

Follow us on Instagram @rangefinance to catch our videos next week.

“What are the top performing holdings in my portfolio?”

With a high-performing quarter now in the books, Rai can help you look past your headline return and see which holdings are actually carrying your portfolio’s returns.

Rai ranks your top performers and breaks down how much they’ve returned since you purchased them.

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